A Magic of Nightfall (10 page)

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Authors: S. L. Farrell

BOOK: A Magic of Nightfall
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The flames died abruptly as the choir ended their song. Cold air rushed back around them, a wind that tousled hair and fluttered cloth. On the altar now, there was nothing but gray ash and a few fragments of bone.
The mortal cage of Ana was gone.
“She is back in Cénzi’s hands now,” Archigos Kenne said to Karl. “He will give her solace.”
And I will give her better than solace.
He nodded silently to the Archigos.
I will give her revenge.
Allesandra ca’Vörl
“
I
T WAS
NOT
a sign.”
Fynn slammed his fisted hand hard on the arm of his chair. The servants standing ready along the wall to serve dinner shivered at the sound. The long scar down the right side of his face burned white against his flushed face. “I don’t care what they’re saying. What happened was a terrible accident. Nothing more. It was
not
a sign.”
“Of course you’re right, Brother,” Allesandra told him soothingly. She paused—a single breath—and gestured to the Magyarian servants: they were taking supper in Allesandra’s rooms within the palais. The servants moved forward, ladling soup into the bowls and pouring wine. Fynn sat at the table’s head; Allesandra at the foot. Archigos Semini and his wife were to Fynn’s right; her son Jan to the left.
Allesandra had heard some of the rumors herself.
Hïrzg Jan is upset that Fynn has taken the crown, not his daughter . . . The Hïrzg’s soul cannot rest . . . I heard from one of the servants in the palais that his ghost still walks the halls at night, moaning and crying out as if angry. . . .
There were dozens of the tales surging through Brezno, twisted depending on the agenda of those who spoke them, and growing larger and more outrageous each time they were told.
Cénzi sends a warning to the Hïrzg that the Holdings and the Faith must become one again . . . The souls of all those the Hïrzg killed—the Numetodo, the Nessanticans, the Tennshah—pursue him and will not allow him to rest . . . They say that when the sealing stone fell, those in the chamber heard the old Hïrzg’s voice call out with a curse on Firenzcia. . . .
The soup had been served and the silence had stretched too long. Allesandra could hear the breathing of the servants and the distant, muffled clatter of the cook and the kitchen help a floor below them. “I understand that the other lancer has died also,” Allesandra commented when it was apparent that no one else was willing to start a conversation.
Fynn glared at her down the length of the table “That was Cénzi’s Blessing,” he said. “The man would never have walked again. The healer said his spine was broken; if I were him, I’d rather die than live the rest of my life as a useless cripple.”
“I’m sure he felt the same as you, Brother.” She kept her voice carefully neutral. “And I’m sure that the Archigos did what he could to ease his passing.” Another pause. “As far as the Divolonté would allow, of course,” she added.
Francesca let her spoon clatter back to the table at that. “You may have been soiled by the beliefs of the false Archigos during your years with her, A’Hïrzg,” she declaimed coldly, “but I assure you that my husband has not. He would
never
—”
“Francesca!” Semini’s rebuke caused Francesca to snap her mouth closed, like a carp gulping on a riverbank. He glared at her, then clasped hands to forehead as he turned to Allesandra. His gaze held hers. Allesandra had always thought that the Archigos had exquisite eyes: powerful and engaging. She had also noticed that when she was in the room, Semini often paid close attention to her. That had never bothered her; she enjoyed his attentions. She’d thought, back when her vatarh had finally ransomed her, that he might have married her to Semini, had he not already been tied to Francesca. That would have been a powerful marriage, allying both the political and religious powers within the state, and Semini might have been someone she could have come to love, as well. Even now . . . She closed off that thought, quickly. She had taken lovers during her marriage, yes—as she had known Pauli had also done—but always carefully. Always discreetly. An affair with the Archigos . . . that would be difficult to conceal.
