A Magic of Dawn

The Dawn

They were pursued by the army of blue and gold and the army of black and silver, hounding them as they retreated toward the river and the waiting ships, but not hotly. The stragglers had been picked off, but the main armies had never reengaged. It was apparent that the Easterners were content to chase them from their land, but they would not demand their extermination if the Tehuantin were willing to leave.

The army had seen the masts of their fleet the second day, ten miles upriver from Nessantico, and they’d boarded as quickly as they could. Tototl, now calling himself Tecuhtli, had boarded the Yaoyotl, and he had turned the fleet westward as soon as the surviving warriors and nahualli were aboard. The empty boats-far too many of them-he’d scuttled in the middle of the river to discourage any of the Holdings’ navy from pursuing them.

They sailed down the A’Sele, moving quickly with its current toward the sea.

Toward home.

Atl, aboard the Yaoyotl, stared into the green mist of his scrying bowl. Tototl watched him carefully, the warrior’s skull painted now with the red eagle pattern that would soon be tattooed permanently on his flesh.

The myriad futures spread out before Atl, no longer blanketed and dim as they once had been. It was as if Axat had lifted a veil from before his face. He could see far more clearly than he’d ever seen before, all the uncertainties that had shrouded things for so long blown away like passing storm clouds. The futures were open before him, all the possibilities.

What he saw made him gasp. The Long Path… This was the future that Taat saw, that he always said was there. He realized then that Niente had known what that Long Path would cost: that to achieve it he must die; that Tecuhtli Citalali would be killed as well if this future was ever to rise; that a multitude of warriors would die as well. How long did you keep this secret, Taat? Did you know before we even left?

Atl suspected that he had. It explained so much. It explained why Niente had never wanted him to use the scrying bowl himself. That had been the act of a protective father, not that of a jealous Nahual. The realization made Atl regret the harsh words they’d exchanged.

“Will I return here?” Tototl asked Atl harshly, interrupting his thoughts and making the green mist waver as he exhaled so that he almost lost the vision. “Will I avenge our defeat?”

Atl could see that future as well: their ships loaded again with an army, one yet larger than Citlali’s, returning a third time to those shores. Only this time, the armies of the Holdings were one, and they descended upon them furiously and early, the bulk of them armed with terrible weapons like the ones that Tototl and Niente had witnessed during their battles. The warriors of the Tehuantin were cut down like wheat with a scythe and the earth drank their blood.

It was a terrible future, but it was one that could easily come to pass.

But the other… the one stretching out until the mists swallowed it. That one was also possible if Atl could direct Tototl that way. It would take skill, and it would demand sacrifice, but it was there and he could see Niente’s hand upon it.

“You will do better than that, Tecuhtli,” Atl told him. “You will one day bring us to peace with the Easterners. Your name will be honored everywhere in our land. All the Tecuhtli who come after will compare themselves to you. You will be forever the Great Tecuhtli.”

The mists were failing now, and Atl took the bowl and threw the water within it over the side of the ship. He handed the bowl to one of the lesser nahualli. “Clean this,” he told the man, “and put it back in my cabin.” He could feel the weariness of the X’in Ka hammering at him, and his left eye twitched uncomfortably. Atl squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Tototl was watching him.

“Peace?” he said. “How does a warrior find honor in peace? How does one become great without war and victory?”

Atl took a long breath. He looked westward, toward the smoke and fumes of Nessantico, toward the place where Niente’s body would forever lie. “I will show you,” he told Tototl. “Together, we will keep to that path.”

“Watch me,” she told Nico. “Then I want you to try it yourself. Are you watching? See, you loop one string like this, then take the other and go around the bottom of the loop once, and…”

There was a knock on Varina’s bedroom door as she was tying the laces of Nico’s boots. “A’Morce?”

“Come in,” Varina said, and Michelle entered, carrying Serafina in her arms. The baby was bundled in lace, and Michelle held the child protectively as she glanced warily at Nico, who sat on the bed. His guileless face turned to look at Michelle.

“Is that Serafina?” he asked Varina, his voice eager.

“Yes,” she told him.

He looked down, almost shyly. “May I… May I hold her?”

