Nico Morel.

NICO HAD NEVER FOLLOWED Talis before. Nico's matarh worked at the tavern around the corner and down the alley from their rooms. If Talis worked, it wasn't as other men did in their neighborhood: keeping a shop; working as an apprentice to some master; acting as a simple laborer, perhaps in the grainery mills where the ma.s.sive grinding wheels were driven by the chants of e-teni, or in the fiery smelters outside the old city walls, the furnaces blazing with Ilmodo fires and the chanting of differently skilled e'teni-who in return for their labors took a portion of the profits for the Concenzia Faith.

Nico had heard his matarh or others in Oldtown complain bitterly about that, how the Faith kept its hands in the pockets of every major industry in the city. The gossip gave Nico strange thoughts: he would imagine long green-sleeved hands snaking out from the temples to pluck coins from the purses of the populace. He wondered why the teni needed to do that, when his matarh and everyone else put coins into the baskets every Cenzidi when they went to the temple. If Nico had that many coins, he could buy a palais on South Bank to live in with Matarh and Talis.

Talis . . .

Nico was playing kick-the-frog in the street with some of the other boys. He was winning: he'd kicked the straw-stuffed sack that was the frog into the puddle three times already, but his friend Jordis had managed it only once and the others not at all. Nico was good at kick-the-frog. Sometimes, when he was playing, he'd feel this strange coldness go through him and he could almost see the frog going into the puddle, and when he kicked it then, the frog would go splash right into the water.

He'd plucked the soaked frog from the puddle for the fourth time when he saw Talis come out of their door and start walking up the street. Nico kicked the frog to Jordis and the others. "I'll be back," he said, and ran after Talis.

Since he'd seen Talis with his bra.s.s bowl, he'd been watching his vatarh carefully, whenever he could. He'd seen and heard strange things when Talis thought he was asleep, even when his matarh was asleep, too. Talis would chant and move his hands the way the teni did, usually with his walking stick set in front of him. When he did that, Nico could feel the frigid tendrils in the air until the walking stick seemed to suck them in.

It was very strange, but the words-they almost sounded like the dream-words Nico sometimes heard, and he wanted to know more.

At first, he intended to simply catch up to Talis and ask him where he was going, but when Talis turned at the first intersection, striding fast as if he were intent on some destination and his walking stick tapping on the cobblestones, Nico decided to drop back and just watch him. He wasn't sure what made him do that, but with the determined way that Talis was walking, he thought his vatarh might be annoyed if Nico suddenly tugged at his bashta.

Talis was walking so quickly that Nico nearly had to run to keep up with him. A few times, as Talis turned left or right along the twisted jumble of streets, Nico nearly lost him, and the farther they went on the more frightened Nico became-he no longer knew where he was. He didn't even know which way home might be, turned around by the winding, curving streets of Oldtown.

There was sunlight suddenly ahead, and he saw Talis turn sharply left. Nico hurried after him. He found himself standing at the confluence of the alleyway with the grand river of the Avi a'Parete, the great boulevard that circled the inner portion of the city. Nico was a.s.saulted by color, noise, and movement: the bashtas and tashtas of every conceivable pattern and shade, the carriages pushing through the throngs (look-that one had no horses at all, only a teni driving it, with one of the a'teni riding inside), a thousand people all going someplace all at once: talking or silent, grim or laughing, together or alone. Vendors along the walls called their wares; drivers called warning or rang their caution bells; a dozen conversations drifted past Nico in a moment to be replaced by a dozen more.

The buildings here, along Nessantico's most visible avenue, seemed as grand and tall as those on the South Bank, though more crowded together and far older. To his left, Nico could see the piers of an arching bridge leading over to the Isle a'Kralji, where the Kraljiki and the Regent lived. Yet among the grandeur, there were reminders that not everyone in the city lived so well. Beggars sat huddled on the corners; the one nearest Nico, swaddled in foul rags, seemed to have only one arm and about the same number of teeth in her red-gummed mouth. Her eyes were white with cataracts, like the old blind lady who lived across the street from Nico. Her single arm, rattling a battered wooden cup with a few bronze d'folias in the bottom, had too few fingers. The crowds sliding past her mostly ignored her, as if they didn't see her at all.

Nico realized that he had no idea where Talis had gone in the crowds. He looked left, then right, panic rising from his stomach into his throat. He started to run in the direction that he thought Talis had gone.

A hand grabbed his shoulder; Nico jumped and nearly screamed.

"What are you doing here, Nico? Why are you following me?" Talis' face was frowning down at him, his fingers bunched in the fabric of Nico's shirt. Relief conquered fright; Nico gasped. "Talis! I was . . . You were leaving and I thought I'd see where you were going and if I could go with you, and then I was already too far away and I was afraid I was lost."

