A Magic of Twilight

Maneuvers

Jan ca’Vorl

“. . you always have to be aware of your ground. Having to charge uphill is a tremendous disadvantage.”

“Though we had to do exactly that at Lake Cresci on the Escarpment,” Jan interjected. “It was a tremendous slog, but the tactic worked because they weren’t expecting it of us.”

O’Offizier ci’Arndt seemed to levitate to his feet and salute at the appearance of the Hirzg, with Vajica Mara accompanying him. Allesandra jumped from her seat at the table where her toy soldiers were set and rushed to Jan. “Vatarh! Georgi has been teaching me. He says I’d make an excellent Starkkapitan.” The young offizier blushed at that, still holding his salute.

“Take your ease, O’Offizier,” Jan told him. “I appreciate the time you’re taking with Allesandra, and she enjoys your company.”

“Thank you, Hirzg. She learns quickly, truly.”

Jan smiled at him. The young man-he couldn’t be much more than twenty-was good-looking enough, and he could see the proprie-

tary way Allesandra regarded him. He wondered if he’d be well-advised to send the o’offizier away soon; sometimes, Allesandra acted distressingly older than her actual age, and there was no way that a ci’, no matter how good an offizier he might be, would be a suitable infatuation for the Hirzg’s daughter.

Mara was looking at him, too, and that amused Jan. “You may go, O’Offizier,” he told ci’Arndt. “I’ll relieve you here.”

The young man saluted again and left the tent. Jan sat next to Allesandra and glanced up at Mara. “You should probably be returning to the Hirzgin, Mara,” he said. “There are proprieties we still need to observe.” He took her hand and kissed her upturned palm.

Mara smiled at him and at Allesandra. “I understand, my Hirzg,”

she said as she curtsied. She left the tent in a flurry of perfume and swaying, brightly-colored cloth.

“Mara is much nicer than Matarh,” Allesandra ventured as Jan watched Mara depart, his gaze leaving her reluctantly.

“I can understand how you would feel that way, Allesandra,” Jan told her, returning his attention to her. He glanced at the soldiers in their array on the table, tousling his daughter’s hair idly. “Allesandra, I would like to talk to you.”

“You sound so serious, Vatarh.”

“I am,” he told her. He went to the opening of the tent and glanced out-Markell had placed guards just far enough away to be out of earshot, and Jan smiled. The sunlight would betray anyone who tried to sneak up close enough to the rear to listen. He went back inside and sat again. “Allesandra, you were right when you said that I shouldn’t marry Mara, even if I could. She is. .” He stopped, choosing his words carefully. “. . someone whose company I enjoy, but she is not my equal, nor yours, nor even your matarh’s. She gives me what she can, and in turn I can give her some little favors now and then. I know you understand.

She and I are. .” He paused, and Allesandra hurried into the gap with a smile.

“Like me and Georgi, Vatarh?”

Jan laughed aloud at that. “You’re too perceptive, my little bird,” he said. “Allesandra, even if your brother Toma had survived the Southern Fever, I think you would be the one I named as my heir.”

Allesandra grinned, though there was sadness lurking there.

She pushed back at the curls around her forehead. “I do miss Toma, Vatarh.”

“I do too,” Jan told her. “Very much. But I look at you-” he glanced again at the miniature armies laid out on the table, at the placement of the archers and war-teni, the infantry and the chevarittai “-and I know that you, more than Toma ever did, think as I do. And you’re growing older faster than I can believe, my darling. So. . I need to speak to you as Hirzg to A’Hirzg, because things will happen very soon.”

“What things?” Her round face twisted, as if she wasn’t certain whether she should be pleased or upset.

“Nothing I can tell you yet, though you’ll know when they happen.”

He plucked one of the soldiers from the table: an infantryman with his sword raised in mid-strike. “If your enemy were looking for a threat coming from another direction, and you were the starkkapitan with your army placed ready to move, what do you think your Georgi would tell you to do?”

“He would say to attack quickly, before they could react,” Allesandra answered, and Jan chuckled again.

“He would be right,” Jan said. “That is exactly what I would do.” He set the soldier back down on the table. “Exactly.”

Ana cu’Seranta

Ana rubbed the paper between her fingers. A small package had come to her apartments the morning after the terrible events of the Gschnas, the seal on the stiff wrapping paper still attached, with a clamshell insignia pressed into the red wax. Inside the tiny box had been a stone clamshell like the one Vajiki ci’Vliomani had shown her the night before, only this one was suspended from a fine silver chain.

Also inside was the folded note she held now. Despite her sadness, she’d smiled momentarily, remembering the ball and Envoy ci’Vliomani, their conversation and their dancing, but the pleasure of the memory was obliterated the next moment by guilt. How could she feel anything but sadness from the Gschnas after what had happened to the Kraljica?

Still. .

She wondered whether someone had opened the package: she

could have done it herself easily with a touch of the Ilmodo magic. She wondered whether Archigos Dhosti had seen the short message:

You must know that I had nothing to do with what happened last night.

That is the truth. If you would like to know more, meet me at Oldtown Center just after the lamps have been lit. Wear the shell over your clothing.

The best way to learn the truth is by seeing it with your own eyes. After what happened at the Gschnas, there may be very little time.

There had been no signature.

Ana wasn’t certain what she should feel or what she should do. A note from the Numetodo Envoy, offering to meet. . Would the Archigos expect her to tell him about this? For that matter, if he did already know and she remained silent, then what might he think?

She crumpled the note and the box and flung them into the fireplace, watching the edges turn brown and then erupt into flame. She picked up the shell on its chain and twirled it in front of her. She thought of putting it in one of the drawers in her desk, or perhaps hiding it among her clothing. She examined the shell, the grooves so well-defined in the stone, as if they had been sculpted. She lifted the chain and placed it around her neck. She glanced in the mirror as she touched the shell, and then placed it under her robes. No, it wasn’t obvious there. “Watha,” she called, “has the Archigos arrived yet?”

Watha entered, bowing and giving Ana the sign of Cenzi. “He should be here any moment, O’Teni,” she said. Ana saw her eyes flicker over the table and around the room-looking for the box, she was certain. The woman licked her lips as if she were about to speak, then evidently thought better of it. “I’ll send Tari out to watch for the carriage,” she said at last.

“Thank you, Watha.” The woman bowed again and left the room.

Ana touched the shell again under the folds of her robe as she looked in the mirror. A plain, weary face stared back at her, with brown circles under the eyes. She remembered nothing of last night beyond her attempt to heal the Kraljica. All the events of the Gschnas were overlaid with a sense of unreality, as if it were something that had happened to another Ana. The payment for her use of the Ilmodo had been severe; her body still ached and the weariness touched her limbs despite a long sleep; it was already nearly noon and she felt as if she’d slept only moments.

“The Kraljica. .” she’d asked through cracked, dry lips as soon as she’d awakened. Watha had been there, sitting on the chair at the foot of her bed.

“Is she. .”

“The Archigos sent a messenger around earlier, O’Teni,” she’d answered.

“He said that the Kraljica is unchanged, and to tell you that you’ll be seeing her midday. He’ll send a carriage. We were all terribly worried when we heard what happened, O’Teni, especially after what nearly happened with the Archigos.”

Ana sighed, looking in the mirror. She knew that the Archigos intended her to use the Ilmodo once again today on the Kraljica, and she wasn’t certain she could do that, not as drained as she was. And if she did, then how would she feel when the lamps were lit around the city.

Would she even be awake?

She touched the shell under her robes once more. Ana had certainly felt attraction before, certainly, though that affection had rarely been returned-it seemed to be reserved for prettier women than her.

