A Magic of Nightfall

Sergei ca’Rudka

“ You don’t trust me, Karl?”

Sergei watched the emotions washing over Karl’s face. The man had a remarkably open face for a diplomat, a defect he’d possessed for as long as Sergei had known the man. Everything Karl thought revealed itself to an observer schooled in reading faces. Maybe that was just the Paeti way of things; Sergei had known a few people from the Isle over the decades, and most of them tended not only to speak their mind too openly, but also made little attempt to hide their genuine feelings or emotions. Perhaps that was what made the Isle renowned for its great poets and bards, for its songs and the fierce passion and temper of its people, but it also made them vulnerable, in Sergei’s estimation.

Theirs was not Sergei’s way.

Karl blinked at the assault of the question, which Sergei had fired at him before the servant had even closed the door. Karl stood at the door to Sergei’s office, uncertain, as the door clicked softly behind him. “Of course I do, Sergei,” he half-stammered, the words thick with the lilting Paeti accent. “I don’t know what you’re…” Then: “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” Sergei took a breath, rubbing at his nose. “I just had a rather unpleasant visit from Ambassador cu’Gorin-though frankly any visit from him tends to be unpleasant. Still, he seems to think you’re a dangerous man who should be residing in the Bastida rather than walking the streets. Actually, he said: ‘In Brezno, that man would be gutted and hung in a gibbet for his impertinence, let alone his embrace of heresy.’ I really don’t think he likes you.” Sergei rose and went to Karl, slapping him once on the back.

Cu’Gorin had indeed complained about Karl, but the Firenzcian Ambassador had come at Sergei’s request, and gone away with a sealed message that Sergei hoped was already in the pouch of a rider tearing down the Avi a’Firenzcia toward Brezno. But none of that was anything he was going to tell ca’Vliomani. “Come. Sit with me, old friend. I’ll have Rodger bring us some tea. I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

A short time later, they were seated on a balcony overlooking the grounds. Groundkeepers prowled the gardens below them, pulling any weed daring to show its common head among the royalty of the flowers. The tea and biscuits sat untouched by either of them.

“Karl, you have to leave this to me.”

“I can’t.”

“You must. My people are aggressively looking for the person or persons who did this to Ana. I am riding Commandant cu’Falla on this as if he were a horse. I won’t let it drop, I won’t let it rest. I promise you that. I want justice for Ana as much as you do. But you have to let me do it. Not you. You need to stay out of the investigation.”

Karl looked at Sergei then, and Sergei saw despair pulling at the pouches below the man’s eyes, dragging down the corners of his mouth. “Sergei, I’m convinced it had to be a Firenzcian plot. With Hirzg Jan dead and Fynn on the throne, it just makes sense that he, and maybe Archigos Semini of Brezno-” Karl licked at his lips. “They all have a reason to hate Ana.”

Sergei stopped Karl with a lifted hand. “Reasons, yes, but you’ve no proof. Neither do I. Not yet.”

“Who else would want Ana dead? Tell me. Is there someone in the Holdings, maybe a jealous a’teni who wanted to be Archigos? Or someone from one of the provinces? Do you suspect someone else?”

“No,” Sergei admitted. “Firenzcia is who I suspect myself. But we need to know before we act, Karl.” The lie, as it always did, came easily to his mouth. Sergei was used to lies. One would not be heard in his voice, or seen in the twitch of a muscle.

Sometimes he thought that he was composed entirely of lies and deceptions, that if you took those away from him, he’d be nothing but a ghost.

“Know?” Karl repeated. “The way you knew when you threw me into the Bastida years ago? The way you knew that I and the Numetodo must have had something to do with Kraljica Marguerite’s death?”

