A Magic of Dawn

Varina ca’Pallo

She might have understood instinctively if she had borne children of her own with Karl, but that had never happened. But Karl had his children, back in Paeti.

“It’s different with your own children,” Karl had told her once. “It doesn’t matter what they do-there’s very little they could do, even some horrible things, that would change the way you feel about them. You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.”

She thought she might realize that, finally.

She’d accosted Sergei after the meeting with Hirzg Jan, pulling at the old Silvernose’s bashta as they left the palais. “If you hurt him, Sergei, I will never forgive you,” she said. “Never. I don’t care how long we’ve been friends. If you torture him, I will never call you friend again.”

His face was pained, the wrinkles deep around his false nose and eyes. “Varina, the war-teni-”

“I don’t care, ” she told him. “Remember that Karl and I risked our lives to save you from the same fate. Pay us back now.”

Sergei had only shaken his head. “I can promise nothing,” he’d answered. “I’m sorry, Varina. Nessantico needs the war-teni.”

Strange how Nico had become the son she’d never had. The son she’d lost for years after the first invasion of Nessantico. The son who hated everything she and Karl believed and for which they’d struggled over the decades. The son who seemed perfectly comfortable with the thought of killing her for his own beliefs.

You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.

She could not hate him. It made no sense, but the feelings were there.

The page had come to her at the Numetodo House from the palais, bearing a letter from the Kraljica. “The Kraljica requires your presence at the Old Temple in a turn of the glass,” he said, bowing to her. And he’d left. The letter had said little more, only that Allesandra herself would be there, and that she requested her presence both as a friend and as a member of the Council of Ca’, and that the Archigos would also be present. She knew that it must be something to do with Nico. The thought terrified her.

She wasn’t certain what she’d do if he’d been abused, how she might react. She didn’t know what she could do, since Talbot had already started manufacturing the sparkwheels for the Garde Kralji and Garde Civile. Her single bargaining chip was gone.

So she watched the carriage with the Garde Kralji’s insignia on it as it clattered into the open space of the plaza. A dais had been erected near the blackened, shattered front facade of the Old Temple, with a viewing stand no more than five strides from it. The dais was only large enough for a few people to stand on; in the center was a wooden pillar with chains attached. Allesandra was already seated on the viewing stand with a cadre of Garde Kralji gardai around her; there was a sea of teni also present, though if Archigos Karrol was indeed watching, he did so from somewhere else-Varina wondered if Allesandra had insisted on that. Behind the teni there was a dense crowd of onlookers, as if this were a holiday and they were there for the celebration. They were strangely silent, the citizens of Nessantico; Varina had no sense of what they were thinking or where their sympathies might lie.

Varina wanted to go toward the carriage, knowing that Nico would be inside, but Allesandra gestured to her from the stand and Talbot had already come up to her. “Follow me, A’Morce,” he said. Varina looked back at the carriage, then followed Talbot to the stand, the gardai sliding aside as they climbed the short set of stairs. Varina curtsied to Allesandra, then to the other members of the Council of Ca’, who were seated immediately behind the Kraljica.

“Sit here, my dear,” Allesandra told her, gesturing to a seat at her right side. The seat to the left was vacant; Varina wondered if Archigos Karrol was supposed to be sitting there-which also made her wonder at the significance of placing the Archigos to the left, lower position, but then Talbot seated himself there.

The carriage-its windows shuttered so that no one could see inside, and pulled by a single black horse-had come alongside the smaller dais. Gardai hurried forward, surrounding it as two of them opened the doors. From the side facing the Kraljica, Sergei was helped down. Leaning on his cane, he bowed to the stand with its dignitaries, then went around to the far side of the carriage. Varina glimpsed Nico’s head over the top of the carriage, then more of him as he ascended the stairs alongside Sergei. Was he limping, or was that only due to the chains that bound his ankles and hands? There were bruises on his face, but they seemed old, not fresh, and there were no obvious disfigurements. His head was free of the terrible cage of the silencer. He seemed to incline himself toward Sergei as they reached the top of the dais, saying something to the man. He appeared to nearly smile as he looked out at the crowd-would that be the reaction of a man who’d been tortured?

