“. . Marguerite?” Renard was saying.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “You were saying?”
“I was asking if you wished to know the evening’s appointments.”
“Will it matter?” she asked, and they smiled at each other.
“The Archigos Dhosti is bringing his niece Safina to meet you at dinner,” Renard told her. “I have asked the A’Kralj to be there as well, so he might have a chance to talk with her.”
“And will he attend?”
Renard shrugged. “The A’Kralj pleaded other commitments. But if you sent word to him. .”
Marguerite shook her head. “No. If my son can’t be bothered to meet the women I suggest as good matches, then Justi will have to be satisfied when I choose a wife for him.”
Renard nodded, his face carefully neutral.
It was a full decade after her husband died that she finally took Renard into her bed. The seduction was unplanned but seemed entirely natural. They had become more than servant and mistress over the years. In private, they had long been friends, and Renard had no family of his own. “I can’t ever offer you more,” she told him that night. “I know,” he’d answered, with that gentle lifting of his lips that she loved to see. “The Kraljica might need to use marriage as a tool. I understand. I do. .”
“. . and also the planning committee for your Jubilee Celebration would like to go over their tentative arrangements with you to see if they meet your approval,” Renard was saying. “I’ve told them that you might have time tonight following your dinner with the Archigos, but I can delay them until tomorrow if you’d like.”
Marguerite waved a hand. “No, that’s fine. Let them come. I’ll listen and nod my head as long as they haven’t done anything enormously stupid.”
Renard nodded. He touched her shoulder softly, almost a caress.
Even here, alone, he was careful of the boundaries between them.
“Then I’ll send word to the committee to be prepared. And. .” He stopped. Pressed his lips together. “There is a letter from Hirzgin Greta, brought by private courier. I took the liberty of decoding it for you.”
“Bring it here.” She didn’t ask what her niece, married to the im-
petuous Jan ca’Vorl, the Hirzg of Firenzcia, had said; she could see from Renard’s suddenly-clouded face that it was not good news. She unfolded the paper Renard handed her and read the underlined words.
She shook her head and let the paper drop. “Thirty Numetodo publicly executed in Brezno. . A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca goes too far, and the Hirzg encourages him. Does the Archigos know?” she asked.
“I suspect the news will have reached him through his own sources,” Renard said. “I will draft a strongly-worded letter to Hirzg ca’Vorl from you. I’m sure the Archigos will be doing the same for A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca.”
“I’m certain of that,” Marguerite replied. “And I’m sure the families of the slain Numetodo will be very pleased with a strongly worded letter.”
Ana cu’Seranta
“No!” U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s thin, oak pointing rod hissed through the air and rapped once on Ana’s moving hands. “Not that way. Pay attention, Ana. You need to create a better pattern. Wider. Larger.”
Her knuckles ached from the blow, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of stopping. But the instructor’s reprimand sent Ana into momentary silence as she glared at the elderly teni, her voice falter-ing in the midst of the chant she and the other acolytes were reciting.
The words were not in her own language, but in the teni-speech that could shape the Ilmodo, and were difficult enough to remember without cu’Dosteau’s scoldings. With the stumble, she felt the Ilmodo-the gift of Cenzi, the energy which fed the teni-spells-begin to slip away from her control. She grasped for the Ilmodo with her mind; as she did, odd new words came to her, words that she knew not at all but which somehow felt right for the task, the same words that would come to her when she was with her matarh. The sounds of the words was similar to teni-speech, but the accent was subtly different. She whispered them, not wanting U’Teni cu’Dosteau to hear how she had changed his chant, and let her hands fall back into the spell-pattern.
Wider. Larger. U’Teni cu’Dosteau treated them like children just learning their letters. In the acolyte’s hall, he acted as if he had a ca’ in front of his name instead of a cu’, even with the acolytes whose family names did begin with ca’, even with Safina ca’Millac, the niece of the Archigos. Cu’Dosteau acted as if he were the Archigos of Concenzia himself. The joke among the acolytes was that cu’Dosteau had enchanted his head so that he could see behind him. He certainly seemed to miss nothing that happened, especially where Ana was concerned.
He seemed to be always watching her, especially now as they all approached the time when they would either be given their Marques to become a teni, or receive the dreaded Note of Severance.
Wider. Larger. U’Teni cu’Dosteau was wrong. Ana could sense it.
She could nearly see the Ilmodo snaking around her body, and she knew that if instead she tightened the hand-pattern, if she made it smaller rather than larger, she could shape the Ilmodo more carefully.
The task was simple enough: U’Teni cu’Dosteau had brought the class down to the basement of the Archigos’ Temple, where several e’teni of the temple had set a huge coal fire ablaze in the furnace. The class was to use the Ilmodo to smother it-it was a task that they might have to perform if they were eventually assigned to be one of the many fire-teni, who had more than once saved the city from burning down, especially in the crowded Oldtown district. The class finished their chant just as Ana caught up with them, their final gestures causing the flames to shudder and dim, although the coals still gleamed mockingly.
Ana finished her spell a breath afterward, her hands moving in a quick, subtle gesture that changed the outline of the Ilmodo, focusing it.
Air rushed away from the remaining blue flames and they went out with an audible whoomp, the noise so loud that all of them took an involuntary step back as a hot breeze laden with the smell of coal ash moved past them and fluttered the green robes of the e’teni. Cu’Dosteau alone didn’t seem to react. He remained standing near Ana, the tip of his pointing rod on the stone-flagged floor and his hands cupped over the handle, his teni-robes looking more brown than green in the sudden dimness of the room. He stared at Ana with dark, speculative eyes from under the hair-rimmed cave of his brow. She lowered her head so that she didn’t have to meet his gaze. The weariness that always came from using the Ilmodo made her want to do nothing more than sink to the floor entirely, especially after her use of it this morning with her matarh.
A few of the acolytes already had done so, drained by their effort.
Using the Ilmodo always came with a cost. Cenzi made the teni pay for His gift. It was the first lesson they had all learned, three years ago now.
“This is why most of you will not receive a Marque from the Archigos,” cu’Dosteau commented as the e’teni began to chant and the coals reignited-it wouldn’t do for the Archigos to be cold in his dressing chambers. In the renewed flames, cu’Dosteau’s shadow shuddered on the wall nearest Ana. “A single experienced fire-teni would have been able to douse those flames alone-a necessary skill, or half the houses in the city might have burned to the foundations by now. Yet it took the whole group of you, and you very nearly didn’t accomplish it. You had ample time to review the proper patterns and the correct chant-words, and yet several of you were stumbling over them.” He tapped a long forefinger to his right ear. “I listen, and I see. And I’m not impressed today. Some of you-” He hesitated, and Ana glanced up to find him looking at her before his gaze swept over the rest of the acolytes. “-seem to feel that the Ilmodo will come to you no matter how you wave your hands about. I assure you that would be a mistake.