A Magic of Twilight

Beginnings

Ana cu’Seranta

Ana knelt down alongside the bed, smiling determinedly at the motionless, unresponsive body under the white linen sheet.

She took the woman’s hands: clammy and limp, the loose skin netted with fine wrinkles. “Matarh,” Ana whispered, then spoke her name, since Ana thought she sometimes responded better to that. “Abini, I’m here.”

Eyelids fluttered but did not open, and Abini’s fingers twitched once in Ana’s hand but failed to clasp hers in return. “It’s nearly First Call,” Ana continued, “and I’ve come to pray with you, Matarh.” The wind-horns sounded plaintively from the Old Temple dome at the same moment, muffled by distance and blurred with echoes from the intervening buildings. Ana glanced up; beyond the curtains, the sun glazed the rooftops of the city. “Do you hear the horns, Matarh? Listen to them, and I’ll pray for both of us.”

Ana placed her matarh’s hands together just under her throat, then clasped her own hands to forehead. She tried to pray, but her mind refused to calm itself. The comforting routine of the morning prayers was diluted with memories: of U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s rebukes, of her fading memories of the time before the Southern Fever left her matarh helpless and unresponsive, of the happier times before Ana had to bear the guilt of what she did nearly every morning just to keep her matarh alive.

“Forgive me, Cenzi,” she said, as she always did, wondering whether He heard, wondering when He would punish her for her impertinence- because that was what the Divolonte, the code of rules governing the Concenzia Faith, insisted must inevitably happen. Cenzi was a stern God, and He would insist that Ana pay for her impertinence in subvert-ing His intentions. “Forgive me. .”

She wondered whether she spoke to Cenzi or to her matarh.

She began to chant, the words coming unbidden: guttural nonsense syllables that were not the rigid forms U’Teni cu’Dosteau taught her.

Her hands moved with the chant, as if she were dancing with her fingers alone. Even before Vatarh had sent her to the Old Temple to become an acolyte, even before she’d begun to learn how to channel the power of Ilmodo, she’d been able to do this.

And even then, she’d known it was something she needed to hide.

She’d listened to the teni thundering their admonitions from the High Lectern enough to realize that. U’Teni cu’Dosteau, the Instruttorei a’Acolyte, was just as blunt and direct: “A teni does not thwart Cenzi’s Will unpunished. .” or “To use the Ilmodo for your own desires is forbidden. .” or “The Divolonte is clear on this. Read it, and if the harshness of it gives you chills, it should.”

Ana told herself that she wasn’t using the Ilmodo for herself, but for her matarh. She told herself that if it were truly Cenzi’s Will that Abini die, well, Cenzi certainly had the power to make that happen no matter what small efforts she might produce to keep her alive. She told herself that if Cenzi had not wanted her to do this, He would not have given her the Gift so early.

Somehow, it never quite convinced. She suspected that Cenzi had already chosen her punishment. She already knew His displeasure.

She shaped the Ilmodo now, quickly. She could feel the cold power of what the teni called the Second World rising between her moving hands, and her chant and the patterns she formed sent tendrils of energy surging toward her matarh. As the Ilmodo touched the prone body, Ana felt the familiar shock of connection. There was a hint of her matarh’s consciousness lost somewhere far below, and she felt that if she wished, she might, she might be able to pull her entirely back.

But that would have been truly wrong, and it would be too obvious.

So, as she had done for the last few years, she used just a touch of the Ilmodo, enough to ensure that her matarh would not sink any further away from life, enough for her to know that Abini would live for another few days longer.

And she let the Ilmodo go. She stopped her chanting, her hands dropped to her sides. The guilt-as always-surged over her like the spring flood of the River A’Sele, and with it came the payment for using the Ilmodo: a muscular exhaustion as severe as if she had been up all day laboring at some impossible physical task-once more, she would be fighting an insistent compulsion to sleep as she listened to U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s lectures. She clasped hands to forehead again and prayed for Cenzi’s understanding and forgiveness.

“Ana? Are you with your matarh?”

She heard her vatarh open the door to the bedroom. So quickly, Cenzi? she asked. Is this what I must bear for what I do? Ana bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let herself cry.

“I know your presence comforts your matarh,” her vatarh said softly, coming up behind her. Tomas cu’Seranta had a voice that purred and growled, and once she’d loved to hear him talk. She would curl up in his lap and ask him to tell her a story, anything, just so she could lay her head against his broad chest and listen to the rumble of his deep voice.