Sergei rubbed at the silver nose as he scowled at the memory. “I was following Kraljiki Justi’s orders at the time. You know that. And you’ll note that you’re still alive when Justi would have preferred you dead. Give me credit for that. Karl, the stakes here are far too high for guesses, or for hotheads barging into the Ambassador of the Coalition’s office and threatening him. If your guess is right, and Hirzg Fynn was responsible for this act, the only thing you’ve accomplished is to give him warning of our suspicions. You and Varina actually used Numetodo spells?” He tsked aloud, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him outright.”

“I wanted to,” Karl said. For a moment, the lines around his mouth tightened, and his eyes glittered in the sunlight. “But I thought of Ana…” The glittering in his eyes increased. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his bashta.

For a moment, Sergei felt genuine pity and empathy for the man. Archigos Ana he had respected, because there was no other choice. Ana never let anyone get too close to her, even those-like Karl-who might have wished that. Sergei knew this because he had watched Karl over the years, watched him because it was his duty to know the predilections and interests of those prominent in the Holdings. He knew Karl frequently engaged the services of the more expensive and discreet grandes horizontales within the city, and-interestingly to Sergei-each of those women whom Karl favored bore a physical resemblance to the Archigos, changing over the decades as Ana had changed herself. It took little intuition to guess why that might be.

Karl… Sergei liked the man, as much as he ever allowed himself to like anyone. He nodded to the Numetodo. “I’m glad Ana’s ghost held back your hand, or otherwise, I might have had no choice. Karl, you have to drop this. Promise me. Let those under me work the investigation. I will tell you anything I find.” That was another lie, of course. Sergei already knew details about the assassination that he had no intention of sharing with Karl; there were suspicions in his mind that he would not voice.

In the darkness of the Bastida, he’d had the gardai leave him alone with the man, an employee of the trader Gairdi, who regularly ran between Nessantico and Brezno. He’d heard the delicious whimper as he unrolled the canvas strip with its grim tools laced inside, and Sergei had smiled at the prisoner. “Tell me the truth,” he’d said, “and perhaps we’ll need none of this.” That, too, had been a lie, but the man had jumped at the opportunity, babbling in a quick, high voice. The screams, when they’d come later, had been exquisite.

There were some vices in him that had become stronger with age, not weaker. “Promise me,” Sergei said again.

Karl hesitated. His gaze skittered away from Sergei to the garden below, and Sergei followed it. There, a gardener dug his finger into soil so wet and rich it appeared black and plucked another weed. The worker tossed the tangle of leaves and roots into the canvas bag slung over his shoulder. Sergei nodded: the necessary work that kept the garden beautiful required death, too.

“I promise, Sergei.” Sergei, trapped in the image, looked back to find Karl smiling wanly at him.

Yet… There was something Karl wasn’t saying, some information he was withholding. Sergei could see it. He nodded as if he believed the man and decided that he would have cu’Falla put someone to watching Karl, with orders to learn what the man knew as well as to prevent the Paetian Ambassador from making a critical mistake-especially one that might interfere with Sergei’s own intentions.

Ana was dead. While she lived, a strong and firm presence guiding the Faith, Sergei hadn’t been willing to move the way he contemplated moving now. But with her dead, with the far weaker and uncertain Kenne elected to the Archigos’ throne, with Kraljiki Audric so ill and frail and young…

Everything had changed.

“Good,” Sergei said, returning Karl’s smile warmly. “This has been hard for all of us, but especially for you, my good friend. Now, let’s have some of this tea before it gets cold, and nibble on the biscuits. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten for a few days, from the look of you. Haven’t Varina and Mika been watching after you…?”

That evening, a turn of the glass after the wind-horns sounded Third Call, Sergei sat with the new Archigos Kenne on the viewing balcony of the temple on the South Bank, watching the daily Ceremony of the Light. For two centuries and more now, the teni of the Concenzia Faith had come from the temple in the evening and-with the gift of the Ilmodo-set ablaze the lamps that banished night from the city. For all his life, Sergei had witnessed the daily rite. The gilded, crystal-globed teni-lamps were placed at five-stride intervals along the grand Avi a’Parete, the wide ring boulevard encircling the oldest sections of the city. Until late into the night, the lamps hurled their challenge to the moon and stars, proclaiming Nessantico’s greatness.

