A Magic of Nightfall (5 page)
Read A Magic of Nightfall Online
Authors: S. L. Farrell
The court applauded politely at his answer, smiling. Most of their pleasure was undoubtedly due to the fact that they were finally nearing the end of the examination, as Maister ci’Blaylock slowly climbed the ladder of history. They’d begun—nearly half a turn of the glass ago—in Year 413 with Kraljiki Henri VI, the first year of the ca’Ludovici line from which Audric himself was descended; the onlookers had been standing the entire time since, after all, one did not sit in the presence of the Kraljiki without permission. Audric knew the answers to the few remaining questions; how could he not, being so intricately bound up in his family’s life? A barely discernible sigh emanated from the court, along with a rustling of clothing as they shifted their stances. “Correct,” ci’Blaylock said, sniffing. He was a dark-skinned man, as many from the province of Namarro were. He dipped the tip of his quill pen into the inkwell of the lectern and made a short, deliberate mark on the open scroll. The scratch of the pen was loud. The wings of his white eyebrows fluttered above cataract-pale eyes. “Year 485. The line of the Archigi.”
Cough. “Archigos Kasim ca’Velarina.” Cough.
More polite applause, and another dip and scratch of the pen.. “Correct. Year 503. The line of the Archigi.”
Audric took a breath and coughed again. “Archigos Dhosti ca’Millac,” he said. “The Dwarf.” Applause. Pen scratch. Audric heard the far door of the hall open; Regent Sergei ca’Rudka entered, striding quickly forward to where Audric was standing. Despite his years, the Regent moved with energy and a straight bearing. The courtiers, with a cautious glance, slid quickly aside to give him room. Sergei’s silver artificial nose alternately gleamed and dimmed in the shafts of failing sunlight streaming through the windows.
“Correct,” ci’Blaylock intoned. “Year 521. The line of the Kralji.”
That was easy: That was the year Audric’s vatarh had taken the Sun Throne after Marguerite’s assassination. Audric took another breath, but the effort sent him into a momentary coughing spasm: deep and filled with the ugly sound of liquid in his lungs. Afterward, he straightened and cleared his throat. “Kraljiki Justi ca’Dakwi,” he told ci’Blaylock and the courtiers. “The Great Warrior,” he added. That was the appellation Justi had given himself. Audric had heard the other whispered names given him when people thought no one was listening:
Justi the One-Legged; Justi the Incompetent; Justi the Great Failure.
Justi the One-Legged; Justi the Incompetent; Justi the Great Failure.
Those names no one would have dared say to the Kraljiki’s face while he’d been alive. Audric looked at the smiles pasted on the faces of the ca’-and-cu’ and wondered what names they called
him
when he was not there to hear.
him
when he was not there to hear.
Audric the Ill. Audric the Regent’s Puppet.
Again, applause came from the onlookers. Sergei, his arms crossed, didn’t join them. He watched from just behind Maister ci’Blaylock, who seemed to feel the pressure of the man’s presence. He glanced once over his shoulder at the Regent and shivered visibly. “Umm . . .” The old man shook his head, glanced at the scroll, then plunged an ink-stained forefinger toward it. “Year 521,” he said. “The line of the Archigi.”
That one was a longer answer but still easy. “Archigos Orlandi ca’Cellibrecca. The Great Traitor and first false Archigos of Brezno.” Audric coughed again, pausing to clear his throat. “Then the same year, after ca’Cellibrecca betrayed the Concénzia Faith and Kraljiki Justi at Passe a’Fiume, Archigos Ana ca’Seranta, the youngest téni ever named Archigos.”
Ana, who still held the title of Archigos. Ana, whom Audric loved as if she were the matarh he’d never known. Audric smiled at the mention of her name, and the applause that came then was genuine—Archigos Ana was well and truly loved by the people of Nessantico.
“Correct,” ci’Blaylock said. “Very good. Also Year 521. War and politics.”
“The Rebellion of Hïrzg Jan ca’Vörl,” Audric answered quickly. The guttural Firenzcian syllables sent his lungs into spasm again. It took several breaths to stop them and manage to talk again. “The Hïrzg was defeated by Kraljiki Justi at the Battle of the Fens,” he managed to croak out, finally.
“Excellent!” The voice was not ci’Blaylock’s but Sergei’s, as he applauded loudly and strode out to stand alongside Audric. The courtiers joined the applause belatedly and uncertainly. Sigourney ca’Ludovici, Audric noticed, didn’t applaud at all, only crossed her arms and glared. “Maister ci’Blaylock, I’m sure you’ve heard enough to make your judgment,” Sergei continued.
Ci’Blayblock frowned. “Regent, I wasn’t quite fin—” He stopped, and Audric saw him staring at the Regent’s frown. He laid down the quill and started to roll up the testing scroll. “Yes, that was very satisfactory,” he said. “Well done, Kraljiki, as always.”
