A Magic of Nightfall

Karl Vliomani

“ Well?” Karl asked Varina as she returned to the room. Varina shrugged off her overcloak and sank down on a chair. “She’s Nico’s matarh, that’s certain,” Varina said. “I told her that I’d heard her son had run away, and that when we stayed in Nessantico, I saw a boy on Crescent Street. Her eyes widened at that, and she told me that was where she’d lived until last month. When I described the boy and the house, she started sobbing. It was all I could do to stop her from rushing back to Nessantico tonight.”

“And Talis?”

“Talis is the boy’s vatarh, and she’s in love with him, Karl,” Varina said. “That much was also obvious; in fact, I suspect she’s with child by him again, the way she hugs her body when she talks about him. Your encounter with him scared him enough that he sent her and Nico away from the city-I think he thought you’d have the Garde Kralji after him. She’s been waiting here hoping he’ll come for her, hoping that Nico would return as well.” Varina leaned her head back and closed her eyes, sighing. “She’s not going to betray Talis to get Nico back, Karl. Honestly, I didn’t even broach that possibility with her. Frankly, I’m certain she’s in her room now packing, getting ready to leave tomorrow for Nessantico, hoping to find Nico there. She’s been grieving and frantic ever since he left.” She opened her eyes again, looking at him. “It’s what I’d do, in her place. I’m sorry-I know what you wanted me to do, but… I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t hold her child hostage against her giving us Talis, not when we don’t actually know where Nico is. I’m sorry. I know you suspect that Talis may be the one who killed Ana, and you have good reasons for those suspicions, but this…”

Another sigh. She spread her hands wide. “I couldn’t do it.”

There was no apology in her voice or in her gaze. And he found that he couldn’t summon any anger toward her-he knew how it would have been with his own sons. He might have been a poor, absent vatarh for them, but had it come to that, he would have done whatever he’d needed to do for them.

At least that’s what he told himself. He wondered if it were true. What if Kaitlin had sent for him while he was in Nessantico, while Ana was alive? What if she’d asked him to return, for the sake of his sons? Would he have gone? Or would he have made some excuse, found some compelling reason that he must remain here with Ana.

“Karl?” Varina asked. “Are you angry with me?”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I understand.” His fingers prowled stubble. He felt old tonight. His bones were cold, and the fire in the hearth did nothing to warm them. “I’ll go back with her,” he said finally, when the silence had threatened to go on too long. “Maybe Talis will come for her. Maybe she knows where Talis is hiding.”

“If you go back, the Garde Kralji will find you, and the Kraljiki will have you tortured and executed. Your corpse will be swinging in one of the cages of the Pontica Kralji, with crows picking the flesh from your bones.”

He shivered, hugging himself with arms that felt tired and weak. “You may be right. But what am I running toward, Varina? Leaving Nessantico-what did I really gain by that? How will I find out who killed Ana somewhere else?” He shook his head. “No, I need to go back. Isn’t that the Numetodo method?-to learn, you must examine; to understand, you must experience. You must have facts. Finding Nico’s matarh…” He shivered again. “It’s almost as if Ana’s ghost had led me here.”

“You don’t believe in either ghosts or gods, Karl. Believe only in what you can see and touch and examine. Isn’t that the Numetodo method?”

He smiled faintly at that. “No, I don’t believe in ghosts,” he told her. “But it’s strange how comforting such a thought could be, isn’t it? It almost makes you understand the hold faith has on people.” He drew a long, slow breath. “Still, I’m going back.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” Varina told him. “Just like you, there’s nothing I’m running toward. And you’ll need help.”

“You don’t need to do this. The Kraljiki would do the same to you as he would me… or worse. There’s no reason for you to go back, after all…” His voice trailed off.

She didn’t answer, but he saw the set of her lips and the posture of her body, he saw the way she was nearly glaring at him, and suddenly he knew, and the revelation was painful. “Oh,” he said. He wondered how he could have been so blind. He got up from his seat at the bed and went over to where she was sitting. He started to put his hand on her shoulder, but her eyes narrowed and he drew his hand back. “Varina…”

Her gaze held him, her brown eyes searching his. “You loved Ana, even though she never quite loved you the same way in return. She was too caught up in what she saw as her own task in life,” Varina said quietly. She nodded. Her lips twitched once as if she wanted to smile, then fell back to a frown. “Well, I understand that, Karl. I understand that very well.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

She did smile then, the expression tinged with an underlying emotion Karl couldn’t decipher. “Then you shouldn’t say anything. I haven’t said anything that needs a reply-beyond telling you that I’m going back with you no matter what you say.”

She held his gaze, unblinking, until he nodded. “All right,” he said. She nodded but otherwise said nothing. The silence grew long and increasingly uncomfortable, both of them staring at the small fire in the hearth. The thoughts roiled in Karl’s head: all the times he and Varina had been together, the comments she’d made, the glances she’d given him, the occasional touches, the way she’d always deflected questions about any romantic interests she might have had, the way she’d flung herself into the work of the Numetodo.

He should have known. Should have realized. But the silence had already made the questions he should have asked more difficult. He cleared his throat. “If… If you’re going back to Nessantico with me, then perhaps you need to start showing me more of this Westlander way of magic.”

Retreating into work to avoid intimacy: that was what Ana had always done, after all.