A Magic of Dawn

Allesandra ca’Vorl

Allesandra stood on the balcony of her rooms and stared out over the grounds. The ashfall had stopped two nights before, and the sunset tonight was stunning. Yellow-and-white clouds billowed near the horizon: wind-streaked, brushed in scarlet and orange-gold, and caught in a deep azure sky while the sun threw shafts of brilliant golden light through the gaps between them. The land underneath was caught in gold-green light and purple shadow. Fragments of saturated color seemed to lurk wherever she looked, as if a divine painter had smeared his palette across the sky.

Below her, workers were still sweeping the walkways of the stubborn gray and brushing the clinging ash from the bushes and plants of the formal garden her apartments overlooked. It had mercifully rained earlier in the day- already, the palais grounds were beginning to look as they once had, but Allesandra could smell the ash: astringent and irritating in her nostrils. The entire city, the entire land stank of it.

The ash, the Morelli insurrection two nights ago, Jan’s curt insistence that he be named her heir: it all weighed on her despite the beauty of the sunset.

“A’Teni ca’Paim wants you thrown into the Bastida,” Allesandra said.

Sergei, who was ignoring the sunset and staring instead at the painting of Kraljica Marguerite on the wall, snorted audibly through his metal nose. “No doubt she does. What did you tell her?”

“I told her that the teni you killed had been a Morelli, had broken the laws of the Holdings, and was deliberately withholding information from you. I said that there wasn’t time to consult her; you took the action you felt was necessary to try to capture Morel.”

Sergei seemed to bow more to Marguerite than to Allesandra. “Thank you, Kraljica.”

“I also read Commandant cu’Ingres’ report. He doesn’t seem to feel that killing the teni was required.”

Sergei shrugged at that. “Two offiziers don’t always agree on tactics. Had Talos done as I did a turn or two earlier, we might actually have caught Morel. Did he mention that in his report?”

“I know you, Sergei. You didn’t kill the man as a tactic. You did it for the pleasure it gave you.”

“We all have our faults, Kraljica,” he answered. “But I did do it to capture Morel. At least partially.”

“Gyula ca’Vikej doesn’t feel you can be trusted anymore. He thinks your predilections and your ambitions have put you in opposition to me.”

If Sergei was worried by that, he didn’t show it. “You know my weaknesses, and I freely admit them to you, Kraljica. All of us have them, and yes, sometimes they can interfere with our best judgment for what is right for the Holdings. And as Ambassador to Brezno and the Coalition, I would prefer that no one else hears the Kraljica refer to ca’Vikej as Gyula. But then I haven’t taken the Gyula-inexile of an enemy state into my bed.”

The surge of anger through her was hot and as bright as lightning. She scowled, her fists tightening so that her fingernails carved crescent moons into her palm. “You dare… ” she began, but Sergei put his hands out in supplication before she could say more.

“I’m simply pointing out-clumsily, I admit-that the choices we make aren’t going to be universally beloved; that we make them for reasons that make sense to us but not necessarily to everyone. Forgive me, Kraljica. We have a long history together, but I shouldn’t presume upon it. You know that my loyalty is to the Holdings and to her ruler. Always and forever.”

I know that your loyalty is to the Holdings. But as to the other. .. Allesandra bit her lip, thinking the words but not saying them. She owed Sergei: she knew it; she knew he knew it. He’d saved her life and that of her son. The sting of his remark still cut at her, but the anger was cooling. She still needed Sergei. She still valued his advice.

But when the time came, she would not hesitate to throw him into the Bastida that he loved too much.

“I would be careful what you say and who you say it to,” she told him, “if you want to escape the fate you’d give to others. You’re lucky that-”

There was a discreet knock on the door of the chamber; a breath later, the door opened and the side of Talbot’s head appeared, carefully not looking in their direction. “Kraljica,” he said. “A messenger has come. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

“What message?” Allesandra asked, the irritation still warm in her voice. “Tell me.”

“I really feel you should hear it from him, Kraljica,” Talbot said.

Allesandra scowled. “Fine. Send him in to us.”

