A Magic of Nightfall (31 page)

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Authors: S. L. Farrell

BOOK: A Magic of Nightfall
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She nodded.
“Good. You’ll place the pouch down at your feet, and place the stone you brought on top of it—it’s a light stone, as near white as you can find? You’d recognize it again?”
Again Allesandra nodded. Resisting the temptation to look back, she unlaced the pouch heavy with gold solas from the belt of her tashta and, crouching, put it on the cobbles of the street next to her feet. She placed the pebble on top of the soft leather and stood up.
“How soon?” Allesandra asked. “How soon will you do it?”
“In my own time and in the place of my own choosing,” the White Stone answered. “But within a moon. No longer than that. Who do you want me to kill?” the assassin asked. “What is his name?”
“You may not take the money when I tell you.”
The White Stone gave a mocking laugh. “You wouldn’t need me if the one you wanted dead weren’t well-placed and well-protected. Perhaps, given your history, it’s someone in Nessantico?”
“No.”
“No?” There was, Allesandra thought, disappointment in the voice. “Then who, A’Hïrzg? Who do you want dead badly enough that you would find me?”
She hesitated, not wanting to say it aloud. She let out the breath she was holding. “My brother,” she said. “Hïrzg Fynn.”
There was no answer. She heard a clatter out in the street to her right, and her head moved involuntarily in that direction. There was nothing there; in the moonlight, the street was empty except for a utilino just turning the corner a block away, whistling and swinging his lantern. He waved at her; she waved back. “Did you hear me?” she whispered to the White Stone.
There was no answer. She glanced down: pouch and stone were gone. She turned. There was a closed door directly behind her, leading into one of the buildings.
Allesandra decided it would not be in her best interest to open that door.
The White Stone
“
M
Y BROTHER. Hïrzg Fynn.
”
She had thought herself beyond surprise at this point, but this . . .
She’d been in Firenzcia now for some three years, longer than she’d stayed anywhere in some time, but the work had been good here. She knew some of the history between Allesandra and Fynn ca’Vörl; she’d heard the rumors, but none of them spoke of a resentment this deep in Allesandra. And she herself had witnessed Allesandra
saving
her brother from an attack.
She found herself puzzled. She didn’t care for uncertainty.
But . . . that wasn’t her concern. The gold solas in the pouch were real enough, and she had heard Allesandra clearly, and the woman’s white stone sat in her pouch next to the stone of the right eye, the stone that held the souls of all those the White Stone had killed.
Her fingers scissored around the white stone now through the thin, soft leather of the pouch. The touch gave her comfort, and she thought she could hear the faint voices of her victims calling.
“I nearly killed you first . . . You were so clumsy then . . .”
“How many more? We grow stronger, each time you add another . . .”
“Soon you’ll hear us always . . .”
She took her hand from the stone and the voices stopped. They didn’t always. Sometimes, especially recently, she’d been hearing them even when she didn’t touch the stone.
To kill a Hïrzg . . . This would be a challenge. This would be a test. She would have to plan carefully; she would have to watch him and know him. She would have to
become
him.
Her fingers were back around the stone again.
“You’ve killed the unranked, you’ve killed ce’-and-ci’, and they are easy enough. You’ve killed cu’-and-ca’, and you know they’re far more difficult because with money comes isolation, and with power comes protection. But never this. Never a ruler.”
“You’re afraid . . .”
“. . . You doubt yourself . . .”
“No!” she told them all, angrily. “I can do this. I will do this. You’ll see. You’ll see when the Hïrzg is in there with you. You’ll see.”
They’ll know you. The A’Hïrzg will know you . . .
“No, she won’t. People like her don’t even
see
the unranked, as I was to her. My voice will be different, and my hair, and—most importantly—my attitude. She won’t know me. She won’t.”
With that, she plucked the pouch of golden coins from the bed and placed it in the chest with the other fees. From the chest, she pulled out the battered bronze mirror and looked at her reflection in the polished surface. She touched her hair, looked at the haunted, almost colorless eyes. It was time for her to become someone else. Someone richer, someone more influential.
Someone who could get close enough to the Hïrzg . . .
THRONES
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Audric ca’Dakwi
Sergei ca’Rudka
Varina ci’Pallo
Enéas cu’Kinnear
Jan ca’Vörl
Nico Morel
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Karl ca’Vliomani
Nico Morel
Allesandra ca’Vörl
The White Stone
Allesandra ca’Vörl
W
ITHIN A MOON . . .
That’s the promise the White Stone had made. Allesandra wondered if she could keep up the pretense that long. It was more difficult than she’d thought. Doubts plagued her—she had dreamed for the last three nights that she had gone to the White Stone to try to end the contract. “Just keep the money,” she’d told him. “Keep the money, but don’t kill Fynn.” Each time he’d laughed at her and refused.
“That’s not what you want,” the White Stone replied. In the dream, his voice was deeper. “Not really. I will do what you desire, not what you say. He’ll be dead within a moon. . . .”
