A Magic of Nightfall

Karl Vliomani

He’d shaved off his beard. He’d darkened his hair with essence of blackstone and let his features become obscured with the dirt of the road. He’d given away the fine bashtas in his pack in exchange for a beggar’s flea-infested and torn wardrobe. He stank of filth, and his smell alone was enough to turn people’s eyes away from him.

He wondered where Sergei was, and if he’d made his way to Firenzcia and how he might have been received there.

Karl had originally intended to make his way back to the Isle of Paeti. He had rested enough to use the Scath Cumhacht to heal the worst of Varina’s wound. Then he and Varina had accompanied Sergei to the woods north of the city, but there had parted ways, Sergei turning eastward toward Azay a’Reaudi, while he and Varina followed the forest’s line westward. They’d crossed the Avi a’Nortegate below Tousia, then turned southeast toward the Avi a’Nostrosei, hoping to follow its line into Sforzia and from there find passage on a ship to either Paeti or one of the northern countries. They’d reached the Avi at Ville Paisli four days later, only a day’s journey by foot from Nessantico’s walls.

He’d intended that they stay one day. No more. He and Varina had taken a room in the only inn in the village, giving false names and traveling as man and wife on their way to Varolli in hopes of finding employment. The older woman who had shown them the room nodded as she took their money, slipping the coins into a pocket under the apron she wore over a stained tashta that looked two decades out of fashion. Her face and body showed years of children and hard work. “I’m Alisa Morel,” she told them. Karl heard the intake of Varina’s breath at the name. “My husband and I own the inn and tavern, and my husband is the village’s smithy. If you’d like a bath-” that with a significant glance and wrinkling of her nose suggesting that such would be a good idea, “-there’s a room below for that, and I can have my children fill two tubs with hot water. Dinner will be a turn of the glass after sundown.”

The woman left them, and Varina lifted eyebrows toward Karl. “Morel…” she said. “Nico said that he’d run away from his tantzia and onczio. Could she be…?”

“Morel’s a common enough name in Nessantico.” He shrugged. “But there are obviously some questions we should ask. If we still had the boy…”

Karl was already certain that the connection was there, though he wasn’t sure how he knew. He could see from Varina’s face that she was thinking the same. If he’d believed in any god at all, he might have thought they’d been led here by divine fortune.

That evening, after taking the woman’s offer of a bath to rid them of the worst of the road stink, he and Varina took their supper in the common room of the tavern, both to avoid suspicion and so that they could hear any gossip that might have reached the village regarding the escape of the Regent from the Bastida. The room was-he suspected from the harried looks of Alisa, her children who served as the waiting staff, and her husband Bayard behind the short bar near the kitchen door-more crowded than usual, and the talk was largely of the events in Nessantico, which seemed to have reached the village only a few days ago.

“I spoke to the offizier of the search squad myself,” Bayard Morel was saying loudly to an audience of a half dozen villagers. “His horse had thrown its shoe, and so he had me shoe the beast for him. He said that Kraljiki Audric, may Cenzi bless ’im, sent riders out on every road from the city to catch the traitor and those Numetodo heretics with him. The offizier’s squad was to scour the road all the way to Varolli if necessary. He told me that the Numetodo killed three dozen Garde Kralji in the Bastida with their awful, blasphemous magic, killed ’em without a thought even though some of them were still in their beds. They left the tower where ca’Rudka was held in rubble, nothing but great stones strewn all over the ground. They were spouting fire as they rode off, a horrible blue fire, the offizier said, that slew people along the Avi as they passed, and then, with a great whoosh-” and here Bayard spread his hands suddenly wide, knocking over the nearest tankard of ale and causing his audience to rear back in wide-eyed terror, “-they vanished in a cloud of foul black smoke. Just like that. All told, there are over a hundred dead in the city. I tell you, death is too good a fate for the Regent. They ought to drag him alive through the streets and let the stones of the Avi tear the very flesh from his bones and rip off that silver nose of his while he screams.”

The people in the room murmured their agreement with that assessment. Varina leaned close to Karl, grimacing as the movement pulled at the knitting wound on her arm. “By next week, he’ll have it at a thousand dead. But at least it seems the searchers have already moved through. We’re behind them. That’s good, right?” She searched his face with anxious eyes, and he grunted assent even though he wasn’t so certain himself.

Watching the room, he noticed that there was another woman helping to serve the patrons: dour and tired-looking, her mouth never gentled with a smile. She looked several years younger than Alisa, but there was a family resemblance between the two: in the eyes, in the narrow nose, in the set of her lips. She appeared too old to be Alisa’s child, all of whom were still striplings. When one of the children-a sullen boy on the cusp of puberty-set a plate of sliced bread on their table, he pointed to her. “That woman there… who is that?”

The boy sniffed and scowled. “That’s my Tantzia Serafina. She’s living with us right now.”

“She looks unhappy.”

“She’s been that way for a while now, since Nico ran away.”

Karl glanced at Varina. “Who’s Nico?”

“Her son,” the boy said, the scowl deepening. “A bastardo. I didn’t like him anyway. Always talking nonsense about Westlanders and magic and trying to pretend he could do magic himself like he was a teni. Everyone had to waste three days looking for him after he left, and my vatarh rode all the way to Certendi, but no one ever found him. I think he’s probably dead.” He seemed inordinately satisfied with that conclusion, satisfaction curling a corner of his mouth.

“Ah.” Karl nodded. “You’re probably right. It’s not an easy world out there for travelers. I was just wondering why she looked so sad.” Varina was looking away now, staring at Serafina, her knuckles to her mouth. The boy scuffled his feet on the rough wooden floor, sniffed and wiped his arm across his nose, and went back into the kitchen.

“Gods, it is her.” Varina gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head. “What do we do, Karl? That’s Nico’s matarh.”

Karl plucked a piece of bread from the plate that the boy had brought. He tore off a chunk of the brown loaf and tucked it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “If we could give her Nico,” he said after he swallowed, “I wonder if she would give us Talis in return?”