That was as far he got. Eneas pulled the leather sack of pebbles from his pocket and, in the same fluid motion, struck the man hard in the side of his head with it. The Numetodo crumpled, unconscious, and Eneas caught the man in his arm as he sagged. He draped a limp arm over his shoulder and pulled up on the man's belt. He laughed as if drunken, singing off-key as he dragged the man in the direction of the temple's side door. Someone seeing them from a distance would think they were two inebriated friends staggering across the plaza. Eneas cast a last look over his shoulder as he reached the doors; no one seemed to be watching. He pulled on the heavy, bronze-plated door, adorned with images of the Moitidi and their struggle with Cenzi: that much hadn't changed-the temple doors were rarely locked, open to those who might wish to come in and pray, or to the indigent who might need a place to sleep during the night at the price of an Admonition by the teni who found them in the morning. Eneas slipped into the cool darkness of the temple. It was empty, and the sound of his breathing and his boot steps were loud as he dragged the Numetodo's dead weight up the main aisle, finally dropping him against the lectern at the front of the quire. He unslung the pack from his shoulder and put it on the Numetodo's lap, uncoiling the long cotton string from the top. He fed it out carefully as he backed down the aisle.

I will show you your own small Gift, Cenzi had told him only this afternoon. I will show you how to make your own fire. The chant and the gestures had come to him then, and though Eneas knew it was against the Divolonte for someone not of the teni to use the Ilmodo, he knew that this was Cenzi's wish and he would not be punished for it. He spoke the chant now near the temple entrance, and he felt the cold of the Ilmodo flowing in his veins and the Second World opening to his mind: between his moving hands there was an impossible heat and light, and he let it fall to the end of the cord and the fuse began to sputter and fume.

"Hey! Who's there! What's this!"

He saw a teni come from one of the archways leading off from the quire-the o'teni he'd spoken to earlier-and Eneas ducked down quickly, though the spell left him strangely tired, as if he'd been working hard all day. He heard the teni give a call and other footsteps echoed. "Who's this? What's going on?" someone said, as the fire on the fuse traveled quickly away from Eneas toward the lectern. When it was nearly there, Eneas rose to his feet and ran toward the door. He caught a glimpse of the o'teni and few e'teni, walking quickly toward the slumped, unmoving Numetodo, and someone pointed to Eneas . . .

. . . but it was already too late.

A dragon roared and belched fire, and the concussion picked Eneas up and threw him against the bronze doors. Half conscious, he fell to the stone flags as bits of rock and marble pelted him. When the hard, quick rain pa.s.sed, he lifted his head. There was something red on the floor in front of him: the Numetodo's leg, he realized with a start, still clad in his loose pants. Near the front of the temple, someone was screaming, a long wail interspersed with curses. Groaning, Eneas tried to sit up. He was bleeding from cuts and sc.r.a.pes and his body was bruised from his collision with the bronze doors, but otherwise Cenzi had spared him. The doors of the temple were flung open in front of him, and an utilino rushed in and past Eneas, blowing hard on his whistle. Teni were rushing in from the alcoves. The high lectern had toppled, laying broken in the aisle, and there was blood and parts of bodies everywhere. The Numetodo . . . he could see the man's head and the top of his torso, torn from his body and tossed into the aisle. The rest of him, where the bag of black sand had lain . . . Eneas couldn't see the rest.

For a moment he felt nausea: this was too much like the war, and the memories of what he'd seen in the h.e.l.lins threatened to overwhelm him. Acid filled his throat, his stomach heaved, but Cenzi's voice was in his head, too.

This is what they deserve, those who defy Me. You, Eneas, you are my Moitidi of Death, my chosen Weapon.

But I don't want this, he wanted to say, but even as he thought the words, he felt the anger of Cenzi rising up, a heat in his brain that made his head pound, and he went to his knees, clutching his skull between his hands.

Everything was confusion. People were pushing past him. He could still hear the wounded teni screaming. ". . . Numetodo . . . I recognize him . . ." Eneas heard the word amidst the chaos, and he smiled. As more people entered from the plaza, shouting and calling, he took the opportunity to slink to the side and into the shadows.

