A Magic of Dawn

PRETENSIONS
Rochelle Botelli

She started at the beginning. “Rochelle is what my matarh called me. Rochelle was also the name of the first woman my matarh ever killed. I didn’t realize that for a long time, didn’t realize I’d been named after the first female voice to ever haunt her.”

The tale had come far easier than she’d thought it would. Perhaps it was because Sergei listened so well and intently, leaning forward eagerly to hear her words; perhaps it was because she found that it was something she’d wanted to share with someone, all unknowingly, for a long time. Whichever it was, the long story came tumbling out, with Sergei prodding her occasionally with questions: “Your matarh was the White Stone? The same?” or “Nico Morel? You say the boy was your brother? ” or “You’re Jan’s daughter…?”

The first half of the tale took the rest of the day, as she told him about her apprenticeship with her matarh, about the White Stone’s madness and eventual death in raving insanity, and how she herself had taken up of the mantle of the White Stone-though given Sergei’s position, she didn’t mention the promise that Matarh had extracted from her on her deathbed.

Once the carriage had stopped at Passe a’Fiume, Sergei hadn’t pressed her for more. He told the staff at the Kraljica’s apartments to prepare a meal for two and a separate room for her, and had sent the servants out for a new tashta, cosmetics, and some jewelry for her, saying that they’d lost her luggage during the storm. She stared at herself in the mirror afterward, nearly not recognizing herself. She wondered what payment Sergei might demand, and made certain that her vatarh’s dagger was accessible under the tashta.

The town’s Comte joined them for dinner; Sergei introduced Rochelle as “Remy, my great-niece from Graubundi,” traveling with him to Nessantico; she felt him watching her as she followed his lead, making up tales of their relatives. He seemed mostly amused by her efforts and the polite responses by the Comte and his family. The talk around the table was mostly of old politics and the coming passage of Jan’s army through the town, as the servants served them dinner in the dining room and various personages of distinction paraded through to give their greetings. After the Comte and the last of the dignitaries of the city had left, Sergei had pleaded exhaustion and a desire to retire for the evening.

That, she discovered, was a lie. Rochelle heard the door of his room open not long after; she’d slid Jan’s dagger from its scabbard then, ready to defend herself if he came into her room, but she heard his cane and footsteps recede down the hall; not long after, she heard the groan of the main doors on the floor below. From her window, she watched him go out along the dark streets of the town.

She locked the door to her room anyway.

She didn’t know when he returned. She woke in the morning to the horns of First Call and the knock of one of the servants. She dressed, and found Sergei already at breakfast. A half-turn of the glass later, they were back in the privacy of the carriage, and he asked her to resume her tale. She did, beginnings with her wanderings from the site of her matarh’s grave, her first tentative contracts as the new White Stone, and how she felt when she heard the tales of the White Stone beginning to arise again, and her wanderings through the Coalition.

There were details she still kept to herself, certainly. Yet… This was catharsis, releasing the story. Once she started, she didn’t think she could have stopped. She hadn’t realized the strain of holding it all in. She’d thought that perhaps one day she might have been able to tell a trusted lover, but with Sergei… He was a stranger, and yet she could tell him.

She wondered if that was because-if she decided it would be necessary-she could keep it all still a secret, wrapped in the silence of a dead man. She kept her hand close to the hilt of Jan’s dagger, and she watched the Silvernose’s face carefully.

By the time they were approaching Nessantico’s walls, she was telling him of the final confrontation with Jan, though she left unsaid the details of how physical it had become. He seemed to understand, his face sympathetic and almost sad as he listened.

“Poor Jan…” he’d said, and his empathy for her vatarh irritated Rochelle. “I came to Firenzcia not long after Fynn’s assassination, and there were already whispers about this Elissa whom the new Hirzg had loved, and who had vanished. I don’t think he’s ever entirely stopped loving her-or at least loving the person he thought she was. I heard the gossip that perhaps she was the White Stone, then when Jan saw her again in Nessantico, that became certain.” He stopped, clamping his mouth shut as if to hold back more that he might have said, the folds under his chin waggling with the movement. She wondered whether what he had decided not to tell her was how Kraljica Allesandra, Rochelle’s great-matarh, had been the one who had hired Matarh to kill Fynn. She wondered whether he realized that she must know that as well.

If so, neither of them mentioned it.

“So now you’ve come to Nessantico,” Sergei said. His rheum-filled eyes held her own, close enough that she could see her warped reflection crawl over his nostrils. “The White Stone’s daughter. Jan’s daughter, and the great-daughter of the Kraljica, too. Nico Morel’s sister. I have to ask why you’ve come.”

“Everyone comes to Nessantico eventually.”

