A Magic of Nightfall

Karl ca’Vliomani

“ I can’t believe I’m seeing this. Has the Council of Ca’ gone entirely insane?”

Sergei, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs in a corner of the cell, inclined his head significantly toward the garda leaning against the wall outside the bars of the cell. “No,” he said, his voice so low that Karl had to lean forward to hear it. “Not insane. Just eager to pick Audric’s bones clean when he falls. And me?” He laughed bitterly. “I was the easiest jackal for the pack to shove aside. I’m to be the scapegoat for everything, including Ana’s death.”

Karl could taste bile on the back of his tongue. The air of the Bastida was thick and heavy and lay like a massive, sodden shawl around his shoulders, slumping them as he sat in the single chair. Memories flooded him: he had once inhabited this very cell, when Sergei commanded the Garde Kralji. Then, Mad Mahri had snatched Karl from his imprisonment with his strange Westlander magic…

… and the memories of that time, so tied to Ana and his relationship with her, brought back fully the grief and the rage at her death. He lifted his head, his jaw and fists clenched, his eyes threatening to overflow. “It was Westlander magic that killed her,” he said to Sergei. “I nearly had the man.”

“Perhaps,” Sergei told him. “I assure you it wasn’t me.”

“And I know that,” Karl told him. “I will tell the Council the same thing. I’ll go to Councillor ca’Ludovici after I leave here-”

“No,” Sergei told him. “You won’t. Don’t get yourself caught in this, my friend. It’s bad enough that you’ve come to see me-the councillors will know that in a turn of the glass or less. You really don’t want whispers of the Numetodo being involved in any of Audric’s conspiracies-not if you don’t want the Holdings looking like the Coalition.” He paused. “You know what I mean by that, Karl. And be careful what you do with these Westlanders. There are already eyes watching you, and they have little sympathy toward anyone they perceive as being against them.”

“I don’t care,” Karl told him as the lava churned in his stomach again. The resolution that had settled there hardened. I’ll find this Talis again, and this time I will force the truth from him. “What about you?”

“So far I’ve been treated well enough.”

“So far.” Karl shuddered. He thought that Sergei was looking all of his years and more, that perhaps there was more gray in his hair than there’d been even a few days ago. “If they want a statement from you, if they want to punish you here in the Bastida…”

“You don’t need to tell me,” Sergei answered, and Karl thought he saw a visible shudder in Sergei’s normally unflappable posture. “I know better than anyone. That guilt is on my hands, too.” His voice dropped lower again. “Commandant cu’Falla is my friend also, and he has left me an option for that, if it comes to it. I won’t be tortured, Karl. I won’t permit it.”

Karl’s eyes widened slightly. “You mean…?”

A bare nod. His voice lifted again as the garda in the corridor stirred. “Come with me-there’s something I’d show you.” He slowly uncoiled himself from the bed and moved to the balcony as the garda watched them carefully-Sergei’s walk was more a shuffle. The wind lifted Karl’s white hair as they approached the rail of a small ledge that jutted out from the tower. Below, the courtyard of the Bastida appeared small and distant far below, and before them the city spread out. To their left, the A’Sele was sun-sparkled as it flowed beneath the Pontica a’Brezi Veste. There were cages hung from the columns of the bridge, with skeletons huddled inside. Karl shuddered at the sight. “Look here,” Sergei told him. He’d turned so that he faced not the city but the stone wall of the tower, and his finger pressed against one of the stones there. In the massive block of granite, a crack furrowed one corner; above Sergei’s finger, a small single white flower bloomed from the gray stone. “It’s a meadow star,” Sergei said. “Far from its usual home.”

“You always knew your plants.”

Sergei smiled, crinkling the skin around his metal nose. Karl could see the glue lifting and cracking. “You remember that, eh?”

“You made it so I was rather unlikely to forget.”

