mud and ash, his face streaked, his eyes sunken in the midst of dark pouches. His hair was white, his hands curled in with huge, knotted knuckles. She guessed him to be five decades old or more, someone who had seen too much work in his time. “Please, sit,” Allesandra told the man immediately, and he sank gratefully into the nearest chair after a sketch of a bow. “Sergei, pour some wine for this poor man. Talbot, see if the cook still has some of the stew from dinner…”
Talbot bowed and left the room. Allesandra stood in front of the man; she heard wine gurgling into a cup, then Sergei’s cane on the floor as he handed the man a goblet. He drank thirstily. “What’s your name,” Allesandra asked the man.
“Martin ce’Mollis, Kraljica.”
“Martin.” Allesandra smiled toward him. “Talbot said you had news.”
The man nodded and swallowed. “I’ve been riding for the last few days after sailing my boat from Karnmor.”
“Karnmor.” She glanced at Sergei. “Then you saw…”
He nodded, then shook his head. “I saw… Kraljica, I live on the northern arm of Karnmor Bay, well out from Karnor. I saw the ships coming in one afternoon-first a storm like nothing I’d seen before, then suddenly they were just there, painted ships attacking our navy in the bay-Westlander ships. I saw them tossing fireballs into the city and our ships there as the sun began to set. I knew someone had to come, had to tell you what was happening. I’m just a fisherman now, but I served in the Garde Civile in my time, so I went to my boat and kept close to the shore and sailed around the northern end of the island in order to make for the mainland. I saw another Westlander warship anchored just off the shore, and a line of lights descending Mt. Karnmor as if people were there and moving down. I anchored where I was sheltered and watched, and the lights came down to the shore, and a small boat came out to the Westlander warship. After that, the warship pulled its anchor and left-I saw out on the horizon there were more ships waiting, Kraljica, more than I could count, and all of them sailed away from Karnmor as if Cenzi were chasing them, as if they knew…”
Martin licked his lips and drank again. “Thank Cenzi that they didn’t pay any attention to me, didn’t see me. I sailed on all night, staying close to shore and finally crossed the channel and landed on the mainland before dawn. There’s a small garrison there, and I was telling the duty offizier what I’d seen just as the sun was rising. Then…”
He stopped. He gulped at the wine again. “Then Mt. Karnmor woke. I watched that awful cloud rising high in the air, felt the thunder hit us like a wall of hard air, and then the ash, so hot it burned the skin where it touched…” He shivered, and Allesandra noticed the reddened and blistered skin of his arms. “They gave me a horse, told me to ride here as fast as I could. Don’t stop, the offizier told me. I didn’t, either, except to steal another horse when the one I was riding died under me. I came here as fast as I could, Kraljica. You had to know, had to know…”
He took another sip; Sergei, wordlessly, refilled his glass. “ They did it,” he said finally. “The Westlanders. They brought their ships there, and their magic made the mountain explode. They knew. They knew it was going to happen-that’s why they went north with their fleet that night. They knew what was going to happen, and-”
Talbot entered with a tray; the man stopped. “Talbot,” Allesandra told him, “take our good friend Martin with you. Feed him, let him bathe, and put him in one of the guest rooms. Send for my healer to make certain he receives any treatment he might need. Martin, you’ve done a great service for the Holdings, and you’ll be rewarded for it. I promise you that.” She smiled again to him, and the man rose from his chair and bowed unsteadily. He let Talbot lead him away.
“The Tehuantin are back…” Sergei breathed the words as the door closed behind them. “This changes everything. Everything.”
Allesandra said nothing. She went back to the window. The sun bathed the horizon in rose and gold.
“There will be panic in the streets as soon as this gets out. And if he’s right, if Mt. Karnmor’s eruption wasn’t simply a coincidence. ..”
