A Magic Of Nightfall Part 15

But the man had moved at the same time, his hand lifting his walking stick. A glow erupted impossibly from the stick, the glare blinding Karl as tendrils of aching brilliance crawled through the air as if they were fingers clawing at a huge, invisible globe. The ethereal fingers snared his lightning and squeezed, a small sun seeming to hang in the air between them as thunder boomed. He heard laughter. Frightened now, he spoke another word: a shielding spell against the attack he was certain would follow.

But the shield fell away unused, and through the shifting curtains of afterimages, he saw that the tiny lane was empty. Talis was gone. Karl shouted his frustration (as heads began to peer cautiously from shuttered windows, as calls and shouts of alarm came from the houses nearest him, as tendrils of smoke curled from charred facades on either side of the street) and Karl ran to the intersection down which the boy had gone.

Neither boy nor Westlander were visible. Karl pounded his fist on the nearest wall and cursed.

Nico Morel.

NICO ONLY TOOK TWO STEPS down the turn before he stopped. He could heard Talis arguing with the strange man, and he crept back toward them, putting his back to the wall of the house at the corner and listening.

"I didn't kill her, if that's your accusation," Talis told the man, and Nico wondered who he was talking about.

Evidently the man was just as puzzled, for he answered "I spoke of no murder."

"Nor did I," Talis said. " But then I don't think it murder to kill your enemy in wartime."

War? Nico had time to wonder before the world exploded. He was never quite certain what happened in the next several breaths, or how he could ever describe it to someone. Though it was daylight, there was a stroke of light that seemed as bright in the shadows of the lane as a thunderstorm throbbing in the blackness of night. He was certain that Talis was dead, except that he heard Talis laugh even as Nico pushed away from the house to run to help his vatarh, the croissants still clutched heedlessly in his hand.

Then Talis was grabbing him by the shoulder-"By all the Moitidi, Nico . . ."-and pulled him running down the lane with him, ducking into a narrow alleyway between two of the houses, and then along a back lane between the backs of buildings, twisting and turning until Nico was out of breath and confused, and finally stopping, panting.

Talis put his hands on his knees, his breath fast as he glared at Nico. "d.a.m.n it, Nico, I told you to leave," he said. "When we get home . . ."

Nico fought not to cry at Talis' harsh tone. "I wanted to hear," he said. "I thought . . . I thought there would be magic."

Talis c.o.c.ked his head slightly, though his too-dark eyes still glittered angrily. "Why would you think that?"

"Because I could feel it, all around, like when I get cold all of a sudden and I get ghost b.u.mps." Nico rubbed at his forearm, showing Talis.

"You felt it?" Talis asked, and now his voice didn't seem quite so upset. Nico nodded furiously. Talis stood up. He glanced all around them, as if trying to see if the man had followed them.

"Was he really Amba.s.sador ca'Vliomani, the Numetodo?" Nico asked Talis. "Matarh says she saw him once, near the Archigos' Temple on South Bank. She said that the Numetodo shouldn't be allowed here. She said that the Archigos should be stronger against them."

Talis scowled. "Maybe your matarh's more right than she knows," Talis answered. He sighed, and suddenly hugged Nico to him. "Come on," he said. "We need to hurry home now. While there's still time."

Nico ate supper alone in the bedroom, while Talis and his matarh talked in the main room. Nico nibbled on the croissants and sipped at the ground-apple stew his matarh had made while he listened to their m.u.f.fled voices. Most of the time he couldn't make out the words, but when they got loud, he could understand them. ". . . told you I expected this. The signs . . . just not so soon . . ."

". . . want us to leave now? Tonight? Are you insane, Talis?"

". . . you stay you'll be in danger . . . go to your sister . . ."

". . . so it was you? You lied to me . . ."

Nico lifted his head at that. He wondered whether his matarh was talking about the woman the Amba.s.sador had accused Talis of killing.

There was more mumbling, then an exasperated huff from his matarh as she flung the door open, glared once at Nico without seeming to see him, then started gathering pots and utensils and stuffing them loudly into the cloth bags she used when she went to the market, muttering to herself. Talis, in the doorway between the rooms, watched her for a moment and gestured to Nico. He followed Talis into the room, watching as the man shut the door behind them.

