The crowds of townspeople were most dense here as the slow line of the army marched through their city. By now, Allesandra knew, the vanguard would already have passed through the western gate and beyond the city walls. By now, she also knew, messengers would be urging their horses to a gallop ahead of the force bringing news to the Kraljica, to the Archigos, and to Nessantico that the Firenzcians were on the march-for all she knew, that word may have already come to Nessantico, as the army first crossed the borders. Soon, now, their advance would be challenged; Kraljica Sigourney couldn’t afford to look westward for long.
An army-especially the Firenzcian army; polished, efficient, and renowned-was a large bargaining chip on any table of negotiation, and Sigourney and the Council of Ca’ would be all too well aware of that. Allesandra smiled at that thought.
The crowd pressed close to them, and the foot soldiers to either side of Allesandra and Jan pushed them back with the shafts of pikes and spears. She could see grim, unhappy faces behind the fence of weapons, and from the depths of the crowd came occasional shouted curses and threats, but when they looked that way, there was no one they could pick out of the masses. The populace remembered the Firenzcian siege, too: many of them had lost family members in the siege, and the sight of the silver-and-black banners was a mockery waving in their faces.
They passed into the shadow of the temple now, the line of the army using the bulwark of the main tower to shield them from the crowds. The wind-horns on the temple began to sound Second Call as Allesandra and Jan came abreast of the tower. Allesandra’s head craned upward toward the noise, squinting into the glare of the sun. Something-a figure, a form-seemed to move above, amongst the corset of scaffolding. She couldn’t see it clearly.
Allesandra was suddenly struck from behind, as her ears alerted her to the sound of hooves against cobbles. A heavy weight bore her down hard to the pavement, though the arms that had gone about her turned her so that the body underneath took the brunt of the impact. She heard a loud kr-unk almost in concert with the impact. A horse screamed-a horrible, awful sound-and people shouted. “The Hirzg!” “Move! Move!” “Back! Get back!” “Above! There he is!” She could hear offiziers shouting orders and more screams. There seemed to be a mob huddled around her. She fought against the arms around her, against the folds of her assaulter’s cloak and her own riding tashta and cloak. There were hands pulling at her, helping her up.
There was another scream, a human one this time, and another impact somewhere close by.
She blinked, trying to make sense of the scene.
Sergei ca’Rudka was standing near her, his cloak torn, grimacing as he kneaded his arm. The silver of his nose was scuffed and the nose itself was partially pulled back from his face, giving her a glimpse of an uncomfortable hole underneath. Jan was being helped to his feet, a stride in back of Sergei. Allesandra’s horse was on its side before her, a massive statue of a Moitidi demon in pieces on the ground around it. The animal was thrashing its legs, its eyes wide, and the sounds it was making… Sergei moved to the horse quickly, kneeling in the wreckage of the stone carving and stroking the horse’s neck as he made soothing noises. She saw him take his knife from its scabbard. “No!” she began, but he’d already made the cut, deep and swift. The horse bucked once, again, and went still.
Allesandra shook her head, trying to clear it. Half the crowd in the plaza seemed to have fled in terror; the Firenzcian soldiers had formed a thick bulwark around them. Sergei moved away from the horse, striding toward a body sprawled in a pool of blood not far from the base of the tower. Soldiers moved to intercept him; he shrugged them away angrily. Allesandra started to move and realized that her body was sore and bruised, and she was bleeding from a cut on the head. She felt Jan come up behind her.
“Matarh?” He was staring at the horse Sergei had killed. She hugged her son, desperately, then held him an arm’s length away, examining him-his clothes were torn, as well, and there was a scrape along one cheek that was oozing blood, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. “What happened?” she asked him. “Did you see?”
“The Regent saved us,” he said. “He took both of us from our horses just in time.” He glanced up at the scaffolding, then back to the body on the ground. Sergei was enclosed in a clot of soldiers, crouched alongside the corpse. “The man… he was up there-he would have killed you. Maybe both of us. But Sergei…”
Archigos Semini came rushing up then, his green robes swirling. “Allesan-” he began, then shook his head, making the sign of Cenzi hurriedly. “A’Hirzg! Hirzg Jan! Thank Cenzi you’re both safe! I thought-”
But Allesandra was no longer listening to him. She pushed through the crowd to where Sergei was examining the body. “Regent?” she said, and Sergei glanced up at her. He was scowling.
“A’Hirzg. I apologize, but there was no time to give you warning. Are you badly hurt?”
She shook her head. He nodded and stood up, groaning as he did so as if the movement pained him. “I’m too damned old for this,” he muttered. He kicked the corpse in front of him, the boot making a soft, ugly sound as the broken torso jiggled in response. Allesandra saw a fair face underneath the blood, a young face, perhaps Jan’s age; what she saw of his clothing was suspiciously fine. The body was adorned with the broken shafts of several arrows. “Don’t know who he is,” Sergei said, “but we’ll find out. Ca’-and-cu’, though, from the way he’s dressed and the way he looks. I saw him up on the scaffolding just before he tossed down the carving. That’s when I moved; looks like your archers took care of the rest.” He seemed to notice his dangling nose then, and pushed it gingerly back in place, holding it with two fingers. “My pardon, A’Hirzg-the glue…”
“No matter,” she told him, waving her hand. “Regent, I owe you my life.”
She thought he would respond as most would have, with a lowering of his head and deprecation, a protest of duty and loyalty and obligation. He did not. Instead, he smiled, still holding his silver nose in place.
“Indeed you do, A’Hirzg,” he said.
Niente
The town burned and the flames reflected in the scrying bowl. They vanished as Zolin slapped the scrying bowl aside, splashing the water over Niente. The bowl clattered away, bronze ringing against the tiles like a wild bell until it clanged up against the far wall, where a tile mosaic of some ancient battle glittered. Outlined in glass, horses reared as soldiers with pikes marched across a field with a snow-topped mountain looming in the background.
“No!” the Tecuhtli roared. “I won’t have you tell me this!”
“It is what I saw,” Niente answered with a calmness he didn’t feel. The dead warrior, the nahualli sprawled next to him, only this time he saw one of their faces. Zolin’s face… And he was too afraid to ask Axat to let him see the nahualli’s features… “Tecuhtli, we have accomplished so much here. We have shown these Easterners the pain that they inflicted on us and our cousins. We have taken land and cities from them as they were taken from us. We have given them the lesson you wanted to give them. To go on…” Niente lifted his hands. The great city in flames and the tehuantin fleeing, their ships with broken masts canted on their sides on the river… “The visions show me only death.”
“No!” Zolin spat. “I’ve sent word back that we’ll stay here, that they are to send more warriors. We will keep what we have taken. We will strike at their heart-this great city of theirs that is so close.” He turned, his heavy and muscular arms swinging close to Niente’s face. Zolin’s thick fingers stabbed toward Niente’s eyes. “Are you blind, Nahual? Didn’t you see how easily we took this city of theirs? Didn’t you watch them run from us like a pack of whipped dogs?”