Once. .

She felt his hand on her shoulder, stroking the soft fabric of her tashta where it gathered. The hand followed the curve of her spine from neck to the middle of her back. His hand slid along the curve of her hip. She closed her eyes, hearing him half-kneel alongside her. “I miss her, too,” he whispered. “I don’t know what I’d do if I were to lose you, too, my little bird.” She wouldn’t look at him, but she felt him as a warmth along her side, and now his hand slid along the tashta’s folds to where the cloth swelled over her breasts. His fingers cupped her.

She stood abruptly, and his hand dropped away. He was looking

down at the floor, not at her nor at Abini. “I have to leave for class, Vatarh,” Ana said. “U’Teni cu’Dosteau said we must be there early today. .”

Karl ci’Vliomani

“Can you imagine this in summer?” Mika ce’Gilan whispered, leaning close to Karl. His long, aquiline nose wrinkled dramatically. “I smell more sweat than perfume.”

Karl could only nod in agreement. The Kraljica’s Throne Room was crowded with supplicants. It was the second Cenzidi of the month, the day that the Kraljica accepted all supplicants-at least all those who managed to reach her in the few turns of the glass she sat on the Sun Throne. The long hall was stuffed as tightly as sweetfruit in a crate with people dressed in their best finery. The room sweltered; Karl could feel beads of perspiration gathered at his brow and running freely down his spine to soak the cloth of the bashta he wore. “It’s what all the ca’-and-cu’ are wearing this season,” the tailor had declared, but Karl could see nothing at all similar in the cut of the bashtas and tashtas nearest him.

He suspected that it was last year’s fashion at best, and that those staring appraisingly at him were snickering behind their fluttering, ornate fans. He also noted that he and Mika stood in their own little open space, as if those with ca’ or cu’ in front of their name would be contaminated if they came too close. He touched the pendant around his neck nervously-a seashell that looked as if it had been carved of stone, the plain gray rock polished from usage.

At the front of the room, the Sun Throne gleamed beneath the Kraljica Marguerite ca’Ludovici: the ruler of Nessantico and the Holdings, the great Genera a’Pace, the Wielder of the Iron Staff, the Matarh a’Dominion, who would in a few months be celebrating the Jubilee of the fiftieth year of her reign: the longest reign yet of any Kralji. Most of the people now living in the Holdings had known no other ruler. The seat of the Kralji was carved from a single massive crystal, enchanted by the first Archigos Siwel ca’Elad over three centuries ago in a way that no teni had since been able to duplicate. When someone wearing the Ring of the Kralji sat in its hard, glittering embrace, the Sun Throne gleamed a pale yellow. Karl knew there were persistent whispers that the radiance had actually vanished long ago; now, skeptics insisted, the interior light was created at need by special teni sent by the Archigos whenever the Kraljica appeared publicly on the Sun Throne. It was

certainly true, given accounts written during Archigos Siwel’s lifetime of how the throne had “shone like a true sun, blinding all with its radiance,” that the Sun Throne must have paled considerably in the intervening centuries. In full daylight, its glow could barely be seen. The swaying chandeliers overhead were decidedly necessary: even though it was nearly Second Call, the tall windows of the Throne Room were too narrow to allow much of the light to enter.

It was also true that Karl would have been able to duplicate that glow himself, had he dared to do such a thing here.

“Vajiki Tomas cu’Seranta!” Renard, the Kraljica’s ancient and wizened aide, called out the name in a wavering voice, reading from a scroll in his hand. The murmur of voices in the room went momentarily quiet. Karl saw someone moving toward the Sun Throne in response, a middle-aged man who bowed low as he approached, and Karl scowled

and sighed at the same time.

“I told you that you should have slipped Renard a siqil or two,” Mika stage-whispered. “He’s not going to call us forward.”

“I’m the Envoy a’Paeti a’Numetodo,” Karl answered. “How can he ignore us?”

“For the same reasons that the Kraljica ignored the Marque of Paeti that you sent her when you requested a private audience. She’s tied too tightly to the Concenzia Faith; she doesn’t want to contaminate herself by acknowledging heretics.”

“You’re a pessimist, Mika.”