But Vajiki ci’Vliomani. . Karl. .

It could all be pretense, her mirror image seemed to be telling her with the frown she saw. He’s a Numetodo; you’re an o’teni. What you felt could be pretext, all one-sided yet again, so that he has a door into the Faith.

He could be intending to corrupt you. Be careful. Be very careful.

“I will be,” she said to the mirror.

“O’Teni?” a voice questioned from the door, and she started, turning her head to see Sunna there. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Is the carriage here?”

“Yes,” Sunna said. “I told the teni to let the Archigos know that you’ll be right down.”

The Archigos said little beyond the required greeting until the teni driver closed the carriage door and began his chant to start the vehicle rolling through the streets. The carriage lurched over the cobbles as it turned onto the Avi a’Parete, people on the street bowing and giving the sign of Cenzi as they passed, their faces solemn. Ana knew what the gossip of the city must be like. The Archigos sighed deeply. “I was able to learn something last night,” he said. “Do you remember ci’Recroix’s painting in the Kraljica’s parlor? The one of the family?”

“Yes, Archigos. It’s a very enchanting painting that makes me want to keep staring at it. The woman with the baby. . I half expect to hear the infant suckling.”

“The family he portrayed is dead. Every one of them,” the Archigos told her. “They died, I’m told, within a day after the painting was completed, of some tragic and unknown disease. Strangely, that seems to be the case with several of the subjects of ci’Recroix’s paintings over the last four or five years, though not before: the person whose portrait he captured suddenly and unexpectedly died. A series of tragic coincidences, which didn’t come to light since ci’Recroix never accepted a commission in the same city twice.”

Ana’s chest felt as if someone were sitting on it. “I don’t think it’s coincidence, Archigos.”

The dwarf sniffed. “Neither do I, Ana. Neither do I. I think ci’Recroix has been. . practicing.”

“But why, and for his own reasons or for someone else’s?”

“That I don’t know, but I will find out. I have my suspicions, however.”

“The Numetodo?” Ana asked hesitantly, thinking of the note she’d received. She was afraid to even glance at the Archigos, afraid that he would see what she was hiding.

She felt more than saw the Archigos shrug. “Possibly, but I doubt that. The Kraljica is more likely to be sympathetic to the Numetodo than the A’Kralj, after all. Why, do you know something about them that would lead you to suspect them? I saw you with Envoy ci’Vliomani last night.”

He was watching her. She could feel his gaze on her, and she stared out the window of the carriage rather than look at him. If he knows about the note, if he’s read it, then I should tell him now so he knows that I won’t keep secrets from him. .

She knew she should open herself to him, but even as she started to speak, another inner voice objected. If you tell him and he knew nothing, he won’t let you go. He’ll make certain that Envoy ci’Vliomani is kept far away from you, and you’ll never know if anything he’s said or anything you might have felt is true. . “No,” she said to the window. “I was only speculating, that’s all. You’re right, of course, Archigos. Envoy ci’Vliomani told me that he was looking forward to meeting the Kraljica, and I believe he was sincere in that.” She forced herself to turn back to the Archigos. There was nothing in his wizened face that suggested he might be disappointed in her or that she had failed a test set her. “If not the Numetodo, then who?” she asked.

The Archigos only shook his head. “I won’t say. Not without more proof-proof that I fully expect is forthcoming. I’ve told Commandant ca’Rudka what I’ve learned, and he has started his own investigation.

The commandant has. .” The Archigos pressed his lips together momentarily. “. . sources and ways of gaining information I do not.”

Ana shivered, remembering the man and the sense of unspoken menace that exuded from him. She could imagine the ways to which the Archigos referred. “And the Kraljica?” she asked. “How is she this morning?”

The Archigos shook his head. “No better. Somewhat worse, perhaps. Renard wasn’t optimistic. She’s remained unconscious since the incident, and no one can rouse her.”

“Archigos, I don’t know if I can. Last night drained me so deeply.”

He reached out with his small, malformed hand and patted hers.

“I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t feel you can do, Ana. The choice is yours-yours and Cenzi’s.”

“And if she dies?”

The Archigos looked at her sharply, then frowned. “If she dies, Ana, then I fear for Nessantico. I truly do.”

Karl ci’Vliomani

“If she dies, we’re doomed. Utterly doomed.”

“It’s not that dire, Mika,” Karl answered. The tavern was cold despite the roaring fire in the large stone hearth near their table. The walls were laced with shadows and smoke, and the inn smelled of soot and ash from the poor ventilation of the flue. Despite the noon sun outside, the shuttered windows kept the tavern in perpetual dusk. The ale in the tankard in front of him was sour and too infused with hops for Karl’s taste. He longed for the malty, dark, and thick stouts and porters of home. Beyond the tankard, Mika looked frightened and worried, leaning forward to whisper harshly across the table.

“No? Did your dancing with the Archigos’ new toy go so well? You mean to say that you don’t foresee bodies hanging from gibbets here in Nessantico when the A’Kralj becomes the Kraljiki? Well, I do, Karl. I see them very clearly, and I see your face and mine on two of the bodies.”

“This wasn’t our fault. We both know that.”

“Right. That will be a great comfort to my surviving relations, I’m sure. I’ll make sure it’s carved on my gravestone: It wasn’t his fault. ”

With a disgusted growl, Mika sat back in his chair and downed his beer in one long gulp. “And you invited your toy to the meeting tonight?”

“Mika.” Now Karl leaned forward over the scarred, grimy tabletop. “I’m going to ask you just once, politely, not to refer to O’Teni cu’Seranta that way. I won’t ask you a second time.”

Mike started to retort, then swallowed whatever he’d intended to say. His gaze drifted away from Karl. “I’m sorry,” Mika said. “I’m terrified by what’s happened, Karl. I have family here in the city; you don’t.

It’s not just what they’d do to me; it’s what would happen to them.”

That’s why it’s all the more important that we meet with O’Teni cu’Seranta. The Archigos isn’t A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca, and maybe she can make the Archigos hear us. I came here to plead the case for tolerance with the Kraljica; if she’s gone, then I’ll go to Concenzia again and-” Karl stopped. The door to the tavern opened, flooding the room with light. There were growls and curses from the patrons until the figure outlined there shut the door again. Karl had shaded his eyes, though it hadn’t helped much: wild splotches of color chased each other over his field of vision, and he thought he saw, impossibly, a glint of metal in the middle of the man’s face. Through the welter of afterimages, the figure looked around, then fixed on them, striding up to their table.

“Cenzi’s balls,” Mika cursed, his chair scraping and falling backward as he rose, his hand going to the knife on his belt. There was an answering ring of steel as the figure drew a sword from his scabbard. Even before Karl could react, Mika was pressed back to the wall with the point at his throat. In the attacker’s other hand, a knife blade flashed, pointed at Karl.

The intruder’s nose was silver.

Ca’Rudka clucked twice scoldingly at Karl, who started to speak as his hand lifted. “I really wouldn’t do that,” he said, and the point of his sword pressed harder against Mika’s throat, dimpling the skin. Mika lifted his chin, his mouth open, his eyes wide and frightened. “He’ll be dead before you can finish, Envoy. I’m faster than your spell, I promise you.”

“Commandant,” Karl said, swallowing the release word that was in his own throat and forcing himself to remain still. The point of ca’Rudka’s knife gleamed a few inches from his chest; his sword remained at Mika’s throat. The pressure of the unreleased spell made Karl grimace. His head pounded. “I apologize for my friend. Here in Oldtown, a little paranoia is a survival tactic, as I’m sure you realize.”

