Allesandra ca’Vörl
ALLESANDRA STOOD ON THE BALCONY of her rooms and
stared out over the grounds. The ashfall had stopped two nights
before, and the sunset tonight was stunning. Yellow-and-white
clouds billowed near the horizon: wind-streaked, brushed in scarlet
and orange-gold, and caught in a deep azure sky while the sun threw
shafts of brilliant golden light through the gaps between them. The
land underneath was caught in gold-green light and purple shadow.
Fragments of saturated color seemed to lurk wherever she looked, as
if a divine painter had smeared his palette across the
sky.
Below her, workers
were still sweeping the walkways of the stubborn gray and brushing
the clinging ash from the bushes and plants of the formal garden
her apartments overlooked. It had mercifully rained earlier in the
day— already, the palais grounds were beginning to look as they
once had, but Allesandra could smell the ash: astringent and
irritating in her nostrils. The entire city, the entire land stank
of it.
The ash, the Morelli
insurrection two nights ago, Jan’s curt insistence that he be named
her heir: it all weighed on her despite the beauty of the
sunset.
“A’Téni ca’Paim wants
you thrown into the Bastida,” Allesandra said.
Sergei, who was
ignoring the sunset and staring instead at the painting of Kraljica
Marguerite on the wall, snorted audibly through his metal nose. “No
doubt she does. What did you tell her?”
“I told her that the
téni you killed had been a Morelli, had broken the laws of the
Holdings, and was deliberately withholding information from you. I
said that there wasn’t time to consult her; you took the action you
felt was necessary to try to capture Morel.”
Sergei seemed to bow
more to Marguerite than to Allesandra. “Thank you,
Kraljica.”
“I also read
Commandant cu’Ingres’ report. He doesn’t seem to feel that killing
the téni was required.”
Sergei shrugged at
that. “Two offiziers don’t always agree on tactics. Had Talos done
as I did a turn or two earlier, we might actually have caught
Morel. Did he mention that in his report?”
“I know you, Sergei.
You didn’t kill the man as a tactic. You did it for the pleasure it
gave you.”
“We all have our
faults, Kraljica,” he answered. “But I did do it to capture Morel. At least
partially.”
“Gyula ca’Vikej
doesn’t feel you can be trusted anymore. He thinks your
predilections and your ambitions have put you in opposition to
me.”
If Sergei was worried
by that, he didn’t show it. “You know my weaknesses, and I freely
admit them to you, Kraljica. All of us have them, and yes,
sometimes they can interfere with our best judgment for what is
right for the Holdings. And as Ambassador to Brezno and the
Coalition, I would prefer that no one else hears the Kraljica refer
to ca’Vikej as Gyula. But then I
haven’t taken the Gyula-inexile of an enemy state into my
bed.”
The surge of anger
through her was hot and as bright as lightning. She scowled, her
fists tightening so that her fingernails carved crescent moons into
her palm. “You dare . . .” she began,
but Sergei put his hands out in supplication before she could say
more.
“I’m simply pointing
out—clumsily, I admit—that the choices we make aren’t going to be
universally beloved; that we make them for reasons that make sense
to us but not necessarily to everyone. Forgive me, Kraljica. We
have a long history together, but I shouldn’t presume upon it. You
know that my loyalty is to the Holdings and to her ruler. Always
and forever.”
I know that your loyalty is to the Holdings. But as to the
other . . . Allesandra bit her lip, thinking the words but
not saying them. She owed Sergei: she knew it; she knew he knew it.
He’d saved her life and that of her son. The sting of his remark
still cut at her, but the anger was cooling. She still needed
Sergei. She still valued his advice.
But when the time
came, she would not hesitate to throw him into the Bastida that he
loved too much.
“I would be careful
what you say and who you say it to,” she told him, “if you want to
escape the fate you’d give to others. You’re lucky
that—”
There was a discreet
knock on the door of the chamber; a breath later, the door opened
and the side of Talbot’s head appeared, carefully not looking in
their direction. “Kraljica,” he said. “A messenger has come. I
think you should hear what he has to say.”
“What message?”
Allesandra asked, the irritation still warm in her voice. “Tell
me.”
“I really feel you
should hear it from him, Kraljica,” Talbot said.
Allesandra scowled.
“Fine. Send him in to us.”
The door closed and
reopened a moment later. Talbot ushered in a bedraggled man, his
clothing stained with mud and ash, his face streaked, his eyes
sunken in the midst of dark pouches. His hair was white, his hands
curled in with huge, knotted knuckles. She guessed him to be five
decades old or more, someone who had seen too much work in his
time. “Please, sit,” Allesandra told the man immediately, and he
sank gratefully into the nearest chair after a sketch of a bow.
