Karl nodded, and the knife blade vanished. He heard more noise-like a slap, and a grunt that could only be Uly. “Answer me if you want to live,” the voice said, though it wasn’t addressing Karl. “You killed Archigos Ana, didn’t you? You made the black sand.”
“No,” Uly began, then his voice cut off with a groan of pain. “All right, all right. Yes, I helped kill her. With the black sand. But it wasn’t my idea. I just gave the man the stuff and told him how to use it. I didn’t know what he intended to do with it. Ouch! Damn it, that’s the truth!” So much for Uly’s preference to die rather than talk, Karl thought. Perhaps Talis didn’t know his warriors that well after all.
“Who?”
“I don’t know-Ow! By Axat! Stop! He told me his name was Gairdi ci’Tomisi, but I don’t know if that’s his real name or not. Paid me well-that’s all I knew or cared about.”
There were more soft sounds, then a long wail that had to have come from Uly. The man was panting now, sobbing in pain, his breath fast and desperate. “Please. Please stop.”
“Then tell me more about this man,” the other voice said. “Quickly.”
“Sounded like ca’-and-cu’, the way he talked. Firenzcian, maybe, by the accent. Said he had ‘orders’ from Brezno, in any case. That’s all I know. I made the stuff, gave it to him, and he left. I was as surprised as anyone when the Archigos was killed.”
Karl desperately wanted to tear the hood from his face, to see what was happening, but he didn’t dare. There were more sounds: a wet scuffling, a soft t-chunk, then a rustling. Someone pulled at his bashta, rummaging in his pocket. He thought he heard soft footsteps but with the pounding and ringing in his head they were faint enough that he couldn’t be sure.
Then, for several breaths, there was nothing at all, only the distant sounds of the city. “Hello?” Karl whispered. There was no answer. Carefully, Karl lifted his hands to the cloth wrapped around his head and pulled it away from his face. What he saw made him recoil backward.
Karl stared at Uly’s body on the cobblestones, his throat slashed and blood sprayed over his clothes. His right eye was open to the sky, but covering the left was the stone the woman had given him in the tavern.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Semini tried to contact her for several days afterward. Allesandra rebuffed his advances. She let his messages sit on her desk. When he sent his o’teni over to talk to her directly, he was told firmly by her well-instructed aides that she was in meetings and could not be disturbed. When Semini himself left the temple to see her, she made certain she was out of town with Jan, watching the muster of the troops.
When Semini-under the guise of working with the war-teni who were also mustering-came to the fields south of Brezno, there was, finally, no way to avoid him.
Semini was a green-clad, dark blot against the sun-washed whiteness of the tent canvas. Outside, the military encampment stirred in the morning: the clash of metal as the smithies worked on weapons, armor, and livery; the call of men; the shouted orders of offiziers; the general buzz of movement; the sound of feet marching in unison as squads drilled. Smells drifted in as Semini let the tent flap close behind him: the cook and campfires, the odor of mud churned by thousands of feet, and the faint stench of the ditches that served as latrines.
She was talking to Sergei ca’Rudka as she sat behind the field desk that had once been her vatarh’s, the front panels painted with images of Hirzg Jan ca’Silanta’s famous battles in East Magyaria. “.. . told the Hirzg and Starkkapitan to expect resistance as soon as we cross the border,” Sergei was saying, and he stopped and turned as her gaze drifted over his shoulder toward Semini. “Ah, Archigos. Perhaps I should go.”
“Come back after Second Call and we’ll continue our discussion, Regent,” she told him. Sergei bowed to her, rubbed at the reflective flank of his nose, and left the tent with a nod and the sign of Cenzi to the Archigos.
Semini seemed uncomfortable, as if he’d expected her to rise and embrace him as soon as the tent flap closed behind ca’Rudka. After a moment, he finally gave her the sign of Cenzi, shifting his weight as he stood in front of the desk like a summoned offizier. “Allesandra,” he began, and she scowled.
“Anyone could be listening through the tent fabric. We are in public, Archigos Semini, and I expect you to address me properly.”
She saw irritation quickly narrow his eyes at the rebuke. His lips pressed together under the roof of his mustache. “A’Hirzg ca’Vorl,” he said, with deliberate slowness. “I apologize.” Then, he dropped his voice to a low, rumbling near-whisper. “I hope that we might still talk openly. Francesca, she…”
Allesandra shook her head slightly; with the motion, Semini stopped. “I spoke with your wife,” she said, with heavy emphasis. “The other night. We had a lovely chat. She seems to believe that you had something to do with Archigos Ana’s death.”
She hadn’t really expected him to react; he didn’t. He stared blandly at her. “I know you had some affection for the false Archigos,” he said. “Given what happened to you, I can understand that. But Ana ca’Seranta was my enemy. I didn’t mourn her passing. Not in the slightest, and if my pleasure in her death offends you, A’Hirzg, then I have to accept that. I prayed-often-that Cenzi would take her soul, because the woman was wrong in her beliefs and she was largely responsible for the severing of the Faith and the break of the Holdings.”
“She is also the reason I am who I am. Without her…” Allesandra shrugged. “I might not be here. Jan may never have been born.”
“And for that, if nothing else, I gave her my prayers when she died.” Semini took a step to the side of the field desk, then stopped. “Allesandra, what’s happened between us? It’s obvious you’ve been avoiding me. Why?”
“When were you going to tell me that it was you who ordered Ana killed? Or weren’t you ever going to tell me?”
“Allesandra-”
“If you didn’t do it, then deny it, Semini. Tell me now that it wasn’t you.”
She wasn’t certain how she wanted him to answer. In the intervening days, she had-through the staff in the palais, through Commandant cu’Gottering of the Garde Brezno-performed her own investigation. The name of Gairdi ci’Tomisi had emerged, and she’d had Commandant cu’Gottering take the merchant, who happened to be in Brezno, to the Bastida for interrogation. Ci’Tomisi, under the Bastida’s less-than-gentle persuasion, had poured out the entire story: how he served Firenzcia and Archigos ca’Cellibrecca as a dual agent, how he knew a Westlander in Nessantico who sold potions, how the man had told him about some powerful Westlander concoction, how the Westlander had demonstrated this “black sand” to him and how ci’Tomisi told his contacts in Brezno Temple about its power, and how word had come back (from ‘the Archigos himself’) that-if he were able to do so-a demonstration against the Nessantican Faith would be “interesting and much rewarded”; how he’d used his contacts in the Archigos’ Temple in Nessantico to gain access at night; how he’d placed the black sand in the High Lectern and set a clock-candle burning within, the flame set to touch the black sand at the same time that Archigos Ana would be giving her Admonition.
Ci’Tomisi confessed in order to save his own life, blubbering and weeping. He’d succeeded, but Allesandra wondered if, in his filthy and dark cell in the bowels of the Bastida, he might be wishing he hadn’t.
Allesandra was also aware that Semini would have realized that ci’Tomisi had been imprisoned and had probably talked. So she watched Semini, wondering what he would say, whether he would give her the lie and deny any knowledge of it, and how she should react if he did.
But he didn’t deny it. “I am Archigos,” he said. “I need to do what seems best for the Faith, and in my opinion, the Faith would stay as broken as Cenzi’s world until that woman was gone.”