There was a commotion at the door; he heard several other people enter and the sound of their drawn weapons, but he didn’t dare look away. He thought he glimpsed blue and gold in his peripheral vision.

“Commandant?” he tip of ca’Rudka’s sword withdrew slightly, leaving behind a mark that drooled blood. Mika touched his fingertip to the tiny wound and looked at the smear of red, his eyes still saucered.

“Mika.” Karl caught his friend’s gaze and nodded his head toward the chair he’d overturned. “Sit down, and don’t move your hands- either to your knife or to make a spell. Commandant, will you take a chair with us? Can I order you a pint of ale? The local brew isn’t quite up to the Isle’s standards, but. .” Slowly, deliberately, Karl sat back down in his own chair. He put his hands on the table where ca’Rudka could see them.

He saw ca’Rudka’s tight-lipped smile through his clearing vision.

The commandant was still watching Mika, though now he lowered the knife that had threatened Karl. After a breath, the tip of his thin saber dropped and he sheathed both weapons. He waved to the men at the door-Garde Kralji-and they bowed and retreated, though they left the door open. No one in the tavern objected this time.

Ca’Rudka took a chair from the nearest table and turned it backward before he sat-Karl realized suddenly that it was a fighter’s move: there was no back to block him if he decided to stand and retreat suddenly or to draw his sword again, and the chair itself would be easy to pick up as a defensive shield. Across the table, Mika sat gingerly, rubbing at the wound on his neck. “Too early in the day for ale,” ca’Rudka answered easily, as if conversing with old friends. “It’s not good for digestion.”

“Nor would be sitting in a cell in the Bastida, I suspect,” Karl answered. “Is that where I’m bound, Commandant?”

“Have you done something deserving of such punishment, Envoy?”

Ca’Rudka folded his arms on the chair’s back and leaned forward, the smile still playing on his lips. “Or perhaps you hired someone to do it for you?”

“I had nothing to do with the Kraljica’s collapse, Commandant.

Nothing. Nor did any Numetodo. This is not what any of us wanted.

Quite the opposite.”

Ca’Rudka stared at him for a breath, silent. At last, he gave a faint nod. “Yet the Archigos tells me that the Kraljica was attacked with a spell, Envoy, and not a spell like those the teni use. The rumors I hear of the Numetodo. .”

“. . are much exaggerated,” Karl told him. “You just saw that demonstrated a moment ago, Commandant. If we were as powerful as people seem to believe, we would have burned your body to a cinder in the instant you drew your sword or turned you into a clucking chicken. Or we’d have hidden our presence so well that you wouldn’t have known where we sat drinking. Seeing that I could do none of those things, then I doubt that I have the ability to harm the Kraljica.”

“This is my city, Envoy. It’s my business to know certain people within it and where I might find them. But let’s not be disingenuous.

We both know that the Numetodo play with the Ilmodo, despite the in-terdiction against such meddling in the Divolonte. Or are you claiming that the Numetodo attack on the Archigos was just a parlor trick?”

“Everyone also saw how easily a mere acolyte turned that fool’s spell, Commandant. If I’d used the Scath Cumhacht at the Gschnas, I would have been seen and heard doing so and the Archigos or A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca or any of the other dozens of teni there would have noticed it, don’t you think? And if we had the ability to plant a triggered spell that powerful, I assure you I wouldn’t have made myself so visible in the crowd.”

“No, I doubt you would have,” ca’Rudka answered. “Which is why you’re not headed for the Bastida already. But I think you understand why I would need to ask, and to watch your face as you answered.” The smile tightened and faded. Karl could see his distorted reflection in the polished nostrils of the commandant’s nose. “I consider myself a good judge of character, Envoy. I find that I like you. I do. You’re unfortunate in your choice of companions-” that with a glance at Mika, “-and your loyalties are suspect, but I like you. I’d hate to see you, well, suffer for your choices.”

“I would say we are in agreement with that final sentiment, Commandant. So how might I avoid that?”

Ca’Rudka’s hand curled and lifted. Drifted down again. “It may be that you can’t, Envoy. So much is in flux at the moment. I’m only a tool in the hand of the Kraljica, after all-or the Kraljiki, should the A’Kralj take the throne-and I do what they ask me to do.”

“Even if innocents are hurt.”

The smile returned. “I find that, like those who give me my orders, I don’t really care whether a few innocents suffer as long as Nessantico herself is protected.”

“The way innocents were butchered in Brezno?” Mika interjected.

“Did their blood and their torment protect Nessantico? Are the Holdings and Concenzia better for the display of their tortured bodies?”

Ca’Rudka didn’t answer, only flicked his gaze over to Mika for a moment before returning his attention to Karl. “I would suggest, Envoy, that you leave Nessantico now. Your diplomatic mission is over at this point. Leave as soon as you can. Today.” With an abrupt and lithe movement, ca’Rudka stood, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I can’t,” Karl told him. “I have my own orders that I have to fulfill.

You can understand that, Commandant.”

A nod. “I can. Then I’ve done all I can do for you, Envoy. I can’t protect you. The rest is in the hands of Cenzi.”

“That’s something else we’ll have to disagree upon,” Karl answered.

This time, ca’Rudka’s smile seemed almost genuine. He nodded again, deeper this time, and turned. He left the tavern, closing the door behind him. Slowly, as false darkness settled around the patrons once more, the sound of conversations swirled through the smoke-tinged air.

“So the man with the silver nose rather likes you,” Mika said. “How interesting.”

Karl was still staring at the door. He could still feel the tension in his body, a vibration so strong that he wondered it wasn’t audible. Mika rubbed at his wounded throat.

“Shut up, Mika,” Karl said. “Or next time I’ll just let him run you through.”

Edouard ci’Recroix

Edouard sat perched on a rock on the banks of the A’Sele not far downriver from Pre a’Fleuve. Leave Nessantico by the Avi a’Firenzcia, his contact had told him. But then follow the flow of the A’Sele.

I will meet you on the day after Gschnas where we first met, on the river below the chateau, once we know that you’ve done your part.

Edouard had followed the instructions, abandoning his horse at a small village, then stealing a small boat to take him down the River Vaghian to the A’Sele, where he traveled once more through Nessantico, passing under the Pontica Mordei and the Pontica Kralji in the night before leaving the walls behind for the last time.

Now he sat on the bank with his sketchbook open on his lap and a stick of charcoal in his hand. A dove sat on the branch of a willow bending to the water near him, and he quickly sketched the outlines of the bird and the tree. The drawing came easily-and as the charcoal flowed around the shadows of the bird, he closed his eyes, whispering the words that opened that place deep within himself, the place the old teni had shown him. .

“The Numetodo. .” the ancient had told him, his voice blurred by the few teeth still left in his gums and the phlegm in his throat. But that face: Edouard had come across the man in a run-down inn far from any of the cities, and he’d been fascinated by the lines, by the great hooked nose and the complexity of the channels running from the corner of his eyes and his mouth, the strands of white hair wisping from the spotted scalp. There was great beauty in the man’s ugliness, and Edouard was striving to capture it in his painting.

“They almost have it right. I discovered it myself. It’s not faith in Cenzi that controls the Ilmodo. No. .” The man had shaken his head. “I was once an o’teni. Did you know that? I was in the service of the temple in Chivasso, and I found out the truth of things before I’d even heard of the Numetodo.” The man spit on the floor, a huge splotch of mucus that darkened the sawdust on the boards of the floor. He went silent then, for so long that Edouard had wondered whether he was asleep with his eyes open.

