A Magic of Nightfall

Allesandra ca’Vorl

Semini tried to contact her for several days afterward. Allesandra rebuffed his advances. She let his messages sit on her desk. When he sent his o’teni over to talk to her directly, he was told firmly by her well-instructed aides that she was in meetings and could not be disturbed. When Semini himself left the temple to see her, she made certain she was out of town with Jan, watching the muster of the troops.

When Semini-under the guise of working with the war-teni who were also mustering-came to the fields south of Brezno, there was, finally, no way to avoid him.

Semini was a green-clad, dark blot against the sun-washed whiteness of the tent canvas. Outside, the military encampment stirred in the morning: the clash of metal as the smithies worked on weapons, armor, and livery; the call of men; the shouted orders of offiziers; the general buzz of movement; the sound of feet marching in unison as squads drilled. Smells drifted in as Semini let the tent flap close behind him: the cook and campfires, the odor of mud churned by thousands of feet, and the faint stench of the ditches that served as latrines.

She was talking to Sergei ca’Rudka as she sat behind the field desk that had once been her vatarh’s, the front panels painted with images of Hirzg Jan ca’Silanta’s famous battles in East Magyaria. “.. . told the Hirzg and Starkkapitan to expect resistance as soon as we cross the border,” Sergei was saying, and he stopped and turned as her gaze drifted over his shoulder toward Semini. “Ah, Archigos. Perhaps I should go.”

“Come back after Second Call and we’ll continue our discussion, Regent,” she told him. Sergei bowed to her, rubbed at the reflective flank of his nose, and left the tent with a nod and the sign of Cenzi to the Archigos.

Semini seemed uncomfortable, as if he’d expected her to rise and embrace him as soon as the tent flap closed behind ca’Rudka. After a moment, he finally gave her the sign of Cenzi, shifting his weight as he stood in front of the desk like a summoned offizier. “Allesandra,” he began, and she scowled.

“Anyone could be listening through the tent fabric. We are in public, Archigos Semini, and I expect you to address me properly.”

She saw irritation quickly narrow his eyes at the rebuke. His lips pressed together under the roof of his mustache. “A’Hirzg ca’Vorl,” he said, with deliberate slowness. “I apologize.” Then, he dropped his voice to a low, rumbling near-whisper. “I hope that we might still talk openly. Francesca, she…”

Allesandra shook her head slightly; with the motion, Semini stopped. “I spoke with your wife,” she said, with heavy emphasis. “The other night. We had a lovely chat. She seems to believe that you had something to do with Archigos Ana’s death.”

She hadn’t really expected him to react; he didn’t. He stared blandly at her. “I know you had some affection for the false Archigos,” he said. “Given what happened to you, I can understand that. But Ana ca’Seranta was my enemy. I didn’t mourn her passing. Not in the slightest, and if my pleasure in her death offends you, A’Hirzg, then I have to accept that. I prayed-often-that Cenzi would take her soul, because the woman was wrong in her beliefs and she was largely responsible for the severing of the Faith and the break of the Holdings.”

“She is also the reason I am who I am. Without her…” Allesandra shrugged. “I might not be here. Jan may never have been born.”

“And for that, if nothing else, I gave her my prayers when she died.” Semini took a step to the side of the field desk, then stopped. “Allesandra, what’s happened between us? It’s obvious you’ve been avoiding me. Why?”

“When were you going to tell me that it was you who ordered Ana killed? Or weren’t you ever going to tell me?”

“Allesandra-”

“If you didn’t do it, then deny it, Semini. Tell me now that it wasn’t you.”

She wasn’t certain how she wanted him to answer. In the intervening days, she had-through the staff in the palais, through Commandant cu’Gottering of the Garde Brezno-performed her own investigation. The name of Gairdi ci’Tomisi had emerged, and she’d had Commandant cu’Gottering take the merchant, who happened to be in Brezno, to the Bastida for interrogation. Ci’Tomisi, under the Bastida’s less-than-gentle persuasion, had poured out the entire story: how he served Firenzcia and Archigos ca’Cellibrecca as a dual agent, how he knew a Westlander in Nessantico who sold potions, how the man had told him about some powerful Westlander concoction, how the Westlander had demonstrated this “black sand” to him and how ci’Tomisi told his contacts in Brezno Temple about its power, and how word had come back (from ‘the Archigos himself’) that-if he were able to do so-a demonstration against the Nessantican Faith would be “interesting and much rewarded”; how he’d used his contacts in the Archigos’ Temple in Nessantico to gain access at night; how he’d placed the black sand in the High Lectern and set a clock-candle burning within, the flame set to touch the black sand at the same time that Archigos Ana would be giving her Admonition.

Ci’Tomisi confessed in order to save his own life, blubbering and weeping. He’d succeeded, but Allesandra wondered if, in his filthy and dark cell in the bowels of the Bastida, he might be wishing he hadn’t.

