She lifted the covering.
Justi ca’Mazzak
The a’Kralj moved through the Oldtown night unnoticed.
Or at least he hoped so.
It was difficult to conceal his identity. The fine and expensive clothing he normally wore could be exchanged-and had been-for a plain,rough bashta that a tradesman might wear. He’d scrubbed away the scent of perfumes and ointments and let the smoke from the choked flue of a tavern hearth coil around him until he smelled of soot and ashes.
He’d mussed his hair; he’d been careful not to use the cultured accents of the ca’-and-cu’, but instead the broad intonation of the lower classes.
Still, his voice was distinctly high-pitched, which he knew was a cause of occasional jest when people talked of him. There was no disguising the squared jaw under the band of well-trimmed beard: the jaw his vatarh and great-vatarh had possessed also, and which was prominent in portraits of them. He could stoop, but it was still difficult to disguise the way he towered over most people, or to hide the trim muscularity of his body. He kept a cowl pulled over his head, he leaned heavily on a short walking stick, and he spoke as little as possible.
He enjoyed nights like this. He enjoyed the anonymity; he enjoyed the escape from the constricting duties of the Kraljica’s court; he enjoyed being simply “Justi” and not “the A’Kralj.” As A’Kralj, he was bound to his matarh’s whims and her rules.
When he was Kraljiki, all that would change. Then Nessantico would dance to his call. The empire would awaken from its long decades of slumbering under his matarh and the current Archigos and his predecessors and realize its true potential.
Soon enough. .
ldtown, despite the intimation of the name, wasn’t the oldest settling within Nessantico. That honor went to the Isle A’Kralji, where the Kraljica’s Grande Palais, the Old Temple, and A’Kralj’s own estate all were situated. But the original dwellings on the Isle had long ago been razed to make room for those far more magnificent buildings and the lavish, manicured grounds on which they stood. Oldtown and the narrow, twisting streets on the north bank of the A’Sele had been the shores onto which the growing city on the Isle had spilled four centuries ago, and Oldtown had changed little in the last few hundred years. Many of the buildings dated back that far. Oldtown clasped its dark past to its bosom and refused to let it go. Mysteries lurked down claustrophobic alleyways, murder and intrigue in the shadows. Its shops contained anything the human heart might desire, if you knew where to find it and could afford it; its taverns were loud and boisterous with the alcohol-buoyed glee of the common folk; its streets swarmed with life in all its glory and all its disgust.
If you can’t find what you desire in Oldtown, it doesn’t exist. It was an old maxim in Nessantico.
Justi had found love in Oldtown, and it was toward love that he hurried, every night that he could find the time to steal away from those around him.
“Pardon, Vajiki. Might you have a d’folia to spare for someone to buy a loaf of bread?” The voice came from the black mouth of an alley, accompanied by the scent of rotting teeth. Here in the bowels of the city near Oldtown Center, well away from the teni-lights of the Avi a’Parete, what illumination there was came mostly from the open windows of taverns and brothels, fitful and dim. Wedges of darkness shifted and Justi saw the man there. He knew him, also: the beggar known as Mad Mahri. Where foul things happen, you’ll see Mad Mahri. It was another saying within the city. The man seemed to be ubiquitous, wandering everywhere through the city, and present often enough at critical events in the city that Commandant ca’Rudka himself had questioned the man. It was rumored that Mahri had acquired at least some of the scars on his body then.
Justi rummaged in the pocket of his cloak; his fingers plucked a small coin from among the others there. He brought his hand out.
“Here,” he said to the beggar. He kept his voice deliberately low, growling the words and disguising his natural high tenor. “Buy yourself bread or a tankard. I don’t care which.”
A hand flashed out and caught the coin as Justi flipped it toward the man. “Thank you, Vajiki,” he said. “And in return, let me give you something.”
“I want nothing from you, Mahri.” Justi took a step away from the man, his right hand straying to the knife he had hidden under his cloak.
Mahri seemed to chuckle. “Ah, Mahri’s no threat to you, Vajiki.
Not tonight. But you do want something from me. You simply don’t realize it. Isn’t that the way it happens too often? We don’t know what it is we need until it’s taken from us, or until we receive it.” His voice changed: it became a breath, a hoarse, urgent whisper. “I know who you are. I know what you want. I know what you’re searching for, and what you’ve found.”
Justi exhaled mockingly, a half-laugh. “I’m supposed to listen to the wisdom of a half-wit who doesn’t even have a d’folia to buy bread?”
A hiss sounded in the darkness. “You wait for your matarh to die.
You yearn for it, and you fear it at the same time. And you lie in the bed of a woman who belongs to another man, and who is her vatarh’s pawn.”
Justi sucked in his breath. His eyes narrowed. He forgot to lower the pitch of his voice, and his reply was shrill. “Why are you accosting me?
What is it you want? All I need to do is call for the utilino. .”
“What I want you’ll eventually give me,” Mahri answered. “I came to tell you this: I know the painted face is also a funeral mask. It will soon be your time, as it should be.”
The words sent a chill through Justi. “What does that mean? Do you offer nothing but riddles?” Justi demanded. Mahri was sinking back into the mouth of the alley, back into darkness. “Wait.” He took a step toward the beggar, but faint candlelight glinted on something arcing toward him, and Justi stepped back, ducking reflexively. He felt something strike his chest, then fall to the cobbled street with a faint clink.
He glanced down. The d’folia he’d given Mahri lay there, his own face in profile on the coin. “Mahri!”
Mahri’s voice called back to him, already distant. “The Concenzia believe that everything was put into the world for Cenzi’s purpose, A’Kralj. Discovering what that purpose might be is the real task of life.
If you abandon the path your eyes show you, you’ll never know truth.”
“Mahri!” Justi called again.
No answer came from the night. The man was gone. Justi glanced down at the coin.
“A problem, Vajiki? Is there something I can do for you?” Sudden light made the bronze d’folia shimmer on the paving stones. Justi jerked his head back up. Where the street intersected another lane, a man in the brocaded uniform of an utilino stood holding up a spell-lit lamp with the reflector aimed toward Justi, who shielded his face from the glare. The utilino were e-teni placed in service of the Garde Kralji: their job was to patrol the streets and put down any trouble they might find, or aid any citizen who needed their help. The utilino’s night-staff was still looped to his belt, but the man placed his lamp on the cobbles and held his copper whistle close to his lips. Justi thought he saw the man’s free hand already moving in the shape of a spell.
“No,” Justi answered. He cleared his throat, tried to bring his voice down. “No problem at all, Utilino. I’ve just dropped something while on my way. I’ve found it now.”
The man nodded. He let the whistle drop on its chain to his chest and picked up his lamp again. “Very good.” The reflector clicked and the light focused on Justi went soft and diffuse, but the utilino paused there, still watching. Justi wondered whether the teni had recognized him. He shrugged his cloak around his shoulders and pulled the cowl up so that his face was in shadow to the utilino. He stepped on the d’folia as he walked past the man, feeling the utilino’s appraising stare on his back.