The sun spread a column of orange high into the haze as the searing yellow disk slipped behind the buildings of the city. The gilded dome of the Old Temple was silhouetted against the fiery colors. Third Call was sounding from the wind-horns; in a mark of the glass, the light-teni would be walking the city, illuminating the lamps of the Avi a’Parete so that the city was snared in a necklace of light. “I will give it to you,” her vatarh had told her once, referring to Nessantico and those lights. He had failed in that, but she had taken the city and the Holdings for herself. She had the city, had the pearl of lights as her own, had been washed in the light of the Sun Throne.
It was hers, and she had to do what she must to keep it.
“You’ll be going back to Brezno,” she said to Sergei. “There’s a message you need to deliver to my son.”
Varina ca’Pallo
“… And if what he’s saying is true, then I worry about the Holdings in general.” Talbot shook his head as he, the mage Johannes, and Varina walked along the Avi a’Parete. They were walking from the Numetodo House on the South Bank-near what was still called the Archigos’ Temple, even though no Archigos had resided there since the unfortunate Kennis-toward one of the fashionable restaurants near the Pontica a’Brezi Veste. The street had been cleaned vigorously, but Varina could still see ash drifts along the gutters, and the cobblestones had a vaguely gray appearance.
Johannes was shaking his head. “I don’t know of any magic that could cause a volcano to spontaneously erupt, and if they can do that, then…” He seemed to shudder. He pulled his cloak tighter around him. He glanced at Varina, bushy white eyebrows like thunderheads over his dark, hidden eyes. “You know the Tehuantin capabilities better than any of us,” he said. “You’re being awfully quiet, A’Morce, and that’s making me uneasy.”
Varina favored him with a wan smile. “I don’t have better information than either of you,” she said. “Maybe it was simply coincidence, or maybe the man’s mistaken about what he saw.”
Talbot shook his head. “Not all of it. We’ve had other fast-riders coming in who have also seen the Tehuantin fleet. They’re definitely out there and heading toward the A’Sele by all indications. I thought I should tell you, A’Morce, since anything that happens could end up affecting the Numetodo also. The general populace will know in a day or two-this can’t be kept silent…”
His voice trailed off. Varina, who had been walking with her head down-as she nearly always did now, since her balance was sometimes as unstable as someone two decades older-glanced up. They had passed the long northward turn of the Avi, passing a short segment of the original city wall of Nessantico as they approached the Bastida. To their left, several small streets led off to the poorer area of South Bank. A knot of several young men had come out from one of the lanes onto the Avi, directly in front of them. They spread out in a ragged line, blocking their path even though there was more than ample room in the Avi.
“Move aside,” Talbot said to the nearest of them. “Unless you want more trouble than you can handle. You don’t know who you’re accosting.”
“Oh?” the man replied. “It’s nearly Third Call, Vajiki. Shouldn’t you be on your way to Temple? But no, I would have remembered seeing the Kraljica’s aide at Temple, or the dead Ambassador’s wife, or this owl-faced trained monkey you have with you.” He laughed at that, the others joining in. Varina felt her stomach muscles contract at the sound: this was deliberate. They knew who they were confronting.
“Don’t make a mistake here,” Varina said to them, looking from one to another, trying to see in any of their faces reluctance or fear. She saw neither. She glanced around for an utilino, for a garda, for anyone who might help, but the eyes of the other people strolling the Avi seemed to be elsewhere. If anyone noticed the confrontation, they ignored it. She had to wonder if that, too, was deliberate.
“Mistake?” the same young man said. He had pox scars mottling his cheeks, and he was missing one of his front teeth. “There’s no mistake. Nico Morel said there would be a sign-and the sign came, as he said it would. But you don’t believe in Cenzi and His signs, do you? You don’t believe that Cenzi speaks through the Absolute One.”
“This isn’t a discussion to have here, Vajiki,” Varina told him. “I would love to discuss it with Nico in person. Tell him that. Tell him that I will meet with him whenever and wherever he wants. But for now-let us pass.”
The pox-cratered man chuckled, the sound echoed by his companions. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s time that the Numetodo were given a lesson.”
