Rochelle Botelli
ROCHELLE WATCHED NICO, weighed down in chains as he
was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right
alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now
than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the
Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now,
he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida
holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only
the téni and some gardai separating them.
Yet she still
couldn’t help him. They would catch her and drag her down before
she reached him even though several of them would be dead as a
result. But she would fail. Must fail. That was another thing
Matarh had taught her, even in her madness. “Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you
move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not
even try.”
To be so achingly
close to him, to see her brother again and not be able to help him
. . .
It hurt. It wounded
her as surely as a sword’s edge. Yet there was something she might
accomplish today, if she had the chance. The Kraljica was here, her
great-matarh, and though Allesandra was as well guarded as her
brother, perhaps there might be a moment, a chance. Rochelle’s hand
went to the dagger under her clothing, the dagger she’d stolen from
her vatarh. The vow she’d made to her matarh burned in her
mind.
If she couldn’t save
a life, perhaps she could take one just as important.
On the dais, Nico
bowed to the ca’-and-cu’ on their own raised platform. “Kraljica,
Councillors. And especially, téni. I’ve come to plead for your
forgiveness, and your understanding.” His voice sounded tired, and
he was looking around. His gaze flitted over each of them, and
Rochelle stood on her toes, trying to see better over the people
around her. Then it happened. Nico’s eyes found hers. She could
feel the connection and acknowledgment.
Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest
of smiles, as if he knew her. He nodded
toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to
be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name,
but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and
his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as
she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s
voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of
summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and
there:
“I thought I was
Cénzi’s Voice . . . I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done . . .
I believed. I still believe . . .” Above the crowd, she saw Nico
lifting his hands and the gesture caught her. She stopped,
wondering.
“I had allowed the
Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in
their human fetters, when, in fact, Cénzi places no such limitation
on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their
credit. That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I
demonstrate to you now.”
Nico?
She never saw clearly
what happened next. It was as if Nico had wrapped himself
completely in a black cloak. She heard people shouting and
gesturing, saw Old Silvernose withdraw his hand from the darkness
with a curse, then . . .
Nico was gone, and
people all around the plaza were shouting wordlessly. The gardai
were buzzing like a hive of bees whose nest had just been struck.
Rochelle had moved to the rear edge of the Kraljica’s dais, just
behind the ring of gardai. They jumped up onto the stage now,
closing around the Kraljica with their swords drawn, and Rochelle
drew back. There was no hope of getting to Allesandra now. None.
Again, this was one of the times when she must allow herself to
fail.
She drifted back in
the crowd, away from the suspicious eyes of the gardai, away from
the green-robed téni who seemed just as upset and on
edge.
A hand touched her
shoulder from behind and she whirled, the dagger already drawn. She
could kill someone in this crowd easily enough and still escape in
the confusion . . .
But her hand stopped
in mid-thrust. “Nico—”
“Hush!” he said. He’d
drawn a hood over his head; his face was visible only to those who
looked directly at him. But even half-hidden as he was, he looked
incredibly exhausted and drawn. His hand on her shoulder trembled,
and she felt him sag, as if he was barely able to stand. In the
shadow of the hood, there were darker circles under his eyes.
“Cénzi told me you were here. He showed you to me. Come on!” She
looked back at the dais and he shook his head. “No. Not now,
Rochelle. Come! I need your help.”
He put his arm around
her. Leaning heavily on her, he guided her away, through the
thinning edge of the crowd and away from the growing uproar and the
plaza itself, until they were walking down a street adorned with
shop signs and busy with hustling people, though few of them seemed
to be interested in the wares displayed in the open windows or in
the sidewalk cabinets. Their faces were grim and harried, and
Rochelle remembered the same looks on the faces of those fleeing
the city when she’d arrived.
Nico finally stopped
near a café. “You have money?” he asked her, and she nodded. “Good.
I need to sit and to eat—they will hardly look for me
here.”
They took a table
against the wall of the cafe and ordered wine, cheese, bread, and
some meats. The waiter seemed genuinely pleased to have a patron;
no doubt those had been far more sparse than usual in the past few
weeks.
She watched Nico as
he ate. He had changed a great deal from the boy she remembered.
The Nico of her memory had been eager and apprehensive all at the
same time as he prepared to go to Brezno Temple as an acolyte.
