A Magic of Nightfall

Karl ci’Vliomani

Karl watched the man carefully, standing close to him in the bakery, where he could hear him.

This one seemed different than the others he’d watched. For the last few weeks, Karl had prowled Oldtown, dressed in soiled and ragged clothes, and watching the crowds surging around him. He’d haunted the public places, lurked in the shadows of the hidden squares in the maze of tiny streets, avoiding the occasional utilino who passed on his or her rounds and who might recognize him. He’d looked at the faces, searching for coppery skin tones, for the lifted cheekbones and the slightly flatter faces that he remembered from his own forays into the Westlands decades ago. He’d found a half dozen people, male and female both, that he followed for a time, on whom he’d eavesdropped, whom he’d touched with the Scath Cumhacht to see if they might respond.

There’d been nothing. Nothing.

But now…

“These croissants have been here all day and are half-stale already,” the man said. Karl heard his voice plainly from where he stood at the bakery’s open door, staring out across the street as if he were waiting for someone. He heard the man’s walking stick tapping the wooden floor of the bakery. “They’re worth no more than a d’folia for the dozen.” The words were nothing, but that accent… Karl remembered it well: from his youth, from Mahri-an accent as foreign in Nessantico as his own and as unmistakable.

Karl glanced into the shop in time to see the baker’s scowl. “They’re still as fresh and soft as they were this morning, Vajiki. And worth a se’folia at least. Why, I can sell them to anyone for that-the flour I use was blessed by the u’teni at the Old Temple.”

The man shrugged and waved his hand. “I don’t see anyone else here. Do you? Maybe you’ll wait all day until they’re no better than cobblestones, when I’ll give you two d’folia for them right now. Two d’folias against wasted bread-it seems more than fair to me.”

Karl listened as they bartered, settling on four d’folias for the croissants. The baker wrapped them in paper, grumbling all the while about the price of flour and the time spent baking and the general higher costs for everything in the city recently, until Karl’s quarry left the shop. The man brushed past Karl-the smell of the croissants making Karl’s own stomach grumble-and strolled eastward along the narrow lane. Karl let him get several strides ahead before he followed. The man turned left down a side alley; by the time Karl reached the intersection, the man was halfway down. In the late afternoon, the houses cast purpled shadows over the lane, seeming to lean toward each other as if to converse in whispers over the cobblestones. There was no one else visible in the alleyway. The spells Karl had cast that morning burned inside him, waiting to be released. He started to call out to the man, to make him turn…

… but a child-a boy perhaps ten or eleven-emerged from an intersection a little farther down the lane. “Talis! There you are! Matarh has been wondering if you were coming for supper.”

“Croissants!” Talis told the boy, holding up the wrapped pastries. “I practically stole them from old Carvel. Only four d’folias…” The man-Talis-clapped his arm around the boy. “Come then, we can’t keep Serafina waiting.”

Together, they started walking down the street. Karl hesitated. You can’t do anything with the boy there alongside him. That’s not what Ana would want of you.

The spells still hissed and burbled inside his head, aching for release. He picked one, the least of them. He lifted a fisted hand and whispered a word in Paeti, the language of his home, and felt the energy release and fly away from him. The spell was designed to do nothing at all; it only spread the power of the Scath Cumhacht over the area-enough that someone used to wielding that power would feel it and react.

The reaction was swifter than Karl expected. Talis spun around as soon as Karl released the spell. The boy turned a moment later-probably, Karl thought, because the man had stopped. There was no time for him to conceal himself. Talis, his gaze never leaving Karl, gave the boy the package of croissants and nudged him away. “Nico,” he said. “Go on home. I’ll follow you in a few minutes.”

“But, Talis…”

“Go on,” Talis answered, more harshly this time. “Go on, or your rear end will be regretting it as soon as I get there. Go!”

With that, the boy gulped and ran. He turned the corner and vanished. The man peered into the dimness, then his head drew back and he nodded. “I should thank you, Ambassador, for sparing the boy,” Talis said. One hand was plunged into the side pockets of his bashta, the other was still on his walking stick-if he were about to cast a spell, he showed no signs of it. Still, Karl tensed, his hand upraised and the remaining spells he’d prepared quivering inside him. He hoped he’d guessed right in their making.

“You know me?” he asked.

A nod. “Yours is a well-known face in this city, Ambassador. A bit of poor clothing and dirt on your face doesn’t disguise you well. I really hope you weren’t thinking you could pass unnoticed in Oldtown.”

“You felt my spell. That means you’re one of the Westlander teni, like Mahri.”

“Perhaps I only turned because I heard you speak a word, Ambassador. Spell? I’ve seen the fire-teni light the lamps of the city; I’ve seen them turn the wheels of their chariots or cleanse the foulness from the water. I’ve seen some of the people of this city with their trivial little light spells that the Numetodo have taught them-which I’m sure the Faith finds disturbing. But I saw no spell just now.”

“You have the accent.”

“Then you’ve a good ear, Ambassador; most people think I’m from Namarro,” the man answered. “I’m a Westlander, yes. But like Mahri, no. There have been very few like him.” He seemed relaxed and confident, and that along with his easy admission worried Karl. He began to wonder if he’d made a critical mistake. The man’s too confident, too sure of himself. He’s not afraid of you at all. You should have just watched, should have just followed him. “So why is the Ambassador of the Numetodo walking about Oldtown casting invisible spells to find Westlanders, if I may ask?” Talis asked.

“We’re at war with the Westlanders.”

“ ‘We?’ Are the Numetodo so accepted by the Holdings, then? I can hear accents, too, and I would tell you that there are those of the Isle of Paeti whose sympathies might be more with the Westlanders than those of the Holdings. After all, Paeti was conquered by the Holdings just as the Hellins were, and your people fought against that invasion just as ours are doing now. Perhaps we should be allies, Ambassador, not adversaries.”

Karl’s teeth pressed together as he grimaced. “That depends, Westlander, on what you are doing here, and what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t kill her, if that’s your accusation,” the man said.

Almost, he loosed the spell at that. I didn’t kill her… So the man knew exactly what it was that Karl was after, and his answer was a lie. It must be a lie. The man would say anything to save his life. A Westlander, and a teni… Karl’s lifted hand trembled; the Paetian release word was already on his lips. He could taste it, as sweet as revenge. “I spoke of no murder.”

“Nor did I,” Talis said. “But then I don’t think it murder to kill your enemy in wartime.”

With that, the rage flared inside Karl and he could no longer contain the anger. His fist pumped, he spoke the word: “ Saighnean! ”-and with the word and the motion, blue-white lightning crackled and arced from Karl toward the mocking Westlander.

But the man had moved at the same time, his hand lifting his walking stick. A glow erupted impossibly from the stick, the glare blinding Karl as tendrils of aching brilliance crawled through the air as if they were fingers clawing at a huge, invisible globe. The ethereal fingers snared his lightning and squeezed, a small sun seeming to hang in the air between them as thunder boomed. He heard laughter. Frightened now, he spoke another word: a shielding spell against the attack he was certain would follow.

But the shield fell away unused, and through the shifting curtains of afterimages, he saw that the tiny lane was empty. Talis was gone. Karl shouted his frustration (as heads began to peer cautiously from shuttered windows, as calls and shouts of alarm came from the houses nearest him, as tendrils of smoke curled from charred facades on either side of the street) and Karl ran to the intersection down which the boy had gone.

Neither boy nor Westlander were visible. Karl pounded his fist on the nearest wall and cursed.