"Matarh's really angry," Nico said as he sat on the bed Talis nodded ruefully. "She is that," he said. "And for good reason. Nico, the two of you need to leave the city. Tonight. You'll be staying with your tantzia in Ville Paisli, which isn't far from Nessantico."

"Are you going with us?"

Talis shook his head. "No. Nico, after what happened, the Garde Kralji is going to be looking for me-the Amba.s.sador is a friend of the Regent, and he'll have them looking for me. He probably knows my first name and maybe yours, he knows what we look like, and he knows about where we live. We have a few turns of the gla.s.s before he can alert anyone, but I'm certain that Oldtown won't be safe for the two of you soon. So you're going to have to help your matarh gather up what you can and leave."

"But the Garde Kralji . . ." Nico sputtered. "Did you do something wrong, Talis?"

"Wrong? No," Talis told him. "I'll explain it all to you when I can, Nico. For now you're going to have to trust me. Do you trust me, Son?"

Nico nodded uncertainly. He wasn't certain of anything at the moment. "Good," Talis said. "I'm going to leave now and arrange for a cart to take you two out of the city-you remember the man I talked to at the Market? Uly? He can help me make those arrangements. When I get back, you and your matarh will need to be ready to leave, so make sure you have everything of yours you want, and help your matarh gather up her things."

Nico's mouth tasted sour, and the food he'd eaten burned in his stomach. From the kitchen, he could hear his matarh still packing things. "But if you stay, won't they find you?"

"I have ways to hide myself if I'm alone, Nico, and I have things I need to do that I can only do here. Also . . ." Talis paused and tousled Nico's head. Nico grimaced and ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it again. "What happened earlier has to be a secret, too, Nico-like the rest. If you tell people what you saw, well, you'd be putting your matarh in danger, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"

"It was magic, wasn't it?"

Talis nodded. "Yes, it was. And Nico, I think that you . . ." He stopped, shaking his head.

"What, Talis?"

"Nothing, Nico. Nothing." Talis was reaching under the bed as he talked, pulling out the leather bag that held the strange metal bowl and putting his clothing and other things into it. "Now, why don't you start gathering your things? Put them all in one place, and you and your matarh can decide what you'll take and what you'll leave here. Go on, now."

Talis was already looking away, opening the chest at the foot of the bed and pulling out a linen nightshirt. Nico watched him. "Are you a teni?" he asked Talis.

Talis straightened, the linen half in the bag. "No," he said, and the way Talis said it, not quite looking at him and drawing out the syllable, told Nico that it was a lie, or the kind of evasion of the truth that Nico sometimes used when his matarh asked him if he'd done something he shouldn't have. "Now go on, boy. Hurry!"

Nico shivered. He left, wondering if he would ever see these rooms again.

Eneas cu'Kinnear.

ENeAS STOOD AT THE STERN of the Stormcloud, staring at the storm clouds that appeared to be rushing toward them from behind. The horizon was a foreboding black under the rising thunderheads, a rushing night p.r.i.c.ked with intermittent flares of lightning. He could see the blurred sheets of rain lashing the ocean underneath the clouds and hear the grumbling of distant low thunder. The Strettosei had turned a dull gray green that was flecked with whitecaps from the rising wind; the canvas sheets of the two-masted ship booming and cracking as they filled with the gales and thrust the ship through the deepening waves. The bow lifted and sliced uneasily through the moving hills of water; the wild spray speckled the hair of the sailors and soaked the military bashta Eneas wore. He could taste brine in his mouth. The air around him seemed to have chilled drastically in the last few minutes as the first outrunners of the storm stretched toward them. The dipping and rolling of the deck underneath his feet was alarming enough that Eneas found himself clutching at the rail.

He could feel the storm. The energy of it seemed to resonate inside him, and his fingertips tingled with every lightning strike, as if they touched him from a distance.

