A Magic of Nightfall

The Battle Begun: The White Stone

“ Why do you stay here?”

“Why do you watch them?-the boy’s not yours.”

“He’s not your responsibility.”

“You should have left.”

“You’ve waited too long.”

The voices yammered in her mind: cajoling, warning, pleased. Fynn’s was loudest, purring with satisfaction. “You’re going to die here, and the child inside with you.”

“Be quiet,” she told them all, and they lapsed into sullen silence.

The air was thick with the unnatural fog, and the smell of burning wood drifted in its tendrils. The glow had become worse, and now there seemed to be a summer snow: ash drifting to the ground and coating her greasy hair and the shoulders of her grimy tashta. There were un-definable sounds in the fog, overlaid with the continual unearthly wail of the wind-horns.

She stared at the door where she’d last seen Talis. There was no one there now, and she hadn’t seen Nico. There’s nothing you can do for him. For the moment, he’s safe. She pressed her hands to her swelling belly. Maybe the voices were right. Maybe she should flee the city. Save her own child.

But Nico was her child, too. Cenzi had brought him to her. He had chosen her, and Nico was hers as much as the unborn child inside her.

“Too late…”

Or maybe not. Grimacing, she turned away from Nico’s house and moved swiftly out into the streets. She had to see with her own eyes, had to know what was happening. The streets were far more crowded than they should have been at this time of night, but people were hurrying to their destinations without looking at each other, fear frozen on their features. Many of them kept their hands near weapons openly carried: swords whose scabbards were peeling leather and whose blades were spotted with rust; knives that looked as if they’d last carved a roasted pig. There would be violence in these streets before this night ended: a harsh word, an unintended jostle, a misinterpreted move-anything could ignite it, a spark to dry tinder. She knew it because violence lived inside her. She could smell the blood ready to spill.

But not yet. Not yet. She kept to shadows, she said nothing to any of them. The White Stone avoided killing, unless it was for pay or for her own protection.

She reached the Avi a’Parete and turned south. As she approached the river, the smell of smoke grew ever stronger, the smoke and fog intermingling so it was impossible to tell one from the other. There were fires burning in the warren of close-set buildings to the west of the Avi, the flames licking high enough to be seen from where she stood. A teni-driven carriage came rushing up from the Pontica Kralji, with a half dozen fire-teni aboard: their faces covered with soot; already exhausted from the effort of using their spells to extinguish the multitude of fires. A squadron of Garde Kralji, their swords out and their faces grim, accompanied them, surrounding a pack of sullen-looking men in plain bashtas, most of them very old or very young. “You!” the offizier of the squadron barked, pointing at a gray-bearded ancient lurking near the building nearest her. “And you!”-this to a youth who could not have been more than twelve, being pulled along by his matarh. “Both of you! Come with us! Lively, now!”

The matarh screeched her objection, the man started to run the other way, then evidently decided he wouldn’t make it. The Garde Kralji closed around them and moved off into the night in the direction of the fires, taking boy and old man with them as the matarh screamed in futile protest.

She continued south until she saw the columns of the Pontica Kralji looming through the smoke. She paused there, looking out over the A’Sele. What she saw horrified her and made the voices inside her laugh.

On the river, several of the warships were afire, already burned nearly down to the waterline, the wreckage clogging the river so that those ships that were still untouched could barely maneuver. Over the northern branch of the river, the Isle A’Kralji burned. The Kraljica’s Palais was a yellow-orange inferno with a volcano of sparks whirling away from it. The grand new dome of the Old Temple looked to be shattered, fire licking at the supports that had been erected around it. There were scattered small fires here and there. The bridges, especially the two leading to the South Bank, were crowded with people fleeing, pushing carts loaded with belongings or burdened with packs. She heard a crash behind her; glancing back over her shoulder toward the buildings crowding the Avi on this bank, she saw a crowd of people smashing down the door of a bakery, and also that of a jeweler. The street behind her was getting crowded and noisy. Somewhere inside one of the shops, she heard a woman scream.

Blood. She could smell the blood. She touched the leather pouch under the cloth of her tashta and felt the smooth, polished stone there.

“The rioting’s begun…”

“It will only get worse…”

The voices shouted alarm in her head. “Have you gone stupid, woman? Move!”

She did. She strode unhurriedly toward the nearest alley, a trash-littered space between the backs of buildings. She would go back to Nico’s house. She would watch and if things became dangerous there, she would be there to help him, to get him out. If his real parents could not protect him, she would be his true parent and do so. She touched her stomach as she walked. “And I will do the same for you,” she whispered to the stirring life inside her. “I will. I promise.”

The voices laughed and cackled.

She saw motion at the edge of her vision in the fog and smoke, felt the prickling of danger. She whirled around. “Hey!” A man stood there-dark hair speckled with gray, but young enough that she wondered how he’d managed to avoid the press gangs prowling Oldtown. His hands were up as if in surprise, and he was smiling, showing the gaps where teeth were missing. “No need to be frightened, Vajica, is there?” he said. She could see his tongue moving behind the sparse teeth. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, I did.” He took a step toward her. “Dangerous days right now.”

“For you, yes,” she answered. “I can take care of myself.”

“Ah, you can, eh?” He sidled to one side, blocking her from moving into the alley. She turned with him, always facing him. “Not many can say that today.” He took a step toward her, and she scowled.

“Don’t,” she told him, even though she knew already that he wouldn’t listen. “You’ll regret it. You don’t want to meet the White Stone.”

He laughed. “The White Stone, is it? Are you telling me that the White Stone is interested in the likes of you?”

She didn’t reply. He took another step, close enough that she could smell him, and he reached out to grab her arm. In that same moment, she crouched and slid a dagger from its sheath in her boot, stabbing hard upward under the man’s rib cage, pushing him backward into the alleyway. He gasped, his mouth gaping like a fish; she felt hot blood pouring over her hand. His fingers clawed at her arm, but fell away softly. She heard him take a gurgling breath as blood trickled from his mouth. She let the body fall as she reached under the collar of her tashta for the pouch. Hurrying, she pulled it from around her neck and let the snow-pale, polished stone spill from the pouch into her hand. She pressed the stone down on his right eye. Her own eyes were closed.

Ah, the death wail… She could hear him screaming, could feel his presence entering the stone as the others moved aside to make room for his dying spirit. The silent howling of the man filled her mind, so loud that she was surprised it didn’t echo around them. When the stone had taken him fully in, she removed the stone from his eye and placed it back in the pouch, placing the leather string around her neck again and letting the pouch fall down between her breasts under the tashta.

“The White Stone protects what is hers,” she said to the open-eyed corpse.

Then, the voices rising to fill her head again and a new one joining the mad chorus, she made her way back toward Nico’s home.