"I see my duty as Regent to look the truth in the face, no matter what that truth is, and to speak it," he told her. That was a lie, of course, but it sounded good; as he saw it, his duty as Regent was to see that the Nessantico he handed to the next Kralji was in a stronger position than he'd originally found it: no matter what that entailed him doing or saying, legal or illegal. "That has always been my function within Nessantico. I serve Nessantico herself, not anyone within it. That's why Kraljica Marguerite named me Commandant of the Garde Kralji, and why your cousin Kraljiki Justi placed me first as Commandant of the Garde Civile and then named me Regent, even when we often disagreed." His mouth twitched at the memories of the arguments he'd had with the great fool Justi. May the soul shredders tear at him for eternity for what he did to the Holdings.

"I, too, serve Nessantico first," Sigourney said. "In that, we're alike, Regent. I want only what is best for her, and for the Holdings. Beyond that . . ." She shrugged in shadow.

"Then we agree, Councillor," Sergei answered. "Nessantico needs truth and open eyes, not blind arrogance. The Council of Ca' certainly recognizes that, doesn't it?"

"Truth is more malleable than you seem to think, Regent. What is the saying? 'A ca's vinegar may be the ce's wine.' Too much of what is termed 'truth' is actually only opinion."

"That may be the case, indeed, Councillor, but it's also what people say when they wish to ignore a truth that makes them uncomfortable," Sergei answered, and was rewarded with a moue of irritation, a glistening of moistened lips in the dimly-lit face. "But we can speak of that later, with all of the Council present, if you wish. There should be a new report coming from the h.e.l.lins soon, and perhaps that will tell us what is true and what is only opinion."

He heard her sniff more than he saw it, and a white hand lifted in the shadowed interior, rapping on the roof of the carriage. "We shall talk further on this, Regent," she told Sergei in a cold, distant voice, then called to the driver in his seat: "Move on."

He watched her drive away, the iron-rimmed wheels of the carriage rumbling against the cobblestones of the Avi. The sound was as cold and harsh as Sigourney's att.i.tude had been. Sergei turned again to the Bastida and looked up at the dragon's skull above the gates. The ferocious mouth grinned.

"Yes," he told the skull. "The truth is that one day we'll all look just like you. But not yet for me. Not yet. I don't care what Audric has said to the Council. Not yet."

Jan ca'Vorl.

JAN FOUND HIS MATARH standing on the balcony of their apartments in Brezno Palais. She was staring down at the activity on the main square. The Archigos' Temple loomed against the skyline directly opposite them, nearly half a mile away, and nearly every foot of that distance was covered with people. The square was illuminated with teni-lights in yellow and green and gold, dancing in the globes of the lampposts, and the markets and shops around the vast open area were thronged with shoppers. Music drifted thin and fragile toward them from street performers, wafting above the hum of a thousand conversations.

"It's a scene worth painting, isn't it?" he asked her, then before she could answer. "What's the matter, Matarh? You've been keeping to yourself ever since the party. Is it Vatarh?"

She turned at that. Her gaze slid from his face to the chevaritt's star that he wore, and he thought that her tentative smile wavered momentarily. "It's just been an overwhelming few weeks," she told him. Her hand brushed imaginary lint from his shoulders. "That's all."

"I think Vatarh's behavior has been abysmal since he came here," Jan said. "I swear, sometimes I think I could kill the man. But I'm sure you've been far more tempted than me." He laughed to take the edge from his words, but she didn't join him. She half-turned, looking back down toward the square.

"You're a chevaritt," she said. "Someday you'll go to war, and someday you'll have to actually kill someone else-or be killed yourself. You'll be forced to make that decision and it's irrevocable. I know . . ."

"You know?" Jan frowned. "Matarh, when did you-?"

She interrupted him before he could finish the half-mocking question. "I was eleven, nearly twelve. I killed the Westlander spellcaster Mahri, or I helped Ana kill him."

