continue to weave from the same threads we’ve been using all along.”
Sergei waited, silent. Jan took a long breath, seeming to stare through Sergei. “The White Stone killed Rance.”
“I heard that from Paulus.”
“You wouldn’t know who hired her, would you, Sergei?”
The accusation buried there was obvious-and startling. Sergei straightened himself as well as he could, pushing against the knob of his cane. In truth, he had complained to Allesandra about Rance’s stubbornness, and had laughingly suggested that if the man slipped down the palais stairs and died, he wouldn’t mourn. He wondered, for a moment, if perhaps Allesandra had hired the White Stone. But he allowed none of that suspicion to show on his face. “Hirzg Jan, I assure you that I had nothing to do with Rance’s death.”
“Rance advised me against this treaty and against any reconciliation with the Holdings,” Jan interrupted, tapping the scroll. His eyes smoldered with a dark fire. “You knew that, and you knew the high regard I had for Rance’s opinion. Perhaps it wasn’t you who hired the Stone, but surely you told Matarh about Rance’s stance. Perhaps she decided to silence the man? Perhaps she would decide to silence me as well, once this treaty is signed-that would relieve her of any obligation to abdicate the throne, wouldn’t it? Did you happen to mention that to her, Sergei?”
Sergei was already shaking his head. “Hirzg, who has been whispering this poison to you? Is it Paulus? Frankly, I don’t think the man’s competent to judge whether his eggs are sufficiently cooked …”
Jan stopped Sergei with a sharp slice of his hand, halfrising from his seat. The field desk shivered with the motion, the scroll rolling across the polished surface. “Not Paulus,” he said. “The man’s a dullard; I know it. I’ll replace him as soon as I can. But I have my reasons for this suspicion, I assure you.”
“Then tell me what they are, so I can refute them. Hirzg Jan, I had nothing to do with Rance’s death. I swear it before Cenzi.”
“And my matarh? You can swear for her also?”
Sergei lifted a hand from the cane, let it drop again. “No, but I believe that if Kraljica Allesandra were responsible, she would have told me her plans, and she has said nothing.” That, at least, was the truth. He was fairly certain that Allesandra would have told him. At least, he hoped so.
Jan sniffed derisively, as if he’d read Sergei’s mind. “Oh, believe me, Matarh is quite skilled at keeping her intrigues to herself. I know that one from my own history. I know it very well.” He tapped the treaty again. “I don’t know that I’ll be signing this, Sergei. I might be signing my own death notice.”
“Hirzg, I assure you-”
Jan scowled and stiffened in his chair. “With all due respect, Ambassador, your assurances mean very little at the moment. I will look at the document with the Hirzgin, and we will talk.”
Sergei nodded. “Then I will meet with you tomorrow, Hirzg. It’s been a long ride here…”
But Jan was shaking his head. “Not tomorrow. I’ll give you my answer in my own time, when I’ve had a chance to investigate other matters, or when…” He stopped. Frowned. “You may return to Stag Fall or Brezno if you wish, Ambassador, or wait here. I don’t care which. I can have Paulus give you field accommodations, if you feel you can trust him that far.”
Stag Fall would be far more comfortable, and Brezno would be more pleasing in other ways, but Sergei shook his head. He had no choice here; over the decades, Sergei had become well-versed in the reading of faces and the lies and half-truths concealed in words. There was something Jan wasn’t telling him, something else that was driving his conviction that Allesandra had hired the White Stone. Sergei couldn’t entirely deny the possibility, but found it unlikely. He’d never mentioned Rance in such ominous terms that Allesandra would have felt compelled to take action. No, if the murder had been the White Stone’s work and not that of some impostor, then there was another explanation.
And if there was something else driving Jan’s anger and irritation. Sergei couldn’t uncover that in Brezno or Stag Fall. “I’ll remain, Hirzg,” he said. “I would like to talk with you further on this-the choice we make here is crucial for both the Holdings and the Coalition, and is time critical. The Tehuantin attack is an issue that can’t wait.”
