A Magic of Dawn

Nico Morel

Nico stared at the young man who had brought the news. “You’re certain of this?” he asked. “Certain?”

The man-an e’teni of the Concenzia Faith, still wearing his green robes-bowed. “Yes, Absolute Nico. A’Teni ca’Paim announced it to the staff this afternoon.” His gaze kept skittering away, as if he were afraid that Nico’s temper might erupt and leave him a charred husk. Nico took a long breath-the news did burn in his gut, furious and hot. It was an outrage, an insult to Cenzi to have Ambassador ca’Pallo’s funeral at the Old Temple. A Numetodo, resting in that sacred place, being praised there… But he managed a grim smile for the e’teni. “Thank you for coming to tell us,” he said. “And may Cenzi’s Blessing come to you for your efforts.” He gave the man the sign of Cenzi.

The e’teni smiled quickly at that and bowed his way from the room, closing the crooked wooden door behind him. Nico turned to the window: between the gaps of the warped shutter, he looked down on an Oldtown alley, the central gutter clogged with waste and trash. The house they were using was on a street with two neighboring butcher shops, and the offal and stench from the carcasses was sometimes overpowering.

It was nearly dusk; the light-teni would soon be setting alight the famous lamps of the Avi A’Parete, the wide boulevard that ringed the old confines of Nessantico. He saw the flash of green as the e-teni emerged from the house and scurried back to his duties at the Old Temple, dashing between two whores walking toward the taverns on the next street. Nico could smell the piss and shit on the streets below: the scent of corruption.

That odor defined Nessantico to him.

Strangely, these weren’t the smells he remembered from his time in Nessantico before the Tehuantin. In those childhood memories, Oldtown was warm and comfortable, tasting of spices and the perfume of his matarh and the sweet odor of her sweat when he hugged her on hot summer days. It was the scent of the herbs his Westlander vatarh had used in the brass bowl he’d always carried. That Nessantico was bright and colorful, alive with hope and promise.

That Nessantico was utterly gone. That Nessantico had died when he’d been snatched away from his matarh.

“Absolute?” The call came from Ancel ce’Breton, one of the few Morellis he trusted implicitly, and one of the two people in the room with Nico. Ancel was gaunt, with a hollow-looking face patchworked with a scraggled dark beard, his long fingers scratching at his cheap linen bashta with cracked, dark fingernails-even more than Nico, he had the appearance of an ascetic. “What are your thoughts?”

“I think, Ancel, that this is a slap to Cenzi’s face,” he said without turning from the window. “I think that A’Teni ca’Paim’s soul will be torn and weighed by the soul-shredders and found wanting when she dies-and I hope that day comes soon. I think that once again the Concenzia Faith has shown its weakness and its degeneracy.”

He felt a gentle hand brush his shoulder: Liana. She pressed against him from behind and he felt the swell of her belly against his spine. “What do you want us to do?” she asked him. “Will you preach against this? Will we act?”

“I don’t know yet,” he told them. “I have to think, and I have to pray.” He turned away from the window. The anger was still there in the pit of his stomach, like banked coals that would never go out, but he smiled to Ancel and reached out to brush the hair from Liana’s wonderful face. “I will spend the night in meditation, and hopefully Cenzi will come to me with His answer by tomorrow.”

Ancel nodded. “I’ll let the others know, especially the teni who are with us. They’ll be ready to do whatever you ask of them, Absolute.”

“Thank you, Ancel. Without you, I don’t know what I’d do.” Nico saw the compliment lend momentary color to the man’s pale face. His eyes widened slightly as he bowed his head and gave Nico the sign of Cenzi.

“I am your servant as you are Cenzi’s,” Ancel said. “I’ll send in one of the others in a turn of the glass with your suppers.”

