S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

Her head spun and she thought she might lose consciousness. She fought to stand upright, blinking to clear away the blotches of purple afterimages. Her vatarh lay crumpled against the wall near the door, the plaster cracked around him. Ana wondered whether she might have killed him, but his chest rose and his eyes opened even as she looked at him: she’d flung the spell aside at the last moment.

It was her bed, the bed where she’d borne his suffocating weight on top of her, that had taken the direct force of the spell’s impact; it lay shattered, black, and nearly unrecognizable, the bedposts splintered.

All the furniture in the room was overturned and damaged, the wall where the headboard had rested broken all the way through the mortared stones to reveal the sunlight outside. Shards of mirrored glass glittered in the wreckage near where her dresser had stood; her vatarh’s cheek trailed blood where a flying piece had cut him.

Sala came running in, stopping at the doorway to look in horror at the wreckage of the room, at Ana’s vatarh slumped dazedly on the floor.

“O’Teni Ana. . what. .?” Ana forced herself to stay upright though the edges of her vision were closing in. Just get to the carriage. That’s all you have to do, then you can let go.

“Tell Matarh I can’t stay, Sala,” Ana said. “Let her know that I’ll send a carriage for her tomorrow after Second Call so we can talk. So I can explain.” She looked at her vatarh, his eyelids fluttering as he groaned and stirred. “I won’t come back while you’re here, Vatarh. I won’t ever see you again willingly. If you ever try, you won’t survive the attempt.”

Ana reached down to the floor for her clothes and the memento box and picked them up, clutching them to her. Then she walked past the dumbstruck Sala and out of the house. She managed to make it to the carriage waiting outside before the darkness closed around her.

Karl ci’Vliomani

The stench made Karl’s stomach lurch hard enough that he could taste the garlic from the pasta he’d eaten a few turns of the glass ago. Here on the banks of the A’Sele near the Pontica Kralji, the open sewers of Oldtown and-across the river-those of the Isle A’Kralji emptied into the water. Adding to the noxious smells were the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and dyers which clogged the riverbank all the way to the River Market, each of them dumping their own wastes in the water.

The air was foul, and the rocks along the riverbank and the piers of the Pontica Kralji were snagged with wriggling trailers of slime and filth.

Karl could see the skeletal, rotting carcass of a pig in the water a few arms’ lengths from them, the eyeless and lipless skull leering at him.

“No one drinks from the A’Sele anymore, at least not here in the city, and not anywhere close to Nessantico downriver,” Mika said, as if he’d overheard Karl’s thoughts. “The old folk will talk about how in their own grandparents’ time the A’Sele ran clean and sweet, and you could dip a cup in and quench your thirst, but not anymore. That’s why everyone goes to the fountains for their water, or they drink only wine or ale, and they don’t eat any fish unless they were caught east of the Fens.”

His gaze went up then to the ramparts of the Pontica Kralji, the longest of the bridges over the A’Sele. They’d both seen the small, black iron cage that had been suspended from a post there, and the corpse that was stuffed inside it: Dhaspi ce’Coeni’s body. The chain groaned and protested as the cage swung in the breeze. The crows had found the display quickly; there was a crowd of them pecking at Dhaspi’s remains through the bars. They could see people passing over the bridge stopping to look at the gibbeted body. Two painted signs had been attached to the cage. Assassin, one said. Numetodo was written on the other. Ce’Coeni’s hands were nailed to that sign, and there was a bare nail above the hands where his tongue had once been-the crows had taken that.

“Poor stupid bastard,” Karl muttered.

They both looked away, deliberately. Mika picked up a stone from the mud and tossed it into the river, where it splashed brownly and vanished, then looked at his hand, grimaced, and wiped it on his cloak.

Mika was wearing a perfumed cloth over his nose and mouth; Karl wished he’d taken the same precaution. “I doubt the river’s been truly clean for centuries, not with Nessantico straddling it forever,” Mika said. “I heard that the Kraljica had swans brought in for the Jubilee all the way from Sforzia. She thought they’d look nice swimming around the Isle A’Kralji. They took one look at the A’Sele, sniffed in disgust, and took off for home.”

Karl grunted at the image. “I can believe that,” he told Mika. “Right now, I’m tempted to do the same.”

“I’ve been here for, oh, almost seven years now, Karl. They can make the city look brilliant and wonderful with their teni-lights, with their dances and their clothes and their great buildings. They can make certain that the Avi a’Parete is swept and clean so the ca’-and-cu’ can promenade and be seen; they can build temples and palaces that prick the very clouds with their towers, but they can’t hide this.

Look over there. .” Mika pointed to the nearest slaughterhouse where Karl glimpsed cloth the color of spring grass through the twilight of an open door. “Do you see the teni? There are dozens and dozens of e’teni assigned-probably as punishment, I’d think-to cleanse the filth from the sewers and the slaughterhouses with their Ilmodo skills, but it’s not anywhere near enough. It would take an army of them working all day, every day, to keep up with the garbage this city spews out, and the place grows bigger each year. Cenzi knows what Nessantico would be like without the teni-and each year there are more people for the teni to clean up after. I don’t even want to imagine Nessantico a generation forward.” Mika lifted his kerchief and spat on the ground. “Even the Kraljica must shit and piss, and it smells no better than mine or yours.”

Karl laughed despite the filth, despite the grim reminder on the Pontica above them. “Now there’s an image I don’t care to retain.”

Mika sniffed and pressed his kerchief against his nose. “It’s true, still. All those grand ca’-and-cu’ sit and look at Oldtown from their lovely houses on the Isle or South Bank and grumble about how disgusting and filthy it is, but they’re no different. Even the grandest chateau has its privies.”

“If you’re going to start spouting cliches, then let’s do it where we can drink and eat as well. Where’s this Mahri? I thought he asked to meet us?”

“I’m here.” With the word, a portion of the stained Pontica seemed to detach itself from an arched support, and Mahri stepped out from the shadows under the bridge, directly under Dhaspi’s gibbet. Karl shivered at the sight of the man’s ravaged face under the black cowl, hoping that Mahri didn’t notice the quick revulsion.

“You live up to your reputation,” Karl said.

“And what is that?” The man’s voice was as broken as his face, a hissing and grumbling issuing from a misshapen maw. If the expression on his twisted lips was a smile, it couldn’t be read; the raw and exposed socket of the missing left eye seemed to glare. The breath from his mouth smelled nearly as bad as the riverbank itself.

“That you’re a ghost who appears anywhere there’s trouble.”

That seemed to amuse Mahri. He turned his head, glancing back

and up over his shoulder at the caged body surrounded by crows. Something approaching a cackle emanated from his mouth, and a thick tongue prowled the edges of his few teeth as he looked back to them.