He glanced upward at the dome. Ghosts… None of them would tolerate this; I can’t either. This is a slap in the face.
“Jan, I understand your feelings; believe me, I have the same reaction,” his matarh said.
“ ‘But…?’ ” Jan spat angrily, turning to her. “Is that what you’re about to say, Matarh? ‘But…’ What possible ‘But’ could there be?”
Strangely, she smiled. “My dear, you sound like Fynn, or perhaps Vatarh. I’ve heard them both roar just like that when they thought themselves insulted.”
Her amusement served only to increase his irritation. He glanced past Semini to the mural behind the High Lectern, at the bloody strips of Pewitt’s flesh clutched in the clawed hands of the Moitidi, trying to stifle his annoyance.
“The ‘But,’ my son, is what we’ve been considering,” she continued. “Perhaps this is just the opportunity we needed. The excuse to act.”
“The excuse?” he began. For a moment, he felt much younger, a child again. “Oh,” he said. That word did not echo at all. It floated in the air between them, lost in the great expanse of the temple. He looked down at the paper half-unrolled over the marble tiles, the suspicion growing in him. “Strange that a message like this would lead to exactly the situation you wanted, Matarh. A bald provocation against us by Nessantico. What wonderful timing.” He raised his eyebrows toward her.
She was shaking her head in denial. “I knew nothing of this until now,” she told him. “I had nothing to do with it. The message is genuine. Ask the Archigos.”
Semini nodded hurriedly. “The letters came sealed and via diplomatic routes,” he said. “If the Hirzg doubts that, I can have the courier brought here.”
Jan waved a hand, looking away from them toward the murals of the dome. “No. There’s no need. It’s just…” His gaze came back to his matarh. “It would seem that Cenzi wants what you want, Matarh.” Perhaps it was coincidence. His matarh had appeared genuinely shocked. Perhaps this was a sign. He was not delighted by the prospect.
“Oh, indeed,” Semini responded. “The Kraljiki has played directly into our hands, or Cenzi has caused him to do so. The Kraljiki has threatened the Coalition and our Faith directly, and we have no choice but to respond to protect our borders and our interests. This is the moment, Hirzg. This is the time. Much of Nessantico’s Garde Civile has been sent westward to the Hellins; it will take time for them to muster the chevarittai and the remaining Garde Civile, to prepare the war-teni who remain available to them, and to draft the necessary foot soldiers they would need to make good this threat.” Semini smiled, nodding to Allesandra. “Your matarh knows this. It’s time for you to show your generalship, and take the Garde Civile and the chevarittai of Firenzcia to war. You will restore the Holdings to the whole it once was, Hirzg Jan, and your name will be remembered forever for that.”
“I don’t know…”
“I do,” Allesandra told him. Her voice was firm and proud. “You’re ready for this, Jan.”
He hesitated. He was still bothered that she would use him for her own purposes; he was also troubled by his own uncertainty as to whether he could be the Hirzg that he wanted to be. “I also think that a good Hirzg listens to the message even when he has difficulty with the messenger.” Sergei’s words. They calmed him. They decided him.
A breath later, he nodded. “You were right the other night. I’ll need to consult with Starkkapitan ca’Damont and the chevarittai. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Matarh?”
If she heard the faint mockery in his voice, she didn’t react to it. “I’ll come with you, Jan. I know the Starkkapitan, and I know the Garde Civile. I can be your mentor in this. Go on and have Roderigo summon them. I’ll follow in a moment.”
Jan’s eyebrows rose, annoyed at the obvious dismissal, but he gave Semini the sign of Cenzi and bowed slightly to his matarh. “Thank you for relaying this information, Archigos,” he told Semini. “We will need your strength and guidance in this. Matarh, I will talk with you later.”
He left them, all but a few of the gardai forming around him as he departed the temple. “Your son will be a fine Hirzg,” he heard Semini growl in his low voice as he reached the doors. He assumed that it was timed so he would overhear it and think the praise genuine.
He smiled to himself. He would be a fine Hirzg. He would surprise both of them with just how effective a leader he would be.
He suspected they might not like the result.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
The walkway at the rear of the temple was dark, illuminated only sporadically by green-shuttered teni-lamps hung on porcelain hooks mortared to the wall. Fluted columns lined the walk, shielding it from the gardens of a courtyard between the northern wing of the temple complex and the temple itself. The great windows of stained glass loomed dark above her. Allesandra half-ran along the walkway, not wanting to be seen though she’d been assured that no teni would be in the area, the soft leather soles of her sandals hushing on polished granite. It had been easy enough to slip from her own rooms at the palais down the servants’ corridors, waiting until there was no one watching to open the door and hurry across the plaza and into the Brezno streets. She wore a cowl over her hair, shadowing her face, and her tashta was plain. She might have been just another woman hurrying home in the evening. Semini had told her which door would be open, and which places the teni generally avoided. The ceremonies for Third Call had ended a turn of the glass ago.
She was nearly there. A turn to the left down the next opening, then up the stairs to the room that Semini kept in the temple complex when he didn’t wish to return to his own apartments in the northern wing.
“Allesandra.”
She froze at the hiss of the voice. Her hand went to the knife she had hidden in the sash of the tashta.
“Francesca,” she said.
A figure appeared from alongside one of the columns. In the uncertain light, she saw the woman, the lines of her face holding shadows. The verdant glow from the lamps made Francesca look sickly. She spread her open hands, as if showing Allesandra that she held no weapon. “I know,” Francesca said to her. “I’ve known all along.”
“What is it that you know, Francesca?”
She laughed. The sound startled black starlings settling for the night in the fruit trees of the courtyard. They rose and fluttered restlessly. Allesandra could smell alcohol on the woman’s strong breath. “We shouldn’t play games, you and I,” the woman said. “There’s been nothing between Semini and myself for years, and if you’re willing to spread your legs so that old ram can plow you, why should I care?”
Allesandra felt her cheeks heat with the raw crudity, drawing her breath in between her teeth. “If you don’t care, why are you here talking to me?”
The amusement vanished from the woman’s face. She sniffed, staring at Allesandra. “You’re a pretty one. Semini always liked you; I heard the fondness in his voice when you finally came back from Nessantico. The lovers he had afterward… they always reminded me of you. Reminded him too, I assume. I know whose face he was seeing when he plowed them. Ah, that bothers you, does it? I’ll bet he never told you that.” Francesca sidled closer to Allesandra and she stepped back, her hand still on the knife’s leather hilt. “I’ll bet there’s much he hasn’t told you.”
“Francesca, you’re drunk and I’m not having this conversation. Now, let me by…”
The woman’s hand came up, her lips twisting in a scowl. “Not yet. Look at me. Look…” Francesca waved her hands toward her own face. “I was beautiful once. Why, I was the Kraljiki Justi’s mistress; I might have been his wife had my vatarh chosen the right side in the war. But he didn’t. And now…” For a moment, Allesandra thought the woman wasn’t going to speak again. She stood there, her body swaying slightly. “You think you know my husband? You don’t know him. I saw you when the news came that Archigos Ana had died. I saw the horror and grief in that pretty face of yours. You were hurt, because you liked that cold bitch. Me, I hated her. I was happy to hear that she’d died. I laughed out loud. But you… she treated you well, didn’t she? She was a matarh to you, when your own family abandoned you. Archigos Ana… Phaw! ” Francesca pursed her lips, turned her head, and spat on the flags. “ He knows who murdered her. As do I.”