To Sergei, this was the ceremony that defined Nessantico to the populace. This was the ceremony that proclaimed Cenzi’s support of the Kralji and of the Concenzia Faith, a ceremony that had existed unchanged for generations-until Archigos Ana’s time. Now it meant less, when there were people walking the street who could produce light themselves: without calling on Cenzi, without the training of a teni. Ana’s acceptance of the Numetodo heresy had lessened the Faith, in Sergei’s opinion, and had forced the people’s view of it to change.

Change. Sergei disliked change. Change meant instability, and instability meant conflict.

Change meant that everything must be reevaluated. Ana… Sergei had never been particularly close to the woman, but in his role as Commandant of the Garde Civile, then as Regent, he had certainly worked in tandem with her. Whatever her personal faults, she had been strong and Sergei admired strength. It was only her presence on the Archigos’ throne that had kept Justi’s reign as Kraljiki from being a complete catastrophe. For that alone, he would always be grateful to her memory.

But now Kenne was Archigos. Sergei genuinely liked Kenne as a person. He enjoyed the man’s company and his friendship. But Kenne would not be the Archigos that Ana had been. Could not be, for he lacked the steel inside. Sergei understood why the Concord A’Teni chose him-because none of the other a’teni wanted the title, the responsibility, or the conflicts that came with the Archigos’ throne and staff, and they especially feared it now. Kenne was no one’s enemy, and, most especially, Kenne was old. Kenne was frail. He would not hold Cenzi’s staff for many years… and maybe when he died, it would be a less turbulent time.

The Concord had acted out of their own self-preservation, and so the Concord had given the Faith a poor Archigos.

Sergei wondered if Kenne would ever forgive him for what that meant.

The two men stood as the light-teni emerged in their long processional line from the great main doors directly below them. Sergei could hear the sonorous melody of the choir finishing the evening devotions in the temple’s main chapel, the sound echoing plaintively throughout the square as the doors opened. The sun had just set, though the clouded western sky was still a furious swirl of reds and oranges. In the glow, the teni turned and gave their Archigos the sign of Cenzi, and Kenne blessed them with the same sign.

The e-teni-all of them looking impossibly young to Sergei’s eyes, all of them solemn with the weight of their duty-bowed as one to the Archigos, green robes swaying like a field of grass in the wind, before turning again to cross the vast courtyard before the temple. The usual crowds had gathered to watch the ceremony, though the crowds were less thick in recent years than they had been in the time of Kraljica Marguerite, when the Holdings had been one and visitors flocked to Nessantico from all points of the compass. In recent years, there were far fewer visitors from the east and south, from Firenzcia or the Magyars, from Sesemora or Miscoli. With the war in the Hellins across the Strettosei, many of the young men were gone and families traveled less. Though the courtyard of the Old Temple was full of onlookers, the Garde Kralji had no trouble making room for the light-teni; Sergei could see the paving-cobbles between them. The teni reached the Avi and split into two lines, spreading out east and west along the Avi and going to the nearest lamps, set on either side of the gated entrance to the Archigos’ Temples.

The first of the light-teni went to the lamps. They stood underneath the shimmering globe of cut glass, looking up into the evening sky as if they glimpsed Cenzi watching them, and they spoke a single word and gestured from chest to lamp, closed fist to open hand.

The lamps erupted with brilliant yellow light.

Sergei applauded with Kenne. Yet…

That single word to release the spell: that was a change, too; a nod to the Numetodo, who could quickly release their spells. It was another of the changes Ana had wrought. “I miss the old ways sometimes, Archigos,” Sergei said to Kenne. “The long chanting, the sequence of gestures, the way the effort visibly wearied your teni.. . The Numetodo way of using the Ilmodo makes it look too easy. There was…” He sighed as the two men sat again. “… a mystery to it then, a sense of labor and love and ritual that’s vanished. I’m not sure that Ana made the right decision when she allowed the teni to start using the Numetodo methods to light our streets.”

