“Move, move, move!” Brie screamed at the sparkwheelers as she saw the Kraljica, with Sergei on their horses, the Archigos in his carriage, and the Garde Kralji, pour out from the brief shelter of the Bastida. “Let’s go! Keep up!”
They had made an abattoir of the Avi at the bridgehead. The sparkwheelers ran over cobbles slick with blood, around bodies that still moaned and writhed. The faces of the sparkwheelers looked alternately horrified and pleased with the carnage they’d caused, but Brie gave them no time to ponder or exult. She pushed them forward toward the Bastida’s gates.
In the open, the sparkwheelers were most vulnerable; they were best at defending a confined space. And if their lines were broken, they would be overwhelmed quickly. She shepherded them, not letting them separate, screaming at them.
Allesandra’s people charged into a clot of warriors at the end of the Bastida walls. More of the Westlanders hurried from the side streets, led by a mounted warrior whose face was painted red and his skull shaved clean. Brie could see a spellcaster with him: an old man whose face was ravaged as if by some disease, his left eye white and blind. As Brie lined up the sparkwheelers near the Bastida gate to deal with the renewed assault, she saw the Archigos chanting and moving his withered hands in a new spell with his green-and-gold robes swaying. The Westlander spellcaster raised a wooden staff, shouting a single word in his strange tongue.
His spell came immediately.
The Archigos and his carriage were enveloped in flame. The teni-driver fell from his seat, shrieking and flailing at his burning robes with his hands. She heard the old man shrilling in surprise and agony. He pushed open the door and fell from the carriage to the street, his robes seeming to drip liquid flame. He rolled on the pavement, a long, thin wail coming from him that ended suddenly, but Brie could no longer see the Archigos, not in the swirl of the battle. As she shouted at the sparkwheelers, trying to get them into their proper lines, she glimpsed the red- skulled warrior with a spear in his hand urging his horse into a gallop toward Allesandra. The Kraljica brought up her sword, but the red-painted warrior’s spear thrust was quicker; with horror, Brie saw the tip of his spear drive hard into and through the Kraljica’s armor. The warrior leaped from his horse, still holding the spear that impaled Allesandra, dragging her down. Brie, shouting at the sparkwheelers desperately, saw Sergei jump from his horse as if he were a young man.
They, too, vanished in the melee.
The spellcasters on both sides were hurling spells, and yet more warriors were arriving, filling the streets. She could feel the chill of the Ilmodo all around them. “Fire!” she screamed at the sparkwheelers, who were staring in confusion. “Fire!”
But then it all changed.
Nico was abandoned. Bereft. Even Rochelle had left him sometime during the night. He had felt her departure, even if he hadn’t responded to her.
He had been praying for over a full day now without eating, drinking, or sleeping, and Cenzi remained silent. Or perhaps He was saying too much. Nico was afflicted by visions, but he couldn’t tell whether they emananted from Cenzi or from the sounds he was hearing outside or from his own fevered imagination. He was cold and shivering, as if wrapped in an impossible winter as cold as the Ilmodo itself. Behind his closed eyes, he felt that he watched the battle to the west as the sun touched him through the window of the hovel in Oldtown. He could see the troops running from the Westlanders, could see the mounted chevarittai vainly trying to protect the rear of the retreating men from the mounted High Warriors with their painted faces and strange armor. Those in black and silver, those in blue and gold were failing; too many of them taken by arrows or by the warrior riders.
Nico witnessed it as if he drifted above the battlefield in the cold arms of his prayers, staring down at the scene. He was a bird, a falcon, drifting on the cold wind. He could see the banner of Commandant ca’Talin, and farther north, those of the Starkkapitan and the Hirzg. They were all flying back toward the city, the foremost of them already in the streets near the Avi a’Certendi, the westernmost limb of the sprawling city.
