A Magic of Nightfall Read online

  Cu’Görin sniffed. “Lack of belief is the core of the problem with the Numetodo, isn’t it? Do you want me to mourn for your Archigos, Ambassador? I won’t. She brought this fate on herself by coddling the Numetodo and by her refusal to acknowledge the Archigos of Brezno as the true leader of the Faith. Violence was an inevitable result of her actions, but to my knowledge, it wasn’t Firenzcia that did this. That’s the truth, and if you can’t believe me . . .” He shrugged. “Then do what you must. You’ll only be demonstrating that the Numetodo are indeed the dangerous fools that every true believer knows them to be. Look at me, Ambassador. Look at me,” he said more sharply, and Karl glared back at him. “Do you see a lie on my face? I tell you—the one who killed the Archigos wasn’t anyone known to me or hired by me. That is the truth.”

  Karl could feel the Scáth Cumhacht vibrating madly inside him. He wanted nothing more than to lash out at this pompous fool, to watch the man’s arrogance crumble into a scream, to have him cry out in agony as he died. But he could also hear Ana. He knew what she would tell him, and he let his hand drop to his side. He heard Varina sigh with relief.

  Cu’Görin’s words gave him no comfort. But he was beginning to wonder whether cu’Görin might not have told him the truth as he knew it, and Karl was also remembering a time many years ago and another person who could harness the Scáth Cumhacht—though he didn’t call it that, nor did he call it the Ilmodo.

  “If I find that you’re lying, Ambassador,” Karl said, “I won’t give you the opportunity to give me your excuses or to draw your sword. I’ll kill you wherever I find you. That is also the truth.”

  With that, he turned and Varina moved to his side. There were three guards blocking the doorway, but Karl shoved past them and strode out into the cool air and sunshine.

  “What in the Eternal Six Pits was that?” Varina raged at him when they were outside on the Avi a’Parete again. She grabbed at his sleeve and pulled him to a stop. “Karl! I mean it. What did you think you were doing?”

  “What I needed to do,” he spat back at her, more sharply than he intended, still flushed with anger at cu’Görin and the man’s attitude and his own gnawing doubts. They were all contained in his retort. “If you didn’t want to be there, you didn’t need to come.”

  “Ana’s dead, Karl. You can’t bring her back. Accusing people without evidence is just going to get you dead, too.”

  “Ana deserves justice.”

  “Yes, she does,” Varina shot back. “Let those whose job it is give her that. She wasn’t your wife, Karl. You weren’t lovers. She wasn’t the matarh of your children.”

  The fury boiled inside him. He lifted his hand, the cold heat of the Scáth Cumhacht rising, and Varina spread her hands. “Do it!” she spat at him. “Go on! Will that make you feel better? Will that change anything?”

  He blinked; around them, people on the street were staring. He dropped his hands. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Varina.”

  She glared at him, her lips pressed tightly together. “She was your friend, and I understand that,” Varina told him. “She was my friend, too. But she also blinded you, Karl. You’ve never been able to see what’s right in front of you.”

  With that, she turned and left him, half-running along the Avi. “Varina,” he called, but she pushed her way into the crowds, vanishing as if she’d never been there. Karl stood there, the throngs parting around him. He heard the wind-horns of the Archigos’ Temple—Ana’s temple—start to wail, proclaiming Second Call, and it sounded to him like mocking laughter.

  Sergei ca’Rudka

  “You don’t trust me, Karl?”

  Sergei watched the emotions washing over Karl’s face. The man had a remarkably open face for a diplomat, a defect he’d possessed for as long as Sergei had known the man. Everything Karl thought revealed itself to an observer schooled in reading faces. Maybe that was just the Paeti way of things; Sergei had known a few people from the Isle over the decades, and most of them tended not only to speak their mind too openly, but also made little attempt to hide their genuine feelings or emotions. Perhaps that was what made the Isle renowned for its great poets and bards, for its songs and the fierce passion and temper of its people, but it also made them vulnerable, in Sergei’s estimation.

