of us is going to convince the other, are we?”
“No.” He spread his hands, palm up, on the table. “Though I must admit that you Numetodo can occasionally be useful: the Tehuantin black sand, for instance. It’s rather ironic, if you reflect on it: had I and my people been permitted to use the Ilmodo, then I wouldn’t have needed to use black sand and your friends would likely still be alive. The Ilmodo, at least, can be a precise weapon.”
Varina flushed at that, and her hand caressed the stock of the cocked and loaded sparkwheel in her belt- pouch.
“So why am I here, Varina,” he continued, “if you’re not planning to hand me over to the Garde Kralji and have me thrown into the Bastida?”
“I wanted to see you again, Nico,” she told him. Her finger curled around the metal guard of the trigger. “I wanted to hear you.” The cold metal tongue on her finger warmed quickly at her touch. “Because I needed to know…” Just a tightening of a muscle. That’s all it would take.
“… if I’m the monster that the Faith makes me out to be?” he finished for her. It would be so easy: under the table, slip the sparkwheel out and point the open metal tube toward Nico; pull the trigger mechanism to spin the wheel and set the sparks aflame to touch the black sand in the enclosed pan. A single breath later, and… The holes in the armor; what would this do to an unprotected body? “No one thinks of himself as a monster,” Nico was saying. “Other people may deem what a person does as evil, but they think that they are doing what they must do to correct the wrongs they perceive. I’m no different. No, I’m not a monster.” He gave her a smile, and his face and eyes lit up in a way that reminded her of the old Nico, the child. “Neither are you, Varina. No matter what you might be thinking of doing to me.”
Her finger uncurled. She brought her hand out from the pouch. “Nico…”
“Varina,” he said before she could gather her chaotic thoughts, “you tried to do what you thought best for me during the Sack of Nessantico. I appreciate that, and I will be forever grateful to you for your efforts, even if you don’t realize that you were following the will of Cenzi. When I pray to Cenzi, I ask Him for forgiveness for both you and Karl. I pray that He will lift the blindness from your eyes so that you may see His glory and come to Him. But…” He slid from the booth and stood alongside her. His hand touched her shoulder once and slid away. His eyes were full of a quiet sadness. “We are on opposite sides in this. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. There can be no reconciliation for us, I’m afraid. For what you did, I will always love you. Because you, too, are Cenzi’s creation, I will always love you. And because of the path you’ve chosen, I must always be your enemy.” His sadness on his face deepened. “And it’s far easier to hate an enemy you don’t know than the one you do. So good-bye, Varina.”
He gave her, without any apparent irony, the sign of Cenzi and turned his back to her. The mad dog… You could take care of it now. She clenched her right hand into a fist; she tried to hear Karl’s voice, but there was nothing. Nico began to walk away slowly.
Now, or it will be too late…
Varina sat unmoving in her seat, staring at the black cloth of his back as he made his way through the tavern patrons to the door.
Nico opened the door and left. From somewhere in the street, she heard the barking of a dog. It seemed to mock her.
PROGRESSIONS
Niente
The sea was calm, and the nahualli that Niente had set to bring the winds were working their spell-staffs hard, the prows of the ships carving long trails of white water. Niente gazed out from the aftcastle of the Yaoyotl, which had begun life as a Holdings warship before its capture fifteen years ago. The Yaoyotl had made this crossing once before, when Tecuhtli Zolin had made his foolish and fatal invasion of the Holdings. Now, it was cruising eastward once again, this time accompanied by over three hundred ships of the Tehuantin navy, three times the number Zolin had used, with an army aboard the size of that which had crushed the Holdings forces in Munereo and the other cities of their cousins’ land on the shore of the Eastern Sea. Niente could look out over the rails of the Yaoyotl and see the sails, like a flock of great white sea birds covering the ocean.
The sight was formidable. When the Easterners saw it approaching, they would tremble and quake. Niente knew this to be the truth; he had seen it in Axat’s visions in his scrying bowl. He saw it again now, as he brought his gaze down to the brass bowl in front of him. He had dusted it with the magical powder, and he had used the power of the X’in Ka to open the path-sight. Now, he peered into the green-lit mists, with his son at his side and his attendant nahualli watching him carefully. In the mists, scenes flitted by him: he saw the great island of Karnmor sending a great fume of smoke and ash into the sky as the ground trembled and the sea itself writhed in torment. He saw the great Tehuantin fleet ascending the mouth of the River A’Sele, saw their armies crawling the shore, saw the walls of Nessantico and its army arrayed there.
But he frowned slightly as he stared; before, the scenes had the hard-edged clarity of reality. Now, they were smudged and slightly indistinct, as if he were seeing them more with his own eyes than with Axat’s help. It troubled him.
Where is the Long Path? Why do You hide it from me, Axat?
No, there it was… Once again, he saw the dead Tecuhtli and the dead Nahual, and beyond them, the Long Path. But it, too, was no longer as clear as it had been. Interfering visions slid past between him and the path, as if Axat were saying that movements were afoot that had twisted and snarled the threads of the future. Niente peered more closely, trying to see if he could still find the way to the Long Path. He moved backward in time, saw the myriad possibilities unfolding…
He could feel his son Atl close to his shoulder, staring into the scrying bowl and holding his breath as if afraid that it would pierce the mists and destroy the vision. Niente knew what came next; he also knew that he could not let Atl see it. Niente exhaled sharply, the green mist swaying, and grasped the bowl. With an abrupt motion he sent the water cascading over the rail and into the sea, hissing coldly. At the same time, Niente felt the weariness of the spell strike him, causing him to stagger as he stood there. Atl’s arm went around his waist, holding him up.
He took a long breath, setting the scrying bowl back on the table. He straightened, and Atl’s hand dropped away from him. “Clean this,” he said to the closest of his attendants; the man scurried forward and took the brass bowl, bowing his head to Niente and hurrying off. “I will rest now,” he told the others, “and talk to Tecuhtli Citlali afterward. There was nothing new in the vision.”
They bowed. He could sense them watching him: was he weaker than he had been? Were the lines carved deeper in his face, were his features more twisted and deformed than before, his eyes more whitened with cataracts? Was this the time to challenge him, to become Nahual myself? That’s what they were thinking, all of them.
Perhaps his son no less than any of the others.
He could not let that happen. Not yet. Not until he had fulfilled the vision he’d glimpsed in the bowl. He forced himself to stand as upright as his curved spine allowed, to smile his twisted smile, and to pretend that his body hurt no more than was usual for a man his age.
The nahualli, with polite protestations, began to drift away to their other tasks.
“You stopped the vision before it was finished,” Atl said quietly.
“There was nothing more to see.”
“How do you know that, Taat? Haven’t you told me that Axat sometimes changes the vision, that the actions of those in the vision can alter the futures, that you must always watch for changes so as to keep to the best path?”
“There was nothing more,” Niente said again. He could see the skepticism in his son’s face, and the suspicion as well. He forced anger into his voice, as if it were twenty years ago and Atl had broken a bowl in the house. “Or are you ready to challenge me as Nahual yourself? If you are, then ready your spell-staff.” Niente grasped for his own, leaning against the table on the aftcastle, the knobbed end polished with decades of use, the carved figures dancing underneath his fingers. He leaned on the spell-staff as if it were a cane, letting it support his weight.