Michelle was shaking her head slightly, but Varina smiled at him. “Just for the tiniest bit,” she told him. “And you must be very careful with her.” Varina nodded to Michelle; still frowning, the wet nurse came forward and placed the baby in Nico’s outstretched hands. “Make sure you hold her head,” Varina told him. “Yes, like that. That’s good…”

Nico grinned, cradling Serafina in his arms. The baby fussed for a moment, then quieted as Nico rocked her unconsciously, staring down into the baby’s face. “Her eyes are so big,” he said wonderingly. “And her hands are awful small. She’s really my daughter?”

“Yes. Yours and Liana’s.” Varina reached down and stroked Sera’s head. Her hair was fine as down, the skin smooth and warm. Her tiny hand waved, finding Varina’s finger and clutching it. She laughed.

Nico shook his head. He was watching the interplay. “I don’t remember Liana,” he said. “I don’t know how…”

“I’ll tell you one day,” Varina told him. “Right now, we still have to get ready to go to the Kraljica’s funeral. Here…” She held out her hands, and Nico carefully placed Sera there. Varina heard Michelle’s audible sigh of relief. Varina kissed Sera’s forehead, hugging her for a few breaths before handing her back to Michelle. “She’s fed?”

“Fed and dressed and ready to go,” Michelle answered. “I have a change of clothes and diapers. I came up to tell you that the carriage is here from the palais.”

“Good,” Varina told her. “Go ahead and get her in and settled. Nico and I will be down in a few moments. I just have to finish his boots.”

Michelle glanced at Nico again. “A’Morce, the young man’s dangerous. What he did…”

“What he did with the Tehuantin saved us,” Varina answered. “And cost him far more than most would have been willing to give.”

“He could be faking his condition, or he could recover his wits. What then?”

Nico said nothing as they discussed him. He only looked from one woman to the other as they spoke.

“Then,” Varina answered, “we will deal with that when it happens.” It was the same question she’d heard already a dozen times or more. There were those on the Council and among the ca’-and-cu’ of the city and the teni of the Faith who wanted Nico tried and executed for the deaths he’d caused and the damage to the Old Temple during the Morelli takeover. For that matter, there was a part of Varina’s own heart that was still angry with him for the destruction and deaths he’d caused, unapologetically, to her own friends during Karl’s funeral.

Nico, truly, had much to answer for, yet he had nearly single-handedly saved the city when it was about to fall. There was also no denial of that-or of the fact that his efforts had cost him greatly, and perhaps, perhaps that had been punishment enough. The Nico in front of her seemed to remember nothing of that day or much of his previous life at all. The Nico before her was an innocent-he might inhabit the same body, but he was not the Nico who had claimed to be the Absolute. Perhaps the Kraljiki would demand punishment for the past, but Varina would fight that, with all the efforts she could muster. “For now, he’s a child, and he needs to be treated as such.”

“As you say, A’Morce,” Michelle answered. Serafina cried, and Michelle rocked her gently. “I’ll get her quieted down again, and we’ll see you in the carriage.”

As Michelle left the room, Varina bent down again to the laces of Nico’s boots. He was watching her, frowning. “It’s all right, Nico,” she said. “Michelle’s not angry with you. She’s just concerned about you, as I am. Now, watch me and let’s see if you can tie the other one. Loop the lace like this, then pass the other end around it…”

The teni were already in attendance at the Archigos’ Temple. A’Teni Valerie ca’Beranger of Prajnoli would conduct the service-the rumors were that she would most likely be elected Archigos when the Concord A’Teni convened in a few days. Brie escorted the children up an aisle lined with e-teni in white robes-the color of death-trimmed in green. The teni watched, silent: like lines of white bone arrowing toward the Stone of Cenzi as Brie and the children ascended the dais and approached the altar, the great Stone of Cenzi, draped in a brilliant azure cloth.

“There,” Brie whispered to Elissa, Kriege, Caelor, and Eria. Her voice sounded loud under the dome and she glanced up once at the frescoes of Cenzi and the Moitidi far above them. “This is your great-matarh Allesandra. She was a great woman, and she told me that she wanted so much to get to know all of you. I wish you could have known her when she was alive.”

