A Magic of Dawn (23 page)

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Authors: S. L. Farrell

BOOK: A Magic of Dawn
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No one aside from Erik ca’Vikej, who was seated behind the Council. Allesandra saw them struggling to ignore the man’s presence; their discomfiture was almost pleasant. Of the councillors, only Varina seemed to take little notice of him. Varina seemed to Allesandra to be lost in her own thoughts; she’d said nothing at all during the meeting.
“Nico Morel is able to make a public speech—one that attacked both the Faith and the Sun Throne—and yet we were unable to capture him.” Allesandra sniffed. The bright yellow glow of the Sun Throne enveloped her; she could see it radiating around her fingers as she clenched the crystalline arms of the throne. She could see the cracks in the carved, translucent stone where the throne, damaged in the assassination of Kraljiki Audric, fifteen years ago, had been repaired. The cracks did not glow but remained stubbornly opaque despite the best efforts of the light-téni. “This is not what I wished to hear.” She heard Erik snort in cold amusement at her remark.
“Nor is it what we wished to report, Kraljica,” Commandant cu’Ingres said. “I was in charge of the operation, not Commandant ca’Talin, who had agreed to support the Garde Kralji, and thus he should be blameless in this. I have no adequate excuse, and will make none.”
“Then it’s good that I had other reports from the scene, Commandant,” Allesandra told him. “I know that your gardai were attacked by the crowd, and that they used admirable restraint in not responding in kind against citizens of the Holdings.” Cu’Ingres inclined his head toward her in acknowledgment. “But I think that the time for restraint against the Morellis may have passed,” she continued. “In the future, both of you have my permission to use whatever force you feel is necessary.” Allesandra looked at Varina with that statement. She made no sign, staring at the hands folded in her lap. Allesandra wondered if she’d even heard what had been said.
“Nico Morel is to be found and brought to justice for the murder of citizens of Nessantico, and for the damage he has done here,” she said to the Commandants, to the councillors. The Commandants bowed their heads, receiving their orders as any good soldier should, but the five members of the Council of Ca’ were less in agreement. Varina was lost in her own thoughts. Allesandra’s cousin Henri ca’Sibelli was nodding, the wattles of his neck swaying with the motion. But the other three . . . Simon ca’Dakwi’s hand prowled his white beard, his mouth twisted as if he’d tasted something sour; Anaïs ca’Gerodi leaned over to Edouard ca’Matin and whispered something in his hair-tufted ear, to which the man scowled vigorously, his head shaking with the palsy that afflicted him.
Have I misjudged Nico Morel’s support here?
Allesandra found herself wishing that Sergei were still in the city; she needed his unvarnished honesty. But she looked instead to Erik.
He was scowling as well, but his irritation was directed at the Council: she saw that he’d noticed their reaction. “Are we in agreement?” she asked the councillors.
“We are, Kraljica,” ca’Sibelli answered, but his was the only voice. The others said nothing; if they felt otherwise, they weren’t going to say it here, then, in front of her.
