A Magic of Dawn

Rochelle Botelli

Rochelle watched Nico, weighed down in chains as he was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now, he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only the teni and some gardai separating them.

Yet she still couldn’t help him. They would catch her and drag her down before she reached him even though several of them would be dead as a result. But she would fail. Must fail. That was another thing Matarh had taught her, even in her madness. “Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not even try.”

To be so achingly close to him, to see her brother again and not be able to help him…

It hurt. It wounded her as surely as a sword’s edge. Yet there was something she might accomplish today, if she had the chance. The Kraljica was here, her great-matarh, and though Allesandra was as well guarded as her brother, perhaps there might be a moment, a chance. Rochelle’s hand went to the dagger under her clothing, the dagger she’d stolen from her vatarh. The vow she’d made to her matarh burned in her mind.

If she couldn’t save a life, perhaps she could take one just as important.

On the dais, Nico bowed to the ca’-and-cu’ on their own raised platform. “Kraljica, Councillors. And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.” His voice sounded tired, and he was looking around. His gaze flitted over each of them, and Rochelle stood on her toes, trying to see better over the people around her. Then it happened. Nico’s eyes found hers. She could feel the connection and acknowledgment. Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest of smiles, as if he knew her. He nodded toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name, but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and there:

“I thought I was Cenzi’s Voice… I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done… I believed. I still believe…” Above the crowd, she saw Nico lifting his hands and the gesture caught her. She stopped, wondering.

“I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cenzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit. That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”

Nico?

She never saw clearly what happened next. It was as if Nico had wrapped himself completely in a black cloak. She heard people shouting and gesturing, saw Old Silvernose withdraw his hand from the darkness with a curse, then…

Nico was gone, and people all around the plaza were shouting wordlessly. The gardai were buzzing like a hive of bees whose nest had just been struck. Rochelle had moved to the rear edge of the Kraljica’s dais, just behind the ring of gardai. They jumped up onto the stage now, closing around the Kraljica with their swords drawn, and Rochelle drew back. There was no hope of getting to Allesandra now. None. Again, this was one of the times when she must allow herself to fail.

She drifted back in the crowd, away from the suspicious eyes of the gardai, away from the green-robed teni who seemed just as upset and on edge.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she whirled, the dagger already drawn. She could kill someone in this crowd easily enough and still escape in the confusion…

But her hand stopped in mid-thrust. “Nico-”

“Hush!” he said. He’d drawn a hood over his head; his face was visible only to those who looked directly at him. But even half-hidden as he was, he looked incredibly exhausted and drawn. His hand on her shoulder trembled, and she felt him sag, as if he was barely able to stand. In the shadow of the hood, there were darker circles under his eyes. “Cenzi told me you were here. He showed you to me. Come on!” She looked back at the dais and he shook his head. “No. Not now, Rochelle. Come! I need your help.”

He put his arm around her. Leaning heavily on her, he guided her away, through the thinning edge of the crowd and away from the growing uproar and the plaza itself, until they were walking down a street adorned with shop signs and busy with hustling people, though few of them seemed to be interested in the wares displayed in the open windows or in the sidewalk cabinets. Their faces were grim and harried, and Rochelle remembered the same looks on the faces of those fleeing the city when she’d arrived.

Nico finally stopped near a cafe. “You have money?” he asked her, and she nodded. “Good. I need to sit and to eat-they will hardly look for me here.”

They took a table against the wall of the cafe and ordered wine, cheese, bread, and some meats. The waiter seemed genuinely pleased to have a patron; no doubt those had been far more sparse than usual in the past few weeks.

She watched Nico as he ate. He had changed a great deal from the boy she remembered. The Nico of her memory had been eager and apprehensive all at the same time as he prepared to go to Brezno Temple as an acolyte. She’d been with him again, when he’d taken the green robe of the teni and made his pledge to Cenzi in that same temple, and he’d seemed so sure of himself then..