This was not how she’d intended for the children to meet their great-matarh. She’d hoped to introduce them to the woman, not the dead container that had once held her. She wondered whether it might not have been better to let the children remain in Brezno for the funeral, but for the fact that they would then have missed their vatarh’s coronation.

“It’s ugly here,” Elissa had proclaimed on disembarking from the carriage at the palais. She looked around at the buildings, broken and scarred by fire and war. “It smells horrible, too. Brezno is much prettier, Matarh. Why can’t we just stay there?”

“Nessantico is our new home now,” she’d told them. “And we’ll make it prettier and more impressive than Brezno-as it was once before. We’ll help your vatarh make it that way, all of us.”

She hoped that had not been a lie.

Now, in the Archigos’ Temple, they stared at yet another broken ruin, that of the Kraljica.

The toddler Eria hung back, a thumb firmly planted in her mouth. She refused to approach the bier at all, content to look at the body while hanging onto Brie’s tashta. Caelor approached only hesitantly, and then moved quickly away close to Brie. Kriege stalked forward with a firm grimace on his face, stared down at the white-painted face there, then took a step back, sniffing as if he could smell the corruption through the scent-shield that the teni had placed around the body. Elissa, who had walked forward with Kriege, remained there, staring down at the body as if she were trying to memorize every detail: the lines of her great-matarh’s face; the golden funeral mask that the teni would place on her face in just a turn of the glass, when the doors of the Archigos’ Temple were opened so that the funeral could begin; the iron rod of Kraljiki Henri VI cradled in her left hand; the signet ring of the Kralji displayed on her upturned right palm, which Jan would take when the funeral rite was finished. The blue cloth over the altar was covered in wreaths of yellow trumpet-flowers. Seven candelabra were set around the stone; they were alight not with flame but with brilliant teni-light, bathing the body in a yellow-white light so intense it seemed that the dome of the temple had been lifted so the sun could shine down on the Kraljica.

Elissa touched Allesandra’s arm with a tentative finger, then looked at the fingertip as if it were a foreign object. “She’s cold,” Elissa reported. “And kind of hard.”

“That’s what happens when you die.”

“Oh.” Elissa seemed to consider that. “Her face looks pretty, though.”

Brie could hear Jan’s voice, talking with Sergei ca’Rudka, Starkkapitan ca’Damont, and Commandant ca’Talin to one side of the quire. Talbot, Allesandra’s aide who had agreed to stay on as Jan’s aide, cleared his throat near the pews. “Hirzgin, they’re ready to let the ca’-and-cu’ enter the temple. I’m going to go get the Hirzg and the others-you have a bit yet, but…”

She nodded to him, and he stepped away. “Don’t touch that,” she told Elissa, who was reaching out with a tentative hand toward the ring. Elissa snatched back her hand as if she’d burned it.

“I wasn’t going to touch it,” she told Brie. “Is that going to be Vatarh’s ring?”

“Yes, very soon,” Brie told her.

“And will it be mine one day?”

Kriege glared at Elissa. “That’s not fair, Matarh,” he howled, his voice shrill under the dome. Brie saw the white lines of the teni ripple and someone laughed, a quick sound that was choked off. “She gets everything.”

She could hear Talbot chuckling as he strode across the nave toward Jan. She laughed, too. “No one’s going to get the ring-at least not for a long, long time, when you’re all grown up. We’ll see then. It may be that neither of you will want it.”

“Then I’ll take it,” Caelor interjected. “It’s a pretty ring.”

Brie laughed. “Come on,” she told her children. “We need to take our seats…”

The wind-horns called mournfully, their low wail sending the pigeons erupting from the ground on the plaza outside. Inside, Rochelle could feel the temple wall throbbing against her back. She’d slipped into the temple via a back door much earlier, picking the lock well before dawn, sliding up to the choir loft and along the side to a shadowed corner behind the arch of one of the buttresses, where she could look down at the quire, the bier and the closest pews.

