and outside the globe of light, and night returned, shot through with afterimages of remembered glare. The effect was startling. He couldn’t see Mahri at all, nor the globe of light. They were. . gone.
He stepped forward again to where Mahri had been standing. . and sunlight dawned once more, caught in Mahri’s hand.
Karl shook his head, stunned. The quickness of the spell didn’t startle him; that was a Numetodo trick, after all, one that the teni couldn’t match with their slow chants. But the spell itself. . “That’s. . Well, that’s truly marvelous, Mahri. You’re a teni, then, or were once?”
Mahri laughed at that, a dry and strangled chuckling. “No. Not a teni.”
Karl frowned. “A Numetodo? If so, then-”
Mahri interrupted Karl before he could finish the statement. “Could you do this, Envoy, you or any Numetodo you know?”
“No,” Karl admitted. “My own skills are. . more limited. I’ve still much to learn before I would claim to have mastered the Scath Cumhacht. But I’ve known a few who, back in Paeti. .” He stopped. “No, I don’t think they could have done that, either.”
Mahri nodded. “I’m not Numetodo. But let us say that I have sympathy for your cause. And one doesn’t
Staying close to the man’s back, Karl shuffled behind Mahri to an archway, then along a short corridor. The interior of the building was shabby and rundown, with walls broken and rat-holed. He heard the slithering of the creatures in the walls as they passed. At the end of the corridor was a staircase, as steep and narrow as Mahri had advertised; they ascended, then turned into a room directly above the one he’d entered on the ground floor. A feral cat streaked along the wall and out a window as they came in. Mahri extinguished the light entirely, thrusting the globe somewhere in his tattered robes. “Come here, Envoy,” he said.
In the dim light from the quartered moon, Karl could see Mahri beckoning to him from alongside a window with the shutters half-open.
A chair was set just to one side, where someone could watch the street but not be noticed. Karl went to the window and glanced down. A covered, four-person carriage had stopped on the street below at the house next to theirs. Two lanterns mounted on the sides pooled light on the street. The driver had dismounted from his seat and gone to the carriage doors. “Vajica Francesca ca’Cellibrecca-you would know her face?” Karl nodded. “Then watch. You’ll only have a moment.”
The driver opened the carriage doors, and Karl leaned forward, squinting into the night. “That’s not her,” he said as the driver helped down a woman, plainly dressed, and thinner and decidedly shorter than Vajica ca’Cellibrecca, but the woman immediately turned back to the carriage, and he realized she was a servant. Another woman, with an ornate feathered hat and a fur draped around her shoulders, took the driver’s hand and descended from the carriage. As she reached the street and the two women began to hurry toward the door of the house next door, she lifted her face up to the buildings and the dim light of the carriage lamps slid over her features.
“Yes. That’s the Vajica,” Karl said.
“I know,” Mahri answered. “Now get comfortable and wait a bit.
The A’Kralj will come.”
Karl watched the women enter the house as the carriage that had brought them drove off again, then turned back toward the beggar.
“How soon. .” he began, then realized that he was talking to no one.
Mahri wasn’t in the room.
“Mahri?” There was no answer. Karl sighed, sat in the chair by the window and waited.
There was little to watch. The lane, off the main streets, had little traffic, locals walking from their apartments to unknown destinations or appointments, or returning with a sack of greens or a long loaf of bread. Very occasionally, a hired carriage would pass, but none stopped.
He could smell woodsmoke nearby and heard the whistle of an utilino shrilling alarm and saw a wan glow on the bottoms of the clouds from a few blocks away. He hoped the fire-teni were close by to put out the blaze- Oldtown feared fire more than anything. Some time later, the glow subsided; maybe half a turn of the glass, maybe more: the fire-teni had arrived and snuffed out the blaze. Karl was nearly ready to give up his vigil when he saw a man dressed in a dark cloak hurrying down the street. Something about the man’s gait and bearing struck him; when the man stopped across from the house, he pushed the cowl back from his head. There was no mistaking the thrusting chin nor the fine features of his face-Karl had seen them in paintings and glimpsed them a few times at public ceremonies in the city: it was the A’Kralj. Karl leaned forward to watch him go to the door of the house. He didn’t knock-the door opened as he approached and he went in.
“They meet three times a week.” Karl jumped at the sound of Mahri’s voice, turning to see the man standing a bare stride from him. “Always the same days, always the same time, always for the same length of time. The A’Kralj has his matarh’s habit of punctuality and ritual. One might suspect that the A’Kralj performs the same acts in the same way each time as well. Nessantico runs on routine, after all.”
“You might warn a person before you sneak up on them.”
“And spoil the mystery?” Karl thought a grim smile creased Mahri’s scarred, distorted mouth, but it might have been a trick of the shadows.
“If I were you, I’d be wondering what Nessantico might be like if A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca became Archigos and the A’Kralj was suddenly Kraljiki Justi III.”
“I don’t have to wonder,” Karl told him. He rose from the chair.
“You should. There are worse options.”
“Such as?”
“What if it weren’t Kraljiki Justi who ruled Nessantico, but someone who had once been Hirzg? Brezno is ca’Cellibrecca’s seat of power, after all.”
“Then why would ca’Cellibrecca’s daughter be tying herself to the A’Kralj?”
“An intelligent man makes plans for every possible scenario. Whatever you may think of A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca, don’t make the mistake of thinking him or Hirzg Jan stupid.”
“And
I’m here representing what’s at best a loose coalition of minor kinglets whose lands are smaller than some of the Kraljica’s personal estates, all huddled just outside the Holding’s current borders. I don’t control an army; I don’t even have much influence on those to whom I report. I’m a minor dignitary who hasn’t yet managed to steal even a moment of the Kraljica’s time despite persistent efforts and-I must say-some substantial bribes.”
“You’ve neglected to mention that you sit at the top of a network of Numetodo here in the city and throughout the Holdings. You control Mika ce’Gilan, who in turn is part of the top cell here in the city. I’ve been watching him for some time now. The unfortunate ce’Coeni was just a member of one of the lower cells-the one you know as Boli’s cell, wasn’t it-though I’m certain that he wasn’t acting on your orders.”
His training allowed Karl to show nothing to Mahri of what he was thinking.
much less cooperate well enough to organize. We have people who still have some lingering belief in Cenzi, however different from the Concenzia; we have those who worship some of the Moitidi in various forms; we have others who believe that there may be no gods at all, that everything in the world can be explained without the need for a god’s intervention. We’d like the freedom to search for our own truths without being persecuted by the Concenzia Faith or the Kraljica’s minions. We’re not a threat to the Holdings or Concenzia as long as they’re not a threat to us. Beyond that, I don’t care who rules the Holdings. That’s all I’m here to ask for, and I’m just what I appear to be. Nothing more.”
“So am I,” Mahri answered blandly. “As much as you.”
