“I’ll need Him,” she said. She faced the storm again, her hands now moving in a new spell-pattern and her chant longer and more complex. Eneas thought he could feel the power gathering around her; he retreated down the slick, sloping deck, holding onto whatever he could grab until he half-fell into the narrow stairwell leading to the cramped passenger compartments. There, he lay on his swinging hammock and listened to the storm as it broke around them, as the wind-teni struggled to keep the worst of the furious winds away from the fragile vessel that was their ship. Eneas prayed also, his knotted hands clasped to his forehead, asking Cenzi for the safety of the ship and for their safe return to Nessantico.
You will be safe… He thought he heard the words, but against the storm and against the vastness of the Strettosei, they were small and insignificant. His words might have been the the whisperings of a gnat.
The storm has been sent to speed you to your home… The thought came to him suddenly, in that low voice he’d thought he’d heard a few times since his escape from the Tehuantin. Cenzi’s Voice. Eneas laughed at that, and suddenly he didn’t fear the storm though the ship pitched and rolled and the wind screamed shrilly. His fear was gone and he felt a certainty that they would be safe.
He thanked Cenzi for giving him that peace.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Do I really want to do this? Allesandra shivered at the thought. It was, almost, too late to change her mind.
Alone, in the darkness of a narrow lane in Brezno on Draiordi evening, she waited where she’d been told. A man approached her, hobnailed boots clacking loudly on the cobbles, and Allesandra stiffened, suddenly alert. All her senses were straining, and she pressed a hand close to the knife hidden under the sleeve of her tashta, though she knew that if the White Stone were what he was rumored to be, no weapon would protect her if he decided to kill her. The man came close to her, his eyes on the shadows under the cowl of her tashta, assessing her.
“Ah,” the man said. “I guess you’re comely enough. Care to do some business with me, girlie?” he asked as he approached her, with the smell of beer trailing after him.
He thinks you’re a whore. This isn’t him. But, just to be certain, she opened her hand and showed him the gray-white, smooth pebble in her palm. He didn’t react. “I have a se’siqil that’s yours if you’re good to me,” the man said, and Allesandra closed her fingers around the stone.
“Be off with you,” she told him, “or I’ll call the utilino.”
The man scowled, hiccuped, then brushed past her. He spat on the ground near her feet.
“Did you think it would be that easy?” At the sound of the voice, Allesandra started to turn, but a gloved hand gripped her shoulder and stopped her. “No,” the voice said. “Just keep standing there, looking across the street. I am the White Stone.” Husky, that voice, though pitched higher than she’d imagined. In her mind, she’d heard a deep, ominous voice, not this nondescript one.
“How do I know it’s you?” she asked
“You don’t. Not now. You won’t know until you see the stone on the left eye of the man you want dead. It is a man, isn’t it?” There was a quiet chuckle. “For a woman, it’s always a man… or because of one.”
“I want to see you,” Allesandra said. “I want to know who I’m talking to, who I’m hiring.”
“The only ones who see the White Stone are those I kill. Turn, and you’ll be one of those-I know you, and that’s enough. Do I make myself clear, A’Hirzg ca’Vorl?” Involuntarily, Allesandra shivered at the threat and the voice chuckled again. “Good. I dislike unnecessary and unpaid work. Now… You brought my fee, as Elzbet told you?”
She nodded.
“Good. You’ll place the pouch down at your feet, and place the stone you brought on top of it-it’s a light stone, as near white as you can find? You’d recognize it again?”
Again Allesandra nodded. Resisting the temptation to look back, she unlaced the pouch heavy with gold solas from the belt of her tashta and, crouching, put it on the cobbles of the street next to her feet. She placed the pebble on top of the soft leather and stood up.
“How soon?” Allesandra asked. “How soon will you do it?”
“In my own time and in the place of my own choosing,” the White Stone answered. “But within a moon. No longer than that. Who do you want me to kill?” the assassin asked. “What is his name?”
“You may not take the money when I tell you.”
The White Stone gave a mocking laugh. “You wouldn’t need me if the one you wanted dead weren’t well-placed and well-protected. Perhaps, given your history, it’s someone in Nessantico?”
“No.”
“No?” There was, Allesandra thought, disappointment in the voice. “Then who, A’Hirzg? Who do you want dead badly enough that you would find me?”
She hesitated, not wanting to say it aloud. She let out the breath she was holding. “My brother,” she said. “Hirzg Fynn.”
There was no answer. She heard a clatter out in the street to her right, and her head moved involuntarily in that direction. There was nothing there; in the moonlight, the street was empty except for a utilino just turning the corner a block away, whistling and swinging his lantern. He waved at her; she waved back. “Did you hear me?” she whispered to the White Stone.
There was no answer. She glanced down: pouch and stone were gone. She turned. There was a closed door directly behind her, leading into one of the buildings.
Allesandra decided it would not be in her best interest to open that door.
The White Stone
“ My brother. Hirzg Fynn. ”
She had thought herself beyond surprise at this point, but this. ..
She’d been in Firenzcia now for some three years, longer than she’d stayed anywhere in some time, but the work had been good here. She knew some of the history between Allesandra and Fynn ca’Vorl; she’d heard the rumors, but none of them spoke of a resentment this deep in Allesandra. And she herself had witnessed Allesandra saving her brother from an attack.
She found herself puzzled. She didn’t care for uncertainty.
But… that wasn’t her concern. The gold solas in the pouch were real enough, and she had heard Allesandra clearly, and the woman’s white stone sat in her pouch next to the stone of the right eye, the stone that held the souls of all those the White Stone had killed.
Her fingers scissored around the white stone now through the thin, soft leather of the pouch. The touch gave her comfort, and she thought she could hear the faint voices of her victims calling.
“I nearly killed you first… You were so clumsy then…”
“How many more? We grow stronger, each time you add another…”
“Soon you’ll hear us always…”
She took her hand from the stone and the voices stopped. They didn’t always. Sometimes, especially recently, she’d been hearing them even when she didn’t touch the stone.
To kill a Hirzg… This would be a challenge. This would be a test. She would have to plan carefully; she would have to watch him and know him. She would have to become him.
Her fingers were back around the stone again. “You’ve killed the unranked, you’ve killed ce’-and-ci’, and they are easy enough. You’ve killed cu’-and-ca’, and you know they’re far more difficult because with money comes isolation, and with power comes protection. But never this. Never a ruler.”
“You’re afraid…”
“… You doubt yourself…”
“No!” she told them all, angrily. “I can do this. I will do this. You’ll see. You’ll see when the Hirzg is in there with you. You’ll see.”
They’ll know you. The A’Hirzg will know you…
“No, she won’t. People like her don’t even see the unranked, as I was to her. My voice will be different, and my hair, and-most importantly-my attitude. She won’t know me. She won’t.”