Jan.
The shock had been palpable. She’d felt it as strongly as if her heart had been placed directly on a bed of hidden, red-hot coals. Jan: he stood there, and she had witnessed the slow recognition on his face. His expression had frightened her. It was full of shock and affection, of yearning and horror. Seeing him was awful and wonderful at the same moment, and she had wanted to run to him, had wanted to take his hand and place it on her swelling stomach and whisper, Here, darling. This is the life we have created together. This is what our love has made; she wanted also to run, to flee, to hide her face and pretend this revelation had never happened.
The second impulse was the stronger.
She’d taken the white stone from Talis’ eye and she’d fled, wanting Jan to follow her and afraid that he actually would.
She didn’t stop until she reached the Pontica Kralji. There were no strange, bronze-colored men there; none who were living, anyway, though their bodies littered the ground. She could see soldiers in the black and silver of Firenzcia moving everywhere on the streets-causing Fynn to exclaim excitedly inside her head-and she carefully made her way across the Pontica and slid quickly into cover on the island. That was easy; so many walls tumbled down, so many fire-scarred buildings. She went to the gardener’s cottage on the palais estates where they’d taken Nico and his matarh, where the healer for the Westlander had worked over her injured body.
The healer and all the Westlander soldiers were gone, but her fears eased when she saw that Nico was still there, holding onto his matarh’s hand as he crouched next to the table on which she lay-it must have once been one of the dining tables from the palais, still covered with fine, lacy damask, now bloodstained and filthy. She could see Serafina’s chest rise with a slow breath, but her eyes were still closed and she seemed unresponsive.
“Nico,” she said, and he started, his hand clenching his matarh’s tightly.
“Oh,” he said a moment later. His face brightened slightly. He sniffed and ran his hand across his nose. “Elle. It’s you.”
She nodded and came to him. She clasped her own hands around his and his matarh’s. She saw him stare at the blood that mottled her skin. “We need to go, Nico,” she told him.
“I can’t leave Matarh,” he said. “Talis will be back soon.”
She shook her head. Her hands pressed tighter against his. His skin was warm, so warm, and she felt the child within her jump at the touch-the stirring of life, the quickening. She gasped slightly at the feel. “No,” she told him. “I’m afraid Talis is dead, Nico.”
She saw the tears start in his eyes and his lower lip trembled. Then he sniffed again and blinked. “That’s the truth?”
She nodded. “The truth, Nico. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”
He was crying fully now, the words coming out between the sobbing breath. “But my matarh… I can’t… They just left her… She’s asleep and I… can’t wake her up…”
“Your matarh would want you to go with me. Look at her, Nico. She loves you so much, I know she does, but I don’t know if she’s ever going to wake up, and the city is full of soldiers and death. She would want you to go with me because I can keep you safe. I will keep you safe.”
“But I did this to her,” Nico said. “It was my fault. I want her to know that I’m sorry.”
She pressed Nico’s hand around his matarh’s. “She knows. Nico, we need to hurry.”
She pulled his hand away from his matarh’s, prying away the fingers gently. He released his grip reluctantly but without protest. “Give her a kiss,” she said. “She’ll feel it, and she’ll know.”
Nico stood up. Leaning over his matarh’s body, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. He put her hand, dangling over the side, on the table, and patted it. He looked back over his shoulder, then, his eyes swimming with tears that didn’t fall.
“I promise you, Nico-I’ll find her again if she lives and bring her back to us. I promise you.”
He nodded. She held out her hand to him, and he took it. She brought him to her, hugging him briefly, then releasing him with a sigh. She took his hand again.
“It’s time,” she told him.
Together, hand in hand, they made their way from the smoldering, ruined city.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
“ Here you are, Matarh. It’s all yours. I hope it makes you happy.”
Jan’s words were scalding water poured over her. They burned and seared her, delivered with an appalling and terrifying scorn and distance. He gestured grandly and mockingly in the direction of the Sun Throne. Allesandra stared at the massive piece of carved crystal, sitting-strangely misplaced-in the middle of the ruined Old Temple. The throne had been cracked and badly repaired; a cloth with strange geometric patterns was draped over it, the ruins of the shattered dome and its lantern littered the broken tiles behind, and all around the hall were the remnants of some feast. Rats prowled the corners of the room, and the air stank of smoke and rotting meat. Near the rear there was a body, with one of the tapestries thrown hastily over it.
Allesandra knew whose body was under the covering: Sigourney, her staked head lolling separately near the throne.
The Regent and the two Numetodo were standing limned in sunlight by the open doors of the temple, too far away to hear her and Jan’s conversation. Starkkapitan ca’Damont called out orders in the temple’s plaza, sending out patrols to make certain that all the Westlander troops were gone from the city and to stop any looting by the survivors.
Allesandra heard the scrape of footsteps at the temple doors; she glanced over her shoulder to see Archigos Semini stepping carefully over the rubble on the floor. Jan saw him also. “Ah, Archigos Semini,” Jan said. “I’m glad you’re here, since this is also yours. I give you Nessantico. You won’t be in Brezno any longer.”
“My Hirzg?” Semini asked, glancing worriedly from Allesandra to Jan. “I was considering that perhaps the Archigos should reside in Brezno now, given the destruction here. I could assign an a’teni to Nessantico…”
“Oh, I agree,” Jan said, and his smile made Allesandra shiver. It was the grim, bloodless smile her vatarh used when he was angry. She had seen it many times in her childhood, and in her adulthood after he had finally brought her back to Firenzcia. Now here the scornful, mocking expression was again, returned. Jan’s face was smeared with soot and blood, and his right arm and leg were heavily bandaged. He limped, he seemed barely able to lift his sword arm. She wondered what her son had seen, what he was feeling. She longed to fold him into her arms and comfort him as she had when he’d been a child, but he stood a careful step from her as if he were afraid of exactly that. “You see, there will be an Archigos in Brezno. As to whether there’s one in Nessantico, well…” Jan shrugged, coldly. “That’s your choice. You might wish to claim the title and hold it for a while-though you’ve always said you wanted a reunited Faith. Or perhaps the Archigos in Brezno will let you be the a’teni here in Nessantico, though I’ll advise the Archigos against that.”
“Hirzg?” ca’Cellibrecca spluttered. His face had gone the color of the white that sprinkled his dark beard and hair, the contrast strong. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps Matarh will explain it to you, since this is now her city,” Jan said.
Allesandra stared at the throne. She felt dead, numbed. If someone cut her now, she thought, she would feel nothing, not even the heat of the blood on her skin. “My son gives me Nessantico, but he has informed me that Firenzcia will not be rejoining the Holdings,” she told Semini, and her voice was as dead as her emotions.
“Consider it my wedding gift, Matarh,” he told her. “For the wedding I never had, with the woman you sent away from me.”