“You’d truly leave the decision to the Council?”
“Oh, I’ve already spoken to some of them. Enough of them for my purposes, anyway. I’ve suggested that-after due deliberation-the Council might come to believe that my brother’s recent actions have shown them whom he currently favored as successor: someone who had amply demonstrated his loyalty and skill. Why, Jan would grow into a fine Hirzg, don’t you think?-one who would rule strongly and well for many years to come.”
Semini chuckled, softly at first, then more enthusiastically. “So that’s your intention.”
The stone felt like ice in her hand. “Not entirely. I’m thinking of the future, Semini. Perhaps when the Holdings and the Coalition are united again and a competent ruler sits on the Sun Throne, and there is a righteous Archigos in the Temple of Cenzi who has also reunited the severed halves of the Faith, then Jan would be that Kralji’s perfect strong right arm.”
His face was split with a wide smile now. “Allesandra, you surprise me.”
“I shouldn’t,” she told him. “You and I, Semini, are on the same side in this.” She rubbed the stone between her fingers and tucked it into a pocket of her tashta. She would have it mounted in gold on a fine chain. She would wear it under her tashta when she spoke to the Council, wear it alongside the broken globe of Cenzi that Archigos Ana had given her. It would be a reminder of guilt, a reminder that she had acted in haste and done worse to her brother than her vatarh and he had ever done to her. I’m sorry, Fynn. I’m sorry that we never really knew each other. I’m sorry…
She placed her hand on the railing, close to Semini’s hand, as she looked down again into the mists. A few breaths later, she felt the warmth of Semini’s hand carefully covering hers.
They stood that way until darkness came and the first stars pricked the dark blue of the sky.
Eneas cu’Kinnear
The mouth of the A’Sele was its widest here. The city of Fossano sat on the southern bank, the hills to the north tiny and hazed with blue on the far side, fading into invisibility as they curved away across the yawning gulf of A’Sele Bay. Dozens of trade ships plied the silt-brown water, traveling upriver to Nessantico or downriver toward Karnmor or other countries to the north or south, or even across the Strettosei itself. The water of A’Sele Bay was colored by the soil the A’Sele carried from its tributaries, with its sweet freshness coiling and fading eventually into the cobalt salt depths of the Nostrosei.
Eneas was at last back in Nessantico proper. Back in the Holdings. Back on the mainland. The scent of salt was faint here, and he stayed well away from it. From here, he would travel the main road east to Vouziers, then north to Nessantico herself at last.
Home. He was nearly home. He could taste it.
In Fossano, everything felt familiar and comfortable. The architecture echoed the solid, ornamented buildings of the capital city just as the temples were smaller replicas of the great cathedrals on the South Bank and the Isle of the Kralji, thirty-some leagues up the rushing waters of the A’Sele. There was nothing of the square, flat buildings of the Westlanders, or of the odd spires and whitewashed flanks of Karnor.
The Hellins and the battles Eneas had experienced felt distant to him as he looked out from a tavern in South Hills, as if they had happened to someone else in another life. He was floating detached from the memories; he could see them but couldn’t touch them, and they couldn’t touch him.
But… always in his head there was this faint voice, the voice he knew now was Cenzi. Yes… I hear you, Lord of All. I listen.. .
Eneas heard His Voice now, as he touched his pack, the niter he’d purchased in Karnor heavy at the bottom. He stood at the open window of his room in the Old Chevaritt’s Inn, and he could faintly catch the scent of burning nearby, and the Voice called to him to go out. Go out. Find the source. Find what was needed now.
He obeyed, as he must. He put on his uniform, buckled his sword around his hip, and left the inn.
Fossano’s streets angled up and down steep inclines, and wandered as if laid out by a drunken man. This area of town, outside the old city walls and away from the densely-packed center, had been farmland until recently. The houses and buildings were still widely separated by small fields where sheep, goats, and cows grazed or where farmers planted crops. The smell of sharp burning intensified as Eneas followed the road farther out from the town, until the houses vanished entirely and the road became no more than a rutted, weed-overgrown path.
Eneas rounded a knob of tree-dotted granite. A bluish trail of smoke was visible, coiling from near a ramshackle hut set in an unworked field. Cords of hardwood littered the yard, and three men were piling the cords into a rounded pile-already twice a man’s height and several strides around. Nearby, another mound of wood had been covered with soil and turf, and smoke drifted from vent holes around the perimeter of the mound and from the covered chimney at the top. The men glanced up as Eneas approached, and he swept back his travel cloak to reveal the crest of the Garde Civile and the hilt of his sword: coalliers were known to be a rough and untrustworthy lot, living in small groups in the forested areas outside the town. A mound of cordwood might take two or three weeks to smolder and fume through the transformation to hard, pure black charcoal, and required constant tending or the coalliers would remove the earthen covering to find only ash. Coalliers stayed to themselves, venturing in only to sell bags of the charcoal they produced, and moving on to new areas of forest as the suitable trees nearby were depleted. Their poor reputation was enhanced by the fact that they’d often mix the charcoal with lumps of dirt and rocks so that the quality of the coal might be less than desirable. In Nessantico, there were e-teni whose task it was to produce the fine, gemlike charcoal used in the smelting furnaces of the great city, and to heat the houses of the ca’-and-cu’. Here, the work wasn’t done through the power of the Ilmodo, but through the back-breaking and dirty labor of common people.
He waved at the coalliers as they stared, hands crossed on chests or at their hips. “What’ya be wantin’, Vajiki?” one of them asked. He had a wen under his left eye like half a red grape glued to his skin, adorned with a tuft of wiry hair that matched the man’s scraggly beard; the wen’s twin sat off-center in the middle of his forehead. The speaker was older than the other two by several years; Eneas wondered if he might not be the vatarh or onczio of the younger two. “Lost your troop, eh?” The trio chuckled at the man’s poor jest with grim laughter as dark as the soot that stained their hands and faces.
“I need charcoal,” Eneas told them. “The highest quality you have. A sack of it with no impurities. This is what Cenzi desires.”
They laughed again. The man with the wens rubbed at his face. “Cenzi, eh? Are you claiming to be Cenzi, or are you a teni, too, Vajiki? Or maybe just slightly light in the head?” Again the rough laughter assaulted Eneas, as the wind sent smoke from the fire mound wrapping around the coalliers. “We’ll be in town next Mizzkdi, Vajiki, with all the charcoal you’d want. Wait until then. We’re busy.”
“I need it now,” Eneas persisted. “I’m leaving town tomorrow for Nessantico.”
The man glanced at his companions. “Traveling, eh? You’re not from Fossano, then?” Eneas shook his head. A smile touched the face of the older coallier. “He’s fancy-lookin’, isn’t he, boys? Look at that bashta and them boots. Why, I’ll wager he’s from Nessantico itself. An’ I’ll bet he has a purse heavy enough to buy that charcoal he’s wantin’ and more.”
The man took a step toward Eneas; he lifted his sword halfway from its scabbard. “I don’t want trouble, Vajiki,” Eneas told them. “Just your coal. I’ll give you a good price for it-twice the going rate, and with Cenzi’s blessing and no haggling.”
“Twice the rate, and a blessing besides.” Another step. “Ain’t we the lucky ones, boys?” The two younger men were moving slowly to either side of Eneas, hemming him in. He saw a knife in one man’s hand; the other held a stick of hardwood like a cudgel.