Rochelle Botelli
SHE STARTED AT THE BEGINNING. “Rochelle is what my
matarh called me. Rochelle was also the name of the first woman my
matarh ever killed. I didn’t realize that for a long time, didn’t
realize I’d been named after the first female voice to ever haunt
her.”
The tale had come far
easier than she’d thought it would. Perhaps it was because Sergei
listened so well and intently, leaning forward eagerly to hear her
words; perhaps it was because she found that it was something she’d
wanted to share with someone, all unknowingly, for a long time.
Whichever it was, the long story came tumbling out, with Sergei
prodding her occasionally with questions: “Your matarh was the
White Stone? The same?” or “Nico Morel? You say the boy was your
brother?” or “You’re Jan’s daughter . .
. ?”
The first half of the
tale took the rest of the day, as she told him about her
apprenticeship with her matarh, about the White Stone’s madness and
eventual death in raving insanity, and how she herself had taken up
of the mantle of the White Stone—though given Sergei’s position,
she didn’t mention the promise that Matarh had extracted from her
on her deathbed.
Once the carriage had
stopped at Passe a’Fiume, Sergei hadn’t pressed her for more. He
told the staff at the Kraljica’s apartments to prepare a meal for
two and a separate room for her, and had sent the servants out for
a new tashta, cosmetics, and some jewelry for her, saying that
they’d lost her luggage during the storm. She stared at herself in
the mirror afterward, nearly not recognizing herself. She wondered
what payment Sergei might demand, and made certain that her
vatarh’s dagger was accessible under the tashta.
The town’s Comté
joined them for dinner; Sergei introduced Rochelle as “Remy, my
great-niece from Graubundi,” traveling with him to Nessantico; she
felt him watching her as she followed his lead, making up tales of
their relatives. He seemed mostly amused by her efforts and the
polite responses by the Comté and his family. The talk around the
table was mostly of old politics and the coming passage of Jan’s
army through the town, as the servants served them dinner in the
dining room and various personages of distinction paraded through
to give their greetings. After the Comté and the last of the
dignitaries of the city had left, Sergei had pleaded exhaustion and
a desire to retire for the evening.
That, she discovered,
was a lie. Rochelle heard the door of his room open not long after;
she’d slid Jan’s dagger from its scabbard then, ready to defend
herself if he came into her room, but she heard his cane and
footsteps recede down the hall; not long after, she heard the groan
of the main doors on the floor below. From her window, she watched
him go out along the dark streets of the town.
She locked the door
to her room anyway.
She didn’t know when
he returned. She woke in the morning to the horns of First Call and
the knock of one of the servants. She dressed, and found Sergei
already at breakfast. A half-turn of the glass later, they were
back in the privacy of the carriage, and he asked her to resume her
tale. She did, beginnings with her wanderings from the site of her
matarh’s grave, her first tentative contracts as the new White
Stone, and how she felt when she heard the tales of the White Stone
beginning to arise again, and her wanderings through the
Coalition.
There were details
she still kept to herself, certainly. Yet . . . This was catharsis,
releasing the story. Once she started, she didn’t think she could
have stopped. She hadn’t realized the strain of holding it all in.
She’d thought that perhaps one day she might have been able to tell
a trusted lover, but with Sergei . . . He was a stranger, and yet
she could tell him.
She wondered if that
was because—if she decided it would be necessary—she could keep it
all still a secret, wrapped in the
silence of a dead man. She kept her hand close to the hilt of Jan’s
dagger, and she watched the Silvernose’s face
carefully.
By the time they were
approaching Nessantico’s walls, she was telling him of the final
confrontation with Jan, though she left unsaid the details of how
physical it had become. He seemed to understand, his face
sympathetic and almost sad as he listened.
“Poor Jan . . .” he’d
said, and his empathy for her vatarh irritated Rochelle. “I came to
Firenzcia not long after Fynn’s assassination, and there were
already whispers about this Elissa whom the new Hïrzg had loved,
and who had vanished. I don’t think he’s ever entirely stopped
loving her—or at least loving the person he thought she was. I
heard the gossip that perhaps she was the White Stone, then when
Jan saw her again in Nessantico, that became certain.” He stopped,
clamping his mouth shut as if to hold back more that he might have
said, the folds under his chin waggling with the movement. She
wondered whether what he had decided not to tell her was how
Kraljica Allesandra, Rochelle’s great-matarh, had been the one who
had hired Matarh to kill Fynn. She wondered whether he realized
that she must know that as well.
If so, neither of
them mentioned it.
“So now you’ve come to Nessantico,” Sergei said. His
rheum-filled eyes held her own, close enough that she could see her
warped reflection crawl over his nostrils. “The White Stone’s
daughter. Jan’s daughter, and the great-daughter of the Kraljica,
too. Nico Morel’s sister. I have to ask why you’ve come.”
“Everyone comes to
Nessantico eventually.”