Talis' frown melted slowly. "You don't know the way home?"

Nico shook his head. "That way?" he asked tentatively, pointing toward one of the buildings behind him.

Talis snorted. "Only if you want to take a bath in the A'Sele. I should just leave you here," he began and Nico's heart began to beat harder and tears started in his eyes, but the man continued. "But Serafina would kill me if she found out. I'm already late. You're going to have to come with me, Nico."

Nico nodded furiously. He hugged Talis around the waist, as the man put his hand behind his head and pulled him close. Nico could feel the k.n.o.b of the walking stick on his back. "I need you to be quiet, Son," Talis told Nico. "No badgering me with questions, understand? I need to meet someone."

"Who are you meeting?" Nico asked, then gulped. "I'm sorry, Talis," he said, but the man was already chuckling.

"You're hopeless, you know that? Come on," he told Nico. "Stay close with me, now."

With Nico hurrying alongside him, Talis set out across the width of the Avi a'Parete, dodging between strolling groups and pausing now and then to let a carriage pa.s.s, then rushing across the path of the next one. When they finally reached the other side, Talis quickly ducked into a small side street, and the bustle and color and glory of the Avi a'Parete vanished as if it had never been there at all. They turned left, then right, following a narrow, twisting lane, and suddenly emerged-as if from a forest made of houses and buildings crushed together into too small a s.p.a.ce-into an open area.

Nico could smell the A'Sele before he saw the river: an odor of dead fish, human waste, and oily water. They stood in a marketplace, with dozens of stalls set up in rows along the riverbank. To his left, Nico could see-from the other side, this time-the grand arch of the Pontica a'Kralji, and out in the glittering waters of the A'Sele, the Isle a'Kralji crowned with the Kralji's Palais, the Old Temple, and the Regent's Estate. Nico stared, then realized belatedly that Talis was already strolling along the aisles of the market, and he scurried to keep up. Now he found he could barely keep his gaze on Talis; he kept being distracted by the goods in the stalls: great heaps of onions, racks of drying herbs, dried and fresh fish, bright knives and glittering stones, bolts of fabrics, tabors and lutes, mounds of apples. . . . "This is better than Oldtown Market," he said, his voice echoing his amazement.

"This is nothing," Talis told him. "I've been told that back in Kraljica Marguerite's time, you could hear the tables groaning under the load of goods coming up the A'Sele from everywhere in the known world. You couldn't walk here for the crowds and sellers. Anything you wanted, you could buy here, no matter what it was." He stopped. They were in front of a stall shaded from the sun by thick, quilted fabric. In the gloom under the canopy, a large form moved. Nico squinted, shading his eyes. The proprietor of the stall was muscular, with thick arms dangling from the loose sleeves of a bashta adorned with a pattern like stalks of wheat. He leaned down, and Nico saw that his face was marred with strange white lines, as if the skin had been sc.r.a.ped raw. Between the lines, the unmarred flesh was nearly the color of polished copper, like someone from the southern provinces.

"Who's the kid?" the man asked Talis. His voice was thick with an accent that Nico didn't place until Talis responded, then he realized that it was a stronger, more p.r.o.nounced version of Talis' own.

"My son Nico." Talis tapped Nico's shoulder with the stick. "Don't worry about him."

"His matarh got you playing at nursemaid now, Talis? Mahri would be so proud."

"Shut up, Uly."

The man sniffed as if amused by the exchange. He spoke at length in another language entirely, and Nico heard Talis reply in the same tongue. Talis moved under the awning with the man. "Stay here," he told Nico. "You can look at what Uly has for sale, but don't bother us."

Nico listened to the two men talking in their strange language as he idly picked at the wares on Uly's tables. He heard the name "Mahri" a few more times. Finally, Uly poured several handfuls of a black, coa.r.s.e powder into a leather sack and handed it to Talis, who tied it to his own belt. The two talked a moment more, then Talis took Nico's hand and led him away from the stall and back toward the Avi a'Parete. Questions tumbled unbidden from Nico-he was unable to hold them back any longer.

"Are you and Uly from the same country?"

"Yes. Originally. Though we've both been away for a long time."

"Are you from Namarro?"

"No." Talis didn't offer more, and Nico remained silent while they crossed the avi and entered into the warrens of Oldtown once again.

"Who's Mahri, Talis?"

"No one now. He's dead."

"Who was he, then?" Nico persisted.

"It's not important."

"Uly said Mahri would be proud of you. And I heard him mention Mahri another time, too."

