A Magic of Dawn (65 page)
Authors: S. L. Farrell
S
HE 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.
HE 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.”
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 Hïrzg 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-téni—”
“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.”
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-téni.”
“I can promise nothing,”
he’d answered.
“I’m sorry, Varina. Nessantico needs the war-téni.”
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.
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 téni 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 téni 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 Cénzi 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, téni. 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 for a long time past the téni into the citizenry, and she halfturned to see who had caught his eye. But he finally cleared his throat and began to speak again.
“I acted in the belief that I was doing what Cénzi required of me,” he said, more loudly. “Nothing more. I say that not to excuse my actions, but so you understand that there was no malice in them, only faith. A terribly mistaken faith.” His voice ignited with the last few words. They shivered, they pulsed, they rang from the ramparts of the buildings around the plaza with impossible clarity. Varina found herself looking around to see if some téni were chanting, adding the power of the Ilmodo to his words, but she could see no movement among the green-robed ranks, and she realized that it must be from Nico himself. She wondered if Sergei realized that Nico was able to use the Ilmodo even with his hands chained, as no téni should be able to do. Even Allesandra’s head moved back as if trying to escape the sound, and now Sergei glanced over at Nico, his head cocked as if he were puzzled.
“I thought I was Cénzi’s Voice,” Nico continued. “I thought I was the Absolute. But I was not. It was actually my own voice I heard, my own hatred and prejudices. I apologize to all of those who listened to me then, and I tell you this: I was, all unwittingly, a false prophet and you would have been better not to have listened to me. I might still have the love of the most important person in my life had I not been so foolish.” Varina heard his voice choke at that, and she thought of Serafina—she’d left the baby asleep at the Numetodo House, with the wet nurse Belle watching over her.
“I apologize to you,” Nico continued, “and I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done. Your sins are on my head, and when Cénzi calls me I will need to answer for them. I release you. I tell you now: follow your Archigos. Follow your Kraljica and your Hïrzg.”
“There,” Allesandra whispered to Varina. “That is what we’ve come for. We have you to thank for this, Varina . . .” She seemed almost ready to rise and respond, but Nico had taken a breath, and now his voice was ice and fire at once.
“I believed,” Nico said. “I still believe. I have prayed now for days for His direction. What I’ve come to realize is that the gift Cénzi has given me is not constrained by laws and restrictions that the Faith placed on me. Cénzi’s revelation to me in the wake of my folly was both enlightening and freeing.” He raised his bound hands as if offering them to the sky. “I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cénzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit—” and there Nico’s gaze found Varina again, and he smiled broadly toward her. “That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”
Varina stood. “Nico, no . . .” she began, her voice a pale shadow of his own, but it was already too late.
Nico’s hands were still raised, and now he gestured once with both of them together, and he shouted a single word—a word in the language of the Ilmodo, of the Scáth Cumhacht, of the X’in Ka. A darkness, a fragment of a starless and moonless night, seemed to wrap around him, hiding him. Sergei gave a shout and reached toward Nico, only to draw his hand back with a cry when he touched the darkness. The gardai did the same, but when they reached the darkness, the false night in which Nico had wrapped himself suddenly vanished.
And where Nico had been, they found only the chains in which he’d been fettered, lying on the wooden planks of the dais. Nico himself had vanished.
Varina blinked. “Well,” she said, “it seems he listened to me more than I thought.”
R
OCHELLE WATCHED NICO, weighed down in chains as he was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now, he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only the téni and some gardai separating them.
OCHELLE WATCHED NICO, weighed down in chains as he was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now, he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only the téni and some gardai separating them.
Yet she still couldn’t help him. They would catch her and drag her down before she reached him even though several of them would be dead as a result. But she would fail. Must fail. That was another thing Matarh had taught her, even in her madness.
“Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not even try.”
“Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not even try.”
To be so achingly close to him, to see her brother again and not be able to help him . . .
It hurt. It wounded her as surely as a sword’s edge. Yet there was something she might accomplish today, if she had the chance. The Kraljica was here, her great-matarh, and though Allesandra was as well guarded as her brother, perhaps there might be a moment, a chance. Rochelle’s hand went to the dagger under her clothing, the dagger she’d stolen from her vatarh. The vow she’d made to her matarh burned in her mind.
If she couldn’t save a life, perhaps she could take one just as important.
On the dais, Nico bowed to the ca’-and-cu’ on their own raised platform. “Kraljica, Councillors. And especially, téni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.” His voice sounded tired, and he was looking around. His gaze flitted over each of them, and Rochelle stood on her toes, trying to see better over the people around her. Then it happened. Nico’s eyes found hers. She could
feel
the connection and acknowledgment. Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest of smiles, as if he
knew
her. He nodded toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name, but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and there:
feel
the connection and acknowledgment. Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest of smiles, as if he
knew
her. He nodded toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name, but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and there:
“I thought I was Cénzi’s Voice . . . I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done . . . I believed. I still believe . . .” Above the crowd, she saw Nico lifting his hands and the gesture caught her. She stopped, wondering.
“I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cénzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit. That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”
Nico?
She never saw clearly what happened next. It was as if Nico had wrapped himself completely in a black cloak. She heard people shouting and gesturing, saw Old Silvernose withdraw his hand from the darkness with a curse, then . . .
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