He went out into the night, feeling Cenzi's presence warming him.

You are fit for the task I have set for you. Now-go to Nessantico, and I will speak to you there . . .

Audric ca'Dakwi.

THE COUNCIL OF CA' FOR NESSANTICO met on the first floor of the Grande Palais on the Isle a'Kralji, where they had several suites of rooms and a small staff of palais servants dedicated entirely to their needs. The Council of Ca', for most of the great Kraljica Marguerite's reign, as well as that of her son Kraljiki Justi, had been largely a social organization, coming to the palais to sign the papers pa.s.sed to them by the Kralji and the royal staff-a task they performed with little thought or discussion, otherwise spending their time relaxing in their sumptuous private offices or socializing in the well-appointed dining room and lounges of the Council's section of the Kralji's Palais. For many decades, being a "councillor" was mostly an honorary position, their duties ceremonial and hardly taxing, and their stipend for serving on the Council generous.

But with Kraljiki Justi's pa.s.sing, with Audric being in his minority when he ascended to the Sun Throne, the Council had been required to a.s.sume a more active role in government. It was the Council of Ca' who had named Sergei ca'Rudka as Regent; it was the Council who now created and pa.s.sed new legislation (until very recently, with the Regent's input as well), it was the Council who controlled the purse strings of Nessantico, it was the Council with whom the Regent was required to consult on any matter of policy within the Holdings, or any diplomatic decisions regarding the Coalition, the h.e.l.lins, or the other countries within the Holdings.

The Council had been required to wake from its comfortable, long slumber, and to a large extent it had. The last election for the Council, four years ago, had been aggressive and harsh; four of the seven members had been deposed, replaced by far more ambitious ca'.

Audric knew the history of the Council; Sergei had yammered on about it interminably, and Maister ci'Blaylock had spoken of the same in his lectures. Now his great-matarh gave him the same warnings.

"You need to be careful, Audric. Remember that each of the councillors wants to be where you are. They want the ring and the staff; they want to sit on the Sun Throne. They are jealous of you, and you must convince them that in giving you what you want, they will find themselves closer to their own goals."

Great-Matarh Marguerite was staring at him as he walked down the corridor to the Hall of the Sun Throne, where the Council awaited him. The wheels of the easel on which her painting rested were quiet today; he'd insisted that Marlon grease them with duck fat before the meeting. The servants pushed the easel down the inner corridor of the palais in front of Audric, careful to match his erratic, slow pace, while Marlon and Seaton supported him at either side. He'd had a bad day; it was a misty and cool day, and he allowed himself to cough even as he heard his great-mam's voice comforting him.

"You can allow it, this once," she told him. "This once, your weakness will be our strength. But after this, you must be stronger. You will be stronger."

"I will, Great-Matarh," he said. "I will be strong after today, and the sickness will leave me." From the periphery of his vision, he saw Marlon look at him strangely, though the man said nothing.

Seaton gestured to the hall servants, who opened the door to the hall and bowed as Audric and his great-matarh entered. Inside, the Council members rose from their seats before the Sun Throne and also bowed, though their bows were but the barest lowering of heads. Audric could see Sigourney ca'Ludovici's eyes as she inclined her head, though her gaze seemed to be more on the painting of Marguerite than on him. He went to the Sun Throne, Marlon helping him up the set of three stairs to the platform on which it sat, and let himself drop into the cushioned seat. He coughed then-he could not stop the paroxysm-as light flared deep inside the crystal and surrounded him in a bath of yellow: as the Throne had done for long generations whenever a Kralji had sat there. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his silken bashta as the Council stood before him and Seaton wheeled the easel to the right side of the throne, so that Marguerite glared balefully out at the seven ca'.

"Look at them," she said to Audric. "Look how hungrily they stare at the Sun Throne. They're all wondering how they might come to sit where you are. Start by being firm with them, Audric. Show them that you are in charge of this meeting, not them. Then . . . then do as you must."

