He scratched at the skin near his false right nostril. On the mantel above the hearth, there was only a neatlyfolded piece of parchment; lettering looped over the front and Sergei leaned in closer to read it: his own name, written in an elegant, careful script. He snorted laughter through his metal nose.
“Ambassador?” Cu’Ingres was peering over Sergei’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said. “Then our informant was right.”
“Right about the location. Wrong with the timing,” Sergei said. He plucked the paper from the mantel and opened the stiff parchment.
Sergei-I’m sorry to have missed you. Cenzi tells me that someday you and I must talk. But not today. Not until I’ve accomplished the tasks He has given to me. I would like to think that perhaps now you’ll see that I am only doing His work, but I suspect your eyes, like those of the Kraljica and the A’Teni, are blinded. I’m sorry for that, and I will pray for Cenzi to give you sight. It was signed simply “Nico.”
“We won’t find anything here,” Sergei told cu’Ingres. “Have your men search the place thoroughly in case they’ve missed something important, but they won’t have. The Morellis have an informant of their own, either in the Garde Kralji or-more likely-within the Faith. We’ve missed them.”
He poked at the ash in the fireplace with the tip of his cane until he saw glowing red. He let the note drift from his hand onto the coals. The edges of the paper darkened, lines of red crawling over it before it burst into flame. “I won’t let this happen a second time,” he said: to cu’Ingres, to the paper, to the ghost of Nico.
The paper went to dry ash, fragments of it lifting and rising up the flue. Sergei shrugged his cloak around his shoulders. He slammed his cane hard once on the floor of the house, and left.
“We’ll be successful next time,” Sergei said. “I promise you that.”
He watched Varina shrug in the light streaming in between the lace curtains of the window. The patterns of the lace speckled her face and shoulders with dappled light and put her eyes in deep shadow. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear,” she said, “but part of me is glad Nico escaped you, Sergei. I think Karl would have felt the same.”
The teapot on the table between them clattered as Sergei adjusted himself in the chair. “Your compassion is admirable, and is what makes everyone-including Karl-love you.”
“But?” Varina put down her teacup. Lace-shadow crawled across the back of her hands.
Now it was Sergei who lifted his shoulders. “Compassion isn’t always good for the State.”
“Would you have said that back when the Numetodo were called heretics and condemned to death?” Varina retorted softly. She looked out to the curtained window and back again. “Would you have said that when Kraljiki Audric and the Council of Ca’ named you a traitor?”
Sergei put his hands up in front of him as if to stop an onslaught. He remembered the time he’d spent in the Bastida after Audric’s condemnation of him all too welclass="underline" how frightened he’d been that what he’d done to many others would now be done to him, and how it had been Karl and Varina who had saved him from that fate, at the risk of their own lives and freedom. “I yield,” he said. “The lady has taken the field.”
Varina almost smiled at that. The expression was momentary, but Sergei grinned in response-it was the first time he’d seen her show a trace of amusement since Karl’s final illness. He reached out and patted her hand; the skin sagging around his bones made her hands look youthful by comparison. “The boy’s had a hard life,” she said. “Snatched away from his poor matarh by that horrid madwoman, the White Stone. What kind of life could the boy have had? We have no idea what horrors he might have experienced with her.”
“I agree, we can’t know that. However, he’s no longer a boy but a man who must be responsible for his actions,” Sergei said, then lifted his hands again as he saw Varina start to answer. “I know, I know. ‘The child shapes the man.’ I know the saying, and yes, there’s truth to it, but still…” He shook his head. “Nico Morel isn’t the boy we knew, Varina, no matter how much you’d like that to be true. His last action killed five of your friends and injured many others.”
“I know,” she answered sadly. “And I’m not saying he should have no punishment for that. Nor do I think him the monster you’d make him out to be, even after what he’s said, even after what he did to-” She stopped there. He heard the catch in her voice and saw the moisture gather in her eyes, and he knew what she wouldn’t say. Varina sniffed and gathered herself. “But compassion… You’re wrong about that, Sergei. You’re wrong about what I’m feeling. A dog gone mad can’t be blamed for its madness, but it still must be dealt with for the good of all. I understand that, Sergei. But if the dog is mine, then it’s my duty to deal with him. Mine.”
Her voice was fervent, and Sergei wondered at the urgency he heard there.
“Just promise me that if you hear from Nico, for any reason, that you’ll tell Commandant cu’Ingres immediately,” he said. “He’s promised to watch over you while I’m in Brezno, but I worry about the Morellis, especially after Karl’s funeral. Cenzi knows what they’re capable of doing. Dealing with him yourself would be risky. From what Archigos ca’Paim has told me, his skills with the Ilmodo are positively frightening, if he would choose to use them. Promise me you’ll be cautious. Promise me that you won’t make any effort to contact him. This particular mad dog threatens everyone in the city; let the city deal with him.”
Another smile, this one far fainter than the last. “You sound like Karl now. I’ve always believed that caution was overrated,” she said, and the smile broadened suddenly. “And you, Sergei-you’ll be careful yourself?”
“Hirzg Jan, though it probably shows his lack of judgment, seems to like me despite the frigid relationship between him and his matarh,” Sergei told her. “And in any case, I’m only the messenger for Kraljica Allesandra.” And sometimes the messenger is blamed when the message isn’t the one they want to hear… Sergei smiled even as the doubt crept into his mind. Jan wouldn’t like Allesandra’s message, that was certain. He suspected that Allesandra was going to dislike Jan’s reply just as much.
You’re getting too old for this… That thought kept rising to the surface, more and more. He was tired, and the thought of several days in a carriage on the road and the pounding his body would take from that, and the discomfort of the inns and strange beds along the way…
Too old…
“Take care of yourself, Varina,” he said. “Be careful, and please remember what I said about Nico.” Grimacing, Sergei pushed his chair back and rose. He took up his cane, leaning against the table. Varina rose with him, going to him and hugging him. One-handed, he returned the gesture.
“And you take care of yourself,” she told him. “And watch yourself with the court ladies, Ambassador. I hear that in Brezno, they aren’t as… discreet as we are here.”
It won’t be ladies of the court with whom I consort… “I’m afraid that when they look on me, the court ladies wish to do nothing more than flee the room,” he told her, touching his nose. He pressed her tightly once more, then released her. “I’ll call on you again as soon as I return. I promise.”
Brie ca’Ostheim
Kriege shouldn’t have been in their dressing room at all, but he had a habit of slipping away from the nursemaids who watched him. Brie would have to talk to them later.
Brie was awakened when she heard the servants’ door to the dressing room creak open. She heard Kriege’s feet padding over the carpet. She slid from her bed and into the dressing room both she and Jan shared. Kriege was standing in front of Jan’s dresser, his hands busy with something that his body masked. Brie smiled indulgently, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Kriege,” she said, “what are you doing?”