He saw Kenne nod. “I understand,” Kenne answered. “Part of me agrees with you, Sergei; there was a feeling to the old rituals that’s gone now. But the Numetodo proved their worth against Hirzg Jan, and Ana could hardly renounce them afterward, could she?” Sergei heard him give a soft, self-deprecating chuckle. “We’re old men, Sergei. We want things to be the way they used to be, back when we were young. When the world was right and Marguerite was going to sit on the Sun Throne forever.”

Yes. I want that more than you’d believe. Sergei scratched at the side of the nose where the glue irritated his skin; a few flecks of the resin flaked off under his fingernail. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Things were good then, with Kraljica Marguerite and Dhosti wearing the Archigos’ robes. There was no better time for the Holdings or for the Faith. We lived in a perfect time and we didn’t even know it.”

“Yes, we did. I agree.” Kenne sighed with the memory.

The gilded doors to the temple behind them opened and an older u’teni emerged: Sergei recognized him: Petros cu’Magnaio, Kenne’s assistant. The man had lived with Kenne since his time with Archigos Dhosti. Kenne nodded to cu’Magnaio with a smile as he set down a tray of fruit and tea between the two of them. It never bothered Sergei that Kenne was afflicted with what was euphemistically called “Gardai’s Disease.” There was some truth, after all, to the appellation: when away for years on a campaign, soldiers sometimes took comfort where they could find it, with those who were around them. “It will be getting chilly with the sunset,” cu’Magnaio said. “I thought the two of you might like hot tea.”

Kenne’s hand hovered above cu’Magnaio’s but didn’t quite touch him-Sergei knew that would have been different if he had not been there. “Thank you, Petros. We won’t be long here, but I appreciate it.”

Cu’Magnaio bowed and gave the sign of Cenzi to them. “I’ll make sure that you’re not disturbed while you’re talking. Archigos, Regent.

…” He left them, closing the balcony doors behind him.

“He’s a good man,” Sergei said. “You’ve been lucky with him.”

Kenne nodded, gazing fondly toward the doors where Petros had gone. Then he shook himself as if remembering something. “Speaking of those who have sat on the Sun Throne, Sergei, I’m sorry the Kraljiki couldn’t join us this evening. How is Audric feeling?”

Sergei lifted a shoulder. Below, the light-teni moved out from the temple to lamps further down the Avi, the crowds walking with them, murmuring. The doves fluttered down from the domes of the Temple and the rooftops of the buildings in the complex to peck at the vacated stones of the plaza for leavings. “He’s not good.” He glanced back over his shoulder; the doors remained closed but he still lowered his voice. “Have you had any luck finding another teni with healing skills?”

Kenne sighed. “That has always been among the rarest of gifts, and since the Divolonte specifically condemns its use… well, it’s been difficult. But I have hopes. Petros is making judicious inquiries for me. We’ll find someone.” He paused, glanced at the fruit on the plate between them and selected a piece. Kenne had long, delicate hands, but the flesh wrapping his bones was wrinkled and thin, and Sergei could see the tremor as the Archigos lifted a slice of sweetrind to his lips and sucked at it. We can’t afford weakness in both the Kraljiki and the Archigos, not if we hope to survive.

“Sergei, we need to consider what happens if the boy dies,” Kenne continued, almost as if he’d heard Sergei’s thoughts. “Justi’s offspring…” He frowned and set the sweetrind back on the plate. “Too sour,” he said. “Justi’s children have never been known for their longevity.”

The teni moved along the Avi and out of sight. The crowds in the square of the temple began to disperse; the sound of the choir ended in a lingering, ethereal chord. “I hope that Cenzi doesn’t make us face that choice,” Sergei said carefully. “But it’s what everyone’s wondering, isn’t it?”

