A Magic of Nightfall

Nico Morel

Ville Paisli was boring.

The entire town could have fit inside a single block of Oldtown, fifteen or so buildings huddled close to the Avi a’Nostrosei, with a few farms close by and a dark, forbidding wood reaching leafy arms around them and hinting at unguessed terrors. Nico could imagine dragons lurking in its hilly depths, or bands of rough outlaws. Exploring there might have been interesting, but his matarh kept close watch on him, as she had ever since they’d left Nessantico.

Nico was used to the endless roar and tumult of Nessantico. He was used to a landscape of buildings and manicured, tamed parks. He was used to being surrounded by thousands and thousands of strangers, to strange sights (even as they were leaving the city, he’d glimpsed a woman juggling live kittens), to the call of the temple horns and the lighting of the Avi at night.

Here, there was only drudgery and the same, stupid faces day after day.

His Tantzia Alisa and Onczio Bayard were nice enough people, who owned Ville Paisli’s only inn, which was his tantzia’s responsibility. Tantzia Alisa looked much older than Nico’s matarh, even though Alisa was actually a year younger than her sister; Onczio Bayard had few teeth and those that were left smelled rotten when he leaned close to Nico, which made him wonder why Tantzia Alisa would have married the man.

Then there were the children: six of them, three boys and three girls. The oldest was Tujan, two years older than Nico, then the twins Sinjon and Dori, who were Nico’s age. The youngest boy was a toddler just beginning to walk, who still sucked at Tantzia Alisa’s breast. Onczio Bayard was also the town’s iron forger, and Tujan and Sinjon both worked with him in the heat of the smithy, working the bellows and tending the fire while Tantzia Alisa, with Dori’s help, made beds and cooked for those staying at the inn-usually only a single traveler or two.

“In Nessantico, there are fire-teni who work in the big forging houses,” Nico had said the first day, watching Tujan and Sinjon labor at the bellows. That had earned him a hard punch in the arm from Tujan when Onczio Bayard wasn’t looking, and a glare from Sinjon. Onczio Bayard had set Nico to pumping the bellows with his cousins all that afternoon, and he’d smelled like charcoal and soot for the rest of the day. He suspected he still did, since he was expected to put in his time at the smithy every day with the other boys, but he no longer smelled it, though his white bashta now looked a streaked gray. The smithy was sweltering, loud with the hammering of steel on steel and bright with the sparks of molten iron. The villagers would come to Bayard to create or repair all sorts of metal objects: plow blades, scythe blades, hinges, and nails. Most of the trade was barter: a plucked chicken for a new blade, a dozen eggs for a small keg of black nails.

At the forge, the day began before dawn when the coals had to be rekindled and brought to blue heat, and ended when the sun went down. There were no light-teni here to banish the night or fire-teni to keep the coals blazing. After sundown, Onczio Bayard worked with Tantzia Alisa in the inn’s tavern, which did more business than the inn. Nico, along with his cousins, was pressed into service delivering tankards of ale and plates of simple food to the villagers at their tables, until Onczio Bayard would bellow “Last Call!” promptly on the third turn of the glass after sundown.

Nights after the tavern closed was the worst time.

Nico slept with Tujan and Sinjon in the same tiny room in the house behind the inn, and they would talk in the dark, their whispers seemingly as loud as shouts. “You’re useless, Nico,” Tujan whispered in the quiet. “You can’t work the bellows as well as even Dori, and Vatarh had to show you three times how to keep the coals piled.”

“He did not,” Nico retorted.

Tujan kicked him under the covers. “Did. I heard him call you a bastardo, too.”

“What’s a bastardo?” Sinjon asked.

“It means Nico doesn’t have a vatarh,” Tujan answered.

“I do,” Nico told them. “Talis is my vatarh.”

“Where is this Talis?” Tujan jeered. “Why isn’t he here, then?”

“He can’t be here. He had to stay in Nessantico. He sent us here to be safe. I know, I saw…”

“You saw what?”

Nico blinked into the night. He wasn’t supposed to tell; Talis had told him how dangerous it would be for his matarh and him. “Nothing,” he said.