"Mahri? The man responsible for Kraljica Marguerite's death?" Is this a joke? he wanted to add, but the look on her face stopped him.

"I stabbed him with the knife Vatarh had given me, stabbed him as he was trying to kill Ana. I never told anyone afterward, and neither did Ana. She was always careful to protect me." She was looking at her hands on the railing; Jan wondered if she expected to see blood there. He wasn't sure what to say or how to respond. He imagined his matarh, the knife in her hand.

"That must have been hard."

She shook her head. "No. It was easy. That's the strange part. I didn't even think about it; I just attacked him. It was only afterward . . ." She took a long breath. "Did you ever think about how it might be if someone you knew were dead-that it might be better for everyone involved if that were the case?"

"Now there's a morbid subject."

"Someone killed Ana because they thought that their world would be better if she were out of the way. Or maybe they did it because someone they believed in told them to do it and they were just following orders. Or maybe just because they thought it might change things. Sometimes that's all the reason someone needs-you don't think about the people who might care for the victim, or what the repercussions might be. You do it because . . . well, I guess sometimes you aren't certain why."

"You're making me worry more, Matarh."

She did laugh at that, though Jan thought there was still a sadness to the sound. "Don't," she said. "I'm just in a strange mood."

"Everyone thinks that way sometimes." Jan shrugged. "I'll wager that every child has at some time wished his parents dead-especially after they've done something stupid and been caught and punished. Why, there was that time that I stole the knife from your . . ." He stopped, his eyes widening. "Was that the same one? You said Great-Vatarh had given it to you."

Another laugh. "It was. I remember that; I found you using the knife to cut up some apples in the kitchen and I s.n.a.t.c.hed it back from you and spanked you so hard, and you were refusing to cry or apologize, and so I hit you harder."

"I did cry. Afterward. And I have to admit that I was so mad that I thought about . . ." He shrugged again. "Well, you know. But the thought didn't last long-not after you brought up the pie to my room, and promised to give me the knife one day." He smiled at her. "I'm still waiting."

"Stay here," she said. She left the railing and brushed past him. He heard her rustling about in her room, then came back out into the chill evening. "Here," she said, holding out a knife in a worn leather scabbard, its black horn and steel hilt gleaming, with tiny ruby jewels set around the pommel. "This was originally Hirzg Karin's knife, and he gave it to his son, your Great-Vatarh Jan, who gave it to me. Now it's yours."

He pushed it back to her. "Matarh, I can't . . ." but she pressed the weapon forward again.

"No, take it," she insisted, and he did. He slid the blade partway from the scabbard. Dark Firenzcian steel reflected his face back to him. "Given who we are, Jan, both of us have to make truly difficult decisions that we're not entirely comfortable with, but we'll make them because they seem best for those we care most for. Just remember that sometimes decisions are final. And fatal."

With that, she pulled him to her, and brought his head down to kiss him on the cheek, and when she spoke, she sounded like the matarh he remembered. "Now, don't cut yourself with that. Promise?"

He grinned at her. "Promise," he said.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

AUDRIC WILL NOT BE KRALJIKI long. That's what most people here believe. There will come a time, soon, when a new Kralji must be named. I remember you, Allesandra. I remember your intelligence and your strength, and I remember that Archigos Ana loved you as well she might have her own daughter, and rumors come to me that you are not pleased that the Holdings remain sundered.

From my conversations with Fynn, I have no hope that he wishes to be part of a reunited Holdings unless he's on the Sun Throne. He has your vatarh's strength, but not his intelligence. I fear that all the good attributes of the late Hirzg Jan came to you.

When the Sun Throne is left empty, I would support your claim to it, A'Hirzg. And there are others here who would do the same. I would support you openly, if you can give me a sign that you feel as I do. . . .

The words were burned into her mind, as crisply as the letters written in fire-ink on the parchment. The crawling flames had destroyed the paper almost as quickly as she'd read the message, leaving behind ash and a sour smoke. Sergei's promise. She'd thought of it nearly every day since the message had come, and now she knew that the Archigos had received a similar missive. She could guess what the Regent had promised him.

