throat, bringing her hands to her forehead. “I didn’t think about it at all, Kraljica,” she said. “There wasn’t time to think.”
“The Archigos has given you a great honor, making you an o’teni. I hope you prove worthy of it.”
The Archigos shifted in his seat and Ana glanced quickly over to him. She could still feel the way he’d touched her knee this morning, as if she were a piece of art or a bottle of fine wine he’d purchased-in that sense, it had been different than when her vatarh touched her. The Archigos hadn’t touched her since, but the memory clung to her and colored the smile she gave the Kraljica. “I will try, Kraljica. Whatever Cenzi wills, will be.” The aphorism from the Toustour was all she could think to say. She felt as if she were drowning here, lost in innuendo and hidden meanings.
“You’ll need to do better than rely on cliches,” the Kraljica said sharply, then grimaced. “Forgive me, O’Teni; I forget how new you are to your station, and that you don’t realize what is expected of you. When in private, I prefer directness and blunt honesty from my advisers. In private, I expect you to tell me what you truly think and believe. You can save polite evasions for when other ears can hear them.”
The criticism reminded her of what U’Teni cu’Dosteau had told her, back when she’d been accepted as an acolyte.
“You shouldn’t apologize, Kraljica,” Ana said. “You’re right to criticize me. I realize that I know far too little. But I also know that I can learn what I need to understand, and I can learn it quickly. This is what I wanted-this is
The Kraljica gave a quick laugh that ended in a cough. “Nicely said, at least.” She patted her mouth with a linen kerchief. “You trust her, Dhosti?” the Kraljica asked the Archigos.
“She knows where her loyalty needs to be,” the Archigos answered.
“Don’t you, O’Teni cu’Seranta?”
Ana forced herself to smile. The Kraljica might indicate that she
wanted directness, but Ana wasn’t yet prepared to leave herself that vulnerable. The events of yesterday had swept her up into a whirlwind, and until she found solid ground again, she was going to continue to act as society had always told her she should. She knew from her vatarh, from her matarh, from her great-vatarh and — matarh, from her peers: the cu’ lived always on the precipice of society, looking for a path upward to the ca’ but always aware that it was easier to slide downward than to climb. She also understood the fist concealed in the velvet glove of the Archigos’ words. “I do, Archigos,” she answered. “I serve Cenzi, and I serve Nessantico.”
That, at least, seemed to mollify the Kraljica. “So what type of teni are you?” she asked. “Did the Archigos save you from having to light the Avi a’Parete every night for the rest of your life, or from stopping the city from burning down, or from driving one of his carriages, or- Cenzi forbid-from purifying the sewage or some other teni task? Are you fire, water, air, earth?”
“She could do any of them,” the Archigos said. “She could easily be a war-teni or more.”
The Kraljica sniffed. “Impress me, then,” she said. She waved an indulgent hand toward Ana.
Ana resisted the impulse to scowl angrily at the Archigos for putting her in this position. She thought madly, trying to decide what to do or what the Kraljica might consider “impressive.”
She didn’t know what birthed the decision. Perhaps it was the draped canvas she could glimpse through the balcony doors. There had been other paintings all along the corridors down which she and the Archigos had just walked: the Kraljica as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother, as a mature woman. Ana had been most
struck by a painting of the Kraljica on her coronation. The expression on the new Kraljica’s face had struck Ana as perfect: she could see both resolve and uncertainty fighting there, as Ana imagined she might have felt herself on being handed such awesome responsibilities at a young age.
She heard the chant change, felt her hands moving, as if Cenzi Himself had taken them. She sculpted the Ilmodo. .
The Kraljica gasped audibly, and Ana opened her eyes.
Standing at the edge of the balcony, leaning against the polished stone railing a few strides from Ana as if she were gazing out into the gardens, was the Kraljica-young, wearing her coronation robes, the signet ring of the Kralji heavy on the index finger of her right hand. She turned to the three of them and smiled. “Fifty years,” she said, and it was the Kraljica’s voice, soft with youth. “I would never have imagined it.” She smiled again. .
. . and the strands fell apart in Ana’s mind, too difficult to hold in their complexity. The weariness of the Ilmodo came over her then, and she put her hand on the railing to keep her balance.
The Kraljica was still staring at where the image of her earlier self had stood. “I’d forgotten: how I looked, how I sounded. .” Her voice trembled, then she pressed her lips together momentarily. “I’ve never seen a teni do this. Dhosti? Could you?”
The Archigos was also staring, but at Ana. She could feel his appraisal. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t. At least not easily. The girl makes up spells rather than using ones taught to her.”
“No wonder A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca is muttering about the Divolonte and the Numetodo with her,” the Kraljica said.
Ana shook her head. “It’s Cenzi’s Gift,” she insisted. “It’s
The Kraljica seemed to chuckle, nearly silently. “What you think might not matter, O’Teni, if ca’Cellibrecca gains any more power in the Concord A’Teni. But it’s obvious that you’d be utterly wasted as a light-teni.” She exhaled deeply, looking again at the spot where the illusion had stood. “Let’s talk,” she said, “because I find that I’m growing concerned at what I hear from both outside and inside our borders. . ”
Jan ca’Vorl
Jan glanced down the ranks of soldiers as his carriage passed
by, their right hands fisted and raised in salute, their faces grim and serious. Most of them were young, but there were grizzled sergeants here and there whose scarred faces remembered the eastern campaigns on the plains of Tennshah and the glorious victory at Lake Cresci, where the Firenzcian army had nearly been destroyed before turning the tide.
The near-disaster at Lake Cresci had been the fault of the a’teni of Brezno at the time, who had sent but a quarter of the war-teni that Hirzg Karin, Jan’s vatarh, had requested to support the ground troops with their magic. The campaign had nearly been lost in that final battle before Jan and the Chevarittai of the Red Lancers had broken through to storm the Escarpment of the Falls and send the T’Sha’s turbaned troops fleeing back to the Great Eastern River.
Jan had sustained his own first battle wounds there, protecting the lamented Starkkapitan ca’Gradki of the Lancers. With that battle, he’d demonstrated to his vatarh the Hirzg that his second child-the one who was hardly the favorite, the one that he invariably denigrated and mocked and derided-was a far braver and more decisive leader than his first son Ludwig, who the Hirzg had named as heir. Jan had taken more territory from Tennshah than his vatarh could have hoped-before Kraljica Marguerite insisted that the borders be restored to what they’d been before the war, and given another one of her seemingly endless grandnieces to the T’Sha to seal the vile treaty that wasted what had been gained through the lives of hundreds of Firenzcian troops.
That memory of that treachery galled, still, two full decades later, bringing stinging bile to Jan’s throat. The Kraljica had stolen Jan’s victory, his victory over both Tennshah and over his brother Ludwig. She had squandered the proof that Jan was more fit to be the next Hirzg than the simpering, vain fool Vatarh obviously preferred. Had both Ludwig and Hirzg Karin not succumbed to the Southern Fever within a few months of each other-five years ago now-Jan would never have taken the throne of Brezno.