Tujan laughed in the darkness. “I thought so. Your matarh brought you here, not any Talis. Musetta Galgachus says that Tantzia Serafina’s a filthy whore who makes her folias on her back, and you’re just a whore’s son.”

The raw insult sparked against Nico like a flint on steel, and sparks filled his mind and drove him up and over on top of the larger boy, his fists pummeling at the unseen face and chest. “She is not! ” he screamed as he struck at Tujan, and then Sinjon piled into him defending his brother, and they all tumbled from the bed onto the floor, flailing at each other blindly and hollering, tangled in the blankets. The cold fire began to burn in Nico’s stomach, and he shouted words that he didn’t understand, his hands gesturing, and suddenly the two boys were flying away from him, landing hard on the floor a few feet away. Nico lay there on the rough planks of the floor, stunned momentarily and feeling strangely empty and exhausted. He could hear the dogs-that slept downstairs in the inn-barking loudly. He wondered what had just happened.

His hesitation was enough; in the darkness the two boys had scrambled up and jumped on him again. “Bastardo!” He felt someone’s fist smash into his nose.

The door to the room flew open-a candle as bright as dawn flaring-and adults were shouting at them to stop and pulling them apart. “What in Cenzi’s name is going on here?” Onczio Bayard roared, plucking Nico from the floor by the nightshirt and sending him stumbling backward into his matarh’s familiar arms. He realized he was crying, more from rage than pain, and he sniffled as he struggled to get out of her grasp and hit one of the boys again. He could feel blood trickling down from his nostril.

“Nico-” Matarh sounded caught between horror and concern. She stooped in front of him as Onczio Bayard hauled his two sons to their feet. “What happened? Why are you boys fighting?”

Nico glared at his cousins, standing sullenly alongside their vatarh. Tantzia Alisa hovered in the doorway, holding the youngest in her arms while the girls peered around her, giggling and whispering. Nico wiped at the blood drooling from his nose with the back of his hand and was glad to see that Sinjon, too, had a line of dark red trickling from a nostril, and spatters of brown on his nightshirt. He hoped that the welt under Tujan’s eye would swell and turn purple by morning. “Nico? Who started this?”

“Nobody,” Nico told her, still glaring. “It wasn’t anything, Matarh. We were just playing, and…” He shrugged.

“Tujan? Sinjon?” their vatarh asked, shaking the boys’ shoulders. “You have anything to add?” Nico stared at them, Tujan especially, daring him to say to his vatarh what he’d said to Nico.

Both boys shook their heads. Onczio Bayard gave a huff of exasperation. “Sorry, Serafina,” he said. “But you know boys…” He shook his sons again. “Apologize to Nico,” he said. “He’s a guest in our house, and you don’t treat him that way. Go on.”

Sinjon muttered a nearly inaudible apology; Tujan followed a moment later. “Nico?” his matarh said, and Nico grimaced.

“Sorry,” he told his cousins.

“All right then,” Onczio Bayard grunted. “We’ll have no more of this. Getting us all out of bed when we’d just gone to sleep. Sinjon, get a rag and clean up your face. And I don’t expect to hear anything else out of the three of you tonight.” Still grumbling, he left the room.

Nico thought he could fall asleep in a moment; now that the cold fire had left him, he was so tired. His matarh crouched down to hug Nico. “You can sleep with me tonight if you want,” she whispered to him. He hugged her back tightly, wanting more than anything to do exactly that and knowing that he couldn’t, that if he did, Tujan and Sinjon would tease him unmercifully the next day.

“I’ll be fine,” he told her. She kissed his forehead. Tantzia Alisa handed her a cloth, and she dabbed at Nico’s nose. He pulled back. “Matarh, it’s already stopped.”

“All right,” she told him. She rose to her feet. “All of you-to sleep. No more talking, no more fighting. Do you hear?”

They all mumbled assent as the girls whispered and laughed and Matarh and Tantzia Alisa exchanged indulgent sighs. The door closed. Nico waited. “You’ll pay for this, Nico Bastardo,” Tujan muttered, his voice low and quiet and sinister in the new dark. “You’ll pay…”

He slept that night in the corner of the room nearest the door, wrapped in a blanket, and he thought of Nessantico and of Talis, and he knew he could not stay here, no matter how dangerous Nessantico might be.