Mahri would watch this young woman. He would know who she was.
Mahri slunk back deeper into the shadows between the buildings.
Silent, a shadow himself, he slid away from the Avi and the noise, finding his own hidden path through the city.
Ana cu’Seranta
“You’re beginning to recover?” the Archigos asked, and Ana nodded. The Archigos had said nothing to her for several minutes, allowing her to gather herself. The fatigue was receding and she no longer felt as if she needed to sleep, though a deep ache still lingered in her muscles.
“I’m feeling much better now,” she told him. “Thank you.”
“So tell me, Vajica cu’Seranta, do you know why I wanted to speak with you?”
Ana shook her head vigorously at the Archigos’ question. “Certainly not, Archigos. In fact, I thought. .” She shook her head again.
The sound of the wind-horns faded as they moved away from the temple, but the crowds still hailed the Archigos as they passed, their clasped hands tight against their foreheads. The acolytes were still singing, another of Darkmavis’ compositions. The Archigos nodded to the people lining the Avi as they approached the Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli.
He raised his hand in greeting even as he spoke with Ana, not looking at her though she had the impression that he knew the expressions that twisted her lips and lowered her eyebrows. “Go on,” he said quietly.
“I thought that, if anything, I would hear only from U’Teni cu’Dosteau,” Ana continued. “As often as he corrected me or told me that I wasn’t trying hard enough or wasn’t paying close enough attention in his classes, I thought that he would give me a Note of Severance.
I knew all the Marques had already been signed. . ” The Archigos had turned completely away from her, and she wondered whether she’d offended him. “I’m sorry, Archigos. I’m chattering on and I shouldn’t speak so about U’Teni cu’Dosteau, who was entirely correct in his attitude toward me. I wasn’t a good enough student for him, I’m afraid.”
“I have indeed signed the Marques that the Acolytes’ Council gave me,” the Archigos said. He waved to the crowds. He smiled. The sun danced on the silken field over his head. He didn’t look at her at all. “Your name wasn’t on any of them.”
Ana nodded in acceptance, not able to speak. Despite having steeled herself for the inevitability of her failure, the intensity of the disappointment that washed over her then told her how stubbornly she’d been grasping to hope that she was wrong. Three years. . three years and all the solas that my family paid to Concenzia for the privilege, money Vatarh really didn’t have, money they’d begged and borrowed. . Three years, and now Vatarh will be angry, and that will be worst of all. .
She’d told herself that she wouldn’t cry, though she’d done so many nights in private since she’d heard about the Marques, but until the note she dreaded came from U’Teni cu’Dosteau she could dry the tears and pretend that she had confidence, at least during the day. The Archigos’ words made her eyes burn and caused the boulevard around them to waver before her as if it were under the waters of the A’Sele.
She could feel the moisture on her cheeks and dabbed at it with her sleeve angrily, hating that she would cry before the Archigos, that her pride was so overweening that she couldn’t accept the fate Cenzi had set before her with due humility, that her faith was so fragile and her fear so great.
She hoped that the Archigos didn’t know about what she’d done with her matarh. If so, she was entirely lost.
Ana realized that the Archigos was looking at her, and she wiped at her eyes again. “You should know that it was U’Teni cu’Dosteau who came to me after I was given this year’s Marques,” the Archigos said softly. “He wanted to talk to me privately. About you, Vajica cu’Seranta.
Do you have an idea of what he said?”
Ana shook her head, mute. Hope lifted its head again, battered and bloodied, but fear caught it in a stranglehold and bore it down. “I won’t tell you all,” the Archigos continued. “It’s enough for you to know that U’Teni cu’Dosteau insisted that the Acolytes’ Council had made a mistake, that they’d looked too much at the family names and too little at the students themselves and U’Teni cu’Dosteau’s evaluations. He told me that he had a student who sometimes created her own spells with the Ilmodo rather than those of her instructor’s. A student who used the Ilmodo for fire or earth or air or water, when most students found a strength in only one of those. A student who could quote the Toustour and seemed a devout follower of the Divolonte, even though there were whispers among her fellow students regarding Numetodo tendencies. A student with a natural talent who didn’t quite know how to harness or control it-who started a terrible fire, he said, in the Acolytes’ Dining Hall one night, then put it out before the fire-teni could come.”
“It was an accident-” Ana began, but the Archigos glanced at her, his hand raised.
“I was impressed by the force of the u’teni’s argument, especially after he reminded me that sometimes Cenzi manifests even in the most common of frames. As the Toustour says-”
“ ‘Even the humblest can be raised, even the lowest exalted.’ ” She provided the quote without thinking.
He laughed then, indicating his own stunted body with a hand.
“Even the lowest,” he repeated. “Vajica cu’ Seranta, do you still desire to accept a Marque? Are you willing to join the Order of Teni if asked?”
“Oh, yes!” she answered in a rush. The affirmation burst from her in a near shout and a laugh that shook tears again from her eyes. She thought the carriage must be shaking with the surge of joy the words had unleashed. “Certainly, Archigos.”
“Good,” the Archigos said. He chuckled at her unrestrained joy.
“Then I’ll have your Marque prepared and signed. You’ll no longer be Vajica; you’ll be O’Teni Ana cu’Seranta.”
He spoke the title slowly and clearly. He was still looking at her, his head-too large for the small body-tilted to one side as if waiting for the question she wanted to ask. His silence gave her the courage to speak. “I must have misheard you, Archigos. I thought. . thought you said o’teni. ”
“Do I speak so poorly?” he said with a chuckle. “U’Teni cu’Dosteau was. . well, he was quite persuasive, and after what I witnessed. . I think that we have more than enough e’tenis already. U’Teni cu’Dosteau believed you were already well past the ability expected from an e’teni, and I would agree with him. In fact, you will be attached to my personal staff, O’Teni. Is that acceptable to you?”
She had no words. She could only nod, a helpless grin on her face.
“I’ll take that as acceptance, then,” the Archigos said. He sighed, turning away from her to raise his hands again to the crowds. “O’Teni, look behind the carriage. Look at the faces you see there.”
Ana glanced down and behind. The a’teni immediately behind the carriage stared back at her, nearly all their gazes lifted toward the carriage. One face in particular snagged her attention. She knew him: Orlandi ca’Cellibrecca, A’Teni of Brezno, Tete of the Guardians, and the man who had arrested dozens of Numetodo last Cenzi’s Day in
Brezno, tried them for forbidden use of the Ilmodo, then had the prisoners executed in the temple square before cheering throngs-his face was turned to her, and his stare was intense and appraising.
“You see them?” the Archigos said softly. “They’re all wondering why you’re standing up here with me, wondering what they’ve missed and how critical it will be to their own power. They’re wondering how it is that an inexperienced acolyte could manage a counter-spell that quickly and remain standing afterward. They’re wondering, honestly, if they could have done the same. They’re trying to figure out how to turn this to their advantage, and whether they should make an overture to you as soon as they can, just in case. When they’re dismissed at the Old Temple, they’ll be scattering to their offices and apartments, whispering hurried instructions to their own underlings, trying to find out everything they can about you, hoping to uncover something they can use. One thing you should understand is that in the world you’re entering, ‘trust,’ ‘loyalty,’ and ‘friendship’ are all concepts that are liquid and mutable. But then, that’s something I suspect you already know.”