“Matarh. .” I don’t want to say it. I don’t know how to even begin.
“Tell me.”
Ana looked at her matarh’s face, saw the suspicion in it. She could feel her lower lip trembling, could feel the tears burning in her eyes. Her matarh’s features swam before her, and she wiped angrily at the betrayal of her eyes. “Please, Matarh. .”
“Tell me,” she repeated.
And so she did. Slowly. Haltingly. Feeling the shame and the guilt and the pain all over again. Her matarh sat there, listening, her head shaking more with each word until Abini finally spread her hands wide apart angrily and rose from the couch. “No!” her matarh shouted, the word echoing in the room. “You’re making this up. You’re lying. Your vatarh wouldn’t do that, Ana. Not Tomas. I don’t believe it and I won’t hear it. I won’t. It’s. . it’s evil. Tomas is a good man and he’s done all he could to provide for us, even with everything that Cenzi gave us to bear. How can you be so cruel to make those accusations-do you know the sacrifices Tomas made to get you accepted as an acolyte, to pay for all your instruction so you could wear those green robes and live in this luxury? Where is your gratitude, child? Oh, why did Cenzi bring me back to this. .?”
She began to sob, uncontrollably, and Ana, crying in sympathy and her own pain, went to her, trying to take her matarh in her arms and accomplish with an embrace what she could not do with words. But Abini recoiled, pushing her away with an inarticulate cry and a wild, angry gaze. She ran from the room as Sunna opened the door. The servant watched Abini rush past her and down the hall toward the outer doors.
“O’Teni?”
Ana forced herself to speak through the tears that choked her throat. “Go with her,” she said to Sunna. “Make certain she gets home safely.”
Jan ca’Vorl
“Will he die quickly, Vatarh?” Allesandra asked.
“I don’t know, Allesandra. Probably.”
Alongside Jan, the Hirzgin stirred. “This is not something our daughter needs to see, my Hirzg,” Greta said. One hand rubbed the welling arc of her belly. The Hirzg and Hirzgin, accompanied by several members of the court, stood on a viewing platform erected just outside the tent-palace. Starkkapitan Ahren Ca’Staunton, commander of the Firenzcian army, and U’Teni Semini cu’Kohnle, head of the war-teni, were at Jan’s left hand. Mara stood discreetly to his right on the other side of Greta, just slightly behind the Hirzgin so that she could make eye contact with Jan without Greta noticing, though Jan was certain that their occasional exchanges of smiles didn’t escape the rest of the court.
Below them, in the meadow lined by the army’s tent-city, a soldier, stripped to the waist with his back and chest displaying the bloodied stripes of a flogging, was bound with his arms behind him to a large post. A line of six archers had been placed facing him, an o’offizier to their side; the remainder of the troops stood in silent ranks around the meadow. Markell stood near the post, overseeing the proceedings.
Allesandra’s maidservant Naniaj started forward to take the girl away, but Jan shook his head and raised a finger. The woman stopped in mid-step.
“She’s only eleven. She’s too young,” the Hirzgin insisted again, making Jan scowl. Everything Greta said made him frown. Just the sound of her thin voice or the sight of her plain, long face with its forward-canted ca’Ludovici jaw or the prominent reminder of her fecundity was enough to make him grind his teeth. She knew her duty as wife, and performed it as if it were exactly that-and no more often than she must. The lack of regular intimacy between them hardly bothered Jan, nor did it prevent him from seeking that intimacy elsewhere, as a few bastard children scattered around Firenzcia testified. Perhaps Mara might end up producing another, if the midwife’s potions failed to work. “Please, my Hirzg, let Naniaj take her inside. .”
“Vatarh, if I’m to lead the army one day as Hirzgin, then I need to understand this,” Allesandra pleaded. Jan laughed, a roar of delight and amusement that spread out from him to Mara, to the Starkkapitan and U’Teni cu’Kohnle, then to the other courtiers like the ripples from a stone dropped in a pond. He stroked her hair, pressing her to his side possessively. Only the Hirzgin was frowning. Mara’s gaze twinkled at him over Greta’s shoulder as the Hirzgin glared at him.
“You see, wife,” he said. “The child knows what she must learn. She stays.”
“Hirzg. .” Greta began, but Jan glanced at her sharply.
“I said she will stay,” he repeated, the words sharp and cutting this time. “If you don’t care to witness this yourself in your condition, Hirzgin, it would frankly please us very much if you removed yourself.”
Greta’s mouth closed at that, her teeth clacking together as she turned away from him and waddled away from the platform. Mara gave the barest of nods to Jan, and then moved to follow the Hirzgin with the rest of her whispering, reluctant entourage. He heard Allesandra chuckle once, softly.
Below, the man was firmly lashed to the post, and Markell and the o’offizier with him stepped well back. Markell gestured; the archers placed arrows to bowstrings and drew them back with a creaking of
leather and wood. The bound man moaned. “What did he do, Vatarh?”
Allesandra asked.
“He’s a Numetodo,” Jan told her. “And he was stupidly vocal about his beliefs. Belief in Cenzi and the rewards that await the brave when they die are what sustains our troops, my darling. Without their faith, they will have no hope, and this fool tried to take that away from them with his words. I want them all to see what happens to those without faith.” At Jan’s left side, U’Teni cu’Kohnle nodded sternly in agreement with his words.
“Why are there six archers there, Vatarh? Wouldn’t just one be able to kill him?”
“All six will let loose their arrows at the starkkapitan’s command,”
Jan told her patiently. “That way, each of the archers can believe that it wasn’t their arrow that took the life of a fellow soldier. It helps them-
it’s difficult for a soldier to kill one of their own, even when that person has betrayed them and his oaths.”
Allesandra nodded solemnly at that. “I understand, Vatarh.”
“Hirzg, we’re ready,” Markell called up to Jan.
“Excellent,” Jan said. He stepped forward with Allesandra. He raised his voice, speaking loudly so that the bound man could hear him.
“Would you pray now?” he asked the man, whose head was turned up toward them. His pupils were large, frightened and bloodshot. Blood drooled from his mouth and nostrils. “Would you plead for Cenzi to save you? Would you ask that His hand move through mine?”
The man’s thick tongue slid over bruised lips. Sudden hope filled those desperate eyes. “Yes,” he managed to say, the voice barely audible.
“I do pray, Hirzg. I’m. . so sorry. I was wrong. . I renounce it all. .”
“What do you think, Allesandra?” Jan asked his daughter, who was
pressed to the railing of the platform, standing on tiptoes so that she could look down over the top. She looked up at him.
“I think a person in his position would say whatever they need to say to save themselves, Vatarh,” she answered.
Jan laughed again. “Indeed. They most certainly would.” He called
out to the court, to the soldiers watching. “Did you hear that?” he proclaimed. “Wisdom comes from the young.” He waved to the starkkapitan. “You may proceed, Starkkapitan ca’Staunton,” he said.
The Numetodo moaned and shrieked. He cursed and thrashed uselessly against the ropes holding him. Starkkapitan ca’Staunton gave the sign of Cenzi to Jan, then to U’Teni cu’Kohnle, and stepped forward.
He lifted his arm and the sextet of archers pulled their bows back to full draw, the leather-wrapped wood creaking ominously. His hand dropped as the Numetodo screamed and the bows sang. The Numetodo’s scream was cut off abruptly with the solid, dull stutter of arrowheads impacting flesh.