Sergei nodded. He touched the flower gently. “Look at this beauty, Karl. The barest crack in a stone, and life has found it. A bit of dirt blown in, the stone eroding in the rain to make the thinnest layer of soil, a bird chancing to leave a seed, or perhaps the wind blowing it from a field leagues away so that it falls in just the right place…”

“You should have been a Numetodo, Sergei. Or perhaps an artist. You have the mind for it.”

Another smile. “If this beauty can happen here in this most doleful of places, Karl, then there is always hope. Always.”

“I’m glad you believe that.”

His finger dropped away from the stone. The wind-horns began to blow Second Call, and he glanced out toward the Isle a’Kralji where the Grande Palais gleamed white. Karl wondered whether Audric looked out from one of his windows toward the Bastida, and perhaps glimpsed them there. “I worry about you, Karl. Forgive me, but you’re looking tired and old since she died. You need to take care of yourself.”

Karl smiled at the thought that Sergei’s opinion of Karl’s appearance was much the same as his impression of Sergei. “I am, my friend.” In my own way… His days and nights were spent making inquiries and trying to find the Westlander Talis again. He was tired, but he could not stop. He would not.

“I know you don’t believe in Cenzi or the afterlife,” Sergei was saying to him, “but I do. I know that Ana is watching from the arms of Cenzi, and I also believe she would tell you to still your grief. She’s gone from here, her soul has been weighed, and she dwells now where she wished one day to go. She would want you to believe that much, and start to heal the wound in your heart that her death left.”

“Sergei…” There were no words in him, no way to explain how deep the wound was and how it bled constantly. There was only the pain, and he could think of only one way to still the agony inside him. But that could wait until he found the Westlander again. “If I actually believed any of that, then I’d be tempted to jump from this ledge, right now, so I might be with her again.” He glanced down again, at the flagstones so far below.

“Varina would be upset by that.”

Karl glanced at Sergei quizzically. “What do you mean?”

Sergei seemed to be studying the meadow star’s blossom. “She has qualities that any person would admire, and yet for all these years she’s chosen to put all relationships aside and spend her time studying your Scath Cumhacht.”

“For which I’m very grateful-she has pushed our understanding of it well past where it once was.”

“I’m sure she appreciates your gratitude, Karl.”

“What are you saying? That Varina…?” Karl laughed. “You evidently don’t know her well at all. Varina has no problem speaking her mind. She’s made it clear how she feels about me lately.”

Sergei touched the flower. It shivered at the touch, its fragile hold on the stone threatening to fail. He took his hand away, and turned back to Karl. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. He favored Karl with a smile touched with melancholy. Here in the daylight, Karl could see the deepening lines life had chiseled into the man’s face. Karl looked out over the city. “This was my life’s love,” he said. “This city, and all that she means. I gave her everything…”

Karl leaned close to Sergei, glancing at the garda who was ostentatiously not watching them. “I may be able to get you out of here. My own way.”

He was still staring outward, his hands on the ledge, and he replied to the air. “To make us both fugitives?” Sergei shook his head. “Be patient, Karl. A flower doesn’t bloom in a day.”

“Patience may not be possible. Or wise.”

For an instant, Sergei’s face relaxed as he turned to Karl. “You could do that? Truly?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“You’d endanger the Numetodo with the act. You understand that? Archigos Kenne might be sympathetic to you, but he’s the next person Audric or the Council of Ca’ will go after because he’s simply not strong enough. All the other a’teni are less sympathetic toward the Numetodo; I see the Conclave electing a strong Archigos who will be more in the mold of Semini ca’Cellibrecca in Brezno, or-worse-I see them reconciling with Brezno entirely.”

“The Numetodo have always been in danger. It was only Ana who sheltered us, and then only here in Nessantico itself.” Karl saw Sergei glance at the gardai and the bars of his cell, and he saw resolution touch the man’s face. “When?” Karl asked Sergei.

“If the Council actually gives Audric what he wants…” Sergei stroked the blossom in the wall with a gentle forefinger. The flower shivered under his touch. “Then.”

Karl nodded. “I understand. But first I’ll need your help and your knowledge of this place.”