"I will," he told her. The ca' were already starting to seat themselves, and he raised his voice, addressing them. "There's no need to take your seats," he told the ca'. "Our business here should take but a few grains of the gla.s.s."

Caught in mid-movement, the ca' straightened again with a rustling of bashta and tashta, and gazes in his direction that ranged from questioning to nearly angry. "Forgive me, Kraljiki," Sigourney ca'Ludovici said, "but things may not be as straightforward as you think."

"But they are, Vajica ca'Ludovici," Audric told her. "The traitor ca'Rudka is in the Bastida; the Council has had the time you asked for to consult with each other and deliberate. Will you name another Regent, or will you allow me to rule as Kraljiki as I should? Those are the only two options before you, and you should have made a decision." The long speech cost him, as he knew it would. He bent over coughing even as his great-matarh laughed softly in his head, covering his mouth with a kerchief that was quickly stained with red blotches. He crumpled the linen in his hand, but not so much that they could not see the blood.

He opened his eyes to see ca'Ludovici staring at his hand. Her gaze lifted abruptly, and she smiled the smile of a cat spying a cornered mouse, glancing back once at the other Council members. "Perhaps you're right, Kraljiki. After all, the day is damp and we shouldn't keep you away from the comfort of your chambers."

She took a breath, and Audric heard Marguerite whisper to him in that s.p.a.ce. "Now. Tell her what she wants to hear."

"I am stronger now than I have been in years," Audric said, but he forced himself to cough again, to pause as if for breath between the words. It did not require much acting. "But I also am aware of my youth and inexperience, and I would look to the Council of Ca' for their advice, and perhaps to you especially, Councillor ca'Ludovici, as my mentor."

She bowed at that, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in her face. "You are indeed wise past your years, Kraljiki, which means that it gives me pleasure to tell you that we have deliberated, all of us, and have come to agreement. Kraljiki Audric, despite your youth, the Council of Ca' will not name a new Regent."

He heard his great-matarh laugh with the word, exulting, and he nearly laughed himself, but did not because it would bring on the coughing again. He contented himself with a silent wave of appreciation to them. So easy to manipulate. So predictable. He didn't know whose thought it was: his or Marguerite's.

"I thank the Council for their efforts," Audric said. "And we see a new era for Nessantico, one where we will regain all that we have lost, and reach beyond even Kraljica Marguerite's dreams." He had to pause, to breathe and clear his lungs again. Marlon stretched his hand toward the throne to give him a new handkerchief and to take away the stained and soiled one. "As for the former Regent ca'Rudka, I think it is time that he confessed his sins, made his peace with Cenzi, and paid for the errors of his life."

Vajica ca'Ludovici bowed once more, but not before Audric again saw the satisfaction in the twisting of her features. Yes, she sees ca'Rudka as her rival, dangerous as long as he remains alive . . . "It will be done as the Kraljiki wishes," she said. "I will see to it myself."

Karl ca'Vliomani.

THE NEWS SPREAD QUICKLY through the city, and as the Amba.s.sador of Paeti, Karl was among the first to hear it: the Council of Ca' had declared that the Kraljiki had reached his majority and that the Regency of ca'Rudka was at an end. Karl heard it with a sinking despair, knowing what it heralded, and he immediately called for a carriage and had the driver rush across the Pontica Kralji into Oldtown.

He hoped he was not already too late. Had he been a religious man, he would have prayed. As it was, he fondled the sh.e.l.l necklace around his neck as if it were a talisman, as if it could ward off the storm clouds he saw in his future.

Audric, a.s.suming the boy managed to survive, would now be a p.a.w.n of Sigourney ca'Ludovici and the Council of Ca'. Ana and Sergei had been the buffers for the Numetodo against the conservative elements within the Faith and within society. It was only those two who had allowed the Numetodo to flourish. Now, far too quickly, they were both gone.

There will be Numetodo bodies gibbeted and displayed on the Ponticas again. He could see them in his mind, and he could see his own face on one of the bodies. He hoped it was only fear that gave him that vision, and not some portent.

