A Magic of Nightfall

The Battle Begun: Kenne ca’Fionta

“ I’m afraid that your poor Petros is dead. It’s a shame.”

Kenne heard the words, and his old eyes blurred with tears, though he’d already known that Petros was gone. He’d felt it in his heart, ever since the Garde Kralji had come and snatched him away to the Bastida. He could only hope that Karl and his people had escaped the sweep; they’d left only a few marks of the glass beforehand. The leather-clad metal tongue gag tasted vile; the irons binding his hands were heavy enough that he could barely lift them from his lap.

Kraljica Sigourney’s scarred, torn face stared down at him. Kenne held her single-eyed regard for only a few breaths sucked in past the horrible device over his head, then dropped his gaze, broken and defeated. Between his legs, his manacled hands plucked restlessly at the straw of the rude bed as he sat in his cell high in the Bastida’s main tower. Her voice was sympathetic, almost sorrowful. “You’re a good man, Kenne. You always were. But you were too weak to be Archigos. You should have refused the title and told the Concord A’Teni to elect someone else.”

He could only nod in agreement. There had been so many nights lately when he’d wished exactly the same thing.

“You should have known this would happen, Kenne,” she told him. “You chose to consort with the enemies of the Holdings. You should have known. And now…”

She hobbled to the cell’s single window, leaning on a gilded, padded crutch, her right leg dangling to the emptiness beyond the knee. The window looked west, Kenne knew-he’d seen the sun’s fading light on the wall opposite that window the past few nights, turning yellow, then red, then purple as it crawled up the damp stones. “Come here,” Sigourney told him. “Come here and look.”

He lifted himself off the bed with difficulty: a broken old man now in truth. He shuffled over to the window as she stood aside. Outside, under a cheerful blue sky, he could see the A’Sele gleaming in the sun as it wound its way past the city toward the sea. Near where the river turned south, he could see dozens of gathered sails. Across the river, what had once been farmland and the estates of the ca’-and-cu’, the land crawled with a dark infestation that had not been there yesterday. “You see them?” Sigourney asked. “You see the Westlander army approaching? Those are the ones for whom you betrayed the Holdings, Archigos. Those are the ones who frightened you so much that you tried to make a pact with the Firenzcian dogs against me.” Her voice was growing angry now, the single eye raking him. “Those are the foul creatures who killed my brother. Those are the villains who razed our towns and villages. Whether you believe it or not, I’m certain they’re also the ones who killed Audric and made me into a horror. Do I hate them? Oh, you can’t imagine how much. Watch, and you’ll see good Holdings chevarittai send them running, and then we’ll deal with your Firenzcian friends as well. Very soon, it will begin. And you’re going to help us, Kenne.”

He turned his silenced head toward her, quizzical. She laughed. “Oh, you are. We must have the war-teni, after all, and we want to make certain that they understand that their Archigos now regrets his horrible treason, and that he wishes all teni of the Faith to help Nessantico in this terrible time in whatever way they can. You do wish that, don’t you, Archigos?”

Kenne could only stare at her, mute.

“You think not?” she told him. “Well, the proclamation is already written; it only requires your signature. And whether you wish to do so or not, I will have that signature. You were a friend of Sergei Rudka, after all-you should know that the Bastida always gains the confessions it wants.”

Even with the horrible device strapped to his face, he could not keep the horror from his face, and he saw her smile at his reaction. “Good,” she said. “I shall reflect on your suffering when the capitaine hands me your confession.”

She gestured to the gardai outside the cell. “He’s ready,” she told them. “Make sure he receives your full hospitality.”