rise again, feeling angry with herself for having come out here, and angry with him for not acknowledging her. But Karl reached out and touched her knee. “Stay,” he said. “Please?”
She sat again. “Why?” she asked.
“We haven’t… Lately… Well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she said to him. “Tell me.”
“You’re trying to make this hard for me?” He flipped the stone over in his fingers.
“No,” she told him. “I’m trying to make it easier for me. Karl, being with you or being without you-those are both situations I can deal with, one way or another. What I can’t handle is not knowing which it’s supposed to be.” She waited. He said nothing. “So which is it?” she asked.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Actually, it is.” She hugged herself as she sat, leaning slightly away from him. “I thought when I finally took you to my bed that I might have everything I’d wanted for years. But I discovered I still only had a part of you. I want all of you, Karl, or I don’t want anything. Maybe I’m asking too much of you, or maybe I’m too possessive, or maybe you think I’m pushing you into something you don’t want.” Tears were threatening, and she sniffed them away angrily. “Maybe it’s my fault that this won’t work, and if that’s the case, then fine. I just need to know.”
“It’s not you.”
She wanted to believe that. Varina bit her lower lip, forcing back the tears, her breath shaking in her throat. “Then what is it?” she asked. “You go after this Uly on your own and nearly get yourself killed, you meet with Kenne without telling me, you’re even making plans with Talis. But you’re not talking to me.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
She wanted to scoff at that. “I worry more because I don’t know the situation. I don’t know what you’re planning, don’t know what you’re trying to do, don’t know what the real dangers might be.” She stopped. Took a breath. “I won’t be your mistress, to be there whenever you want that kind of comfort but conveniently forgotten otherwise. If that’s all you want from me, then I made a mistake. I’m also not Ana, only wanting you as a friend. Again, if that’s all you want from me, well, you can’t have that either. Not anymore. So if that’s the case, then tell me and as soon as this is over, one way or the other, I’ll go my own way. I’ve wanted you to open the door between us for a long time, Karl. Now you have, but you can’t stand there with one foot in and one outside. I need to either close that door and lock it forever, or you need to enter all the way in.”
“How do I do that?” His voice sounded plaintive in the darkness. He pressed the stone between his fingers. How can you not know? she wanted to rail at him. Can’t you see it as plainly as I do?
“ Talk to me,” she said. “Share what you’re thinking. Let me accept the dangers you’re willing to accept. Let me be with you.”
She thought that he wasn’t going to answer-which would have been answer enough. He sat there, still toying with the stone and staring outward. She started to rise again, and this time he took her hand. She could feel the stone as he pressed it into her palm.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’m thinking…”
And he began to talk.
Kenne ca’Fionta
Aubri cu’Ulcai looked like a whipped dog as he knelt on one knee, head lowered, before the Kraljica. His armor was scratched and battered, his face was streaked with grime and smoke, his hair was dark and matted, and he stank. In the Hall of the Sun Throne, he was like a horsefly paddling in a golden mug of clear, cold water.
Not that the hall itself didn’t still show scars. No one could miss the marks of the hasty repair where the Sun Throne had been damaged by the assassin’s magic-no, not magic if Karl ca’Vliomani was correct, Kenne remembered, but something more sinister-something any apothecary could make with the right ingredients. What had the Ambassador ca’Vliomani called it? The end of magic? Kenne wondered if the man was right.
The hanging tapestries around the hall still reeked of smoke, and Kenne wondered if there wasn’t a faint, horrifying pink tinge to the tiles around the throne dais. And there was no way to miss the appearance of Kraljica Sigourney herself: the patch over her missing eye, the scars on her face, the bandages that still wrapped her arms and single leg, the way she shifted painfully on the seat, the goblet filled with an extract of the seeds of the poisonous cuore della volpe flower-a concoction the court herbalist had created to keep Sigourney’s pain at bay.
Still, the Sun Throne gleamed underneath and around her as it had for countless Kralji; Kenne had seen to that personally. If that was a sham, no one watching would know it. Kenne sighed on his own seat to the right of the throne, weary from the effort of casting the light spell. The Council of Ca’ was arrayed to the left. Otherwise, the hall had been cleared of courtiers and even servants-none of them wanted more rumors spreading through the city than there already were.
“Commandant cu’Ulcai,” Sigourney said, her voice as cracked as her face, “the news you bring…” She stopped, her single eye closing. When it opened again, her voice was sharper. “You have failed us.”
“I am sorry, Kraljica,” the commandant said. “You should have my resignation letter in hand already.”
“I do,” she said. “But I won’t be accepting it.” When cu’Ulcai lifted his face with a faint hope, she scowled down at him. “That is not for any reason other than the fact that we have too few offiziers with your experience,” she told him. “You have failed with the Westlanders, and the stain on your record won’t easily be erased. I intend to have Aleron ca’Gerodi direct the defense of Nessantico should these barbarians be foolish enough to continue their advance. Had my brother been here…” With that, her lips trembled and a glimmer of moisture appeared in her eye. She took a sip of the cuore della volpe. “As for you-let us see how well you fare against an enemy you should know better. I am sending you east, Commandant cu’Ulcai, to direct our forces against the army of Firenzcia. Odil ca’Mazzak of the Council will be accompanying you, and you will both leave tomorrow.” She waved an arm to him in dismissal. “I assume you have preparations to make, Commandant.”
Cu’Ulcai rose, bowed deeply to the Kraljica, and walked from the hall, loud in the silence that followed him. When he had left, Kraljica Sigourney sighed.
“I don’t trust the man,” Odil ca’Mazzak muttered. “He’s another offizier with ties to the traitor Regent.”
“Unfortunately, he’s the best we have,” Kraljica Sigourney answered. “Odil, we need to go over the negotiation points you’ll be discussing with the Firenzcians. Archigos, I need you to beat the drums against the Numetodo-for two reasons: to placate Firenzcia, and so that we know we don’t have traitors here in the city when we’re facing enemies on either side. I expect to hear aggressive Admonitions from you and all your teni starting with the Third Call services.”
Kenne knew she anticipated no objection from him; she’d already turned away from him before she finished speaking. She thought he would nod and agree and say nothing. Once, she would have been right.
Once. But there was Karl’s visit, and there was the specter of the false Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca looming on the horizon and all that would mean. And there was the memory of Ana and the freedom and leniency she’d fought for over the years.
“No,” he said. “I won’t do that.”
The silence that followed was lengthy. Kraljica Sigourney’s single eye blinked. “No,” she repeated, the word like the tolling of a funeral bell. “Did I hear you correctly, Archigos?”
He nodded. “You’re…” His throat was dry. He swallowed, trying to dredge up some moisture. “You’re wrong about the Numetodo, Kraljica,” he told her. “You’re wrong in believing that it was their magic that killed Kraljiki Audric and injured you. It wasn’t them.”
Another solo blink. The other councillors watched the two of them, silent. “It wasn’t? And how is it that you know this?”
“Because I’ve actually spoken with Ambassador ca’Vliomani. I’ve heard his explanations, and I’ve investigated on my own what he’s discovered.”
“Karl Vliomani-” the prominent lack of a prefix to his surname lay heavy in the air, “-is a fugitive whose life is currently forfeit. You tell me that he came to you, and you let him leave? ”
Kenne shivered at the tone of her voice. “He came to me, yes, and he showed me this,” he told her. He brought out a small glass vial from under his green robes. In it, the black sand glistened. “Watch.” He rose from his
