S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

“Why not?”

In answer, he brought a shallow brass bowl from the bag he wore under his cloak, the rim decorated with ornate filigrees of colored enamel.

He went to the desk and set the bowl there, pouring water into it from a pitcher the servants had left there. From a leather pouch, he sprinkled a dark powder into the water and stirred it, chanting words in the West-speech. He could see her watching him, her head cocked to one side as she listened, and he knew that she heard the similarity between West-speech and the language of the Ilmodo: the same cadences and rhythms, the same sibilance and breathy vowels. A mist rose above the bowl.

“Look into it,” he said.

She gave him a long, appraising look. Then, finally, she rose from her chair (he could see her weariness in the grimaces and the way she stretched her limbs) and-on the far side of the desk from him-stood over the bowl. She looked down.

He knew what she saw, knew because he’d glimpsed it himself a dozen or more times over the last few months.

In the mists, Ana’s face, and the figure of Jan ca’Vorl. She holds a knife, and the blade is bloodied. The mists roil, and there is ca’Cellibrecca, sprawled on the ground alongside the Hirzg, blood spread across his chest, his chest unmoving. Ana’s face is a mask as she stares, her eyes cold and hard. The knife drops from her hand, and the mists swirl again, and there is Nessantico, untouched, and on the Sun Throne is Justi. .

He knew what she saw. He stretched his scarred hand between Ana’s rapt face and the bowl, sweeping away the mist.

He would not let her see what came afterward. That was only for him.

Ana looked up at him, her hands fisted on the desktop. “This is the future?” she asked.

He nodded. “It is a glimpse of one path the future can take,” he said. “A path that’s uncertain and hard to decipher sometimes. But when I see the Hirzg’s death, when I see Nessantico saved and Justi on the throne, it is always you who do this deed, Ana. Not me. That’s why I gave you the spelled glass-because I know that if I kill them, Nessantico still falls. Inevitably.”

He wondered if she could hear the half-lie.

“I can’t,” she said. “To murder people while they’re helpless. .”

He smiled, and saw her recoil from his expression. “How better to do it?” he said. “My people have a saying: ‘In time of war, all laws are silent.’ How many have died today-unnecessarily-because you didn’t do what I suggested?”

Her gaze hardened then, and he realized he’d pushed her too far.

“You blame me ?”

Mahri hurried to answer, shaking his head. He could not give her time to think, or it would be too late. “No, Ana. I don’t blame you-if anything, the blame is mine for not making it clear enough. You can play by the rules of ‘civilized’ war if you wish, Ana, but you will lose if you do so-ask Commandant ca’Rudka if he truly thinks you will

prevail against Hirzg Jan; ask your war-teni if they believe they are stronger than those on the other side. You’ve already bent the rules of your Faith and your Divolonte. Bend them further. You have tonight to do this. Tonight only. Tomorrow, it will be too late, because the Hirzg will be dining in the Palais and ca’Cellibrecca will be standing where you’re standing right now. Both you and Justi will be dead, or worse.”

“Why?” she asked him. “Why do you care who is Kraljiki or Archigos?”

“I don’t,” he told her. “I care for what is best for my people, as you do. And so I want Justi as Kraljiki and you as the Archigos.”

“You saw that here?” she asked, pointing at the bowl.

For a moment he wondered if she had guessed, or if she’d seen more in the bowl than he’d intended for her to see. “Yes,” he told her tentatively. “Glimpses, as you saw. And I hope that they’re right.”

He was relieved when she nodded. He plucked the glass ball from the dinner tray. “Tonight,” he repeated, holding the ball. “It’s your only chance.”

She stared at him. He was afraid she was going to refuse, afraid that what he’d seen in the bowl would be forever shattered and lost. But finally her hands came up from her sides, palms up.

He placed the ball in her hands and closed her fingers around the glow.

Ana ca’Seranta

Ana was more frightened than she could remember. Her hands were shaking, and she felt impossibly cold.

Kenne brought the carriage, driven by a trusted e’teni. When she told him that she wanted to leave the city along the Avi a’Firenzcia, that she wanted to come as close as she could come to where the Hirzg’s army was camped (trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking), he nodded as if she’d asked him to take her on a promenade around the Avi a’Parete. “And Envoy ci’Vliomani? Will we be picking him up also?”

“Let Karl sleep,” she’d told him. “This is something I must do on my own-but I need your help.”

Kenne had nodded and kept any thoughts he might have had to himself. That gratified Ana; she didn’t know if she would have been able to answer his questions.

She stared out from the curtains as they rattled through the city.

The Avi a’Parete was strangely dark, the teni-lamps unlit for the first time in generations. The storm front had passed on eastward, leaving moon-silver puddles on the flags of the courtyards and the Avi.

The streets were deserted except for Garde Civile (though the taverns they passed were both crowded and noisy), and it was only the cracked globe of Cenzi on their carriage that saved them from being stopped and questioned several times. The A’Sele flowed dark and forbidding under the Pontica Mordei, and the heads on either side

of the gates of the Avi a’Firenzcia were black and still, frozen as they stared outward into the night, gazing blindly to where the army of Firenzcia slept.

The carriage was hailed as they came to the barricades at the gate; Kenne leaned out from the carriage and answered the challenge. At his insistence that they were on the Archigos’ business, they were permitted through. They passed between uncounted tents of the Garde Civile along the Avi.

The world seemed calm, despite the cataclysm that had come to Nessantico, despite Ana’s own apprehensions. She cradled the glass ball nestled in her pocket, letting the Ilmodo energy captured within it tingle her fingers and praying to Cenzi to tell her that she was doing the right thing.

There was no answer. Only an aching uncertainty in her heart and the fear of what she was setting out to do.

She felt the carriage come to a halt as the driver stopped chanting.

“Archigos,” she heard the driver say. “I can’t go farther. .”

Kenne opened the carriage door and Ana peered out. Ahead, the Avi was entirely blocked: the rear defensive line of Nessantico troops.

A squad of the Garde Civile were approaching the carriage; as they saw Ana and Kenne step from the carriage, they all hurriedly gave the sign of Cenzi. “Archigos, U’Teni,” the e’offizer with them said. “I’ll send word to Commandant ca’Rudka that you’ve come.” He started to gesture to one of his men, but she stopped him.

“No, E’Offizier. Let the commandant have his rest. I’ve come to look at the lines, that’s all. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d see where we should place the war-teni.”

He nodded, with a quick, almost shy smile. “I understand. Right now, though, things are quiet.”

“Where are the Firenzcian troops?”

The man pointed up the road. “No more than a quarter mile past our lines. You can glimpse their campfires through the trees.”

“I’d like to see.”