Chasing us from the west-like the hordes of the Westlanders, crackling with the power of the nahualli. Pursuing us even as we flee, coming to us in our very homes. . . . Eneas shuddered, watching the storm's approach and imagining he could see the shapes of the Westlander warriors in the clouds, or that the thunderheads were the smoke of sacrificial fires. He wondered what had happened in the h.e.l.lins since they'd left. He wondered, and he worried at the omen of the storm.

"You'd best get below to your cabin, O'Offizier. I'll do what I can, but Cenzi knows there'll be no calming the sea with this." The wind-teni a.s.signed to the ship had come up alongside him, unheard against the protest of the sails, the shrill keening of the wind through the rigging, and the urgent calls of the ship's offiziers to the sailors on deck. She was staring at the storm in the same manner that Eneas would gaze at an enemy force arrayed against him, gauging it and pondering what strategies might work best against it. The task of the wind-teni was to fill the sails of the ship when the natural winds of the Strettosei would not cooperate. They would also strive to calm the storms that raked the deep waters between the Holdings and the h.e.l.lins, but that was the harder task, Eneas knew: the Moitidi of the sky were powerful and contemptuous of the Ilmodo and the attempts of the wind-teni to calm their fury.

"A bad one?" Eneas asked her.

The deck lifted as they rose on the next wave, then dropped abruptly as Stormcloud raced down the slope beyond. Eneas wrapped an arm around the rail as water sluiced over the deck; the wind-teni only shifted her weight easily and naturally. "I've seen worse," she answered, but to Eneas' ears it sounded more like bravado than confidence. "But you never really know what's behind the thunderheads until it gets here. Let me test it." Her hands lifted and moved in a spell-pattern, and she chanted in the language of the Ilmodo, her eyes closed as she faced the storm.

Her hands dropped. Her eyes opened and she glanced at him. "O'Offizier, are you also a teni?"

Eneas shook his head, puzzled. "No. I've had some little training, but . . ."

"Ahh . . ." She paused, her eyes narrowing. "Perhaps that's it."

"What?" he asked.

"Just now, when I opened myself to the storm, I thought I felt . . ." She shook her head, and droplets flew from her spray-darkened hair. The first spatters of cold rain hit the deck like tossed stones. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Right now, I have to see what I can do with this. Please, you should go below, O'Offizier . . ."

The ship lurched again, and with it, Eneas' stomach. Lightning crackled nearer, and he thought he could feel the strike in his very flesh, raising the hairs on his arms. He gave the wind-teni the sign of Cenzi. "May Cenzi be with you to still the storm," he told her, and she returned the gesture.

"I'll need Him," she said. She faced the storm again, her hands now moving in a new spell-pattern and her chant longer and more complex. Eneas thought he could feel the power gathering around her; he retreated down the slick, sloping deck, holding onto whatever he could grab until he half-fell into the narrow stairwell leading to the cramped pa.s.senger compartments. There, he lay on his swinging hammock and listened to the storm as it broke around them, as the wind-teni struggled to keep the worst of the furious winds away from the fragile vessel that was their ship. Eneas prayed also, his knotted hands clasped to his forehead, asking Cenzi for the safety of the ship and for their safe return to Nessantico.

You will be safe . . . He thought he heard the words, but against the storm and against the vastness of the Strettosei, they were small and insignificant. His words might have been the the whisperings of a gnat.

The storm has been sent to speed you to your home . . . The thought came to him suddenly, in that low voice he'd thought he'd heard a few times since his escape from the Tehuantin. Cenzi's Voice. Eneas laughed at that, and suddenly he didn't fear the storm though the ship pitched and rolled and the wind screamed shrilly. His fear was gone and he felt a certainty that they would be safe.

He thanked Cenzi for giving him that peace.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

DO I REALLY WANT to do this? Allesandra shivered at the thought. It was, almost, too late to change her mind.

Alone, in the darkness of a narrow lane in Brezno on Draiordi evening, she waited where she'd been told. A man approached her, hobnailed boots clacking loudly on the cobbles, and Allesandra stiffened, suddenly alert. All her senses were straining, and she pressed a hand close to the knife hidden under the sleeve of her tashta, though she knew that if the White Stone were what he was rumored to be, no weapon would protect her if he decided to kill her. The man came close to her, his eyes on the shadows under the cowl of her tashta, a.s.sessing her.