She thought she could smell smoke here: not just the spiced aroma from the censers on the altar, but a fume that was a remnant of the black sand bombardment of the Tehuantin, lingering here below the painted arches of the dome. She had sat there hidden for several turns, waiting. She’d watched the white-robed teni file in; the choir settling into their seats not far from her.

She’d seen her vatarh and his family enter to view the body midmorning, had watched Brie escort the children forward after she and Jan had paid their own respects.

The children… The thought came to her that this could have been her matarh and her, if only things had been different, but then she shook her head. No, she told herself firmly. Their relationship could never have survived the falsehoods and Matarh’s madness. It would never have been. This was never meant for you. Don’t lie to yourself. You can only be his bastarda, never his true daughter.

She wondered what her future held, and she had no answer for that. Her hand went to the jeweled hilt of the knife she’d taken from her vatarh, the knife with which she’d hoped to kill the Kraljica. The smooth wood of the pommel seemed to throb against her fingers.

The family stepped back from the bier. She saw them settle into their pews, heard the doors open as the wind-horns began their throbbing, mournful call once again, and the ca’-and-cu’ entered the temple. The choir, startling her, began to sing one of Darkmavis’ ethereal, mournful pieces. The rising tones and the close harmonies echoed, loud and insistent, near here to the dome of the temple that they enveloped her like a cloak.

It seemed to take forever for the mourners to enter between the lines of white-robed teni and settle in their pews. From her hiding place, Rochelle watched the front pews, gazing at her vatarh and her half siblings, as well as the woman who had taken her own matarh’s place: Brie, whom they were calling the Victor of the South Bank and who the crowds cheered as loudly as they did Jan. She could see Sergei in the row behind them, sitting next to the Numetodo woman, who had a child in her arms.

And beside her was Nico, fidgeting like a bored child. The A’Morce kept turning to him and speaking softly to him, and Rochelle noticed that Sergei was watching the young man closely. Nico-she wondered if it was true, what they said of him, that his wits were gone and that he was no more than a child. Seeing him this way hurt most of all, she thought.

A’Teni ca’Beranger finally emerged from behind the quire and began the service, attended by a covey of high-ranking teni who fluttered around her with censers and goblets, with the staff of the broken globe, with the scrolls of the Toustour and Divolonte. Rochelle half-dozed through most of it, stirring only when Jan arose to give the Admonition. She watched him move to the High Lectern-walking like an old man, leaning on a cane with one arm clutched tight to his body. Talbot moved to assist him, and she saw Jan shake his head at the man. Slowly, he ascended the steps of the High Lectern, refusing to allow his injuries to stop him. She saw him gaze out over the crowd, then stare at the body of his matarh for several breaths before speaking.

“It’s customary to say how kind and wonderful one’s matarh was in life,” he said finally, his baritone voice swelling with the fine acoustics of the temple. “I won’t tell you that lie. She was not, perhaps, the best matarh I could have had. I was her only child, but I was still not the child she cared most about.

“That child, her only true child, was Nessantico. The Holdings. To Nessantico, she was an excellent matarh: a strong and forceful one, who accomplished what few others could have. She restored Nessantico when the city was in ruins. She kept the Holdings from falling apart when in lesser hands it would have crumbled and dissolved. She protected Nessantico when, for the second time, it came under the attack of foreign invaders. She gave all her love and all her energy and all her attention to this city and this empire, and when the sacrifice was demanded, she was willing to give Nessantico her life as a final payment.”

He paused, taking several breaths as if speaking had exhausted him. Rochelle leaned forward. I was willing to take her life. I would have, Matarh, but I was too late. Her hand was still on the knife hilt. Her vatarh glanced upward, as if he’d glimpsed her movement or could somehow feel the pull of the knife she’d stolen from him. She slid back into shadow. His eyes, far below, seemed to hold her despite the great distance.

“Celebrate Allesandra ca’Vorl,” Jan continued, his gaze returning to the audience. “Celebrate her stewardship of the Holdings, because in a time when the Holdings teetered on the brink, she kept the empire from the edge. That was masterful. That was genius. That was passion. Those were the qualities that Matarh possessed in abundance. They were exactly the qualities that Nessantico needed, and she arrived at exactly the time Nessantico required her presence. Nessantico was fortunate to have her-with her abilities and in this moment. Even if I didn’t exactly appreciate that most of the time.”