Ca'Rudka wanted a reunited Holdings and a Faith unsundered. Well, so did she. To create a Holdings greater than even that of Kraljica Marguerite had been her vatarh's dream, and-because it had been the dream of her vatarh and she had loved him so desperately as a child-hers as well. He had betrayed that dream and sundered the empire, but the dream remained alive in her.

It was what she wanted more than anything. More than her own safety.

. . . if there were a sign . . .

Archigos Semini had taken that for the obvious hint that it was, and he'd acted in haste before the pieces were in their correct places. Now-partially thanks to the Archigos' impatience and clumsiness-they were.

A sign. She would give ca'Rudka that sign, even though it gnawed at her conscience. Even though she might hate herself for it afterward.

Did you ever think about how it might be if someone you knew were dead? It was the question she'd asked Jan, but it was the question she had been asking herself, over and over.

"I'm afraid I lied to you, Elzbet," Allesandra told the woman across the smeared, dirty table. "I'm not interested in you as a servant." The woman shrugged and started to get up. Allesandra waved her back down. "I'm told," Allesandra said, "that you can put me in touch with a certain man." Allesandra placed a pebble on the table: a flat stone roughly the size of a solas, very light in color.

Even as she said the words, Allesandra doubted the truth of them. The young woman seated before her was plain in appearance. She looked to be in her third decade, though that was difficult to tell; a hard life may have made her look older than her actual years. Her hair was evidently unacquainted with a hairbrush: long and touched with fierce red highlights on the brown, wild strands flying everywhere, it was pulled fiercely back into an unkempt braid of a style Allesandra had not seen since she'd been young. Her bangs were bedraggled, her eyes nearly lost behind the forest of them. Allesandra couldn't even see the color of the eyes shaded as they were, though they seemed to be pale.

The woman only shrugged, glancing once at the pebble. "That may be," she said. Her words held the hint of an accent so slight that Allesandra couldn't place it, and the voice was whiskey-rough. "The one you're talking about is hard to contact. Even for me."

If he knows you that well, girl, I'm not impressed with his taste. . . . "What's your full name, Elzbet?" Allesandra asked the woman.

The woman stared, her eyes unblinking behind the tangle of brown locks. "Begging your pardon, A'Hirzg, but you'll not be needing my name. You're not hiring me, after all-at least no further than finding him."

It had taken Allesandra days to get this far, and she could be certain of nothing. There had been discreet inquiries made of people who might have had a reason to kill the three most recent victims of the White Stone, inquiries made by private agents who themselves didn't know who they were representing, only that it was someone wealthy and influential. Names and descriptions had been given, and slowly, slowly, it had all come down to this young woman. Allesandra had arranged to meet her-in a tavern on the edge of one of the poorer districts in Brezno-on the pretext of wishing to interview her for a position on the palais staff. Through the shuttered windows of the tavern, she could see the uniform of the gardai who had accompanied her, waiting by the carriage for her. "How do I know that you can do what you say you can do?"

"You don't," the woman replied. That was all she said. She waited, those unblinking, hidden eyes on Allesandra's as if daring her to look away. The impudence, the lack of respect, nearly made Allesandra get up from her chair and leave the tavern, but this was what she needed and it had taken too long to get this far.

"Then how do we proceed?" Allesandra asked.

"Give me three days to see if I can contact this person you're looking for," the woman said. Her finger flicked at the stone Allesandra had placed on the table. "If I think that your gardai or agents are watching me, or if he sees them, especially, nothing will happen at all. At the night of the third day-that would be Draiordi-you will do this . . ." The woman leaned over the table, she whispered instructions into Allesandra's ear, then sat back again. "You understand, A'Hirzg? You can do that?"

"It's a lot of money."

"You don't bargain with him," the woman said. "If what you want done were an easy task, you would do it yourself. And you, A'Hirzg, can afford the price he asks."

