S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

He seemed to chuckle inwardly. “Once, you might have been able to get away with that answer, Rochelle. Not now. Not with the Coalition as her great rival. Not with the Tehuantin pressing on her borders once again. Not with your brother’s people making their violent presence known here. You’re being disingenuous, Rochelle, and it doesn’t become you.” He stared; Rochelle’s fingertips brushed the smooth, worn hilt of Jan’s dagger. Will you have to kill him now? Can you let him walk away knowing what he knows?

“I don’t know why I’ve come,” she answered, “and that’s only the truth, Sergei. I couldn’t stay where I was and I didn’t know where else to go, and I just started walking. Nessantico seemed to be calling to me.”

“Calling for what, ” he persisted. “Revenge? A reunion?”

“Neither,” she said. Yes, revenge… She could almost hear her matarh’s voice whispering that inside. “I didn’t know for certain that Nico was here. I swear that by Cenzi.”

“Ah, a murderer swearing by Cenzi. How ironic. Your brother might appreciate that. If he’s still alive.”

That sentence sent a winter breeze swirling down her back, causing the newly-chopped hairs at the back of her neck to rise. “What?”

She couldn’t tell if he shrugged or only adjusted himself on the bench seat of the carriage. “You left the encampment before the news came,” Sergei said. “Your brother and his followers assaulted the Old Temple in Nessantico. They took it over and barricaded themselves inside. By now, Kraljica Allesandra will have ordered the attack on them; they wouldn’t have been able to hold out there. I would suspect that Nico Morel is either dead or in the Bastida by now. I’m sorry; I see that worries you, but I’m sorry-I’ve no sympathy for him, I’m afraid.”

She was stunned. She sat back in her seat across from him. Nico dead? No, she hadn’t seen him or talked to him for years, but she could still see him as a young man, just leaving to become an acolyte in the Faith, Matarh clinging to him as he lifted a bag in his hand with the few possessions he had, the carriage driver calling out impatiently. She’d glimpsed him once or twice since then; Matarh had taken her to see his induction as teni, but then he’d been sent to Brezno, and the visits stopped. They’d heard the tales of his rise and sudden fall within the ranks of teni; when Matarh had died, he hadn’t come, even though Rochelle had expected him. She wondered if he would even recognize her. She wondered if he would care; she wondered if he would condemn her for what she’d done and what she’d become.

“I wasn’t here for him,” she said. “I didn’t know…”

“Then why are you here? You still haven’t answered me.”

Outside, she saw houses and other carriages on the road with them, as well as people on horses or walking toward or from the city-leaning out, she could see the gates of the city just ahead. “Stop the carriage,” she said. “I’d like to get out here.”

Sergei stared for another moment, then he tapped on the roof of the carriage twice; the driver pulled on the reins, calling to the horses and moving them to the side of the road. “Do you kill me now?” Sergei asked. “You’re thinking that you could probably get away with it-easy enough to get lost in the crowds here before the driver raised the alarm.”

He knows what you’re thinking… And that, Rochelle realized, meant that he probably had anticipated the act and had a plan to counter it. His hand was on the knob of his cane. Still, he was too old and slow to stop her. “Don’t,” Sergei told her. His voice almost sounded amused. “I’m not a threat to you, Rochelle. Not at this moment, anyway-though if you become a threat to Nessantico, then we’ll be meeting again. We’re very much alike, you and I-did you know that? I know you, better than you would believe. The difference is that you’re still young. You have a chance to escape becoming me, or becoming like your matarh: a madwoman haunted by the deaths she’s caused and too enamored of death to give it up. You just have to stop. Stop being the White Stone-because if you don’t, soon you won’t want to stop. You won’t be able to stop. Listen to me-I know what I’m speaking of. You don’t want that, Rochelle. You truly don’t.”

He was still holding the cane, still watching her. She saw his gaze fasten on her right hand under her tashta, on the hidden knife.

A quick upward slash. It would come before he could even move, and the blood would be spilling from him even as I leap from the carriage. He’d be dead by my first step…

She was breathing hard. But there’d be no time to use the stone. The voice might have been her matarh. You’ll be in his eyes, caught there forever at the moment of his death. His eyes will betray you.. .

The noise of the city was loud in the carriage. “Ambassador?” the driver called down through the closed curtain.

Stop being the White Stone…

“Well, Rochelle?” Sergei asked her. “What is it to be?”

A few breaths later, she descended from the carriage. She looked up at the driver. “The Ambassador says to go on,” she told him. He slapped the reins, and the carriage started forward again, slipping into the stream of traffic heading toward the gate. She watched it until it had passed the half-tumbled stone arches, then she slipped into the crowds herself.

The Tecuhtli march at midday; almost immediately afterward, one of the warriors came panting up to Niente, telling him that Citlali required his presence. His stomach churning with unease, Niente followed the man to where most of the High Warriors were gathered in a wide circle. They parted to let him pass through; in the center, Tecuhtli Citlali was seated, with the High Warrior Tototl, as usual, at his right side. Atl was standing at his left hand, stern and unsmiling as Niente entered the open space.

The burning in Niente’s stomach increased.

“Your son tells me disturbing things, Nahual Niente,” Citlali said without preamble. “He says that your path leads to defeat, not victory. He says that he sees another way, and he tells me that we must take it now before it is too late.”

Split the army in three arms, one of which must go back toward Villembouchure and cross the river. Come to the city from west, north, and south, and come at a fast march, so that you reach the city before the other army can reach it… He had seen that vision himself. He’d seen the warriors push howling into the streets, the city’s defenses too stretched to offer resistance. The city would fall, in a single, bloody day.

“My son is wrong,” Niente said. He could not look at Atl’s face. “I’ve already told the Tecuhtli this.”

“You have,” Citlali answered. “And I’ve listened to you, and to Atl. I find it rather compelling that a son who has always loved, respected, and obeyed his Taat feels so strongly that he would go against him: not only as a Taat, but as Nahual.”

“Atl believes what he has seen in the bowl, and he does have Axat’s gift,” Niente answered. “But he doesn’t yet have the skill to interpret what he sees in the mists, nor to see far enough through them. What he doesn’t realize is that one day’s victory may lead to the next day’s defeat.”

“Hmm…” Citlali’s fingers stroked his chin as if he were petting a cat. “Or an old man could be so weakened by years of using his gift that he’s no longer strong enough to see well, and instead sees only what he wants to see.”

“Don’t mistake physical weakness for something else, Tecuhtli,” Niente said. “I am still stronger in the ways of the X’in Ka than any of the other nahualli.” Now he did look at Atl, almost in apology. “And that includes my own son.”