A Magic of Nightfall

Varina ci’Pallo

“ That’s it…With the chant, think of the fibers of the wood opening like you’re pushing aside a curtain.”

Varina spoke quietly and encouragingly to Karl as he chanted the spell-words, staring at the walking stick he held in his right hand while his left made the necessary motions. She could see the grain of the wood shivering and parting, strangely and disconcertingly malleable. She could see the effort he was using to create the spell; Karl was panting and sweating as hard as if he’d run the entire circuit of the Avi a’Parete.

“Now-this bit is trickier-hold it apart while you place inside it the spell you’ve already prepared,” Varina told him. He didn’t glance back at her; she knew he didn’t dare look away from the staff: the wood would snap back together or the stick would shatter entirely-there were still splinters in Karl’s fingers from previous attempts. “Go on,” she continued. “You should be able to feel the light spell you prepared. I always feel it like a tiny ball of energy in your head, ready to burst. Imagine it moving from your mind and sliding into the space you’ve just made on the walking stick. Imagine it nestled in there. Carefully. Good. Good. And… Let everything go!”

Karl ended the chant, let his hand fall to his side. The gap in the wood clapped together again, a sound like two boards slamming together, and the walking stick was whole and undamaged in his hand, as if nothing had happened to it at all. Karl sagged against the back of the chair in which he was sitting. He wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his bashta as Varina laughed, clapping her hands together once. He sat there for what seemed to be several marks of the glass, trying to catch his breath.

“You did it that time,” she said.

“I certainly hope so.”

“You want to try it to make sure? Just hold the stick and speak the release word.”

“After all that trouble?” he told her. “I think I’ll just believe you for now.” He sighed, letting his head drop back and closing his eyes. “By Cenzi, that was hard. No wonder Mahri looked the way he did.”

She laughed again at that, but she could hear a certain, unwilling bitterness in the sound. Her fingers touched her own face, tracing the lines that hadn’t been visible a year ago. She buried her worry in words. “It’s a matter of finding the right word and gestures to move the energy, only you have to hold both the spell and the object being spelled at the same time-that’s what makes it difficult. From what we know of the Westlanders, they attribute the power to one of their own gods, as the teni do here, but it’s just a matter of the right chant, the right movements. Science, not faith. The advantage is that once you’ve done the task, it’s the object that holds the spell, not you, and as long as the object is of good craftsmanship in the first place and isn’t broken afterward, it could conceivably hold the spell indefinitely, I suspect. Still…” Fingers drifted over the lines of her face again, brushed back graying, dry hair. “It’s a damned expensive way to do things, if you ask me.”

“I can understand that,” Karl told her. “I feel entirely drained.”

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Not yet. She smiled again. She reached out as if to pat his hand, but drew back at the last moment. That was part of the uncomfortable dance they’d been doing for days now.

They were ten days back in Nessantico. They’d returned to the city with Serafina, who had taken up residence in her old rooms. She invited Varina and Karl to stay with her, an offer they’d accepted-the old Numetodo haunts were undoubtedly being watched by Garde Kralji, and they’d seen none of the Numetodo in Oldtown at all. They’d scoured the neighborhood with Serafina, asking about Nico, but no one remembered seeing the boy, certainly not after the day they’d helped the Regent escape the Bastida. If Nico had indeed returned to Nessantico, as Varina had been certain he had, he seemed to have somehow vanished; if Talis were still in the city, he remained hidden as well.

And for Varina… after their awkward conversation in Ville Paisli, she didn’t seem to know quite how to act around Karl. Her admission that she had wanted more of him than friendship… Why did she say that to him? He looked at her strangely now, as if he were thinking back on all the interactions they’d had over the years and reinterpreting them, casting their conversations in the light of this revelation and wondering.

Why did you tell him? Why did you admit it?