"You're going to keep pestering me, aren't you?"

Nico glanced up at Talis. He didn't look too angry, so Nico nodded. "Did you know Mahri? Was he your vatarh?"

Talis laughed, though Nico didn't know what he'd said that was so funny, and shook his head. "No. Mahri wasn't my vatarh, and I never knew him. I only knew of him."

"Why?"

"Because they said he could do things no one else could do. I thought I said no questions."

Nico ignored that last statement. "What things?"

Talis let loose a sigh laced with annoyance. "Things not even the teni can manage with their Ilmodo."

"Oh." Nico went quiet at that. Everyone whispered how the teni could do nearly anything with the Ilmodo, and there were whispers about Archigos Ana being able to do everything the Numetodo could do, too. But Nico knew that Talis didn't believe in Cenzi or go to temple. So maybe Mahri was a Numetodo? And didn't the Westlanders use magic too? Or maybe there were all sorts of magic, out in the world.

"Do you want to be like Mahri?" Nico asked.

He saw a corner of Talis' mouth lift. "That depends on what you mean, Nico. I don't particularly want to be dead." He laughed, but Nico wrinkled his face in a moue of irritation.

"That's not what I meant."

Talis reached down and tousled his hair, and Nico stepped away. "I know it's not what you meant," Talis said. "And I don't particularly figure that I'll ever be like him. Now, can we try to get home before Serafina realizes you're gone and turns the whole neighborhood upside down looking for you?"

Talis stopped talking and hurried his pace, taking Nico's hand. The soft leather pouch with its midnight powder swung on his belt. Nico watched it from the side of his eyes as they walked.

He'd watch Talis more. Maybe he could learn to do magic, too. After all, the Numetodo said that most people could do magic if they worked at it hard enough. Nico worked hard; he always won at kick-the-frog because he worked hard. When you worked hard, you could feel the cold energy.

He'd watch Talis. He'd learn to do what Talis did.

Varina ci'Pallo.

HAD SHE BEEN FORCED into a career as a spy, she would have been captured and executed her first day.

Varina leaned against the side of an apothecary at the edge of Oldtown Center, staring out at the crowds gathered in bright sunshine and searching among them for a familiar face, one that she'd lost in the twists and turns of Oldtown. She was panting a little from the effort of trying to catch up to the man after he'd made an abrupt turn-she'd come to the corner to find him gone. Vanished.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The question, coming from behind her, made Varina jump. Varina spun, bringing her hands up, ready to speak a word and release a quick push spell, but a hand grasped her arm as she turned, stopping her from casting the spell, and she was looking into the face for which she'd been searching.

"Karl . . ."

He released her hand, stepping back. She couldn't tell if he was angry or not. "You were following me." His storm-sea eyes held her.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Why?"

"Because I'm worried about you."

He sniffed as if amused. That irritated her more than his expression. "You, or Mika?" he barked. "Or maybe Sergei?"

She held his stare defiantly, her chin lifting. She brushed back her hair from her face. "All of us. Everyone who knows you and likes you is concerned about you, Karl, even though you don't seem to see it. Following you was my idea, though. Not Mika's. Not Sergei's. So you can yell at me if you'd like, but not them. They didn't know."

"I'm not a child who needs to be watched."

"Forgive me," she told him. "I'll be sure to mention that to Sergei and Amba.s.sador cu'Gorin. They'll both be pleased to hear how you've matured."

Karl sniffed again. "That was a mistake. I won't repeat it."

"Karl, you were convinced that it was the Firenzcians and you were ready to be judge and executioner for them. Now you're just as convinced it's a Westlander plot and you're out chasing Mahri's ghost. I'm worried about you, yes. Mahri's dead; you won't find him. And I'm even more worried about what you'll do if you do find some Westlander, someone who might be entirely innocent. I don't know how to say this other than bluntly: do what Sergei told you to do-let them take care of the investigation. You're not helping them or yourself."

"And what am I supposed to do, Varina?" he asked. His face was twisted, the skin under his eyes was baggy and dark, and he hadn't trimmed his beard in days.

"You said that you were interested in what I could show you about enchanting objects. Let me teach you. Let's work on that, together-I could certainly use your help and your expertise. It might take your mind away . . ." She glanced around them. ". . . from this."

"You can't understand," he grated out. "So just leave me alone." The look of disgust he gave her was like a blow to her face.

"You've been hurt enough, Karl. I don't want to see you make it worse for yourself."

"I don't need your pity, Varina, and I don't want or need your help," he spat back at her. The words sliced into her. "What do I need to do to make that clear to you?"

