“As it turns out, I’m here on the Archigos’ business.” The slight hesitation and the way she averted her eyes before she spoke was enough to tell Sergei that she wasn’t telling the truth-lies in all their shades and forms were something he knew intimately, and the o’teni was hardly a facile liar.
“I see,” he answered. He rubbed the cold metal of his nose. “The stamina of our Archigos never fails to amaze me, especially on a day such as today, when there must a hundred details to which he must attend for the Kraljica’s funeral and for the procession this evening. You have a letter for me, perhaps, outlining this ‘business’ on which he has sent you?” She shook her head. Her gaze wandered somewhere past him, to the bare stone walls behind. “Ah, I see. An unfortunate gaffe on his part. The Archigos must understand after all his years here in Nessantico how the gears of the Holdings are milled from paper and greased with ink. But perhaps if you could tell me about this. .” He paused deliberately. “. . business.”
His hands were folded on his desk and she stared at them. Perhaps she was expecting to see blood there. She hadn’t prepared the lie; she startled with the last word, like a dove surprised on a windowsill. “I. . the Archigos. . we know Envoy ci’Vliomani had wished to meet the Kraljica. . and. . and. .”
“O’Teni.” Sergei lifted a hand and she lapsed into a flushed silence.
“We needn’t pretend. Not here. The Bastida is not a place for posturing.
The two of you are lovers?”
The flush crept higher on her neck. “No,” she said quickly. That was the truth, he could tell, though he could guess the rest: ci’Vliomani was attractive enough, intelligent enough, and given her unremarkable features and the rank of her family before her recent elevation, he doubted that she had been much pursued by suitors in the past. He could imagine the attraction ci’Vliomani might have for her; he could also imagine that she would be an easy mark for a seduction, if ci’Vliomani had wanted to use her. He’d glimpsed her fear for ci’Vliomani’s fate in the apartment when he’d arrested the man, heard it in the urgent whispers they’d exchanged as he took ci’Vliomani away. If they weren’t lovers, there was still a bond between them. He hoped, for her sake, that the bond ran both ways.
She was attracted to the lure of the foreign, the alien, the forbidden. He knew that. He felt it himself. He understood. So he smiled at the young woman.
“No,” he repeated, just to watch the flush bloom again in her cheeks.
“Then what is your interest in him?”
“He. .” She swallowed. Her eyes found his face and wandered away again. Then she took a long breath in through her nose and stared hard at him. “He is a friend. I don’t believe that those who possess a true faith have anything to fear from learning about other ways. We won’t bring the Numetodo back to the Faith through torment and death, Commandant. We will bring them back through
understanding.”
She spoke with such passion and earnestness that Sergei leaned back in his chair and patted his hands together softly. “Bravo, O’Teni. Well said-though that doesn’t appear to be a position most of the
a’teni or the A’Kralj would take, nor even the Archigos himself. And unfortunately. .” He spread his hands wide. “. . those are the masters I serve.”
He could see the fear in her face, could nearly taste it in the air, sweet. “Envoy ci’Vliomani. . Is he. .”
“He is bound and silenced, as he must be so that he doesn’t misuse the Ilmodo. But otherwise, he is well-treated and in good health.” He saw her relax slightly. “Thus far,” he added, and the pallid fear returned to her. “You understand that I can make no promises.”
“If it would be possible. . if I could see him, Commandant. .”
She licked at dry lips. “I would be grateful, and perhaps such a favor could be returned to you.”
“You offer me a bribe, O’Teni?” he asked, smiling to gentle the blow.
She said nothing. Did nothing.
He nodded, finally. “You will be part of the Kraljica’s final procession this evening?” She nodded in mute answer. “As I will be. Afterward, I could perhaps accompany you when you take your leave. The Archigos would understand that I might have questions for you regarding Envoy ci’Vliomani. If I happened to escort you here, neither the Archigos nor the A’Kralj would be surprised, and perhaps I might be persuaded to let you see Envoy ci’Vliomani for a few moments. As a. . favor.”
“I would be in your debt, Commandant.”
“Yes,” he answered solemnly. “You would indeed, O’Teni cu’Seranta.”
He saw the way she drew back a step with his statement, and the furtive, reflexive manner in which she tightened her robes around her. The sight gave him a small satisfaction. “Tonight, then.”
She nodded and drew the hood over her head. As she reached the door, he called out to her. “We both believe Envoy ci’Vliomani is innocent, O’Teni. But what we believe may be of no matter.”
Mahri
The massive twin heads of two ancient Kraljiki, set on either side of Nortegate, gleamed eerily with teni-fire. At night, their features were illuminated from within the hollow stone so that they appeared almost demonic, but rather than facing out as they usually did, glaring at any potential invaders, the e’teni tending them had used the power of the Ilmodo to turn the heavy sculptures inward so that the great, scowling visages glared eastward: toward the oncoming procession of the Kraljica as it paraded slowly along the gleaming Avi a’Parete toward the Pontica Kralji and the Isle A’Kralj, where the final ceremony would be held. They seemed angry, perhaps furious that the Kraljica had been taken from the city in the midst of the celebration of her Jubilee.
The procession coiled along the Avi like a thick, gilded snake caught in the famous teni-lights of the city, which gleamed in doubled brilliance tonight. First came a phalanx of the Garde Kralji in their dress uniforms, led by Commandant ca’Rudka. Their stern, forbidding faces cleared the crowds from the Avi, pushing any errant pedestrians back into the onlookers who lined the Avi and clogged the openings to the side streets. More of the Garde Kralji, in standard uniform and bearing pole arms, marched slowly on either side of the Avi, herding the crowds and watching for any signs of disturbance.
Given the reputation of the Garde Kralji for cruelty and thoroughness, it was hardly surprising that there were none.
Then came the chevarittai of the city, astride their horses and in their field armor, polished and gleaming. In the midst of them was a lone, riderless white horse, shielded by their lances and their swords.
The chevarittai paraded by, grim-faced and solemn, the hooves of their destriers loud on the cobblestones of the Avi.
Then came the Sun Throne from which the Kraljica had ruled for her five decades, floating effortlessly above the stones through the effort of several chanting teni who paced with it, the eternal light inside the crystalline facets alive and gleaming a sober, sullen ultramarine, as if the throne itself understood the import of the moment.
Two-dozen court musicians paced behind the throne, dressed in bone-white, their horns and pipes inflicting an endless dirge on the onlookers that echoed belatedly from the buildings on either side.
The Archigos’ carriage followed the musicians at a judicious distance from the cacophony, bearing the Archigos as well as several of the older (and less mobile) a’teni currently in residence in Nessantico, A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca among them.
Behind the Archigos was a long double line of green-robed a’teni and u’teni, all of them chanting, their hands moving in the patterns of spells. In the air above them flickered images of the Kraljica as she had been when she was alive: not solid illusions, but wispy ghosts shimmering in the air, far larger than life and looming over the mourners in the street below.