"If I do this, how do I know he will keep his end of the bargain?"

No answer. The woman simply sat with her hands on the table as if ready to push her chair back.

Allesandra nodded, finally. "Find him, Elzbet," she said. She plucked a half-solas from the pocket of her cloak and placed the coin on the table between them, next to the stone. "For your trouble," she said.

The woman glanced down at the coin. Her lips twisted. Her chair sc.r.a.ped across the wooden planks of the floor. "Draiordi evening," she told Allesandra. "Be there as I said. Remember what I said about being followed."

With that, she turned and strode quickly from the tavern, with the stride of someone used to walking long distances. Light bloomed in the dimness as she pushed open the door with surprising strength. Through the shutters, Allesandra could see the gardai come suddenly alert as the woman left the tavern.

The coin was still on the table. Allesandra took the stone but left the coin, going to the door herself and shaking her head at the gardai, one of whom was already pulling open the door with concern; the others were watching the woman. "I'm fine," she said to them. The woman was already halfway down the street, walking fast without looking back. The garda who had opened the door inclined his head toward the woman, raising his eyebrows quizzically. "Should I-?"

"No," she said to him. "I won't be hiring her; she was a poor match. Let her go. . . ."

Karl ci'Vliomani.

KARL WATCHED THE MAN carefully, standing close to him in the bakery, where he could hear him.

This one seemed different than the others he'd watched. For the last few weeks, Karl had prowled Oldtown, dressed in soiled and ragged clothes, and watching the crowds surging around him. He'd haunted the public places, lurked in the shadows of the hidden squares in the maze of tiny streets, avoiding the occasional utilino who pa.s.sed on his or her rounds and who might recognize him. He'd looked at the faces, searching for coppery skin tones, for the lifted cheekbones and the slightly flatter faces that he remembered from his own forays into the Westlands decades ago. He'd found a half dozen people, male and female both, that he followed for a time, on whom he'd eavesdropped, whom he'd touched with the Scath c.u.mhacht to see if they might respond.

There'd been nothing. Nothing.

But now . . .

"These croissants have been here all day and are half-stale already," the man said. Karl heard his voice plainly from where he stood at the bakery's open door, staring out across the street as if he were waiting for someone. He heard the man's walking stick tapping the wooden floor of the bakery. "They're worth no more than a d'folia for the dozen." The words were nothing, but that accent . . . Karl remembered it well: from his youth, from Mahri-an accent as foreign in Nessantico as his own and as unmistakable.

Karl glanced into the shop in time to see the baker's scowl. "They're still as fresh and soft as they were this morning, Vajiki. And worth a se'folia at least. Why, I can sell them to anyone for that-the flour I use was blessed by the u'teni at the Old Temple."

The man shrugged and waved his hand. "I don't see anyone else here. Do you? Maybe you'll wait all day until they're no better than cobblestones, when I'll give you two d'folia for them right now. Two d'folias against wasted bread-it seems more than fair to me."

Karl listened as they bartered, settling on four d'folias for the croissants. The baker wrapped them in paper, grumbling all the while about the price of flour and the time spent baking and the general higher costs for everything in the city recently, until Karl's quarry left the shop. The man brushed past Karl-the smell of the croissants making Karl's own stomach grumble-and strolled eastward along the narrow lane. Karl let him get several strides ahead before he followed. The man turned left down a side alley; by the time Karl reached the intersection, the man was halfway down. In the late afternoon, the houses cast purpled shadows over the lane, seeming to lean toward each other as if to converse in whispers over the cobblestones. There was no one else visible in the alleyway. The spells Karl had cast that morning burned inside him, waiting to be released. He started to call out to the man, to make him turn . . .

. . . but a child-a boy perhaps ten or eleven-emerged from an intersection a little farther down the lane. "Talis! There you are! Matarh has been wondering if you were coming for supper."