“I’m a realist,” Mika retorted. “’I would remind you that I have been here in Nessantico for far longer than you, my friend, and I know these people all too well. I think we’re lucky to have even been allowed in the hall-it’s only your pretty title that got us past Renard. Look over there to the side. You see that man staring our way? The one in black? You can’t miss him-he has a silver nose.”

Karl lifted up on his toes, scanning the room in the direction in

which Mika had nodded. The man stood against the wall, too casually posed. When he noticed Karl’s gaze, the mustachioed lips under the metallic nose twisted in what might have been an amused smirk. He nodded faintly in Karl’s direction. “That’s Commandant ca’Rudka of the Garde Kralji,” Mika continued. “If either of us appear to be even halfway threatening, we’ll be in the Bastida faster than a fly to a dead horse. So don’t make any sudden gestures.”

“I think you’re being paranoid.”

Mika sniffed. “Things are different in the west away from Nessantico,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll wager you dinner tonight that we don’t meet the Kraljica today.”

“Done,” Karl said.

Three turns of the glass later, the Kraljica rose and everyone bowed as she left the room. Karl had yet to be called forward for his audience.

“I’m terrifically hungry,” Mika commented as those in attendance filed from the Throne Room. “How about you?”

Marguerite ca’Ludovici

The reception-as it did every month-left Marguerite exhausted and irritated. Renard, her aide, waved away the clus-

ter of servants who had accompanied them from the Throne Room.

When the door closed behind them, his stiff, proper stance finally relaxed. “Here, Margu,” Renard said as he handed her a glass of cool water freshened with slices of yellow fruit. His use of her familiar name pleased her-in this place, where no one else could hear. “I know your throat is parched.”

“And my rear is sore, as well,” Marguerite answered. She handed him her cane. “The cushion did nothing against that damned crystal.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” He chuckled. “I’ll see that it’s replaced with a more appropriate covering.” He proffered the water again, and this time she took it. She let herself sink gratefully into one of the well-padded chairs in the private reception room. The windows were opened slightly though the air still held much of winter’s nip, and the fire roaring in its hearth was welcome. Marguerite sighed. “I’m sorry, Renard. It’s my duty and I shouldn’t complain.”

“You are the Kraljica,” he told her. “You can do whatever you’d like.”

She smiled at that. Renard cu’Bellona had been with her for the bulk of her five decades as Kraljica. Marguerite might be Kraljica, but it was Renard who scheduled her life and made certain that the days ran smoothly. Brought into her service as a page at age five, he had been simply Renard Bellona, with not even a lowly ce’ before his family name, but he had shown his loyalty and intelligence and progressed over the years to his current position.

Then she had not been the “Genera a’Pace” but the “Spada Terribile,”

the Awful Sword, who brought the Outer Lands into the Holdings by negotiation when she could, and with the Garde Civile, her armies, and simple brute force when she could not. She had been young then, energetic, and full of anger at the way her vatarh had been treated as Kraljiki. She had vowed that the ca’-and-cu’ would never call her “weak,” that the chevarittai of the Holdings would never call her “cowardly.” None of them would ever call her “fool”. . not and keep their lives.

“. . Marguerite?” Renard was saying.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “You were saying?”

“I was asking if you wished to know the evening’s appointments.”

“Will it matter?” she asked, and they smiled at each other.

“The Archigos Dhosti is bringing his niece Safina to meet you at dinner,” Renard told her. “I have asked the A’Kralj to be there as well, so he might have a chance to talk with her.”

“And will he attend?”

Renard shrugged. “The A’Kralj pleaded other commitments. But if you sent word to him. .”

Marguerite shook her head. “No. If my son can’t be bothered to meet the women I suggest as good matches, then Justi will have to be satisfied when I choose a wife for him.”

Renard nodded, his face carefully neutral.

It was a full decade after her husband died that she finally took Renard into her bed. The seduction was unplanned but seemed entirely natural. They had become more than servant and mistress over the years. In private, they had long been friends, and Renard had no family of his own. “I can’t ever offer you more,” she told him that night. “I know,” he’d answered, with that gentle lifting of his lips that she loved to see. “The Kraljica might need to use marriage as a tool. I understand. I do. .”

“. . and also the planning committee for your Jubilee Celebration would like to go over their tentative arrangements with you to see if they meet your approval,” Renard was saying. “I’ve told them that you might have time tonight following your dinner with the Archigos, but I can delay them until tomorrow if you’d like.”

Marguerite waved a hand. “No, that’s fine. Let them come. I’ll listen and nod my head as long as they haven’t done anything enormously stupid.”

