that was threatening to fall out, the last of his baby teeth. He wasn’t worried about Talis, only the tooth. He didn’t want to lose it, since if he did Matarh would make him smash it with a hammer and grind it up, and that was a lot of work. When he was done, she would help him sprinkle the powder onto some milk-moistened bread, and they’d put the bread outside the window next to his bed. At night, he’d hear the rats and mice eating the offering, scurrying around outside. In the morning, the dish would be empty; Matarh said that meant that his new teeth would grow in as strong as a rat’s.
He’d seen what rats could do with their teeth. They could strip the meat from a dead cat in hours. He hoped his teeth would be that strong. He reached into his mouth with a forefinger and wiggled the tooth, feeling it rocking easily back and forth in his gums. If he pushed hard, it would come out…
“Serafina?”
Nico heard Talis call out for his matarh. Matarh ran to him, and they embraced as he shut the door behind him. “I was worried,” Matarh said. “When I heard about…”
“Shh…” he said, kissing her forehead. His gaze was on Nico, watching them. “Hey, Nico. Did your matarh take you to Temple Park today?”
“Yes,” Nico said. He went over to them, sidling close to his matarh so that her arm went around him. He wrinkled his nose, staring up at the man. “You smell funny, Talis,” he said.
“Nico-” his matarh began, but Talis laughed and ruffled Nico’s hair. Nico hated when he did that.
“It’s all right, Serafina,” Talis said. “You can’t fault the boy for being honest.” Talis didn’t talk the way other people did in Oldtown; he pronounced his words strangely, as if his tongue didn’t like the taste of the syllables and so he spat them out as quickly as possible instead of letting them linger the way most people did. Talis crouched down near Nico. “I walked by a fire on the way here,” he said. “Lots of nasty smoke. The fire-teni put it out, though.”
Nico nodded, but he thought that Talis didn’t smell like smoke exactly. The odor was sharper and harsher. “Archigos Ana died, Talis,” he said instead.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Talis answered. “The Regent will be scouring the city, looking for a scapegoat to blame it on. It’s time for foreigners to lay low if they want to stay safe.” He seemed to be talking more to Nico’s matarh than to Nico, his eyes glancing up toward her.
“Talis…” Matarh breathed his name, the way she sometimes called out Nico’s name when he was sick or he’d hurt himself. Talis stood up again, hugging Nico’s matarh. “It will be fine, Sera,” he heard Talis whisper to her. “I promise you.”
Listening to him, Nico pushed at the loose tooth with his tongue. He heard a tiny pop and tasted blood.
“Matarh,” Nico said, “my tooth came out…”
Allesandra ca’Vorl
“ Matarh?”
Allesandra heard the call, followed by a tentative knock. Her son Jan was standing at the open door. At fifteen, almost sixteen, he was stick-thin and gawky. In just the past several months, his body had started to morph into that of a young man, with a fine down of hair on his chin and under his arms. He was still several fingers shorter than the girls of the same age, most of whom had reached their menarche the year before. Named for her vatarh, she could glimpse some of his features in her son, but there was a strong strain of the ca’Xielt family in him as well-Pauli’s family. Jan had the duskier skin coloring of the Magyarians, and his vatarh’s dark eyes and curly, nearly black hair. She doubted that he would ever have the heavier ca’Belgradin musculature of his uncle Fynn, which Allesandra’s great-vatarh Karin and vatarh Jan had also possessed.
She sometimes had difficulty imagining him galloping madly into battle-though he could ride as well as any, and had keen sight that an archer would envy. Still, he often seemed more comfortable with scrolls and books than swords. And despite his parentage, despite the act (purely of duty) that had produced him, despite the surliness and barely-hidden anger that seemed to consume him lately, she loved him more than she had thought it possible to love anyone.
And she worried, in the last year especially, that she was losing him, that he might be falling under Pauli’s influence. Pauli had been absent through most of Jan’s life, but maybe that was Pauli’s advantage: it was easier to dislike the parent who was always correcting you, and to admire the one who let you do whatever you wanted. There’d been that incident with the staff girl, and Allesandra had needed to send her away- that was too much like Pauli.
“Come in, darling,” she said, beckoning to him.
Jan nodded without smiling, went to the dressing table where she sat, and touched his lips to the top of her head-the barest shadow of a kiss-as the women helping her dress drifted away silently. “Onczio Fynn sent me to fetch you,” he said. “Evidently it’s time.” A pause. “And evidently I’m little better than a servant to him. Just Magyarian chattel to be sent on errands.”
“Jan!” she said sharply. She gestured with her eyes to her maidservants. They were all West Magyarians, part of the entourage that had come with Jan from Malacki.
He shrugged, uncaring. “Are you coming, Matarh, or are you going to send me back to Fynn with your own response like a good little messenger boy?”
You can’t respond here the way you want to. Not where everything we say could become court gossip tonight. “I’m nearly ready, Jan,” she said, gesturing. “We’ll go down together, since you’re here.” The servants returned, one brushing her hair, another placing a pearl necklace that had once been her matarh Greta’s around her neck, and yet another adjusting the folds of her tashta. She handed another necklace to her dressing girl: a cracked globe on a fine chain, the continents gold, the seas purest lapiz lazuli, the rent in the globe filled with rubies in its depths-Cenzi’s globe. Archigos Ana had given her the necklace when she’d reached her own menarche, in Nessantico.
“It belonged to Archigos Dhosti once,” Ana had told her. “He gave it to me; now I give it to you.” Allesandra touched the globe as the servant fastened it around her neck and remembered Ana: the sound of her voice, the smell of her.
“Everyone keeps telling me how Onczio Fynn will make a fine Hirzg,” Jan said, interrupting the memory.
“I know,” Allesandra began. And why would you expect anything else? she wanted to add. Jan knew the etiquette of court well enough to understand that.
He evidently saw the unspoken remark in her face. “I wasn’t finished. I was going to say that you would make a better one. You should be the one wearing the golden band and the ring, Matarh.”
“Hush,” she told him again, though more gently this time. The maidservants were her own, true, but one never knew. Secrets could be bought, or coaxed out through love, or forced through pain. “We’re not at home, Jan. You must remember that. Especially here…”
His sullen frown melted for a moment, and he looked so apologetic that all her irritation melted, and she stroked his arm. It was that way with him too much of late: scowls one moment and warm smiles the next. However, the scowls were coming more frequently as the loving child in him retreated ever deeper into his new adolescent shell. “It’s fine, Jan,” she told him. “Just… well, you must be very careful while we’re here. Always.” And especially with Fynn. She tucked the thought away. She would tell him later. Privately. She stood, and the servants fell away like autumn leaves. She hugged Jan; he allowed the gesture but nothing more, his own arms barely moving. “All right, we’ll go down now. Remember that you are the son of the A’Gyula of West Magyaria, and also the son of the current A’Hirzg of Firenzcia.”
Fynn had given her the title yesterday, after their vatarh had died: the title that should have been hers all along, that would have made her Hirzgin. She knew that even that gift was temporary, that Fynn would name someone else A’Hirzg in time: his own child, perhaps, if he ever married and produced an heir, or some court favorite. Allesandra would be Fynn’s heir only until he found one he liked better.
“Matarh,” Jan interrupted. He gave a too-loud huff of air, and the frown returned. “I know the lecture. ‘The eyes and ears of the ca’-and-cu’ will be on you.’ I know. You don’t have to tell me. Again.”
Allesandra wished she believed that. “All right,” she breathed. “Let us go down, then, and be with the new Hirzg as we lay your great-vatarh to his rest.”