“Sergei, pour some wine for this poor man. Talbot, see if the cook
still has some of the stew from dinner . . .”
Talbot bowed and left
the room. Allesandra stood in front of the man; she heard wine
gurgling into a cup, then Sergei’s cane on the floor as he handed
the man a goblet. He drank thirstily. “What’s your name,”
Allesandra asked the man.
“Martin ce’Mollis,
Kraljica.”
“Martin.” Allesandra
smiled toward him. “Talbot said you had news.”
The man nodded and
swallowed. “I’ve been riding for the last few days after sailing my
boat from Karnmor.”
“Karnmor.” She
glanced at Sergei. “Then you saw . . .”
He nodded, then shook
his head. “I saw . . . Kraljica, I live on the northern arm of
Karnmor Bay, well out from Karnor. I saw the ships coming in one
afternoon—first a storm like nothing I’d seen before, then suddenly
they were just there, painted ships
attacking our navy in the bay—Westlander ships. I saw them tossing
fireballs into the city and our ships there as the sun began to
set. I knew someone had to come, had to tell you what was
happening. I’m just a fisherman now, but I served in the Garde
Civile in my time, so I went to my boat and kept close to the shore
and sailed around the northern end of the island in order to make
for the mainland. I saw another Westlander warship anchored just
off the shore, and a line of lights descending Mt. Karnmor as if
people were there and moving down. I anchored where I was sheltered
and watched, and the lights came down to the shore, and a small
boat came out to the Westlander warship. After that, the warship
pulled its anchor and left—I saw out on the horizon there were more
ships waiting, Kraljica, more than I could count, and all of them
sailed away from Karnmor as if Cénzi were chasing them, as if they
knew . . .”
Martin licked his
lips and drank again. “Thank Cénzi that they didn’t pay any
attention to me, didn’t see me. I sailed on all night, staying
close to shore and finally crossed the channel and landed on the
mainland before dawn. There’s a small garrison there, and I was
telling the duty offizier what I’d seen just as the sun was rising.
Then . . .”
He stopped. He gulped
at the wine again. “Then Mt. Karnmor woke. I watched that awful
cloud rising high in the air, felt the thunder hit us like a wall
of hard air, and then the ash, so hot it burned the skin where it
touched . . .” He shivered, and Allesandra noticed the reddened and
blistered skin of his arms. “They gave me a horse, told me to ride
here as fast as I could. Don’t stop, the offizier told me. I
didn’t, either, except to steal another horse when the one I was
riding died under me. I came here as fast as I could, Kraljica. You
had to know, had to know . . .”
He took another sip;
Sergei, wordlessly, refilled his glass. “They did it,” he said finally. “The Westlanders.
They brought their ships there, and their magic made the mountain
explode. They knew. They knew it was going to happen—that’s why they went
north with their fleet that night. They knew what was going to
happen, and—”
Talbot entered with a
tray; the man stopped. “Talbot,” Allesandra told him, “take our
good friend Martin with you. Feed him, let him bathe, and put him
in one of the guest rooms. Send for my healer to make certain he
receives any treatment he might need. Martin, you’ve done a great
service for the Holdings, and you’ll be rewarded for it. I promise
you that.” She smiled again to him, and the man rose from his chair
and bowed unsteadily. He let Talbot lead him away.
“The Tehuantin are
back . . .” Sergei breathed the words as the door closed behind
them. “This changes everything. Everything.”
Allesandra said
nothing. She went back to the window. The sun bathed the horizon in
rose and gold.
“There will be panic
in the streets as soon as this gets out. And if he’s right, if Mt.
Karnmor’s eruption wasn’t simply a coincidence . . .”
The sun spread a
column of orange high into the haze as the searing yellow disk
slipped behind the buildings of the city. The gilded dome of the
Old Temple was silhouetted against the fiery colors. Third Call was
sounding from the wind-horns; in a mark of the glass, the
light-téni would be walking the city, illuminating the lamps of the
Avi a’Parete so that the city was snared in a necklace of light.
“I will give it to you,” her vatarh had
told her once, referring to Nessantico and those lights. He had
failed in that, but she had taken the city and the Holdings for
herself. She had the city, had the pearl of lights as her own, had
been washed in the light of the Sun Throne.
It was hers, and she
had to do what she must to keep it.
“You’ll be going back
to Brezno,” she said to Sergei. “There’s a message you need to
deliver to my son.”