He seemed to chuckle inwardly. “Once, you might have been able to get away with that answer, Rochelle. Not now. Not with the Coalition as her great rival. Not with the Tehuantin pressing on her borders once again. Not with your brother’s people making their violent presence known here. You’re being disingenuous, Rochelle, and it doesn’t become you.” He stared; Rochelle’s fingertips brushed the smooth, worn hilt of Jan’s dagger. Will you have to kill him now? Can you let him walk away knowing what he knows?

“I don’t know why I’ve come,” she answered, “and that’s only the truth, Sergei. I couldn’t stay where I was and I didn’t know where else to go, and I just started walking. Nessantico seemed to be calling to me.”

“Calling for what, ” he persisted. “Revenge? A reunion?”

“Neither,” she said. Yes, revenge… She could almost hear her matarh’s voice whispering that inside. “I didn’t know for certain that Nico was here. I swear that by Cenzi.”

“Ah, a murderer swearing by Cenzi. How ironic. Your brother might appreciate that. If he’s still alive.”

That sentence sent a winter breeze swirling down her back, causing the newly-chopped hairs at the back of her neck to rise. “What?”

She couldn’t tell if he shrugged or only adjusted himself on the bench seat of the carriage. “You left the encampment before the news came,” Sergei said. “Your brother and his followers assaulted the Old Temple in Nessantico. They took it over and barricaded themselves inside. By now, Kraljica Allesandra will have ordered the attack on them; they wouldn’t have been able to hold out there. I would suspect that Nico Morel is either dead or in the Bastida by now. I’m sorry; I see that worries you, but I’m sorry-I’ve no sympathy for him, I’m afraid.”

She was stunned. She sat back in her seat across from him. Nico dead? No, she hadn’t seen him or talked to him for years, but she could still see him as a young man, just leaving to become an acolyte in the Faith, Matarh clinging to him as he lifted a bag in his hand with the few possessions he had, the carriage driver calling out impatiently. She’d glimpsed him once or twice since then; Matarh had taken her to see his induction as teni, but then he’d been sent to Brezno, and the visits stopped. They’d heard the tales of his rise and sudden fall within the ranks of teni; when Matarh had died, he hadn’t come, even though Rochelle had expected him. She wondered if he would even recognize her. She wondered if he would care; she wondered if he would condemn her for what she’d done and what she’d become.

“I wasn’t here for him,” she said. “I didn’t know…”

“Then why are you here? You still haven’t answered me.”

Outside, she saw houses and other carriages on the road with them, as well as people on horses or walking toward or from the city-leaning out, she could see the gates of the city just ahead. “Stop the carriage,” she said. “I’d like to get out here.”

Sergei stared for another moment, then he tapped on the roof of the carriage twice; the driver pulled on the reins, calling to the horses and moving them to the side of the road. “Do you kill me now?” Sergei asked. “You’re thinking that you could probably get away with it-easy enough to get lost in the crowds here before the driver raised the alarm.”

He knows what you’re thinking… And that, Rochelle realized, meant that he probably had anticipated the act and had a plan to counter it. His hand was on the knob of his cane. Still, he was too old and slow to stop her. “Don’t,” Sergei told her. His voice almost sounded amused. “I’m not a threat to you, Rochelle. Not at this moment, anyway-though if you become a threat to Nessantico, then we’ll be meeting again. We’re very much alike, you and I-did you know that? I know you, better than you would believe. The difference is that you’re still young. You have a chance to escape becoming me, or becoming like your matarh: a madwoman haunted by the deaths she’s caused and too enamored of death to give it up. You just have to stop. Stop being the White Stone-because if you don’t, soon you won’t want to stop. You won’t be able to stop. Listen to me-I know what I’m speaking of. You don’t want that, Rochelle. You truly don’t.”

He was still holding the cane, still watching her. She saw his gaze fasten on her right hand under her tashta, on the hidden knife.

A quick upward slash. It would come before he could even move, and the blood would be spilling from him even as I leap from the carriage. He’d be dead by my first step…

She was breathing hard. But there’d be no time to use the stone. The voice might have been her matarh. You’ll be in his eyes, caught there forever at the moment of his death. His eyes will betray you.. .

The noise of the city was loud in the carriage. “Ambassador?” the driver called down through the closed curtain.

Stop being the White Stone…

“Well, Rochelle?” Sergei asked her. “What is it to be?”

A few breaths later, she descended from the carriage. She looked up at the driver. “The Ambassador says to go on,” she told him. He slapped the reins, and the carriage started forward again, slipping into the stream of traffic heading toward the gate. She watched it until it had passed the half-tumbled stone arches, then she slipped into the crowds herself.