A Magic of Dawn

Varina ca’Pallo

Her ears were ringing and she could barely hear the voices talking to her through the din. That was an improvement, at least: immediately after the blast she’d found herself entirely deafened. She’d been carried to the nearest building-one of the Holdings’ bureaucratic offices that dominated the Isle A’Kralji. Healers had been sent for; gardai had flitted in and out asking questions of her and Sergei. Even Commandant cu’Ingres had seen her, and the news he had brought her was grim. Kraljica Allesandra and A’Teni ca’Paim were both shaken but unharmed, but of the dozen Numetodo who had been accompanying Karl’s bier-all of them friends, most of them longtime members of the group-five were dead, and three more were seriously injured. Even if they lived, they would suffer from the effects of this day for the rest of their lives.

Varina cried for them more than she cried for Karl, who was beyond suffering.

Talbot had been among those escorting the bier; luckily, his injuries had been minor.

Varina frowned in concentration toward Sergei, who was leaning over her solicitously. She could see her warped reflection in his silver nose; her face was scratched, a long line of dried blood slicing across her forehead, and her right cheek was dark with a rising bruise. “The deafness should be temporary, the healers tells me,” he was saying. She had to concentrate on his lips to understand him. “That’s good news for both of us-my hearing has suffered enough in the last few years. They also tell me that none of your injuries are likely to be serious, though you’re going to be stiff and sore for several days. You don’t appear to have broken bones, though you should let them know if you feel sharp pain inside, or if your cuts start to grow red or foul.”

“It was Nico who did this?” she asked.

Sergei scowled. “Yes,” he said. “He and the Morellis. One of the gardai swears that he saw Nico in the group below the puppet.”

“Why would he do this? Karl and I never… never…” She bit at her lower lip, the tears threatening again at mention of his name.

“Hopefully you’ll get to ask the man yourself, when we find him,” Sergei told her. “And they will find him. I’ve already told Commandant cu’Ingres that I will personally oversee the search for Morel if he’s not already been captured by the time I return from Brezno.”

“You’re still going? You’re all right?”

“I’m old and tough-it will take more than a bit of black sand to stop me. I’ve already started an investigation into how they acquired the black sand; I suspect that someone within the Armory is a Morelli sympathizer. But with the recent border incursions, I have to go.. .” The smile collapsed as if under its own weight, and he placed his hand on Varina’s shoulder. “I’m so very sorry, Varina. This should never have happened. Karl deserved far better than this.”

The weeping overtook her then, and she could not speak. Sergei patted her shoulder, but his gaze was elsewhere. “Karl’s… body?” she managed to say, finally.

“Karl’s body,” he said, and she could see by the tightening of his lips that he wasn’t telling her everything, “has been recovered and is already on the pyre at the Kraljica’s Palais. The Garde Kralji have been stationed around it, and there are several Numetodo there as well, who say they won’t leave until the pyre’s been lit.”

“I need to go there, then.” Varina started up. She could feel her muscles protesting the movement, but she managed to sit. The room lurched around her, then settled.

“Varina, Kraljica Allesandra said she would light the pyre herself. The healers have said you should stay-”

“I need to go there,” she said, more firmly, and Sergei sighed. He nodded.

“I told the Kraljica that would be your answer. I’ll accompany you there…”

“Varina…” Kraljica Allesandra enveloped her as she stepped from the carriage after Sergei. “I am so sorry. I must take the blame for this atrocity. We obviously didn’t take all the precautions we should have, and that’s my responsibility.”

Varina shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said simply. Behind the courtiers and chevarittai who flanked Allesandra, she saw Mason ce’Fieur, a Numetodo and friend, and one of her students within the group. He nodded to her grimly. “Excuse me, Kraljica,” she said to Allesandra, and went to Mason. They embraced.

“A’Morce Numetodo,” he said, and the use of the title startled her. Karl had been the nominal head of the group for as long as she had been with them. She’d never considered that with his passing, the title might pass to her, but it seemed it had. “We’ve been waiting, all of us.”

She glanced toward the pyre. There were the ca’-andcu’ in their finery-the palais sycophants who wanted the Kraljica to see them-but there were also the Numetodo of the city, most of them ce’ or less: two hundred or more of them, faces she recognized, people she had worked with and taught. They stood there now, silent and patient.

The pyre was three people high, and the smell of oil was strong in the courtyard between the scaffold-latticed wings of the palais. At the top of the pyramidal stack of timbers, a closed wooden coffin had been set-no longer the body draped in the flag of Paeti. Varina’s lips tightened at the sight and her stomach overturned, sending acid burning in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, once. “Let’s do this,” she said. “We’ll have more pyres to light for the rest of our fallen soon enough.”

With Sergei on her left, the Kraljica on her right, and the Numetodo closing ranks behind her, she advanced to the base of the pyre. She looked up at the coffin and for a moment had to pause, overwhelmed by memories of Karl. Her stomach churned anew, and she closed her eyes briefly.

She opened them again, finding in her mind the spell she’d prepared last night. It sat in her head like an egg on the edge of bursting, and she caressed it with her thoughts. This was the way of the Numetodo: like the teni, they used a pattern of words and hand movements to shape the spell-a formula that must be followed. Like the teni, the effort of spell-casting cost them in exhaustion and weakness. Unlike the teni, they did not call on Cenzi or attribute the power to any deity at all; unlike the teni, they did not have to cast their spell immediately upon finishing the incantation. The Numetodo knew how to hold the spell in their minds, to be released with a word and a single gesture much later. The Numetodo could thus “pay in advance” the weakness that came with spell-casting and not be affected later. They could cast a prepared spell in the moment it took to speak and gesture.

She did that now. Standing before the pyre, she opened the spell. “Tine,” she said in the language of Paeti, Karl’s homeland. Fire. She made a motion as if casting a stone at the base of the pyre. A sun erupted within the center of the pyramid, yellow-white and so hot that the wavering shimmer of it struck the onlookers like a hurricane wind. The oiled timbers caught with an audible k-WHOOMP, and flames leaped toward the sky, twirling tornadoes of sparks ahead of them. A fume of smoke followed, drifting toward the distant rooftops of the palais where a wind tore at the column and smeared it westward toward the Old Temple and the River A’Sele.

Already, the furious blaze was licking at the coffin that held Karl’s remains. As Varina watched, the flames slid upward along the sides until the wooden box was obscured by flame and veiled in smoke. “Good-bye, my love,” Varina whispered. “I will always miss you.”

The tears were streaming unashamedly down her face, the fierce heat of the pyre drying them quickly. Someone was hugging her, and she didn’t know if it was Sergei or the Kraljica or Mason.

It didn’t matter. She watched Karl’s remains spiraling upward into eternity.

She stood there until the pyre collapsed, several minutes later, into a heap of ash and coal as dead and as charred as her own self.