“Nico!” His matarh had wrapped her arms around him. “Nico…” she said again, more softly this time. Her arms tightened around him, and he wasn’t sure if it was intended to be an embrace or a stranglehold. They were all staring at him.
“I’m sorry,” Nico told them. “I didn’t mean to…”
He started to cry.
Karl Vliomani
“ I’m sorry,” Nico said. His lower lip was trembling and he barely got the next words out before his shoulders started to shake from sobbing. “I didn’t mean to…”
Serafina was staring at them over the boy’s shoulder as she held him, her eyes wide and terrified. Outside in the plaza, they could hear faint shouts as passersby searched for the source of the thundering brilliance. Karl could hear Varina sigh with relief behind him. “If he’d been a hand’s breadth to one side or the other…” Karl said.
“He wasn’t,” Varina answered. She crouched down in front of him, nodding to Serafina. “It’s all right, Nico,” she told him. “No one was hurt. It’s all right.” She looked back over her shoulder to Karl. “It’s all right,” she repeated. The boy sniffled, rubbing his sleeve over his nose and eyes.
Karl let go a breath. He smiled: at Varina, at Nico, at Serafina. “Yes,” he said. “It’s all right, thanks to Varina. Talis, did you know
…?”
“I suspected, but…” He was holding his spell-staff, looking at it bemusedly as if it were a glass suddenly emptied. “I know now. Archigos, are you…?”
Kenne waved a hand as if in dismissal, but Karl could see the man’s chest still heaving. “I’m fine,” Kenne said. “And impressed. Your son’s one of the few natural talents I’ve known. Archigos Dhosti had been one, and Ana, too. With training, well…”
“ I will train him.” Talis’ answer was wrapped in a scowl. He clutched the spell-staff tightly. “This is Axat’s gift, not Cenzi’s.”
“Of course,” Kenne told him, but his gaze stayed on Nico. “Don’t worry,” he told the boy. “No one here is angry with you. Do you understand that?” Nico nodded, still sniffling.
“If I’d known about this, I’d have been far more careful when I first approached you,” Karl told Talis. “But since no harm’s been done
… We still have plans and contingencies to make. Archigos, is Petros prepared to make the offer we’ve talked about to Firenzcia?”
Kenne nodded, more hesitantly than Karl liked, but at least it was a nod. In truth, he’d been afraid that Kenne might not have followed through, especially given the undeniable danger into which it placed Petros. “He is.” The Archigos’ voice quavered a little-fear combined with age, Karl decided. “In fact, he should have done so by now.”
“Good,” Karl told him. He patted Kenne on the shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” he told the Archigos. “And he’ll be back with you soon. Now, for his part, Talis will bring the supplies from Uly’s rooms here to the temple tomorrow, and we can begin to prepare the black sand for the demonstration. That should show this Tecuhtli of the Westlanders that attacking the city would be foolish. We can prevent hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.”
The Archigos’ carriage was a ruse-four of Kenne’s servants clambered into that vehicle when it pulled up to the rear entrance of the building, while Karl and the others hurried down a back stair toward a little-used side servants’ door. None of them knew whether the subterfuge was necessary; Karl hoped not; if it was, then none of the contingencies for which they’d prepared might come to fruition.
They started to hurry away from the plaza, moving toward the Avi. Kenne had given them enough money to hire one of the carriages there to take them back to Oldtown. As they moved toward the street, they saw three separate squadrons of Garde Kralji hurrying across the Archigos’ Plaza. “Wait a moment,” Karl said. Talis, Serafina, and Nico were already on the Avi, looking for a carriage for hire; Varina, a little ahead of him, paused. As Karl hesitated on the edge of the plaza, he and Varina watched two of squadrons rush into the building from which they’d just come; the other entering the Archigos’ Temple.
Their weapons were drawn, steel shining in the lights of the lamps.
“Karl? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, Varina. I think I should go back. Take the others. I’ll-”
“No,” Varina told him firmly. She came back to him, lacing her arm into his. “No, Karl. Not this time. Even disguised, your face is too recognizable to the Garde Kralji, and there are too many of them anyway. You don’t know why they’re there; it may be nothing. It’s probably nothing. And if it’s not…” She bit at her lower lip. Her eyes pleaded with him. “You need to let the Archigos take care of this himself. Come with me. Please.”
“But if things have gone wrong-”
“If things have gone wrong, you can’t change it now. We can’t change it. All that would happen is that you’d be lost, too.” Her arm tightened on his. “Please, Karl. Let’s go. If there is a problem, we can help Kenne more by staying alive than by being thrown in the Bastida with him. We got Sergei out; we could do the same again if we had to. Karl…” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “If you’re going back,” she told him, “then I’m going with you. But that’s the wrong decision. I know it.”
He stared at the buildings, wishing he could see Kenne’s balcony from here. Everything was quiet; people still walked in the plaza as if nothing were happening. But he knew. He knew.
And he also knew that Varina was right. He could change nothing. He looked over his shoulder. Talis had waved down a carriage; he was looking back at them curiously. A woman-dressed strangely poorly for this part of the city-scuttled past them from the direction of the plaza. As she passed, she seemed to stumble and brush against Karl. “Sorry, Vajiki,” the woman muttered. Her voice… it seemed vaguely familiar, but the woman kept the cowl of her tashta up and her head down. He caught a glimpse of dirty brown hair. “It’s going to be a bad night. A bad night. You really should hurry home…”
She scurried quickly past them.
Karl stared after the woman, who vanished around the other side of the waiting carriage. Talis was waving at them. It was then that Karl remembered where he’d heard that voice.
Karl didn’t believe in either coincidence or omens.
“All right,” he told Varina. “We’re leaving.”
The Battle Begun: Kenne ca’Fionta
“ I’m afraid that your poor Petros is dead. It’s a shame.”
Kenne heard the words, and his old eyes blurred with tears, though he’d already known that Petros was gone. He’d felt it in his heart, ever since the Garde Kralji had come and snatched him away to the Bastida. He could only hope that Karl and his people had escaped the sweep; they’d left only a few marks of the glass beforehand. The leather-clad metal tongue gag tasted vile; the irons binding his hands were heavy enough that he could barely lift them from his lap.
Kraljica Sigourney’s scarred, torn face stared down at him. Kenne held her single-eyed regard for only a few breaths sucked in past the horrible device over his head, then dropped his gaze, broken and defeated. Between his legs, his manacled hands plucked restlessly at the straw of the rude bed as he sat in his cell high in the Bastida’s main tower. Her voice was sympathetic, almost sorrowful. “You’re a good man, Kenne. You always were. But you were too weak to be Archigos. You should have refused the title and told the Concord A’Teni to elect someone else.”