Less than a turn of the glass or more later, they all heard a loud commotion welling up from the west on the street outside. Varina opened the door to peer out. Not far down the street, a mob of several dozen people prowled the lane-not soldiers, not Westlanders, but those who lived in Oldtown. They were shouting, rushing from house to house and breaking in through doors and windows-she could hear the screams and cries of those inside as the mob pushed its way inside each house. They were looting, carrying out anything that appeared to be valuable: she could see some of them clutching stolen items as they marched; what else they were doing in those houses, she could only guess at. There were fires already burning in three or four houses farther down the street. The mob was shouting, screaming- “Take what you want! The city’s lost! Rise up! Rise up!”
Karl and Talis pushed past Varina toward the street as the mob continued its slow, chaotic progress toward them. Someone at the front noticed them and pointed, and several clots of looters surged toward them. “Stop this!” Karl called, and they mocked him, shouting back at him and shaking old or improvised weapons. Karl glanced at Talis, shaking his head. He lifted his hands, gesturing, and light blossomed between his hands. Alongside him, Talis had raised his staff, tapping it once on the pavement stones: a lightning bolt arrowed up from the knob toward the smoke-wrapped sky.
The mob stopped. Without a word, they scattered in a strange silence, scurrying in any direction as long as it was away from them. A few breaths later, the street was empty. “Well, that went rather well,” Karl said. He and Talis turned, and Varina saw their mouths drop open as they gaped.
Varina had cast her own spell even as Karl had cast his. She’d shaped the air around her with a sculptor’s touch, drawing upon it as a canvas and placing on it an image from her mind. She knew what Karl and Talis saw, looming behind them higher than any of the houses.
“A dragon!” Nico, in Serafina’s arms, shouted from the doorway of the house in delight. Karl laughed, clapping his hands, and Varina grinned. “Can you make it spit fire and fly?” Nico asked, and Varina shook her head at the boy.
“It can’t do anything. It just looks ferocious,” she told him. For a moment, the danger was forgotten, but then reality collapsed back around them as Varina let the spell go. The dragon vanished in a fume of green, smoky ribbons that the wind hurried away. The looters might be gone, but nothing had changed. They’d be back, soon enough, and the nearby fires still raged unchecked. The city was still under assault.
“Karl,” Varina said, “we can’t stay here.”
Karl looked once at Talis, saw the man nod slightly. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time. Let’s gather what we need.” He clapped Talis on the shoulder and started toward the door.
Across the street, Varina saw a lone older woman-a beggar, from the look of her clothing. She was staring toward their house. As Varina noticed her, the woman seemed to nod, then hurried away into the dark, narrow space between the houses and was gone.
Sigourney ca’Ludovici
They put her in the Old Temple.
Commandant ca’Gerodi came fleeing back from the debacle at the Pontica Kralji, bellowing as he charged into the Old Temple to where Sigourney sat on the Sun Throne, telling her she and the Council of Ca’ must take what they could and flee immediately by the Pontica a’Brezi Veste to the South Bank and out of the city.
Sigourney refused. “Let the Council go if they must,” she said. “I am staying.”
“I can’t protect you, Kraljica,” ca’Gerodi told her. “They are coming, at any moment.”
“I’m not abandoning my city and my charge,” she responded coldly. “I will stay.”
In the end, her staff had taken what they could of the remaining treasures of the palais and fled the Isle a’Kralji. It was the same everywhere in Nessantico: in the vast Archigos’ Temple on the South Bank, at the Grand Libreria with its precious, irreplaceable vellum scrolls and books; at the Theatre a’Kralji and the Musee a’Artisans. Councillor ca’Mazzak and the rest of the Council had vanished as well. Fleeing south, the only direction still open to them…
Sigourney remained on the Sun Throne in the Old Temple, in the sunlight coming through the ruined, charred dome. Before she allowed the court herbalist to leave, she ordered him to prepare a special goblet of cuore della volpe, which now sat on the arm of the Sun Throne next to her. She wore a long, cerulean tashta with a yellow overcloak, hiding the fact that there was no leg below her right knee. She had the servants place a jeweled patch over the hole where her right eye had been, and apply egg powder to her face to hide the worst of the scars.
She waited on the ancient seat of Nessantico. Waited for the inevitable.
Outside, she could hear the battle raging: the shouting of men, the clashing of arms, the roar of war-teni spells. Smoke drifted overhead, dulling the sunlight. An elite guard of Garde Kralji was arrayed before her, their chain mail rustling as they shifted nervously, swords in hand and facing the doors to the temple. Commandant ca’Gerodi had left her a turn of the glass earlier. “I won’t see you again, Kraljica,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she told him. “I know. And I am sorry, too.”
She waited.
When the doors burst open, the gardai in front of her stiffened and started to rush forward. “No,” she told them. “Hold! Wait!” Several Westlander warriors entered the temple; with them was another man, this one without the tattoos of the warriors and carrying a burnished wooden staff: one of their spellcasters. They stopped, peering down the long aisle of the nave to where Sigourney was seated in a dusty shaft of sunlight. “Do any of you speak our language?” she called out.
“I do,” the spellcaster said. His words were slurred and heavily accented, but understandable. “A little.”
“Good,” she said. “I am Kraljica Sigourney ca’Ludovici, ruler of this land. Who are you?”
The man whispered for a moment to the warrior alongside him, with the image of a red hawk or eagle inscribed over his bare skull. “I am Niente,” the spellcaster answered. “I am the Nahual. And this,” he said, gesturing to the warrior to whom he’d spoken, “is the leader of the Tehuantin, Tecuhtli Zolin. He demands your surrender, Kraljica.”
“He can demand whatever he likes,” Sigourney told him. She lifted a hand from the arm of the Sun Throne, the signet ring of the Kralji glinting on her hand as she touched the golden band of a crown set in her gray, coarse hair. The sun was warm on her, and she glanced upward to the charred ruins of the dome supports. “He won’t have that.”
Again the spellcaster spoke to the warrior, who uttered a laugh that echoed in the temple. He spoke words in a tongue that sounded at once strange and yet oddly familiar. Where had she heard words like that before? “Tecuhtli Zolin says that if the Kraljica wishes to challenge him, he is willing to meet that challenge. He will loan her his own sword if she doesn’t have one of her own. Otherwise, he will order his warriors to take you prisoner. He leaves the choice to you.”
She shook her head. “I know how you treat prisoners,” she told him. “And you haven’t looked at all the choices I have.” The spellcaster appeared confused as Sigourney took the goblet from the arm of the Sun Throne and downed the bitter concoction in one long draught. “I hope you enjoy the city while you hold it,” she told him. She raised the goblet to them, then let it fall ringing to the tiles. Her leg was already losing sensation as she leaned back on the throne. The paralysis rose quickly upward: her thighs, her hips, her midsection. Her heart. The sunlight in the room seemed to be dimming. “This is my throne,” she told them, “and while I live, I will not give it up.”
She laughed then. Her voice sounded strange and breathy and weak. She tried to force out the next words. “And I choose my own time.” She tried to take a breath, but her lungs would not move. She opened her mouth, but there was no air for words.
She smiled at them as the sun went dark and Nessantico vanished from her sight.
Karl Vliomani
“ Where do you suggest we go?” Talis asked.
“East,” Karl suggested. “To the Firenzcians. Sergei might be there.”
