A Magic of Nightfall

The White Stone

Nessantico…

She had never seen the city before, though of course she’d heard much about it. Even with the Holdings sundered, even with the previous Kraljiki having been a pale shadow of his famous matarh, and even with the current Kraljiki a frail boy who-rumors said-wouldn’t live to his majority, Nessantico retained her allure.

The White Stone had always known she would eventually come here, as anyone with ambition must. The pull of the city was irresistible, and for a person in her line of business, Nessantico was a rich and fertile field to be exploited. But she had not expected to come here so quickly or for these reasons.

After the nearly-botched and hasty assassination of the Hirzg, she had thought it too dangerous to stay in the Coalition. She’d slipped back into her beggar role as Elzbet, hiding herself among the poor who were so often invisible to the ca’-and-cu’, and she’d made her way from Brezno to Montbataille in the eastern mountains that formed the border of Nessantico and Firenzcia, and then down the River A’Sele to the great city itself.

Playing her role, she settled herself in Oldtown. That was the best way to avoid drawing attention to herself. She was just another of the nameless poor walking the streets of the known world’s greatest city, and if she conversed with the voices in her head as she walked, no one would particularly notice or care. Just another crazed soul, a mad-woman babbling and muttering to herself, walking in some interior world at odds with the reality around her.

“You’ll pay for this. You can’t kill me and not pay. They’ll find you. They’ll track you down and kill you.”

“Who?” she asked Fynn’s strident voice as the others inside her laughed and jeered at him. She put her hand to her tashta, feeling underneath the cloth the small leather pouch tied around her neck, and inside it the smooth, pale stone she kept with her always. “Who will come find me? I told you who hired me. Is she going to search for me?”

“You’re worried that someone else will figure it out. You’re worried that word will get out that the White Stone was also the woman who was Jan ca’Vorl’s lover. They’ve seen your face; they would recognize you, and the White Stone’s face can’t be known.”

“Shut up!” she nearly screamed at him, and the screech caused heads to turn toward her. A passing utilino stopped in the midst of his rounds, his teni-lit lantern swinging over to focus on her. She shielded her eyes from the light, stooping over and grinning at the man with what she hoped was a mad leer. The utilino uttered a sound of disgust and the light moved away from her; the other people had already looked away, turning back to their own business.

The voices of her victims were laughing and chuckling and chortling as she turned the corner into Oldtown Center. The famous teni-lamps of Nessantico gleamed and twinkled on the iron posts set around the open plaza. She gazed up at the placards of the shops along the street. Here in the large plaza the shops were still open, though most of those along the side streets had been shuttered since full dark: the teni might light the lamps of Oldtown Center, but they didn’t come to the narrow and ancient streets that led off the Center. They’d set the ring of the Avi A’Parete ablaze all around the city, so that Nessantico seemed to wear a collar of yellow brilliance, and they would illuminate the wide streets of the South Bank where most of the ca’-and-cu’ lived, but Oldtown was left to dwell in night.

The moon had slid behind a cloud, and a drizzle threatened to turn into a hard rain. She hurried along toward the Center, knowing that the weather would send everyone home and set the shopkeepers to shuttering their stores.

There: she saw the mortar and pestle of an apothecary just down the lane, and she shuffled toward it through the rapidly-thinning crowds, keeping her back near the bricks and stones of the buildings and her head down. Once, a passing man touched her arm: a graybeard, who leered at her with missing teeth and breath that smelled of beer and cheese. “I have money,” he said to her without prelude, his face slick with rain. “Come with me.”

Whore! the voices called out at her gleefully, mocking. Why not?-you let them pay you for other services. She glared at him, and showed him the hilt of the knife at her waist. “I’m not a whore,” she told him, told them. Her hand grasped the knife, and raindrops scattered from her cloak with the motion. “Back away.”

The man laughed, gap-toothed, and spread his hands. “As you wish, Vajica. No harm, eh?” Then his gaze slid away from her and he walked on, splashing in the gathering puddles. She watched him go.

She could rid herself of him, but not of the others. They were with her always.

She’d reached the apothecary and glanced inside the open shutters. There was no one inside except for the balding proprietor. She went inside, the man glancing up from his jars and vials behind the counter as the bell on the door jingled brightly.

“Good evening to you. A foul night-I was just about to close up. How can I help you, Vajica?” His words were pleasant, but the tone of them and the look he gave her were less inviting. He seemed torn between coming from behind the counter and returning to his interrupted preparations to close. “A potion for headaches? Something to ease a cough?”

The White Stone would have been firm, would have been certain, but she wasn’t the White Stone now, only an unranked, nondescript young woman dripping on the floor, a person who could be mistaken for a common prostitute walking the streets or trying to escape the weather for a moment.

Is this what you really want? She wasn’t sure who asked the question, or whether it was her own self who asked. The voices had been quiet when she’d been with Jan. Somehow, being with him had quieted the turmoil inside her head, and that had been at least part of the attraction he’d had for her, had been why she’d let herself grow far more attached than she should have. With Jan, for that little time, she’d felt herself healing. She’d thought that maybe she could become someone other than the White Stone, could become normal. Jan. .. She wondered what he was thinking now, whether he was feeling that he’d been played the fool, or if he ever thought of her with regret. She wondered whether he knew who she’d been, that she’d killed his uncle, or if he thought she’d fled only because she pretended to be someone she wasn’t and had been found out.

“Vajica?”

She wondered if he would ever know just how much she regretted it all.

She touched her stomach gently again, as she had more and more recently. She should have had her monthly bleeding even before she’d killed Fynn ca’Vorl. She’d thought perhaps it was the stress that had made it a few days late. But the bleeding hadn’t come during her flight; it still hadn’t come during the days she’d been in Nessantico, and there was now the strange nausea when she woke and there were stranger feelings inside.

It’s all you will have of him. Do you really want to do this?

It might have been her own voice. It might have been all of them.

“Vajica? I don’t have all evening. The rain…”

She shook her head, blinking. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I…” Her hand touched her abdomen again.

He was staring at her, at the motion of her hand on her belly. His chin lifted and fell, and he rubbed a hand over his bald head as if smoothing invisible hair. “I may have what you want, Vajica,” he said, and his voice was gentler now. “Young ladies of your age, they come to me sometimes, and like you, they don’t quite know what to say. I have a potion that will bring on your bleeding. That’s what you need, isn’t it? However, I must tell you that it’s not easy to make, and therefore not cheap.”

She stared at him. She listened. She put her hand to the collar of her soaked tashta and felt the stone in its leather pouch.

The voices were silent.

Silent.

“No,” she told him. She backed away, hearing the door jingle as her heel slammed into it. “No. I don’t want your potion. I don’t want it.”

She turned then and fled into the plaza and the harsh assault of the rain, the teni-lights flaring around her and reflecting on the wet streets.

That was when she heard the wind-horns begin to blow alarm, all across the city.