Sigourney ca’Ludovici
THEY PUT HER in the Old Temple.
Commandant ca’Gerodi
came fleeing back from the debacle at the Pontica Kralji, bellowing
as he charged into the Old Temple to where Sigourney sat on the Sun
Throne, telling her she and the Council of Ca’ must take what they
could and flee immediately by the Pontica a’Brezi Veste to the
South Bank and out of the city.
Sigourney refused.
“Let the Council go if they must,” she said. “I am
staying.”
“I can’t protect you,
Kraljica,” ca’Gerodi told her. “They are coming, at any
moment.”
“I’m not abandoning
my city and my charge,” she responded coldly. “I will
stay.”
In the end, her staff
had taken what they could of the remaining treasures of the palais
and fled the Isle a’Kralji. It was the same everywhere in
Nessantico: in the vast Archigos’ Temple on the South Bank, at the
Grand Libreria with its precious, irreplaceable vellum scrolls and
books; at the Theatre a’Kralji and the Museé a’Artisans. Councillor
ca’Mazzak and the rest of the Council had vanished as well. Fleeing
south, the only direction still open to them . . .
Sigourney remained on
the Sun Throne in the Old Temple, in the sunlight coming through
the ruined, charred dome. Before she allowed the court herbalist to
leave, she ordered him to prepare a special goblet of cuore della volpe, which now sat on the arm of the
Sun Throne next to her. She wore a long, cerulean tashta with a
yellow overcloak, hiding the fact that there was no leg below her
right knee. She had the servants place a jeweled patch over the
hole where her right eye had been, and apply egg powder to her face
to hide the worst of the scars.
She waited on the
ancient seat of Nessantico. Waited for the inevitable.
Outside, she could
hear the battle raging: the shouting of men, the clashing of arms,
the roar of war-téni spells. Smoke drifted overhead, dulling the
sunlight. An elite guard of Garde Kralji was arrayed before her,
their chain mail rustling as they shifted nervously, swords in hand
and facing the doors to the temple. Commandant ca’Gerodi had left
her a turn of the glass earlier. “I won’t see you again, Kraljica,”
he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she told
him. “I know. And I am sorry, too.”
She
waited.
When the doors burst
open, the gardai in front of her stiffened and started to rush
forward. “No,” she told them. “Hold! Wait!” Several Westlander
warriors entered the temple; with them was another man, this one
without the tattoos of the warriors and carrying a burnished wooden
staff: one of their spellcasters. They stopped, peering down the
long aisle of the nave to where Sigourney was seated in a dusty
shaft of sunlight. “Do any of you speak our language?” she called
out.
“I do,” the
spellcaster said. His words were slurred and heavily accented, but
understandable. “A little.”
“Good,” she said. “I
am Kraljica Sigourney ca’Ludovici, ruler of this land. Who are
you?”
The man whispered for
a moment to the warrior alongside him, with the image of a red hawk
or eagle inscribed over his bare skull. “I am Niente,” the
spellcaster answered. “I am the Nahual. And this,” he said,
gesturing to the warrior to whom he’d spoken, “is the leader of the
Tehuantin, Tecuhtli Zolin. He demands your surrender,
Kraljica.”
“He can demand
whatever he likes,” Sigourney told him. She lifted a hand from the
arm of the Sun Throne, the signet ring of the Kralji glinting on
her hand as she touched the golden band of a crown set in her gray,
coarse hair. The sun was warm on her, and she glanced upward to the
charred ruins of the dome supports. “He won’t have
that.”
Again the spellcaster
spoke to the warrior, who uttered a laugh that echoed in the
temple. He spoke words in a tongue that sounded at once strange and
yet oddly familiar. Where had she heard words like that before?
“Tecuhtli Zolin says that if the Kraljica wishes to challenge him,
he is willing to meet that challenge. He will loan her his own
sword if she doesn’t have one of her own. Otherwise, he will order
his warriors to take you prisoner. He leaves the choice to
you.”
She shook her head.
“I know how you treat prisoners,” she told him. “And you haven’t
looked at all the choices I have.” The spellcaster appeared
confused as Sigourney took the goblet from the arm of the Sun
Throne and downed the bitter concoction in one long draught. “I
hope you enjoy the city while you hold it,” she told him. She
raised the goblet to them, then let it fall ringing to the tiles.
Her leg was already losing sensation as she leaned back on the
throne. The paralysis rose quickly upward: her thighs, her hips,
her midsection. Her heart. The sunlight in the room seemed to be
dimming. “This is my throne,” she told
them, “and while I live, I will not give it up.”
She laughed then. Her
voice sounded strange and breathy and weak. She tried to force out
the next words. “And I choose my own time.” She tried to take a
breath, but her lungs would not move. She opened her mouth, but
there was no air for words.
She smiled at them as
the sun went dark and Nessantico vanished from her
sight.