Jan ca’Vorl
“Where is Georgi, Vatarh? I want him to show me how you besiege a city.”
Her voice echoed in the expanse of the Comte’s Palais of Passe a’Fiume. The open lobby under the broken, charred roof was littered with pallets of the wounded and dead, and what remained of the structure stank of blood and smoke. Jan regarded his daughter and sighed.
He’d allowed her to enter Passe a’Fiume from the rear encampment this morning. It was safe enough now: U’Teni cu’Bachiga, A’Offizier cu’Garret, and those injured Chevarittai of Nessantico who had been unable to flee were incarcerated in the temple, which was one of the less-damaged buildings in the city. The executed bodies of some of the lesser offiziers of the Garde Civile-those whose families were unlikely to have enough wealth to make ransom likely or worthwhile-were gibbeted along the walls of the town. The war-teni, under ca’Cellibrecca’s guidance, had briefly become fire-teni, putting out the flames their spells had caused. Despite their efforts, the town smoldered: the buildings were grave-shrouded in ribbons of gray, thin smoke; the walls were cracked and tumbling near the main gates. Crows feasted on the bodies left strewn in the streets or half-buried in rubble or sprawled on the fields outside, while soldiers monitored the citizens dragooned into removing the dead, stacking the corpses on flat-bedded carts, and taking them to the pyre built on the far side of the Clario. The dead-wagons fought against the constant influx of Firenzcian soldiers crossing into and through Passe a’Fiume. Except for the laughter and howls from the Firenzcian soldiers carousing in Passe a’Fiume’s still-open taverns and brothels, the city went about its sad duties silently, in massive grief and shock.
Jan had hoped that this would be the worst Allesandra would need to see, but hope-as the Toustour said- was a fickle mistress. Jan had studied the reports that Markell had given him regarding their own losses. He looked at his aide now, standing behind Allesandra with his head bowed.
“That’s why I asked Markell to bring you here,” he told her. “Come with me, love. I must show you something.” He held out his hand to her. She took it, and he marveled again at how smooth her hand was in his, and how it was no longer quite so small in his grasp. They walked down the main aisle between the pallets, with Jan stopping occasionally to comfort one of the wounded Firenzcian soldiers. Jan could see Allesandra’s eyes widening, seeing the blood and the decaying flesh, the missing limbs and terrible, open wounds. Her breathing was shallow and fast, and she clung hard to him.
They stopped, finally, before a pallet in the middle of the room.
“No. .” Jan heard Allesandra breathe, then a sob cracked in her voice and she tore her hand away from Jan, kneeling down beside the pallet and the still, bloodied body laying there. She looked up at Jan with eyes brimming. “This can’t be,” she said. “I won’t let it be.”
“I wish it were that easy, my little bird,” he answered. He crouched alongside her. “Allesandra, your Georgi was a soldier. An o’offizier. He asked to participate in the siege and he performed valiantly, but when the Nessantican chevarittai fled yesterday it was his encampment they went through. He fought to hold them back. But he fell.”
Jan reached for the blanket and started to pull it over Georgi’s head; Allesandra reached out and touched his hand. “No,” she said. “Let me, Vatarh. He was my friend.”
Jan let her take the blanket, and Allesandra gently pulled the folds over Georgi’s face. She touched her hand to the o’offizer’s hidden face.
“Allesandra,” Jan said softly, “war might seem like a game, but a starkkapitan or a Hirzg must realize that the pieces aren’t lead and paint; they’re flesh and blood, and once they fall, you can’t pick them up again and put them back. Look around you; this is the reality of war, and you need to understand it if you are to be the Hirzgin. Georgi was teaching you how to move the pieces; now he teaches you what it means to
Allesandra glanced back up at him and though her cheeks were stained with the tracks of moisture, her eyes were dry. “Tell me that we’ll go to Nessantico now, Vatarh,” she said, her voice tinged more with anger than sorrow. “Tell me that.”
He crouched down and cradled her in his arms, and her anger returned again to tears. She sobbed against his chest, hard and inconsolable. He stroked her hair and pressed her against him.