Allesandra was also aware that Semini would have realized that ci’Tomisi had been imprisoned and had probably talked. So she watched Semini, wondering what he would say, whether he would give her the lie and deny any knowledge of it, and how she should react if he did.

But he didn’t deny it. “I am Archigos,” he said. “I need to do what seems best for the Faith, and in my opinion, the Faith would stay as broken as Cenzi’s world until that woman was gone.”

With that, Allesandra’s hand went to the cracked-globe pendant she wore, that Ana had given her. She saw Semini watching the gesture. “Cenzi would have taken her,” Allesandra said. “In His own time. And if He did not, why should you act for Him?”

He had the grace and humility to look down at the carpeted grass that was the tent’s floor. “Cenzi often requires that we act for Him,” he answered finally. “There was… a sudden opportunity, one that presented itself all unexpected and would not point back to Firenzcia, but to either the Numetodo or the Westlanders. Is that any more wrong than someone in the Holdings sending the White Stone to kill Fynn?” He stared at her.

Allesandra felt a quick stab of guilt. She pressed her lips tightly; Semini seemed to interpret the gesture as annoyance.

“I had to act immediately or not at all,” Semini continued. “I prayed to Cenzi for guidance, and I felt I was answered. And at the time, A’Hirzg, you and I were not…” He let the next word hang there, silent. He continued, but his voice was now a husk, barely audible. “Had we been, Allesandra, I would have sought your advice and taken it. Instead, I asked your vatarh, who was very ill already, and your brother.”

“You’re telling me Vatarh knew? And Fynn? They also approved of this?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Allesandra.” The regret in his voice seemed genuine. His hands were lifted, as if asking for absolution, and there was a moistness in his eyes that caught the sun filtering through the canvas. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Had I realized how much the act would hurt you, if I’d known what it would do to us, I would have stopped it. I would have. You must believe that.”

“No,” she told him, shaking her head. Semini. Fynn. And Vatarh. All of them, approving of the death of the woman who kept me alive and sane. “I don’t have to believe that at all. You would say that whether it’s the truth or not.”

“Then how can I prove it to you?”

“You can’t,” she told him. “But it’s something you should have told me long before now: in my role as A’Hirzg and the matarh of the Hirzg if nothing else. And I don’t know where that leaves us. I don’t know that at all.”

The steed was frothed with sweat as it galloped hard up the slope to where they waited, its muscular legs shivering as the rider dismounted holding a courier’s pouch. He immediately dropped to a knee in front of Jan, Allesandra, Sergei, and Semini. “Urgent news from Nessantico, my Hirzg,” he said. The man’s leathers were caked with road grime, his face and hair streaked with dirt. His voice shook with exhaustion, and he looked as if-like his mount-he were ready to collapse. He held out the pouch, his hand trembling. Jan took the pouch from the man as Allesandra waved to the attendants, hanging back a judicial few paces from the four. “Get this man some food and rest, and take care of his horse.”

Attendants scurried to obey. Jan unfolded the thick parchment inside the pouch, dropping the pouch on the ground. Allesandra watched his eyes scan the words there. Her son’s eyes widened, and he handed the paper to Allesandra silently. She understood his shock quickly; the phrases there seemed impossible.

… Kraljiki Audric has been assassinated in much the same way as Archigos Ana… Sigourney ca’Ludovici has been named Kraljica, but she has been injured in the attack… Karnor has been razed and plundered by Westlanders… Westlander army approaching Villembouchure… Garde Civile and chevarittai mustered to stop them…

She passed the message to Sergei, who read it with Semini looking intently over his shoulder. “A’Hirzg,” she heard Semini say, “this comes as a shock to me. I swear to Cenzi that I knew nothing of any of this. Audric dead…” He spread his hands in supplication. “That was not my doing, nor my intention.”

She paid no attention to his protests. She put her arm around Jan, who was staring out over the army encampment, glittering with banners and armor, dotted with gray-white tents, seething with the activity of thousands of soldiers. “What does this mean, Matarh?” Jan asked her, though she saw him looking at Sergei as well. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“It means that Cenzi has truly blessed us,” she told him. “We are moving at the right time, when our enemy is weakest.” She nearly laughed. Audric dead, ca’Ludovici injured, the attention of the Holdings given over to the Westlanders rather than looking toward Firenzcia. “This is your moment, my son. Your moment. All you have to do is seize it.”

It was her moment as well, perhaps more than her son’s, but she didn’t say that.

Jan continued to stare at the encampment. Then he shook himself, and in that moment, she saw a glimpse of his great-vatarh in him: the firm clamping of his jaw, the certainty in his eyes. It was the way the old Hirzg Jan had always looked when he’d set his mind; she remembered it well. Jan gestured to the attendants.

“Bring Starkkapitan ca’Damont to me,” he said. “I have new orders to give him.”