S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

Niente watched from the high stern of the warship, standing at Citlali’s right hand. The High Warrior’s body was decorated with the black-red tracks of clotted sword cuts, and he leaned heavily on a broken spear shaft as he glared back at the city.

“You were right, Nahual,” Citlali said to Niente. “Axat’s vision-you saw it correctly.”

Niente nodded. He still marveled that he was here, that he was alive, that Axat had somehow, impossibly spared him. He could still see the vision from the scrying bowl-only now, it wasn’t his face on the dead nahualli who lay next to Tecuhtli Zolin, but Talis’. Axat had spared him. He might yet see home, if the storms of the Inner Sea allowed it. He would hold his wife in his arms again; he would hug his children and watch them play. Niente took a long, shuddering breath.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he said to Citlali. “I wasn’t the Nahual I should have been. If I’d spoken more strongly to Zolin, if I’d seen the visions more clearly…”

“Had you done that, nothing significant would have changed,” Citlali answered. “Zolin wouldn’t have listened to you, Nahual, no matter what you told him. All he could hear were the gods singing for revenge. He wouldn’t have listened to you. You would have been removed as Nahual and you’d have died here, too.”

“Then it was all a waste.”

Citlali laughed-humorless and dry. “A waste? Hardly. You have no imagination, Nahual Niente, and you are no warrior. A waste? No death in battle is wasted. Look at their great city.” He pointed eastward to where the sun shone golden on the broken spires and lanced through the curling smoke of the remaining fires. “We took their city,” Citlali said. “We took their heart.” He held his hand out, palm upward as if clutching something. His fingers slowly closed. “Do you think they’ll ever forget this, Nahual? No. They’ll shiver in the night and start at a sudden sound in terror, thinking that it’s us, returned. They’ll remember this for hand upon hand of generations. They will never feel safe again-and they would be right.”

Citlali spat over the rail into the river. His spittle was flecked with blood. “We took their heart, and we will keep it,” he said. “I make that promise to Sakal here, and you are my witness-let His eye see my words and mark them. We will keep what we’ve taken from them. A Tecuhtli will stand again where Zolin fell.”

He clapped Niente on the back, hard enough that Niente staggered. “What do you think of that, Nahual?”

Niente stared at the city, dwindling in the boat’s wake. “I will look in the scrying bowl tonight, Tecuhtli Citlali” he said, “and I will tell you what Axat says.”

The new voice in her head screamed and wailed and raged, speaking half in the language of Nessantico and half in a language she didn’t understand at all. The others in her head laughed and hooted.

“Your lover Jan… What a pleasant vision he has of you now!”

“Do you think he would marry the filthy assassin he saw?”

“He laid with a murderer and now she carries his child.”

“He’s glimpsed the truth. I hope you always remember the horror on his face when he recognized you.”

That last one was Fynn, pleased and smug. “Shut up!” she shouted at them, but they only laughed all the louder, their voices crowding out what she heard with her own ears.

She’d followed Talis and the Westlander leader from the Isle back to the Red Swan after she’d made certain that Nico seemed to be safe. She was angry, furious with Talis-he’d broken his promise to her. The Numetodo… they might be disgusting heretics, but they had treated Nico kindly and with respect, the woman especially.

But Talis…

Talis had betrayed Nico and because of that Nico’s matarh lay near death, and she had told Talis what the price would be. She had told him, and she would exact payment. The White Stone always kept her word.

So she had followed him, when-all out of nowhere-the sounds of battle had erupted from the east and she’d watched the Westlander leader arrange his men to ambush the Firenzcian chevarittai and soldiers. Suddenly there was far too much fighting going on, too much movement for her to make a move, and she was worried now about Nico and whether he was truly safe and she wanted desperately to run back to him, afraid that following Talis might have been a mistake. But she’d seen Talis slip from the room into which he’d gone and rush out into the street, and she’d followed. She watched the confrontation and she’d seen the chance. She slashed her blade across his throat and she felt him die as he dropped the flask of dark powder And as she laid him down and started to put the stone on his eye, she’d glimpsed him.

Jan.

The shock had been palpable. She’d felt it as strongly as if her heart had been placed directly on a bed of hidden, red-hot coals. Jan: he stood there, and she had witnessed the slow recognition on his face. His expression had frightened her. It was full of shock and affection, of yearning and horror. Seeing him was awful and wonderful at the same moment, and she had wanted to run to him, had wanted to take his hand and place it on her swelling stomach and whisper, Here, darling. This is the life we have created together. This is what our love has made; she wanted also to run, to flee, to hide her face and pretend this revelation had never happened.

The second impulse was the stronger.

She’d taken the white stone from Talis’ eye and she’d fled, wanting Jan to follow her and afraid that he actually would.

She didn’t stop until she reached the Pontica Kralji. There were no strange, bronze-colored men there; none who were living, anyway, though their bodies littered the ground. She could see soldiers in the black and silver of Firenzcia moving everywhere on the streets-causing Fynn to exclaim excitedly inside her head-and she carefully made her way across the Pontica and slid quickly into cover on the island. That was easy; so many walls tumbled down, so many fire-scarred buildings. She went to the gardener’s cottage on the palais estates where they’d taken Nico and his matarh, where the healer for the Westlander had worked over her injured body.

The healer and all the Westlander soldiers were gone, but her fears eased when she saw that Nico was still there, holding onto his matarh’s hand as he crouched next to the table on which she lay-it must have once been one of the dining tables from the palais, still covered with fine, lacy damask, now bloodstained and filthy. She could see Serafina’s chest rise with a slow breath, but her eyes were still closed and she seemed unresponsive.

“Nico,” she said, and he started, his hand clenching his matarh’s tightly.

“Oh,” he said a moment later. His face brightened slightly. He sniffed and ran his hand across his nose. “Elle. It’s you.”

She nodded and came to him. She clasped her own hands around his and his matarh’s. She saw him stare at the blood that mottled her skin. “We need to go, Nico,” she told him.

“I can’t leave Matarh,” he said. “Talis will be back soon.”

She shook her head. Her hands pressed tighter against his. His skin was warm, so warm, and she felt the child within her jump at the touch-the stirring of life, the quickening. She gasped slightly at the feel. “No,” she told him. “I’m afraid Talis is dead, Nico.”

She saw the tears start in his eyes and his lower lip trembled. Then he sniffed again and blinked. “That’s the truth?”

She nodded. “The truth, Nico. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

He was crying fully now, the words coming out between the sobbing breath. “But my matarh… I can’t… They just left her… She’s asleep and I… can’t wake her up…”