“What’s this truth?” he’d asked the old man at last. “What happened?”

“There was a girl there,” he said. “Arial, her name was. Just a ce’, one of the servants there in the Temple. But she had a fair face and a full figure, and we became lovers. It was wrong, but we didn’t care. I learned that her family was from Boail and-like them-she didn’t believe in Cenzi at all. They worshiped some minor Moitidi, who they were convinced was the only god, She would watch me use the Ilmodo-it was my task to light the temple every night-and she’d ask me to show her how I did it. I told her what I’d always been told myself: that it was impossible, that to use the Ilmodo required much training and a deep faith, that it wasn’t something that those not blessed by Cenzi could do, that the sorcerers and witches who claimed to be able to use magic were liars and abominations who had been seduced by the Moitidi who survived Cenzi’s purge. She nodded and said she understood, but she was listening to me and watching me, and one night I saw her. She was using the Chant of Light, and there was cold fire between her hands as she spoke, and I knew then, even as I called for the a’teni, even as I betrayed her, that what I been taught was wrong. There were those who could shape the Ilmodo without believing in Cenzi, and that. . that shook the very foundations of my faith and tore them down.”

He went silent again for a time, then licked his lips and began again.

“They cut off her hands and took out her tongue as the Divolonte requires, so that she could never use the Ilmodo again. I watched as they tortured her, trying to convince myself that I’d done what Cenzi had wanted me to do, but my faith. . my faith was already shaken, already failing. But every night, I could still light the temple, even though the words to Cenzi meant nothing to me, even though I doubted my faith and my beliefs. I told myself that Cenzi was showing His mercy, that He wanted me to come back to Him and that was why I could still shape the Ilmodo, but my faith continued to fail, until I found I didn’t believe at all. I left, finally, because I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy and the lies I spoke every day. I left, and Cenzi has punished me ever since.”

The man’s voice was a bare whisper when he said that, and he glanced at the canvas before Edouard. “You’ve the Gift,” the old man had said. He touched Edouard’s head, then his hands. “You’re using the Ilmodo even though you don’t know it. It flows from you out onto the canvas. Not many can do that.”

“Show me what you showed Arial,” Edouard had said suddenly. “Show me the truth.”

The ancient had protested and argued, but in the end he’d agreed. He’d taught Eduoard how to open the place inside so that he could feel the Ilmodo, and Edouard in turn had learned that his Gift was indeed special. The old teni was dead when Edouard left, but the painting, the old man’s portrait. .

It was the best painting he’d ever done. The face that stared out from the canvas was so genuine, so compelling. .

The old man was dead, but it was not the last time that Edouard would see him or hear him. Oh, no, not the last time at all.

Edouard let the Ilmodo flow uninterrupted: out from his fingers, through the charcoal stick to the paper, and from there radiating out to the bird. He could see the bird in his mind, snared in the radiance of the Ilmodo. He could feel its heart fluttering and its shivering body, and he let that pass through him onto the paper.

He heard the soft fall of the bird onto the grass, and opened his eyes to see its perfect form captured on the paper.

“It’s gorgeous, as I would expect.” He heard the voice from behind him, the man’s approach masked by the sound of the breezes in the willows and the rush of the A’Sele.

“Vajiki,” Edouard said, placing the sketchpad on the grass next to the bird. “I was beginning to wonder if you would come.”

“Exactly as promised,” the man said. Edouard didn’t know his name; he’d first approached Edouard when he was painting a commissioned portrait in a chateau near Prajnoli. Even his face was common and unremarkable, his hair a nondescript brown, though the eyes had irises of the most saturated grass-green. But the money he’d offered had staggered Edouard-enough that Edouard would never have to touch a brush again, not unless it was what he wanted.

Maybe then they’ll leave me alone: the voices of those I’ve taken. .

He hoped it would be true. They haunted him at night-the faces of those he’d painted, those he’d killed. They came in his nightmares, tormenting him. They were still alive, all of them, alive in his head.

He didn’t know who the man worked for, nor how they had discovered the “gift” he bore-though he wondered if it weren’t Chevaritt ca’Nephri, since it was his chateau that overlooked the river nearby.

Whoever it was, Edouard didn’t know how they’d arranged to have him paint the Kraljica. He knew very little beyond the fact that his purse was far heavier when the green-eyed man had left, and that it would be much heavier again today.

That was enough to know.

“You have my final payment?” he asked the man.

“The Kraljica’s not dead,” the man answered.

Edouard shook his head. “That’s not possible. I finished the painting. I tied her spirit to it.”

“She’s been stricken, but she lingers,” the man said. “That’s not what you promised, Vajiki. It’s not what was wanted by my employer.”

Edouard was still shaking his head. There was no explanation for it, and he was frightened. Panic surged through him as he tried to fashion an excuse. “Sometimes. . sometimes it takes a few days, Vajiki. Perhaps a week, even. But she will die; they always die.” He licked his lips, staring at the man’s eyes of spring grass and hoping he saw belief there.

It wouldn’t matter once he was paid. He could disappear forever then, and even if the Kraljica somehow lived. . He forced his voice to sound angry. “You still owe me the solas you promised. Where are they?”

“I have them,” the man said. “You’re certain she’ll die?”

Edouard poked the body of the bird with the toe of his boot. “Yes.

I’m certain.”

The man nodded, staring down at the bird and the sketch. “Then let’s give you your reward. I have a horse right over here.” He waved a hand toward a path leading to a stand of trees farther up the bank, and Edouard stooped to pick up his sketchbook. The man gestured again, and Edouard stepped in front of him.

Edouard heard the sound, but failed to understand its significance until it was too late. He had a moment to contemplate the strange feeling as the blade entered his body from behind and thrust entirely through him. Strangely, there was very little pain. He stood there, im-paled, staring at the blood marbling the steel of the long blade that emerged from just under his rib cage. He tried to breathe, and coughed instead, and blood sprayed from his mouth. The blade was withdrawn in a sudden, ripping movement and he fell to his knees.

The world seemed to move as if underwater. He could see the fluttering pages of his sketchbook as it fell from his hands. He could hear the birds in the trees and the crystalline water and even the hush of the clouds sliding across the sky. The colors were impossibly bright and unreal, as if painted with pigments mixed by Cenzi Himself.

The weapon sliced at him again, a blow to the side of the neck this time, and he toppled. He fell to the ground, eyes open, and the grass was an emerald like the man’s eyes and a ruby river flowed between the blades. He could see the dove’s body, only a stride away, and he reached out his hand to touch it, but his arm refused to move.

Something golden-a shell? — flashed in front of him, and he felt his head lifted and a cold chain placed around his ruined neck.

“Here’s your reward, painter,” the man’s voice said, and there was laughter in the gathering darkness, the laughter of all those he’d painted, and their faces came to him and carried him far away as he tried in vain to scream.

Ana cu’Seranta

The Kraljica was a husk wrapped in white linen. For a moment, Ana wasn’t certain she was breathing at all, but then her breath stuttered and the folds of the linen lifted with a breath. A sour odor hung in the air despite perfumed candles that provided the only light in the draped and shuttered room. Renard ushered them into the room, obviously weary from having stood vigil over the Kraljica during the night. A healer was there with his assortment of medicines and instruments, and a trio of servants were emptying bedpans, keeping the fire lit in the hearth, or changing the leeches placed on the Kraljica’s body under the direction of the healer.

The Archigos ordered them all out of the room except Renard.

As the servants slid away with low bows and the healer packed up his implements with obvious irritation, the Archigos placed a comforting hand on Renard’s arm. “You’ve been up all night?” Renard nodded.