Renard nodded. He touched her shoulder softly, almost a caress.

Even here, alone, he was careful of the boundaries between them.

“Then I’ll send word to the committee to be prepared. And. .” He stopped. Pressed his lips together. “There is a letter from Hirzgin Greta, brought by private courier. I took the liberty of decoding it for you.”

“Bring it here.” She didn’t ask what her niece, married to the im-

petuous Jan ca’Vorl, the Hirzg of Firenzcia, had said; she could see from Renard’s suddenly-clouded face that it was not good news. She unfolded the paper Renard handed her and read the underlined words.

She shook her head and let the paper drop. “Thirty Numetodo publicly executed in Brezno. . A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca goes too far, and the Hirzg encourages him. Does the Archigos know?” she asked.

“I suspect the news will have reached him through his own sources,” Renard said. “I will draft a strongly-worded letter to Hirzg ca’Vorl from you. I’m sure the Archigos will be doing the same for A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca.”

“I’m certain of that,” Marguerite replied. “And I’m sure the families of the slain Numetodo will be very pleased with a strongly worded letter.”

Ana cu’Seranta

“No!” U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s thin, oak pointing rod hissed through the air and rapped once on Ana’s moving hands. “Not that way. Pay attention, Ana. You need to create a better pattern. Wider. Larger.”

Her knuckles ached from the blow, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of stopping. But the instructor’s reprimand sent Ana into momentary silence as she glared at the elderly teni, her voice falter-ing in the midst of the chant she and the other acolytes were reciting.

The words were not in her own language, but in the teni-speech that could shape the Ilmodo, and were difficult enough to remember without cu’Dosteau’s scoldings. With the stumble, she felt the Ilmodo-the gift of Cenzi, the energy which fed the teni-spells-begin to slip away from her control. She grasped for the Ilmodo with her mind; as she did, odd new words came to her, words that she knew not at all but which somehow felt right for the task, the same words that would come to her when she was with her matarh. The sounds of the words was similar to teni-speech, but the accent was subtly different. She whispered them, not wanting U’Teni cu’Dosteau to hear how she had changed his chant, and let her hands fall back into the spell-pattern.

Wider. Larger. U’Teni cu’Dosteau treated them like children just learning their letters. In the acolyte’s hall, he acted as if he had a ca’ in front of his name instead of a cu’, even with the acolytes whose family names did begin with ca’, even with Safina ca’Millac, the niece of the Archigos. Cu’Dosteau acted as if he were the Archigos of Concenzia himself. The joke among the acolytes was that cu’Dosteau had enchanted his head so that he could see behind him. He certainly seemed to miss nothing that happened, especially where Ana was concerned.

He seemed to be always watching her, especially now as they all approached the time when they would either be given their Marques to become a teni, or receive the dreaded Note of Severance.

Wider. Larger. U’Teni cu’Dosteau was wrong. Ana could sense it.

She could nearly see the Ilmodo snaking around her body, and she knew that if instead she tightened the hand-pattern, if she made it smaller rather than larger, she could shape the Ilmodo more carefully.

The task was simple enough: U’Teni cu’Dosteau had brought the class down to the basement of the Archigos’ Temple, where several e’teni of the temple had set a huge coal fire ablaze in the furnace. The class was to use the Ilmodo to smother it-it was a task that they might have to perform if they were eventually assigned to be one of the many fire-teni, who had more than once saved the city from burning down, especially in the crowded Oldtown district. The class finished their chant just as Ana caught up with them, their final gestures causing the flames to shudder and dim, although the coals still gleamed mockingly.

Ana finished her spell a breath afterward, her hands moving in a quick, subtle gesture that changed the outline of the Ilmodo, focusing it.

Air rushed away from the remaining blue flames and they went out with an audible whoomp, the noise so loud that all of them took an involuntary step back as a hot breeze laden with the smell of coal ash moved past them and fluttered the green robes of the e’teni. Cu’Dosteau alone didn’t seem to react. He remained standing near Ana, the tip of his pointing rod on the stone-flagged floor and his hands cupped over the handle, his teni-robes looking more brown than green in the sudden dimness of the room. He stared at Ana with dark, speculative eyes from under the hair-rimmed cave of his brow. She lowered her head so that she didn’t have to meet his gaze. The weariness that always came from using the Ilmodo made her want to do nothing more than sink to the floor entirely, especially after her use of it this morning with her matarh.

