S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

Fynn gave an exasperated huff, slapping his hand on the railing. She could feel the impact of his hand shivering the rail. “There… There are people…” He stopped, taking a long audible breath. When he released it, she could see it cloud before his face. He touched the plain golden band that encircled his head. “Vatarh told me before he died that there were whispers among the chevarittai and the higher teni of the Faith. Some of them opposed his naming of me as the A’Hirzg. They don’t like my temper, or they say I’m too… stupid.” He spat out the word, as if it tasted sour on his tongue. “Some of them wanted you to have that title, or wanted someone else entirely to take the band of the Hirzgai.”

“Did Vatarh tell you who was doing the whispering? Where did it come from?” Allesandra asked. She had to ask the question. She shivered a little, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “Did Vatarh tell you who had said this?”

But Fynn only shook his head. “No. No names. Just… that there were those who would oppose me. If I find them…” He took a long breath in through his nose, and his face went hard. “I will take them down.” He looked directly at her. “I don’t care who they are, and I don’t care who I have to hurt.”

She faced away from him so he could not see her face, looking at the fog drifting among the pines just below. Good. Because I know some of them, and they know me… “You can’t punish rumors, Fynn,” she said. “You can’t put chains around gossip and imprison it, any more than you can capture the mists.”

“I don’t think Vatarh was deceived by mists.”

“Then what do you want of me, little brother?”

That was what he’d wanted her to ask. She could see it in his face, in the dimming light of the sky. “At the Besteigung,” he began, then stopped to put his hand atop hers on the railing. It did not feel like an affectionate gesture. “You’re the one that everyone looks to. You’re the one who could have been Hirzgin had Vatarh not changed his mind. The ca’-and-cu’ still like you, and many of them think that Vatarh did wrong by you. The rumors always circulate around you, Allesandra. You. I want to stop them; I want them to have no reason at all to exist. So-at the Besteigung-I want you, and Pauli and Jan also, to take a formal oath of loyalty to the throne. In public, so everyone will hear you say the words.”

They would only be words, she wanted to tell him, with as much meaning as my saying now “No, Fynn, I’m not your enemy,” Words and oaths mean nothing: to know that, all you need do is look at history. .. But she smiled at him gently and patted his hand. Perhaps he really was that simple, that naive? “Of course we’ll do that,” she told him. “I know my place. I know where I should be, and I know where I want to be in the future.”

Fynn nodded. His hand moved away from hers. “Good,” he said, and the relief sang a high note in his voice. “Then we will expect that.” We… She heard the royal plural in his voice, all unconscious, and it made her lips press tightly together. “I like your son,” he said unexpectedly. “He’s a bright one-like you, Allesandra. I’d hate to think he was involved in any plots against me, but if he was, or if his family was…” His face tightened again. “The air’s chilly and damp out here, Allesandra. I’m going inside.” Fynn left her, returning to the warmth of the palais’ common room. Allesandra stood at the railing for several more minutes before following him, watching until the mists were nearly level with her and the world below had vanished into gloom and cloud.

She thought of being Hirzgin, and it came to her that the High Seat in Brezno would never have satisfied her, even if it had been hers. It was a hard realization, but she knew now that it was in Nessantico that she’d been most happy, that she’d felt most at home.

“I know my place, Brother,” she whispered into the hush of the fog. “I do. And I will have it.”

Nico heard Talis speaking in the other room, even though Matarh had gone to the square to get bread.

Matarh had kissed him and told him to nap for a bit, saying that she’d be back before supper. But he hadn’t been able to sleep, not with the sounds of the people in the street just outside the shutters of his window, not with the sun peeking through the cracks between the boards. He was too old for naps now anyway. Those were for children, and he was becoming a young man. Matarh had told him that, too.

Nico threw the covers aside and padded softly across the room. He leaned forward just enough that he could see past the edge of the scarred, warped door that never closed tightly-making sure he didn’t touch it, since he knew the hinges would screech a rusty alarm. Through the crack between door and jamb, he could see Talis. He was bent over the table that Matarh used to prepare meals. A shallow bowl was sitting on the table, and Nico squinted in an effort to see it better: incised animals danced along the rim, and the bowl had the same hue as the weathered bronze statue of Henri VI in Oldtown Square. Matarh didn’t have a metal bowl, at least none that Nico had ever noticed; the animals carved into it were strange, too: a bird with a head like a snake’s; a scaled lizard with a long snout full of snarled teeth. Talis poured water from Matarh’s pitcher into the bowl, then untied a leather pouch from his belt and shook a reddish, fine powder onto his palm. He dusted the powder into the water as if he were salting food. He gestured with his hand over the bowl as if smoothing something away, then spoke words in the strange language that he sometimes spoke when he was dreaming at night, cuddled with Nico’s matarh in their bed.

A light seemed to glow inside the bowl, illuminating Talis’ face a sickly yellow-green. Talis stared into the glowing bowl, his mouth open, his head leaning closer and closer as if he were falling asleep, though his eyes were wide. Nico didn’t know how long Talis stared into the bowl-far longer than the breath Nico tried to hold. As he watched, Nico thought he could feel a chill, as if the bowl were sending a winter’s breath out from it, frigid enough that Nico shivered. The feeling became stronger, and the breath Nico drew in seemed to pull that cold inside with it, though somehow it felt almost hot inside him. It made him want to breathe it back out, like he could spit frozen fire.

In the other room, Talis’ head nodded ever closer. When his face appeared to be about to touch the rim of the bowl, the glow vanished as suddenly as it had come, and Talis gasped as though drawing breath for the first time.

Nico gasped, too, involuntarily, as the cold and fire inside him vanished at the same moment. He started to pull his head back from the door, but Talis’ voice stopped him. “Nico. Son.”

He peered back in. Talis was staring at him, a smile creasing the lines of his olive face. There were more wrinkles there, lately, and Talis’ hair was beginning to be salted with gray. He groaned when he stood up too fast and his joints sometimes creaked, even though Matarh said that Talis was the same age as her. “It’s fine, Son. I’m not angry with you.” Talis’ accent seemed stronger than usual. He gestured to Nico, and Nico could see a smear of the red dust still on his palm. He sighed as if he were tired and needed to sleep. “Come here.” Nico hesitated. “Don’t worry; come here.”

Nico pushed open the door-the hinge, as he knew it would, protesting loudly-and went to Talis. The man picked him up (yes, he grunted with the effort) and put him on a chair next to the table so he could see the bowl. “Nico, this is a special bowl I brought with me from the country where I used to live,” he said. “See… there’s water in it.” He stirred the water with a fingertip. The water seemed entirely ordinary now.