He smiled to himself. He would be a fine Hirzg. He would surprise both of them with just how effective a leader he would be.

He suspected they might not like the result.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

THE WALKWAY AT THE REAR of the temple was dark, illuminated only sporadically by green-shuttered teni-lamps hung on porcelain hooks mortared to the wall. Fluted columns lined the walk, shielding it from the gardens of a courtyard between the northern wing of the temple complex and the temple itself. The great windows of stained gla.s.s loomed dark above her. Allesandra half-ran along the walkway, not wanting to be seen though she'd been a.s.sured that no teni would be in the area, the soft leather soles of her sandals hushing on polished granite. It had been easy enough to slip from her own rooms at the palais down the servants' corridors, waiting until there was no one watching to open the door and hurry across the plaza and into the Brezno streets. She wore a cowl over her hair, shadowing her face, and her tashta was plain. She might have been just another woman hurrying home in the evening. Semini had told her which door would be open, and which places the teni generally avoided. The ceremonies for Third Call had ended a turn of the gla.s.s ago.

She was nearly there. A turn to the left down the next opening, then up the stairs to the room that Semini kept in the temple complex when he didn't wish to return to his own apartments in the northern wing.

"Allesandra."

She froze at the hiss of the voice. Her hand went to the knife she had hidden in the sash of the tashta.

"Francesca," she said.

A figure appeared from alongside one of the columns. In the uncertain light, she saw the woman, the lines of her face holding shadows. The verdant glow from the lamps made Francesca look sickly. She spread her open hands, as if showing Allesandra that she held no weapon. "I know," Francesca said to her. "I've known all along."

"What is it that you know, Francesca?"

She laughed. The sound startled black starlings settling for the night in the fruit trees of the courtyard. They rose and fluttered restlessly. Allesandra could smell alcohol on the woman's strong breath. "We shouldn't play games, you and I," the woman said. "There's been nothing between Semini and myself for years, and if you're willing to spread your legs so that old ram can plow you, why should I care?"

Allesandra felt her cheeks heat with the raw crudity, drawing her breath in between her teeth. "If you don't care, why are you here talking to me?"

The amus.e.m.e.nt vanished from the woman's face. She sniffed, staring at Allesandra. "You're a pretty one. Semini always liked you; I heard the fondness in his voice when you finally came back from Nessantico. The lovers he had afterward . . . they always reminded me of you. Reminded him too, I a.s.sume. I know whose face he was seeing when he plowed them. Ah, that bothers you, does it? I'll bet he never told you that." Francesca sidled closer to Allesandra and she stepped back, her hand still on the knife's leather hilt. "I'll bet there's much he hasn't told you."

"Francesca, you're drunk and I'm not having this conversation. Now, let me by . . ."

The woman's hand came up, her lips twisting in a scowl. "Not yet. Look at me. Look . . ." Francesca waved her hands toward her own face. "I was beautiful once. Why, I was the Kraljiki Justi's mistress; I might have been his wife had my vatarh chosen the right side in the war. But he didn't. And now . . ." For a moment, Allesandra thought the woman wasn't going to speak again. She stood there, her body swaying slightly. "You think you know my husband? You don't know him. I saw you when the news came that Archigos Ana had died. I saw the horror and grief in that pretty face of yours. You were hurt, because you liked that cold b.i.t.c.h. Me, I hated her. I was happy to hear that she'd died. I laughed out loud. But you . . . she treated you well, didn't she? She was a matarh to you, when your own family abandoned you. Archigos Ana . . . Phaw!" Francesca pursed her lips, turned her head, and spat on the flags. "He knows who murdered her. As do I."

"Who?" Allesandra asked. Her hand had gone to her throat. She was afraid she knew the answer.

Francesca took a stumbling step forward, nearly falling and clutching at Allesandra's tashta. "Ask him," the woman grated out, her breath filling Allesandra's nostrils. "Make him tell you, and then see how you feel about him."