The door closed and reopened a moment later. Talbot ushered in a bedraggled man, his clothing stained with mud and ash, his face streaked, his eyes sunken in the midst of dark pouches. His hair was white, his hands curled in with huge, knotted knuckles. She guessed him to be five decades old or more, someone who had seen too much work in his time. “Please, sit,” Allesandra told the man immediately, and he sank gratefully into the nearest chair after a sketch of a bow. “Sergei, pour some wine for this poor man. Talbot, see if the cook still has some of the stew from dinner…”

Talbot bowed and left the room. Allesandra stood in front of the man; she heard wine gurgling into a cup, then Sergei’s cane on the floor as he handed the man a goblet. He drank thirstily. “What’s your name,” Allesandra asked the man.

“Martin ce’Mollis, Kraljica.”

“Martin.” Allesandra smiled toward him. “Talbot said you had news.”

The man nodded and swallowed. “I’ve been riding for the last few days after sailing my boat from Karnmor.”

“Karnmor.” She glanced at Sergei. “Then you saw…”

He nodded, then shook his head. “I saw… Kraljica, I live on the northern arm of Karnmor Bay, well out from Karnor. I saw the ships coming in one afternoon-first a storm like nothing I’d seen before, then suddenly they were just there, painted ships attacking our navy in the bay-Westlander ships. I saw them tossing fireballs into the city and our ships there as the sun began to set. I knew someone had to come, had to tell you what was happening. I’m just a fisherman now, but I served in the Garde Civile in my time, so I went to my boat and kept close to the shore and sailed around the northern end of the island in order to make for the mainland. I saw another Westlander warship anchored just off the shore, and a line of lights descending Mt. Karnmor as if people were there and moving down. I anchored where I was sheltered and watched, and the lights came down to the shore, and a small boat came out to the Westlander warship. After that, the warship pulled its anchor and left-I saw out on the horizon there were more ships waiting, Kraljica, more than I could count, and all of them sailed away from Karnmor as if Cenzi were chasing them, as if they knew…”

Martin licked his lips and drank again. “Thank Cenzi that they didn’t pay any attention to me, didn’t see me. I sailed on all night, staying close to shore and finally crossed the channel and landed on the mainland before dawn. There’s a small garrison there, and I was telling the duty offizier what I’d seen just as the sun was rising. Then…”

He stopped. He gulped at the wine again. “Then Mt. Karnmor woke. I watched that awful cloud rising high in the air, felt the thunder hit us like a wall of hard air, and then the ash, so hot it burned the skin where it touched…” He shivered, and Allesandra noticed the reddened and blistered skin of his arms. “They gave me a horse, told me to ride here as fast as I could. Don’t stop, the offizier told me. I didn’t, either, except to steal another horse when the one I was riding died under me. I came here as fast as I could, Kraljica. You had to know, had to know…”

He took another sip; Sergei, wordlessly, refilled his glass. “ They did it,” he said finally. “The Westlanders. They brought their ships there, and their magic made the mountain explode. They knew. They knew it was going to happen-that’s why they went north with their fleet that night. They knew what was going to happen, and-”

Talbot entered with a tray; the man stopped. “Talbot,” Allesandra told him, “take our good friend Martin with you. Feed him, let him bathe, and put him in one of the guest rooms. Send for my healer to make certain he receives any treatment he might need. Martin, you’ve done a great service for the Holdings, and you’ll be rewarded for it. I promise you that.” She smiled again to him, and the man rose from his chair and bowed unsteadily. He let Talbot lead him away.

“The Tehuantin are back…” Sergei breathed the words as the door closed behind them. “This changes everything. Everything.”

Allesandra said nothing. She went back to the window. The sun bathed the horizon in rose and gold.

“There will be panic in the streets as soon as this gets out. And if he’s right, if Mt. Karnmor’s eruption wasn’t simply a coincidence. ..”

The sun spread a column of orange high into the haze as the searing yellow disk slipped behind the buildings of the city. The gilded dome of the Old Temple was silhouetted against the fiery colors. Third Call was sounding from the wind-horns; in a mark of the glass, the light-teni would be walking the city, illuminating the lamps of the Avi a’Parete so that the city was snared in a necklace of light. “I will give it to you,” her vatarh had told her once, referring to Nessantico and those lights. He had failed in that, but she had taken the city and the Holdings for herself. She had the city, had the pearl of lights as her own, had been washed in the light of the Sun Throne.

It was hers, and she had to do what she must to keep it.

“You’ll be going back to Brezno,” she said to Sergei. “There’s a message you need to deliver to my son.”