A Magic of Nightfall

Jan ca’Vorl

“ I have to ride as quickly as I can to Brezno,” his matarh had told him. “I’ve instructed the servants to pack up our rooms for travel. I want you to follow along as soon as they have the carriages ready. And, Jan, see if you can convince your vatarh to come with you.” She kissed his forehead then, more urgently than she had in years, and pulled him into her. “I love you,” she whispered. “I hope you know that.”

“I do,” he’d told her, pulling away and grinning at her. “And I hope you know that.”

She’d smiled, hugging him a final time before she swung herself onto the horse held by the two chevarittai who would accompany her. He watched the trio clatter away down the road of their estate at a gallop.

That had been two days ago. His matarh should have made Brezno yesterday. Jan leaned his head back against the cushions of the carriage, watching the landscape of southern Firenzcia pass by in the green-gold light of late afternoon. The driver had told him that they would be stopping at the next village for the evening, and arrive in Brezno by midday tomorrow. He wondered what he’d find there.

He was alone in his carriage.

He’d asked his vatarh Pauli to come with him, as his matarh had requested. The servants had told him that Pauli was in his apartments at the estate-in a separate wing from those of Allesandra-and Pauli’s chief aide had gone in to announce Jan. The aide had returned with arched eyebrows. “Your vatarh says he can spare a few moments,” he’d said, escorting Jan to one of the reception rooms off the main corridor.

Jan could hear the muffled giggling of two women from a bedroom leading from the room. The door opened in the middle of a man’s coarse laugh. His vatarh was in a robe, his hair was tousled and unkempt, and his beard untrimmed. He smelled of perfume and wine. “A moment,” he’d said to Jan, touching a finger to his lips before half-staggering to the door leading to the bedroom and opening it slightly. “Shh!” he said loudly. “I am trying to conduct a conversation about my wife with my son,” he said. That was greeted by shrill laughter.

“Tell the boy to join us,” Jan heard one of them call out. He felt his face flush at the comment as Pauli waggled his forefinger toward the unseen woman.

“The two of you are delightfully wicked,” Pauli told them. Jan imagined the women: rouged, bewigged, half-clothed, or perhaps entirely nude, like one of the portraits of the Moitidi goddesses that adorned the halls. He felt himself responding to the image and forced it out of his mind. “I’ll be there in a moment,” Pauli continued. “You ladies have more wine.”

He closed the door and leaned heavily against it. “Sorry,” he told Jan. “I have… company. Now, what did the bitch want? Oh-you may tell your matarh for me that the A’Gyula of West Magyaria has better things to do than ride to Brezno because someone may or may not be dying. When the old bastard finally does breathe his last, I’ll undoubtedly be sent to the funeral as our representative, and that’ll be soon enough.” His words were slurred. He blinked slowly and belched. “You don’t need to go either, boy. Stay here, why don’t you? The two of us could have some fun, eh? I’m sure these ladies have friends…”

Jan shook his head. “I promised Matarh that I’d ask you to come, and I have. I’m leaving tonight; the servants have nearly finished packing the carriages.”

“Ah, yes,” Pauli said. “You’re such a good, obedient child, aren’t you? Your matarh’s pride and joy.” He pushed himself from the door and stood unsteadily, pointing at Jan with a fingertip that drifted from one side to another. “You don’t want to be like her,” he said. “She won’t be satisfied until she’s running the whole world. She’s an ambitious whore with a heart carved from flint.”

He’d heard Pauli insult his matarh a thousand times, more with each passing year. He’d always gritted his teeth before, had pretended not to hear or mumbled a protest that Pauli would ignore. This time. .. The nascent flush in Jan’s face went lava-red. He took three swift steps across the carpeted room, drew his hand back, and slapped his vatarh across the face. Pauli reeled, staggering back against the door, which opened and toppled him onto a braided rug there. Jan saw the two women inside-half-clothed, indeed, and in his vatarh’s bed. They covered their breasts with the sheets, screaming. Pauli lifted an unbelieving hand to his face; over the thin beard, Jan could see the imprint of his fingers on his vatarh’s cheek.

He wondered for a moment what he’d do if Pauli got up, but his vatarh only blinked again and laughed as if startled.

“Well, you didn’t need to do that,” he said.

“You may have whatever opinion you want of Matarh,” Jan told him. “I don’t care. But from now on, Vatarh, keep them to yourself or we will have more than words.” With that, before Pauli could rise from the carpet or answer, Jan turned and rushed from the room.

He felt strangely exhilarated. His hand tingled. The rest of the day, he expected to be summoned into his vatarh’s presence-once the wine had passed from the man’s head. But when he was told that the carriages were ready and waiting for him, he had heard nothing. He looked up to the windows of his vatarh’s wing as he entered the lead carriage and the servants traveling with him piled into the others. Jan thought he glimpsed a form at the window, watching, and he lifted his hand-the hand that had struck his vatarh.

Another form-a feminine one-approached his vatarh from behind, and the curtain closed again. Jan stepped up into the carriage. “Let’s go,” he told the driver. “We’ve a long journey ahead.”

He looked out from the carriage window again now. For most of the journey, he’d brooded on what had happened. He was nearly sixteen. Nearly a man. He’d even had his first lover-a ce’ girl who had been part of the estate staff, though his matarh had sent her away when she realized that they had become intimate. She’d also given Jan a long lecture on her expectations for him. “But Vatarh-” he’d begun, and she cut off his protest with a sharp slash of her hand.

“Stop there, Jan. Your vatarh is lazy and dissolute, and-forgive my crudeness-he too often thinks with what’s between his legs, not with his head. You’re better than him, Jan. You are going to be important in this world, if you make the choice not to be your vatarh’s child. I know this. I promise you.”

She hadn’t said all that she could have, and they both knew it. Pauli might be Jan’s vatarh, but for him that was just another title and not an occupation. It had been his matarh whom Jan saw each day, who had played with him when he was small, who had come to see him each night after his nursemaids had tucked him into bed. His vatarh. .. He was a tall figure who sometimes tousled Jan’s head or who gave him extravagant presents that seemed more to be a payment for his absence than true gifts.

His vatarh was the A’Gyula of West Magyaria, the son of the current Gyula, the ruler who Jan saw about as often as he saw his other great-vatarh, the Hirzg. People bowed in Pauli’s presence, they laughed and smiled as they talked with him. But Jan had heard the whispers of the staff, and of their guests when they thought no one was listening.

His right hand throbbed, as if with the memory of the slap to his vatarh’s face. He looked at the hand in the dying light of the day: an adult’s hand now. The slap to his vatarh’s face had severed him from his childhood forever.

He would not be his vatarh. That much, he promised himself. He would be his own self. Independent.