Her hand retreated from his. He started to reach over to her. “Varina…”

“I’m back!” The call came as the door to the room opened and Serafina came in. She carried a cloth bag from which a long loaf of bread protruded. Varina saw Serafina glance at them strangely before she walked over to the table and placed the bag there. She lifted out the loaf of bread, then a half-round of cheese and a paper bag of marsh-berries. They watched her, not speaking, and she sighed and shook her head.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Varina said. She wondered whether Serafina had seen them working the magic, but she was shaking her head with a half-smile.

“The two of you,” she said, glancing from Varina to Karl. “It’s obvious enough that you’re not married, no matter what you told my sister back in Ville Paisli. But it’s also obvious there’s something between the two of you, and that neither of you are sure what to do about it. I understand; that’s the way it was with Talis and me at first. I’d been hurt too much by a previous lover who didn’t care about me but only himself, and I thought that was the way it was going to be with everyone. But Talis… he was a good man. He cared about me, and when Nico came, he was a good vatarh as well. But the damned Numetodo…” She bit her lower lip as Varina looked at Karl and raised an eyebrow.

“The Numetodo?” Karl asked.

“Talis said the Ambassador tried to kill him; that’s why he sent me and Nico away-because he thought the Numetodo would come after him, and since the Ambassador was friendly with Regent ca’Rudka, that the Garde Kralji would be after him as well. I guess that’s nothing he has to worry about now,” she added with a wry smile. “The Kraljiki seems to like the Regent and Ambassador less than Talis.”

“Talis hasn’t contacted you?” Karl persisted.

Serafina shook her head. “He will, when he thinks it’s safe. He’ll know I’m here soon, if he doesn’t already. Maybe he’s found Nico, too.” She sighed, and Varina saw her blink away tears. She put her hand on Serafina’s shoulder in comfort as the woman sniffed and brushed the tears away. “Anyway,” she said, “I was saying that I’ve watched the two of you circling each other like you’re promenading around the Avi a’Parete, and… well, I was glad when I finally let myself admit that I was in love with Talis. It was the best thing I’d done in a long time. That’s all.”

She smiled, and patted Varina’s hand, still on her shoulder. “I’m going to walk to the butcher’s and see what he has. Then I’m going to look for Nico around Temple Park; he always liked to go there.”

“I’ll come with you,” Varina said, but Serafina shook her head.

“No,” she told them. “I’d like to be on my own for a bit. I’ll be home before Third Call, and we can make a supper then.”

She smiled at them again, picked up her cloth bag, and left the rooms again. They heard the snick of the lock behind her. Varina could feel Karl staring at her. “What are we going to do if we find Talis, Karl?” she asked. “Or if she finds Nico? She loves Talis, and Nico would recognize both of us. What do we do then?”

“I don’t know,” Karl told her. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Varina nodded at that, and the silence between them slowly lengthened. She could feel the weight of it, wrapping around them like the greasy chains of a Bastida cell. Varina puttered with the bread and cheese, putting them in a woven basket.

“Varina,” Karl said finally, and she stopped. “Serafina’s right. It’s just…” His fingers tapped the walking stick. “I still hurt whenever I think about Ana,” he said. “She…”

“I know,” Varina told him. “I saw…” she began, then dropped her gaze to the table. “A few times, on the street, I saw the grandes horizontales you hired to…” Her gaze came back up. “To me, they all looked like her: the same coloring, the same build.”

He dropped his gaze, guiltily. “Varina-”

“No,” she told him, interrupting. “I understood. I did. But it still hurt, because you didn’t see me, when that’s…” She closed her mouth, pressed her lips tightly together. She wouldn’t say the rest. She wouldn’t.

Karl lifted his hands, let them drop back to the table. “Serafina’s right. Because of my obsession, I missed what was right in front of my nose. I was stupid. Worse, I was cruel, and that’s something I never wanted to be. Not to you, Varina. Never to you. You’ve always been someone I admired and trusted. I always thought of you as a friend. And now… I don’t know if…”

“I don’t know either,” she told him. Go on, she heard a voice inside her say. Go on. Say it. “Karl, we can both continue to wonder. Or-”

She let the word hang there, as bright in his mind as spell-fire.

He held out his hand to her.

She took it.