“Maudlin,” Sergei repeated. “Let’s have the servants bring us some wine, so at least we have an excuse.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Oh, but it is, Allesandra. It’s just not funny to us. But Cenzi no doubt finds it tremendously amusing. As for mortality-look at me.” He spread his hands wide. “I’ve been feeling it for a long time. In fact, it’s a wonder that I’m still moving at all. Compared to me, you’ve no room for complaint. You still have all your teeth. And your nose.” He tapped his own false nose with a fingernail so that it rang metallically. He saw her fighting a smile, which made him grin himself. “As for your son,” he continued, “I’ll talk to him when I’m next in Brezno. I’ve suggested this before, as you know: maybe it’s time the two of you sat down together, to see if you can come to an understanding. He does love and respect you, Allesandra, even if he won’t say it.”
“He has a strange way of demonstrating it. How many border skirmishes have there been, and more numerous now than ever since the debacle in West Magyaria? He thought that he’d give me the Sun Throne and watch the Holdings continue to fall apart. That’s what he wanted.”
“And instead you’ve kept the Holdings together,” Sergei answered, “which is what I’ve been trying to point out to you. The Holdings have survived, despite the fact that without your guiding presence the various countries would have broken away or let the Coalition absorb them. You very nearly brought West Magyaria back to the Holdings.”
“And that angers my son.”
“Perhaps,” Sergei admitted. “But it also makes Jan respect you, however grudgingly.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” he told her. It was a lie, but he was used to lying and he did it convincingly.
He could use this. He could twist it to his advantage.
Later. For now, he patted Allesandra’s hand, and he smiled again at her. “Let me talk with Jan,” he repeated. “And we’ll see.”
Jan ca’Ostheim
Jan wasn’t certain that he could believe the story. “She’s here in Brezno again? Are you certain?”
Commandant Eris cu’Bloch of the Garde Brezno nodded, stroking one end of his long, elaborate mustache. “It certainly appears so, my Hirzg. Or someone is trying to create that impression. The goltschlager ci’Braun was found with a light-colored stone over his left eye, just as with your onczio, and none of the gold had been disturbed-all of the ingots were found still there. A common murderer or thief would have taken the gold. I’m afraid all signs indicate that this was indeed a contract murder by the White Stone.”
Archigos Karrol, who had been at the palais when the news came, sniffed loudly. “There have been no White Stone murders in a decade and more. I think this is a fraud. The real White Stone is dead or retired.”
Commandant cu’Bloch turned his bland gaze to the Archigos. The Archigos, approaching his sixtieth birthday, had once been the A’Teni Karrol ca’Asano of Malacki, until Jan had discovered that then-Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca had betrayed Firenzcia. Archigos Karrol had been a burly man whose presence and booming voice dominated a room, though most of his earlier brawn had evaporated over the years except for the paunch he retained in front. His hair had thinned and receded to leave his skull bare; his long beard was an unrelenting white, his skin was spotted with brown age marks, and his spine curved so much that, when walking, the Archigos seemed to be eternally staring at the floor and the cane he required to support himself. Currently, he sat perched on a chair, frowning.
“That’s certainly possible, Archigos,” the Commandant answered. “But, regardless, in the last year or two I have been given three or four reports from inside the Coalition that match this one. Perhaps the White Stone tired of her retirement, or perhaps she has trained a replacement.”
“Or someone wants to profit from her reputation and is pretending to be her,” Karrol retorted.
Cu’Bloch shrugged. “That’s also possible, yes, but does it matter, either way?”
Jan lifted a hand and both men turned to him. “It’s not as if the White Stone is too old. She was only a few years older than me when she killed Hirzg Fynn,” Jan commented. He couldn’t keep the hopefulness from his voice; he saw Karrol glance at him strangely. “She’d be in her late thirties now; no more than forty at the most. This still may be the original White Stone.”
Cu’Bloch bowed to Jan. “I have already given my offiziers a description of the way she looked at that time, my Hirzg, though fifteen years changes a person, especially if that person wishes to change. She may look quite different now.”
Jan remembered very well how she had looked then: “Elissa ca’Karina,” she’d called herself at the time, and he had been deeply in love with her. He’d thought that it had been the same for her-he’d believed in their mutual affection so strongly that he’d asked his matarh Allesandra to open marriage negotiations with the ca’Karina family. Before the ca’Karina family had responded with the news that their daughter Elissa had died as an infant, the White Stone had killed his matarh’s brother Fynn, then newly crowned as the Hirzg, and fled the city. He’d glimpsed her one more time: in Nessantico during the war with the Tehuantin.
There, she had saved his life, and he could never forget the last glance they had shared. He was certain he had seen his love for her reflected in her eyes.
Even though he had married since, even though he felt a deep and abiding affection for his wife and for their children, when he thought of Elissa, something still stirred within him. He still looked for her, in the mistresses he took.
Why would she come back here? Why would she return to Brezno?
He found himself torn by conflicting feelings-as he had when he’d thought of her in that first year or two after he’d taken the crown of the Hirzg. He was repelled by what she’d done to Fynn, whom he’d loved as he might have an older brother, yet he was drawn to her by the memory of her laugh, her lips, her lovemaking, by the pure joy of being with her. He had tried to reconcile the conflicting images in his head countless times.
He had always failed.
Jan had sent agents searching for her in the years afterward. He wasn’t certain why, wasn’t certain what he would do with her if she were captured. All he knew was that he wanted her, wanted to sit down with her and discover the truth. Of everything. He wanted to know if she had loved him as he had her, wanted to know if she had only used him to get close to Fynn, wanted to know why she’d saved him in Nessantico.
Sergei ca’Rudka had suggested that Elissa-whatever her real name might be-might have been responsible for abducting the young Nico Morel from his matarh during the Sack of Nessantico. But when Jan had interviewed the young teni Morel who had at the time been assigned to the Archigos’ Temple in Brezno, Morel claimed to have no idea whether the woman-whom he called Elle Botelli-had ever been the White Stone, or where she might be now. “We always moved around,” Morel had told Archigos Semini, when asked. “She never stayed longer than half a year in any one place, and usually less than that. The woman was touched; I can tell you that-the Moitidi inflicted her with voices. That was Cenzi’s punishment for her sins.”
Morel-he was an enigma himself, no less than the White Stone: an incredibly charming and talented acolyte and teni who had been marked from the beginning for rapid advancement. But he’d become an eloquent and stubborn troublemaker who ended up cast out from the ranks of teni when he claimed that Archigos Karrol and the Faith were no longer supporting the tenets of Cenzi. Archigos Karrol, the upstart had insisted, must either acknowledge his errors or be forcibly removed from the throne. The young man had come closer to succeeding than either Jan or Karrol had expected. There were still teni within the Concenzia Faith who would follow the charismatic Nico if he called on them.
Jan shook away his thoughts. “Find this assassin-whomever she is,” Jan told the Commandant. “I don’t care what resources it takes. The White Stone or someone pretending to be her was in this city no more than a day ago. She may still be here. Find her.”
The Commandant bowed, smoothed his mustache once more, and left them.
“It can’t be her,” Karrol persisted. “It must be an impostor. It might not even be a woman.”
“Why? Why can’t it be her?”
Karrol sputtered momentarily. He wiped at his mouth with a large hand. “This just doesn’t feel right,” he
