You could end up as lonely as Ana was, as Marguerite was. Why shouldn't you let yourself be close to someone, to enjoy them? You need someone who is your ally, your lover. . . .

She touched his back, let her hand trail down his spine. "The meal," she said, "was for appearances. And for later."

"Allesandra-" He had turned toward her, and the hopeful look on his face nearly made her laugh.

She lifted up on her toes, her hand on his shoulders, and kissed him. His beard, she found, was surprisingly soft, and the lips underneath yielded to her. She brought her heels back down to the floor and took his hands, looking up at him with her head c.o.c.ked to one side. His mouth was slightly open. "We would have to be careful, Semini," she told him. "So very careful."

His fingers tightened on hers. He leaned down toward her and she felt his lips brush her hair, moving as he spoke. "Cenzi has my soul," he whispered. "But you, Allesandra, you have my heart. You always had my heart." The words were so unexpected, so clumsy and cloying that she nearly laughed again, though she knew it would destroy him. She started to speak, to say something in return, but he leaned down again and kissed her brow, softly. She turned her face toward his, her arms going around him. The kiss was longer and urgent, his breath sweet, and the depth of her own hungry response startled her. She broke away reluctantly, hugging him tightly, her breath trembling.

His lips brushed her hair, his breath on her ear made her shiver. "This is what I want, Allesandra, more than anything."

She didn't answer him with words, but with her mouth and her hands.

Karl ca'Vliomani.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE I'm seeing this. Has the Council of Ca' gone entirely insane?"

Sergei, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs in a corner of the cell, inclined his head significantly toward the garda leaning against the wall outside the bars of the cell. "No," he said, his voice so low that Karl had to lean forward to hear it. "Not insane. Just eager to pick Audric's bones clean when he falls. And me?" He laughed bitterly. "I was the easiest jackal for the pack to shove aside. I'm to be the scapegoat for everything, including Ana's death."

Karl could taste bile on the back of his tongue. The air of the Bastida was thick and heavy and lay like a ma.s.sive, sodden shawl around his shoulders, slumping them as he sat in the single chair. Memories flooded him: he had once inhabited this very cell, when Sergei commanded the Garde Kralji. Then, Mad Mahri had s.n.a.t.c.hed Karl from his imprisonment with his strange Westlander magic . . .

. . . and the memories of that time, so tied to Ana and his relationship with her, brought back fully the grief and the rage at her death. He lifted his head, his jaw and fists clenched, his eyes threatening to overflow. "It was Westlander magic that killed her," he said to Sergei. "I nearly had the man."

"Perhaps," Sergei told him. "I a.s.sure you it wasn't me."

"And I know that," Karl told him. "I will tell the Council the same thing. I'll go to Councillor ca'Ludovici after I leave here-"

"No," Sergei told him. "You won't. Don't get yourself caught in this, my friend. It's bad enough that you've come to see me-the councillors will know that in a turn of the gla.s.s or less. You really don't want whispers of the Numetodo being involved in any of Audric's conspiracies-not if you don't want the Holdings looking like the Coalition." He paused. "You know what I mean by that, Karl. And be careful what you do with these Westlanders. There are already eyes watching you, and they have little sympathy toward anyone they perceive as being against them."

"I don't care," Karl told him as the lava churned in his stomach again. The resolution that had settled there hardened. I'll find this Talis again, and this time I will force the truth from him. "What about you?"

"So far I've been treated well enough."

"So far." Karl shuddered. He thought that Sergei was looking all of his years and more, that perhaps there was more gray in his hair than there'd been even a few days ago. "If they want a statement from you, if they want to punish you here in the Bastida . . ."

"You don't need to tell me," Sergei answered, and Karl thought he saw a visible shudder in Sergei's normally unflappable posture. "I know better than anyone. That guilt is on my hands, too." His voice dropped lower again. "Commandant cu'Falla is my friend also, and he has left me an option for that, if it comes to it. I won't be tortured, Karl. I won't permit it."

Karl's eyes widened slightly. "You mean . . . ?"

A bare nod. His voice lifted again as the garda in the corridor stirred. "Come with me-there's something I'd show you." He slowly uncoiled himself from the bed and moved to the balcony as the garda watched them carefully-Sergei's walk was more a shuffle. The wind lifted Karl's white hair as they approached the rail of a small ledge that jutted out from the tower. Below, the courtyard of the Bastida appeared small and distant far below, and before them the city spread out. To their left, the A'Sele was sun-sparkled as it flowed beneath the Pontica a'Brezi Veste. There were cages hung from the columns of the bridge, with skeletons huddled inside. Karl shuddered at the sight. "Look here," Sergei told him. He'd turned so that he faced not the city but the stone wall of the tower, and his finger pressed against one of the stones there. In the ma.s.sive block of granite, a crack furrowed one corner; above Sergei's finger, a small single white flower bloomed from the gray stone. "It's a meadow star," Sergei said. "Far from its usual home."