“That’s an issue critical for the Holdings, yes,” Jan agreed. He tapped the scroll again, staring at it as a miner might inspect a chuck of rock for the presence of gold. “But for the Coalition?” He shrugged. “I assure you, Ambassador, the Coalition will survive that problem, whether the Holdings does or not. Good day, Sergei,” he said, and pointedly began to examine a map laid out on his desk.
Sergei watched him for a breath, then bowed to him. His cane pressed deeply into the carpet-hidden grass as he left.
Varina ca’Pallo
“I need your help, Varina.”
It was not a statement that a person expected to hear from the Kraljica. In the years that Varina had known Allesandra, she’d come to consider the woman a friend, yet there was always a necessary distance and deference to that friendship due to her title. Allesandra wasn’t someone who asked for help; rather, she generally expected help to be offered without the necessity of a request, or she would instead issue an order for the aid. Yet here was Allesandra, sitting in Varina’s sunroom as if on a social visit, and asking.
The room was warm with the sunlight pouring through the glass, and full of the scent of blooming flowers. Varina had watered them little since sending the servants away, and the stress and neglect seemed ironically to have startled them into bloom. She had never seen the room so vibrant and alive.
It was almost a mockery. The plants flaunted their color and brilliance against the gray, wrinkled bag of her own flesh and against the gray plain of her continuing grief.
“I need your help.” Varina was afraid that she knew exactly what Allesandra wanted, and she wasn’t certain it was something she could do. “If this has to do with Nico and the attack on the Old Temple.. .”
“It does,” Allesandra replied flatly. She stroked the yellow petals of a sunrise flower on a stand alongside her chair. “Very pretty,” she said. “The ones in the palais garden are just beginning to bud.” She laid her hand back in her lap, her gaze on Varina again. Varina could see the steel of the ca’Ludovici line in her face: the sharp nose, the jutting chin. “Nico Morel doesn’t only threaten the Faith and me,” Allesandra said. “He also threatens you and the Numetodo, and he does so directly. If he has his way, the persecution of the Numetodo by the Faith would begin once again. He wants to see your tortured bodies hanging in cages from the Ponticas, as they did when Orlandi held the Archigos’ throne.”
“You wouldn’t allow that, Kraljica,” Varina answered. “I know you that well.”
Allesandra gave an audible sniff, as if searching for the perfume of the flowers in the room. “I wouldn’t, no. But if Morel has his way, then my refusal would be mean that there would be someone else on the Sun Throne, a lackey who would bow first to the Archigos’ throne rather than to the people of the Holdings, who would place religious issues before political ones. If that happens…”
“How can it?” Varina said. “Nico can be charming and persuasive; I know that well. But this tiny group of followers taking over the Faith?” She shook her head. “Surely that’s not a serious threat.”
“You underestimate both Nico, and the Morelli influence among the teni and the populace. They aren’t a ‘tiny group,’ Varina. When A’Teni ca’Paim called for the war-teni of the Holdings to join the Garde Civile to defend Villembouchure, few of them answered. Most of those who ignored her are now in the Old Temple with the Morellis. My people are telling me that the Garde Kralji doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the raw power Morel has gathered there. I suspect they also don’t have the will to do so-I know that some of the offiziers within the Garde are actually sympathetic to the Morellis and their stance.”
The bright colors of the sunroom plants filled the air behind Allesandra, discordant. Varina’s hand had gone to her throat. She felt a sour burning there, deep inside: a remembered fear that she’d thought long extinguished and forgotten. She remembered Sergei’s advice to her; she wondered whether she should have listened, if once again he’d been right when everyone else had been wrong. “It’s that serious? How did we miss this?”
“When things don’t go well, people look for scapegoats to blame. They never blame themselves, they never blame Cenzi, they never blame circumstance, they never blame chance. They blame others.”
