With that, Allesandra’s hand went to the cracked-globe pendant she wore, that Ana had given her. She saw Semini watching the gesture. “Cenzi would have taken her,” Allesandra said. “In His own time. And if He did not, why should you act for Him?”
He had the grace and humility to look down at the carpeted grass that was the tent’s floor. “Cenzi often requires that we act for Him,” he answered finally. “There was… a sudden opportunity, one that presented itself all unexpected and would not point back to Firenzcia, but to either the Numetodo or the Westlanders. Is that any more wrong than someone in the Holdings sending the White Stone to kill Fynn?” He stared at her.
Allesandra felt a quick stab of guilt. She pressed her lips tightly; Semini seemed to interpret the gesture as annoyance.
“I had to act immediately or not at all,” Semini continued. “I prayed to Cenzi for guidance, and I felt I was answered. And at the time, A’Hirzg, you and I were not…” He let the next word hang there, silent. He continued, but his voice was now a husk, barely audible. “Had we been, Allesandra, I would have sought your advice and taken it. Instead, I asked your vatarh, who was very ill already, and your brother.”
“You’re telling me Vatarh knew? And Fynn? They also approved of this?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Allesandra.” The regret in his voice seemed genuine. His hands were lifted, as if asking for absolution, and there was a moistness in his eyes that caught the sun filtering through the canvas. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Had I realized how much the act would hurt you, if I’d known what it would do to us, I would have stopped it. I would have. You must believe that.”
“No,” she told him, shaking her head. Semini. Fynn. And Vatarh. All of them, approving of the death of the woman who kept me alive and sane. “I don’t have to believe that at all. You would say that whether it’s the truth or not.”
“Then how can I prove it to you?”
“You can’t,” she told him. “But it’s something you should have told me long before now: in my role as A’Hirzg and the matarh of the Hirzg if nothing else. And I don’t know where that leaves us. I don’t know that at all.”
The steed was frothed with sweat as it galloped hard up the slope to where they waited, its muscular legs shivering as the rider dismounted holding a courier’s pouch. He immediately dropped to a knee in front of Jan, Allesandra, Sergei, and Semini. “Urgent news from Nessantico, my Hirzg,” he said. The man’s leathers were caked with road grime, his face and hair streaked with dirt. His voice shook with exhaustion, and he looked as if-like his mount-he were ready to collapse. He held out the pouch, his hand trembling. Jan took the pouch from the man as Allesandra waved to the attendants, hanging back a judicial few paces from the four. “Get this man some food and rest, and take care of his horse.”
Attendants scurried to obey. Jan unfolded the thick parchment inside the pouch, dropping the pouch on the ground. Allesandra watched his eyes scan the words there. Her son’s eyes widened, and he handed the paper to Allesandra silently. She understood his shock quickly; the phrases there seemed impossible.
… Kraljiki Audric has been assassinated in much the same way as Archigos Ana… Sigourney ca’Ludovici has been named Kraljica, but she has been injured in the attack… Karnor has been razed and plundered by Westlanders… Westlander army approaching Villembouchure… Garde Civile and chevarittai mustered to stop them…
She passed the message to Sergei, who read it with Semini looking intently over his shoulder. “A’Hirzg,” she heard Semini say, “this comes as a shock to me. I swear to Cenzi that I knew nothing of any of this. Audric dead…” He spread his hands in supplication. “That was not my doing, nor my intention.”
She paid no attention to his protests. She put her arm around Jan, who was staring out over the army encampment, glittering with banners and armor, dotted with gray-white tents, seething with the activity of thousands of soldiers. “What does this mean, Matarh?” Jan asked her, though she saw him looking at Sergei as well. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“It means that Cenzi has truly blessed us,” she told him. “We are moving at the right time, when our enemy is weakest.” She nearly laughed. Audric dead, ca’Ludovici injured, the attention of the Holdings given over to the Westlanders rather than looking toward Firenzcia. “This is your moment, my son. Your moment. All you have to do is seize it.”
It was her moment as well, perhaps more than her son’s, but she didn’t say that.
Jan continued to stare at the encampment. Then he shook himself, and in that moment, she saw a glimpse of his great-vatarh in him: the firm clamping of his jaw, the certainty in his eyes. It was the way the old Hirzg Jan had always looked when he’d set his mind; she remembered it well. Jan gestured to the attendants.
“Bring Starkkapitan ca’Damont to me,” he said. “I have new orders to give him.”
The White Stone
She was across the lane from them when Talis went up to the building and knocked on the door, holding Nico. She heard the cry from Serafina-“Nico! Oh, Nico!”-and she watched the woman gather up Nico in her arms… and she also saw Talis stiffen as if in alarm, raising the walking stick he always carried as if he were about to strike someone with it, gesturing with his free hand as if he wanted Serafina and Nico to leave.
She hurried across the lane, her hand on one of the throwing knifes hidden in her tashta. She caught some broken, loud conversation as she did so.
“… just go! Now!… the Numetodo Ambassador… tried to kill me…”
“… knew where Nico was, and you didn’t go to him?… ”
There was more, but the voices were yammering in her head, and she couldn’t distinguish the real ones from the ones inside her head. The door closed behind Talis, and she took the opportunity to slip into the narrow space between the buildings. There, she pressed against the wall next to one of the shuttered windows. She could hear the muffled conversation-clearly enough to realize that she didn’t need to intervene. Not yet. There was talk of the assassination of Archigos Ana, (“That cold witch deserved to die for what she did to my family,” Fynn screeched), of something called black sand that could kill (and all the voices of her victims clamored in her head at that- “Death! Death! Yes, bring more of them here to us!” -so loudly she had to scream silently at them to stop), of a man named Uly (“That name. ..” Fynn said “I know that name…”).
When it was apparent that Talis and Nico would be staying here, she slipped away again, returning to her apartment and gathering up the things she had there. That evening, after three or four stops, she had rented a new apartment, one street south of Nico’s matarh’s rooms: there, from the window, she could see the door of Nico’s rooms through the space between the buildings.
For days, she watched. She would slip at night between the houses and listen to them. She followed them whenever they left, especially if Nico was with them. For days, she watched: the trips to Oldtown Market, the attempts to find Uly. She’d already found the man herself, living in squalid rooms on Bell Lane near the Oldtown Market. She found the foreigner strange and loathsome-not a man who cared about the cleanliness of his rooms or the filth ground into his clothes. He was brusque and rude with the customers to whom he sold potions, usually in the tavern below his rooms: the Red Swan. He was often drunk, and he was a poor drunk. He could be violent as well; certainly he was rough with the prostitutes he hired, enough that most of the women working the streets around the Market avoided him.
For days, she watched.
She was surprised, one day, to see Nico accompanying Varina and Karl to the market-generally, that was something that Serafina wouldn’t allow. But she also knew that the market visits were by now routine, that with each passing day the group had less expectation that they would ever find Uly, and she knew that Varina and Serafina had become close friends, that Nico seemed to think of the Numetodo woman almost as a beloved tantzia. She followed the trio closely, winding her way through the throngs about the stalls, close enough to almost listen to them but never so near that one of them might notice her. She saw them talk to a farmer in his stall, saw him point and the three of them hurry away, with Varina looking suddenly worried. Karl went up to a woman with a yellow tashta-a woman that she recognized as one of Uly’s customers.