She wondered whether he noticed how few servants there were in their house, or how the hall needed to be repainted and that there were cobwebs in the high corners, wondered whether he knew that she had once been like him. Whatever he might be thinking, it never reached his impassive face.
“If you’d follow me, Vajica. .” he said, gesturing to the carriage waiting on the street.
She followed behind him, into the air that still held a faint kiss of winter in its embrace despite the sun. She shivered and wished, briefly, that she’d brought the shawl Sala had offered with her, though that would have spoiled the effect of the tashta. She could see a few of their neighbors standing outside in their front gardens, pointedly not staring at the carriage adorned with an ornate gold-and-enamel fractured globe, the sign of Cenzi and the Concenzia Faith. She lifted her hand to them; they nodded back, as if happening to notice her and the carriage for the first time. “Why, good morning, Vajica Ana. How is your matarh today? When does Vajiki cu’Seranta return from Prajnoli. .?”
“Matarh is still very weak from the Fever and still can’t talk or move on her own, but she is beginning to recover, thank you for asking. We expect Vatarh back later today or this evening,” she answered as the acolyte opened the door of the carriage for her and helped her inside, then closed the door and took his place standing on the step outside.
The driver was indeed one of the teni, and as he turned to nod to Ana, she glanced at the doubled white slashes on the shoulders of his green, cowled robes. “E’Teni,” she said, addressing him by the rank denoted by the slashes, the lowest of the teni positions. “I’m ready.”
He nodded again, turning. She heard him muttering softly-the sibilant chanting that she’d heard many times over the years, his hands gestured-and the wheels of the carriage began to turn in response to the incantation. They moved off onto the street.
The carriage proceeded at the stately pace of a person walking energetically, with the acolyte ringing a small bell occasionally to warn the pedestrians: out from the Rue Maitre-Albert onto the wide, landscaped expanse of the Avi a’Parete at the Sutegate. Two immense stone heads of past Kralji flanked the city gates there, rotating slowly so that they always faced the sun; below each of the sculptures, in an open room carved from the pillars of the ancient city wall, was an e’teni whose task it was to chant the spell that allowed the heads to turn-quickly exhausted by their task, each would be relieved on the turn of the glass with a new e’teni.
Ana had always wondered if one day she might be there, chanting as the stone groaned and grumbled overhead on its daily rotation.
Just past midday, the Avi was crowded: throngs of strolling couples and families near the central, tree-lined divider; buyers gathered around the stalls set up against the government buildings to the north side of the boulevard; crowds moving past the street entertainers on the south side; the occasional carriages, all of those horse-drawn except for hers.
Most were moving slowly in the direction of the Archigos’ temple, the sextet of domes radiant in the sunlight. Ana sat in the carriage, trying to pretend that she didn’t notice the attention she was receiving. The sun glinting from the fractured globe mounted by the door, the lack of horses, the teni chanting on the driver’s seat, the tenor clatter of the acolyte’s bell-all brought eyes around to their carriage. Some stared- mostly those of the lower classes-but the families in their finery would only wave, as if it were altogether a common occurrence that one of the Concenzia’s teni-driven carriages was sent out to convey someone. Ana could see them peering squint-eyed even as they inclined their heads politely, and she could nearly hear the whispered conversations as she passed.
“Is that one of the ca’Faromi daughters? Or one of the Kraljica’s grandnieces? Perhaps Safina ca’Millac, the Archigos’ niece; I hear she’s a favorite for the A’Kralj’s hand. What? Abini cu’Seranta’s daughter?
Truly? Oh, yes, I’ve seen her before; wasn’t she at the A’Kralj’s Winter Ball? Why, her family is just barely cu’, I hear. My cousin is on the Gardes a’Liste, and he says that the family might become just ci’Seranta next year. What is she doing being taken to the temple, I wonder?”
Ana wondered herself, and hope and fear battled inside her.
Marguerite ca’Ludovici
There was a knock, then the door slowly opened. “Kraljica?