“How is she?”

“No better,” Renard said. “After you and O’Teni cu’Seranta visited her-” this with a swift, appreciative glance at Ana; she smiled in return despite her own weariness, “-she seemed to rally, but then slowly slipped back. I fear. .” His lower lip trembled and he closed his mouth.

He wiped at an eye with his sleeve. “I’ve served the Kraljica for nearly thirty years, since I was a young man myself.”

“And you’ve served her well,” the Archigos said. “You have been

her crutch and her support, Renard. Don’t give up hope yet. Cenzi may still hear our prayers.”

Renard nodded, but Ana could see the despair etched in the lines of his face. “Leave us with her again,” the Archigos said to him, “so that we might pray with her. In the meantime, get a bit of sleep. You’ll be no good to her if you’re exhausted.”

“I will try,” Renard said. He looked back at the bed and gave a long sigh before moving toward the door. As he came near Ana, he stopped for a moment. “Thank you for your efforts, O’Teni,” he said quietly.

“May Cenzi bless you.”

He bowed and clasped his hands to his forehead. He left the room, leaving them alone with the Kraljica’s erratic breath.

“He knows,” Ana said.

“He’s hardly a stupid man. And he loves the Kraljica.” He was standing beside her and his fingers brushed her hand. She jerked her hand away. His eyes regarded her with what she thought might be pity, but he didn’t touch her again. “He suspects, but he doesn’t know, Ana,”

he said. “And he’ll say nothing to anyone, no matter what the Divolonte states. Nor will I.”

She wasn’t certain that she believed this. She wasn’t certain she trusted any of them. Ana could imagine the Archigos betraying her to save himself, and she rubbed her hands. They would cut them off, and take your tongue as well. . She shuddered.

“Ana. .? Are you all right?”

Ana blinked. The Archigos was staring at her. “I know you’re tired, but this may be our last chance to save her,” he said. His voice was rushed and quiet, and she realized that the Archigos was frightened himself-afraid of what might happen to him if the Kraljica died and the A’Kralj became Kraljiki. In that moment, she glimpsed how fragile was the Archigos’ hold on his position in the church, and thus how precarious her own situation, tied to his standing, was in turn. The realization made her stomach turn uneasily.

She nodded to the Archigos and went to the side of the bed, looking down at the white, drawn face of the Kraljica: her cheeks sunken, her skin draped loosely over her skull. She looked half a corpse already.

She doesn’t deserve this. If Cenzi gave you this ability, then He didn’t intend for you to ignore it.

Ana clasped hands to forehead for a moment, taking deep breaths.

Then she opened her hands wide and let them move in the pattern she felt in her head, and she spoke the words that Cenzi sent her.

Eyes still closed, she shaped the power of the Ilmodo and let it rush into the Kraljica. Faintly, she heard a gasp from the old woman on the bed. “Ana. .” she heard the woman say aloud, and the word echoed in her mind as well. Ana. . The painting calls me and I can’t resist. The stream of the Ilmodo cascaded from Ana into the Kraljica and back out through that terrible rent in the Kraljica’s very being, the awful wound nearly as wide now as it was last night. Ana found herself in the Kraljica and in the painting at the same time-the painting where most of the Kraljica’s awareness seemed to reside now. The body on the bed was largely an empty shell.

Ana found herself marveling again at the spell that had done this: no teni could enchant an object this way. A teni could place a nonburn-ing glow within a lamp that would remain for several turns of the glass, but to do so required the proper chanting and hand motions, which must be performed at the time the spell was cast. But there had been no one chanting to ensorcell the painting-the spell had been cast with Ana’s pull of the cover: instantaneously, without words of prayer or gestures.

Ana had no idea how that had been accomplished, and it made her wonder again if ci’Recroix had been Numetodo. The rumors she had heard about how they twisted the Ilmodo. .

But she couldn’t think of that now. She could not spare the distractions.

Ana reshaped the Ilmodo, wrapping it around the Kraljica and trying to pull the woman back into her body and away from the painting, but the spell within the painting resisted, tearing at the Ilmodo and shredding it so that it couldn’t hold the Kraljica. Where her spell touched that within the painting, it was as if claws raked her body, dragging deep furrows that tore muscles and ripped ligaments from bones. Ana screamed with the pain, not knowing if she did so aloud. She could feel the spell, could glimpse how it had been shaped and constructed. . and there was nothing of Cenzi in it. She could not feel Him in it at all.

The shell on its chain under her robes seemed to be glowing whitehot, burning her skin.

Ana pulled at the Kraljica desperately, dragging the old woman’s awareness back toward her body as much as she could and trying to close off that awful hole within her once more. Slowly, it began to heal itself, but the effort cost Ana. She screamed again, her body and her mind aching from the exertion. .

. . and she could hold the Ilmodo no more. It slipped from her, and she was back in the Kraljica’s room, on her knees on the carpeted floor, her body soaked in perspiration, the front of her teni-robes stained with vomit, her hands curled and as stiff as if she’d been outside unprotected for hours in winter.

“I tried. .” she managed to husk out to the Archigos, who was kneeling alongside her. She looked at him, stricken. “I did all I could, and I almost. . almost. .”

And that was all she remembered for a time.

Mahri

The room was chilly even in the late afternoon sun, but Mahri hardly noticed. He was staring at a shallow, battered pan set on the wobbly table in front of him, in which he could see the distorted reflection of his own ravaged face. He heard the teapot over the fire in the hearth begin to sing, and he went to it. Wrapping the sleeve of his ragged clothing around the handle of the pot, he lifted it from the crane and poured the steaming water into the basin, then sprinkled leaves from a leather pouch on his belt into the water. He sat back.

“Show me,” he said softly, and the steam above the basin writhed and twisted and coalesced. There, in the mist, was a shimmering image: the figure of the A’Kralj, his jutting chin unmistakable even if he hadn’t been dressed in his usual finery, and seated across a small table from him, the Vajica Francesca ca’Cellibrecca. “A’Kralj,” the woman said, a bit too loudly and forced, obviously for the benefit of someone else within earshot. “You do us a great honor by coming here, and I know my husband will be displeased that he missed you. We were both so shocked by your matarh’s collapse at the Gschnas. How is she?”

“No better, I’m afraid, Vajica,” Mahri heard the A’Kralj answer. His hand moved on the table, sliding a few inches toward the woman’s. He glanced away to his right, as if looking at Mahri, and his eyebrows lifted slightly. The Vajica glanced that way also.

“Cassie, would you go to the kitchen and see if Falla still has those cakes from the morning? A’Kralj, some tea also perhaps? Cassie, have Falla make some new tea as well, and bring it here.”

“Yes, Vajica,” Mahri heard a faint voice answer, and there were footsteps and the sound of a door closing from the steam-wrapped scene before him. With the sound, the A’Kralj reached across the table to take the woman’s hand. He started to rise, as if he were about to embrace and kiss her, but she shook her head slightly.

“Not here,” she said in a whisper. “Too many eyes. But we can speak openly, for a moment anyway. The Kraljica?”

“She’s dying,” he said. “If I could keep that dwarf Archigos and that ugly cow of a teni of his away from her, she’d be dead already. I think he’s using the Ilmodo on her, or cu’Seranta is.”

“I’ll make certain that my vatarh knows,” the woman said. “I’m certain that he’d be interested in that.” She shook her head. “Such a strange, sudden thing. Vatarh thinks that the Numetodo had a hand in it.”

