The words were fire in his mouth. The heat of them blasted the people before him, and they again shouted their affirmation. “Tell us, Absolute One!” someone shouted, and they all took up the chant. “Tell us! Tell us!”
Nico listened to them for several breaths, his chest heaving from the effort of speaking. He lifted his hands finally and they went silent again. In the hush, in the quiet, he began to speak, and though his voice was but a whisper, they could all hear him. He could hear his voice rebounding from the temple walls on the far side of the park.
“Cenzi has told me that we can no longer tolerate the heretics among us. We can no longer even tolerate those who wear the green robes but who fail to hear Him when He speaks. The Archigos and his a’teni speak with false tongues. We can no longer tolerate those whom this world has blessed with power and money but who do not see that those blessings derive from Cenzi, not themselves. He has told me this: He will give us a sign. He will bring fire and destruction. He will bring death and darkness. He will demonstrate to us our folly so that we may all see it, and when He does…”
Another pause. He enunciated each of the next words clearly. Slowly. Each in its own breath. “We. Must. Respond.”
They shouted, they applauded, they raised their hands. But Nico, looking over them, could see at the rear of the crowd Garde Kralji in their uniforms, squadrons of them pouring into Temple Park. “The sign is coming!” he shouted. “We will know it soon! I promise you this because He has promised it to me. But, look-” he pointed then to the Garde Kralji, “-there are those who want to prevent you from hearing my words. They would stop me from speaking Truth, because Truth is their enemy. Look!”
The crowd turned. They saw the Garde Kralji and they shouted. As the gardai pressed forward, trying to reach the stage, the crowd pushed back. The gardai, armed with batons, responded. Some of the crowd went down under the assault. One of the e’teni in the crowd unleashed a spell: a blast of fire that went howling into the ranks of the gardai.
Suddenly, it was chaos-many in the crowd pushing through the new gap in the gardai’s ranks. Batons rose and fell, and there was now open fighting in the park. Utilino whistles shrilled, and the Ilmodo was now being wielded against the crowd. A controlled blast of wind hit near the front of the stage, sending the closest onlookers sprawling onto the dirt and grass of the park, as well as blowing Nico backward into Ancel. “Absolute!” Ancel shouted above the din of the fray. “We must leave! Now!”
Nico stared outward. There was nothing he could do here, and Cenzi was silent in his head. “They don’t listen to me,” he said. “This is unnecessary. The Faithful should not be fighting each other.”
More gardai were coming into the park, some of these in the uniform of the Garde Civile, and armed with swords and spears rather than batons. He saw bloodied heads. Nico started toward the front of the stage, but Ancel took his arm. Liana had clambered on stage now, along with several others of his inner circle, and they were all around him. “You will see!” Nico shouted toward the crowd, but his voice was only his voice now, and if they heard, they paid him little attention. He was exhausted, as tired as if he’d been using the Ilmodo. He sagged in the hands of his people and they hurried him to the rear of the stage and down the steps. “We’re done here,” Ancel told them. “Now we must protect the Absolute One and get him away. Quickly.”
Nico took Liana’s hand as his followers closed ranks around him, and they fled into the depths of Temple Park toward the maze of the Oldtown streets.
Varina ca’Pallo
Pierre’s workshop was in the rear garden of the Numetodo House grounds on South Bank. It stank of iron, oil, wood, and varnish, as well as Pierre’s unfinished sausage, which sat half-eaten on a side table in the cluttered room. Every work surface was filled; no wood showed on any of the tabletops. Instruments and strange devices sat around in various stages of assembly. Varina could only guess at what half of them might be. The room was lit by sun streaming in from several ivy-fringed skylights; the sheets of light illuminated air that was full of wood dust: Pierre was sanding a board set in a vise on one of the tables.
“A’Morce,” he said, suddenly noticing her standing at the door. He dropped the sanding block in a flurry of bright motes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
As she entered, Pierre plucked up a half-dozen wood chisels from the seat of a chair, and shooed away the cat that had been curled in their midst. He gestured for Varina to sit, as the cat hissed in irritation and went under the nearest table to lick her paws and sulk.
“I understand the Morellis caused a full-scale riot in Temple Park yesterday,” Pierre said. “At least a dozen dead, from what I heard, but that bastard Morel escaped.”
Varina nodded silently. The complex guilt gnawed at her her again: for having let Nico live when she could have killed him; for allowing herself to think she could be his judge and executioner; for having failed Karl; for still having maternal feelings for Nico after all these years; for thinking that there was something about the young man that was redeemable; for the strange sympathy she found she had for him.
For what she was about to do now.
Karl, is this what I should do? Is this what you’d have done as A’Morce? The grief washed over her again at the thoughts and she had to turn away from Pierre for a moment. Everyone had warned her it would be this way: that the mourning would ebb away only slowly, that for a long time she’d suddenly remember Karl and the sorrow would take her again.
Pierre must have thought she’d caught a speck of dust in her eye. “Morel said there’d be a sign from Cenzi.” he continued. “Something about fire and destruction and death, from what I hear.” He sniffed. “If that’s all prophecy is, well, then any of us could make a living as a prophet. There’s enough fire and death and destruction in any given year for a double handful of vague prophecies like that. You’d think that if Cenzi were really as powerful as Morel seems to think, then he’d make such signs unmistakable and his prophecies more specific-why, if he told me the sun would rise in the west tomorrow and it did, that might just convince me to turn to the Faith.” He grinned at his own joke.
Varina smiled politely. She wiped at her eyes quickly.
Pierre seemed to take the smile as encouragement. “What bothers me,” he said, “is that there were evidently quite a lot of people listening to them, and some of them were teni, too, if you can believe it. I tell you, the troubles for the Numetodo may be ready to start again.”
“Nico can be quite charming and convincing,” Varina said. “He has quite a presence.” And if I’d had any doubt of those reports, then meeting him again confirmed them.
Pierre shrugged. “From what I heard, the crowd actually resisted the Garde Kralji when they showed up and allowed the bastardo to escape. There’s going to be blood between the Morellis and us Numetodos, A’Morce. Mark my words on that-and call me a prophet, too.” He grinned again, then shrugged. “But forgive me, A’Morce, for rattling on. I take it you had a chance to try the device I made for you. Did it work? Did it survive the experiment?”
“It did,” she told him; he nodded, and she saw a fierce satisfaction slip over his face. “I was very pleased with it,” she continued. “That’s why I’m here. I want more of them. Several hands of them, in fact.”
Now his eyebrows climbed his thin face. He absently brushed sawdust from the front of his bashta. His gaze skittered about the workroom. “Several hands of them,” he muttered, almost inaudibly. “A’Morce, all the work I have here to do… The requests from the other Numetodo for instruments and devices for their studies… I don’t know how I could possibly…” He lifted his hands; she could see the scars and calluses on them.
“Hire yourself some competent apprentices,” she told him. “I will pay their wages myself, whatever you feel is fair. Buy the material you need and bill it to me. The devices needn’t be as…” She stopped and smiled at him. “… beautifully crafted as the one you made for me. Good solid workmanship would suffice. Have them work under your supervision; you can even have them help you with your other work at need. I don’t care. But I want the devices soon-within a month, and as many as you can make.” She took a breath that shuddered. “Pierre, this is necessary for the protection of all Numetodo.”
“A’Morce, I haven’t heard-”
“That’s because I’ve said nothing to anyone else. And you shouldn’t either. I can count on your discretion, I trust?”