“Good,” Allesandra snapped—if they were too unsure to voice their discontent, then let them be discontented. She rose from the Sun Throne, and the glow from within the crystal died. The room seemed suddenly dim. “We’re done here. Commandants, Councillors, thank you for your time.” The Commandants bowed themselves quickly out, their boot heels clacking loudly on the tiles of the Sun Throne’s hall; the councillors glanced at each other, uncertain, then finally rose from their chairs with various groans and mutterings. They bowed to Allesandra, then—hesitating—bowed also to Erik before, more slowly than the two soldiers, beginning to make their way from the room. “Varina,” Allesandra called out, “a moment, if you would . . .”
When the last of the councillors had made their way from the hall and the hall servants had closed the doors behind them, Allesandra went to Varina. She took the woman’s hands. “How are you?” she asked. “I worry about you. You said nothing today at all.”
“I’m sorry, Kraljica.”
“You’re recovered from your injuries?”
“My injuries?” she asked, as if uncertain what Allesandra meant. Then: “Oh, my injuries. Yes, entirely. Thank you for your concern.”
Her voice was dull, and she appeared more tired and worn even than usual. The left side of her face seemed to sag slightly, and the eye on that side was clouded. Allesandra was reminded of other longtime couples she’d known, and how after one spouse died, the other often followed into Cénzi’s arms soon after. She wondered if that would be the case here. “I’m going to send my healer over to you this evening,” she said to Varina, and waved off the beginning of the woman’s protest. “No, I won’t hear any excuses from you, my dear. I insist. I know you have the Numetodo to look after you, but Talbot tells me that you’re burying yourself in work, keeping yourself locked up in your laboratory. That’s not healthy, Varina. You should be out in the air, enjoying yourself and your friends.”
“I’m afraid that I’m feeling my mortality, Kraljica. I don’t have much time left, and there’s so much to do, so much to understand.”
“You will be here for years and decades yet,” Allesandra told the woman. It was a polite lie, and they both knew it. “You missed the Gschnas tending to poor Karl, and that’s a shame. I will have another party soon; you’ll be invited, and I will insist you come. I won’t hear of any excuse.”
“The Kraljica is too kind,” Allesandra said. “Of course I’ll come. But I do need to return to the Numetodo House. An experiment I’m conducting . . .” She gave Allesandra the ghost of a curtsy and began to turn, then stopped. “Kraljica?”
“Yes?”
“I always told Karl that Nico could be reclaimed, that if we only had the chance to talk to him . . .” She licked dry, cracked lips webbed with wrinkles. “I was wrong.”
“You’ve actually spoken to him?” Allesandra asked. Varina nodded. “Nico is convinced that he is right and the rest of us are wrong. And he’s more dangerous than any of us thought.”
With that, she gave her abbreviated curtsy again and shuffled away toward the doors, moving like a woman two decades older than she was.
“She’s right, you know.”
The voice startled her; she’d forgotten that Erik was still there with her. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she trapped it with her cheek.
“I know,” she told him. “And that frightens me.”
 