“I apologize, A’Hïrzg,” Semini said. “Sometimes my wife’s, ahh, devotion to the Faith causes her to speak too harshly. I did give the poor lancer what comfort I could, at the Hïrzg’s request.” He addressed Fynn then. “My Hïrzg, you shouldn’t be concerned with the gossip of the rabble. In fact, I will make it clear in my next Admonition that those who believe that there are portents in this horrible incident are mistaken, and that these wild rumors are simply lies. I’ve already had people begin to make inquiries as to who is spreading all the vile gossip—I would say that if the Garde Hïrzg takes a few of them into custody, especially a few of those of lower rank, and, ahh,
convinces
them to recant publicly before they’re executed for treason, that would certainly act as a lesson to the others. I think we’d find that all the talk about what happened at your vatarh’s burial would vanish as quickly as snow in Daritria.”
Francesca was nodding at her husband’s words. “We should treat these people no better than we would the Numetodo,” she agreed. “Just as the Numetodo are traitors to the Faith, these rumormongers are traitors to our Hïrzg. A few bodies swaying in gibbets will adequately shut the mouth of the populace.” She glanced at Allesandra. “Wouldn’t you agree, A’Hïrzg?” she asked, her voice far too gentle and far too eager. The woman actually leaned forward at the table, emphasizing her humped back.
“I think it’s dangerous to equate rumormongering with heresy, Vajica ca’Cellibrecca,” she began carefully, but Jan interrupted her.
“If you punish people for gossiping, you’ll convince them instead that the rumors are true,” her son said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d sat at the table, then shrugged as the others looked at him. “Well, that’s the truth,” he insisted. “If you give them the sermon you suggest, Archigos, you’ll just be drawing
more
attention to what happened, which will make people believe the rumors even more. It’s better to say and do nothing at all; all this talk will fade away on its own when nothing else happens. Every time one of us repeats the gossip, even to deny or refute it, we make it seem more real and more important than it is.”
She followed Jan’s gaze from Semini to the others at the table. Semini was glowering, his eyebrows lowered like thunderclouds over those captivating eyes; Francesca’s mouth gaped open as if she were too stunned for words at the boy’s impertinence; she gave a cough of derision and waved a hand like a claw in Jan’s direction, as if warding off a beggar’s curse. Fynn was staring down at the tablecloth in front of him. “It’s better to say and do nothing,” Jan repeated into the silence, his voice thinner and more uncertain now, “or what happened
will
become a sign. You’ll all have turned it into one.”
Allesandra touched his arm: it was what she would have said, if less diplomatically spoken. “Well said,” she whispered to him. He might have smiled momentarily; it was difficult to tell.
“So if
you
were the Hïrzg, you’d do
nothing
?” Francesca said. “Then let’s thank Cénzi that you’re not, child.”
That brought Jan’s head up again. “If I were Hïrzg,” Jan answered her, “I’d be thinking that these rumors aren’t worth my time. There are more important events that I’d be considering, like the death of Archigos Ana, or the war in the Hellins that’s sapping Nessantico’s resources and their attention, and what all that means for Firenzcia and the Coalition.”
Francesca snorted again. She returned her attention to her soup, as if Jan’s comment was beneath consideration. Semini was shaking his head and glaring at Allesandra as if she were directly responsible for Jan’s impertinence.
She thought Fynn was angry beneath the scowl he wore, but her brother surprised her. “I believe the young man’s right,” Fynn said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. He gave Jan a smile twisted by the scar on his face. “I hate the thought of having to hear the whispers for even another breath, but . . . you’re right, Nephew. If we do nothing, the gossip will fade in a week, maybe even a few days. Perhaps I should make you my new councillor, eh?”
Jan beamed at Fynn’s praise as Francesca sat back abruptly with a frown. Semini tried to look unconcerned. “You’ve raised an intelligent young man, Sister,” Fynn told Allesandra. “He’s as bold as I’d want my own son to be. I should talk more with you, Jan, and I regret that I don’t know you as well as an onczio should. We’ll start to rectify that tomorrow—we’ll go hunting after my afternoon conferences, you and I. Would you like that?”