The painter ci’Recroix is here. .”
Marguerite-Kraljica Marguerite I of Nessantico, born of the royal ca’Ludovici line which had produced the Kralji for the last century and a half-looked away from her son and nodded to the hall servant whose head peered from behind the massive doors of her outer parlor. “Set the water clock,” she told the servant. “When it empties, bring Vajiki ci’Recroix to me here.” He touched clasped hands to forehead, glanced quickly at the Kraljica’s son, and vanished, the door clicking shut behind him.
Her son-the A’Kralj Justi, who might one day, upon her death, become the Kraljiki Justi III-had not moved. Usually the Kraljica’s parlor was crowded with supplicants, courtiers, and chevarittai: the ca’-and-cu’ of Nessantico. Today, they were alone. Justi was standing before a painting set on an easel near the west wall, bathed in sunlight. The A’Kralj’s appearance was regaclass="underline" a gray-flecked beard carefully trimmed in the current fashion, like a thin band glued to his chin; straight hair combed and oiled and arranged to minimize the alarming thinness at the crown of his skull; a long nose, deep-set dark eyes, and a nearly geometrically squared and jutting jaw, all features he’d inherited from his long-dead father. The resemblance still made Marguerite occasionally startle when she looked at him. His body, molded by days spent hunting in the saddle, was that of an aging warrior-in his youth, the A’Kralj had ridden in the Garde Civile along with the other chevarittai of Nessantico. Despite the long decades of order under the Kraljica, despite her popular title as “Genera a’Pace,” the Creator of Peace, there were still the occasional border skirmishes and squabbles, and Justi fancied himself quite the military man.
Marguerite, who had seen the reports from the Garde Civile, had an entirely different opinion of her son’s prowess.
Justi’s head canted slowly as he regarded the painting.
“This is truly marvelous, Matarh,” he said. His voice belied his appearance; it was reedy and unfortunately high. That was another trait he’d inherited from his long-dead father. “He’s a handsome thing to look at,” Marguerite’s own matarh had said long decades ago when she’d informed her daughter that a marriage had been arranged for her. “Just keep him from talking too much, or he’ll completely destroy the illusion. .”
She wondered if other matarhs elsewhere said the same of Justi to their daughters.
“I’d heard that this ci’Recroix was the master among masters,” Justi continued, “but this. .” He reached out with a thin index finger that stopped just short of the surface of the canvas. “I feel that if I touched the figures I would feel warm flesh and not cold brush strokes. It’s easy to see how some say that he uses sorcery to create his paintings.” He paced in front of the canvas. “Look, their eyes seem to follow me. I almost expect their heads to move.”
She had to agree with him that the painting was superbly crafted, so lifelike as to be startling. Three strides long, half that high, caught in an exquisite, filigreed gold frame as wide as two hands, the painting depicted a peasant family: a couple with their two daughters and a son.
The wife and husband, dressed in stained linen with plain overcoats, sat behind a rough-hewn table laden with a simple dinner, a cloth dusted with bread crumbs covering the planks. An infant daughter sat on the matarh’s lap, a son on the vatarh’s, while a female toddler played with a puppy underneath the table. Marguerite had seen paintings that appeared realistic from a distance, but the ci’Recroix. . No matter how closely she approached it, no matter how she leaned in and peered at the surface, nowhere could she see the mark of a brush. The only texture was that of the canvas on which the pigments rested: it was as if the painting were indeed a window into another world. More details within the scene revealed themselves as you came closer and closer, until the varnished surface of the painting itself stopped you. Marguerite knew (because she had looked) that if you examined the wimple on the matarh’s head, that you could not only see the texture of the blue cloth and how it had been wrapped and folded, but you could also note where a rent had been repaired and sewn shut with thread of a slightly different hue. You could see how she was just beginning to glance down at her daughter in her lap, her attention beginning to move away from the viewer as her daughter’s hand clutched at the hem of her blouse.