"Ah," the man said. "I guess you're comely enough. Care to do some business with me, girlie?" he asked as he approached her, with the smell of beer trailing after him.

He thinks you're a wh.o.r.e. This isn't him. But, just to be certain, she opened her hand and showed him the gray-white, smooth pebble in her palm. He didn't react. "I have a se'siqil that's yours if you're good to me," the man said, and Allesandra closed her fingers around the stone.

"Be off with you," she told him, "or I'll call the utilino."

The man scowled, hiccuped, then brushed past her. He spat on the ground near her feet.

"Did you think it would be that easy?" At the sound of the voice, Allesandra started to turn, but a gloved hand gripped her shoulder and stopped her. "No," the voice said. "Just keep standing there, looking across the street. I am the White Stone." Husky, that voice, though pitched higher than she'd imagined. In her mind, she'd heard a deep, ominous voice, not this nondescript one.

"How do I know it's you?" she asked "You don't. Not now. You won't know until you see the stone on the left eye of the man you want dead. It is a man, isn't it?" There was a quiet chuckle. "For a woman, it's always a man . . . or because of one."

"I want to see you," Allesandra said. "I want to know who I'm talking to, who I'm hiring."

"The only ones who see the White Stone are those I kill. Turn, and you'll be one of those-I know you, and that's enough. Do I make myself clear, A'Hirzg ca'Vorl?" Involuntarily, Allesandra shivered at the threat and the voice chuckled again. "Good. I dislike unnecessary and unpaid work. Now . . . You brought my fee, as Elzbet told you?"

She nodded.

"Good. You'll place the pouch down at your feet, and place the stone you brought on top of it-it's a light stone, as near white as you can find? You'd recognize it again?"

Again Allesandra nodded. Resisting the temptation to look back, she unlaced the pouch heavy with gold solas from the belt of her tashta and, crouching, put it on the cobbles of the street next to her feet. She placed the pebble on top of the soft leather and stood up.

"How soon?" Allesandra asked. "How soon will you do it?"

"In my own time and in the place of my own choosing," the White Stone answered. "But within a moon. No longer than that. Who do you want me to kill?" the a.s.sa.s.sin asked. "What is his name?"

"You may not take the money when I tell you."

The White Stone gave a mocking laugh. "You wouldn't need me if the one you wanted dead weren't well-placed and well-protected. Perhaps, given your history, it's someone in Nessantico?"

"No."

"No?" There was, Allesandra thought, disappointment in the voice. "Then who, A'Hirzg? Who do you want dead badly enough that you would find me?"

She hesitated, not wanting to say it aloud. She let out the breath she was holding. "My brother," she said. "Hirzg Fynn."

There was no answer. She heard a clatter out in the street to her right, and her head moved involuntarily in that direction. There was nothing there; in the moonlight, the street was empty except for a utilino just turning the corner a block away, whistling and swinging his lantern. He waved at her; she waved back. "Did you hear me?" she whispered to the White Stone.

There was no answer. She glanced down: pouch and stone were gone. She turned. There was a closed door directly behind her, leading into one of the buildings.

Allesandra decided it would not be in her best interest to open that door.

The White Stone.

"MY BROTHER. Hirzg Fynn."

She had thought herself beyond surprise at this point, but this . . .

She'd been in Firenzcia now for some three years, longer than she'd stayed anywhere in some time, but the work had been good here. She knew some of the history between Allesandra and Fynn ca'Vorl; she'd heard the rumors, but none of them spoke of a resentment this deep in Allesandra. And she herself had witnessed Allesandra saving her brother from an attack.

She found herself puzzled. She didn't care for uncertainty.

But . . . that wasn't her concern. The gold solas in the pouch were real enough, and she had heard Allesandra clearly, and the woman's white stone sat in her pouch next to the stone of the right eye, the stone that held the souls of all those the White Stone had killed.

Her fingers scissored around the white stone now through the thin, soft leather of the pouch. The touch gave her comfort, and she thought she could hear the faint voices of her victims calling.

"I nearly killed you first . . . You were so clumsy then . . ."

"How many more? We grow stronger, each time you add another . . ."