“There are the ca’Ludovici twins, Sigourney or Donatien. They’re, what…” Kenne’s thin lips pursed in concentration. “… second cousins once removed from Audric and first cousins to Justi, since Marguerite was their great-great aunt. They’re already of age and more, which is good. Donatien, particularly, has distinguished himself in the Hellin Wars, even if things haven’t been going well of late, and he’s married to a ca’Sibelli, a solid Nessantican family-we could call him back from the Hellins. Sigourney might be the better choice, though. She still carries the ca’Ludovici surname, of course: that certainly has incredible weight here, and she’s made her presence felt on the Council of Ca’. The two of them have the closest lineage claim, I believe, and I’m certain the Council of Ca’ would sustain either of their claims to take the Sun Throne.”

Sergei was unsurprised to find that the Archigos’ thoughts were so closely paralleling his own; he suspected this was the case throughout both the Holdings and the Coalition. He paused, wondering whether he should say more. It would be interesting, perhaps, to see how Kenne would react. “Allesandra ca’Vorl can claim the same lineage and the same relationship through her matarh,” Sergei answered, as if idly musing. “For that matter, so could the new Hirzg Fynn. They’re also second cousins to Marguerite-with a claim to the throne equal to Sigourney or Donatien.”

In the fierce light of the teni-lamps, Kenne’s eyebrows clambered up the ridges of his forehead. “You’re not seriously suggesting…”

The volatile tone was the reaction he’d expected, and Sergei grinned quickly to make it seem that the words were only a jest. “Hardly,” Sergei told him. “Just pointing out how Allesandra might respond. Certainly Sigourney or Donatien would be good choices, as you suggest, though perhaps we need Donatien to remain as commandant in the Hellins. However, Audric’s not dead, and I’d prefer that he stay that way. But if the worst would happen… You’re right; we should be considering the succession. The Holdings are already broken, thanks to Justi’s incompetence, and we can’t afford to have what is left shatter further.” He paused. He deliberately narrowed his eyes and stroked his chin, as if the thought had just now occurred to him. “But

… Perhaps a compromise could be worked between the Holdings and the Coalition if the worst happened, Kenne. A ca’Vorl to take the Sun Throne, but the Concenzia Faith ruled by you, not Semini ca’Cellibrecca.” There. See what he makes of the offer.

“You’d have Ana’s murderers seated on the Sun Throne?” The horror in the man’s voice was palpable.

Sergei sniffed-a loud sound, whistling through the metal nostrils of his false nose. “You’re making the same accusation as Ambassador ca’Vliomani. As of the moment, it’s unfounded.”

“Who else would have done this to Ana, Sergei? We know it wasn’t the Numetodo-she was their ally.”

Sergei didn’t push the point any further. He already knew what he needed to know. “That’s something my people are trying to determine. And we will.” The sunset fire no longer burned in the western sky. The stars were competing against the colder flames of the teni-lamps, and the evening chill was settling around the city. Sergei shivered and rose from his chair. His knee joints cracked and protested at the movement; he grunted with the effort. Sergei could still feel the ache in his muscles and the lingering bruises from when he’d flung himself over Audric in the temple.

Old men, indeed…

Petros must have been watching (and undoubtedly listening, as well) through the cracks of the temple doors; as soon as Sergei stood the doors opened and an e’teni attendant hurried to him with his overcloak. He could see Petros standing in the gloom of the corridor beyond. “I should be checking on Audric, Archigos,” Sergei said as he shrugged on the woolen folds. “If you find someone with the skills we were discussing, please bring him or her to the palais immediately.”

“I’ll stop by myself in a turn of the glass or so,” Kenne said. “Petros will have my supper ready now, but I’ll come afterward. To see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Archigos,” Sergei told him. “I will see you then, perhaps.”

As he walked away from the temple, he wondered whether his message had reached Brezno yet, and what reception it might have found.