He clasped his hands together in front of him as if in prayer. “Yes,” he told them. “Cenzi came to me as I stood before the Kraljica, and He released me from the poor shackles this life placed on me. But
…” He stopped, shaking his head. “Cenzi has also shown me that I’ve let my own pride lead me away from His path, and He has punished me for that. He’s taken into Himself too many of those whom I loved, He has sent others into pain and misery, and He has filled me with grief and sorrow. Their pain came because they followed me. I realize now that I must become entirely Cenzi’s vessel, that I must give myself over completely to Him and must accept whatever He gives me to bear. I realize that I am nothing.”
He brought his head up and lowered his hands, his gaze sweeping over them, making eye contact with each of them in the room. “You must also understand that,” he told them. “This is your task as well, as it has always been for the teni-to perform the will of Cenzi and nothing more.”
“What is it that Cenzi wants us to do?” someone asked. “Tell us, Absolute.”
Nico hesitated even though he felt the words filling him. Am I right this time, Cenzi? Am I hearing You and not myself? Is this truly what You want me to tell them? The words remained in his mind, and he could rid himself of them only by speaking them.
“Our Faith is being directly threatened,” he said. “We have the Westlanders ready to overwhelm Nessantico and the Holdings, and if that happens, then the Faithful will suffer greatly. I have prayed, and I have opened myself to Cenzi and listened to Him, and this is what He tells me.” He paused and took several breaths, looking at each of them. “Now is the time to set aside our struggles with the false leaders of the Faith-not forever, but for a short time. We must first beat back the heathens and heretics who threaten us before we can look to the heresy within the Holdings and the Coalition.”
He paused, nodding to them. “I said this the other day on the plaza, and I tell you again here: for now, you should obey the Archigos. War-teni, go to war. Teni, perform whatever duty is given you. For the rest of you, do what you must. Obey the authorities that are over you. For now.”
He waited. The glow in the room increased. “Do this for the moment,” he told them. “And afterward… Afterward, we will again look inward. Afterward, we will turn our attention to reforming the Concenzia Faith. We will take the glory we have earned, and we will shape the Faith as Cenzi intended it to be, as the Toustour and the Divolonte demand, and we will listen to the commands of no one, no one, who is not with us. That is all I have to say tonight.”
The glow in the room faded, and the lamplight seemed dull in comparison. They shuffled, they hesitated, they stared. Then someone opened the door; one by one, they gave him the sign of Cenzi and shuffled from the room. Nico returned the sign to each of them, murmuring a blessing to each. When they had all gone, he felt Rochelle’s hand on his shoulder.
“They weren’t happy,” she said. “You didn’t give them what they came to hear. They were disappointed.”
“I know,” he told her. “But it’s all I had.”
Rochelle nodded. “You’re tired.”
“Exhausted,” he admitted. He looked at the stairs leading to the second floor. “But there’s still one more meeting before I can sleep.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. He said nothing, only gestured for her to follow him. He trudged up the stairs, his feet heavy on the treads. There was lamplight coming from the rear bedroom, where there had been no light before. He heard Rochelle’s knife blade slide from its sheath, and he shook his head at her.
“You won’t need that. Not yet.”
He walked easily down the corridor to the room and pushed the door open. “Did you hear what you wanted to hear?” he asked the person in the room.
“Did you hear what you wanted to hear?” Nico said, and Sergei shrugged.
“Overall, yes,” he answered. “You just saved yourself, and saved the war-teni along with you.”
“My safety isn’t in your hands, Silvernose,” Nico said, but the bravado in his voice was tired and unheated.
“Ah, but actually it is,” Sergei answered. He glimpsed movement behind Nico and saw a face. “Rochelle. Please, why don’t the two of you come in and sit down? There’s no reason we can’t have a civil conversation, just the three of us.”
