S Farrell - A Magic of Nightfall

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Not yet. She smiled again. She reached out as if to pat his hand, but drew back at the last moment. That was part of the uncomfortable dance they’d been doing for days now.

They were ten days back in Nessantico. They’d returned to the city with Serafina, who had taken up residence in her old rooms. She invited Varina and Karl to stay with her, an offer they’d accepted-the old Numetodo haunts were undoubtedly being watched by Garde Kralji, and they’d seen none of the Numetodo in Oldtown at all. They’d scoured the neighborhood with Serafina, asking about Nico, but no one remembered seeing the boy, certainly not after the day they’d helped the Regent escape the Bastida. If Nico had indeed returned to Nessantico, as Varina had been certain he had, he seemed to have somehow vanished; if Talis were still in the city, he remained hidden as well.

And for Varina… after their awkward conversation in Ville Paisli, she didn’t seem to know quite how to act around Karl. Her admission that she had wanted more of him than friendship… Why did she say that to him? He looked at her strangely now, as if he were thinking back on all the interactions they’d had over the years and reinterpreting them, casting their conversations in the light of this revelation and wondering.

Why did you tell him? Why did you admit it?

Her hand retreated from his. He started to reach over to her. “Varina…”

“I’m back!” The call came as the door to the room opened and Serafina came in. She carried a cloth bag from which a long loaf of bread protruded. Varina saw Serafina glance at them strangely before she walked over to the table and placed the bag there. She lifted out the loaf of bread, then a half-round of cheese and a paper bag of marsh-berries. They watched her, not speaking, and she sighed and shook her head.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Varina said. She wondered whether Serafina had seen them working the magic, but she was shaking her head with a half-smile.

“The two of you,” she said, glancing from Varina to Karl. “It’s obvious enough that you’re not married, no matter what you told my sister back in Ville Paisli. But it’s also obvious there’s something between the two of you, and that neither of you are sure what to do about it. I understand; that’s the way it was with Talis and me at first. I’d been hurt too much by a previous lover who didn’t care about me but only himself, and I thought that was the way it was going to be with everyone. But Talis… he was a good man. He cared about me, and when Nico came, he was a good vatarh as well. But the damned Numetodo…” She bit her lower lip as Varina looked at Karl and raised an eyebrow.

“The Numetodo?” Karl asked.

“Talis said the Ambassador tried to kill him; that’s why he sent me and Nico away-because he thought the Numetodo would come after him, and since the Ambassador was friendly with Regent ca’Rudka, that the Garde Kralji would be after him as well. I guess that’s nothing he has to worry about now,” she added with a wry smile. “The Kraljiki seems to like the Regent and Ambassador less than Talis.”

“Talis hasn’t contacted you?” Karl persisted.

Serafina shook her head. “He will, when he thinks it’s safe. He’ll know I’m here soon, if he doesn’t already. Maybe he’s found Nico, too.” She sighed, and Varina saw her blink away tears. She put her hand on Serafina’s shoulder in comfort as the woman sniffed and brushed the tears away. “Anyway,” she said, “I was saying that I’ve watched the two of you circling each other like you’re promenading around the Avi a’Parete, and… well, I was glad when I finally let myself admit that I was in love with Talis. It was the best thing I’d done in a long time. That’s all.”

She smiled, and patted Varina’s hand, still on her shoulder. “I’m going to walk to the butcher’s and see what he has. Then I’m going to look for Nico around Temple Park; he always liked to go there.”

“I’ll come with you,” Varina said, but Serafina shook her head.

“No,” she told them. “I’d like to be on my own for a bit. I’ll be home before Third Call, and we can make a supper then.”

She smiled at them again, picked up her cloth bag, and left the rooms again. They heard the snick of the lock behind her. Varina could feel Karl staring at her. “What are we going to do if we find Talis, Karl?” she asked. “Or if she finds Nico? She loves Talis, and Nico would recognize both of us. What do we do then?”

“I don’t know,” Karl told her. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Varina nodded at that, and the silence between them slowly lengthened. She could feel the weight of it, wrapping around them like the greasy chains of a Bastida cell. Varina puttered with the bread and cheese, putting them in a woven basket.

“Varina,” Karl said finally, and she stopped. “Serafina’s right. It’s just…” His fingers tapped the walking stick. “I still hurt whenever I think about Ana,” he said. “She…”

“I know,” Varina told him. “I saw…” she began, then dropped her gaze to the table. “A few times, on the street, I saw the grandes horizontales you hired to…” Her gaze came back up. “To me, they all looked like her: the same coloring, the same build.”

He dropped his gaze, guiltily. “Varina-”

“No,” she told him, interrupting. “I understood. I did. But it still hurt, because you didn’t see me, when that’s…” She closed her mouth, pressed her lips tightly together. She wouldn’t say the rest. She wouldn’t.

Karl lifted his hands, let them drop back to the table. “Serafina’s right. Because of my obsession, I missed what was right in front of my nose. I was stupid. Worse, I was cruel, and that’s something I never wanted to be. Not to you, Varina. Never to you. You’ve always been someone I admired and trusted. I always thought of you as a friend. And now… I don’t know if…”

“I don’t know either,” she told him. Go on, she heard a voice inside her say. Go on. Say it. “Karl, we can both continue to wonder. Or-”

She let the word hang there, as bright in his mind as spell-fire.

He held out his hand to her.

She took it.

Second Cenzidi. The day he was to meet with the Kraljiki.

This is your time, your moment. This day, I will take you up into Me and hold you, and you will be forever happy and at ease. Today.. .

“Thank you, Cenzi,” Eneas whispered gratefully. “Thank you. I am your servant, your vessel.”

He had taken the ground niter, charcoal, and sulfur; mixing them carefully together with stale urine as Cenzi had directed him to do, until he had created the black sand of the Westlanders. He placed the cakes of black sand into a leather satchel, which he draped over his uniform. He had rehearsed in his mind the spell of fire Cenzi had given him until he knew the gestures and the chant and could do the simple spell in the space of a few breaths. Yes, this would demonstrate to the Kraljiki what the Westlanders could do. It would make Nessantico realize how important and how dangerous this war had become.

Then, finally, he tidied the room, so that it would look neat for those who would come to look at it afterward.

As he walked to the Kraljiki’s palais for his audience, he let himself take in the sights of Nessantico, absorbing everything the city he loved so much had to offer. He strolled along the North Bank of the Isle a’Kralji from his rooms, gazing fondly at the gated towers of the Pontica Mordei and watching a flatboat piled high with crates slide under its stonework span. The A’Sele gleamed in sunlight, wavelets sparking and dancing. Couples sat with linked arms on the grassy bank, lost in the presence of each other. A quartet of e’teni hurried past him on their way to some task, their green robes swaying around their ankles and the faint smell of incense trailing after them. Eneas could hear the chaotic, eternal voice of the city, the sound of thousands of voices speaking at once.