S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

“There,” Allesandra whispered to Varina. “That is what we’ve come for. We have you to thank for this, Varina…” She seemed almost ready to rise and respond, but Nico had taken a breath, and now his voice was ice and fire at once.

“I believed,” Nico said. “I still believe. I have prayed now for days for His direction. What I’ve come to realize is that the gift Cenzi has given me is not constrained by laws and restrictions that the Faith placed on me. Cenzi’s revelation to me in the wake of my folly was both enlightening and freeing.” He raised his bound hands as if offering them to the sky. “I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cenzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit-” and there Nico’s gaze found Varina again, and he smiled broadly toward her. “That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”

Varina stood. “Nico, no…” she began, her voice a pale shadow of his own, but it was already too late.

Nico’s hands were still raised, and now he gestured once with both of them together, and he shouted a single word-a word in the language of the Ilmodo, of the Scath Cumhacht, of the X’in Ka. A darkness, a fragment of a starless and moonless night, seemed to wrap around him, hiding him. Sergei gave a shout and reached toward Nico, only to draw his hand back with a cry when he touched the darkness. The gardai did the same, but when they reached the darkness, the false night in which Nico had wrapped himself suddenly vanished.

And where Nico had been, they found only the chains in which he’d been fettered, lying on the wooden planks of the dais. Nico himself had vanished.

Varina blinked. “Well,” she said, “it seems he listened to me more than I thought.”

Rochelle watched Nico, weighed down in chains as he was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now, he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only the teni and some gardai separating them.

Yet she still couldn’t help him. They would catch her and drag her down before she reached him even though several of them would be dead as a result. But she would fail. Must fail. That was another thing Matarh had taught her, even in her madness. “Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not even try.”

To be so achingly close to him, to see her brother again and not be able to help him…

It hurt. It wounded her as surely as a sword’s edge. Yet there was something she might accomplish today, if she had the chance. The Kraljica was here, her great-matarh, and though Allesandra was as well guarded as her brother, perhaps there might be a moment, a chance. Rochelle’s hand went to the dagger under her clothing, the dagger she’d stolen from her vatarh. The vow she’d made to her matarh burned in her mind.

If she couldn’t save a life, perhaps she could take one just as important.

On the dais, Nico bowed to the ca’-and-cu’ on their own raised platform. “Kraljica, Councillors. And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.” His voice sounded tired, and he was looking around. His gaze flitted over each of them, and Rochelle stood on her toes, trying to see better over the people around her. Then it happened. Nico’s eyes found hers. She could feel the connection and acknowledgment. Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest of smiles, as if he knew her. He nodded toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name, but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and there:

“I thought I was Cenzi’s Voice… I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done… I believed. I still believe…” Above the crowd, she saw Nico lifting his hands and the gesture caught her. She stopped, wondering.

“I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cenzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit. That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”

Nico?

She never saw clearly what happened next. It was as if Nico had wrapped himself completely in a black cloak. She heard people shouting and gesturing, saw Old Silvernose withdraw his hand from the darkness with a curse, then…

Nico was gone, and people all around the plaza were shouting wordlessly. The gardai were buzzing like a hive of bees whose nest had just been struck. Rochelle had moved to the rear edge of the Kraljica’s dais, just behind the ring of gardai. They jumped up onto the stage now, closing around the Kraljica with their swords drawn, and Rochelle drew back. There was no hope of getting to Allesandra now. None. Again, this was one of the times when she must allow herself to fail.

She drifted back in the crowd, away from the suspicious eyes of the gardai, away from the green-robed teni who seemed just as upset and on edge.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she whirled, the dagger already drawn. She could kill someone in this crowd easily enough and still escape in the confusion…

But her hand stopped in mid-thrust. “Nico-”

“Hush!” he said. He’d drawn a hood over his head; his face was visible only to those who looked directly at him. But even half-hidden as he was, he looked incredibly exhausted and drawn. His hand on her shoulder trembled, and she felt him sag, as if he was barely able to stand. In the shadow of the hood, there were darker circles under his eyes. “Cenzi told me you were here. He showed you to me. Come on!” She looked back at the dais and he shook his head. “No. Not now, Rochelle. Come! I need your help.”

He put his arm around her. Leaning heavily on her, he guided her away, through the thinning edge of the crowd and away from the growing uproar and the plaza itself, until they were walking down a street adorned with shop signs and busy with hustling people, though few of them seemed to be interested in the wares displayed in the open windows or in the sidewalk cabinets. Their faces were grim and harried, and Rochelle remembered the same looks on the faces of those fleeing the city when she’d arrived.

Nico finally stopped near a cafe. “You have money?” he asked her, and she nodded. “Good. I need to sit and to eat-they will hardly look for me here.”

They took a table against the wall of the cafe and ordered wine, cheese, bread, and some meats. The waiter seemed genuinely pleased to have a patron; no doubt those had been far more sparse than usual in the past few weeks.

She watched Nico as he ate. He had changed a great deal from the boy she remembered. The Nico of her memory had been eager and apprehensive all at the same time as he prepared to go to Brezno Temple as an acolyte. She’d been with him again, when he’d taken the green robe of the teni and made his pledge to Cenzi in that same temple, and he’d seemed so sure of himself then..

The Nico who stood before her now was thinner, his cheeks drawn in. The lines of his face were harsher and more deeply drawn, and she could see the pain of his life written there. There had always been an intensity to him, one that she remembered from her earliest memory of him, but was changed now. It had turned into something harder, deeper inside himself, and more dangerous.