She looked eastward, toward the evening mist rising in its soft, slow tide from the valleys toward the steep slopes in which the palais was nestled. The tops of the evergreens below them were wrapped in strands of white cloud, though the wind-scoured and treeless peaks above remained swaddled in sun that sparked from the granite cliffs and the clinging snowbanks. Somewhere hidden in the mist below, a waterfall burbled and sang.
“It’s truly beautiful here,” Allesandra said. “I never realized that when I was here as a girl. Great-Vatarh Karin picked a perfect location: gorgeous, and perfectly defensible. No army could ever take Stag Fall if it were well-defended.”
Fynn nodded, though he didn’t seem to be looking at the landscape. Instead, he was fiddling with the brocaded cuff of his sleeve. “I asked you to walk with me so we could speak alone, Sister,” he said.
“I thought as much. We ca’Vorls rarely do anything without ulterior motives, do we?” she said. A quick smile played with her lips. “What did you want to say to me, little brother?”
He grinned-briefly-at that, the thick scar on his cheek twitching with the motion. “You never knew me when I was little.”
“There was good reason for that.” Yes, that hurt was at the very heart of the mountain inside, the seed from which it had all grown.. ..
“Or a bad one. I didn’t understand then, Allesandra, why Vatarh left you in Nessantico for so long. After he finally told me about you, I always wondered why Vatarh let my sister languish in another country, one he so obviously hated.”
“Do you understand now?” she asked, then continued before he could respond. “Because I still don’t. I always waited for him to apologize to me, or to explain. But he never would. And now…”
“I don’t want to be your enemy, Allesandra.”
“Are we enemies, Fynn?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. I would like to know.”
Allesandra waited before answering. The marble railing of the balcony was damp under her hand, the swirls of pale blue in the milky stone varnished by dew. “Are you thinking that if our positions were reversed, that if I’d been named Hirzgin by Vatarh, then you would consider me your enemy?” she asked carefully.
He made a face, his hand sweeping through the cool air as if he were swiping at an annoying insect. “So many words…” He sighed loudly and she could hear his irritation in it. “You make speeches that slip in my ears and make my own words twist their meanings, Allesandra. I’ve never been someone able to fence with words and speeches-it’s not one of my skills. It wasn’t one of Vatarh’s either. Vatarh always said exactly what he thought: no more, no less, and what he didn’t want someone to know, he didn’t say at all. I asked you a simple enough question, Allesandra: are you my enemy? Please do me the courtesy of giving me a plain, unadorned answer.”
“No,” she answered firmly, and then shook her head. “Fynn, only an idiot would answer you with anything other than ‘No, we’re not enemies.’ You know that, too, despite your protestations. You may be many things, but you’re not that simple, and I’m not that foolish to fall into so obvious a trap. What’s the real question you’re asking?”
Fynn gave an exasperated huff, slapping his hand on the railing. She could feel the impact of his hand shivering the rail. “There… There are people…” He stopped, taking a long audible breath. When he released it, she could see it cloud before his face. He touched the plain golden band that encircled his head. “Vatarh told me before he died that there were whispers among the chevarittai and the higher teni of the Faith. Some of them opposed his naming of me as the A’Hirzg. They don’t like my temper, or they say I’m too… stupid.” He spat out the word, as if it tasted sour on his tongue. “Some of them wanted you to have that title, or wanted someone else entirely to take the band of the Hirzgai.”
“Did Vatarh tell you who was doing the whispering? Where did it come from?” Allesandra asked. She had to ask the question. She shivered a little, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “Did Vatarh tell you who had said this?”
But Fynn only shook his head. “No. No names. Just… that there were those who would oppose me. If I find them…” He took a long breath in through his nose, and his face went hard. “I will take them down.” He looked directly at her. “I don’t care who they are, and I don’t care who I have to hurt.”
She faced away from him so he could not see her face, looking at the fog drifting among the pines just below. Good. Because I know some of them, and they know me… “You can’t punish rumors, Fynn,” she said. “You can’t put chains around gossip and imprison it, any more than you can capture the mists.”
“I don’t think Vatarh was deceived by mists.”
“Then what do you want of me, little brother?”
That was what he’d wanted her to ask. She could see it in his face, in the dimming light of the sky. “At the Besteigung,” he began, then stopped to put his hand atop hers on the railing. It did not feel like an affectionate gesture. “You’re the one that everyone looks to. You’re the one who could have been Hirzgin had Vatarh not changed his mind. The ca’-and-cu’ still like you, and many of them think that Vatarh did wrong by you. The rumors always circulate around you, Allesandra. You. I want to stop them; I want them to have no reason at all to exist. So-at the Besteigung-I want you, and Pauli and Jan also, to take a formal oath of loyalty to the throne. In public, so everyone will hear you say the words.”
They would only be words, she wanted to tell him, with as much meaning as my saying now “No, Fynn, I’m not your enemy,” Words and oaths mean nothing: to know that, all you need do is look at history. .. But she smiled at him gently and patted his hand. Perhaps he really was that simple, that naive? “Of course we’ll do that,” she told him. “I know my place. I know where I should be, and I know where I want to be in the future.”
Fynn nodded. His hand moved away from hers. “Good,” he said, and the relief sang a high note in his voice. “Then we will expect that.” We… She heard the royal plural in his voice, all unconscious, and it made her lips press tightly together. “I like your son,” he said unexpectedly. “He’s a bright one-like you, Allesandra. I’d hate to think he was involved in any plots against me, but if he was, or if his family was…” His face tightened again. “The air’s chilly and damp out here, Allesandra. I’m going inside.” Fynn left her, returning to the warmth of the palais’ common room. Allesandra stood at the railing for several more minutes before following him, watching until the mists were nearly level with her and the world below had vanished into gloom and cloud.
She thought of being Hirzgin, and it came to her that the High Seat in Brezno would never have satisfied her, even if it had been hers. It was a hard realization, but she knew now that it was in Nessantico that she’d been most happy, that she’d felt most at home.
“I know my place, Brother,” she whispered into the hush of the fog. “I do. And I will have it.”
Nico Morel
Nico heard Talis speaking in the other room, even though Matarh had gone to the square to get bread.
Matarh had kissed him and told him to nap for a bit, saying that she’d be back before supper. But he hadn’t been able to sleep, not with the sounds of the people in the street just outside the shutters of his window, not with the sun peeking through the cracks between the boards. He was too old for naps now anyway. Those were for children, and he was becoming a young man. Matarh had told him that, too.
Nico threw the covers aside and padded softly across the room. He leaned forward just enough that he could see past the edge of the scarred, warped door that never closed tightly-making sure he didn’t touch it, since he knew the hinges would screech a rusty alarm. Through the crack between door and jamb, he could see Talis. He was bent over the table that Matarh used to prepare meals. A shallow bowl was sitting on the table, and Nico squinted in an effort to see it better: incised animals danced along the rim, and the bowl had the same hue as the weathered bronze statue of Henri VI in Oldtown Square. Matarh didn’t have a metal bowl, at least none that Nico had ever noticed; the animals carved into it were strange, too: a bird with a head like a snake’s; a scaled lizard with a long snout full of snarled teeth. Talis poured water from Matarh’s pitcher into the bowl, then untied a leather pouch from his belt and shook a reddish, fine powder onto his palm. He dusted the powder into the water as if he were salting food. He gestured with his hand over the bowl as if smoothing something away, then spoke words in the strange language that he sometimes spoke when he was dreaming at night, cuddled with Nico’s matarh in their bed.