A few of the acolytes already had done so, drained by their effort.

Using the Ilmodo always came with a cost. Cenzi made the teni pay for His gift. It was the first lesson they had all learned, three years ago now.

“This is why most of you will not receive a Marque from the Archigos,” cu’Dosteau commented as the e’teni began to chant and the coals reignited-it wouldn’t do for the Archigos to be cold in his dressing chambers. In the renewed flames, cu’Dosteau’s shadow shuddered on the wall nearest Ana. “A single experienced fire-teni would have been able to douse those flames alone-a necessary skill, or half the houses in the city might have burned to the foundations by now. Yet it took the whole group of you, and you very nearly didn’t accomplish it. You had ample time to review the proper patterns and the correct chant-words, and yet several of you were stumbling over them.” He tapped a long forefinger to his right ear. “I listen, and I see. And I’m not impressed today. Some of you-” He hesitated, and Ana glanced up to find him looking at her before his gaze swept over the rest of the acolytes. “-seem to feel that the Ilmodo will come to you no matter how you wave your hands about. I assure you that would be a mistake.

Vajica cu’Seranta, might you agree with that statement?”

Ana’s head came up. She heard Safina ca’Millac snicker, then go abruptly silent as cu’Dosteau cast her a baleful glance. “Yes, U’Teni,”

Ana answered quickly. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Cu’Dosteau sniffed, as if amused. “That’s enough for today,” he told them. “We’re already late for the Archigos’ service. I know you’re all tired from using the Ilmodo, even as poorly as you did, but see if you can manage to stay awake until after the Admonition. Then go home and sleep. Tomorrow I expect to see evidence that you have actual brains inside those skulls, as unlikely as that appears at the moment.”

Dhosti ca’Millac

There were few people other than U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s class in the main nave of the temple: two or three of the ca’-and-cu’ families in their fashionable bashtas and tashtas, several dozen ce’, ci’, or unranked citizens hanging farther back in the shadows of the vaulted interior. Archigos Dhosti ca’Millac climbed the small set of stairs placed judiciously behind the High Lectern that stood in front of the quire; even when he stood on the top step, his balding head-adorned with a gold circlet with a riven globe-barely topped the wooden structure.

Those below him saw mostly the hairless summit of his head.

Dhosti had once been a lowly street performer, a dwarf gymnast in a traveling circus in the desert wastes in southern Namarro, with no denotation of status before his name at all. But a young teni happened to attend one of the traveling circus’ performances and had seen in the misshapen young man’s startling performances of strength and agility the fact that Dhosti was tapping, unconsciously and poorly, the power that those of Concenzia called “Ilmodo,” the unseen energy the teni shaped through their deep faith and ritualized chants. Dhosti Millac, as he was known then, was brought to the nearest temple and converted to the Faith-easy in the Holdings, where Concenzia was the state religion, and anyone who wished to become cu’ or ca’ must be one of the Faithful. The promise glimpsed in Dhosti by that teni-none other than U’Teni cu’Dosteau himself, then a humble e’teni-was found to be greater than anyone expected. Over the course of several decades, the dwarf had risen through the ranks from e’teni to his installation as Archigos eighteen years ago.

Eighteen years as Archigos. Dhosti felt each of those years tenfold.

Not too long from now, someone else would take the globe of Cenzi from his dead hands and wear the green-and-white robes. Those around Dhosti were constantly reminding him of his mortality, reminding him that he had yet to designate someone to be the next Archigos, reminding him that far too many of the a’teni-those teni just under Dhosti, who controlled the largest cities of the Holdings-didn’t agree with Dhosti’s views and found him “soft.” They wanted the Concenzia Faith to wield its power and strength, they felt that the proper response to heretical statements was not discussion and negotiation, but the measures outlined in the harsh Commandments of the Divolonte.

Dhosti sighed, as much from the exertion of climbing the steps as from his thoughts.

He looked over the worn, polished oak of the High Lectern toward the small congregation gathered below him. He nodded faintly to U’Teni cu’Dosteau and also to his niece Safina, there in the midst of the acolytes, and began his Admonition.