Nico inclined his head as the man closed the door behind him. He heard Ancel call out: “Erin, bring the Absolute and Liana their meals, please…” Now that they were alone, Liana rubbed her rounded stomach and finally came closer, pressing her body against his; he wrapped his arms around her body and kissed the top of her head and the glossy, dark-brown curly strands there. Not as dark as Rochelle’s hair, which was as black as midnight, but the same tight curls…

He shook away the memory. It was no good thinking of his sister Rochelle. She was lost, along with the rest of his past. Nico tightened his embrace on Liana, and could feel the nagging pull of healing ribs from where the Garde Kralji had kicked him two days ago: he’d been preaching to a crowd near Temple Square. They’d shoved him down on the soiled flags and circled around him, their booted feet lashing out as he covered his head and his followers screamed invectives and tried to pull the gardai away from him. “No!” he’d shouted to them. “Don’t worry! Cenzi will protect me!”

He’d wanted to use the Ilmodo then. He’d wanted to call down a storm of lightning on them, or set them afire, or sweep them away with a howling wind. He could have done any of those, easily. But he dared not-not in public, not with the teni watching. If they saw Nico use the Ilmodo, the magic of the teni, they would have invoked the laws of the Divolonte, the code by which the Concenzia Faith lived. By that code, as a defrocked teni, Nico was subject to the harshest penalties if he used Cenzi’s Gift again: he would have his hands cut off, his tongue ripped from his mouth so that he would never again use the Ilmodo. Only the teni were permitted to call upon the magic of the Second World.

And because Nico truly believed in the Divolonte, because he was a faithful teni, he obeyed. He had not used the Ilmodo for three years now, though he had been the best of them: the most talented, the strongest with the power. Even Archigos Karrol would have admitted that. Yet Nico took no pride in his prowess: it was Cenzi who had made him that way, Cenzi who had made him the Absolute. Not Nico himself.

The Faith had cast him out unfairly. They cast him out because they were jealous of him. They cast him out because they were afraid. They cast him out because he spoke the true, pure words of Cenzi and they felt it even as they denied it. They cast him out because they heard the power in his voice, and they saw how easily he gathered followers to him.

All the a’teni, even Archigos Karrol in Brezno, now allowed the Numetodo to spew their poison. They were not like Archigos Semini, who had set the bodies of Numetodo heretics swinging in their gibbets in Brezno Square. No, the current Archigos and his a’teni might complain about the godlessness and false beliefs of the Numetodo, but they permitted them to mock Cenzi with their own magics. The teni adulterated the Faith’s own magic by using Numetodo techniques themselves. They tolerated members of the Numetodo serving on the Council of Ca’ and whispering into the Kraljica’s ears. They listened to the nonsense the Numetodo spat out, about how all things in the world could be explained without resorting to Vucta or Cenzi or even the Moitidi. The Numetodo claimed that logic always trumped faith, and

…

The

Faith

Said

Nothing.

The Numetodo infuriated Nico. Neither they nor the people of Nessantico herself saw how the sack of Nessantico by the Tehuantin-themselves heathens and heretics who worshiped false gods-had been Cenzi’s great punishment, a dire warning to them of what must happen when people turned their backs to Him.

Nico would show them. He would lead them along the correct path. They would hear his voice and heed him.

That was what Cenzi demanded of him. That was what he would do.

“Nico, where are you?” Liana was looking up at him with eyes the color of well-steeped tea-that was not like Rochelle either, who had pupils of the palest blue. Nico started, torn from his reverie. “Is He speaking to you?”

He shook his head down at her. “Not yet,” he told her. “But I know He’s close. I can feel His strength.” He hugged her and leaned down to kiss her mouth, which yielded softly under his pressure. He felt the flicker of her tongue against his and a tightness under his bashta.

“Then let me comfort you for now,” Liana whispered to him as they broke the embrace. “For a turn of the glass only…”

He touched her belly. “Should we…?”

She laughed up at him. “I’m pregnant, my love, not made of glass. I won’t break.” She took his hand, and Nico allowed her to lead him over to the bed.

There, for a time, he lost himself in earthly passion and heat.