He drifted above it all, watching…
… and he saw her: Varina. She was exhausted, being pulled along by two other Numetodo heretics; the three of them dangerously separated from the main mass of the Garde Civile. The mounted warriors were close by, only a few strides away and the grim foot-soldiers of the Tehuantin weren’t far behind them. They were going to be overrun and killed. All too soon.
Why do you show me this, Cenzi? Why do you show me the heretic so clearly?
As he watched Varina, he felt the cold wrap its arms even tighter around him. He was falling, tumbling down toward Varina as he saw the warriors on the warhorses rushing at her, as her companions turned to hurl futile spells toward the attackers, as they surrounded her.
Then he was there, on the ground and standing not far from Varina. He heard her gasp and call his name-“Nico?”-but there was so much energy here that he could barely hear for the buzzing of it. The Second World seemed to gape open in the sky above him, a cold fire, the frigid power of the Ilmodo pouring down. He could feel them all pulling at the energy above him: the war-teni, the heretics, the spellcasters of the Tehuantin, even those across the A’Sele in the city. He could feel the power stored in the spell-sticks of the Tehuantin, in the minds of the Numetodo.
All of them channeled the Ilmodo from the Second World where Cenzi still lived.
Nico felt vast. He could stretch out his fingers and touch the threads of all of their connections to the Ilmodo; he could pull on them, take them for himself…
So he did.
It wasn’t a conscious movement. He acted as if someone else had control of his body, without volition. He heard himself saying words he couldn’t comprehend, felt his hands moving in patterns he had never used before. Cenzi? But if it was Cenzi, there was no answer.
He shouted the final words, made the final gesture. He snatched the cords of power that tied the Westlanders to the Second World, but he left that of the teni and even the Numetodo alone. He stood on the battlefield with his arms wide, and the Second World took him as it never had before.
He had never felt so full of the power of the Ilmodo. It filled him, burning and too dangerous to handle for more than a breath. He took it all in, breathed in the gift of Cenzi, and exhaled it again, shouting.
What do I do with this? he asked Cenzi, and he heard the answer:
Do what you should do…
The wave of energy pulsed out from him, radiating westward and north along the line of battle. Where it touched, the Tehuantin were thrown back, flung wildly backward into their own ranks. They toppled like game pieces swept aside by an angry hand.
The warrior riders about to slay Varina and her companions were taken in the storm, both steeds and riders hurled away. “Go!” Nico told them. “This is Cenzi’s Gift!” His voice was that of Cenzi; it roared, a thunder that could be heard all along the lines. “Go!”
And it was over. The threads of power snapped; the Second World shut with a deep thunder. A terrible exhaustion filled him, so overpowering that he couldn’t stand. His legs gave way, and he collapsed into cold darkness.
“Let them come across,” Tototl said. “Once they’re in the boulevard, they’ll be easy targets and we’ll hit them from all sides at once.”
The tactic had worked initially. The Easterners used their spells as the sun rose; Niente told the nahualli to let them waste their energy even though they could have easily countered them all with the spells in their spell- staffs. The warriors drew back, abandoning the catapult. Niente waited on his horse next to Tototl, just down the first major cross street of the great boulevard. Their archers sent volleys into the sky; an ancient nahualli Easterner riding in a carriage showed his strength and sent the arrows flying harmlessly away. The Tecuhtli of the Easterners-the woman clad in steel-escorted her warriors across.
They heard the rush of warriors who were hidden near the river and in the courtyard of where the monster’s skull was set, but Tototl raised his hand as the warriors behind them pressed forward, eager to join the battle. “Wait,” he said. “Not yet.”
Through the gaps between the buildings, Niente glimpsed the Easterners pressing farther up the street, the woman, strangely, leading them into the courtyard from which the warriors had come. He wondered at that for a moment, then the answer came: the terrible shrill chatter of the black sand weapons, sounding eerily like the eagle claws used in the sacrifice of captives. They heard the screams that followed, and saw the warriors falling like