He seemed to chuckle
inwardly. “Once, you might have been able to get away with that
answer, Rochelle. Not now. Not with the Coalition as her great
rival. Not with the Tehuantin pressing on her borders once again.
Not with your brother’s people making their violent presence known
here. You’re being disingenuous, Rochelle, and it doesn’t become
you.” He stared; Rochelle’s fingertips brushed the smooth, worn
hilt of Jan’s dagger. Will you have to kill
him now? Can you let him walk away knowing what he
knows?
“I don’t know why
I’ve come,” she answered, “and that’s only the truth, Sergei. I
couldn’t stay where I was and I didn’t know where else to go, and I
just started walking. Nessantico seemed to be calling to
me.”
“Calling for
what,” he persisted. “Revenge? A
reunion?”
“Neither,” she said.
Yes, revenge . . . She could almost
hear her matarh’s voice whispering that inside. “I didn’t know for
certain that Nico was here. I swear that by Cénzi.”
“Ah, a murderer
swearing by Cénzi. How ironic. Your brother might appreciate that.
If he’s still alive.”
That sentence sent a
winter breeze swirling down her back, causing the newly-chopped
hairs at the back of her neck to rise. “What?”
She couldn’t tell if
he shrugged or only adjusted himself on the bench seat of the
carriage. “You left the encampment before the news came,” Sergei
said. “Your brother and his followers assaulted the Old Temple in
Nessantico. They took it over and barricaded themselves inside. By
now, Kraljica Allesandra will have ordered the attack on them; they
wouldn’t have been able to hold out there. I would suspect that
Nico Morel is either dead or in the Bastida by now. I’m sorry; I
see that worries you, but I’m sorry—I’ve no sympathy for him, I’m
afraid.”
She was stunned. She sat back in her seat across from
him. Nico dead? No, she hadn’t seen him or talked to him for years,
but she could still see him as a young man, just leaving to become
an acolyte in the Faith, Matarh clinging to him as he lifted a bag
in his hand with the few possessions he had, the carriage driver
calling out impatiently. She’d glimpsed him once or twice since
then; Matarh had taken her to see his induction as téni, but then
he’d been sent to Brezno, and the visits stopped. They’d heard the
tales of his rise and sudden fall within the ranks of téni; when
Matarh had died, he hadn’t come, even though Rochelle had expected
him. She wondered if he would even recognize her. She wondered if
he would care; she wondered if he would condemn her for what she’d
done and what she’d become.
“I wasn’t here for
him,” she said. “I didn’t know . . .”
“Then why
are you here? You still haven’t
answered me.”
Outside, she saw
houses and other carriages on the road with them, as well as people
on horses or walking toward or from the city—leaning out, she could
see the gates of the city just ahead. “Stop the carriage,” she
said. “I’d like to get out here.”
Sergei stared for
another moment, then he tapped on the roof of the carriage twice;
the driver pulled on the reins, calling to the horses and moving
them to the side of the road. “Do you kill me now?” Sergei asked.
“You’re thinking that you could probably get away with it—easy
enough to get lost in the crowds here before the driver raised the
alarm.”
He knows what you’re thinking . . . And that,
Rochelle realized, meant that he probably had anticipated the act
and had a plan to counter it. His hand was on the knob of his cane.
Still, he was too old and slow to stop her. “Don’t,” Sergei told
her. His voice almost sounded amused. “I’m not a threat to you,
Rochelle. Not at this moment, anyway—though if you become a threat
to Nessantico, then we’ll be meeting again. We’re very much alike,
you and I—did you know that? I know you, better than you would
believe. The difference is that you’re still young. You have a
chance to escape becoming me, or becoming like your matarh: a
madwoman haunted by the deaths she’s caused and too enamored of
death to give it up. You just have to stop. Stop being the White
Stone—because if you don’t, soon you won’t want to stop. You won’t be able to stop. Listen to me—I know what I’m speaking
of. You don’t want that, Rochelle. You truly don’t.”
He was still holding
the cane, still watching her. She saw his gaze fasten on her right
hand under her tashta, on the hidden knife.
A quick upward slash. It would come before he could even
move, and the blood would be spilling from him even as I leap from
the carriage. He’d be dead by my first step . .
.
She was breathing
hard. But there’d be no time to use the
stone. The voice might have been her matarh. You’ll be in his eyes, caught there forever at the moment
of his death. His eyes will betray you . . .
The noise of the city
was loud in the carriage. “Ambassador?” the driver called down
through the closed curtain.
Stop being the White Stone . . .
“Well, Rochelle?”
Sergei asked her. “What is it to be?”
A few breaths later,
she descended from the carriage. She looked up at the driver. “The
Ambassador says to go on,” she told him. He slapped the reins, and
the carriage started forward again, slipping into the stream of
traffic heading toward the gate. She watched it until it had passed
the half-tumbled stone arches, then she slipped into the crowds
herself.
