A Magic of Nightfall

Nico Morel

After spending several days with the woman, Nico decided she was very strange, but also fascinating. She was good to Nico. She fed him well, she talked to him-long talks in which he found himself telling her everything about his matarh and Talis and how he and his matarh had left Nessantico, and how he hated his onczio and his cousins and left the village, and how the Regent and Varina had helped him…

The woman walked with him during the day around his old neighborhood, with Nico hoping he would see Talis or his matarh.

But he hadn’t. “Your vatarh’s name is Talis Posti?” she had asked him the first night, after he’d told her his story. “You’re sure of that? And he’s here in the city?” He nodded, and she’d said nothing more.

She told Nico her name was Elle, but sometimes when Nico called out that name, she didn’t seem to notice. She would sometimes, in the middle of conversation, respond to some unheard comment or address the air as if talking to it. In public, she seemed to make herself shrivel and look old and frail, but in the privacy of the rooms she kept, she was another person altogether: much younger; strong, athletic, and vital. She kept weapons in the room: a sword leaning in the corner near the door and another at the side of the bed, and there were several knives with wickedly-sharp edges-she nearly always had two or more of those on her person. Nico would watch her when she honed her weapons at night with a whetstone. He’d watch her face, and the loving concentration as she sharpened the razored edges made him shiver.

She had a small leather pouch around her neck that she never took off. It was always there under her clothing, and at night she would clasp her hand around it as she were afraid someone might steal it. He wondered if when she took her daily bath in the copper tub in the common room of the house, she kept it on also. The bathing in itself was strange, since Nico had never seen anyone bathe themselves more than once a week, and more likely once a month. His matarh had always said that if you bathed too much, it caused you to get sick. Maybe, Nico thought, that was what was wrong with Elle.

At odd times, she would tell him to stay in the rooms they rented, and she would go out alone-usually at night. She would be gone for several turns of the glass, and usually Nico would fall asleep waiting for her to return. Whatever she did those nights, she never told him.

Tonight had been one of those nights. “Nico…” He felt her hand shaking him, and he blinked up at her face, candle-lit against the darkness of the room. “Get up,” she told him.

“Why, Elle?”he grumbled sleepily. It was comfortable and warm under the covers. She didn’t answer him-she had already moved to the door of their room.

“I want you to come with me,” she said. Grudgingly, Nico slid the covers aside and lifted himself from the straw-filled mattress. “Shoes,” Elle said as he started to pad toward her barefoot. He slipped on his worn boots as she opened the door. “Stay with me,” she told him, taking his hand. They went out into the night.

Nico knew that Nessantico never slept-not entirely. No matter what time of day or night, there would be people abroad in the Oldtown streets. But the night denizens were more dangerous than those of the day, his matarh had told him. “You’ll understand better when you grow up,” she’d said, more than once. “Night is a mask that the city puts on when it wants to do things it shouldn’t. The business people do at night… well, sometimes they need the darkness to hide it.” He’d glimpsed some of that recently, alone in Oldtown before Elle had found him. He’d witnessed the slurred speech and uncertain walk of the tavern denizens; seen the grunting encounters in dark alleys; glimpsed the quick, brutal assaults; witnessed the furtive exchange of jingling coins for wrapped packages. He stayed close to Elle now as they moved through the streets, alive with those wearing the mask of night.

She walked rapidly, so much so that he had to half-run to keep up with her. They cut across a corner of Oldtown Center and into the tangle of lanes running south and west toward the river, the buildings on either side growing rapidly older, smaller, and closer together, as if they wanted to huddle together in the night for warmth. Nico was quickly lost. There were no teni-lights here, only the occasional lamps set in the windows of taverns or brothels. Twice they passed an utilino, and Elle would draw down onto herself, making herself look smaller and older, and she would husk out a greeting with a grating voice that didn’t sound at all like her own.

Finally, Elle tugged him into the darkness of an alleyway and crouched down next to him. “Listen to me, Nico. I need you to be very, very quiet now. You need to be careful when you move so that no one hears your footsteps, and you can’t talk. No matter what you see or what happens. Do you understand?” In the faint light of the moon, he could see the white of her eyes, and her gaze was serious and solemn.

He nodded. She took his hand, squeezing it once gently. “All right,” she said. “Come on.”

They moved farther down the alley to a tiny door half-off its rusty hinges. Elle reached under her cloak; her fingertips, when her hand emerged again, had a dollop of some dark substance which she smeared on the hinges. She pushed at the door, it swung open reluctantly but silently, and Elle ducked inside, gesturing to Nico to follow.

