Allesandra ca’Vorl
“ The Councillors are here and seated, A’Hirzg,” the aide told them. “They’ve asked me to bring you to chambers.”
Allesandra stood in the corridor outside the council chamber with Pauli and Jan on either side of her. Her hand touched her tashta, low on the throat where-under the cloth-a common white stone hung surrounded by golden filigree, next to Archigos Ana’s globe. Even Pauli, who had been chattering contentedly about how West Magyaria and Firenzcia, when he was Gyula and Allesandra was Hirzg, would together solidify the Coalition, went silent as the aide nodded to the hall servants to open the double doors and they peered into the shadowed dimness beyond, where the Council of Ca’ was seated at the great table.
Jan, for his part, was solemn and quiet, as he had been since Fynn’s death and Elissa’s departure. Allesandra put her arm around her son before they entered. She leaned over to him and whispered: “When I leave here, you must go to your rooms and wait. Do you understand?”
He looked at her strangely but finally gave her a small, puzzled nod.
The chamber of the Council of Ca’ in Brezno was dark, with stained oak paneling on the walls and a rug the color of dried blood: an interior room of Brezno Palais with no windows, illuminated only by candled chandeliers above the long, varnished table (not even teni-lights), and cold with only a small hearth at one end. The room was dreary and cheerless. It was not a room that invited a long stay and slow, leisurely conversations-and that was deliberate. Hirzg Karin, Allesandra’s great-vatarh, had intentionally assigned the room to the Council. He found the Council of Ca’ sessions tedious and boring; the lack of comfort in the room ensured that they would at least be short.
“Please, come in, A’Hirzg,” Sinclair ca’Egan said from the head of the table. Ca’Egan was bald and ancient, a quaver-voiced chevaritt who had ridden with Allesandra’s vatarh before Hirzg Karin had even named Allesandra’s vatarh as A’Hirzg. He’d been on the Council of Ca’ for as long as Allesandra had known him; as Eldest, he was also titular head of the Council. Four women (one of them Francesca), five men; they rose as one and bowed to her as A’Hirzg, a nicety even the Council of Ca’ could not ignore, then sat once more. Six of the nine, especially, nodded and smiled to her. Allesandra, Pauli, and Jan stood-as etiquette demanded-at the open end of the table. Ca’Egan rattled the parchments set in front of him and cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming. We certainly needn’t be long. A mere formality, actually. Hirzg Fynn had already named Allesandra ca’Vorl as A’Hirzg, so we only need to have your signature, A’Hirzg, and those of the councillors here…”
“Vajiki ca’Egan,” Allesandra said, and ca’Egan’s head came up wonderingly at the interruption. At her right side, Pauli grunted at the obvious breach in etiquette. “I have a statement to make before the Council puts its stamp on that document and sends it to the Archigos for his acknowledgment. I have thought about this ever since my dear brother was killed, and I have prayed to Cenzi for His guidance, and everything has become clear to me.” She paused. This is your last chance to change your mind… Semini had argued with her for a long turn or two, as they lay in bed together, but she was convinced that this was the right strategy. She took a deep breath. She could feel Pauli staring at her quizzically and impatiently. “I do not wish to be Hirzgin,” she declaimed, “and I hereby revoke my claim on the title.”
Ca’Egan’s eyebrows clambered high on his bare, wrinkled skull and his mouth opened soundlessly. Francesca, in shock, reared back in her seat, stunned by the announcement, but most did not. They only nodded, their gazes more on Jan than on Allesandra.
“Cenzi’s balls!” Pauli shouted alongside her, the obscenity almost seeming to draw lightning in the dark air of the chamber. “Woman, are you insane? Do you know what you’re doing? You’ve just-”
“Shut up,” she said to Pauli, who glared, though his jaw snapped closed. Allesandra raised her hands to the councillors. “I’ve said all I need to say. My decision is irrevocable. I leave it to the Council of Ca’ to decide who is best suited take the throne of Brezno. However, it won’t be me. I trust your judgment, Councillors. I know you will do what is best for Brezno.”