“No,” the A’Kralj answered. “They didn’t, though I certainly don’t mind if they pay the price for it.” He smiled, his chin jutting out even further. Mahri heard the slow intake of breath through the Vajica’s nostrils and saw the rising of her eyebrows.

“Justi. .”

The smile grew larger. “Matarh was always insisting that it was time for me to think of heirs and marriage. I will be Kraljiki soon-and I find that I’m now thinking of exactly those two things. Are you, Francesca my love?”

The woman seemed to be looking for escape-left, then right. “Of course, Justi. Of course. But this is so quick. All the careful plans we were making with my vatarh. .”

“. . weren’t necessary,” he answered. “I made my own plans, and I have followed them through. I think Matarh’s portrait should go in the West Hall, where she can see the Kralji’s throne and see me sitting there with you beside me, don’t you think?”

There was a soft knock at the door and the click of the latch. The A’Kralj sat back, releasing Francesca’s hand. Her smile was a frozen gash on her face. “But, of course, I came to ask U’Teni Estraven if he would perform a special ceremony for Matarh,” the A’Kralj said smoothly, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, as Mahri saw the servant approach the table and place a silver tray with tea and cakes between the two before curtsying and backing quickly away. “It would mean so much to her.”

“Certainly,” Francesca answered. She blinked, reflexively moving to serve him tea. “I will mention it to Estraven.” The water in the basin was cooling, and the scene above it was fading, the figures going transparent and their voices failing. “I know he would be most willing. .”

They were gone, suddenly, and the bowl was simply a bowl of lukewarm water. Mahri sighed. Rising, he put the teapot back on the crane.

He picked up the bowl reverently and went to the window, tossing the water out onto the Oldtown alleyway below. He took the bowl back to the table and sat once again, waiting for the teapot to boil. When it did, he poured more water into the bowl and once more dusted the steaming water with the infusion from his pouch.

“Show me,” he said again, and this time the scene that formed was a different place, and new figures appeared. .

Ana cu’Seranta

“You can’t go out, O’Teni,” Watha insisted. “You’re not strong enough. The Archigos said you must rest. He was very emphatic about that.”

“The Archigos isn’t me and doesn’t know how I feel,” Ana insisted.

She shrugged off the hands that attempted to hold her back on the bed and swung her feet down to the floor. She stood. The room threatened to tilt under her, but she took a long breath that stopped the movement. “I need clothes,” she said. “Not my teni-robes. A tashta, perhaps, or something else.”

Watha’s eyes seemed about to burst from her skull. “I can’t-”

“You will,” Ana insisted. “And you’ll do it now. I’ll also need a carriage.”

The young woman seemed terrified. Her matarh, Sunna, came in a moment later, and Ana repeated her request. Sunna conferred with Watha, who left the room with a terrified glance at Ana. Sunna muttered to herself as she rummaged-far too slowly-through trunks and closets to find clothing for Ana. Ana heard the outer door to her apartment open and close before Watha returned to help her matarh; Ana decided that Beida had been sent to inform the Archigos. By the time she’d dressed, the outer door opened again and Beida entered the bedchamber to announce that a carriage was at the door for Ana’s use.

Ana left the apartment, refusing the offer of a quick dinner from Watha, and Sunna’s insistence that someone from the household should accompany her. She wondered if she were being entirely foolish, since the walk down to the carriage exhausted her and she half-stumbled into the seat as the teni-driver held the door open for her. “Your destination, O’Teni?” the young man asked. It was the same driver who had picked her up from her house that day that seemed so long ago now; she knew that he would tell the Archigos everything. He was staring at her, at her lack of green robes.

“Cooper Street, one block from Oldtown Center,” she said to him.

He nodded and closed the door. She felt the carriage sway as he took his seat and heard the beginning of his chant as the wheels began to turn. She leaned back against the cushions, her hand touching the shell under her tashta.

You shouldn’t be doing this. You’re already exhausted and need to rest.

The Archigos will be upset, and thus you risk not only yourself but your family’s well-being. Worse, you endanger your very soul. .

She ignored the nagging voice and closed her eyes, feeling the lurch of the carriage and the sound of the wheels as it passed along the Avi a’Parete.

“We’re here, O’Teni,” the e’teni’s voice said through the leather flap between the carriage and his seat, seemingly only a few moments later, and Ana realized that she’d fallen asleep during the trip. She lifted the curtain at the side of the carriage. They were parked on a street lined with shops, with a tumult of people moving around them. Poking her head out the window, Ana looked around. It was dusk, the sun already gone though the sky was still deep blue and the first stars had yet to appear. Farther up the street, she could glimpse the wide expanse of Oldtown Center, where lamps set on ornate posts around the circumference of the Center waited for the spells of the light-teni to set them ablaze.

Oldtown Center had, a few centuries ago, been the social nexus of Nessantico, a function now given over to the square around the Archigos’ Temple and the newer and grander buildings on the southern bank of the A’Sele. The memory of Oldtown Center’s past was preserved in the tall, ancient buildings that flanked it and in the fountain in the middle with its stained bronze statue of Selida II, posed far larger than life with his war-spear and shield and the writhing body of a subdued Magyarian chieftain raising his hands in mute supplication at his feet: at its height, Oldtown Center had been known as Victory Square.

Now, the buildings that had once housed the offices of the Kralji’s government and the grand apartments of the wealthy were run-down, tired, and ancient. The offices were now street-level shops, the grand residences had been broken up into myriad tiny apartments above the shops teeming with the households of ci’ and ce’ and even unranked families. There was still a vitality to Oldtown Center, but it was unre-fined and raw, just as strong as it had always been but gone darker and potentially more dangerous.

“O’Teni,” the driver called through the flap, his voice audibly tired from the exertion of the drive. “Where did you want to go?”

“This is fine,” she told him. She glanced out again at the signs over the doors. “Just there-Finson the Herbalist. They have a tea infusion that my matarh always made, and I thought it might help the Kraljica.”

She opened the door and stepped out before the driver could dismount.

“Wait here for me,” she told him. He was only a black silhouette against the ultramarine sky. “I shouldn’t be long. Stay here.”

She hurried away even as she heard him protest; she was fairly certain that his instructions from the Archigos were to remain with her.

She rushed into the shop, a bell chiming as she opened the door. The herbalist-an older man with white eyebrows that curled over deep-set eyes, glanced up from a table near the rear of the store. The store smelled of herbs and the multitude of lit candles holding back the murk.

“What can I do for you, Vajica?” he asked, coming forward to a counter adorned with glass jars stuffed with dried leaves.

Ana placed a siqil on the counter, the the silver profile of the Kraljica on the coin glimmering in the candlelight. “You have a rear door?” Ana asked, her fingers still on the coin.

He was staring at the siqil-more money than he would see in a week’s sales. “Yes, Vajica. Just past there.” He pointed to the darkness at the back of the store without taking his eyes from the coin. “Here, I’ll show you. . ”

Ana shook her head. “I’ll find it,” she said. “Thank you.” She lifted her fingers from the coin and hurried around the counter. The smell of herbs was nearly overpowering, but she found the door and found herself in a narrow alleyway where the stench was more human and far less pleasant. To her right, an opening beckoned, leading to another of the warren of streets around the Center. Faintly, she thought she heard the bell chime on the herbalist’s front door. She pulled the shell necklace from under her clothing and half-ran down the alley and out into the street, letting the rush of the crowds carry her. She circled around Oldtown Center for a time, moving around it and away from where

she’d left the carriage-always looking around her to see if she saw the driver, avoiding the neighborhood utilinos with their staffs, lanterns, and whistles in case they’d been instructed to watch for her-until she heard the chant of the light-teni at their work.

