Nico Morel
THE FALSE NIGHT LINGERED into afternoon, and merged
with its true cousin.
The citizens of
Nessantico tied cloths around their noses and mouths to keep out
the ash, coughing in the fetid air. Some of those, the ones who
were already having difficulty breathing, labored more than the
healthy or even succumbed. A’Téni ca’Paim sent out the light-téni
to light the lamps of the Avi a’Parete not long after Second Call,
and had to send them out again to renew their glow after Third
Call. The denizens of Oldtown slogged through ash almost as deep as
the first joint of Nico’s forefinger.
And Nico prayed. He
gave thanks to Cénzi for sending this sign, this incontrovertible
signal that He was angry at the Faith for their failure to follow
the Divolonté and the Toustour, for their tolerance of those who
denied Him. They would remember Nico’s words—those who had heard
him speak in the park, and those who had been told his prophecy at
secondhand—and they would realize the truth that he had
spoken.
Cénzi’s truth. The
eternal truth.
Death and darkness.
Cénzi had wrapped them in both.
“Nico?” He felt Liana
come up behind him as he knelt before the altar in his room, felt
her hand gently touch his shoulder. He shivered, his open eyes
coming back to focus on the room. He coughed, the grit tickling his
throat. He had no idea how long he’d been kneeling there—he’d heard
the wind-horns sound Third Call, but that could have been turns
ago. There seemed to be no time at all in this gloom. “The ash has
stopped falling,” she told him. The mask she’d been wearing was
looped around her neck. “There are people in the street outside.
Lots of them. Ancel said I should come and get you.”
He tried to rise to
his feet and found he could not; his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Liana
put her hands under his armpits and help him to stagger to the bed,
where she rubbed life back into his legs. “You haven’t eaten
anything for two hands of turns,” she told him. “I’ve brought some
bread, cheese, and wine. Eat a bit first . . .”
He did as she
suggested, the first bite telling him how drawn his stomach was. He
cut slices of cheese from the pale yellow block and tore at the
loaf. The wine soothed the grittiness in his throat. “Thank you,”
he told Liana, “I’m better now. How have you been with all this?”
He lifted her from where she knelt in front of him.
She gasped as he did
so. “The baby just kicked,” she said. “Here, feel . . .” She put
his hand on the slope of her stomach, and Nico felt the push of
hand or foot against his fingers. He was certain that if he’d
looked at her stomach, he might have seen the outline of that limb
on her own stretched skin. “It won’t be long now, little one,”
Liana crooned to the child. “You’ll be coming out to see your
vatarh and matarh.”
Nico leaned over to
kiss Liana, and she smiled up at him. “You said Ancel . .
.”
She sighed and took
his hand. He stood, his legs still tingling from his long sojourn
at prayer, and followed her from the room.
Ancel was waiting for
them on the stoop of the house they’d taken in the depths of
Oldtown. Above, the stars and moon were still masked in cloud and
ash, but the ashfall, as Liana had said, had stopped. Still, the
railings of the stoop were coated with it, and their feet raised
cloudlets as they walked.
And on the street . .
.
There were at least a
hundred people there, perhaps more—it was difficult to tell in the
darkness, but they filled the narrow street and spread out between
the houses on either side. Mixed in among them, Nico saw several
green robes, their color muted by darkness and smears of ash. They
were of all ages, both men and women. They gazed at the house,
silent, but he stayed to the shadows of the stoop as he looked out
at them.
“How did they find
us?” he asked Ancel, who only shook his head.
“I don’t know,
Absolute. They started gathering around Third Call. I watched,
afraid that the Garde Kralji would come, but so far . . .” He
shrugged, and ash slid from the folds of his cloak. “I’ve asked
them to leave, told them that they’re putting us in danger, but
they won’t go. They say they’re waiting to hear from
you.”
Nico nodded. “Then
let me talk to them,” he said. He stepped to the edge of the stoop,
Liana and Ancel just behind him, several other Morellis emerging
from the house to stand with them. The crowd called out, seeing him
in the glow of the lamps on the supports of the porch. He heard his
name shouted, and Cénzi’s, but he raised his hands and the crowd
quieted again.
He looked out on the
landscape, dark and ominous, interrupted only by the pools of light
cast by those carrying lanterns, as if the stars had abandoned the
sky for the ground. “If you believe that I am pleased by what has
happened, you would be mistaken,” he said—slowly and softly, so
that they leaned forward to hear his words. He cleared his throat,
coughing once, and felt Cénzi touch his voice, so that it
strengthened and swelled. “Yes, I said Cénzi would give a sign to
us, and He has done so. He has given us an unmistakable and grim
sign. The end times are coming, if the Faithful will not listen!
What you see around you is the death of thousands, all of them
martyrs so that we of the Faith might see the error of our current
path, so we might see what awaits the world if we fail to heed
Cénzi. I weep for each of those who have died. I weep because it
had to come to this. I weep because you would not listen. I weep
because you could not follow Cénzi’s words without His needing to
give us this terrible punishment. I weep that we still have so much
of His work to do. I weep that even as the ash coats Nessantico,
those who rule her still do not see the
truth of what we say.”
He paused. In the
audience, he could hear them coughing. “I know why you have come
here,” he said. “But I tell you that you already know what you must
do. It’s here in your hearts.” He touched his own chest, the words
a fire in his throat burning away the taste of ash. “It’s in your
souls, that Cénzi already holds. All you need to do is listen, and
feel, and be open to Him. As Cénzi has been fierce in His sign, so
we must be fierce in our response.”
He paused, and his
next words shredded the air like black claws. “It is time!” he
roared to them. “That is what I have to tell you. It is
our time. Now! It will be His time, or He will bring death down upon all of
us! Now—go and show them!”
He pointed southward,
toward the Isle a’Kralj, toward the Old Temple, toward the
Kraljica’s Palais, toward the South Bank with the houses of the
ca’-and-cu’. They roared with him. He could feel Cénzi’s touch
depart, leaving him weary and his legs again weak. But the clouds
parted momentarily, releasing a shaft of blue moonlight that
painted the crowd and illuminated their faces. “It’s another sign!”
someone cried within the crowd, and they all began shouting. The
crowd surged away from the house and away.
Nico leaned against
one of the supports of the porch, not caring that the ash stained
his face, as he watched them move away. “Should we go with them,
Absolute?” Ancel asked. “If that is what Cénzi wants of us . .
.”
“No,” he told them.
“We must stay hidden a while yet—but soon. Soon.” He looked up; the
clouds had closed once again over the moon and the street seemed
darker than before, the shouting of the crowd fading in the
distance.
“Tonight, there’s
something else we must do.”
