S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

The gardai looked at him startled. They began to protest, but Jan gestured again toward the door. As they bowed and left, Jan went to ca’Rudka and helped the man back to his feet. “Are you really that poor a swordsman, Regent?”

Ca’Rudka managed to smile as he held his side, leaning forward and trying to catch his breath. “No,” he answered. “But I made you think I was.” He took a long breath in through his mouth and groaned. “By Cenzi, that hurt. I trust that my point’s obvious enough?”

“That people might lie and deceive me in order to get what they want?” Jan laughed bitterly. “You’re not the only one trying to teach me that lesson.”

“Ah.” Ca’Rudka seemed to be considering that. He said nothing, waiting.

“My matarh and the Archigos seem to think that now is the time to attack Nessantico.”

Ca’Rudka shrugged, then grimaced again. “Do you want to be admitting that to a potential spy in your midst, Hirzg? Why, I might send a note back to the Kraljiki.”

“You won’t.”

Nothing moved on ca’Rudka’s face at that. He blinked over his silver nose. “Have you considered that your matarh and the Archigos might be right?”

“You’d agree with them?”

“Honestly, I’d rather that there be no war at all, that we settle our differences another way. But if I were your matarh…” He shrugged. “Perhaps I’d be thinking the same.”

“So you think I should listen to them?”

“I think that you’re the Hirzg, and therefore you should make up your own mind. But I also think that a good Hirzg listens to the message even when he has difficulty with the messenger.”

Jan looked away from the man. He could see himself in the bronze mirrors of the hall, his image slightly distorted in the waves of thin metal. He was still holding his sword. He went to the wall where ca’Rudka’s wooden sword had come to a rest. He leaned down and picked up the practice weapon, tossing it to the man.

“Show me something else,” he said. “Show me how experience beats raw skill.”

Ca’Rudka smiled. He took the sword, and this time his movements were fluid and graceful. “All right,” he said. “Take your stance.. .”

After spending several days with the woman, Nico decided she was very strange, but also fascinating. She was good to Nico. She fed him well, she talked to him-long talks in which he found himself telling her everything about his matarh and Talis and how he and his matarh had left Nessantico, and how he hated his onczio and his cousins and left the village, and how the Regent and Varina had helped him…

The woman walked with him during the day around his old neighborhood, with Nico hoping he would see Talis or his matarh.

But he hadn’t. “Your vatarh’s name is Talis Posti?” she had asked him the first night, after he’d told her his story. “You’re sure of that? And he’s here in the city?” He nodded, and she’d said nothing more.

She told Nico her name was Elle, but sometimes when Nico called out that name, she didn’t seem to notice. She would sometimes, in the middle of conversation, respond to some unheard comment or address the air as if talking to it. In public, she seemed to make herself shrivel and look old and frail, but in the privacy of the rooms she kept, she was another person altogether: much younger; strong, athletic, and vital. She kept weapons in the room: a sword leaning in the corner near the door and another at the side of the bed, and there were several knives with wickedly-sharp edges-she nearly always had two or more of those on her person. Nico would watch her when she honed her weapons at night with a whetstone. He’d watch her face, and the loving concentration as she sharpened the razored edges made him shiver.

She had a small leather pouch around her neck that she never took off. It was always there under her clothing, and at night she would clasp her hand around it as she were afraid someone might steal it. He wondered if when she took her daily bath in the copper tub in the common room of the house, she kept it on also. The bathing in itself was strange, since Nico had never seen anyone bathe themselves more than once a week, and more likely once a month. His matarh had always said that if you bathed too much, it caused you to get sick. Maybe, Nico thought, that was what was wrong with Elle.

At odd times, she would tell him to stay in the rooms they rented, and she would go out alone-usually at night. She would be gone for several turns of the glass, and usually Nico would fall asleep waiting for her to return. Whatever she did those nights, she never told him.

Tonight had been one of those nights. “Nico…” He felt her hand shaking him, and he blinked up at her face, candle-lit against the darkness of the room. “Get up,” she told him.

“Why, Elle?”he grumbled sleepily. It was comfortable and warm under the covers. She didn’t answer him-she had already moved to the door of their room.

“I want you to come with me,” she said. Grudgingly, Nico slid the covers aside and lifted himself from the straw-filled mattress. “Shoes,” Elle said as he started to pad toward her barefoot. He slipped on his worn boots as she opened the door. “Stay with me,” she told him, taking his hand. They went out into the night.

Nico knew that Nessantico never slept-not entirely. No matter what time of day or night, there would be people abroad in the Oldtown streets. But the night denizens were more dangerous than those of the day, his matarh had told him. “You’ll understand better when you grow up,” she’d said, more than once. “Night is a mask that the city puts on when it wants to do things it shouldn’t. The business people do at night… well, sometimes they need the darkness to hide it.” He’d glimpsed some of that recently, alone in Oldtown before Elle had found him. He’d witnessed the slurred speech and uncertain walk of the tavern denizens; seen the grunting encounters in dark alleys; glimpsed the quick, brutal assaults; witnessed the furtive exchange of jingling coins for wrapped packages. He stayed close to Elle now as they moved through the streets, alive with those wearing the mask of night.

She walked rapidly, so much so that he had to half-run to keep up with her. They cut across a corner of Oldtown Center and into the tangle of lanes running south and west toward the river, the buildings on either side growing rapidly older, smaller, and closer together, as if they wanted to huddle together in the night for warmth. Nico was quickly lost. There were no teni-lights here, only the occasional lamps set in the windows of taverns or brothels. Twice they passed an utilino, and Elle would draw down onto herself, making herself look smaller and older, and she would husk out a greeting with a grating voice that didn’t sound at all like her own.

Finally, Elle tugged him into the darkness of an alleyway and crouched down next to him. “Listen to me, Nico. I need you to be very, very quiet now. You need to be careful when you move so that no one hears your footsteps, and you can’t talk. No matter what you see or what happens. Do you understand?” In the faint light of the moon, he could see the white of her eyes, and her gaze was serious and solemn.

He nodded. She took his hand, squeezing it once gently. “All right,” she said. “Come on.”

They moved farther down the alley to a tiny door half-off its rusty hinges. Elle reached under her cloak; her fingertips, when her hand emerged again, had a dollop of some dark substance which she smeared on the hinges. She pushed at the door, it swung open reluctantly but silently, and Elle ducked inside, gesturing to Nico to follow.

The smell inside made Nico want to gag: there was something dead and rotting close by, and he was glad for once that it was far too dark to see well, though he was afraid he was going to trip over whatever was dead down here. Elle’s hand took his again and he followed her closely toward a dimly glimpsed stair, and up to a door. He saw Elle stoop alongside the door and fiddle for a few moments with a few pieces of wire inside the keyhole. There was a faint click, and Elle pushed the door open slowly. Nico found himself hurrying behind Elle down a narrow, dark hallway to stop in front of a door. “When I open this door,” she whispered huskily to him, “I need you to stay here in the hall. Don’t move, no matter what. Say nothing. Just listen. Listen. Do you understand?”