A faint chuckle ran through the crowd at that comment, sounding out of place in the temple. “We have emerged victorious from a terrible war,” Jan said, “in no small part because of Kraljica Allesandra’s actions. I can only hope, in going forward, that I am able to emulate her, that I can be her son and build upon her legacy. The Holdings are one again, the Faith is one again, but there are challenges ahead that will test us-all of us. I know that she will be watching from the arms of Cenzi. I hope that we can make her proud of what we accomplish.”

Jan bowed his head. Rochelle thought that he might say more, but he gave the sign of Cenzi to the crowd and left the High Lectern-slowly, again, the sound of his cane loud in the silence. He returned to his seat as the A’Teni and her attendants moved back to the altar. As they began to circle the bier, chanting and waving censers, Rochelle sank back into her niche, putting her spine to the cold stone.

What do I do, Vatarh? What do I do to make you proud of me?

She could feel the hilt of the knife pressing into her side as she crouched against the temple’s buttress. If Nessantico was to be her vatarh’s passion, as it had been Allesandra’s, if-as he had said was true of Allesandra-the Holdings were to be his one true child, then she would share that passion with him. Rochelle’s matarh had given her a singular skill; she would use it, then.

I won’t be the White Stone, no, but I can become the Blade of Nessantico.

She nodded. She would stay in the shadows. She would truly be Jan’s daughter. She would serve the Holdings in her own way.

Yes.

The choir began to sing once more, and she closed her eyes, letting herself sink into the ethereal sound, as insubstantial and mysterious as she would be.

The procession around the ring boulevard of the Avi a’Parete was long and slow and-Jan could see by the throngs that lined the Avi waiting for the Kraljica to pass by-necessary. The populace stood several hands deep on both sides of the Avi for the entire length of the boulevard, as far he could see. Their faces were solemn; many were weeping openly. Jan realized then that as Allesandra had loved the city, it had come to love and appreciate her in return.

He could only hope they would do the same for him in the coming years.

He grimaced as the carriage in which he rode found a jagged hole in the pavement, the impact pushing his cracked ribs together, the pain radiating all the way to his shoulders. The cuts the healers had sewn closed days ago pulled as he tried to make himself comfortable in the seat. He struggled to show as little of his discomfort as possible to the crowds. He smiled; he waved. And on his hand, the signet ring of the Kralji glistened.

The funeral procession for Allesandra echoed that for the great and beloved Kraljica Marguerite. None of the Kralji between Marguerite and Allesandra had been given such a formal display. Kraljiki Justi, Marguerite’s son, had been mocked and loathed; the people of the city had actually rejoiced at his death, and his bier had gone directly from the Archigos’ Temple to the palais. His son Audric’s reign had been worse, though Sergei’s short regency had kept the city stable. But once the regency ended prematurely, Audric’s madness and erratic behavior had damaged the Holdings even further, and his assassination had-many thought-been a blessing. Kraljica Sigourney, Audric’s successor, had committed suicide as the Tehuantin sacked and burned the city, and her body had been desecrated by the Westlanders: Jan remembered that all too vividly.

With Sigourney’s death, with the city a smoking ruin around him, Jan could have taken the title of Kraljiki himself; he’d chosen to give Nessantico and the Holdings to his matarh instead: a gesture of mockery.

She had turned his mockery into a true gift, he had to admit. That was evident now.

Jan’s carriage, drawn by three white horses in a four-horse harness, followed immediately behind the bier. He could hear the chanting of the teni who walked alongside the bier, which appeared to float in a white cloud. Above the body, huge images of the Kraljica appeared and vanished again: there she was as she appeared in her official portrait; there she dedicated the rebuilt dome of the Old Temple, there she smiled as she descended from the balcony during the Gschnas.

The smell of trumpet-flowers accompanied her, and the sound of the musicians in the open carriage ahead of the bier, playing Darkmavis and ce’Miella: a fusing of ancient and modern.

The old giving way to the new. Jan found it compelling.

