A Magic of Dawn

Varina ca’Pallo

She stared at him and there were no words she could summon up.

“I’m so sorry, Nico,” she said. “So sorry…”

He only stared back at her. His hands were bound in chains, his head encased in the metal cage of a silencer. His hair was caked with blood, his face and arms a patchwork of cuts and scratches. In the chill of the cell of the Bastida, he curled against the wall like a broken doll.

I warned you, Nico. I tried to tell you it would end this way.. . She wanted to say the words, but she couldn’t. They would only have been further wounds to this already terribly injured man. She sank down to her knees in front of him, on the wet, dirty straw of the Bastida, not caring that she soiled her tashta or that her joints ached with the effort. She reached out to touch his face, as she’d done years ago when he’d been just a child. He turned his head and closed his eyes, and she stopped the gesture just short of him.

“I have nothing to say that can comfort you,” she said. “I don’t believe in your afterlife or the mercy of your Cenzi, but I’ve lost people I’ve loved myself. I’ve lost Karl, and so I can at least understand a portion of the pain you’re feeling.” His eyes opened again, though he wasn’t looking at her but at the filthy floor of his cell. The place reeked of ancient urine and feces, the foulness contained in the very stones of the cell. She spoke to break the horrible silence as much as anything, because if she didn’t speak, she didn’t think she could bear to be here. Her breath was a white cloud before her in the dungeon’s chill.

“The baby…” Liana gasped the words as she died in Varina’s arms, as the blood poured from the terrible wound in her chest. “Take the baby, now. She should be named… ” Liana paused, her eyes closing, and Varina thought she was gone, but she took another gurgling breath and opened her eyes again. “… Serafina.” Liana’s bloody hands clutched at Varina’s sleeves. “Take her. You must…”

And she did. It was the most horrific thing she’d ever done in her life, carving open the woman even as she died, but from the body she lifted a child who squalled and squirmed with life.

“You have a daughter, Nico. Liana… There was nothing we could do for her, but we took the child from her as she died. Your child, Nico. Liana told me that she wanted her to be called Serafina. I have her in my house, and she’s safe and healthy and beautiful.”

Tears were running down Nico’s cheeks, leaving clear trails on his filthy skin, and he made a terrible strangled sound as he sobbed.

“I have lost a lover, but that was a long time coming and I had the memory of a long time with Karl. I had time to prepare, to expect the end,” she told him. “Still, I really can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”

He stared at her, choking off the tears and sorrow, his eyes hardening. “And children… I’ve never had one, though I sometimes thought of you as my child. I would have taken you as my own, Nico, after those awful days when the Tehuantin came and killed your matarh, but you’d vanished, and when I finally heard your name again, you were already a grown man. I don’t know what you went through or what you endured… I can only imagine what happened to you to turn you into what you’ve become.”

He tried to speak, but all the words were distorted and unintelligible around the silencer. The sound tore at her.

“I made certain that Liana’s body was taken care of with respect. The Kraljica…” Varina paused. Her legs ached and she stood again, afraid that if she didn’t she might have to call the garda to help her up. “The Kraljica was having many of the bodies gibbeted and displayed.” She saw him recoil visibly at that. “I know, but it’s what is always done and I can’t entirely blame her; the public anger against the Morellis is strong. But I want you to know that I didn’t let that happen to Liana. I had her cleaned and dressed, and paid for the o’teni at the Archigos’ Temple to give her the proper service, though they didn’t want to do it. I was there when they cremated her in the Ilmodo-fire. I might not believe, but I know it’s what she would have wanted. I will do the same for you when the time comes, if I can. But I don’t know…”

She stopped again. She could hear the garda outside the cell door: the creak of his leather armor, the jingle of the keys at his belt, the sound of his breathing. She knew he was listening, and she wondered whether he was amused by her sympathy for Nico. “As for you. .. I don’t know that I’ll be allowed to have your body. You’re too famous, Nico. They need to make an example of you, so someone else doesn’t do what you did. But if there’s anything I can do, I will do it. I tell you this, Nico: I’ll make certain that Serafina is safe, too. As long as I’m alive, she will have a home, and I’ll make provisions for her on my death. I promise you that much. She’ll be safe, and she’ll be loved.”

She stared down at him, huddled at her feet, his head still averted.

“I hate what you’ve preached and what you’ve done in the name of your beliefs,” she told him. “I hate the death and injury that have been suffered in your name. I despise what you stand for. But I don’t hate you, Nico. I will never hate you. I can’t. I wanted you to understand that, to know that before… before…”

She stopped. His head had turned, and he looked her once in the eyes before his gaze slid away again. She wasn’t certain what she saw there, his expression too distorted by the silencer around his head and the dimness of the cell. This wasn’t the Nico she’d met before, not the self-assured Absolute confident in the favor of his god. No, this was a shattered soul, wounded inside as well as outside.

She wondered whether that internal wound might not be as mortal as the one that would eventually kill him. There would be no trial for Nico-he was already judged and condemned. The Faith would insist on having his tongue and hands first, to pay for his disobedience of the Archigos; the state would demand the end of what was left for the death and destruction he’d caused. It would almost certainly all be done publicly, so the citizens could watch and cheer his torment and death. His body would swing in a cage from the Pontica Kralji until there was nothing left but his disconnected bones.

Nico was already dead, even though there was still misery he must endure.

She was crying. The sob pulsed once in her throat, a sound that the stone walls of the Bastida seemed to absorb greedily, as if it were the prison’s cold nourishment. She wiped at her face almost angrily. “I wanted to tell you about Liana and Serafina,” she said to him. “I hoped it would give you at least some small peace.” She wanted him to lift his head again, to look at her and perhaps nod, to give her at least that tiny recognition that he heard her and that he understood.

He did not. The iron chains around his hands rattled dully as he clutched them to his chest.

She called out through the tiny, barred window of the cell door to the garda. “Get me out of here,” she said.