"You just have," she told him. "You've made it very clear indeed." With that, she gestured at the open, sunny expanse of Oldtown Center. "Go on," she said. "I won't follow you anymore."

With that, not daring to look back, she started walking away southward, back toward the Numetodo House. She didn't look back. She told herself that she didn't want to see whether he was watching her or not.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

BESTEIGUNG. THE INAUGURAL for the new Hirzg.

The day dawned brilliant and cooperative, with a sky of lush azure in which misty ships of pale white clouds scudded westward and away. The heat had broken, driven away by a cleansing rain the night before. Cenzi had blessed the day, and the teni beamed as if it had been their prayers that had caused the day to be so beautiful.

Perhaps it had.

Allesandra prayed to Cenzi as well. She prayed that the day might turn out as she hoped it would, that she had not misread the signs. And though she prayed, she also made certain that a dagger was sheathed to her forearm under the frilled and lacy sleeve of her tashta. She had learned long ago from her vatarh to never be without a weapon.

The day would be a long one for Fynn-and for those, like Allesandra, who were required to attend to him. First came the ceremony in Brezno Temple at First Call, where the Archigos gave the new Hirzg the Blessing of Cenzi. Then there were the required state visits: to the Tomb of Hirzg Kelwin, first Hirzg of Firenzcia; to the temple near the Hirzg's Palais that held a vial of blood from Misco, the founder of Firenzcia; to the great cracked boulder near Brezno's main square, where it was said that the Moitidi-at Cenzi's request-sent a furious lightning bolt down to earth to smite the army of Il Trebbio when it invaded Firenzcia in 183 during the midst of the Three Generation War. At each location, there were the obligatory speeches and ceremonies, and the ca'-and-cu' listened attentively, grateful that there was no driving rain or bitter cold or humid heat to endure beyond the stultifying, expected phrases.

Then there came the final procession to the new statue of Falwin I, erected by Allesandra's vatarh Jan after he declared Firenzcia's secession from the Holdings-it was Falwin who had led the tragically unsuccessful revolt against Kraljiki Henri VI in 418, and it was there that Fynn had erected the dais where, at last, the Crown and Ring of Firenzcia would be officially declared his to bear.

As Archigos ca'Cellibrecca pa.s.sed Allesandra in his teni-driven carriage on his way to his place in the line of dignitaries, he leaned from the window and ordered the driver to halt. The e'teni stopped her chanting and the wheels slowed. The Archigos beckoned to Allesandra over the broken-globe symbol of Cenzi painted in gold and lapis. "Excuse me a moment," she told Jan and Pauli. Jan shrugged at his matarh; Pauli, deep in a conversation with a pretty young woman of the ca'Belgradin family, gave no acknowledgment at all. Allesandra went to the Archigos' carriage and gave the sign of Cenzi to Semini. Francesca was sitting next to the Archigos, in shadow. "A beautiful day for the ceremony," she said to him, to Francesca. "Cenzi has smiled on Fynn."

"Indeed," Semini answered. His voice dropped, low enough that Francesca could not have heard him, barely audible over the tumult of the musicians beginning the processional march. "However, A'Hirzg, I would not stand too close to the new Hirzg on the dais."

"Archigos?"

He glanced to the rear of the line, where Fynn's carriage-drawn by four white horses, one of them riderless-waited. "It's a beautiful day indeed," he said, more loudly now. "A good one for all of Firenzcia, I think," he said. "Driver-they're waiting for us."

The e'teni began chanting again; the wheels creaked as they began to turn once more. Allesandra stepped back from the carriage as Semini nodded to her and sat back again on his cushioned seat next to Francesca, who gave Allesandra a sour look as they pa.s.sed. She watched them move into line just before the Hirzg's carriage.

She had been on edge all day, wondering if ca'Cellibrecca truly intended to carry out what he had hinted at-he would do nothing himself, of course, but work through layers of intermediaries; if something were to happen, the Archigos would also want it to occur in public, where he could be seen not to be involved, and where it would have the most impact. It was exactly what she would have done herself.

"I would not stand too close to the new Hirzg . . ."

A thrill of fear overlaid with excitement went through her. She wanted to run back to the Archigos, to whisper three words to him: "The White Stone?" If he nodded yes to that, then what she had planned would be a dangerous ploy indeed, given the legends of the a.s.sa.s.sin. The White Stone, it was said, would kill anyone who tried to interfere with his completion of a contract The White Stone, those same rumors declared, was a master in the use of every weapon; there was no one who could safely cross blades with him. But the White Stone always struck his victims in isolation, not in the midst of crowds. It couldn't be him . . . at least Allesandra hoped not.