She’d been with him again, when he’d taken the green robe of the
téni and made his pledge to Cénzi in that same temple, and he’d
seemed so sure of himself then..
The Nico who stood
before her now was thinner, his cheeks drawn in. The lines of his
face were harsher and more deeply drawn, and she could see the pain
of his life written there. There had always been an intensity to
him, one that she remembered from her earliest memory of him, but
was changed now. It had turned into something harder, deeper inside
himself, and more dangerous.
She knew she had
changed as well. Perhaps more than Nico had. Neither of them were
the person they’d been back then. Brother and sister they might be,
but time had pulled them apart and she didn’t know if they could
ever fit together again.
“You’re staring.”
Nico set down the cup and poured himself more wine from the
flagon.
“I haven’t seen you
in years, Nico.”
He smiled. “You’ve
grown into an attractive young woman.” Then the smile faded.
“You’ve also taken on Matarh’s legacy. I’ve heard the gossip that
the White Stone still walks. That’s you?”
She
nodded.
“Do you hear their
voices, too?”
“No. I’m not mad,
Nico.”
“Not yet,” he
answered. “But you can’t do what you do and stay sane. You can’t do
what you do and expect anything but the soul shredders after your
death. Cénzi will find you wanting, my sister.”
It was so similar to
what Sergei had told her that she wanted to laugh. “You’re going to
lecture me?” Rochelle sniffed in
derision. “They had you in chains, Nico. How many died when you and
your people took the Old Temple?” She saw him flush with that
accusation, and she remembered. “I’m sorry, Nico,” she said,
putting her hand on his. “I forgot. I wish I could have met
Liana.”
He nodded, and she
saw his eyes swim in sudden moisture. He wiped at them, almost
angrily. “I wish that, too. You see, that was my punishment. My madness. Cénzi always gives us
warnings, one way or another. It’s just that we sometimes don’t pay
attention to them or even see them for what they are.”
“You still believe,
after all this?” she asked him. “You still think your destiny is
within the Faith?”
“Yes.” He said it
firmly, without hesitation, the strength returning to his voice.
“And what about your own faith, Rochelle ? Do you still
believe?”
“I don’t know,” she
answered. “I think so, but . . .” A shoulder rose under her tashta.
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “But you do?”
“I do,” he said.
“Still. Cénzi contains everything, Rochelle. He contains all that
is good, and He contains all that is evil as well. That is why the
Moitidi fought each other and Him; because they were His children
and thus contained within themselves were all possibilities. And He
brought you here, now, for a reason.”
Rochelle laughed
bitterly. “You have no idea why I’m here.”
“Don’t I?” Nico
reached across the table and plucked up a baguette. He broke off a
piece of the bread and pushed it into his mouth with a forefinger.
He chewed contentedly for a moment, then took a sip of the wine.
Then he leaned forward toward her conspiratorially. “You’re here to
kill the Kraljica,” he whispered, and leaned back
again.
Rochelle felt her
face flush, and he laughed. “Oh, it’s not such a revelation,” he
told her. “Matarh asked the same of me, when I became a téni.
‘You’ll be close to her one day,’ she told me. ‘When you’re an
a’téni or maybe even the Archigos. You’ll be close to her, and I
want you to kill her for me, because of what she did to ruin my
life.’ Isn’t that what she told you as well?”
“It was similar,”
Rochelle admitted.
“I thought so. But
that’s not why you’re here, Rochelle. You’re here because Cénzi
wanted you to see me. He wanted to reunite us.”
She felt a chill
touch her spine at that, as if a winter breeze had somehow lingered
behind to caress her at that moment, and she wondered where that
feeling came from as she shivered and hugged herself. He had been there, then he had wrapped himself in darkness
and gone somewhere else. If I could do that, why, the White Stone
could go anywhere. The White Stone could easily kill the Kraljica .
. . “What you did out there—can you do that again? Could you
teach me how to do it?” she asked Nico.
“A month ago I would
have said no,” he told her. “I would have told you that only the
pure of faith can or should use the Ilmodo. But now . . .” He
drained the wine in front of him. “I don’t know. Perhaps anything
is possible.”
“And why do you think
that Cénzi wanted us together?”
“I really don’t know
yet,” he answered, “but perhaps we’ll find out.”
