“Now, Jan, don’t go giving the Ambassador ideas,” the Hirzgin interjected. Rochelle wasn’t sure how she felt about the matarh of her half-siblings. Hirzgin Brie seemed to genuinely care for Jan, but Rochelle had already heard comments and seen glances that made her wonder how well-reciprocated that affection might be. There was the palais gossip also, but Rochelle wasn’t yet privy to the details of the carefully whispered suspicions.
“Don’t worry,” Sergei said to the two of them. “The Hirzg has already told me exactly how he feels, but I trust he’s couched it more diplomatically in the letter to the Kraljica. At least I hope so.” The three of them chuckled again, but the amusement was short this time, and tinged with something else that Rochelle couldn’t quite decipher. Sergei’s voice was suddenly serious and muted. “I truly hope that we can find some way through this without resorting to violence. A new war would not be good for either the Holdings or the Coalition.”
“That depends entirely on my matarh,” Jan answered.
“And it depends on the Coalition not provoking her in the meantime,” Sergei responded. He nodded, and bowed to the two of them. “I’m away, then. I’ll send a response by fast-courier as soon as I’ve spoken with Kraljica Allesandra. Give my love to the children, and may Cenzi bless both of you.”
He bowed again and left the room as Rochelle continued to pile dirty dishes on the tray. “I’ll go see to the children,” Brie said to Jan. “Are you coming, my dear?”
“In a few moments,” he told her.
“Oh.” The strange, dead inflection of the single word made Rochelle glance up from her work, but Brie was already walking toward the entrance to the inner chambers, her back to Rochelle. She bent down to her work again, the dishes clattering softly as she stacked them.
“You’re new on the staff.”
It took a moment for Rochelle to realize that Jan had addressed her. She saw him gazing at her from the other side of the table. She curtsied quickly, her head down, as she’d seen the other servants do in his presence. “Yes, my Hirzg,” she answered, not looking up at him. “I was hired only a week ago.”
“Then you’ve obviously impressed Rance, if he’s put you on palais staff. What’s your name?”
“Rhianna Berkell.”
“Rhianna Berkell,” he repeated, as if tasting the name. “That has a pretty sound. Well, Rhianna, if you do well here, you might find yourself one day with a ce’ before your name. Rance himself was ce’Lawli only two years ago, and now he’s ci’Lawli. He’ll almost certainly be cu’Lawli one day. We reward those who serve us well.”
“Thank you, sir.” She curtsied again. “I should get these back to the kitchen…”
“Look at me,” he said-he said it gently, softly, and she lifted up her face. Their eyes met, and his gaze remained on her face. “You remind me of…” He stopped. His regard seemed to drift away for a moment, as if he were lost in memory. “… someone I knew.”
He reached out, the fingertips of his right hand stroking her cheek-the touch, she thought, of a vatarh. She dropped her gaze quickly, but she could still feel the touch of his fingertips on her skin for long breaths afterward. “The tray, my Hirzg,” she said.
“Ah, yes. That. Certainly. Thank you, Rhianna. I appreciate it.”
She lifted the tray and stepped toward the servants’ door. She could feel his gaze on her back as she pushed the door open with her hip. She didn’t dare look back, afraid that if she did, she would blurt out the secret, that she would call him by the name she longed to use.
Vatarh…
She could not do that. Not now.
Not yet.
Varina ca’Pallo
She’d set up the demonstration in the main hall of the Numetodo House. There were two hands of the long-standing Numetodo there with her: among them Pierre Gabrelli, who was grinning, already knowing what Varina intended to show; the Kraljica’s chief aide Talbot ci’Noel; Johannes ce’Agrippa, perhaps the most skilled of the Numetodo’s magicians, whose study of magical forms pushed the boundaries of Karl and Varina’s own discoveries; Niels ce’Sedgwick, whose interest was not in any magic at all, but in the rocks of the earth and what they spoke of the history of the land; Leovic ce’Darci, whose graceful drawings of buildings and engineering marvels were not only a delight, but were beginning to change Nessantico’s skyline; Nicolau Petros, who studied the stars and their movements with a device based on the one Karl had seen the Tehuantin spy Mahri use; Albertus Paracel, the scribe and librarian who was creating an already-monumental compilation of all knowledge gained from Numetodo research and experimentation. All of them were essential to the primary task of the Numetodo-to understand how the world worked without the veil of superstition and religion, to use reason and logic to fathom the mysteries that surrounded them.
They were those Nico Morel and his ilk found so terribly threatening.
There were a few who were missing, though-those that Nico had already killed, those who had actually been closest to Karl and her. She could do nothing for them except mourn their and Karl’s aching absence.
Varina had continued her own experiments with the sparkwheel. She’d refined the mixture of black sand and the shape and composition of the lead bullet the device delivered; she had Pierre create a few new experimental pieces as well. Each day, she saw the frightening potential of the sparkwheel more clearly. Each day, she was more convinced that this device could change the very sinews and fiber of the society in which they lived.
She wondered, sometimes, if this was really something she wanted to unleash.
“You can’t hide knowledge.” That was what Karl had said, many times over the decades. “Knowledge refuses to be hidden. If you try to bury it, it will only find a way to reveal itself to others.”
Fine. Then she wouldn’t hide it.
“Thank you for coming,” Varina said to the assembly. “You’re all familiar with black sand. You all know the terrible destruction it can cause when ignited in large amounts. My experiments recently have been with far smaller amounts than those used in war, and with no use of magic to set it off at all. And…” She stopped, stepping to the table she’d set up, covered in a black cloth. Several strides away, a ripe sweetfruit had been set up on a stand in front of an upended oaken table serving as a backstop: a fruit the size of a man’s head, enclosed in its marbled, yellow-and-green tough rind. A head as hard as a sweetfruit -it was an old saying in the Holdings. She could see everyone looking at the setup curiously. “Well, it’s easier to simply demonstrate,” she said to them.
She nodded to Pierre, who flicked the cover from the table. Pierre’s original sparkwheel sat there, gleaming and beautiful, already primed and ready. Varina plucked it up without a word, cocked it, and aimed at the sweetfruit.
She pulled the trigger.
The sparkwheel clicked. The black sand in the pan flashed and flared; the sparkwheel bucked in her hand with a loud report. At the end of the room, the sweetfruit seemed to explode, spattered chunks falling to the floor as the broken remnant jumped in its stand. In the silence that followed, they could hear the bright red juice of the shattered sweetfruit dripping to the floor.
The symbolism, as Varina had expected, was lost on none of them.
“No magic?” Talbot muttered. “None?”
Varina shook her head. The report of the sparkwheel still rang in her ears; a thin line of white smoke curled from the muzzle. “No magic,” she said. “A few pinches of black sand, a lead pellet, and Pierre’s craftsmanship. And it’s repeatable. Back away…” She called out to the others, some of whom had gone to examine the broken sweetfruit or the oaken planks behind it, where the pellet was embedded. She reloaded-the work of a few breaths-cocked the sparkwheel and fired it again. This time the rest of the sweetfruit collapsed entirely and the stand fell backward. Varina put the sparkwheel back on the table.