There are no G.o.ds. There are no portents. The rational thought did nothing to ease his mind. He wasn't feeling rational; he was feeling afraid.

Mika and Varina had agreed to meet him in his usual Oldtown tavern. Even here, where the patrons knew him and greeted him by name, Karl could imagine dark stares from those in the booths or at the tables. He no longer knew who he could count on, except these two. Varina sat next to him in the corner booth, her body a welcome warmth along his side, Mika across the booth's table.

Friends. He hoped they would remain so, after this. "You're the A'Morce of the Numetodo here," he told Mika, his voice hurried, pitched low so that none of the bar's denizens could hear him. The musician in the corner, playing a five-stringed luth and singing ballads that had been old when his great-vatarh taught them to him, helped cover their conversation. "I don't ask you to be involved, but I've made a promise to ca'Rudka and I intend to keep it. I need to warn you so you can . . . make arrangements."

Mika shrugged, though the drawn look of his features told Karl that the man was more worried than he was going to admit. Mika reached for the ale in front of him and drank a long gulp, wiping the foam from the ends of his mustache. "If Audric or the Council is willing to kill ca'Rudka, then they'll be looking at the Numetodo next as additional scapegoats, whether you do anything or not, Karl. The blame for everything will fall on us, as it always has."

"You have family here. I know. I'm sorry."

"Sali's been through this before," Mika said. "She'll understand. I'll send her and the children off to family in Il Trebbio."

"What about the boy Nico?" Varina asked. "What do we do with him?"

"We've heard nothing from Talis or his matarh?" Karl asked, and Varina shook her head in answer. "Then keep him with you for now, if you're willing. If things get too dangerous, just let him go-I've no interest in having the child hurt because he's a.s.sociated with us." Karl gave a long sigh. His own ale sat untouched on the table, and he stared at the bubbles frothing against the wooden mug. Thousands of bubbles, all rising for a time, then bursting and gone. Like me. Like all of us. Too quickly gone, and nothing afterward. Nothing . . .

"I'll go with you tonight, Karl, after I've sent Sali and the children on their way," Mika told him. "You'll need help with this."

Karl shook his head. "That's not necessary."

"If ca'Rudka is s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Bastida by magic, then we all know who's going to be blamed and who's going to be hunted," Mika said. "For once, they'll be right in blaming the Numetodo, eh? But the response we get won't change whether you go alone or with a dozen of us, or whether you succeed or fail: just the attempt will be enough."

"I'm not going to risk the lives of a dozen of us. I'm going to take two," he said. "Myself, and one other."

Mika grinned. "So I might as well make certain that you succeed-as long as ca'Rudka's alive, there's a chance he may find his way back to power, and that would be best for us."

"I'm stronger than either one of you with the Scath c.u.mhacht," Varina interjected. "I'm going with you also."

With that declaration, the knot in Karl's stomach tightened. He imagined Varina dead, or worse, captured. The pain of that thought made him grimace, made his head shake. "There's no need. You have Nico to watch."

Her lips tightened. She tapped the booth's table with her fingernails. "Mika," she said, "I think we need another round here. Would you mind getting it?"

Mika blinked, puzzled. "Just call Mara over and-" He stopped, then his eyes widened slightly. "Oh," he said, his lips pursing. "Certainly. I'll go get it."

He had barely left the booth when Varina turned in the bench seat to face Karl. Her voice was low and dangerous. "Karl, I have spent years-years-doing the research and experiments to expand the catalog of spell formulae we now use regularly. I have thrown myself into understanding the Westlander magic and how it might work and how we might harness their ways. I have given up . . ." She stopped, biting her lower lip momentarily. "I have given up the life I might have had for the Numetodo and a cause I thought we shared. And now you're going to relegate me to a babysitter? If you do that, Karl, you will be telling me that I've wasted all that time and all that effort and all those years. Is that what you're telling me? Is it?"

Her accusation sliced into him like a honed dagger. He lifted his hands from the table as if wounded. "You don't understand-" he started to say.

"What don't I understand?" she shot back. "That you don't think I'm of any use to you? That I don't . . . don't care enough for you to want to help?"