  Theirs was not Sergei’s way.

  Karl blinked at the assault of the question, which Sergei had fired at him before the servant had even closed the door. Karl stood at the door to Sergei’s office, uncertain, as the door clicked softly behind him. “Of course I do, Sergei,” he half-stammered, the words thick with the lilting Paeti accent. “I don’t know what you’re . . .” Then: “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.” Sergei took a breath, rubbing at his nose. “I just had a rather unpleasant visit from Ambassador cu’Görin—though frankly any visit from him tends to be unpleasant. Still, he seems to think you’re a dangerous man who should be residing in the Bastida rather than walking the streets. Actually, he said: ‘In Brezno, that man would be gutted and hung in a gibbet for his impertinence, let alone his embrace of heresy.’ I really don’t think he likes you.” Sergei rose and went to Karl, slapping him once on the back.

  Cu’Gorin had indeed complained about Karl, but the Firenzcian Ambassador had come at Sergei’s request, and gone away with a sealed message that Sergei hoped was already in the pouch of a rider tearing down the Avi a’Firenzcia toward Brezno. But none of that was anything he was going to tell ca’Vliomani. “Come. Sit with me, old friend. I’ll have Rodger bring us some tea. I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

  A short time later, they were seated on a balcony overlooking the grounds. Groundkeepers prowled the gardens below them, pulling any weed daring to show its common head among the royalty of the flowers. The tea and biscuits sat untouched by either of them.

  “Karl, you have to leave this to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You must. My people are aggressively looking for the person or persons who did this to Ana. I am riding Commandant cu’Falla on this as if he were a horse. I won’t let it drop, I won’t let it rest. I promise you that. I want justice for Ana as much as you do. But you have to let me do it. Not you. You need to stay out of the investigation.”

  Karl looked at Sergei then, and Sergei saw despair pulling at the pouches below the man’s eyes, dragging down the corners of his mouth. “Sergei, I’m convinced it had to be a Firenzcian plot. With Hïrzg Jan dead and Fynn on the throne, it just makes sense that he, and maybe Archigos Semini of Brezno—” Karl licked at his lips. “They all have a reason to hate Ana.”

  Sergei stopped Karl with a lifted hand. “Reasons, yes, but you’ve no proof. Neither do I. Not yet.”

  “Who else would want Ana dead? Tell me. Is there someone in the Holdings, maybe a jealous a’téni who wanted to be Archigos? Or someone from one of the provinces? Do you suspect someone else?”

  “No,” Sergei admitted. “Firenzcia is who I suspect myself. But we need to know before we act, Karl.” The lie, as it always did, came easily to his mouth. Sergei was used to lies. One would not be heard in his voice, or seen in the twitch of a muscle.

  Sometimes he thought that he was composed entirely of lies and deceptions, that if you took those away from him, he’d be nothing but a ghost.

  “Know?” Karl repeated. “The way you knew when you threw me into the Bastida years ago? The way you knew that I and the Numetodo must have had something to do with Kraljica Marguerite’s death?”

  Sergei rubbed at the silver nose as he scowled at the memory. “I was following Kraljiki Justi’s orders at the time. You know that. And you’ll note that you’re still alive when Justi would have preferred you dead. Give me credit for that. Karl, the stakes here are far too high for guesses, or for hotheads barging into the Ambassador of the Coalition’s office and threatening him. If your guess is right, and Hïrzg Fynn was responsible for this act, the only thing you’ve accomplished is to give him warning of our suspicions. You and Varina actually used Numetodo spells?�
�� He tsked aloud, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him outright.”

  “I wanted to,” Karl said. For a moment, the lines around his mouth tightened, and his eyes glittered in the sunlight. “But I thought of Ana . . .” The glittering in his eyes increased. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his bashta.