She hoped Cénzi was not rebuking her.
Fynn probably contemplated killing me as Vatarh was dying, thinking I would challenge him for the crown. He would still do so if he suspected me of plotting against him—he’s as much as said that. This is no less than he deserves for what Vatarh and he did to me. This is what he deserves for his continued arrogance toward me. This is what I must do for me; this is what I must do for Jan. This is what I must do for Vatarh’s dream. This is the only way. . . .
The words were burning coals in her stomach, and they touched all aspects of her life. She had suspected it would one day come to this, but she had also hoped that day might never arrive.
Since the attempted assassination, Fynn had enjoyed the adulation of the Firenzcian populace and Jan—as the Hïrzg’s protector—had been taken up with it as well. Everyone seemed to have forgotten entirely that Allesandra had anything to do with the foiling of the assassination. Even Jan seemed to have forgotten that—he certainly never mentioned, in all his recounting of the story, that it had been her who pointed out the assassin to him.
Crowds gathered to cheer whenever the Hïrzg left his palais in Brezno, and there were parties nearly every night, with the ca’-and-cu’ of the Coalition. There were new people there every night, especially women wanting to be close to the Hïrzg (still unmarried despite his age) and to the new young protégé Jan.
Her husband, Pauli, also enjoyed the influx of fresh young women into the palais life. Allesandra was far less pleased with it, and even less pleased with Pauli’s attitude toward Jan. “He’s your son,” she told him. Her stomach roiled with the argument she knew was coming, and she placed a hand on her abdomen to calm it, swallowing the fiery bile that threatened to rise in her throat and hating the shrill sound of her voice. “You need to caution him about these things. If one of these eager ca’-and-cu’ swarming around him end up with child . . .”
Pauli gave her an expression that was near-smirk, making the bile slide higher inside her. “Then we buy the girl and her family a vacation in Kishkoros unless she’s a good match for him. If that’s the case, let him marry her.” His casual shrug was infuriating. Allesandra wondered how many Kishkoros vacations Pauli had bought during their years of marriage.
They were standing on the balcony above the palais’ main ballroom floor. Another party was in progress below; Allesandra could see Fynn and the usual cluster of bright tashtas, and that made her hands tremble. Archigos Semini was close by as well, though Allesandra didn’t see Francesca in the crowd. Jan was in the same group, talking to a young woman with hair the color of new wheat. Allesandra didn’t recognize her.
“Who is that?” she asked. “I don’t know her.”
“Elissa ca’Karina, of the Jablunkov ca’Karina line. She was sent to represent her family for the Besteigung, but was delayed near Lake Firenz and just arrived a few days ago.”
“You know her well, then.”
“I’ve . . . talked to her a few times since her arrival.”
The hesitation and choice of words told Allesandra more than she wanted to know. She closed her eyes for a breath, rubbing at her stomach. She wondered if it had just been flirtations or more. “I’m sure Jan would appreciate your familial interest, just as Fynn appreciates his First Taster.”
“That was crude and beneath you, my dear.”
She ignored that, peering over the railing. “How old is she?”
“Older than our Jan by a few years, I’d judge,” Pauli told her. “But an engaging and interesting woman.”
“And a candidate for a Kishkoros vacation?”
She heard Pauli chuckle. “She might prefer a more northern location, but yes, if it would come to that.” She felt him move close to her, staring down at the crowd. “You can’t protect him forever, Allesandra. You can’t live his life for him, and you can’t keep someone his age captive—not without expecting him to resent you for it.”
“
I
was kept captive,” she answered him, and pushed away from the railing.
“You can’t live his life for him.”’ But I
will
shape his future. I will . . .
“We should go down.”
They were announced into the party by the door heralds. She went directly to Fynn and Jan, while Pauli bowed to her and went off on his own. Archigos Semini’s eyes widened a bit with her approach—since the attempted assassination and their one subsequent conversation, the Archigos had engaged in little more than the required polite talk with her. She wondered what he’d think if she told him what she’d done.
The ca’-and’cu’ in the group all bowed low as she approached. She bowed also—a mere inclination of her head—to Fynn and gave Semini the sign of Cénzi. She smiled toward Jan, but her gaze was more on the woman with him. Elissa ca’Karina was one of those women who was incredibly striking while not being beautiful in a classical sense, and the arms emerging from the lace of the tashta were decidedly muscular—a horsewoman, perhaps. Her eyes were her best feature: large, a pale icy blue, and made prominent by judicious application of kohl. Allesandra judged her to be in her early twenties—and if she was unmarried at that age given her rank, then perhaps there was some scandal attached to her: Allesandra decided that a judicious inquiry was in order. The lines of the vajica’s face seemed oddly familiar, but perhaps that was only because she was little different than the others: young, eager, smiling, all eyes and laughter and attention.

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