“We of Concenzia know that the Toustour is the word of Cenzi, given to us so that we would understand Him. To guide us along the right path, our predecessors within the Faith created a companion to the scrolls of the Toustour, the Divolonte, and for long years, they have both served us. But we should always remember that while the Toustour was inspired by Vucta through Her son Cenzi, and while the Divolonte in turn was inspired by the Toustour, the Divolonte comes from our minds: the minds of frail people, not from Vucta or Cenzi or even the Moitidi who in turn created us. Just as the Moitidi which came from Cenzi were imperfect, so too are we. Even more so. In fact, we of the Faith must constantly look to the Divolonte we have made, and change it in response to the world in which we find ourselves. .”

It was an old Admonition, one that Dhosti had proclaimed so often that it required no thought on his part, and-he could see from the nodding heads before him-that those who came to the temple no longer even heard it when he spoke. He saw U’Teni cu’Dosteau put his hand over his mouth to cover a small, injudicious yawn.

You bore even yourself, old man. Dhosti wondered whether this was what Cenzi had intended for him: a long, slow, and sleepy decline from the vigor of his younger years. He wondered if this was why he’d fought so hard to become Archigos.

Half a turn of the glass later, he ended the Admonition and gave Cenzi’s Blessing to the congregation. They left the temple gratefully, the acolytes especially half-running from before the High Lectern as soon as they were dismissed. Dhosti moved slowly across the quire toward the vestry, his head bent down because of his curved spine. Kenne, his secretary and an o’teni despite his relative youth, took Dhosti’s arm, helping him from the dais. “Archigos,” Kenne whispered urgently. “There is news.”

Dhosti raised bristling white eyebrows as he regarded Kenne’s somber face. “Not good news, then. The Kraljica?”

“The Kraljica is fine. The news comes from Brezno.”

“Ah. What has A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca done?”

Dhosti could see from Kenne’s plain, round face that the guess had hit close to the mark. But Kenne’s next words nearly sent him stagger-ing to the carpeted tiles. “A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca and Hirzg ca’Vorl have captured and executed several Numetodo in Brezno Square.”

“He dares. .” Dhosti sputtered. The teni attendants at the vestry entrance looked at him quizzically, and he waved them away. They scattered as Kenne helped Dhosti into the vestry and closed the door.

Dhosti sat in the nearest chair and looked up at Kenne. His heart pounded against the cage of his ribs, and his breath was tight. His weariness had vanished, and he felt a burning in his stomach as if he’d just taken a glass of firebrew. “Tell me,” he said to Kenne. “Tell me what you know.”

Kenne nodded. “The report is from O’Teni ci’Narsa, who is the Hirzgin’s personal teni. He says that A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca had confessions taken from the captives in the Bastida Brezno first. Evidently many of the Numetodo, when they were paraded out, could barely walk. They were displayed to the crowds while the charges were read and sentences given. At least five of the prisoners were drawn before their heads were taken. The crowd was much amused, according to ci’Narsa.” The teni swallowed hard; Dhosti could see him imagining the scene. “The bodies were gibbeted on the square as a warning to any other Numetodo in the city, and the Hirzg and A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca both made speeches to the crowds. There were at least thirty killed, from the report that came here.”

He could see the bodies. In their black iron cages, their skeletal faces stared at him. “I did this,” Dhosti said quietly.

“Archigos?”

“I did this,” Dhosti repeated. “A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca has made no secret that he opposes my feelings toward the Numetodo, but now he goes beyond words to actions. It is my fault: I have been asleep here. If I were a stronger Archigos, he would not have dared.”

“You can’t blame yourself for A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca’s actions, Archigos. Only he is responsible.”

Dhosti nodded, wanting to believe Kenne, and knowing he could not. He could see the dead in Brezno Square, and all of them seemed to be looking directly at him. My fault. .

This was Cenzi’s warning. This was Cenzi telling him that he had been drifting, that if he continued to drift, far worse than this would happen.

My fault. .

He promised Cenzi that the sign would not be forgotten. He began to breathe again, but the blaze inside him remained. “Draft a letter to ca’Cellibrecca,” he told Kenne. “Make it clear to him that I am not pleased by this. And tell him that I expect him to come to Nessantico for the Kraljica’s Jubilee, and that we will talk further then.”

“I will do that,” Kenne answered. “Here, let me help you with your robes, and I will send for one of the e’teni to accompany you to your apartments. You can rest there until I bring you the draft.”

“No,” Dhosti told him. “We will work on this together. In my office.

I’ve been resting too long, Kenne. It’s time to wake up once more.”