The Nico who stood before her now was thinner, his cheeks drawn in. The lines of his face were harsher and more deeply drawn, and she could see the pain of his life written there. There had always been an intensity to him, one that she remembered from her earliest memory of him, but was changed now. It had turned into something harder, deeper inside himself, and more dangerous.

She knew she had changed as well. Perhaps more than Nico had. Neither of them were the person they’d been back then. Brother and sister they might be, but time had pulled them apart and she didn’t know if they could ever fit together again.

“You’re staring.” Nico set down the cup and poured himself more wine from the flagon.

“I haven’t seen you in years, Nico.”

He smiled. “You’ve grown into an attractive young woman.” Then the smile faded. “You’ve also taken on Matarh’s legacy. I’ve heard the gossip that the White Stone still walks. That’s you?”

She nodded.

“Do you hear their voices, too?”

“No. I’m not mad, Nico.”

“Not yet,” he answered. “But you can’t do what you do and stay sane. You can’t do what you do and expect anything but the soul shredders after your death. Cenzi will find you wanting, my sister.”

It was so similar to what Sergei had told her that she wanted to laugh. “You’re going to lecture me?” Rochelle sniffed in derision. “They had you in chains, Nico. How many died when you and your people took the Old Temple?” She saw him flush with that accusation, and she remembered. “I’m sorry, Nico,” she said, putting her hand on his. “I forgot. I wish I could have met Liana.”

He nodded, and she saw his eyes swim in sudden moisture. He wiped at them, almost angrily. “I wish that, too. You see, that was my punishment. My madness. Cenzi always gives us warnings, one way or another. It’s just that we sometimes don’t pay attention to them or even see them for what they are.”

“You still believe, after all this?” she asked him. “You still think your destiny is within the Faith?”

“Yes.” He said it firmly, without hesitation, the strength returning to his voice. “And what about your own faith, Rochelle? Do you still believe?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I think so, but…” A shoulder rose under her tashta. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “But you do?”

“I do,” he said. “Still. Cenzi contains everything, Rochelle. He contains all that is good, and He contains all that is evil as well. That is why the Moitidi fought each other and Him; because they were His children and thus contained within themselves were all possibilities. And He brought you here, now, for a reason.”

Rochelle laughed bitterly. “You have no idea why I’m here.”

“Don’t I?” Nico reached across the table and plucked up a baguette. He broke off a piece of the bread and pushed it into his mouth with a forefinger. He chewed contentedly for a moment, then took a sip of the wine. Then he leaned forward toward her conspiratorially. “You’re here to kill the Kraljica,” he whispered, and leaned back again.

Rochelle felt her face flush, and he laughed. “Oh, it’s not such a revelation,” he told her. “Matarh asked the same of me, when I became a teni. ‘You’ll be close to her one day,’ she told me. ‘When you’re an a’teni or maybe even the Archigos. You’ll be close to her, and I want you to kill her for me, because of what she did to ruin my life.’ Isn’t that what she told you as well?”

“It was similar,” Rochelle admitted.

“I thought so. But that’s not why you’re here, Rochelle. You’re here because Cenzi wanted you to see me. He wanted to reunite us.”

She felt a chill touch her spine at that, as if a winter breeze had somehow lingered behind to caress her at that moment, and she wondered where that feeling came from as she shivered and hugged herself. He had been there, then he had wrapped himself in darkness and gone somewhere else. If I could do that, why, the White Stone could go anywhere. The White Stone could easily kill the Kraljica.. . “What you did out there-can you do that again? Could you teach me how to do it?” she asked Nico.

“A month ago I would have said no,” he told her. “I would have told you that only the pure of faith can or should use the Ilmodo. But now…” He drained the wine in front of him. “I don’t know. Perhaps anything is possible.”

“And why do you think that Cenzi wanted us together?”

“I really don’t know yet,” he answered, “but perhaps we’ll find out.”