that, and I can have my children fill two tubs with hot water. Dinner will be a turn of the glass after sundown.”
The woman left them, and Varina lifted eyebrows toward Karl. “Morel…” she said. “Nico said that he’d run away from his tantzia and onczio. Could she be…?”
“Morel’s a common enough name in Nessantico.” He shrugged. “But there are obviously some questions we should ask. If we still had the boy…”
Karl was already certain that the connection was there, though he wasn’t sure how he knew. He could see from Varina’s face that she was thinking the same. If he’d believed in any god at all, he might have thought they’d been led here by divine fortune.
That evening, after taking the woman’s offer of a bath to rid them of the worst of the road stink, he and Varina took their supper in the common room of the tavern, both to avoid suspicion and so that they could hear any gossip that might have reached the village regarding the escape of the Regent from the Bastida. The room was-he suspected from the harried looks of Alisa, her children who served as the waiting staff, and her husband Bayard behind the short bar near the kitchen door-more crowded than usual, and the talk was largely of the events in Nessantico, which seemed to have reached the village only a few days ago.
“I spoke to the offizier of the search squad myself,” Bayard Morel was saying loudly to an audience of a half dozen villagers. “His horse had thrown its shoe, and so he had me shoe the beast for him. He said that Kraljiki Audric, may Cenzi bless ’im, sent riders out on every road from the city to catch the traitor and those Numetodo heretics with him. The offizier’s squad was to scour the road all the way to Varolli if necessary. He told me that the Numetodo killed three dozen Garde Kralji in the Bastida with their awful, blasphemous magic, killed ’em without a thought even though some of them were still in their beds. They left the tower where ca’Rudka was held in rubble, nothing but great stones strewn all over the ground. They were spouting fire as they rode off, a horrible blue fire, the offizier said, that slew people along the Avi as they passed, and then, with a great whoosh-” and here Bayard spread his hands suddenly wide, knocking over the nearest tankard of ale and causing his audience to rear back in wide-eyed terror, “-they vanished in a cloud of foul black smoke. Just like that. All told, there are over a hundred dead in the city. I tell you, death is too good a fate for the Regent. They ought to drag him alive through the streets and let the stones of the Avi tear the very flesh from his bones and rip off that silver nose of his while he screams.”
The people in the room murmured their agreement with that assessment. Varina leaned close to Karl, grimacing as the movement pulled at the knitting wound on her arm. “By next week, he’ll have it at a thousand dead. But at least it seems the searchers have already moved through. We’re behind them. That’s good, right?” She searched his face with anxious eyes, and he grunted assent even though he wasn’t so certain himself.
Watching the room, he noticed that there was another woman helping to serve the patrons: dour and tired- looking, her mouth never gentled with a smile. She looked several years younger than Alisa, but there was a family resemblance between the two: in the eyes, in the narrow nose, in the set of her lips. She appeared too old to be Alisa’s child, all of whom were still striplings. When one of the children-a sullen boy on the cusp of puberty-set a plate of sliced bread on their table, he pointed to her. “That woman there… who is that?”
The boy sniffed and scowled. “That’s my Tantzia Serafina. She’s living with us right now.”
“She looks unhappy.”
“She’s been that way for a while now, since Nico ran away.”
Karl glanced at Varina. “Who’s Nico?”
“Her son,” the boy said, the scowl deepening. “A bastardo. I didn’t like him anyway. Always talking nonsense about Westlanders and magic and trying to pretend he could do magic himself like he was a teni. Everyone had to waste three days looking for him after he left, and my vatarh rode all the way to Certendi, but no one ever found him. I think he’s probably dead.” He seemed inordinately satisfied with that conclusion, satisfaction curling a corner of his mouth.
“Ah.” Karl nodded. “You’re probably right. It’s not an easy world out there for travelers. I was just wondering why she looked so sad.” Varina was looking away now, staring at Serafina, her knuckles to her mouth. The boy scuffled his feet on the rough wooden floor, sniffed and wiped his arm across his nose, and went back into the kitchen.
“Gods, it is her.” Varina gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head. “What do we do, Karl? That’s Nico’s matarh.”
Karl plucked a piece of bread from the plate that the boy had brought. He tore off a chunk of the brown loaf and tucked it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “If we could give her Nico,” he said after he swallowed, “I wonder if she would give us Talis in return?”
Jan ca’Vorl
Jan motioned to the Gardai outside the door. “Let me in,” he said. The two men glanced at each other once, quickly, before one of them opened the door. As Jan stepped inside, the garda started to follow. Jan shook his head at the man. “Alone,” he said. The garda hesitated before nodding his head once in salute. The door closed behind Jan again.
“You’re a brave one, to be in a room alone with his enemy. And that one will be reporting to Commandant cu’Gottering that you’ve come to visit me. Cu’Gottering will undoubtedly inform your matarh.”
Candlelight reflected from silver as Sergei turned to regard Jan. The man had been placed in one of the interior rooms of Brezno Palais, his meal laid out before him on a damask-covered table, the hearth crackling with a fire to take off the night chill, and a comfortable bed soft with down pillows and coverlets. He was wearing a new, clean bashta and had evidently taken a bath, and his graying hair was newly oiled.
He sat in a prison woven of silk.
“I don’t care that cu’Gottering knows, nor my matarh. Are you so dangerous, Regent ca’Rudka?” Jan asked the man, standing across the table from him.
In reply, Sergei reached down to his bootheel: slowly, so that Jan could see him. He slid a slender, short- handled and flat blade from between the sole and leather and placed it on the table, sliding it across the table toward Jan. “Always, Hirzg Jan,” the man answered with a faint smile. “Your great-vatarh would have told you that. Your matarh as well. If I’d wanted you dead, you would be dead already.”
Jan stared at the blade. He’d watched the gardai search the man for weapons, had heard them declare the Regent unarmed. “I think I’ll need to have a talk with Commandant cu’Gottering about the training of his men.” He reached down to touch the hilt with a fingertip, but otherwise didn’t pick up the knife. “What else did they miss?”
Sergei only smiled. Jan put his hand on the knife and slid it back across the table to Sergei, who sheathed it again in his boot. “So, Hirzg Jan,” Sergei said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Jan wasn’t certain of that himself. The initial meeting with Sergei had left him unsettled, listening to his matarh and to Archigos ca’Cellibrecca, knowing that they’d dominated the moment. In truth, he was feeling overwhelmed by the suddenness of events: Fynn’s assassination, Elissa’s flight, the news from the Holdings, the Regent’s arrival. His vatarh had left Brezno in an angry rush; his matarh and the Archigos were suspiciously close. It was as if he were being swept along helplessly in a flood he hadn’t seen and hadn’t anticipated. He found himself feeling lost and uncertain, and he’d brooded on that for long turns of the glass, unable to lose himself in the now- forced gaiety of the party or the distractions of the young women who flirted with him or the urgent speculations that erupted all around him.
He wanted to talk to someone. He didn’t want that person to be his matarh.
Jan didn’t feel like the Hirzg. He felt like an impostor. “I want to know what I’ve gained by giving you asylum, Regent,” he said.
“Are you having second thoughts?” Sergei asked him. He pushed his chair back from the table. “Or is it that you think that someone else made that decision for you?”
He should have felt anger at that. Instead, he only brought one shoulder up and let it drop again. “Ah,” Sergei said. “I understand. So, I think, would poor Audric. Let me tell you this, Hirzg Jan: I’ve known several Kralji in my time, and despite what you might think of them, the truth is that none of them ever made an easy decision. Everything you do as Kralji-or Hirzg-affects thousands of other people, some in good ways, others adversely. Be