Now Nico, too, faced the Kraljica, and he bent low at the waist toward her, giving her the sign of Cenzi as best he could with manacled hands. “Kraljica,” he said. “Councillors.” He seemed to be scanning the crowd. Varina wondered if he were looking for the Archigos. “And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.”

His voice was a husk, containing but a memory of the power Varina remembered. He sounded weak and exhausted. But he lifted his head, and he looked out at each of them, his eyes finding all of them in turn. Varina felt the shock of connection when his gaze came to her. He smiled again then, nodding ever so slightly to her, and she could not stop herself from giving him a smile in return. Then his gaze drifted on, and Varina thought that he stared for a long time past the teni into the citizenry, and she halfturned to see who had caught his eye. But he finally cleared his throat and began to speak again.

“I acted in the belief that I was doing what Cenzi required of me,” he said, more loudly. “Nothing more. I say that not to excuse my actions, but so you understand that there was no malice in them, only faith. A terribly mistaken faith.” His voice ignited with the last few words. They shivered, they pulsed, they rang from the ramparts of the buildings around the plaza with impossible clarity. Varina found herself looking around to see if some teni were chanting, adding the power of the Ilmodo to his words, but she could see no movement among the green-robed ranks, and she realized that it must be from Nico himself. She wondered if Sergei realized that Nico was able to use the Ilmodo even with his hands chained, as no teni should be able to do. Even Allesandra’s head moved back as if trying to escape the sound, and now Sergei glanced over at Nico, his head cocked as if he were puzzled.

“I thought I was Cenzi’s Voice,” Nico continued. “I thought I was the Absolute. But I was not. It was actually my own voice I heard, my own hatred and prejudices. I apologize to all of those who listened to me then, and I tell you this: I was, all unwittingly, a false prophet and you would have been better not to have listened to me. I might still have the love of the most important person in my life had I not been so foolish.” Varina heard his voice choke at that, and she thought of Serafina-she’d left the baby asleep at the Numetodo House, with the wet nurse Belle watching over her.

“I apologize to you,” Nico continued, “and I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done. Your sins are on my head, and when Cenzi calls me I will need to answer for them. I release you. I tell you now: follow your Archigos. Follow your Kraljica and your Hirzg.”

“There,” Allesandra whispered to Varina. “That is what we’ve come for. We have you to thank for this, Varina…” She seemed almost ready to rise and respond, but Nico had taken a breath, and now his voice was ice and fire at once.

“I believed,” Nico said. “I still believe. I have prayed now for days for His direction. What I’ve come to realize is that the gift Cenzi has given me is not constrained by laws and restrictions that the Faith placed on me. Cenzi’s revelation to me in the wake of my folly was both enlightening and freeing.” He raised his bound hands as if offering them to the sky. “I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cenzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit-” and there Nico’s gaze found Varina again, and he smiled broadly toward her. “That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”

Varina stood. “Nico, no…” she began, her voice a pale shadow of his own, but it was already too late.

Nico’s hands were still raised, and now he gestured once with both of them together, and he shouted a single word-a word in the language of the Ilmodo, of the Scath Cumhacht, of the X’in Ka. A darkness, a fragment of a starless and moonless night, seemed to wrap around him, hiding him. Sergei gave a shout and reached toward Nico, only to draw his hand back with a cry when he touched the darkness. The gardai did the same, but when they reached the darkness, the false night in which Nico had wrapped himself suddenly vanished.

And where Nico had been, they found only the chains in which he’d been fettered, lying on the wooden planks of the dais. Nico himself had vanished.

Varina blinked. “Well,” she said, “it seems he listened to me more than I thought.”