Allesandra ca’Vorl
The walkway at the rear of the temple was dark, illuminated only sporadically by green-shuttered teni-lamps hung on porcelain hooks mortared to the wall. Fluted columns lined the walk, shielding it from the gardens of a courtyard between the northern wing of the temple complex and the temple itself. The great windows of stained glass loomed dark above her. Allesandra half-ran along the walkway, not wanting to be seen though she’d been assured that no teni would be in the area, the soft leather soles of her sandals hushing on polished granite. It had been easy enough to slip from her own rooms at the palais down the servants’ corridors, waiting until there was no one watching to open the door and hurry across the plaza and into the Brezno streets. She wore a cowl over her hair, shadowing her face, and her tashta was plain. She might have been just another woman hurrying home in the evening. Semini had told her which door would be open, and which places the teni generally avoided. The ceremonies for Third Call had ended a turn of the glass ago.
She was nearly there. A turn to the left down the next opening, then up the stairs to the room that Semini kept in the temple complex when he didn’t wish to return to his own apartments in the northern wing.
“Allesandra.”
She froze at the hiss of the voice. Her hand went to the knife she had hidden in the sash of the tashta.
“Francesca,” she said.
A figure appeared from alongside one of the columns. In the uncertain light, she saw the woman, the lines of her face holding shadows. The verdant glow from the lamps made Francesca look sickly. She spread her open hands, as if showing Allesandra that she held no weapon. “I know,” Francesca said to her. “I’ve known all along.”
“What is it that you know, Francesca?”
She laughed. The sound startled black starlings settling for the night in the fruit trees of the courtyard. They rose and fluttered restlessly. Allesandra could smell alcohol on the woman’s strong breath. “We shouldn’t play games, you and I,” the woman said. “There’s been nothing between Semini and myself for years, and if you’re willing to spread your legs so that old ram can plow you, why should I care?”
Allesandra felt her cheeks heat with the raw crudity, drawing her breath in between her teeth. “If you don’t care, why are you here talking to me?”
The amusement vanished from the woman’s face. She sniffed, staring at Allesandra. “You’re a pretty one. Semini always liked you; I heard the fondness in his voice when you finally came back from Nessantico. The lovers he had afterward… they always reminded me of you. Reminded him too, I assume. I know whose face he was seeing when he plowed them. Ah, that bothers you, does it? I’ll bet he never told you that.” Francesca sidled closer to Allesandra and she stepped back, her hand still on the knife’s leather hilt. “I’ll bet there’s much he hasn’t told you.”
“Francesca, you’re drunk and I’m not having this conversation. Now, let me by…”
The woman’s hand came up, her lips twisting in a scowl. “Not yet. Look at me. Look…” Francesca waved her hands toward her own face. “I was beautiful once. Why, I was the Kraljiki Justi’s mistress; I might have been his wife had my vatarh chosen the right side in the war. But he didn’t. And now…” For a moment, Allesandra thought the woman wasn’t going to speak again. She stood there, her body swaying slightly. “You think you know my husband? You don’t know him. I saw you when the news came that Archigos Ana had died. I saw the horror and grief in that pretty face of yours. You were hurt, because you liked that cold bitch. Me, I hated her. I was happy to hear that she’d died. I laughed out loud. But you… she treated you well, didn’t she? She was a matarh to you, when your own family abandoned you. Archigos Ana… Phaw! ” Francesca pursed her lips, turned her head, and spat on the flags. “ He knows who murdered her. As do I.”
“Who?” Allesandra asked. Her hand had gone to her throat. She was afraid she knew the answer.
Francesca took a stumbling step forward, nearly falling and clutching at Allesandra’s tashta. “Ask him,” the woman grated out, her breath filling Allesandra’s nostrils. “Make him tell you, and then see how you feel about him.”
Her laugh erupted in another fluttering of starling wings, and she pushed away from Allesandra. She stumbled toward the archway leading to the north wing without looking back. “Ask him,” Allesandra heard the woman say again, the words echoing around the courtyard.
She watched Francesca wrench open the doors, heard them shut again behind her. She stood there for several moments, as the starlings settled in the fruit trees once again and the moon lifted over the domes of the temple.
In the end, Allesandra turned and walked away from the temple, back toward her rooms and her own thoughts.
Nico Morel
In the distance, Nico could hear the wailing cornets and zinkes as Kraljiki Audric’s funeral procession proceeded along the Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procesthe Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procession might look like-all the ca’-and-cu’ parading behind the funeral coach, the teni using their magic to turn the wheels, the new Kraljica Signourney following behind in her own special coach. It would be splendid, that procession. A wonder. Audric hadn’t been much older than he was, and Nico wondered what it would be like to be so young and also Kraljiki. He wondered how someone could have hated Audric so much that he would kill him. Nico couldn’t imagine hating anyone that much.
No one else in the room seemed to notice the sounds of the funeral-or perhaps they chose to ignore it.
“I didn’t kill Archigos Ana.”
Nico sat in his matarh’s lap. She hardly let him go since she’d seen him. Not that he minded; he was quite content to sit encircled by her arms, protected. The feeling made him realize just how much he had missed her, just how scared he had been for so long. He and his matarh were sitting on the hearth, the fire warming his side. Talis was sitting at the table in the center of the room; Karl and Varina were on the other side. Nico could almost see the tension arcing between them, a fire nearly as hot as the one at his back. His matarh felt it, too; he could feel the shivering in her muscles and how tightly she held him, and he knew she was afraid that something was going to happen.
“I didn’t kill her,” Talis said again. “It’s the truth.”
“Right,” Karl answered. “And we’re just supposed to simply believe that. Because you say it’s so.”
Talis shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t want to believe me, fine. It’s still the truth. But…” Talis licked his lips. “I know how she was killed, and I know who must have been at least partially responsible.”
“Go on,” Karl said.
“It was this…” Talis reached into the pouch on his belt. Nico saw both Varina and Karl stiffen at that, and his matarh sucked in her breath. Karl’s hands were suddenly up, as if ready to cast a spell. Talis froze. “No magic,” he said. “I wouldn’t, not with Sera and Nico here. I wouldn’t.”
After a moment, Karl let his hands rest on the tabletop again, and Talis opened the pouch. He brought out a small cloth bag and untied the string holding it together. He spilled out a small mound of dark powder on the table. Karl stared at it. “There was black dust all around the High Lectern and on Ana’s clothes,” he said. “That… that’s the same thing?”
Talis nodded. “Yes.” He scooped up all but a pinch of the powder and put it back in the bag. “We call it bosh luum in our language. Black sand, in yours. Here…” From the pouch, he took a low, wide brass bowl, marked with strange figures around the rim. He brushed the remnants of the powder into the bowl and set it in the center of the table. “I’ll leave this to you-put a small fire spell in the bowl, just the tiniest spark.” He smiled, a brief flicker. “And don’t put your face too near it if you want to keep that beard.”
Karl glanced at Varina, obviously uncertain. Varina looked at Nico’s matarh. “Sera?” she asked. “We can trust him?”
Nico felt rather than saw his matarh nod, but her hands tightened even more around him at the same time. Varina made a quick motion with her hand, and spoke a word in another language. The word sounded like “tihn-eh”
