A Magic of Twilight

touched his fingertip to the tiny wound and looked at the smear of red, his eyes still saucered.

“Mika.” Karl caught his friend’s gaze and nodded his head toward the chair he’d overturned. “Sit down, and don’t move your hands- either to your knife or to make a spell. Commandant, will you take a chair with us? Can I order you a pint of ale? The local brew isn’t quite up to the Isle’s standards, but. .” Slowly, deliberately, Karl sat back down in his own chair. He put his hands on the table where ca’Rudka could see them.

He saw ca’Rudka’s tight-lipped smile through his clearing vision.

The commandant was still watching Mika, though now he lowered the knife that had threatened Karl. After a breath, the tip of his thin saber dropped and he sheathed both weapons. He waved to the men at the door-Garde Kralji-and they bowed and retreated, though they left the door open. No one in the tavern objected this time.

Ca’Rudka took a chair from the nearest table and turned it backward before he sat-Karl realized suddenly that it was a fighter’s move: there was no back to block him if he decided to stand and retreat suddenly or to draw his sword again, and the chair itself would be easy to pick up as a defensive shield. Across the table, Mika sat gingerly, rubbing at the wound on his neck. “Too early in the day for ale,” ca’Rudka answered easily, as if conversing with old friends. “It’s not good for digestion.”

“Nor would be sitting in a cell in the Bastida, I suspect,” Karl answered. “Is that where I’m bound, Commandant?”

“Have you done something deserving of such punishment, Envoy?”

Ca’Rudka folded his arms on the chair’s back and leaned forward, the smile still playing on his lips. “Or perhaps you hired someone to do it for you?”

“I had nothing to do with the Kraljica’s collapse, Commandant.

Nothing. Nor did any Numetodo. This is not what any of us wanted.

Quite the opposite.”

Ca’Rudka stared at him for a breath, silent. At last, he gave a faint nod. “Yet the Archigos tells me that the Kraljica was attacked with a spell, Envoy, and not a spell like those the teni use. The rumors I hear of the Numetodo. .”

“. . are much exaggerated,” Karl told him. “You just saw that demonstrated a moment ago, Commandant. If we were as powerful as people seem to believe, we would have burned your body to a cinder in the instant you drew your sword or turned you into a clucking chicken. Or we’d have hidden our presence so well that you wouldn’t have known where we sat drinking. Seeing that I could do none of those things, then I doubt that I have the ability to harm the Kraljica.”

“This is my city, Envoy. It’s my business to know certain people within it and where I might find them. But let’s not be disingenuous.

We both know that the Numetodo play with the Ilmodo, despite the in-terdiction against such meddling in the Divolonte. Or are you claiming that the Numetodo attack on the Archigos was just a parlor trick?”

“Everyone also saw how easily a mere acolyte turned that fool’s spell, Commandant. If I’d used the Scath Cumhacht at the Gschnas, I would have been seen and heard doing so and the Archigos or A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca or any of the other dozens of teni there would have noticed it, don’t you think? And if we had the ability to plant a triggered spell that powerful, I assure you I wouldn’t have made myself so visible in the crowd.”

“No, I doubt you would have,” ca’Rudka answered. “Which is why you’re not headed for the Bastida already. But I think you understand why I would need to ask, and to watch your face as you answered.” The smile tightened and faded. Karl could see his distorted reflection in the polished nostrils of the commandant’s nose. “I consider myself a good judge of character, Envoy. I find that I like you. I do. You’re unfortunate in your choice of companions-” that with a glance at Mika, “-and your loyalties are suspect, but I like you. I’d hate to see you, well, suffer for your choices.”

“I would say we are in agreement with that final sentiment, Commandant. So how might I avoid that?”

Ca’Rudka’s hand curled and lifted. Drifted down again. “It may be that you can’t, Envoy. So much is in flux at the moment. I’m only a tool in the hand of the Kraljica, after all-or the Kraljiki, should the A’Kralj take the throne- and I do what they ask me to do.”

“Even if innocents are hurt.”

The smile returned. “I find that, like those who give me my orders, I don’t really care whether a few innocents suffer as long as Nessantico herself is protected.”

“The way innocents were butchered in Brezno?” Mika interjected.

“Did their blood and their torment protect Nessantico? Are the Holdings and Concenzia better for the display of their tortured bodies?”

Ca’Rudka didn’t answer, only flicked his gaze over to Mika for a moment before returning his attention to Karl. “I would suggest, Envoy, that you leave Nessantico now. Your diplomatic mission is over at this point. Leave as soon as you can. Today.” With an abrupt and lithe movement, ca’Rudka stood, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I can’t,” Karl told him. “I have my own orders that I have to fulfill.

You can understand that, Commandant.”

A nod. “I can. Then I’ve done all I can do for you, Envoy. I can’t protect you. The rest is in the hands of Cenzi.”

“That’s something else we’ll have to disagree upon,” Karl answered.

This time, ca’Rudka’s smile seemed almost genuine. He nodded again, deeper this time, and turned. He left the tavern, closing the door behind him. Slowly, as false darkness settled around the patrons once more, the sound of conversations swirled through the smoke-tinged air.

“So the man with the silver nose rather likes you,” Mika said. “How interesting.”

Karl was still staring at the door. He could still feel the tension in his body, a vibration so strong that he wondered it wasn’t audible. Mika rubbed at his wounded throat.

“Shut up, Mika,” Karl said. “Or next time I’ll just let him run you through.”

Edouard ci’Recroix

Edouard sat perched on a rock on the banks of the A’Sele not far downriver from Pre a’Fleuve. Leave Nessantico by the Avi a’Firenzcia, his contact had told him. But then follow the flow of the A’Sele.

I will meet you on the day after Gschnas where we first met, on the river below the chateau, once we know that you’ve done your part.

Edouard had followed the instructions, abandoning his horse at a small village, then stealing a small boat to take him down the River Vaghian to the A’Sele, where he traveled once more through Nessantico, passing under the Pontica Mordei and the Pontica Kralji in the night before leaving the walls behind for the last time.

Now he sat on the bank with his sketchbook open on his lap and a stick of charcoal in his hand. A dove sat on the branch of a willow bending to the water near him, and he quickly sketched the outlines of the bird and the tree. The drawing came easily-and as the charcoal flowed around the shadows of the bird, he closed his eyes, whispering the words that opened that place deep within himself, the place the old teni had shown him. .

“The Numetodo. .” the ancient had told him, his voice blurred by the few teeth still left in his gums and the phlegm in his throat. But that face: Edouard had come across the man in a run-down inn far from any of the cities, and he’d been fascinated by the lines, by the great hooked nose and the complexity of the channels running from the corner of his eyes and his mouth, the strands of white hair wisping from the spotted scalp. There was great beauty in the man’s ugliness, and Edouard was striving to capture it in his painting.

“They almost have it right. I discovered it myself. It’s not faith in Cenzi that controls the Ilmodo. No. .” The man had shaken his head. “I was once an o’teni. Did you know that? I was in the service of the temple in Chivasso, and I found out the truth of things before I’d even heard of the Numetodo.” The man spit on the floor, a huge splotch of mucus that darkened the sawdust on the boards of the floor. He went silent then, for so long that Edouard had wondered whether he was asleep with his eyes open.

“What’s this truth?” he’d asked the old man at last. “What happened?”

“There was a girl there,” he said. “Arial, her name was. Just a ce’, one of the servants there in the Temple. But she had a fair face and a full figure, and we became lovers. It was wrong, but we didn’t care. I learned that her family was from Boail and-like them-she didn’t believe in Cenzi at all. They worshiped some minor