Forgive me for saying this, but one thing my vatarh always told me was that the promise of a Kralji could not buy a beer in the tavern: even a barkeep knows that the Kralji might decide that the folia is better spent somewhere else, and leave you with the tab.”
“You believe I’m that cold?” she asked, and she knew he could hear the warning in her voice. “You think you mean that little to me?” His hand stroked her arm and found her hand, but she didn’t return the pressure of his fingers. He hurried to answer.
“No, of course not.” A breath. A sigh. “I would be lost without you. Truly. Being with you, well, I’ve never felt this way with anyone, not even the matarh of my children. I just hate to think.. .”
“Then don’t think,” she told him. Her voice snapped more sharply than she intended, and she softened her tone. “Just feel what I tell you, and accept it.”
He laughed then, and his hands roamed the slope of her side, falling into the hollow of her hips. His hands tightened there, and he pulled her toward him. His mouth sought hers, his beard brushing her skin. His hands cupped her as he brought her on top of him. She looked down at him, and he seemed vulnerable and almost boyish.
She smiled at that thought. She brought her head down and kissed him deeply, her mouth opening, her hands on either side of his face. When she finally pulled away, gasping, she leaned on her elbows, a cloud hovering above his landscape. Firelight rippled across his face and she saw the eager expression there. “No more thinking, and no more worrying,” she told him. “At least not for a bit…”
Sergei sat in his chair like a wizened toad, one hand clutching the end of his staff, his silver nose reflecting the morning light from the window overlooking the palais gardens. Erik was seated near him, and his face was dark and red with a flush. Allesandra had left her own chair behind her desk, pacing near the balcony entrance.
“I wonder, sometimes, if you aren’t conspiring with my son, Ambassador,” she said. “I thought that you believed you could convince him to accept the offer we tendered.”
“I told you, Kraljica, that I thought he would listen to it sympathetically. And he did exactly that.”
“Yet he requires that I abdicate the throne in seven years in favor of him.”
Sergei gave a nod that sent motes of light scattering along the wall like bright cockroaches. “Yes,” he answered simply. “If you agree to that and state so publicly, the Hirzg will dissolve the Coalition, freeing the member countries to make whatever choice they wish: to rejoin the Holdings or remain independent.” Sergei smiled slightly. “Like you, Kraljica, he doesn’t expect any of them to choose the latter course. And he will bring the army of Firenzcia here to help defend Nessantico against the Tehuantin.”
“What of West Magyaria and the false Gyula he set on its throne?” Erik interjected before Allesandra could respond. “What does the Hirzg say of that?”
Sergei glanced over at Erik. He seemed to look the man up and down with a smirk of disdain. “Of that he said nothing at all,” he said. “He didn’t seem to consider the throne of the Gyula important enough for comment or negotiation.”
“Then he’s a fool,” Erik spat. “With West Magyaria at the Kraljica’s side, the Holdings wouldn’t need Firenzcia at all.”
“The Hirzg, I believe, would disagree with you, Vajiki ca’Vikej. For that matter, so would I. And I note that the Kraljica didn’t send an Ambassador to West Magyaria asking for their help.”
Erik sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, and Allesandra whirled to face them. “Be quiet, both of you,” she snapped. “Your bickering makes my head ache so that I can’t think.” She kneaded her forehead with a hand. She felt confined, trapped, as if the palais walls were constricting around her. You have no choice in this. The thought hammered at her skull in time with her pulse. You really have no choice. The Holdings can’t stand alone against the Westlanders, and the Holdings can’t survive another long recovery.
She stared out the window, to the walls where she could still see the marks of the repairs that had been done after the Tehuantin bombardment. She remembered how the city had looked in the days and weeks and months after the Firenzcian army had finally smashed the Westlander forces and sent them reeling back across the Strettosei. She remembered the misery and the pain of those times. She remembered how desolate she had been herself then, abandoned by her own son.
“We’re stronger now,” she said to both of them. “We no longer have half of our army fighting a war across the sea.” She tried to say it with confidence, but even she could hear the uncertain quaver in her voice.
“And the Tehuantin, from all reports, are also stronger-they’ve brought easily three times the ships they had before,” Sergei answered. “Between Karnmor and Fossano, they’ve already destroyed most of our navy. Kraljica, if I thought that Commandant ca’Talin could defeat the Tehuantin alone, I would counsel you to ignore the Hirzg’s counteroffer. But I can’t do that, not in good conscience. Not as a loyal subject of the Sun Throne, who wishes nothing more than the Holdings’ success. I wish I were wrong in this, but I fear that I’m not.” She wasn’t looking at him. She didn’t wish to see his face. “And I think that you know it as well,” he finished.
She continued to stare out at the palais grounds. She could feel her fists clenched at her waist, as if she’d eaten bad shellfish and was trying to quell a rebellious stomach. The damnable man was right; the Garde Civile would fight courageously and well, but in the end, they would fall. And Jan, as he had before, was in position to sweep in and clean up the mess. If he wanted the Sun Throne, he could have it in mere months; all he need do was wait and do nothing until Nessantico was taken and Allesandra herself dead or fled.
“Don’t listen to him,” Erik was saying. “You should be Kraljica for the rest of your life. This offer; it is an insult.”
“Insult or not,” she told the air, “I have no choice.” She turned to the two men. “Sergei, you will have Talbot draft the agreement; I will sign it this afternoon. A’Teni ca’Paim will read the proclamation at service tomorrow. We’ll also send it by fast-rider to Brezno; you will follow as soon as you can, and you will remain with the Hirzg as my representative until he arrives here in Nessantico with his army.”
She watched Erik’s face as she spoke. She saw the anger he tried to hide. She suspected it was not rage at the decision, but a fear that he might not have what he wanted. Which one of us is using the other? She told herself that she had no answer to that question, but a voice deeper inside laughed at that evasion. You don’t just want to admit the truth…
“Why are you both still sitting there?” she barked at the two men. “We’re done here.”
With that, she waved her hand and turned back to the landscape outside once again. She listened as they bowed and hurried away, Sergei’s cane tapping at the marble flags. She stared at the isle and at the buildings of Nessantico, and they no longer seemed hers alone.
Varina ca’Pallo
“How have you been recovering?” Sergei asked her. “You certainly look well, like you’re a decade younger than you are.”
Sergei had come to the Numetodo House, and Johannes had escorted him down to Varina’s workroom. Varina saw him eyeing the sparkwheel prototype she had set in a vise, pointing at the straw dummy at the far end of the room. This version of the sparkwheel had a significantly longer barrel; she had wondered whether that might improve the accuracy of the shot. Varina flipped a sheet over the apparatus as she laughed at the blatant compliment. “I have to believe that your eyes are failing in your old age then, Sergei. But thank you for the lie.”
“Karl saw your beauty, as I do-though it took him longer than it should have.”
She managed to smile at that, remembering. In the midst of the war, in the midst of death and terror, there had been Karl, and that had made it all bearable. Yet now it seemed those times were to return, and Karl was gone. She didn’t know how she was going to live through another war and more battles.
She wasn’t certain she wanted to.
“The Morellis are becoming more than a simple nuisance, I’m afraid,” Sergei was saying. “Unfortunately, I need to leave the city again, so I can’t join the hunt for Morel himself. However, I’ll make certain that Commandant cu’Ingres understands the importance both the Kraljica and I place on tracking down the man. You were lucky that you were with your people. I understand it was your magic that killed one of them-I hope that you’re not too upset by that. You truly had no choice.” She thought that his gaze was strangely intense on her as he said the last, as if