“Good,” Sergei said. “Now, if all of you will excuse us . . .”
The Regent’s dismissal was abrupt but effective. Maister ci’Blaylock gathered up his scrolls and limped toward the nearest door; the courtiers drifted away like tendrils of fog on a sunny morning, smiling until they turned their backs. Audric could hear their furious whispering speculations as they left the hall. Sigourney, however, paused. “Is this something the Council of Ca’ should know?” she asked Sergei. She wasn’t looking at Audric; it was as if he weren’t important enough to be noticed.
Sergei shook his head. “Not at the moment, Councillor ca’Ludovici,” he said. “If it becomes so, be assured that I will let you know immediately.”
Sigourney sniffed at that, but she nodded to Sergei and bowed the proper obeisance to Audric before leaving the hall. Only a few servants remained, standing silently by the tapestry-hung stone walls, while two e-téni—priests of the Concénzia Faith—whispered prayers as they lit the lamps against the dying light. On the wall near the Sun Throne, the faces of the peasant family in ci’Recroix’s painting seemed to shiver in the light of the téni-fire.
“Thank you, Sergei,” Audric said. He hacked again, covering his mouth with a fisted hand. “You could have come half a turn of the glass earlier, though, and saved me the whole ordeal.”
Sergei grinned. “And face the wrath of Maister ci’Blaylock? Not likely.” He paused a moment, and the lines of his face went serious around the metal nose. “I would have been here earlier to hear your examination, Kraljiki, but I’ve just received a message from a contact in Firenzcia. There’s news, and I thought you should hear it before the Council: Hïrzg Jan of Firenzcia is on his deathbed. He’s not expected to live out the week. It may be that he’s dead already—the message was days old.”
“So A’Hïrzg Fynn will become the new Hïrzg? Or will Allesandra fight her brother’s ascension?”
Sergei’s grin returned momentarily. “Ah, so you
do
pay attention to my briefings. Good. That’s far more important than Maister ci’Blaylock’s lessons.” He shook his head. “I doubt Allesandra will protest. She doesn’t have enough backing from the ca’-and-cu’ of Firenzcia to contest Hïrzg Jan’s will.”
do
pay attention to my briefings. Good. That’s far more important than Maister ci’Blaylock’s lessons.” He shook his head. “I doubt Allesandra will protest. She doesn’t have enough backing from the ca’-and-cu’ of Firenzcia to contest Hïrzg Jan’s will.”
“Which of the two would
we
prefer?”
we
prefer?”
“Our own preference would be Allesandra, Kraljiki—after the decade and more she spent here waiting for Hïrzg Jan to ransom her, we know her far better. Archigos Ana always had a good relationship with her, and Allesandra is far more sympathetic to the Holdings. If she became Hïrzgin . . . well, maybe there would be some hope of reconciliation between the Holdings and the Coalition. There might even be a faint possibility that we could return things to the way they were in your great-matarh’s time, with you on the Sun Throne under a reunited Holdings. But with Fynn as Hïrzg . . .” Again, Sergei shook his head. “He is his vatarh’s son, just as bellicose and stubborn. If he’s Hïrzg, we’ll have to watch our eastern border closely—which will mean less resources we can spare for the war in the Hellins, unfortunately.”
Audric bent over with another coughing fit, and Sergei placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Your cough is worsening again, Kraljiki,” he said. “I’ll have the healers make another potion for you, and perhaps we’ll have Archigos Ana see you tomorrow after the Day of Return ceremony. It’s a little early, but with the rains last month . . .”
“I’m better now,” Audric told him. “It’s just the damp air here in the hall.” The nearest e’téni had stopped her chant, her hands frozen in the middle of shaping the Ilmodo—the energy that fueled their magic. She was a young woman not much older than Audric; she blushed when she saw that Audric had noticed her, looked quickly away, and began her chant anew: the lamp set high on the wall bloomed into light as her hands waved in the Ilmodo patterns under it.
Audric’s chest was beginning to ache with the racking coughs. He hated being ill, but it seemed he was often sick. He’d been that way from the very beginning of his memories. If an illness were passing through the staff of the palais, he was certain to catch it; he was constantly assailed by coughing fits, by difficulty in breathing. Any physical exertion left him quickly exhausted and gasping. Yet somehow Cénzi had protected him from the outbreak of Southern Fever when he was four, though the illness had taken his older sister Marguerite, named for her famous great-matarh and primed to be the Kraljica on their vatarh’s death. Her state funeral—a long and somber ceremony—was one of his earliest memories.
It should be Marguerite standing here now, not him. Audric hoped this meant Cénzi had a plan for him.
He drew in a long breath and this time held back the cough that threatened. “There, you see,” he told Sergei. “Just the damp, and having to answer all the Maister’s damnable questions.”
