S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

Niente remembered the battles around Lake Malik, and shook his head. “Tecuhtli, they were caught unawares and unprepared for us. That won’t happen again. The whispers of what happened here will come to their Kraljiki and the commanders of their army. Perhaps…” He hesitated, not wanting to say the next words. “Perhaps it would be best if we take what we have gained here and return home.”

Tecuhtli Zolin laughed mockingly. “Go back? Now? When we’re standing here in the smoke of victory, just as you foresaw? Nahual Niente, you disappoint me. I came here to challenge this Kraljiki who would send his people to steal our cousins’ land but who won’t even lead his own army. Citlali, Mazatl-what do you say?”

Mazatl was already frowning, firelight playing over his marked face. Like Zolin, he still wore his battered and gore-marked armor. “I say that I’m glad to be standing on the ground, even here. To be at sea again?” He spat on the rocks at his feet. “I came to fight, not to sail. I say we give Axat what She has earned here, and go on.” Citlali muttered his agreement, but appeared less convinced.

The nahualli and the warriors gathered nearest the fire had already begun the low, haunting chanting of the prayer to Axat. The moon’s light fell bright and full on the altar stone, glinting on the thick glass tips of the eagle claws. Niente nodded to Zolin.

Two nahualli grabbed one of the prisoners and hauled the man forward. The offizier was blubbering with fright, calling out to Cenzi. The nahualli pulled him onto the altar stone and pushed him down to his knees. He stared up at Niente in terror. “Go bravely to your death,” Niente said to the man in his own language as he picked up one of the eagle claws. He turned the horn at the tip, the ominous click loud as the spell was activated. “Pray to your god. This will be quick. I promise you that much.” Niente nodded again, and the nahualli held the man’s arms tight as the man closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer.

Niente opened his own mind to Axat and the moon glow, and pressed the bone of the muzzle to the man’s stomach. The sound of the eagle claw’s detonation echoed over the city.

Jan looked almost frightened, his eyes so wide there was white entirely around the pupils. “Matarh… taking the army against the Holdings… I don’t know.”

“I understand the danger,” she told him. “Yes, it is a huge step to take so early in your time as Hirzg, and I understand how you must feel. I do. You would need to trust Starkkapitan ca’Damont’s expertise; even so, this would test you beyond anything you’ve ever done in your life. But, Jan, I know this is something you can do. Taking the army into battle is something you must eventually do-as nearly every Hirzg of Firenzcia has done. Even your vatarh would tell you that. Fynn was eighteen, only two years older than you, when he first did so.” She nodded toward Semini, who sat silently in his own chair. They were in Allesandra’s chambers, the three of them. The servants had been dismissed after they had served dinner, the remnants of which decorated the table between them. “Semini knows,” she said. “He commanded the war-teni when your great-vatarh Jan nearly took Nessantico.”

“And he would have succeeded, had that vile heretic of an Archigos not used her Numetodo magic against us,” Semini grumbled. He seemed more like a bear than ever, hunched over on his chair. He tapped his plate, but looked carefully away from Allesandra. She could still remember the shock of that evening: she had been in the tent sitting on her vatarh’s lap. “You are my little bird,” he was saying, “and I love-” Then his voice cut off and-impossibly-she was outside far from the encampment, sprawled on rain-soaked ground in the night as Archigos Ana and some strange man fought each other with Ilmodo magic she would have thought impossible. Yes, she remembered that all too well-and she knew that her capture was the reason her vatarh had failed, and that he blamed her for it. “Oh, there’s much that the Holdings hasn’t yet answered for,” the Archigos continued, looking only at Jan. He pounded softly on the tablecloth with a fist. “I look forward to demanding payment. Hirzg Jan, I stand ready to be at your right hand, with all the war-teni of the Faith alongside me.”

Jan still looked uncertain, and Allesandra reached out to pat his hand. “Jan,” she said, “ultimately this must be your decision, not mine. I’m not the Hirzg, you are.”

“You didn’t want this when you could have had it, ” Jan said, tapping the golden band of the Hirzg’s crown on his head. “And yet now you want to-” He stopped, abruptly. Blinked. “Oh,” he said. His eyes narrowed.

She worried at the look on his face. “Think of what we could accomplish together, Jan,” she told him hurriedly, “with the same family on the Sun Throne and on the Throne of Firenzcia. We could bind the Holdings together and create a greater, more peaceful empire than Marguerite’s.”

He said nothing. He looked from Semini to Allesandra, then rose from his seat and walked quickly to the door. “Jan?” she called after him, and he paused there. He spoke without turning around to her.

“I’m beginning to understand some of what Vatarh said about you before he left, Matarh,” Jan said. “He told me that you use people for your own purposes; he said that was exactly the way your own vatarh had been, so it wasn’t all that surprising. He said that was what had made Great-Vatarh an effective Hirzg, but a dangerous friend. I wonder if I can ever be such a good Hirzg. I wonder if I would ever want to be.” Jan knocked on the door and the hall servants opened it.

Allesandra rose to her feet and pushed back from the table; she started after him as plates clashed and goblets shivered. “Jan, stay. Please. Talk to me.”

He shook his head and left without another word, the door closing again.

Allesandra stood in the center of the dining room and could not hold back the sob that came. I never meant to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. At the same time, she wondered at his declaration: had she made a mistake placing him on the Hirzg’s throne? Was she seeing Jan with a matarh’s eyes and not those of truth? She felt Semini’s hands on her shoulders and realized that he had risen to stand behind her. “Don’t worry, Allesandra,” he said to her. His words were a low growl in her ear. “Let the boy alone for a bit-and remember that in many ways he still is a boy. He knows you’re right, but right now he’s feeling that you gave him the crown of the Hirzg as the consolation prize.”

“It truly wasn’t that way.” Tears threatened, and she sniffed and blinked them back. “I love him, Semini. I do. He doesn’t realize how much. It hurts me to see him angry with me. This wasn’t what I intended.”

“I know,” he whispered. “I’ll talk to him. I can convince him that you’re right.”

She shook her head, staring at the door. “I need to go after him.”

“If you do that, the two of you will just end up in a worse argument. You’re both too much alike. Give him time to calm and think about things, and he’ll realize that he was overreacting. He may even apologize. Give him time. Let him be angry now.”

His hands kneaded her shoulders. She felt his lips brush the hair at the nape of her neck, and let her head drop forward in response. “He’s my son. It hurts me when he’s hurting.”

“If you get what you’re after, then that’s something you might have to accept. The Kralji of Nessantico and the Hirzgai of Firenzcia have always had their differences and their separate agendas. If you don’t want a struggle between the two of you, then you should give up this idea of yours.”