Zolin laughed at that. “Come now, Niente. Don’t be so modest. Why, you are a far-seer and a nahualli the like of which we haven’t seen since Mahri. Better, since Mahri failed to stop the Easterners from invading our lands and those of our cousins. Necalli was a fool who wasted valuable resources. He wasted you as well-all the effort you put into that Easterner. But now…” A broad smile spread over Zolin’s face. “I have thrown the Easterners back to one unimportant town on our cousins’ land-with the help of your advice and your skill-and now we go to plunder the Easterners as they once plundered our cousins of the Eastern Sea.” He waved a hand. “I will chop the head from this Eastern serpent myself, and I will make certain that it never grows a new one.” His hand sliced downward. Zolin grinned, but the two High Warriors’ faces were stoic and unmoving.
Niente wondered which one of them might one day challenge Zolin if this expedition failed, as Niente feared it would.
Niente shared the dour attitude of Citlali and Mazatl. Zolin was no different than many of those outside the nahualli. They all thought his gift was a simple thing: peer into the water and let the moon-goddess Axat send the future spinning past your eyes. They didn’t understand that Axat’s visions were confusing and sometimes dim, that what swam in the sacred water were only possibilities, and that those possibilities could be altered and shifted and even averted by other’s abilities. Mahri-whose skills, it was said, had surpassed any nahualli’s-had discovered how fickle Axat could be: Mahri’s death had been one of the first visions Niente had ever seen in a scrying bowl; it had been that vision that had demonstrated to Niente’s mentors how fully Axat and Sakal had blessed him. Talis, who Tecuhtli Necalli had sent to Nessantico, had since confirmed Niente’s vision: Mahri had failed and been killed.
Those without the gift thought that it must be wonderful to wield the power of Axat and Sakal, of moon and sun. They didn’t see how using the gift stole strength and vitality; how it disfigured and twisted those who used it. Already Niente could look into the bronze mirror in his room and see the deep lines in his face, lines that no one of his age should yet bear. He could see how his mouth sagged, how his left eye wept constantly and was now whitened with a spell-cloud, how his hair was thinning and marbled with silver strands. He could feel the constant ache in his joints that would one day turn into obsidian knives of agony. Niente had never met Mahri, but he had glimpsed the man’s face in the scrying bowl, and it terrified him that one day he, too, would see people turning away rather than look on him, and he would hear the cries of frightened children as he passed.
And he knew that Tecuhtli Zolin might be pleased now with him, but that the Tecuhtli’s pleasure was fragile, and could vanish as quickly as mist in sunlight. A battle lost… That was all it would take, and Tecuhtli Zolin would be looking for a new Nahual to be at his side.
“I pray to Axat that you will slay the Eastern serpent,” he told Zolin. “But I-”
He stopped, hearing a call from the deck. “Land…” someone was shouting. “The Easterner coast…”
Zolin’s grin grew wider. “Good,” he said to his High Warriors, to Niente. “It’s time to see a city burn and watch our banners floating over their land.” He rose to his feet, gesturing away the servants who rushed to help. “Come,” the Tecuhtli said. “Let’s see this land together with our own eyes, before we take it.”
Karl Vliomani
“ Well?” Karl asked Varina as she returned to the room. Varina shrugged off her overcloak and sank down on a chair. “She’s Nico’s matarh, that’s certain,” Varina said. “I told her that I’d heard her son had run away, and that when we stayed in Nessantico, I saw a boy on Crescent Street. Her eyes widened at that, and she told me that was where she’d lived until last month. When I described the boy and the house, she started sobbing. It was all I could do to stop her from rushing back to Nessantico tonight.”
“And Talis?”
“Talis is the boy’s vatarh, and she’s in love with him, Karl,” Varina said. “That much was also obvious; in fact, I suspect she’s with child by him again, the way she hugs her body when she talks about him. Your encounter with him scared him enough that he sent her and Nico away from the city-I think he thought you’d have the Garde Kralji after him. She’s been waiting here hoping he’ll come for her, hoping that Nico would return as well.” Varina leaned her head back and closed her eyes, sighing. “She’s not going to betray Talis to get Nico back, Karl. Honestly, I didn’t even broach that possibility with her. Frankly, I’m certain she’s in her room now packing, getting ready to leave tomorrow for Nessantico, hoping to find Nico there. She’s been grieving and frantic ever since he left.” She opened her eyes again, looking at him. “It’s what I’d do, in her place. I’m sorry-I know what you wanted me to do, but… I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t hold her child hostage against her giving us Talis, not when we don’t actually know where Nico is. I’m sorry. I know you suspect that Talis may be the one who killed Ana, and you have good reasons for those suspicions, but this…”
Another sigh. She spread her hands wide. “I couldn’t do it.”
There was no apology in her voice or in her gaze. And he found that he couldn’t summon any anger toward her-he knew how it would have been with his own sons. He might have been a poor, absent vatarh for them, but had it come to that, he would have done whatever he’d needed to do for them.
At least that’s what he told himself. He wondered if it were true. What if Kaitlin had sent for him while he was in Nessantico, while Ana was alive? What if she’d asked him to return, for the sake of his sons? Would he have gone? Or would he have made some excuse, found some compelling reason that he must remain here with Ana.
“Karl?” Varina asked. “Are you angry with me?”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I understand.” His fingers prowled stubble. He felt old tonight. His bones were cold, and the fire in the hearth did nothing to warm them. “I’ll go back with her,” he said finally, when the silence had threatened to go on too long. “Maybe Talis will come for her. Maybe she knows where Talis is hiding.”
“If you go back, the Garde Kralji will find you, and the Kraljiki will have you tortured and executed. Your corpse will be swinging in one of the cages of the Pontica Kralji, with crows picking the flesh from your bones.”
He shivered, hugging himself with arms that felt tired and weak. “You may be right. But what am I running toward, Varina? Leaving Nessantico-what did I really gain by that? How will I find out who killed Ana somewhere else?” He shook his head. “No, I need to go back. Isn’t that the Numetodo method?-to learn, you must examine; to understand, you must experience. You must have facts. Finding Nico’s matarh…” He shivered again. “It’s almost as if Ana’s ghost had led me here.”
“You don’t believe in either ghosts or gods, Karl. Believe only in what you can see and touch and examine. Isn’t that the Numetodo method?”
He smiled faintly at that. “No, I don’t believe in ghosts,” he told her. “But it’s strange how comforting such a thought could be, isn’t it? It almost makes you understand the hold faith has on people.” He drew a long, slow breath. “Still, I’m going back.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” Varina told him. “Just like you, there’s nothing I’m running toward. And you’ll need help.”
“You don’t need to do this. The Kraljiki would do the same to you as he would me… or worse. There’s no reason for you to go back, after all…” His voice trailed off.
She didn’t answer, but he saw the set of her lips and the posture of her body, he saw the way she was nearly glaring at him, and suddenly he knew, and the revelation was painful. “Oh,” he said. He wondered how he could have been so blind. He got up from his seat at the bed and went over to where she was sitting. He started to put his hand on her shoulder, but her eyes narrowed and he drew his hand back. “Varina…”