A Magic of Twilight

The Hirzgin’s mouth tightened so that even from this distance, Jan could see the lines folding in her plain, flattened face. “Yes,” Jan said to Markell. “Tell the a’teni that it’s time for him to make his choice: either for me, or for the A’Kralj.

Tell him he can no longer play both sides. He must make his choice now. Tell him that I hear his daughter will be looking for a new husband soon, and that I’ll be looking for a wife.” Jan clapped Markell on the shoulder. “When we reach the border, Markell, the Kraljica will realize that the might of the Holdings is Firenzcia. She will negotiate, as she always has, rather than risk war-and the terms will make me the A’Kralj, not her son. From what I’ve heard, that may even please her.

And if not. .” He shrugged. “Then may Cenzi have mercy on her in the afterlife.”

Ana cu’Seranta

She had expected that the Archigos would be waiting at her apartments when she returned from Oldtown. He was not. There was, in fact, only silence from him the next day, a day in which she performed her duties in the Archigos’ Temple without seeing him, a day in which the Kraljica lingered-according to all the rumors-on the edge of death, a day in which she found that she could not stop thinking of what she had seen. The Numetodo haunted her dreams and skulked like shadows in her waking thoughts.

She’d returned changed, and she knew it. She wondered how everyone else could not see it as well.

On the morning of the following day, a note came from the Archigos: he would meet her at the Kraljica’s Palais immediately. The carriage was already waiting for her; the Archigos was not in it, but the driver was the same e’teni who had taken her to Oldtown. He glared at her accusingly as he opened the carriage door.

At the palace, Renard was waiting to escort her to the Kraljica’s chambers. “How is she?” Ana whispered as they walked. The mood in the palais was somber; the servants Ana glimpsed hurried about their tasks, silent and frowning. Renard shook his head.

“I pray, O’Teni, as does the Archigos, but I fear that Cenzi calls her too strongly.”

The hall servants opened the door to the Kraljica’s chambers as they approached. “The Archigos said for you to go in directly to her bedroom. I’ll wait here,” Renard said. Ana nodded, and the old man took her hands before she could move away. “If you can help,” he said, “the healers with their potions and leeches have been able to do nothing, but you. . you were able to keep her alive. I know that it is what she would want, and Cenzi will forgive you.”

He released her hands and turned away before she could respond, leaving Ana alone. The Archigos’ voice called to her from the bedroom. “Ana? Come here. .”

The bedroom looked the same as she’d last seen it, all but the Kraljica. Her face was a pale skull draped with parchment above the covers, strands of white hair clinging to it stubbornly. She looked already dead, her eyes and cheeks sunken.

“She’s nearly gone,” the Archigos said. He was seated alongside the bed, looking like a wizened child in the tall chair with his legs dangling below the robes of his office, clad in white stockings and slippers. She looked for accusation in his face and saw nothing there but grief.

“I’m sorry, Archigos.” She came to the other side of the bed and looked down at the Kraljica. “I can’t help her. Not anymore.”

“Try,” he said. The single word was an order. The deep sadness in his face had been erased. He looked across the bed to Ana, his eyebrows raised angrily.

“Archigos, I have tried. You know that. And the Divolonte. .”

He cut her off, lifting himself nearly off the seat with his hands.

“You will try again,” he repeated. “I brought you into the Faith from obscurity; I have raised you up. I’ve protected you. I have given you and your family all that they have. I know where you went the other night and I’ve said nothing. I’ve protected you from enemies you don’t even know you have, Ana. You will try.” She started to protest, but his voice softened. “The Kraljica has been my support and my dearest friend for decades, and that she’s stricken is not Cenzi’s plan but someone else’s.

I know what I ask of you, and I know the Divolonte. Try. One more time.”

The Kraljica’s mouth opened slightly in a sour breath. Ana nodded.

“I’ll try,” she told the Archigos. She closed her eyes, drawing in a long, calming breath, trying not to think of the exhaustion and pain that were going to follow.

The words of the chant sounded false in her ears. She kept thinking of what she’d seen with the Numetodo. “Perhaps the Ilmodo also has nothing to do with faith and belief at all. .” She called to Cenzi. . but there was no answer. Not this time. The words were empty and her hands swept only through air, not into the cold, unseen stream of the Ilmodo. Frightened, she opened her eyes to see the Archigos watching her. He seemed not to notice that her spell was vacant, his face expect-ant and hopeful.

Cenzi, what have I done? Have You abandoned me?

She stopped chanting. She let her hands fall to her side. “Archigos,”

she said. “I’m sorry. I can do nothing for her.”

He nodded as if it was what he’d expected to hear, and Ana realized that he misunderstood her, that he believed she had already tried and failed. She started to tell him the truth but could not think of a way to do that without betraying her promise to Karl. I saw another side of the Ilmodo, and Cenzi has taken away my Gift because I doubted. The Archigos would take away her Marque and send her away. He would demand that Vatarh return the solas he’d been given in payment for her service. Her family would be disgraced and she would be the cause of it all.

The Kraljica would die, and she would bear the blame.

“Thank you for the effort, Ana,” the Archigos was saying. “I knew it was her time, but I didn’t want. .” He stopped. She saw the grief wash again over his face as he looked down at the Kraljica. “Stay here with me. Pray with me.”

Ana nodded. She brought a chair over to the side of the bed and sat across from him. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving. A faint glow emanated from his hands; he was calling the Ilmodo reflexively, unconsciously. Ana found herself mute. She watched the Archigos, but she could not bring herself to pray. Her thoughts were chaotic: a nightmare mix of fright at what would happen to her, of images from the Numetodo’s heretical use of the Ilmodo, of what she’d been taught of teni who had lost their faith and found themselves punished by Cenzi, never to be able to use the Ilmodo again.

“Archigos,” she said softly, almost a whisper. “Let me try again, one more time. .” The dwarf’s eyes opened, the glow faded from his hands.

He nodded to her, silently.

Please, Cenzi. I shouldn’t have doubted You. . She began the chant again, trying to open the way to Cenzi and the Second World. There was no immediate response, no sense of the cold power of the Ilmodo, and she thought that once more she’d failed. She continued to chant the words, to move her hands, as if by sheer determination she could wrench open a path. . and she began to feel the Ilmodo close to her once more, and she took the power and shaped it, moving its frigid waves over the comatose Kraljica.

Again she felt the emptiness there, how the frayed thread of life in her body led irrevocably back to the painting elsewhere in the palais. She wrapped the Ilmodo around that thread, began to tug at it delicately.

Slowly, slowly, she started to pull the Kraljica back once more. Ana nearly sobbed with the relief and effort. Thank you, Cenzi. Thank you. .

She could do this, she could bring the Kraljica back yet again even if she could not fully heal her. She could- but a strange nausea passed over Ana, a sudden disorientation.

It was as if someone had shaken the world. For a moment she thought that it was the tremor of an earthquake. . and she realized that the thread holding the Kraljica to her body was-impossibly-broken.

“No!” Ana screamed. The spell dissolved, the Second World vanished, the Ilmodo fled from her.

The Kraljica’s mouth was open, but her chest was still. Her hair, only a few seconds ago brushed and arranged, was mussed, as if in her last moment she had thrashed and struggled. The Archigos stood, and Renard, from his station along the wall, called through the door for the healer, in a choked voice. The healer entered, glanced at the body and held a silvered glass to the Kraljica’s nostrils.

He shook his head.