“We will go to Nessantico, Allesandra,” he told her. “I promise you that. You will walk its streets soon enough.”
“Another week, perhaps a bit more, and this will be Nessantico’s fate.
Cenzi has indeed blessed us,” ca’Cellibrecca said, his voice as raucous as one of the carrion crows. “What a wonderful victory, my Hirzg!”
Jan turned from a broken window set high in a domed tower of the temple. He’d given Allesandra into Markell’s care before going to find the Archigos. Ca’Cellibrecca was beaming at him, his corpulent face alight above the ornate robe of the Archigos. Jan scowled back.
“You’re a fool, ca’Cellibrecca,” he snarled. He pointed to the shattered window. Shards of colored glass were snared in the leaden frame, and the sill was blackened with smoke. “Is that
he railed at the man, who cowered back in the doorframe as if searching for a retreat. “Will you tell me that Kraljiki Justi is among our prisoners?
Was it the Kraljiki or even Commandant ca’Rudka who surrendered the city to us, or only some unimportant local offizier? Did you fail to notice how many men we lost here, or how many days we’ve wasted while Nessantico readied its defenses?” Jan spat out from the window, watching the gob of spittle arc in the air to fall on shattered roof tiles far below. He turned back to ca’Cellibrecca. “The Kraljiki played us here, ca’Cellibrecca, better than his matarh could have. He offered parley to gain days, then he fled and left his commandant here to hold us. Then the chevarritai fled themselves before they could be captured.”
“I realize that,” ca’Cellibrecca said. “Starkkapitan ca’Linnett should have ordered his men to pursue. I told the man so, but he wouldn’t listen to me.” Ca’Cellibrecca shook his head. “Now we’ll have to contend with them at Nessantico. I’ve been thinking about this, my Hirzg. If we take our troops, and divide them so that we come in from the north and west as well as the east. .”
Jan interrupted the man with a snarl. “Come here a moment, Archigos-I need to show you something.”
Ca’Cellibrecca walked across the room toward him; Jan stepped aside to let him stand before the window, his nose wrinkling at the smell of incense clinging to the man’s robes. “What is it you want me to see?”
ca’Cellibrecca asked, and Jan caught the man’s green robes in his fists and pushed him forward hard. Ca’Cellibrecca squalled in fright but his hands flailed only at cold air. Jan could see shards of glass digging into the rolls of the man’s waist. Overbalanced, ca’Cellibrecca was heavier than Jan had expected; he had to brace himself to keep from losing his grip entirely.
“Can you fly, Archigos?” Jan asked as the man shouted in alarm.
“Can Cenzi give you wings like a bird?”
“My Hirzg. . Pull me back up!”
“Shut up,” Jan told him. “You look more like a cow than a bird to me, Archigos. That’s what you are, Archigos: a cow. As long as you give me the milk of Cenzi, I will keep you. If you can’t be my cow, then I have U’Teni cu’Kohnle to serve as such. Frankly, I don’t really care which one of you it is as long as you give me what I want from you. I don’t need you to be a bird and tell me about bird matters unless you can demonstrate to me how well you fly. I already have a starkkapitan, but maybe you think you’re a better strategist, eh? We can find out now.
So tell me, Archigos, because my arms are tired and I can’t hold you for much longer: are you a cow, or are you a bird?”
He shook the man and heard the sound of cloth ripping. Ca’Cellibrecca screamed. “I’m a cow! A cow!” Jan could see his arms flailing. People were looking up from the ground and pointing to the Archigos.
“Louder,” he called to the Archigos, shaking him again. “I can’t hear you. They can’t hear you.”
“I’m a cow!” the man screamed. He could hear the bellowing reverberate in the streets below. “I am a cow, my Hirzg!”
“Moo for me then, Cow,” Jan said. “Let us hear you moo.”
Ca’Cellibrecca gulped. He mooed, a plaintive wail sounding over and over again, as if he were one of the wind-horns of the temple. Jan could hear laughter in the streets below.