"You always knew your plants."

Sergei smiled, crinkling the skin around his metal nose. Karl could see the glue lifting and cracking. "You remember that, eh?"

"You made it so I was rather unlikely to forget."

Sergei nodded. He touched the flower gently. "Look at this beauty, Karl. The barest crack in a stone, and life has found it. A bit of dirt blown in, the stone eroding in the rain to make the thinnest layer of soil, a bird chancing to leave a seed, or perhaps the wind blowing it from a field leagues away so that it falls in just the right place. . . ."

"You should have been a Numetodo, Sergei. Or perhaps an artist. You have the mind for it."

Another smile. "If this beauty can happen here in this most doleful of places, Karl, then there is always hope. Always."

"I'm glad you believe that."

His finger dropped away from the stone. The wind-horns began to blow Second Call, and he glanced out toward the Isle a'Kralji where the Grande Palais gleamed white. Karl wondered whether Audric looked out from one of his windows toward the Bastida, and perhaps glimpsed them there. "I worry about you, Karl. Forgive me, but you're looking tired and old since she died. You need to take care of yourself."

Karl smiled at the thought that Sergei's opinion of Karl's appearance was much the same as his impression of Sergei. "I am, my friend." In my own way . . . His days and nights were spent making inquiries and trying to find the Westlander Talis again. He was tired, but he could not stop. He would not.

"I know you don't believe in Cenzi or the afterlife," Sergei was saying to him, "but I do. I know that Ana is watching from the arms of Cenzi, and I also believe she would tell you to still your grief. She's gone from here, her soul has been weighed, and she dwells now where she wished one day to go. She would want you to believe that much, and start to heal the wound in your heart that her death left."

"Sergei . . ." There were no words in him, no way to explain how deep the wound was and how it bled constantly. There was only the pain, and he could think of only one way to still the agony inside him. But that could wait until he found the Westlander again. "If I actually believed any of that, then I'd be tempted to jump from this ledge, right now, so I might be with her again." He glanced down again, at the flagstones so far below.

"Varina would be upset by that."

Karl glanced at Sergei quizzically. "What do you mean?"

Sergei seemed to be studying the meadow star's blossom. "She has qualities that any person would admire, and yet for all these years she's chosen to put all relationships aside and spend her time studying your Scath c.u.mhacht."

"For which I'm very grateful-she has pushed our understanding of it well past where it once was."

"I'm sure she appreciates your grat.i.tude, Karl."

"What are you saying? That Varina . . . ?" Karl laughed. "You evidently don't know her well at all. Varina has no problem speaking her mind. She's made it clear how she feels about me lately."

Sergei touched the flower. It shivered at the touch, its fragile hold on the stone threatening to fail. He took his hand away, and turned back to Karl. "I'm sure you're right," he said. He favored Karl with a smile touched with melancholy. Here in the daylight, Karl could see the deepening lines life had chiseled into the man's face. Karl looked out over the city. "This was my life's love," he said. "This city, and all that she means. I gave her everything. . . ."

Karl leaned close to Sergei, glancing at the garda who was ostentatiously not watching them. "I may be able to get you out of here. My own way."

He was still staring outward, his hands on the ledge, and he replied to the air. "To make us both fugitives?" Sergei shook his head. "Be patient, Karl. A flower doesn't bloom in a day."

"Patience may not be possible. Or wise."

For an instant, Sergei's face relaxed as he turned to Karl. "You could do that? Truly?"

"I think so. Yes."

"You'd endanger the Numetodo with the act. You understand that? Archigos Kenne might be sympathetic to you, but he's the next person Audric or the Council of Ca' will go after because he's simply not strong enough. All the other a'teni are less sympathetic toward the Numetodo; I see the Conclave electing a strong Archigos who will be more in the mold of Semini ca'Cellibrecca in Brezno, or-worse-I see them reconciling with Brezno entirely."

"The Numetodo have always been in danger. It was only Ana who sheltered us, and then only here in Nessantico itself." Karl saw Sergei glance at the gardai and the bars of his cell, and he saw resolution touch the man's face. "When?" Karl asked Sergei.

"If the Council actually gives Audric what he wants . . ." Sergei stroked the blossom in the wall with a gentle forefinger. The flower shivered under his touch. "Then."

Karl nodded. "I understand. But first I'll need your help and your knowledge of this place."

Nico Morel.

