S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

Early on, she had imagined coming back to Nessantico-perhaps as the Hirzgin, perhaps as a claimant to the Sun Throne itself. She had imagined her friendship with Ana restored, of the two of them working together to create an empire that would be the wonder of the ages. But now Ana was gone forever, stolen from her.

She had herself. She had no one else.

You like Semini well enough, and it’s obvious he’s already in love with you. But he was also nearly two decades older, and they were both married. There was no future with him-unless, perhaps, he could become the Archigos of a unified Faith.

You’re thinking like your vatarh. You’re thinking like old Marguerite.

Semini stared at the meal on the table: the cold, sliced meats, the bread, the cheese, the wine. “If the A’Hirzg is hungry, then.. .”

You could end up as lonely as Ana was, as Marguerite was. Why shouldn’t you let yourself be close to someone, to enjoy them? You need someone who is your ally, your lover…

She touched his back, let her hand trail down his spine. “The meal,” she said, “was for appearances. And for later.”

“Allesandra-” He had turned toward her, and the hopeful look on his face nearly made her laugh.

She lifted up on her toes, her hand on his shoulders, and kissed him. His beard, she found, was surprisingly soft, and the lips underneath yielded to her. She brought her heels back down to the floor and took his hands, looking up at him with her head cocked to one side. His mouth was slightly open. “We would have to be careful, Semini,” she told him. “So very careful.”

His fingers tightened on hers. He leaned down toward her and she felt his lips brush her hair, moving as he spoke. “Cenzi has my soul,” he whispered. “But you, Allesandra, you have my heart. You always had my heart.” The words were so unexpected, so clumsy and cloying that she nearly laughed again, though she knew it would destroy him. She started to speak, to say something in return, but he leaned down again and kissed her brow, softly. She turned her face toward his, her arms going around him. The kiss was longer and urgent, his breath sweet, and the depth of her own hungry response startled her. She broke away reluctantly, hugging him tightly, her breath trembling.

His lips brushed her hair, his breath on her ear made her shiver. “This is what I want, Allesandra, more than anything.”

She didn’t answer him with words, but with her mouth and her hands.

“ I can’t believe I’m seeing this. Has the Council of Ca’ gone entirely insane?”

Sergei, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs in a corner of the cell, inclined his head significantly toward the garda leaning against the wall outside the bars of the cell. “No,” he said, his voice so low that Karl had to lean forward to hear it. “Not insane. Just eager to pick Audric’s bones clean when he falls. And me?” He laughed bitterly. “I was the easiest jackal for the pack to shove aside. I’m to be the scapegoat for everything, including Ana’s death.”

Karl could taste bile on the back of his tongue. The air of the Bastida was thick and heavy and lay like a massive, sodden shawl around his shoulders, slumping them as he sat in the single chair. Memories flooded him: he had once inhabited this very cell, when Sergei commanded the Garde Kralji. Then, Mad Mahri had snatched Karl from his imprisonment with his strange Westlander magic…

… and the memories of that time, so tied to Ana and his relationship with her, brought back fully the grief and the rage at her death. He lifted his head, his jaw and fists clenched, his eyes threatening to overflow. “It was Westlander magic that killed her,” he said to Sergei. “I nearly had the man.”

“Perhaps,” Sergei told him. “I assure you it wasn’t me.”

“And I know that,” Karl told him. “I will tell the Council the same thing. I’ll go to Councillor ca’Ludovici after I leave here-”

“No,” Sergei told him. “You won’t. Don’t get yourself caught in this, my friend. It’s bad enough that you’ve come to see me-the councillors will know that in a turn of the glass or less. You really don’t want whispers of the Numetodo being involved in any of Audric’s conspiracies-not if you don’t want the Holdings looking like the Coalition.” He paused. “You know what I mean by that, Karl. And be careful what you do with these Westlanders. There are already eyes watching you, and they have little sympathy toward anyone they perceive as being against them.”

“I don’t care,” Karl told him as the lava churned in his stomach again. The resolution that had settled there hardened. I’ll find this Talis again, and this time I will force the truth from him. “What about you?”

“So far I’ve been treated well enough.”

“So far.” Karl shuddered. He thought that Sergei was looking all of his years and more, that perhaps there was more gray in his hair than there’d been even a few days ago. “If they want a statement from you, if they want to punish you here in the Bastida…”

“You don’t need to tell me,” Sergei answered, and Karl thought he saw a visible shudder in Sergei’s normally unflappable posture. “I know better than anyone. That guilt is on my hands, too.” His voice dropped lower again. “Commandant cu’Falla is my friend also, and he has left me an option for that, if it comes to it. I won’t be tortured, Karl. I won’t permit it.”

Karl’s eyes widened slightly. “You mean…?”

A bare nod. His voice lifted again as the garda in the corridor stirred. “Come with me-there’s something I’d show you.” He slowly uncoiled himself from the bed and moved to the balcony as the garda watched them carefully-Sergei’s walk was more a shuffle. The wind lifted Karl’s white hair as they approached the rail of a small ledge that jutted out from the tower. Below, the courtyard of the Bastida appeared small and distant far below, and before them the city spread out. To their left, the A’Sele was sun-sparkled as it flowed beneath the Pontica a’Brezi Veste. There were cages hung from the columns of the bridge, with skeletons huddled inside. Karl shuddered at the sight. “Look here,” Sergei told him. He’d turned so that he faced not the city but the stone wall of the tower, and his finger pressed against one of the stones there. In the massive block of granite, a crack furrowed one corner; above Sergei’s finger, a small single white flower bloomed from the gray stone. “It’s a meadow star,” Sergei said. “Far from its usual home.”

“You always knew your plants.”

Sergei smiled, crinkling the skin around his metal nose. Karl could see the glue lifting and cracking. “You remember that, eh?”

“You made it so I was rather unlikely to forget.”

Sergei nodded. He touched the flower gently. “Look at this beauty, Karl. The barest crack in a stone, and life has found it. A bit of dirt blown in, the stone eroding in the rain to make the thinnest layer of soil, a bird chancing to leave a seed, or perhaps the wind blowing it from a field leagues away so that it falls in just the right place…”

“You should have been a Numetodo, Sergei. Or perhaps an artist. You have the mind for it.”

Another smile. “If this beauty can happen here in this most doleful of places, Karl, then there is always hope. Always.”

“I’m glad you believe that.”

His finger dropped away from the stone. The wind-horns began to blow Second Call, and he glanced out toward the Isle a’Kralji where the Grande Palais gleamed white. Karl wondered whether Audric looked out from one of his windows toward the Bastida, and perhaps glimpsed them there. “I worry about you, Karl. Forgive me, but you’re looking tired and old since she died. You need to take care of yourself.”