“Look-they’re cheering for you, Vatarh,” Elissa said happily, pointing and waving herself. And it was true, as the bier passed, as their open carriage followed, the mourning morphed into applause and smiles. “They like you.”

“They’re cheering because they don’t have a choice,” Jan told her, and Brie frowned.

“Jan…”

“It’s true, and the children should understand that,” he answered her. He leaned forward across to where the children were sitting, ignoring the pull of the stitches and the twinge in his chest. “The people will applaud you as long as they think you’re going to keep food in their bellies and a roof over their heads. They’ll applaud you when they fear you, too, because they’re afraid that if they don’t, they’ll be punished. Don’t mistake their smiles and applause for anything more than a facade.”

He felt Brie’s hand on his arm. “Darling, please. They don’t understand what you’re saying, and you’re just scaring them. And you shouldn’t be so cynical. Not today of all days.”

She was right, and he knew it. He glimpsed the ornate handle of the sparkwheel fitted to an embossed leather holder on her belt: the gorgeous sparkwheel Varina and the Numetodo had presented to her after the battle. The citizens of Nessantico were cheering Brie, he knew: the success of the sparkwheeler corps in the battle was already a legend in the city, and it appeared that the A’Hirzg in Brie had become the favorite of the city. “I’m sorry,” he told her, told the children. “You’re right…”

They continued around the ring boulevard, and he continued to smile and wave. Because it was expected. Because it was his duty. They clattered over the Pontica A’Kralji, where, in iron gibbets, the skeletal body of the Westlander war-teni Sergei had killed and the Westlander Tehuantin were displayed in gory triumph. Jan barely glanced at their bodies.

The procession ended at the courtyard of the Kraljica’s Palais at dusk. The bier floated on its mage-cloud to the summit of the pile of oil-soaked timbers set well away from the wings of the palais: the pyre that would send Allesandra’s soul into the arms of Cenzi, placed in the center of the Kraljica’s gardens. The ca’-and-cu’ of the city and of the Holdings and Coalition both, the chevarittai in their dress uniforms of blue and gold or black and silver, Sergei ca’Rudka, Starkkapitan ca’Damont, Commandant ca’Talin of the Garde Civile: they were all here, watching as Jan and his family descended from their carriage.

Jan looked a last time at his matarh’s body. He nodded to Talbot, who gestured to the fire-teni arrayed around the pyre. Their hands danced an intricate ballet together; their voices mingled in a slow chant. Fire bloomed orange-red between their hands as they gestured, as if tossing petals toward the pyre. Flames crackled and hissed in fury, licking at the oil and climbing rapidly. The mage-cloud vanished under a pall of writhing white that rose to the height of the palais roof before the wind smeared it across the sky. The flames touched the bier itself; Jan could see trumpet-flowers withering and curling under as Allesandra’s body became lost in the heat waver and smoke. The furious crackling and popping of the fire echoed from the walls of the palais and the insistent heat drove everyone a few steps back from the pyre.

A log collapsed in the pyre, sending sparks coiling wildly upward. Jan realized that he’d been watching the fire burn for far longer than he’d thought, that the sky was growing dark.

“We can go now, Kraljiki,” Talbot said. The title sounded strange to Jan. “They’re ready in the hall…”

The Hall of the Sun Throne was packed. The windows in the long room flickered red with the flames of the pyre, while the great window behind the throne showed the dusk sky, already a deep violet with the first stars beginning to glisten above. The Council of Ca’ was seated before the throne, with the other dignitaries. A’Teni ca’Beranger waited with Talbot alongside the Sun Throne. Brie gave the children to the nursemaids and approached the dais of the throne alongside Jan.

The Sun Throne. The massive chair sculpted from a single massive crystal towered more than two men high, a mottled, semitransparent white. It loomed over Jan and Brie. As he stared at the throne, he twisted the signet ring on his hand, the gold and silver of the ring cold and smooth on his flesh. “This is what you were meant for, my husband,” Brie whispered to him. He glanced over to her, saw that she was looking at his hands. “You know that,” she said. “Your matarh did, too.”

“She had a strange way of showing it.”