Rochelle Botelli
 
“
T
HAT
BASTARDO
CI’LAWLI took me off the list for chevaritt,” cu’Kella said, swearing under his breath. As Rochelle had instructed the man, he didn’t turn around to look into the shadows where she stood. “He sent my daughter away, who was carrying the Hïrzg’s child, and they’re offering me almost nothing,
nothing,
in return. Why, I’d have been ca’Kella when the Hïrzg made the announcement if it hadn’t been for ci’Lawli’s interference. I may even have become a councillor in time. Now ci’Lawli has to pay—for me, for my daughter, for my family’s fortune.”
It was an old tale, a variation on one she’d already heard a hand of times in her short career as the White Stone, one that her matarh had no doubt listened to innumerable times. “If that’s what you wish, Vajiki,” Rochelle said to the man, casting her voice in a low and ominous tone, “then leave the solas and the stone I told you to bring as a sign, and go home. Within the month, the man will be dead. I promise you that.”
He’d left the bag of gold coins and the pale, flat stone. Rochelle had taken it.
Rance ca’Lawli. Killing him would mean being close to her vatarh. She could feel the thrill inside her at the thought.
She manufactured an identity for herself. Matarh had shown her how the White Stone did that. She already had four or five false identities ready for use, a few she’d used in the past: girls who had been born within a few years of herself, but who had died in infancy. They were everything from common, unranked people to those of ca’ status. For the latter, she knew their genealogy, knew their parents, their towns and their titles, and who they knew. Matarh had warned her how careful one had to be with false identities, especially as one climbed the social scale to the ca’and-cu’. She’d given Rochelle the cautionary tale of how she’d nearly been exposed, here in Brezno, when Matarh had called herself Elissa ca’Karina, when “Elissa” and the A’Hïrzg Jan had been lovers.
When Rochelle herself had been conceived.
“The elite know each other,” Matarh had said to Rochelle, after Rochelle’s second or third kill as the White Stone, not long before Matarh died. “Oh, shut up—you don’t know what you’re talking about.” That last had been an aside to one of the voices in her matarh’s head; Rochelle had learned to filter out such comments. “They’re a closed group, many of them related to one another, and family relationships are important to them—and because of that, they know them. You must be careful what you say, because the slightest misstatement can reveal you. Yes, I know that, you idiot. Why do you keep tormenting me this way? Shut up! Just shut up!” She clasped her hands to her ears as if she could stop the interior dialogue, rocking back and forth in her chair as if in pain.
Two days later, Matarh was dead. Killed by her own hand.
Rochelle didn’t need that caution here. She presented herself to Rance ci’Lawli as Rhianna Berkell, an unranked young woman of Sesemora who had come to Brezno seeking her fortune, and who looked to make her start on the palais staff. She had in hand recommendations on the stationery of three chevarittai of Sesemora, with whom she’d supposedly worked. The stationery and the names on them were genuine, the paper stolen when she’d been in Sesemora with her matarh years ago; the recommendations were, of course, entirely false. But Rochelle was an accomplished actress: she knew what to say, how to present herself, and what skills would put her in the best situation on the palais staff. She also knew how to flirt without being obvious, and ci’Lawli was susceptible to the attentions of a young, handsome woman. Three days later, the summons came to the inn where she was staying: she was to be hired. Aide ci’Lawli placed her on the royal staff, who cared for the Hïrzg’s wing of the palais and who worked directly with ci’Lawli. Over the next several days, she made certain that her work was superior, and she watched. She watched ci’Lawli so that she could learn his habits and routines.
She also found herself occasionally in the same room as her vatarh. Once or twice, she thought she noticed him looking at her strangely, and she wondered if he felt the same pull she felt. But most of the time, especially if his wife or children were in the room, he paid no more attention to her than to the paintings on the walls; she was—like the rest of the staff—simply part of the furniture of the palais.
Today, she’d been sent to clear the reception room outside the main rooms of the Hïrzg’s apartments. The children were elsewhere, but Jan and the Hïrzgin had taken breakfast with Ambassador ca’Rudka of the Holdings, who was leaving Brezno today.
As she entered from the servant’s door with a tray to clear the table, ca’Rudka—whose face made her shudder, with that horrible silver nose glued to his wrinkled skin—was bowing to both Jan and Brie. “. . . will convey to the Kraljica your letter as soon as I return.”
“By which time, you’ll have no doubt read it yourself, just to make sure it matches what I’ve told you,” Jan said. He chuckled. Rochelle loved the sound of his laughter: full of rich, unalloyed warmth. She liked the sound of his voice as well. She wished she had known it in her childhood, had heard him whispering to her at night as he wished her good night, or as he cradled her in his arms in front of a fire, telling her stories of his own youth, or perhaps the tales of the long history of Firenzcia and their ancestors.
“Now, Jan, don’t go giving the Ambassador ideas,” the Hïrzgin interjected. Rochelle wasn’t sure how she felt about the matarh of her half-siblings. Hïrzgin Brie seemed to genuinely care for Jan, but Rochelle had already heard comments and seen glances that made her wonder how well-reciprocated that affection might be. There was the palais gossip also, but Rochelle wasn’t yet privy to the details of the carefully whispered suspicions.
“Don’t worry,” Sergei said to the two of them. “The Hïrzg has already told me exactly how he feels, but I trust he’s couched it more
diplomatically
in the letter to the Kraljica. At least I hope so.” The three of them chuckled again, but the amusement was short this time, and tinged with something else that Rochelle couldn’t quite decipher. Sergei’s voice was suddenly serious and muted. “I truly hope that we can find some way through this without resorting to violence. A new war would not be good for either the Holdings or the Coalition.”

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