S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

“Excellent!” The voice was not ci’Blaylock’s but Sergei’s, as he applauded loudly and strode out to stand alongside Audric. The courtiers joined the applause belatedly and uncertainly. Sigourney ca’Ludovici, Audric noticed, didn’t applaud at all, only crossed her arms and glared. “Maister ci’Blaylock, I’m sure you’ve heard enough to make your judgment,” Sergei continued.

Ci’Blayblock frowned. “Regent, I wasn’t quite fin-” He stopped, and Audric saw him staring at the Regent’s frown. He laid down the quill and started to roll up the testing scroll. “Yes, that was very satisfactory,” he said. “Well done, Kraljiki, as always.”

“Good,” Sergei said. “Now, if all of you will excuse us…”

The Regent’s dismissal was abrupt but effective. Maister ci’Blaylock gathered up his scrolls and limped toward the nearest door; the courtiers drifted away like tendrils of fog on a sunny morning, smiling until they turned their backs. Audric could hear their furious whispering speculations as they left the hall. Sigourney, however, paused. “Is this something the Council of Ca’ should know?” she asked Sergei. She wasn’t looking at Audric; it was as if he weren’t important enough to be noticed.

Sergei shook his head. “Not at the moment, Councillor ca’Ludovici,” he said. “If it becomes so, be assured that I will let you know immediately.”

Sigourney sniffed at that, but she nodded to Sergei and bowed the proper obeisance to Audric before leaving the hall. Only a few servants remained, standing silently by the tapestry-hung stone walls, while two e-teni-priests of the Concenzia Faith-whispered prayers as they lit the lamps against the dying light. On the wall near the Sun Throne, the faces of the peasant family in ci’Recroix’s painting seemed to shiver in the light of the teni-fire.

“Thank you, Sergei,” Audric said. He hacked again, covering his mouth with a fisted hand. “You could have come half a turn of the glass earlier, though, and saved me the whole ordeal.”

Sergei grinned. “And face the wrath of Maister ci’Blaylock? Not likely.” He paused a moment, and the lines of his face went serious around the metal nose. “I would have been here earlier to hear your examination, Kraljiki, but I’ve just received a message from a contact in Firenzcia. There’s news, and I thought you should hear it before the Council: Hirzg Jan of Firenzcia is on his deathbed. He’s not expected to live out the week. It may be that he’s dead already-the message was days old.”

“So A’Hirzg Fynn will become the new Hirzg? Or will Allesandra fight her brother’s ascension?”

Sergei’s grin returned momentarily. “Ah, so you do pay attention to my briefings. Good. That’s far more important than Maister ci’Blaylock’s lessons.” He shook his head. “I doubt Allesandra will protest. She doesn’t have enough backing from the ca’-and-cu’ of Firenzcia to contest Hirzg Jan’s will.”

“Which of the two would we prefer?”

“Our own preference would be Allesandra, Kraljiki-after the decade and more she spent here waiting for Hirzg Jan to ransom her, we know her far better. Archigos Ana always had a good relationship with her, and Allesandra is far more sympathetic to the Holdings. If she became Hirzgin… well, maybe there would be some hope of reconciliation between the Holdings and the Coalition. There might even be a faint possibility that we could return things to the way they were in your great-matarh’s time, with you on the Sun Throne under a reunited Holdings. But with Fynn as Hirzg…” Again, Sergei shook his head. “He is his vatarh’s son, just as bellicose and stubborn. If he’s Hirzg, we’ll have to watch our eastern border closely-which will mean less resources we can spare for the war in the Hellins, unfortunately.”

Audric bent over with another coughing fit, and Sergei placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Your cough is worsening again, Kraljiki,” he said. “I’ll have the healers make another potion for you, and perhaps we’ll have Archigos Ana see you tomorrow after the Day of Return ceremony. It’s a little early, but with the rains last month…”

“I’m better now,” Audric told him. “It’s just the damp air here in the hall.” The nearest e’teni had stopped her chant, her hands frozen in the middle of shaping the Ilmodo-the energy that fueled their magic. She was a young woman not much older than Audric; she blushed when she saw that Audric had noticed her, looked quickly away, and began her chant anew: the lamp set high on the wall bloomed into light as her hands waved in the Ilmodo patterns under it.

Audric’s chest was beginning to ache with the racking coughs. He hated being ill, but it seemed he was often sick. He’d been that way from the very beginning of his memories. If an illness were passing through the staff of the palais, he was certain to catch it; he was constantly assailed by coughing fits, by difficulty in breathing. Any physical exertion left him quickly exhausted and gasping. Yet somehow Cenzi had protected him from the outbreak of Southern Fever when he was four, though the illness had taken his older sister Marguerite, named for her famous great-matarh and primed to be the Kraljica on their vatarh’s death. Her state funeral-a long and somber ceremony-was one of his earliest memories.

It should be Marguerite standing here now, not him. Audric hoped this meant Cenzi had a plan for him.

He drew in a long breath and this time held back the cough that threatened. “There, you see,” he told Sergei. “Just the damp, and having to answer all the Maister’s damnable questions.”

“At least the maister’s questions have definite answers. The solutions for a Kraljiki are rarely so clear-cut, as you already know.” Sergei put his arm around Audric, and Audric leaned into the man’s embrace. “Trust ca’Rudka as your Regent,” his vatarh had whispered as he lay on his bed during that final day. “Trust him as you would me…”

The truth was that Audric had never quite trusted his vatarh, whose temperament and favor had been erratic at best. But Sergei… Audric felt that his vatarh had made a final good choice with the man. Yes, he might chafe under the Regent’s hand more and more as he approached his majority, he might be irritated that people at times treated Sergei as if he were the Kraljiki, but Audric could not have asked for a more loyal ally in the chaotic winds of the Kraljiki’s court.

It didn’t matter to him what the whispers of the courtiers said about the Regent. It didn’t matter what the man did in the dungeons of the Bastida, or with the grandes horizontales he sometimes took to his bed.

“I suppose we must draft a statement for the Hirzg’s death,” Audric said. “And we must listen to ten different councillors requesting that we respond in twenty different ways. Then ten more advisers to tell us what we need to do about the Hellins in the west.”

Sergei laughed. His arm tightened around Audric’s shoulder, then released him. He rubbed at his silver nose as if it itched him. “No doubt,” he answered. “ I would say that you have learned all your lessons very well, Kraljiki.”

His August presence, the Kraljiki Audric, hunched in his padded, elevated seat alongside Sergei, coughing so desperately that Sergei leaned over to the boy. “Do you need some of the healer’s draught, Kraljiki? I’ll have one of the attendants bring it over…” He started to gesture, but Audric caught his arm.

“Wait, Sergei. This will pass.” Audric said it in three breaths. Wait, Sergei (breath) This will (breath) pass… Just the effort of grabbing Sergei’s arm visibly tired the boy.

Sergei rubbed at the polished surface of the false nose glued to his face, his original nose lost long decades ago in a youthful sword fight. “Would you prefer to return to the palais, Kraljiki?” Sergei asked. “The smoke from the censers and the incense can’t be good for your lungs, and the Archigos will understand. In any case, she’ll be over to see you as soon as she’s finished here.”