“She was meant for it also. That was the problem.” She gestured toward the throne. “There it is,” she said. “It’s yours, my love.”

Jan glanced toward Talbot. He nodded. Behind a door at the far rear of the hall, just behind the throne, two light-teni were chanting. Talbot had told him how in the last century, the Sun Throne barely reacted to the signet ring, that it was instead the work of especially trusted and skilled light-teni who ensured that the proper response came when a Kralji sat on the crystal.

Jan had laughed at that revelation-another sham, another show.

Jan ascended the dais, A’Teni ca’Beranger giving him the sign of Cenzi as he passed. On reaching the throne, he turned to face the crowd. They were watching him, all of them.

He sat. The crystal around him erupted with brilliant yellow light, seeming to emerge from the hidden depths of the throne. Kraljiki Jan sat, bathed in that light, as the audience rose in thunderous applause.

“I’ll always wonder what the Holdings might have been had you lived,” Sergei said to the portrait of Kraljica Marguerite. “I’d love to know what you think of things now.”

The wine he’d had was making his head spin a bit. Downstairs, in the palais, the celebration for the new Kraljiki was still going on while, outside, the embers of Allesandra’s pyre glowed red in the night. Sergei had slipped away from the festivities via the servants’ corridors to come up here-to the chambers that had been Allesandra’s and which were now Jan’s. A goblet of wine still in his hand, he raised it to Marguerite’s portrait as he lounged in a chair. A small fire-set to take away the evening chill-crackled in the hearth below the portrait, the fire and the candles lit to either side giving a wavering illumination that lent animation to Marguerite’s painted, stern face. He could imagine her stirring, opening her mouth to talk to him…

It was an unnerving sensation, bringing back memories of Audric and his madness.

Sergei took a long sip of the wine and, with his free hand, reached into a pocket of his bashta. He retrieved a smooth, pale pebble. He rubbed its polished surface between his fingers. Wine sloshed over the rim of his glass with the motion and threw bloody droplets on his bashta. He didn’t care.

“Marguerite, we both loved this city and this empire so much that we were willing to do anything for her. Anything at all. I wonder.. . Did she love us back for our passion and our faith? Did she care? Did you sometimes regret your life the way I do? Hmm… Somehow, knowing you, I doubt it. You were always so sure of yourself.” He lifted the goblet to her in salute, then brought it to his mouth and tilted it, draining the wine in a long gulp. He set the goblet down on the table next to him and reached for his new cane, lifting himself from the chair with a grunt and a moan. “You’ll have a new relative to stare at tonight,” he told Marguerite. “Let’s hope he’s a good one, as strong as you were.”

He realized he was still holding the stone. He held it up to his ear. “I don’t hear anyone,” he said. He tapped the stone on his nose, listening to the ring of stone on metal. He laughed, weaving slightly as he stood there, and placed the stone back in his pocket. “What becomes of us when we’re gone?” he asked the painting. “Does Cenzi really wait there to judge us? I’d appreciate a sign, Marguerite. I really would.”

The painting stared at him in the firelight. Marguerite’s painted gaze refused to let him go. Finally, Sergei rubbed at his nose and sniffed. “No answer, eh?” he said. “You always did keep your secrets. Well, I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.”

He bowed to the painting, nearly falling as he did so. He patted the stone in his pocket. He left the room, leaving the goblet on the table, and, stumbling, made his way down the back stairs again. As he reached the servants’ corridor nearest the Hall of the Sun Throne, he could hear the noise of the revelers, still chattering. He went in the other direction, making his way out into the garden. The cool night air seemed to clear his mind. He could smell the odor of ash and woodfire-far out in the gardens, servants were raking and spreading the coals of the pyre. He shook his head, rubbed at his stubbled cheeks. He walked around the side of the palais toward the Avi a’Parete, still crowded with pedestrians and carriages even this late. Across the Pontica a’Brezi Veste, he could see the tower and walls of the Bastida.

He took a long breath. The tower was dark against the moonlit clouds, and a small light glistened in one of the upper windows, seeming to beckon to him. Sergei’s hand, in the pocket of his bashta, touched again the pebble of the White Stone.

He sighed, and he began walking the other way.