"No." He shook his head helplessly. "Varina, our odds aren't good here."

"And they're better without me?"

Karl sighed. "No. That's not what I'm saying. I don't want you hurt."

"You're willing to let Mika take his chances, though? Why, Karl? Why is it different for me? Why?" The questions were hammer blows, and he thought there was a strange urgency to her questions, as if there were an answer she wanted him to give.

But he had no answers. He ducked his head, staring down at his mug, at the bubbles expiring on its rim, at the water ringing the bottom and staining the wood. "If you want to go with me, Varina," he said, "then I will be glad for your help," he told her. He lifted his head. She was staring at him with a fragile defiance. "Thank you."

Her mouth opened slightly, as if she were going to say more. Then she nodded.

Mika came back with more ale. He placed the mugs on the center of the table. "Settled?" he asked.

"Yes," Karl answered. "Settled. If this is what you both truly want, then let's finish our drinks so we can go to our rooms and prepare the spells we'll need this evening. Mika, if you'd make sure that word gets pa.s.sed along that all Numetodo should leave the city or plan to make themselves very scarce for the foreseeable future . . ." He picked up his mug finally, and Mika and Varina lifted theirs. They touched them together. "To luck," he said. "We'll need it."

They drained their mugs as one.

Varina ci'Pallo.

"YOU LOOK AWFUL TIRED, Varina," Nico said.

She was. She was exhausted, so tired that her bones ached. The afternoon had been spent preparing spells, shaping the Scath c.u.mhacht until the spell was complete, then placing the trigger word and gesture to release it in her mind. The spell-weariness dragged at her-it was worse now than it had been when she was younger, worse since she'd begun experimenting with the Tehuantin method. She'd gone to the small room where they kept Nico to bring him his supper and check on him.

"I'll be fine in a few turns," she told Nico. "I just have to go to sleep for a bit so I can recover."

"Talis was always tired, too, when he did magic things, especially with that bowl. I thought it made him look old, too. Like you."

The brutal honesty of a child. Varina touched her graying hair, the deep wrinkles that had carved themselves into her face in the last few years. "We pay for magic this way," she told Nico. "Nothing ever comes to you in this world without cost. You'll learn that." She smiled wryly. "Sorry. That sounds like something a parent would say."

Nico smiled: hesitantly, almost shyly. "Matarh talks like that to me sometimes," he told her. "Like she's talking more to herself than me. I'll try to remember it, though."

Varina laughed. She sat on the chair alongside his bed, leaning forward to tousle his hair. Nico frowned, sliding back a little on the bed. "Nico," Varina said, drawing her hand back, "I have to talk to you. Things are happening, outside. Bad things. After I rest a little, I have to go do something, and when I get back, we're going to have to leave the city, very quickly."

"Like I had to with Matarh?" He drew his doubled legs up to his chest as he sat on the bed, wrapping his hands around them. He looked at her over his knees.

"Yes, like that."

"Are you in trouble?"

She had to smile at that. "I'm about to be."

He sniffed. "Is it because of that man?"

"Karl, you mean? You might say that."

He released his legs and glanced at the food on the tray but didn't touch it. "Are you and Karl . . . ?"

She understood what he was asking without the word. "No. What would make you think that?"

"You act like you are. When the two of you talk to each other, you remind me of Matarh and Talis."

"Well, we're not . . . together. Not that way."

"He likes you, I can tell."

That made her smile, but the taste of it was bitter. "Oh, you can, can you? When did you become so wise in the way of adults?"

Nico shrugged. "I can tell," he said again.

"Let's not talk about this," she said, though she wanted to. She wondered what Karl would say to Nico if Nico told him the same thing. "I need you to eat, and I need you to get some sleep because very likely we'll be leaving the city tonight. You need to be ready for that."

"Will you take me to my matarh?"

"I wish I could, Nico. I really do. But I don't know where we'll be going, yet. I'll take you somewhere safe. That much I promise you. I won't let anything bad happen to you, and we'll try to get you back to your matarh. Do you understand me?"