“Yet if two people’s wishes coincide, and they coincide with those of other people, and if those people are powerful enough…” He smiled, folding his fingers together on the lace tablecloth as if he were praying. “Would that be your wish as well, A’Hirzg? Can you see a ca’Vorl on the Sun Throne? I know your vatarh had that vision.”
He knows. “Let’s put that aside for the moment, Regent. There are other issues if this is something we would pursue-and I’m not saying that it is. What of the Faith? Who would be the Archigos in this restored Holdings you envision: Semini, or Kenne?”
“Despite what I said about his faults, I like Archigos Kenne. He is my friend, his faith is true, and as I said, he’s a good man.”
“He may be all of that, but he is not a friend of Firenzcia and, like Ana, would coddle the heretics. And Semini is my friend.”
Sergei made a contemplative sound deep in his throat. “There are rumors, A’Hirzg, that he may be more.”
She flushed hotly at that. The gardai behind the Regent moved his hand from his side to the hilt of his sword, but she shook her head to him. “You speak too freely about rumors and lies, Regent. You can’t treat me like a girl or a royal hostage anymore. You’re on my land, and it’s your life at stake, not mine. If this is the way you spoke to Audric, then it’s no wonder he no longer wanted you to be Regent.”
He bowed his head, but there was no apology in his hawkish eyes. “My apologies, A’Hirzg. My stay in the Bastida has, I’m afraid, scrubbed away both my diplomacy and my patience. But those rumors and lies do concern me, if we are to work together.”
“The Archigos already has a wife. That’s all that needs to be said, and all the answer you’ll receive. As to Archigos Kenne…” Allesandra remembered Kenne ca’Fionta also: a gentle man, a quiet man, one who was always an effective second-in-command but never questioned anything asked of him or spoke up for himself. She could not imagine him as Archigos. Ana could be gentle and affectionate also, but there was hard bone and steel underneath her velvet, and you did not want to be her enemy. Allesandra wasn’t certain what lay underneath ca’Fionta’s exterior, but she suspected that Sergei’s assessment was correct.
But Semini-Semini could be as adamantine and strong as Ana. “If you want Firenzcia’s help,” she continued, “if you want the help of our war-teni, then it will be Archigos Semini, not Archigos Kenne, who reunites the Faith. Kenne needn’t be killed; if he could be convinced to renounce his title for the good of the Faith, perhaps even to become the a’teni of one of the cities. I suspect a friend could convince another friend of the sanity of that course. I hope so, for Kenne’s sake.”
Allesandra settled back in her chair. Sergei, for the first time, had a look of uncertainty in his face, and she was surprised by the strength of the enjoyment that gave her. She wondered if that was how a Kraljica or a Hirzgin often felt, if that was one of the gifts of power. A gift, or perhaps a trap for those who fell into the thrall of that feeling. “I know what I bring to you, Regent,” she said to him. “I bring you my name and my genealogy. I bring you the unmatched army of Firenzcia through my son. I bring you the fearsome war-teni of the true Concenzia Faith through Archigos Semini. I bring you Miscoli, Sesemora, and the Magyarias, who answer to Firenzcia. I bring all that to the table. What is it that you bring us, Regent?”
He didn’t answer quickly. His right forefinger stroked the lip of the teacup before him, and he seemed to be staring down at the pattern of the leaves in the bottom. “I bring you knowledge,” he said. “I know the Garde Kralji and the Garde Civile and the strengths and weaknesses of their commanders. I know Nessantico; I know all her paths and all her secrets. There are those in the Garde Civile and the Garde Kralji who will answer if I call them. There are those among the ca’-and-cu’ who will do the same. There are chevarittai who will come to me if I summon them. It may be, A’Hirzg, that I can deliver the Sun Throne to you with as few lives lost as possible.”
“Why, if you could do all that, why isn’t it that you’re the Kraljiki yourself rather than a refugee?” she asked him, but gave him no time to respond. “And if you can do all this, what is it that you want in return?”
“Nothing,” he said, and Allesandra felt surprise lift her eyebrows. “Give me whatever reward you see fit. I do this for Nessantico only, to whom I have always pledged my life. I once protected Nessantico from Firenzcia’s aggression; now, I will give her to Firenzcia freely. Kraljica Marguerite believed in marriage as a way to reconcile opposing forces, and I believe the same, because the marriage of Nessantico to Firenzcia is what she needs now to survive.”
Pretty words, she wanted to say scoffingly. She wasn’t certain she believed the man at all. But Cenzi had brought the Regent to her, all unexpected, a gift she couldn’t refuse. “You are an intelligent, talented, and attractive young woman,” Archigos Ana had told her when news had reached Nessantico that her vatarh had named the infant Fynn as the A’Hirzg and refused to pay the ransom that Kraljiki Justi had demanded for her release. It had been less than a year into her cushioned and bejeweled imprisonment, and Allesandra had wept in bewilderment and fright. Ana-the enemy-had held her and comforted her, had stroked her hair and calmed her again. “I know Cenzi has a plan for you. I can feel it, Allesandra. There is a great part for you to play yet in life…”
She would play that part. She would have what her vatarh had once promised her: the brilliant necklace of Nessantico. That was the reason that Sergei ca’Rudka had appeared now.
“We shall see, Regent ca’Rudka,” was all she told him now. “In the end, it will be as Cenzi wills…”
Niente
Niente stood on the slope of Karnor with Tecuhtli Zolin and his High Warriors, the city spread out below him, and he saw the vision he had glimpsed in the bowl.
The windows of the temple just below them were shattered, gouged-out eyes in the skull of a ruined building. Soot blackened the stones around them, greasy smoke still rising through them. The golden half-dome was broken, the gilded masonry fallen in. Fires flared skyward at a dozen places in the city, brighter than the setting sun.
The attack had gone quickly and easily. As soon as they had glimpsed the heights of the Easterners’ great island Karnmor, Niente had called together the nahualli who could control the wind and the sky, and they had conjured a wall of dense fog to conceal the Tehuantin fleet as they approached. The fog bank wrapped them in gray-white air and muffled the sounds of their preparations. By the time the spell-fog failed and drifted away in wisps, the Yaoyotl -flying the eagle banner of Tehuantin-was already at the mouth of Karnor Harbor, its sister ships spread out in two great wings to either side. Karnor Harbor was vast and deep, nested in cliffs of stony arms with the city perched far back, leagues away.
A hand of Holdings naval ships were stationed there, and they tacked to face the onslaught even as fishing and pleasure vessels fled for safety. Niente had to admire the bravery of the Holdings captains: in the face of a vastly superior force they didn’t flee but turned to confront them directly with their blue-and-gold flags fluttering atop the masts. Still, it had been slaughter. The sea wind was behind the Tehuantin fleet and the Holdings ships had to beat slowly into the wind. The war-teni aboard the Holdings galleons had little time to prepare their spells-perhaps more powerful than those of the nahualli, but slow to create, and Niente had pushed his nahualli all that day. Their spell-sticks were full, the black sands already prepared. The spells of the nahualli had been able to deflect most of the arcing fire of the war-teni away from the ships, though the ship alongside the Yaoyotl took a direct hit that fanned into a monstrous blossom of fire and destruction along the decks, sending dozens of men screaming into the cold swells and setting the ship aflame and dead in the water, so that the ships behind had to tack suddenly to avoid it.