The smell inside made Nico want to gag: there was something dead and rotting close by, and he was glad for once that it was far too dark to see well, though he was afraid he was going to trip over whatever was dead down here. Elle’s hand took his again and he followed her closely toward a dimly glimpsed stair, and up to a door. He saw Elle stoop alongside the door and fiddle for a few moments with a few pieces of wire inside the keyhole. There was a faint click, and Elle pushed the door open slowly. Nico found himself hurrying behind Elle down a narrow, dark hallway to stop in front of a door. “When I open this door,” she whispered huskily to him, “I need you to stay here in the hall. Don’t move, no matter what. Say nothing. Just listen. Listen. Do you understand?”

He nodded silently. Again Elle crouched by the door with her wires; again, there was a click. Elle opened the door and slipped inside, leaving the door open. Nico couldn’t see anything inside, though he squinted hard. Someone in the room was breathing hard, as if asleep. His own breathing seemed terribly loud, and if Elle made any sound at all as she moved through the room, Nico couldn’t hear it. He clutched at the doorframe, frightened and wanting to disobey Elle and call out to her, but the fear choked his throat.

There was a soft snick, a startled grunt, and then Elle’s voice. “That’s right,” he heard someone say softly-it sounded somewhat like Elle, but her voice was pitched deep and low. It might have been a man speaking. “That’s a knife blade against your neck, and if you cry out or so much as move your hands, you’re a dead man. Do as I say, and you might live. If you understand, nod your head.” There was a pause, then: “Good. I know who you are and what you are. I’ve been watching you. Now, I want to know something else. Do you know a boy named Nico Morel? Answer me: yes or no. And softly.”

Nico’s own breath hissed in at the mention of his name. He heard the person half-whisper an answer: “Yes.”

With that single word, he knew the voice: Talis. Almost, he leaped into the room, but he remembered Elle’s warning and he remained crouched at the door. “Good. You get to live yet,” Elle whispered to Talis. “Ah! No moving now; remember what I told you. I’d hate for you to slice yourself open accidentally. You’ve shared the bed of the boy’s matarh?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love her? Answer true now.”

There was a hesitation in which Nico took a quick breath. Then: “I do.”

“And the boy? Do you care about him?”

The answer was quicker and more emphatic. “Yes. The boy is…” His voice trailed off into a long silence.

“The boy is what?”

“My son. And yes. I care about the boy. That why I sent away both him and Serafina-so they’d be safe.”

“But he came back here, to this city. You discovered that after the Numetodo had him. You knew the Ambassador ca’Vliomani wanted to talk to you, but you didn’t answer him. You abandoned the boy, to save your own skin.” Nico realized that she was talking mostly for his own benefit, so that he would hear Talis’ reply.

Nico heard the rustling of cloth and straw as, despite Elle’s warning, Talis moved. “Ow! No. That’s not true. Ow! Easy! You’re right, I knew Nico was here and didn’t answer the Ambassador, but not for the reasons you say. Because…”

“Because?”

“I saw the consequences of trying to do that. I saw that if I’d gone to the Numetodo, worse things would have happened: for Nico, for me, for all of us. If I could have gotten Nico back safely, I would have. I knew the Ambassador would treat him kindly. I knew Nico wouldn’t be hurt if I stayed hidden. But if I’d come for him, if I’d tried to rescue him, I didn’t know what would happen. He might be hurt, or worse. There could have been terrible consequences.”

“You know this because of magic. Westlander magic.” Nico could almost see Talis’ nod. It was hard to stand silent and listen. He wanted to go to Talis, to Elle, but he also wanted to hear what Talis would say. “And did you see this moment in your spells? Did you see me?” Elle asked in her strange, husky voice.

“No,” he said. “I kept seeing Nico in the scrying bowl, as if he were close, but there was something around him, something protecting him.”

“Then you did see me. I protect him. And I will continue to do so.”

“Where is he?” Talis asked. “Take me to him!”

“Why? Why should I do that?”

“Because…” Nico heard Talis swallow hard. “… Because he should be with people he knows. I can take him back to his matarh.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope for your sake you keep promises.”

Following Elle’s answer, no one said anything, though Nico thought he could hear furtive, swift movements. He peered into the darkness until blobs of color swam in front of his eyes, trying to see. He could hear Talis stirring, heard him speak a word in another language, and Nico shivered, as if some invisble, cold breeze had touched him. Suddenly there was bright light, light that seemed to come from Talis himself. He was sitting up in bed, his blankets pooled around his waist and two small trickles of blood running down his chest from his neck, and the light was coming from a cold glow that sat in his upturned palm. Elle was no longer in the room, though curtains swayed in front of an open window near the bed. Talis saw Nico in the hallway, and his mouth dropped open. “Nico!”

Nico ran to him, crying.