Then she walked into Oldtown Center itself.

The open space was busy, but quickly looking around, Ana saw no one who seemed to be searching for her. No one seemed to notice her at all. She wondered what the driver was doing; whether he was frantically looking for her or whether he’d returned to the Archigos with the admission that he’d lost his charge. In the sky above, the first stars were twinkling, and a group of six e’teni were moving slowly from lamp to lamp, each in turn erupting into cold, bright flame. The crowd-many of them in foreign clothing-cheered with each lamp, giving the sign of Cenzi and following the teni around the perimeter, then to the quartet of lamps around the fountain.

As Ana lurked on the edge of the crowds well away from the teni, she felt someone brush against her side. “O’Teni cu’Seranta?”

She started, taking a quick step away from the man, who raised his hands as if to show he had no weapon. He was no one she knew, dressed in nondescript, plain clothing. “Who are you?”

“My name is Mika,” he said. “The rest of my name you don’t need.

Envoy ci’Vliomani asked me to escort you to where he’s waiting. He said to tell you that the shell is one from the Isle of Paeti, and that he hopes you found it interesting. Will you follow me?”

He started to walk away from the fountain and the crowds, to the west. He didn’t look back. Ana watched him for several strides, until there were several people between them. Biting her lip between her teeth, she followed at last, quickening her steps and weaving among the passersby until she was at his elbow. He didn’t speak, only moved out from the center into the narrow streets leading away and into Oldtown itself. “Where are you taking me?” she asked at last.

He shook his head without looking at her. “Nowhere you would know,” he answered. He stopped then, turning to her. “If that frightens you, then you’re free to return to Oldtown Center. I’m sure the teni would be happy to escort you back to one of the temples. I told Karl you wouldn’t come.”

“Then you were wrong.”

He seemed amused at that. He shrugged and started walking again.

They walked for some time, following streets that twisted and turned until Ana was thoroughly lost. Twice, he ushered her into the mouth of an alleyway or into the shadows between two houses as an utilino passed. They circled around a block where fire-teni were putting out a smoldering house fire. For the most part, the people they passed seemed to be intent on their own business, which in most cases was provided by the numerous taverns.

Oldtown was not an area she knew well; like most South Bank families, hers had rarely ventured over the ponticas to the North Bank except to visit Oldtown Center or the River Markets. Even when they had come here, they kept to the main streets on those excursions, never venturing too far away from the Avi a’Parete. By the time Mika stopped before a door with peeling strips of blue paint clinging stubbornly to the wood, Ana was no longer even certain which way the river lay, and full night had fallen heavily over the claustrophobic streets. Here, there were no bright teni-lights, only dim candles in windows punctuating the darkness-this seemed another city entirely. Mika rapped twice on the door, then a single sharp knock. A small peephole opened and Ana saw an eye peering out. The door opened just wide enough to admit them. Mika entered, and Ana-more hesitantly, with the opening words of a defensive chant on her lips and her hands ready to make the proper motions-followed.

She found herself in a dim foyer. Directly in front of her, steps led up to a second floor and a hallway led farther into the building; a curtained archway hid a room to the right. She could heard voices from somewhere close by. “Where is Envoy ci’Vliomani?” she demanded of Mika, but she was answered from the room to her right.

“Here.” Karl ci’Vliomani moved the curtains aside and stepped from the room. He smiled and bowed to her, his hands remaining at his sides. “Thank you, Mika. We’ll meet you upstairs,” he said, and gestured to the room behind him. “Would you come in, O’Teni? It’s hardly as grand as the Kraljica’s Palais, but it will have to do.” He smiled at her.

“I’m pleased to see you again. Truly. That shell looks far better on you than it did on me.” He smiled again; despite herself, Ana found herself returning the smile. The tension within her eased; she could feel her shoulders relax as she walked through the curtains he held aside for her.

“Water? Wine? Some cakes?” He gestured to a small table in the center of the room holding a refreshment tray.

Her stomach growled, but she shook her head. There were two windows, both heavily curtained. There was a fire in the hearth, but most of the light in the room came from a large glass ball that glowed a strange blue-white. Ana put her hands toward the globe: colder than the room by far. As cold as Ilmodo fire. “I want nothing right now, Vajiki,” she said.

“Here, at least, you could call me Karl.” He smiled again. “If you’d like.”

She’d wondered whether she’d feel that strange pull again, that attraction. Now she knew that she did. You can’t trust that. You don’t know him. “Karl,” she said, looking up from the frigid glow. “Then here, at least, you may call me Ana.”

He bowed again. “I want to apologize for the subterfuge,” he said as she glanced down once more at the light. “I assumed you wouldn’t want the Archigos to know where you were tonight, and I know I certainly don’t, especially after what’s happened with the Kraljica. I can assure you that you weren’t followed.” She heard his voice change, his voice at once serious and sympathetic. “How is the Kraljica, Ana? We’ve heard nothing since the Gschnas but what the news-criers have said.”

“I’m surprised you care.” She placed a hand on the globe; the shadow of it covered the wall behind her. “For all I know, the Numetodo were responsible.”

“If you truly thought we had anything to do with that, you wouldn’t be here.” The remonstrance was gentle. “We might be at odds with the Kraljica and Concenzia, but we would much rather have the Kraljica on the throne than her son.”

“Is that why I’m here, then-you think I’ll provide you with a sympathetic voice within the Faith? I’m afraid you overestimate my influence, Envoy.”

“Karl,” he corrected. “I think you’re here because you’re curious, and I asked you because. .” He stopped. He walked to the globe, put his own hand on it, and shadows leaped. Ana removed her hand quickly.

“. . because I feel that we share a common interest.”

“And what is that?”

“You want to understand how the world works, as do I.” His hand slid caressingly over the round curve of the globe. “Like how one can use the Scath Cumhacht, the Ilmodo, even in ways that your Divolonte says it shouldn’t or even can’t be used. You understand that, don’t you?”

Ana felt her stomach lurch. She told herself it was the lateness, the exertions with the Kraljica, and the fact that she’d eaten nothing for some hours. He must have seen it also, for his hand was no longer on the globe but under her elbow, and his face was concerned. “O’Teni?

Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m fine,” she told him, forcing a smile. “Just tired. I’ve. . had very little sleep in the last few days.”

“I understand. The Kraljica.” His hand had not left her arm, and she didn’t want to pull away from his touch. “I was doubly sorry that happened as it did. I. . I enjoyed talking with you, and our dance. And I would not wish the Kraljica harm.” His hand did leave her then, and he frowned. “I apologize, Ana. I presume.”

You don’t need to apologize. I appreciate your concern, more than I should. But she didn’t speak her thoughts. “What is it you wanted to show me, Karl? We don’t have much time. The Archigos. .”

“Will be frantically looking for you, no doubt.” He nodded. “You’re right. Come with me, then. We’ll go upstairs to the hall. Things will have started by now.”

The foyer was empty when he pushed aside the curtain, and she followed him up the stairs. The sound of talking grew louder, until she could make out individual voices in the mix. The stairs entered out onto a balcony that circled the floor below, lit brightly by the same cold light that had been in the globe downstairs. “Here, Ana,” Karl said. He was standing at the railing to the balcony, behind a scrim of thin, dark fabric. “Those below can’t see you if you stand behind this, but you’ll be able to see them well enough.” As she started forward, he raised a hand. “You understand the trust I’m showing you, Ana? You’ll see the faces of the Numetodo who live in Nessantico, and that’s knowledge that the Archigos, A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca, and Commandant ca’Rudka would find extremely interesting. You will literally hold these people’s lives in your hands. I must have your promise now that you won’t reveal what you see here.”

