seemed genuinely pleased to have a patron; no doubt those had been far more sparse than usual in the past few weeks.
She watched Nico as he ate. He had changed a great deal from the boy she remembered. The Nico of her memory had been eager and apprehensive all at the same time as he prepared to go to Brezno Temple as an acolyte. She’d been with him again, when he’d taken the green robe of the teni and made his pledge to Cenzi in that same temple, and he’d seemed so sure of himself then..
The Nico who stood before her now was thinner, his cheeks drawn in. The lines of his face were harsher and more deeply drawn, and she could see the pain of his life written there. There had always been an intensity to him, one that she remembered from her earliest memory of him, but was changed now. It had turned into something harder, deeper inside himself, and more dangerous.
She knew she had changed as well. Perhaps more than Nico had. Neither of them were the person they’d been back then. Brother and sister they might be, but time had pulled them apart and she didn’t know if they could ever fit together again.
“You’re staring.” Nico set down the cup and poured himself more wine from the flagon.
“I haven’t seen you in years, Nico.”
He smiled. “You’ve grown into an attractive young woman.” Then the smile faded. “You’ve also taken on Matarh’s legacy. I’ve heard the gossip that the White Stone still walks. That’s you?”
She nodded.
“Do you hear their voices, too?”
“No. I’m not mad, Nico.”
“Not yet,” he answered. “But you can’t do what you do and stay sane. You can’t do what you do and expect anything but the soul shredders after your death. Cenzi will find you wanting, my sister.”
It was so similar to what Sergei had told her that she wanted to laugh. “You’re going to lecture me?” Rochelle sniffed in derision. “They had you in chains, Nico. How many died when you and your people took the Old Temple?” She saw him flush with that accusation, and she remembered. “I’m sorry, Nico,” she said, putting her hand on his. “I forgot. I wish I could have met Liana.”
He nodded, and she saw his eyes swim in sudden moisture. He wiped at them, almost angrily. “I wish that, too. You see, that was my punishment. My madness. Cenzi always gives us warnings, one way or another. It’s just that we sometimes don’t pay attention to them or even see them for what they are.”
“You still believe, after all this?” she asked him. “You still think your destiny is within the Faith?”
“Yes.” He said it firmly, without hesitation, the strength returning to his voice. “And what about your own faith, Rochelle? Do you still believe?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I think so, but…” A shoulder rose under her tashta. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “But you do?”
“I do,” he said. “Still. Cenzi contains everything, Rochelle. He contains all that is good, and He contains all that is evil as well. That is why the Moitidi fought each other and Him; because they were His children and thus contained within themselves were all possibilities. And He brought you here, now, for a reason.”
Rochelle laughed bitterly. “You have no idea why I’m here.”
“Don’t I?” Nico reached across the table and plucked up a baguette. He broke off a piece of the bread and pushed it into his mouth with a forefinger. He chewed contentedly for a moment, then took a sip of the wine. Then he leaned forward toward her conspiratorially. “You’re here to kill the Kraljica,” he whispered, and leaned back again.
Rochelle felt her face flush, and he laughed. “Oh, it’s not such a revelation,” he told her. “Matarh asked the same of me, when I became a teni. ‘You’ll be close to her one day,’ she told me. ‘When you’re an a’teni or maybe even the Archigos. You’ll be close to her, and I want you to kill her for me, because of what she did to ruin my life.’ Isn’t that what she told you as well?”
“It was similar,” Rochelle admitted.
“I thought so. But that’s not why you’re here, Rochelle. You’re here because Cenzi wanted you to see me. He wanted to reunite us.”
She felt a chill touch her spine at that, as if a winter breeze had somehow lingered behind to caress her at that moment, and she wondered where that feeling came from as she shivered and hugged herself. He had been there, then he had wrapped himself in darkness and gone somewhere else. If I could do that, why, the White Stone could go anywhere. The White Stone could easily kill the Kraljica.. . “What you did out there-can you do that again? Could you teach me how to do it?” she asked Nico.
“A month ago I would have said no,” he told her. “I would have told you that only the pure of faith can or should use the Ilmodo. But now…” He drained the wine in front of him. “I don’t know. Perhaps anything is possible.”
“And why do you think that Cenzi wanted us together?”
“I really don’t know yet,” he answered, “but perhaps we’ll find out.”
Varina ca’Pallo
Varina made rushed apologies to Kraljica Allesandra and hurried away from the Old Temple with a quartet of gardai assigned to her. Allesandra, the councillors, Sergei-they were all surrounded by gardai, and everyone seemed panicked. Varina, though, was gripped by a terrifying certainty. She made her way quickly to the Numetodo House with her stomach burning and worry furrowing her forehead.
The chains lying empty on the dais and Nico gone…
She was afraid that she knew where he’d gone.
Even before the carriage had stopped she was half-running toward the door, something she hadn’t done in years. “A’Morce,” Johannes said as she pushed into the house, looking surprised at Varina’s appearance and her lack of breath, “we didn’t expect you back…”
“Where is she?” Varina said, interrupting him.“Serafina-where is she?” Her voice was shrill but she didn’t care.
“Why, she’s upstairs with Belle, of course. I think that-”
She pushed past him, pounding up the stairs with her heart racing. She tore open the door. Belle, a young recruit of the Numetodo, and also a wet nurse with a new child of her own, was sitting in a chair at the window of Varina’s office there. Startled, Belle covered herself; Varina realized she’d been nursing the baby. “A’Morce? Is everything all right?”
Her heart, which seemed to have been trying to force its way from her throat, settled back into her chest. The terrible scenes she’d imagined all the way here faded slowly in her mind: Belle lying still on the carpeted floor, the Numetodo House afire or wrecked, her other friends dead or wounded, and Nico’s child gone.
Vanished like Nico himself.
She closed her eyes for a moment, her hand to her mouth. “I thought…” she began, then shut off the thought with a shake of her head. Her heart was starting to slow, her breath to return, and now she was beginning to feel foolish at her panic. “Never mind, Belle. I don’t know what I was thinking. How’s Sera?”
Belle smiled. She lifted the cloth over her shoulder, showing Varina the baby suckling at her breast, the little mouth working hard even though her eyes were closed. “Hungry as a wolf cub,” Belle answered. “I’m wondering if there’s going to be anything left for my own little one.” She laughed, stroking Sera’s head, with its crown of fine golden hair. “I’ve found another wet nurse for her, also; my cousin Michelle lost her own baby at birth, and said she’d be willing to come to your house mornings. Between the two of us, we’ll keep the little dear well fed. Now that the Firenzcians are coming, we should be safe enough.”
I wish I was as certain… Varina forced a smile to her face. “Thank you,” Varina told her. “Tell her I’ll pay her double the usual rate for her trouble.”
“You’re very generous, A’Morce.” Sera lost the nipple for a moment and started to cry with tears sparkling in her blue eyes, and Belle lifted her breast to Sera’s mouth. The infant settled again. “How was the…?” She stopped, uncertain of the word. “Apology?” she finished.
“Unsatisfying, I’m afraid,” Varina told her. “Nico showed again why he was Absolute of the Morellis. He’s