  For a moment, Sergei felt genuine pity and empathy for the man. Archigos Ana he had respected, because there was no other choice. Ana never let anyone get too close to her, even those—like Karl—who might have wished that. Sergei knew this because he had watched Karl over the years, watched him because it was his duty to know the predilections and interests of those prominent in the Holdings. He knew Karl frequently engaged the services of the more expensive and discreet grandes horizontales within the city, and—interestingly to Sergei—each of those women whom Karl favored bore a physical resemblance to the Archigos, changing over the decades as Ana had changed herself. It took little intuition to guess why that might be.

  Karl . . . Sergei liked the man, as much as he ever allowed himself to like anyone. He nodded to the Numetodo. “I’m glad Ana’s ghost held back your hand, or otherwise, I might have had no choice. Karl, you have to drop this. Promise me. Let those under me work the investigation. I will tell you anything I find.” That was another lie, of course. Sergei already knew details about the assassination that he had no intention of sharing with Karl; there were suspicions in his mind that he would not voice.

  In the darkness of the Bastida, he’d had the gardai leave him alone with the man, an employee of the trader Gairdi, who regularly ran between Nessantico and Brezno. He’d heard the delicious whimper as he unrolled the canvas strip with its grim tools laced inside, and Sergei had smiled at the prisoner. “Tell me the truth,” he’d said, “and perhaps we’ll need none of this.” That, too, had been a lie, but the man had jumped at the opportunity, babbling in a quick, high voice. The screams, when they’d come later, had been exquisite.

  There were some vices in him that had become stronger with age, not weaker. “Promise me,” Sergei said again.

  Karl hesitated. His gaze skittered away from Sergei to the garden below, and Sergei followed it. There, a gardener dug his finger into soil so wet and rich it appeared black and plucked another weed. The worker tossed the tangle of leaves and roots into the canvas bag slung over his shoulder. Sergei nodded: the necessary work that kept the garden beautiful required death, too.

  “I promise, Sergei.” Sergei, trapped in the image, looked back to find Karl smiling wanly at him.

  Yet . . . There was something Karl wasn’t saying, some information he was withholding. Sergei could see it. He nodded as if he believed the man and decided that he would have cu’Falla put someone to watching Karl, with orders to learn what the man knew as well as to prevent the Paetian Ambassador from making a critical mistake—especially one that might interfere with Sergei’s own intentions.

  Ana was dead. While she lived, a strong and firm presence guiding the Faith, Sergei hadn’t been willing to move the way he contemplated moving now. But with her dead, with the far weaker and uncertain Kenne elected to the Archigos’ throne, with Kraljiki Audric so ill and frail and young . . .

  Everything had changed.

  “Good,” Sergei said, returning Karl’s smile warmly. “This has been hard for all of us, but especially for you, my good friend. Now, let’s have some of this tea before it gets cold, and nibble on the biscuits. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten for a few days, from the look of you. Haven’t Varina and Mika been watching after you . . . ?”

  That evening, a turn of the glass after the wind-horns sounded Third Call, Sergei sat with the new Archigos Kenne on the viewing balcony of the temple on the South Bank, watching the daily Ceremony of the Light. For two centuries and more now, the téni of the Concénzia Faith had come from the temple in the evening and—with the gift of the Ilmodo—set ablaze the lamps that banished night from the city. For all his life, Sergei had witnessed the daily rite. The gilded, crystal-globed téni-lamps were placed at five-stride intervals along the grand Avi a’Parete, the wide ring boulevard encircling the oldest sections of the city. Until late into the night, the lamps hurled their challenge to the moon and stars, proclaiming Nessantico’s greatness.

  To Sergei, this was the ceremony that defined Nessantico to the populace. This was the ceremony that proclaimed Cénzi’s support of the Kralji and of the Concénzia Faith, a ceremony that had existed unchanged for generations—until Archigos Ana’s time. Now it meant less, when there were people walking the street who could produce light themselves: without calling on Cénzi, without the training of a téni. Ana’s acceptance of the Numetodo heresy had lessened the Faith, in Sergei’s opinion, and had forced the people’s view of it to change.