“Oh, yes!” Jan burst out, suddenly the child again, presented with an unexpected gift. Then he seemed to realize how young he sounded, and he nodded solemnly. “I’d enjoy that very much, Onczio Fynn,” he said, his voice pitched low. “Matarh?”
“The Hïrzg is very kind,” Allesandra told him, smiling even as suspicion hammered at her.
First Vatarh, now Fynn. What does the bastard think he can gain with this? Is he just trying to get to me by stealing Jan’s affection? I’m losing my son, and the tighter I try to hold him, the faster he’ll slip away. . . .
“It sounds like a wonderful idea,” she told Jan.
The White Stone
T
HERE WERE EASY KILLINGS, and there were hard ones. This was one of the easy ones.
The target was Honori cu’Belgradi, a merchant dealing in goods from the Magyarias, and a philanderer who had made the mistake of sleeping with the wrong person’s wife: the wife of the White Stone’s client.
“I watched him tup her,
” the man had told the White Stone, his voice shaking with remembered rage.
“I watched him take my wife like an animal, and I heard her call out his name in her passion. And now . . . now she’s pregnant, and I don’t know if the child is mine or . . .”
He’d stopped, his head bowed.
“But I’ll make certain that he’ll do this to no other husband, and I’ll make certain that the child will never be able to call him vatarh. . . .”
Relationships and lust were responsible for fully half of the White Stone’s work. Greed and power accounted for the rest. There was never a dearth of people seeking the White Stone; if you needed to find the Stone, you found the way.
Honori cu’Belgradi was a creature of habit, and habits made for easy prey. The Stone had watched him for three days, and the man’s ritual never varied by more than a quarter turn of the glass. He would close his shop in Ville Serne, a town a half-day’s ride south of Brezno, then stroll to the tavernhouse on the corner of the next street over. He would stay there until four turns of the glass after third call, after which he would go to the rooms where the woman—the wife of the Stone’s client—waited for their nightly tryst.
On the way to those rooms, Honori would pass the alleyway where the Stone waited now. The Stone could already hear the footsteps in the cool night air. “Honori cu’Belgradi,” the Stone called as the figure of the man passed by the opening of the alley. Honori stopped, his face cautious, then eagerly interested as the Stone stepped into the light of the téni-lamps of the street.
“You know me?” cu’Belgradi asked, and the Stone smiled gently.
“I do. And I would know you better, my friend. You and I, we have a business arrangement to make.”
“How do you mean?” cu’Belgradi asked as the Stone stepped closer to him.
So easy . . .
Only a step away. A knife thrust’s distance apart, and cu’Belgradi tilted his head quizzically.
“Like this,” the Stone answered, looking around the street and seeing no one watching, and clapping cu’Belgradi on the shoulder as if the man were a long-lost friend. At the same time the hand holding the poisoned blade drove hard up under the man’s rib cage and twisted it up into the heart. Cu’Belgradi made a strangled, blood-choked cry, and the body was suddenly heavy against the Stone’s athletic build. The Stone half-dragged, half-carried the dying cu’Belgradi into the alleyway, laying the body quickly on the ground. Cu’Belgradi’s eyes were open, and the Stone dug into a cloak pocket and brought out two stones: both white in the dimness of the alley, though one was smooth and polished as if from much handling. The stones were placed on cu’Belgradi’s open eyes, the Stone pressing them down into the sockets. The one on the left eye the Stone left there; the gleaming, white, and smooth one over the right eye—the eye of the ego, the eye that held the image of the face it saw in its last moment—that one the Stone picked up again and placed back in a leather pouch around the Stone’s neck.
“And now I have you, forever,” the apparition known as the White Stone whispered.
A breath later, there was no one left alive in the alley, only a corpse with a white pebble over its left eye: a contract fulfilled.
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