NICO LEFT THE LITTLE HOUSE behind the inn of Ville Paisli a few turns of the gla.s.s before dawn, having tied up his clothes into a roll he carried on his back and s.n.a.t.c.hing a loaf of bread from the kitchen. He stroked the dogs, who were wondering why someone was up so early, calming them so they wouldn't bark when he slipped the latch on the rear door and slipped out. He hurried along the road from the village in the dim light of false dawn, jumping into the shadows along the roadside at any noise. By the time the sun had eased itself over the horizon to touch the clouds in the east with fire, he was well away from the village.

He hoped his matarh would understand and not cry too much. But if he could find Talis and tell him what things were like in Ville Paisli, then Talis would come back with him and everything would be fine. All he had to do was find Talis, who loved his matarh-he'd be as angry as Nico was at what they were saying and with his magic, well, he could make them stop.

Talis had told him that Ville Paisli was only about a league and a half from Nessantico. Nico half-trotted along the rutted dirt lane that was the Avi a'Nostrosei; if he could get to the village of Certendi, then he could lose anyone pursuing him. They'd expect him to follow the Avi a'Nostrosei into Nessantico, but he'd take the Avi a'Certendi instead, which jogged off southeast to enter Nessantico nearer the banks of the A'Sele. It was a longer road, but maybe they wouldn't be looking for him there.

Nico watched carefully over his shoulder as he fled for anyone riding fast from behind. He could see the thatch-and-slate roofs of Certendi ahead of him when he noticed a smear of dust rising from behind a stand of cypress trees beyond a slow bend in the Avi. He scurried off the road and into a field of long-beans, crouching down in the thick leaves. It was good he'd done so, since the horse and rider soon appeared: it was Onczio Bayard, looking awkward and uncomfortable atop a draft horse, his eyes focused on the road in front of him. He let his onczio plod along the avenue until he vanished around the next turn.

Let Onczio Bayard look all he wanted in Certendi, then. Nico would cut around to the south through the farm fields and find the Avi a'Certendi where it emerged from the village.

He walked on, moving between the fields. Perhaps a turn of the gla.s.s later, maybe more, he found what he a.s.sumed was the Avi a'Certendi-a well-rutted dirt road, mostly clear of gra.s.s and weeds. He trudged on, munching on the bread and stopping to get a drink occasionally from one of the numerous creeks that were flowing toward the A'Sele.

By late afternoon, his feet were aching and sore, with blisters erupting wherever his skin touched his boots. The bottoms of his feet were bruised from the stones he'd stepped on. He shuffled more than walked, more tired than he'd ever been in his life and wishing he had another loaf of bread. But he was finally walking among the cl.u.s.tered houses around Nessantico's River Market. He was home and now he could find Talis. Clutching the roll of clothes tightly, he scanned the market for Uly, the seller who knew Talis. But the s.p.a.ce where Uly's stall had been set up a few weeks ago was vacant, the cloth awning gone and a few half-broken tables the only remnant. Nico limped over to the old woman selling peppers and corn next to the s.p.a.ce, grimacing and wanting nothing more than to sit down and rest. "Do you know where Uly is?" he asked wearily, and the woman shrugged. She waved her hand at a fly that landed on her nose.

"Can't say. Man's been gone for a hand of days now. Good riddance, too-just laughed when the Calls came and people said their prayers. And those horrible scars."

"Where did he go?"

"Do I look like his matarh?" She glared at him. "Go away. You're keeping away my customers."

Nico looked up and down the market; there were only a few people there and none were near the stall. "I really need to know," he told her.

She sniffed and ignored him, arranging the peppers in their boxes and shooing away flies. "Please," Nico said. "I have to talk to him."

Silence. She moved a pepper from the top of the box to the bottom.

Nico could feel himself getting angry and frustrated. It felt chilly inside, like the evening breeze. "Hey!" Nico hollered at her.

She scowled at him. "Go away or I'll call for the utilino, you little pest, and tell him you were trying to steal my produce. Go on! Away with you!" She waved at him as if he were one of the flies.

The irritation rose higher in him, and his throat felt like it did when he had one of the spicy-hot dishes Talis sometimes made. There were words that wanted to come out, and his hands made motions on their own. The old woman stared at him as if he were having some kind of fit, her eyes widening as if fascinated. The words came boiling out and Nico made a grasping motion with his hands. The woman suddenly clutched at her throat with a choking cry. She seemed to be trying to draw in a breath, her face turning redder, as Nico tightened his fists. "Stop!" He could barely make out the word, but Nico let his fist relax and the woman nearly fell, taking a deep, loud breath.

"Tell me!" Nico said, and she stared at him with fear in her eyes, her hands up as if to ward off a fist.

"I hear he might be over at Oldtown Market now-" the old woman said, all in a rush. "That's what I heard, anyway, and . . ."

But Nico was already moving away, no longer listening.

He was trembling, and he felt far more tired now than he had a moment ago. He was scared as well. Talis would be mad, and so would Matarh. You could have hurt her. He wouldn't do that again, he told himself. He wouldn't let that happen. He didn't dare. The cold anger frightened him too much.