  Change. Sergei disliked change. Change meant instability, and instability meant conflict.

  Change meant that everything must be reevaluated. Ana . . . Sergei had never been particularly close to the woman, but in his role as Commandant of the Garde Civile, then as Regent, he had certainly worked in tandem with her. Whatever her personal faults, she had been strong and Sergei admired strength. It was only her presence on the Archigos’ throne that had kept Justi’s reign as Kraljiki from being a complete catastrophe. For that alone, he would always be grateful to her memory.

  But now Kenne was Archigos. Sergei genuinely liked Kenne as a person. He enjoyed the man’s company and his friendship. But Kenne would not be the Archigos that Ana had been. Could not be, for he lacked the steel inside. Sergei understood why the Concord A’Téni chose him—because none of the other a’téni wanted the title, the responsibility, or the conflicts that came with the Archigos’ throne and staff, and they especially feared it now. Kenne was no one’s enemy, and, most especially, Kenne was old. Kenne was frail. He would not hold Cénzi’s staff for many years . . . and maybe when he died, it would be a less turbulent time.

  The Concord had acted out of their own self-preservation, and so the Concord had given the Faith a poor Archigos.

  Sergei wondered if Kenne would ever forgive him for what that meant.

  The two men stood as the light-téni emerged in their long processional line from the great main doors directly below them. Sergei could hear the sonorous melody of the choir finishing the evening devotions in the temple’s main chapel, the sound echoing plaintively throughout the square as the doors opened. The sun had just set, though the clouded western sky was still a furious swirl of reds and oranges. In the glow, the téni turned and gave their Archigos the sign of Cénzi, and Kenne blessed them with the same sign.

  The e-téni—all of them looking impossibly young to Sergei’s eyes, all of them solemn with the weight of their duty—bowed as one to the Archigos, green robes swaying like a field of grass in the wind, before turning again to cross the vast courtyard before the temple. The usual crowds had gathered to watch the ceremony, though the crowds were less thick in recent years than they had been in the time of Kraljica Marguerite, when the Holdings had been one and visitors flocked to Nessantico from all points of the compass. In recent years, there were far fewer visitors from the east and south, from Firenzcia or the Magyars, from Sesemora or Miscoli. With the war in the Hellins across the Strettosei, many of the young men were gone and families traveled less. Though the courtyard of the Old Temple was full of onlookers, the Garde Kralji had no trouble making room for the light-téni; Sergei could see the paving-cobbles between them. The téni reached the Avi and split into two lines, spreading out east and west along the Avi and going to the nearest lamps, set on either side of the gated entrance to the Archigos’ Temples.

  The first of the light-téni went to the lamps. They stood underneath the shimmering globe of cut glass, looking up into the evening sky as if they glimpsed Cénzi watching them, and they spoke a single word and gestured from chest to lamp, closed fist to open hand.

  The lamps erupted with brilliant yellow light.

  Sergei applauded with Kenne. Yet .
. .

  That single word to release the spell: that was a change, too; a nod to the Numetodo, who could quickly release their spells. It was another of the changes Ana had wrought. “I miss the old ways sometimes, Archigos,” Sergei said to Kenne. “The long chanting, the sequence of gestures, the way the effort visibly wearied your téni . . . The Numetodo way of using the Ilmodo makes it look too easy. There was . . .” He sighed as the two men sat again. “. . . a mystery to it then, a sense of labor and love and ritual that’s vanished. I’m not sure that Ana made the right decision when she allowed the téni to start using the Numetodo methods to light our streets.”

  He saw Kenne nod. “I understand,” Kenne answered. “Part of me agrees with you, Sergei; there was a feeling to the old rituals that’s gone now. But the Numetodo proved their worth against Hïrzg Jan, and Ana could hardly renounce them afterward, could she?” Sergei heard him give a soft, self-deprecating chuckle. “We’re old men, Sergei. We want things to be the way they used to be, back when we were young. When the world was right and Marguerite was going to sit on the Sun Throne forever.”