With that, she turned and left him, half-running along the Avi. “Varina,” he called, but she pushed her way into the crowds, vanishing as if she’d never been there. Karl stood there, the throngs parting around him. He heard the wind-horns of the Archigos’ Temple-Ana’s temple-start to wail, proclaiming Second Call, and it sounded to him like mocking laughter.
Sergei ca’Rudka
“ You don’t trust me, Karl?”
Sergei watched the emotions washing over Karl’s face. The man had a remarkably open face for a diplomat, a defect he’d possessed for as long as Sergei had known the man. Everything Karl thought revealed itself to an observer schooled in reading faces. Maybe that was just the Paeti way of things; Sergei had known a few people from the Isle over the decades, and most of them tended not only to speak their mind too openly, but also made little attempt to hide their genuine feelings or emotions. Perhaps that was what made the Isle renowned for its great poets and bards, for its songs and the fierce passion and temper of its people, but it also made them vulnerable, in Sergei’s estimation.
Theirs was not Sergei’s way.
Karl blinked at the assault of the question, which Sergei had fired at him before the servant had even closed the door. Karl stood at the door to Sergei’s office, uncertain, as the door clicked softly behind him. “Of course I do, Sergei,” he half-stammered, the words thick with the lilting Paeti accent. “I don’t know what you’re…” Then: “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.” Sergei took a breath, rubbing at his nose. “I just had a rather unpleasant visit from Ambassador cu’Gorin-though frankly any visit from him tends to be unpleasant. Still, he seems to think you’re a dangerous man who should be residing in the Bastida rather than walking the streets. Actually, he said: ‘In Brezno, that man would be gutted and hung in a gibbet for his impertinence, let alone his embrace of heresy.’ I really don’t think he likes you.” Sergei rose and went to Karl, slapping him once on the back.
Cu’Gorin had indeed complained about Karl, but the Firenzcian Ambassador had come at Sergei’s request, and gone away with a sealed message that Sergei hoped was already in the pouch of a rider tearing down the Avi a’Firenzcia toward Brezno. But none of that was anything he was going to tell ca’Vliomani. “Come. Sit with me, old friend. I’ll have Rodger bring us some tea. I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”
A short time later, they were seated on a balcony overlooking the grounds. Groundkeepers prowled the gardens below them, pulling any weed daring to show its common head among the royalty of the flowers. The tea and biscuits sat untouched by either of them.
“Karl, you have to leave this to me.”
“I can’t.”
“You must. My people are aggressively looking for the person or persons who did this to Ana. I am riding Commandant cu’Falla on this as if he were a horse. I won’t let it drop, I won’t let it rest. I promise you that. I want justice for Ana as much as you do. But you have to let me do it. Not you. You need to stay out of the investigation.”
Karl looked at Sergei then, and Sergei saw despair pulling at the pouches below the man’s eyes, dragging down the corners of his mouth. “Sergei, I’m convinced it had to be a Firenzcian plot. With Hirzg Jan dead and Fynn on the throne, it just makes sense that he, and maybe Archigos Semini of Brezno-” Karl licked at his lips. “They all have a reason to hate Ana.”
Sergei stopped Karl with a lifted hand. “Reasons, yes, but you’ve no proof. Neither do I. Not yet.”
“Who else would want Ana dead? Tell me. Is there someone in the Holdings, maybe a jealous a’teni who wanted to be Archigos? Or someone from one of the provinces? Do you suspect someone else?”
“No,” Sergei admitted. “Firenzcia is who I suspect myself. But we need to know before we act, Karl.” The lie, as it always did, came easily to his mouth. Sergei was used to lies. One would not be heard in his voice, or seen in the twitch of a muscle.
Sometimes he thought that he was composed entirely of lies and deceptions, that if you took those away from him, he’d be nothing but a ghost.
“Know?” Karl repeated. “The way you knew when you threw me into the Bastida years ago? The way you knew that I and the Numetodo must have had something to do with Kraljica Marguerite’s death?”
Sergei rubbed at the silver nose as he scowled at the memory. “I was following Kraljiki Justi’s orders at the time. You know that. And you’ll note that you’re still alive when Justi would have preferred you dead. Give me credit for that. Karl, the stakes here are far too high for guesses, or for hotheads barging into the Ambassador of the Coalition’s office and threatening him. If your guess is right, and Hirzg Fynn was responsible for this act, the only thing you’ve accomplished is to give him warning of our suspicions. You and Varina actually used Numetodo spells?” He tsked aloud, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him outright.”
“I wanted to,” Karl said. For a moment, the lines around his mouth tightened, and his eyes glittered in the sunlight. “But I thought of Ana…” The glittering in his eyes increased. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his bashta.
For a moment, Sergei felt genuine pity and empathy for the man. Archigos Ana he had respected, because there was no other choice. Ana never let anyone get too close to her, even those-like Karl-who might have wished that. Sergei knew this because he had watched Karl over the years, watched him because it was his duty to know the predilections and interests of those prominent in the Holdings. He knew Karl frequently engaged the services of the more expensive and discreet grandes horizontales within the city, and-interestingly to Sergei-each of those women whom Karl favored bore a physical resemblance to the Archigos, changing over the decades as Ana had changed herself. It took little intuition to guess why that might be.
Karl… Sergei liked the man, as much as he ever allowed himself to like anyone. He nodded to the Numetodo. “I’m glad Ana’s ghost held back your hand, or otherwise, I might have had no choice. Karl, you have to drop this. Promise me. Let those under me work the investigation. I will tell you anything I find.” That was another lie, of course. Sergei already knew details about the assassination that he had no intention of sharing with Karl; there were suspicions in his mind that he would not voice.
In the darkness of the Bastida, he’d had the gardai leave him alone with the man, an employee of the trader Gairdi, who regularly ran between Nessantico and Brezno. He’d heard the delicious whimper as he unrolled the canvas strip with its grim tools laced inside, and Sergei had smiled at the prisoner. “Tell me the truth,” he’d said, “and perhaps we’ll need none of this.” That, too, had been a lie, but the man had jumped at the opportunity, babbling in a quick, high voice. The screams, when they’d come later, had been exquisite.
There were some vices in him that had become stronger with age, not weaker. “Promise me,” Sergei said again.
Karl hesitated. His gaze skittered away from Sergei to the garden below, and Sergei followed it. There, a gardener dug his finger into soil so wet and rich it appeared black and plucked another weed. The worker tossed the tangle of leaves and roots into the canvas bag slung over his shoulder. Sergei nodded: the necessary work that kept the garden beautiful required death, too.
“I promise, Sergei.” Sergei, trapped in the image, looked back to find Karl smiling wanly at him.
Yet… There was something Karl wasn’t saying, some information he was withholding. Sergei could see it. He nodded as if he believed the man and decided that he would have cu’Falla put someone to watching Karl, with orders to learn what the man knew as well as to prevent the Paetian Ambassador from making a critical mistake-especially one that might interfere with Sergei’s own intentions.