S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

“Varina told me that I still had the Gift, that it hadn’t been taken from me.”

“Nico…”

He raised his manacled hands. “You said Varina saved my life.”

“She did.”

“Tell me, my friend Silvernose, do you think she saved me for this?” He gestured at the bed and the instruments there. The chains clinked dully with the motion.

“It’s for Varina’s sake that I haven’t already forced you,” Sergei told him. “It’s for her that I still won’t-as long as you swear to me and Cenzi that you’ll recant. But you make one mistake, Nico-it’s not Varina who has spared your life, but the Kraljica at Varina’s request. The Kraljica will let you live if you confess your mistake; she has given me the charge to force that from you if you refuse, and if you still will not…” Sergei lifted his hands. He plucked the brass hammer from its loop and fitted the handle to it. “If you will not-then after I am finished with you, you’ll be handed over to the Archigos. I guarantee you that you’ll find no compassion there.”

“You and I both believe in Cenzi, Ambassador. We both believe that His will should be followed.”

“I don’t believe Cenzi talks to me,” Sergei answered. He tapped the battered end of the brass hammer in one palm. “I do the best I can, but I’m only a weak human being. I do what I think is best for Cenzi, but most especially what I think is best for Nessantico.”

Nico nodded. He turned his back to Sergei and shuffled gingerly to the ledge of the cell. He stood there looking out. “I could let myself fall,” he said to the air. “It would all be over in a few breaths.”

“Others have done that,” Sergei said. “If you do, I’ll produce a signed confession from you and have it read aloud in the plaza. It won’t be as effective, but it might suffice.”

Nico smiled over his shoulder. Sergei thought then that he would do it. There was nothing he could do to stop Nico; by the time he reached the young man, his body would already be broken on the stones of the courtyard below; even if he did, Sergei no longer had the strength to hold him back-they might both end up falling.

But Nico didn’t fall. He took a long breath, looking out over the city. “I thought I saw my sister out there,” he told Sergei. “Varina and my sister, and poor dead Liana, whose only sin was that she loved me and followed me-that’s what Cenzi gives me when I pray to Him.”

He looked back at Sergei, and his face was bleak. “All I wanted-all I ever wanted-was to serve Him, in gratitude for the Gift He has given me.”

“Then serve Him, and admit that you were wrong.”

“How do you do that?” Nico asked. “How do you suddenly change what you’ve done for years? How?”

Sergei came forward to stand next to him. He remembered this ledge; all the stones he’d come to know so well in the time he’d been held here himself. Nico was crying, twin tears leaving a clean path on his grimy cheeks. “I don’t know how,” he told Nico. “I only know that you have to start with one step.”

He was still holding the brass hammer. He lifted it, showing it to Nico. “Put your hands on the railing there,” he told Nico sternly. “Do it!” The garda started forward to force Nico’s cooperation, but Sergei gestured to him to stay back.

Nico, his hands trembling in their chains, placed them flat on the weathered, chipped stone, his fingers splayed out. Sergei lifted the hammer. He could imagine the brass head coming down, crushing flesh and bone, and the sweet, sweet cry of agony that Nico would make and the pleasure that would surge through him with it.

… and he let the hammer fall from his hands, tumbling over the edge of the balcony to clatter loudly on the flagstones below. Chips of stone flew, the wooden handle splintered into two pieces; the hammer leaving a deep gouge in the stone The gardai stationed at the gates jumped, startled, looking back at the courtyard.

“Come with me,” Sergei told Nico. “We’re going to the Old Temple. I think you have something to say.”

Nico lifted his hands. He stared at them wonderingly and clenched them into fists.

He nodded.

Jan viewed the landscape from the top of the hill along the Avi a’Sele, some fifteen miles out of Nessantico, and his mind reeled. “Cenzi’s balls…” Starkkapitan ca’Damont breathed alongside him, and Commandant Eleric ca’Talin gave a sympathetic laugh at the curse.

“It’s rather impressive, isn’t it?” the Commandant said. “They’re swarming along the road and a good mile or two on either side. I have reports that companies of their warriors crossed the A’Sele and are now on the south side as well. We haven’t been able to do more than annoy them, much less stop them.”

Jan had seen armies on the march before, but rarely so large a force. The Westlanders spread out before them, dark specks crawling like ants along the road and through the tilled fields to either side, the scales sewn onto their bamboo-and-leather armor glistening in sunlight. They made the army at Commandant ca’Talin’s back look like but a single squad. The Firenzcian force that would be arriving was little more than half the size of the Tehuantins. “I feel better now that we have at least a few hands of war-teni with us,” ca’Talin continued, “and we have adequate supplies of black sand, but these Westerner sorcerers are terribly strong, and we already know what their own black sand weapons can do against city walls. They cut through Villembouchure’s defense like rats through soft cheese; it was all I could do to hold the town for a single day and make it as costly for them as I could. Still, they forced me to retreat just to preserve the troops I had so I could continue to harry them on the way here.” The Commandant shook his head. “If I thought we had any realistic chance of cutting them down significantly, I would say we should bring your troops here and engage the Tehuantin here and now, before they reach Nessantico. We have the advantage of height, and beyond these last hills the land flattens in front of Nessantico, and we’ll have less room to maneuver. But if we do that and fail, then we’ve abandoned the city’s defenses to those who manage to live and retreat, and to the Garde Kralji. If you have some better strategy, Hirzg, Starkkapitan, I’d be happy to hear it.”

Ca’Damont only shook his gray head. Jan stared downward. “Watch,” ca’Talin said. “I’ve sent out a group of chevarittai to attack their left flank there, by the river where the Westerners are exposed. The chevarittai are in that copse of trees…”

Before the Commandant had finished speaking, a group of two hands of mailed riders rushed outward from the cover of the trees, hurtling toward a group of Tehuantin warriors who had become slightly separated from the main group. They saw the Westlander warriors bring down their pikes, grounding them against the charge. But the lead chevaritt hurled something that glistened in the sun toward their front ranks. It exploded, shattering as it reached them. They saw the brilliance of the explosion and the smoke rising from the Tehuantin ranks before the sound of the explosion came, a thunder that rolled from the hillside. There was a hole in the pike line, with several of the Westlanders on the ground. The chevarittai slammed into that hole, swords and spears slashing, but now they could see other warriors hurrying toward the gap, and plume-helmeted sorcerers raising their spell-staffs. Lightnings flashed, and-with the shrill call of a cornet-the chevarittai were retreating back through the hole they’d torn in the line. There were only six of them now, with two riderless horses accompanying them, and two more horses down. They hurried back into the cover of the trees as arrows plummeted down around them-Jan saw another rider fall under the assault just before they reached the tree line.