Nico entered with a shrug and sat on the edge of the bed in the room. Sergei saw him glance at the far door on the rear of the house. Sergei had left it open, displaying the stairway leading down to an alley behind the draper’s. Rochelle entered and immediately put her spine to the wall to one side of the corridor doorway, remaining standing. She stared at Sergei, her eyes intent and dangerous. Sergei lifted his own hands from the arms of his chair, his right holding his cane. He imagined he could feel Varina’s spell hidden within the wood. “There, you see. I’m no threat to either of you at the moment.”
Nico’s mouth twitched with the ghost of amusement. “And neither of us believe that.”
“I didn’t expect you to,” Sergei told him. In his mind, he repeated the release word for the spell Varina had placed on his cane so it would be clear if he needed to use it. He wondered how effective it might be against Nico- not as much as he might hope, he suspected.
“You have a better information network than I thought, Sergei.”
“I was lucky. A few of your Morelli teni had guilty consciences. After the debacle in the Old Temple, they’re not all quite so trusting of you anymore, Nico. They came and told me where you’d be.”
“I can’t say I blame them.” Nico leaned back on the bed. “I don’t trust myself either. What would you have done had I not told the war-teni to obey the Archigos?”
“There were enough gardai, loyal teni, and Numetodo spellcasters in the streets outside to have arrested twice the rabble you managed to cobble together tonight, even with the war-teni.” Sergei closed his eyes, imagining the scene. “Let me tell you what would have happened. They were waiting for my signal. I would have all of you taken immediately to the courtyard outside the Kraljica’s Palais, driving the pack of you down the A’Parete like a herd of pigs being taken to slaughter, so that everyone could see you. By the time we reached the palais, there would be a huge crowd of citizens there to watch the spectacle, and I would set you and your people at the front. I would drag you forward, Nico, with tourniquets tied hard around your forearms. I would tell the citizens that you and the war-teni who follow you would rather see Nessantico burned to the ground and all of them dead rather than fulfill their oath to Cenzi, the Faith, and the people. I would have handed a volunteer from the citizenry an executioner’s ax-and I would have many volunteers, Nico. I’d have that person strike your hands from your arms. Your screams would rebound from the walls of the palais, so loud that you’d think that all of Nessantico could hear them. Then I’d have another citizen pull your tongue from your mouth and slice it off with red-hot scissors, so that the wound would be immediately cauterized. I wouldn’t want you to die. Not yet. I would tell them all-the citizenry, the war-teni watching-that this was the Faith’s punishment, and that now I would show them the punishment of the Sun Throne. I would bind you to a post, and have one of the Bastida garda open your stomach and pull out a loop of your intestines. I’d tie that to a windlass, and have the garda slowly extract your guts, the windlass creaking as it turned. If you were still alive, afterward, then I’d have you flayed, the skin stripped from your living body. When you finally died, in misery and torment, your body would be put into a gibbet and displayed, with your hands and tongue nailed to your skull.”
Neither had spoken during his long tale. Sergei opened his eyes. Nico still watched him from the bed, but his face was an inscrutable mask. Rochelle appeared horrified. Her mouth hung slightly open, and she would not look directly at him. “You enjoy that fantasy,” she said angrily.
“I do, indeed,” Sergei admitted, glancing at her before returning his attention to Nico. “Then, when it was all over,” Sergei continued, scratching at the base of his metal nose with a forefinger, “I would tell the war-teni that they have two choices set before them. One is to renounce you, obey the Archigos, and serve Nessantico, and they might live. The other is to immediately suffer your fate. I would give each of them the choice. How many do you think would have followed you into martyrdom, Nico?”
“I don’t know,” Nico answered. “Nor do I think it does much good to speculate about any of this, since it didn’t happen. I told them to obey the Archigos, and you’ve let them go. What matters is what happens now.” He shifted position, sitting upright at the bed’s edge. “So what does happen now, Sergei? Do you try to arrest me again?”
“I could try,” Sergei answered, then lifted his hand as Nico started to protest. “Despite my fantasy-” there he stopped and smiled at Rochelle, “-after your performance in the plaza, I do have doubts as to my ability to manage