“At least the maister’s questions have definite answers. The solutions for a Kraljiki are rarely so clear-cut, as you already know.” Sergei put his arm around Audric, and Audric leaned into the man’s embrace.
“Trust ca’Rudka as your Regent,”
his vatarh had whispered as he lay on his bed during that final day.
“Trust him as you would me . . .”
“Trust ca’Rudka as your Regent,”
his vatarh had whispered as he lay on his bed during that final day.
“Trust him as you would me . . .”
The truth was that Audric had never quite trusted his vatarh, whose temperament and favor had been erratic at best. But Sergei . . . Audric felt that his vatarh had made a final good choice with the man. Yes, he might chafe under the Regent’s hand more and more as he approached his majority, he might be irritated that people at times treated Sergei as if he were the Kraljiki, but Audric could not have asked for a more loyal ally in the chaotic winds of the Kraljiki’s court.
It didn’t matter to him what the whispers of the courtiers said about the Regent. It didn’t matter what the man did in the dungeons of the Bastida, or with the grandes horizontales he sometimes took to his bed.
“I suppose we must draft a statement for the Hïrzg’s death,” Audric said. “And we must listen to ten different councillors requesting that we respond in twenty different ways. Then ten more advisers to tell us what we need to do about the Hellins in the west.”
Sergei laughed. His arm tightened around Audric’s shoulder, then released him. He rubbed at his silver nose as if it itched him. “No doubt,” he answered. “ I would say that you have learned all your lessons very well, Kraljiki.”
Sergei ca’Rudka
H
IS AUGUST PRESENCE, the Kraljiki Audric, hunched in his padded, elevated seat alongside Sergei, coughing so desperately that Sergei leaned over to the boy. “Do you need some of the healer’s draught, Kraljiki? I’ll have one of the attendants bring it over . . .” He started to gesture, but Audric caught his arm.
IS AUGUST PRESENCE, the Kraljiki Audric, hunched in his padded, elevated seat alongside Sergei, coughing so desperately that Sergei leaned over to the boy. “Do you need some of the healer’s draught, Kraljiki? I’ll have one of the attendants bring it over . . .” He started to gesture, but Audric caught his arm.
“Wait, Sergei. This will pass.” Audric said it in three breaths.
Wait, Sergei (breath) This will (breath) pass. . . .
Just the effort of grabbing Sergei’s arm visibly tired the boy.
Wait, Sergei (breath) This will (breath) pass. . . .
Just the effort of grabbing Sergei’s arm visibly tired the boy.
Sergei rubbed at the polished surface of the false nose glued to his face, his original nose lost long decades ago in a youthful sword fight. “Would you prefer to return to the palais, Kraljiki?” Sergei asked. “The smoke from the censers and the incense can’t be good for your lungs, and the Archigos will understand. In any case, she’ll be over to see you as soon as she’s finished here.”
“We’ll stay, Sergei. This is where I should be.”
We’ll stay (breath) Sergei (cough breath cough). This is (breath) where I (breath) should be. . . .
We’ll stay (breath) Sergei (cough breath cough). This is (breath) where I (breath) should be. . . .
Sergei nodded. In that, the boy was right. The two were seated in the royal balcony of the Archigos’ Temple, on the South Bank of the River A’Sele in Nessantico. Below, the main floor of the temple was packed with worshipers for the Day of Return. Archigos Ana stood with several of the a’téni in the quire of the Temple, her hair—streaked with bright, gray-white strands at the temples—gleaming in the glow of the téni lamps, her strong, fierce voice reciting the lines from the Toustour. The Day of Return was the Spring solstice ceremony, preparing the faithful for the eventual return of Cénzi to the world He had created. It was the duty of Kraljiki Audric to attend, which was why the temple was crowded to its very sides with the chevarittai, with the ca’-and-cu’, with those lesser-ranked families who could cram into the remaining space, all of them there to catch a glimpse of the young Kraljiki and perhaps to also catch
his
eye: for a request, for a petition, or perhaps because he was not yet officially betrothed to anyone despite the persistent rumors that the Regent intended to make arrangements soon with one of the great families of the Holdings.
his
eye: for a request, for a petition, or perhaps because he was not yet officially betrothed to anyone despite the persistent rumors that the Regent intended to make arrangements soon with one of the great families of the Holdings.
They also would have noted the Kraljiki’s deep, barking coughs punctuating the Archigos’ reading. Even Archigos Ana stopped once in the midst of her recitation to glance up with concern and sympathy toward their balcony. She nodded almost imperceptibly to Sergei, and he knew that she would hurry to the palais after the ceremony. Sergei leaned over again, whispering into the boy’s ear. “The Archigos has promised to come by after we’re done here and pray for you. She always helps you, I know. You can endure this, knowing you’ll feel better soon.”
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