“It’s a scene worth painting, isn’t it?” he asked her, then before she could answer. “What’s the matter, Matarh? You’ve been keeping to yourself ever since the party. Is it Vatarh?”
She turned at that. Her gaze slid from his face to the chevaritt’s star that he wore, and he thought that her tentative smile wavered momentarily. “It’s just been an overwhelming few weeks,” she told him. Her hand brushed imaginary lint from his shoulders. “That’s all.”
“I think Vatarh’s behavior has been abysmal since he came here,” Jan said. “I swear, sometimes I think I could kill the man. But I’m sure you’ve been far more tempted than me.” He laughed to take the edge from his words, but she didn’t join him. She half-turned, looking back down toward the square.
“You’re a chevaritt,” she said. “Someday you’ll go to war, and someday you’ll have to actually kill someone else-or be killed yourself. You’ll be forced to make that decision and it’s irrevocable. I know…”
“You know? ” Jan frowned. “Matarh, when did you-?”
She interrupted him before he could finish the half-mocking question. “I was eleven, nearly twelve. I killed the Westlander spellcaster Mahri, or I helped Ana kill him.”
“Mahri? The man responsible for Kraljica Marguerite’s death?” Is this a joke? he wanted to add, but the look on her face stopped him.
“I stabbed him with the knife Vatarh had given me, stabbed him as he was trying to kill Ana. I never told anyone afterward, and neither did Ana. She was always careful to protect me.” She was looking at her hands on the railing; Jan wondered if she expected to see blood there. He wasn’t sure what to say or how to respond. He imagined his matarh, the knife in her hand.
“That must have been hard.”
She shook her head. “No. It was easy. That’s the strange part. I didn’t even think about it; I just attacked him. It was only afterward
…” She took a long breath. “Did you ever think about how it might be if someone you knew were dead-that it might be better for everyone involved if that were the case?”
“Now there’s a morbid subject.”
“Someone killed Ana because they thought that their world would be better if she were out of the way. Or maybe they did it because someone they believed in told them to do it and they were just following orders. Or maybe just because they thought it might change things. Sometimes that’s all the reason someone needs-you don’t think about the people who might care for the victim, or what the repercussions might be. You do it because… well, I guess sometimes you aren’t certain why.”
“You’re making me worry more, Matarh.”
She did laugh at that, though Jan thought there was still a sadness to the sound. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m just in a strange mood.”
“Everyone thinks that way sometimes.” Jan shrugged. “I’ll wager that every child has at some time wished his parents dead-especially after they’ve done something stupid and been caught and punished. Why, there was that time that I stole the knife from your…” He stopped, his eyes widening. “Was that the same one? You said Great-Vatarh had given it to you.”
Another laugh. “It was. I remember that; I found you using the knife to cut up some apples in the kitchen and I snatched it back from you and spanked you so hard, and you were refusing to cry or apologize, and so I hit you harder.”
“I did cry. Afterward. And I have to admit that I was so mad that I thought about…” He shrugged again. “Well, you know. But the thought didn’t last long-not after you brought up the pie to my room, and promised to give me the knife one day.” He smiled at her. “I’m still waiting.”
“Stay here,” she said. She left the railing and brushed past him. He heard her rustling about in her room, then came back out into the chill evening. “Here,” she said, holding out a knife in a worn leather scabbard, its black horn and steel hilt gleaming, with tiny ruby jewels set around the pommel. “This was originally Hirzg Karin’s knife, and he gave it to his son, your Great-Vatarh Jan, who gave it to me. Now it’s yours.”
He pushed it back to her. “Matarh, I can’t…” but she pressed the weapon forward again.
“No, take it,” she insisted, and he did. He slid the blade partway from the scabbard. Dark Firenzcian steel reflected his face back to him. “Given who we are, Jan, both of us have to make truly difficult decisions that we’re not entirely comfortable with, but we’ll make them because they seem best for those we care most for. Just remember that sometimes decisions are final. And fatal.”
With that, she pulled him to her, and brought his head down to kiss him on the cheek, and when she spoke, she sounded like the matarh he remembered. “Now, don’t cut yourself with that. Promise?”
He grinned at her. “Promise,” he said.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Audric will not be Kraljiki long. That’s what most people here believe. There will come a time, soon, when a new Kralji must be named. I remember you, Allesandra. I remember your intelligence and your strength, and I remember that Archigos Ana loved you as well she might have her own daughter, and rumors come to me that you are not pleased that the Holdings remain sundered.
From my conversations with Fynn, I have no hope that he wishes to be part of a reunited Holdings unless he’s on the Sun Throne. He has your vatarh’s strength, but not his intelligence. I fear that all the good attributes of the late Hirzg Jan came to you.
When the Sun Throne is left empty, I would support your claim to it, A’Hirzg. And there are others here who would do the same. I would support you openly, if you can give me a sign that you feel as I do.. ..
The words were burned into her mind, as crisply as the letters written in fire-ink on the parchment. The crawling flames had destroyed the paper almost as quickly as she’d read the message, leaving behind ash and a sour smoke. Sergei’s promise. She’d thought of it nearly every day since the message had come, and now she knew that the Archigos had received a similar missive. She could guess what the Regent had promised him.
Ca’Rudka wanted a reunited Holdings and a Faith unsundered. Well, so did she. To create a Holdings greater than even that of Kraljica Marguerite had been her vatarh’s dream, and-because it had been the dream of her vatarh and she had loved him so desperately as a child-hers as well. He had betrayed that dream and sundered the empire, but the dream remained alive in her.
It was what she wanted more than anything. More than her own safety.
… if there were a sign…
Archigos Semini had taken that for the obvious hint that it was, and he’d acted in haste before the pieces were in their correct places. Now-partially thanks to the Archigos’ impatience and clumsiness-they were.
A sign. She would give ca’Rudka that sign, even though it gnawed at her conscience. Even though she might hate herself for it afterward.
Did you ever think about how it might be if someone you knew were dead? It was the question she’d asked Jan, but it was the question she had been asking herself, over and over.
“I’m afraid I lied to you, Elzbet,” Allesandra told the woman across the smeared, dirty table. “I’m not interested in you as a servant.” The woman shrugged and started to get up. Allesandra waved her back down. “I’m told,” Allesandra said, “that you can put me in touch with a certain man.” Allesandra placed a pebble on the table: a flat stone roughly the size of a solas, very light in color.