He felt like sleeping, but he couldn't. It took him until Third Call to find the Avia'Parete, half-lost in the cl.u.s.ter of small, twisting lanes around the market and moving slowly on his aching feet. He stopped there, leaning against a building, to bow his head and say the evening prayer to Cenzi with the crowds near the Pontica Kralji. He sat down . . .

. . . and lifted his head with a start, realizing that he'd fallen asleep. Across the bridge, he could see the light-teni just beginning to light the famous city lamps in front of the Grande Palais-a scene that would be happening simultaneously all along the great length of the Avi. With a sigh, Nico pushed himself up and plunged back into the crowds, heading northward into the depths of Oldtown, looking for a familiar side street, one that might lead him home.

He didn't know how he would find Talis in the huge city, but right now all Nico wanted was to rest his aching, exhausted feet somewhere familiar, to fall asleep somewhere safe. He could go to Oldtown Market tomorrow and see if Uly was there. He limped toward home-their old house. It was the only place he could think of to go.

The trip seemed to take forever. He had to sit and rest three times, almost crying from the pain in his feet, forcing himself to keep his eyes open so he didn't fall asleep again, and each time it was harder to force himself to stand up again. He wanted to rip the boots from his feet, but he was afraid of what he might see if he did that. But at last he walked down the lane where Talis had been attacked by the Numetodo man, and turned the corner that led toward his house. He began to see buildings and faces that were familiar. He was nearly there.

"Nico!"

He heard the voice calling his name and he turned. A woman waved at him and hurried over toward him, but she was no one he recognized. Her face was lined and tired-looking, as if she were as exhausted as he was, and she seemed older than the fall of hair around her shoulders.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Varina," she told him. "I've been looking for you."

"Did Talis . . . ?" he began, then stopped, biting his lower lip. Talis wouldn't want him talking to someone he didn't know.

"Talis?" the woman said. Her chin lifted. "Ah, yes. Talis." She crouched down in front of him. He thought she had kind eyes, eyes that again seemed younger than the lined face. Her fingers lightly stroked his cheek-the way Matarh sometimes did. The gesture made him want to cry. "You were limping badly just now. You look terribly tired, Nico, and look, you're covered with dust." Concern creased the lines of her forehead as she tilted her head to the side. "Are you hungry?"

He nodded. "Yes," he said simply.

She hugged him tightly, and he relaxed into her arms. "Come with me, Nico," she said, rising to her feet again. "I'll get us a carriage, and we'll get you some food and let you rest. Then we'll see if we can find Talis for you, eh?" She held out her hand to him.

He took the offered hand, and she closed her fingers around his. Together, they walked back toward the Avi a'Parete.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

ELISSA CA'KARINA . . .

Allesandra kept hearing the name, every time she spoke to her son in recent days. "Elissa said the most intriguing thing yesterday . . ." or "I was out riding with Elissa . . ."

Today it was: "I want you to contact Elissa's parents, Matarh."

Allesandra looked at Pauli, who was reading reports from the palais in Malacki near the fire in their apartments; the servants had yet to bring in their breakfast. He seemed unsurprised by the announcement-she wondered whether Jan had spoken to him first. "You've known the woman for a little more than a week," Allesandra said, "and she's significantly older than you. I have to wonder why her family hadn't made arrangements for a marriage for her years ago. We don't know enough about her, Jan. Certainly not enough to be opening negotiations with her family."

Jan had begun shaking his head at her first objection; Pauli appeared to be stifling a laugh. "What does any of that matter, Matarh? I enjoy her company, and I'm not asking to marry her tomorrow. I want you to make the necessary inquiries, that's all. That way, if everything appears as it should and I still feel the same way in, oh, a month or two . . ." He shrugged. "I talked to Fynn; he said that the ca'Karina name is well-regarded, and that he would have no objection. He likes Elissa, too."

Allesandra doubted it-at least not in the way Jan liked the woman. Fynn considered the women of the court nothing more than necessary adornment, like a display of flowers and just as disposable. He himself had no interest in them, and if he ever married (and he would not, if the White Stone earned his money-with that thought, she felt again a stab of doubt and guilt) it would be purely for the political advantage that he gained from it.

Fynn would not marry a woman for love, and decidedly not for l.u.s.t.

But Jan . . . She already knew, from palais gossip, that Elissa had spent several nights with her son in his rooms. She also knew that she had no support here: not from Jan, not from Pauli, and certainly not from Fynn, who probably found the affair amusing, especially since it so obviously annoyed Allesandra. Nor, given what she'd begun with Semini, could she say much without hypocrisy. He wants no more than you want, after all. She fixed an indulgent smile on her face, mostly because she knew it would annoy Paul.