visibly older than before they’d left their own country: the cost of using the far-sight. In time-too little time-he would look as haggard and ancient and scarred as Niente did now. His face would be a horror, a constant reminder of the power of Axat’s grip. One day he would realize that all Niente’s warnings had been true.
Niente hoped that he wasn’t alive to see that day.
“I can see little in my own bowl,” Atl said, his voice a whisper that only the two of them could hear. “Everything is confused. There are so many images, so many contradictions. And Tecuhtli Citlali keeps asking what I think of his strategies.”
Again, Niente felt a guilty stab of satisfaction. “Do you still see victory for us?”
A nod. “I do. Yet…”
“Yet?”
An uncomfortable shrug. He looked forward, not at Niente. “I was so sure, Taat. Right after Karnmor, I could nearly touch it, everything was so clear. Yet since then, a mist has begun to overlay everything, there are shadows moving in the future and forces I can’t quite see. It’s become worse since, well, since you stepped down.”
“I know,” Niente told him. “I felt the forces and the changes, too.”
Atl looked back at Niente, and lifted his right arm slightly, so that the golden bracelet of the Nahual shone briefly. “This isn’t what I wanted, Taat. I would rather you were still wearing this, and that is the truth. It was only… I know what I had seen in the bowl, and it wasn’t what you said was there.”
“I know that also.”
“Could you have killed me, had we fought as the Tecuhtli wanted?”
Niente nodded. “Yes.” His answer was certain and quick. Yes, he was still stronger than his son with the X’in Ka. Even now. He was sure of that. “But… I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t kill my own son so I could continue to call myself Nahual. I couldn’t.”
Atl didn’t answer, seeming to ponder that. “I need your help, Taat. You were Nahual for so long. I need your advice, your counsel, your skill.”
“You have it,” he told Atl, and for the first time in days, he smiled. Slowly, Atl returned the gesture.
“Good,” Atl said. “Then tonight when we stop, we will both use our scrying bowls, and we will talk with each other about what we see, and that way I will give Tecuhtli Citlali the best advice I can. Will you do that with me, Taat?”
Niente patted his son’s leg. “I will.”
“Good. Then it’s settled. You!” Atl called out to one of the nahualli. “Go and find a horse for the Uchben Nahual. I need to speak to him and borrow from his wisdom, and he should not be walking. Hurry!” Uchben Nahual- the Old Nahual.
He could be that. He could serve that way.
If that was the role Axat had given him, he would perform it.
Varina ca’Pallo
She might have understood instinctively if she had borne children of her own with Karl, but that had never happened. But Karl had his children, back in Paeti.
“It’s different with your own children,” Karl had told her once. “It doesn’t matter what they do-there’s very little they could do, even some horrible things, that would change the way you feel about them. You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.”
She thought she might realize that, finally.
She’d accosted Sergei after the meeting with Hirzg Jan, pulling at the old Silvernose’s bashta as they left the palais. “If you hurt him, Sergei, I will never forgive you,” she said. “Never. I don’t care how long we’ve been friends. If you torture him, I will never call you friend again.”
His face was pained, the wrinkles deep around his false nose and eyes. “Varina, the war-teni-”
“I don’t care, ” she told him. “Remember that Karl and I risked our lives to save you from the same fate. Pay us back now.”
Sergei had only shaken his head. “I can promise nothing,” he’d answered. “I’m sorry, Varina. Nessantico needs the war-teni.”
Strange how Nico had become the son she’d never had. The son she’d lost for years after the first invasion of Nessantico. The son who hated everything she and Karl believed and for which they’d struggled over the decades. The son who seemed perfectly comfortable with the thought of killing her for his own beliefs.
You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.
She could not hate him. It made no sense, but the feelings were there.
The page had come to her at the Numetodo House from the palais, bearing a letter from the Kraljica. “The Kraljica requires your presence at the Old Temple in a turn of the glass,” he said, bowing to her. And he’d left. The letter had said little more, only that Allesandra herself would be there, and that she requested her presence both as a friend and as a member of the Council of Ca’, and that the Archigos would also be present. She knew that it must be something to do with Nico. The thought terrified her.
She wasn’t certain what she’d do if he’d been abused, how she might react. She didn’t know what she could do, since Talbot had already started manufacturing the sparkwheels for the Garde Kralji and Garde Civile. Her single bargaining chip was gone.
So she watched the carriage with the Garde Kralji’s insignia on it as it clattered into the open space of the plaza. A dais had been erected near the blackened, shattered front facade of the Old Temple, with a viewing stand no more than five strides from it. The dais was only large enough for a few people to stand on; in the center was a wooden pillar with chains attached. Allesandra was already seated on the viewing stand with a cadre of Garde Kralji gardai around her; there was a sea of teni also present, though if Archigos Karrol was indeed watching, he did so from somewhere else-Varina wondered if Allesandra had insisted on that. Behind the teni there was a dense crowd of onlookers, as if this were a holiday and they were there for the celebration. They were strangely silent, the citizens of Nessantico; Varina had no sense of what they were thinking or where their sympathies might lie.
Varina wanted to go toward the carriage, knowing that Nico would be inside, but Allesandra gestured to her from the stand and Talbot had already come up to her. “Follow me, A’Morce,” he said. Varina looked back at the carriage, then followed Talbot to the stand, the gardai sliding aside as they climbed the short set of stairs. Varina curtsied to Allesandra, then to the other members of the Council of Ca’, who were seated immediately behind the Kraljica.
“Sit here, my dear,” Allesandra told her, gesturing to a seat at her right side. The seat to the left was vacant; Varina wondered if Archigos Karrol was supposed to be sitting there-which also made her wonder at the significance of placing the Archigos to the left, lower position, but then Talbot seated himself there.
The carriage-its windows shuttered so that no one could see inside, and pulled by a single black horse-had come alongside the smaller dais. Gardai hurried forward, surrounding it as two of them opened the doors. From the side facing the Kraljica, Sergei was helped down. Leaning on his cane, he bowed to the stand with its dignitaries, then went around to the far side of the carriage. Varina glimpsed Nico’s head over the top of the carriage, then more of him as he ascended the stairs alongside Sergei. Was he limping, or was that only due to the chains that bound his ankles and hands? There were bruises on his face, but they seemed old, not fresh, and there were no obvious disfigurements. His head was free of the terrible cage of the silencer. He seemed to incline himself toward Sergei as they reached the top of the dais, saying something to the man. He appeared to nearly smile as he looked out at the crowd-would that be the reaction of a man who’d been tortured?
Now Nico, too, faced the Kraljica, and he bent low at the waist toward her, giving her the sign of Cenzi as best he could with manacled hands. “Kraljica,” he said. “Councillors.” He seemed to be scanning the crowd. Varina wondered if he were looking for the Archigos. “And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.”
His voice was a husk, containing but a memory of the power Varina remembered. He sounded weak and exhausted. But he lifted his head, and he looked out at each of them, his eyes finding all of them in turn. Varina felt the shock of connection when his gaze came to her. He smiled again then, nodding ever so slightly to her, and she could not stop herself from giving him a smile in return. Then his gaze drifted on, and Varina thought that he stared