“How do you know my promise is good?”

A momentary smile. “That’s the same objection Mika gave me. I’ll tell you what I told him: I look at you, and I know. Swear it,” he said.

“Swear it on Cenzi’s name.”

“I thought Numetodo didn’t believe in Cenzi.”

“I don’t,” he answered. “But you do.”

You came here because you wanted to know. The knowledge is there, waiting. “I’ll say nothing of what I see here,” she told him. “On Cenzi’s name, I give you my word.”

He nodded. He beckoned her forward.

The room below was large and open. There were perhaps thirty people below, most of them seated before a small raised dais where Mika stood. She recognized none of them. “So few?” Ana whispered.

“You’d think from the threat that A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca says we are that there would be hundreds of us, wouldn’t you?” Karl answered. “I wish that were the case. There are others who couldn’t be here tonight, but not many. Not in Nessantico herself. Watch, though, and you’ll see what the Numetodo can do.”

“. . tonight will be her first time,” Mika was saying. “Her name within the group is Varina. Please make her feel welcome.” There was a smattering of applause as a young woman came up on the stage. “Be kind, now,” Mika said to the others as the girl stood there. “Go on, Varina. Demonstrate what you’ve learned to do.”

Varina nodded. She took a long breath, closing her eyes. She began to chant: a phrase that wasn’t in the Ilmodo language Ana had been taught, though it had affinities-the same cadences and guttural vowels, and she thought she recognized a word or two pronounced strangely.

Still, these weren’t the calls to Cenzi that were a part of every chant she’d been taught. Varina’s hands moved with the chant, and Ana saw the beginnings of light forming around them. As Varina continued her chant, the glow strengthened until it was a fitful, small ball of light resting now on the upturned palm of her left hand. She ended the chant with a deep sigh. The ball of light sputtered and failed.

There was applause again from the onlookers. Varina nodded, then her eyes rolled backward in her head and she collapsed to the floor of the dais. She tried to stand again and failed. Mika gestured and two of the Numetodo came forward; they helped her to a chair. Another brought her water. Someone placed a dampened cloth over her forehead.

“You don’t seem impressed, Ana,” Karl said as Mika took the stage again.

“How long did it take her to learn that?” Ana asked.

“Mika started working with her around the time of the first winter snow,” Karl answered. “It takes time.”

“I could do that, and better, the first day U’Teni Dosteau began teaching us,” Ana said. “So could nearly everyone in my class. Even in the Toustour there are stories of witches and sorcerers who could use the Ilmodo, however badly. The Moitidi, they are always trying to taunt Cenzi, to defy Him, and they allow the Ilmodo to be tainted despite Cenzi’s wishes.”

Karl was shaking his head. “Varina called on neither Cenzi, nor any of the Moitidi,” he responded. “There are no gods or demigods involved at all. Only a certain set of words and hand motions: something anyone could be taught. But you’re right-you teni do learn to shape the Ilmodo faster than us, and Varina has little skill as yet. But watch. Watch.”

Mika was speaking again. “It’s important that we understand the Scath Cumhacht and how to contain and shape it,” he was saying. “But as I’ve been telling you, it’s also vital to learn how to store the power of the Scath Cumhacht so it can be used quickly. That’s where those of Concenzia are lacking.” He glanced quickly at the scrim along the balcony, then back to the audience. “Look there,” he said, pointing to an unlit lamp set on a table at the end of the room.

He spoke a single word and thrust his hand in the direction of the lamp. The word was concussive, as if someone had struck a great, invisible drum. Ana nearly jumped backward with the sound. No human voice alone could have made that sound. At the same moment, the lamp flared-as bright as that of the teni-lamps, though the color was greenish. The watchers applauded, but Mika raised his hand to quiet them. He spoke another drumbeat word and gestured again. The lamp flared once more, but this time not with light but enormous heat, as if a roaring furnace gaped there. The heat was intense, so much so that Ana brought an arm up to shield her face. She thought that in another moment, the walls and curtains around the room would erupt into flame. Mika spoke a final word, and the heat and light both vanished as if they had never been there.

There was no applause this time. There was only a relieved silence.

“That,” Mika said, “is what you need to learn. That is what we will teach you when you’re ready.”

Ana’s hands were white-knuckled on the railing of the balcony.

“He gave no chant, made no hand patterns, just a single word and gesture. .” She looked down again at Mika. He was smiling and walking about the dais; the shaping of what he called the Scath Cumhacht seemed to have affected him not at all. Ana looked back at Karl. “He’s not tired from the spell-casting?”

“He performed the incantations hours beforehand, and then rested from his exertions.” Karl told her, as if guessing her thoughts. “We’re doing nothing different than what you teni do, Ana-handling the Ilmodo is a great effort and it costs the person who does it. But Mika made his payment several turns of the glass ago. He needed to speak only a release word for the energy he was holding. They don’t teach you that in your classes, do they?”

“You can do that?”

Karl nodded. “I was one of those who taught Mika.” He paused, tilting his head. “And I could teach you. Or does your Faith insist that such a thing can’t be done?”

Ana stared down at the gathering, where Mika was talking to several of the Numetodo. The spells Mika had formed-they were nothing that she hadn’t seen U’Teni Dosteau show the acolytes, that she couldn’t do herself. She could do more, in fact-as she knew from her confrontation with her vatarh or the illusion she’d cast for the Kraljica-and the war-teni devised enormously destructive spells. But they all required time and effort; they all required the chants and the patterns of the hands; they all had to be cast immediately afterward, and they cost the shaper in weariness and pain. U’Teni Dosteau had been amazed by Ana’s quickness at shaping the Ilmodo, the rapid casting of power that had protected the Archigos.

But this. . A single word, a single gesture. .

Not even the a’teni can do that, nor the war-teni. And if I did it, they would say it is the work of the Moitidi. They would take my hands and my tongue. .

“You teni shape the Ilmodo with your Faith,” Karl was saying, but she had trouble concentrating on what he said. “I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that you of the Concenzia, especially the war-teni, can create spells more powerful than any Numetodo, but you’ve had long centuries to learn the ways of the Ilmodo. We learn more with each passing year. But I want you to think beyond just the shaping of the Ilmodo to the implications, Ana.”

He glanced down at the shell around her neck, and Ana put her hand over the ridged shape. “You explain the shapes of shells and fish in the stones in terms of the Toustour,” Karl continued, “but we look for other explanations-explanations that can be proved or disproved through examination. I don’t know for certain yet, but I suspect that we’ll learn that the shells of the mountains were once indeed shells within the sea. The explanation makes at least as much sense as the creation story of the Toustour, and it doesn’t require gods, only natural forces within the earth. And if the Scath Cumhacht, your Ilmodo, can be reached and shaped by those without faith, if we Numetodo can even learn to do things that the teni can’t do, then perhaps the Scath Cumhacht also has nothing to do with faith and belief at all. You have to at least acknowledge the possibility, Ana. You’ve seen it here tonight with your own eyes.”

Her hand tightened around the shell until she felt the edges press into her flesh. She shook her head in mute denial, but his words crashed and thundered inside her. Not true, not true. . The denial shattered and re-formed.

“Ana?”

She could barely breathe. The atmosphere seemed thick and heavy.

“I have to leave,” she said. “I have to go now.”

His lips tightened. His face was grim. “Your promise, Ana?”

“I gave you my word, Envoy. I won’t break it,” she told him. “Now, please, I want to leave.”

He nodded. “I’ll escort you back to Oldtown Center,” he said.