"Croissants!" Talis told the boy, holding up the wrapped pastries. "I practically stole them from old Carvel. Only four d'folias . . ." The man-Talis-clapped his arm around the boy. "Come then, we can't keep Serafina waiting."

Together, they started walking down the street. Karl hesitated. You can't do anything with the boy there alongside him. That's not what Ana would want of you.

The spells still hissed and burbled inside his head, aching for release. He picked one, the least of them. He lifted a fisted hand and whispered a word in Paeti, the language of his home, and felt the energy release and fly away from him. The spell was designed to do nothing at all; it only spread the power of the Scath c.u.mhacht over the area-enough that someone used to wielding that power would feel it and react.

The reaction was swifter than Karl expected. Talis spun around as soon as Karl released the spell. The boy turned a moment later-probably, Karl thought, because the man had stopped. There was no time for him to conceal himself. Talis, his gaze never leaving Karl, gave the boy the package of croissants and nudged him away. "Nico," he said. "Go on home. I'll follow you in a few minutes."

"But, Talis . . ."

"Go on," Talis answered, more harshly this time. "Go on, or your rear end will be regretting it as soon as I get there. Go!"

With that, the boy gulped and ran. He turned the corner and vanished. The man peered into the dimness, then his head drew back and he nodded. "I should thank you, Amba.s.sador, for sparing the boy," Talis said. One hand was plunged into the side pockets of his bashta, the other was still on his walking stick-if he were about to cast a spell, he showed no signs of it. Still, Karl tensed, his hand upraised and the remaining spells he'd prepared quivering inside him. He hoped he'd guessed right in their making.

"You know me?" he asked.

A nod. "Yours is a well-known face in this city, Amba.s.sador. A bit of poor clothing and dirt on your face doesn't disguise you well. I really hope you weren't thinking you could pa.s.s unnoticed in Oldtown."

"You felt my spell. That means you're one of the Westlander teni, like Mahri."

"Perhaps I only turned because I heard you speak a word, Amba.s.sador. Spell? I've seen the fire-teni light the lamps of the city; I've seen them turn the wheels of their chariots or cleanse the foulness from the water. I've seen some of the people of this city with their trivial little light spells that the Numetodo have taught them-which I'm sure the Faith finds disturbing. But I saw no spell just now."

"You have the accent."

"Then you've a good ear, Amba.s.sador; most people think I'm from Namarro," the man answered. "I'm a Westlander, yes. But like Mahri, no. There have been very few like him." He seemed relaxed and confident, and that along with his easy admission worried Karl. He began to wonder if he'd made a critical mistake. The man's too confident, too sure of himself. He's not afraid of you at all. You should have just watched, should have just followed him. "So why is the Amba.s.sador of the Numetodo walking about Oldtown casting invisible spells to find Westlanders, if I may ask?" Talis asked.

"We're at war with the Westlanders."

" 'We?' Are the Numetodo so accepted by the Holdings, then? I can hear accents, too, and I would tell you that there are those of the Isle of Paeti whose sympathies might be more with the Westlanders than those of the Holdings. After all, Paeti was conquered by the Holdings just as the h.e.l.lins were, and your people fought against that invasion just as ours are doing now. Perhaps we should be allies, Amba.s.sador, not adversaries."

Karl's teeth pressed together as he grimaced. "That depends, Westlander, on what you are doing here, and what you've done."

"I didn't kill her, if that's your accusation," the man said.

Almost, he loosed the spell at that. I didn't kill her . . . So the man knew exactly what it was that Karl was after, and his answer was a lie. It must be a lie. The man would say anything to save his life. A Westlander, and a teni . . . Karl's lifted hand trembled; the Paetian release word was already on his lips. He could taste it, as sweet as revenge. "I spoke of no murder."

"Nor did I," Talis said. "But then I don't think it murder to kill your enemy in wartime."

With that, the rage flared inside Karl and he could no longer contain the anger. His fist pumped, he spoke the word: "Saighnean!"-and with the word and the motion, blue-white lightning crackled and arced from Karl toward the mocking Westlander.