With that, she gave the sign of Cenzi to the Council and turned, pushing the doors open so abruptly that the hall servants on station outside were nearly knocked aside. Pauli and Jan, surprised by the suddenness of her retreat, followed belatedly. Allesandra could hear Pauli charging after her. His hand caught her arm and spun her around. His handsome face was flushed and distorted, made ugly with anger. Behind him, she saw Jan standing at the open door of the chamber watching their confrontation, his own features puzzled and uncertain.
“What in the seven hells is this?” Pauli raged. “We had everything we ever wanted in our hands, and you just throw it away? Are you mad, Allesandra?” His hand tightened on her bicep, the tashta bunching under his fingers. She would be bruised there tomorrow, she knew. “You are going back in there now and you’re telling them that it was a mistake. A joke. Tell them any damn thing you want. But you’re not going to do this to me.”
“To you?” Allesandra answered mockingly, calmly. “How does this have anything to do with you, Pauli? I was the A’Hirzg, not you. You are just a pitiful, useless excuse for a husband, a mistake I hope to rectify as soon as I can, and you’ll take your hand from me. Now.”
He didn’t. He drew his other hand back as if to strike her, his fingers curling into a fist. “No!” The shout was from Jan, running toward them. “Don’t, Vatarh.”
Allesandra smiled grimly at Pauli, at his still-upraised hand. “Go ahead,” she told him. “Do it if you’d like. I tell you now that it will be the last time you ever touch me.”
Pauli let the fisted hand drop. His fingers loosened on her sleeve and she shook herself away from him.
“I’m done with you, Pauli,” she told him. “You gave me all I ever needed from you long ago.”
Eneas cu’Kinnear
Vouziers: a landlocked city, the largest in South Nessantico, the crossroads to Namarro and the sun-crazed southlands of Daritria beyond. Vouziers sat at the northern edge of the flatlands of South Nessantico, a farming country with vast fields of swaying grain. Vouziers’ people were like the land: solid, unpretentious, serious, and uncomplicated.
The coach took several days to reach Vouziers from Fossano. In a village along the way, he purchased all the sulfur the local alchemist had in his shop; the next night, he did the same in another. At each of their nightly stops, Eneas would take a private room at the inn. He would take out a few chunks of the charcoal and begin, slowly, to grind it into a black powder-he could hear Cenzi’s satisfaction when the charcoal had reached the required fineness. Then, with Cenzi’s voice warning him to be gentle and careful, he mixed the charcoal powder, the sulfur, and the niter together into the black sand of the Westlanders, tamping it softly into paper packages. Cenzi whispered the instructions into his head as he worked, and kept him safe.
The night before they reached Vouziers, he took a few of the packs out into the field after everyone was asleep. There, he poured the contents into a small, shallow hole he dug in the ground-the result reminded him uneasily of the black sands on the battlefields of the Hellins and his own defeat. As Cenzi’s Voice instructed him, he took a length of cotton cord impregnated with wax and particles of the black sand, buried one end in the black sand and uncoiled the rest on the ground as he stepped away from the hole. Later, he heard Cenzi say in his head, I will show you how to make fire as the teni do. You should have been a teni, Eneas. That was My desire for you, but your parents didn’t listen to Me. But now I will make you all you should have been. You have My blessing…
Taking the shielded lantern he’d brought with him, Eneas lit the end of the cord. It hissed and fumed and sputtered, sparks gleaming in the darkness, and Eneas walked quickly away from it. He’d reached the inn and stepped into the common room when the eruption came: a sharp report louder than thunder that rattled the walls of the inn and fluttered the thick, translucent oiled paper in the windows, accompanied by a flash of momentary daylight. Everyone in the room jumped and craned their heads. “Cenzi’s balls!” the innkeeper growled. “The night is as clear as well water.”
The innkeeper went stomping outside, with the others trailing along behind. They first looked up to the cloudless sky and saw nothing. Out in the field, however, a small fire smoldered. As they approached, Eneas saw that the small hole he’d dug was now deep enough for a man to stand in up to his knees, and nearly an arm’s reach across. Stones and dirt had been flung out in all directions. It was as if Cenzi Himself had punched the earth
