Ana cu’Seranta
The tower stank of mold and urine and fear, and the torches set in their sconces accentuated the darkness rather than banishing it. The long climb left the muscles in her leg aching, but she wasn’t going to give the commandant the satisfaction of her pain.
Ana’s heart sank when Karl turned at the sound of footsteps outside his cell and she saw his chained hands and the awful device clamped around his head. The commandant nodded to the garda outside the door, who took the keys from his belt and opened the cell door. “You may go eat your supper, E’Garda,” ca’Rudka said, inclining his head toward the spiral stone staircase. The man saluted and hurried away. The commandant stepped aside and gestured to Ana to enter; he followed behind her.
“Envoy ci’Vliomani, I’ve brought someone to see you. I assume I have your word as before not to use the Ilmodo?”
A nod. The commandant moved behind Karl and took the silencer from his head. Karl grimaced and drew his sleeve over his saliva-slick mouth. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said to Ana, and she thought or a moment that he was truly angry. “But I’m glad you did,” he added.
“I could see the flames of the Kraljica’s pyre from here.” He nodded toward the open shutters of the balcony, where flickering yellow still touched the stones. “You were there?”
Ana nodded. “I watched the A’Kralj take the scepter and ring from her hands. The Archigos lit the pyre with the Ilmodo. The heat was almost too much to bear. I’ve never felt a fire so intense. .” She stopped, realizing that she was talking only to keep away the silence. She heard the clatter of metal against metal and saw the commandant holding a set of heavy cuffs, the thick rings of metal opened.
“I would leave the two of you alone to talk,” he said, “but I’d be failing in my duty if I did so without making certain you can’t use the Ilmodo, O’Teni cu’Seranta.”
“I will give you my word, Commandant,” Ana told him. She was looking more at the manacles than at him.
“And I would take it, except that if you
He raised his eyebrows, proffering the manacles. Reluctantly, Ana extended her hands to him. The steel was lined with leather, with dark stains that Ana tried to ignore. The shackles pinched her skin as the commandant pressed the halves around her wrists and locked them together. The harsh click of the lock sent panic rushing through her: he could keep her here; he could take her to one of the cells in the Bastida and do whatever he wished to her-torture her, rape her, kill her.
He must have sensed her growing panic. He stepped back. “My word is law here, O’Teni, and I don’t make promises that I won’t keep,” he told her. “One turn of the glass, and I will take these away from you.”
Ana nodded. The commandant glanced from her to Karl. “And I trust your word as well, Envoy,” he said. With that, he left the cell, locking the door behind him. They heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“Ana,” Karl said, bringing her gaze away from the locked and barred door. “I had nothing to do with the Kraljica’s death. Nothing. I swear to you.”
“I believe you,” she told him. “Only Cenzi knows why, but I do.”
“How are you? Does the Archigos know you were with me when I was arrested?”
“The commandant told him, I’m certain. He seems mostly, I don’t know, disappointed. Dejected. But he has more important issues.”
“And you? Have you been able to find the Scath Cumhacht, the Ilmodo, as you did before?”
She could only shake her head, not trusting her voice. “I’m sorry,”
he told her. She felt his bound hands touch hers. Their fingers linked. “I wish I could show you,” he said quietly. “I wish I could teach you.”
“I wish that, too,” she told him. His head bent toward her. His lips brushed her hair, her forehead. She remembered her vatarh doing the same to her: at night, in the darkness. With her vatarh, she had trembled and turned her face away. With him, she had endured the embrace and the touch. With him, she had felt nothing but ice and fear.
It was not what she felt now. She lifted up her face to meet Karl’s.
She felt the trembling of her lips against his as they touched. She closed her eyes, feeling only the kiss. Only the kiss.
She drew away from him. “Ana?” he asked.
“Don’t say anything,” she told him. Her hands still held his. She leaned her head against his shoulder. She felt him start to move to put his arms around her, but there was only the clanking of chains and a muttered curse. “It’s all fallen apart,” she said. “Everything I thought I had. Everything I might have wanted.”
“I’m so sorry, Ana.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I. . I lost my faith.”
“I did once, too,” he told her, his breath warm on her ear. “And I found a new one. A better one.”
“I glad you could,” she told him. “I can’t.”
He stepped back from her then, though he would not let go of her hands. Iron clinked unmusically in response. “You have to have faith in yourself first,” he told her, and she made a scoffing noise as she turned her head. The yellow light of the Kraljica’s funeral prowled the stones of the tower. She released his hands and went to the opening to the balcony. Vertigo swept over her momentarily as
she looked at the shelf of stone and the long fall below. She clung to the side of the balcony, staring out rather than down. The Avi was a circlet of glowing pearls around the city, and the waters of the A’Sele glittered and reflected the teni-lights. The Kraljica’s-no, the Kraljiki’s-palais on the Isle was brilliant, all the windows alive with teni-lights or candelabras, and the gilded roofs of the temples shimmered in their own radiance. Between the Old Temple and the Palais, the embers of the Kraljica’s pyre still threw tongues of flame and whirling sparks at the stars.
Out there, the teni worked: keeping Nessantico alive and vital.
Nessantico held back the night, refusing to allow it dominion.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Karl said behind her. She nodded.
“My vatarh. .” She started to tell him about how he’d said he could see the city at night from afar, and stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk about her vatarh. He was dead, as far as she was concerned. “Tell me about you,” she told him. “Tell me more about the Numetodo. Please. Let’s sit here, where we can look out at the city. .”
She asked him because she didn’t want to think, didn’t want to talk.
She only wanted to sit next to him, to feel his warmth on her side, and listen to his voice. The words didn’t matter, only his presence.
She wondered if he realized that.
They sat, and he talked, and she half-listened, her own thoughts
crashing against themselves in her head so loudly that they nearly drowned out his voice.
Bonds
Jan ca’Vorl
From the wooded crown of the rise, the army spread out along the valley like a horde of black ants on the