Her laugh erupted in another fluttering of starling wings, and she pushed away from Allesandra. She stumbled toward the archway leading to the north wing without looking back. "Ask him," Allesandra heard the woman say again, the words echoing around the courtyard.

She watched Francesca wrench open the doors, heard them shut again behind her. She stood there for several moments, as the starlings settled in the fruit trees once again and the moon lifted over the domes of the temple.

In the end, Allesandra turned and walked away from the temple, back toward her rooms and her own thoughts.

Nico Morel.

IN THE DISTANCE, Nico could hear the wailing cornets and zinkes as Kraljiki Audric's funeral procession proceeded along the Avi a'Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procesthe Avi a'Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procession might look like-all the ca'-and-cu' parading behind the funeral coach, the teni using their magic to turn the wheels, the new Kraljica Signourney following behind in her own special coach. It would be splendid, that procession. A wonder. Audric hadn't been much older than he was, and Nico wondered what it would be like to be so young and also Kraljiki. He wondered how someone could have hated Audric so much that he would kill him. Nico couldn't imagine hating anyone that much.

No one else in the room seemed to notice the sounds of the funeral-or perhaps they chose to ignore it.

"I didn't kill Archigos Ana."

Nico sat in his matarh's lap. She hardly let him go since she'd seen him. Not that he minded; he was quite content to sit encircled by her arms, protected. The feeling made him realize just how much he had missed her, just how scared he had been for so long. He and his matarh were sitting on the hearth, the fire warming his side. Talis was sitting at the table in the center of the room; Karl and Varina were on the other side. Nico could almost see the tension arcing between them, a fire nearly as hot as the one at his back. His matarh felt it, too; he could feel the shivering in her muscles and how tightly she held him, and he knew she was afraid that something was going to happen.

"I didn't kill her," Talis said again. "It's the truth."

"Right," Karl answered. "And we're just supposed to simply believe that. Because you say it's so."

Talis shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "You don't want to believe me, fine. It's still the truth. But . . ." Talis licked his lips. "I know how she was killed, and I know who must have been at least partially responsible."

"Go on," Karl said.

"It was this . . ." Talis reached into the pouch on his belt. Nico saw both Varina and Karl stiffen at that, and his matarh sucked in her breath. Karl's hands were suddenly up, as if ready to cast a spell. Talis froze. "No magic," he said. "I wouldn't, not with Sera and Nico here. I wouldn't."

After a moment, Karl let his hands rest on the tabletop again, and Talis opened the pouch. He brought out a small cloth bag and untied the string holding it together. He spilled out a small mound of dark powder on the table. Karl stared at it. "There was black dust all around the High Lectern and on Ana's clothes," he said. "That . . . that's the same thing?"

Talis nodded. "Yes." He scooped up all but a pinch of the powder and put it back in the bag. "We call it bosh luum in our language. Black sand, in yours. Here . . ." From the pouch, he took a low, wide bra.s.s bowl, marked with strange figures around the rim. He brushed the remnants of the powder into the bowl and set it in the center of the table. "I'll leave this to you-put a small fire spell in the bowl, just the tiniest spark." He smiled, a brief flicker. "And don't put your face too near it if you want to keep that beard."

Karl glanced at Varina, obviously uncertain. Varina looked at Nico's matarh. "Sera?" she asked. "We can trust him?"

Nico felt rather than saw his matarh nod, but her hands tightened even more around him at the same time. Varina made a quick motion with her hand, and spoke a word in another language. The word sounded like "tihn-eh" to him, and as soon as Varina spoke it, a spark appeared between her fingers and she flicked her hand in the direction of the bowl, the spark flying away.

As soon as the spark entered the bowl, there was a simultaneous flash and boom, as if a thunderstorm had broken inside the bowl. The bowl itself jumped and rang, and white smoke erupted. Someone shouted; Nico couldn't tell who. His matarh had turned with the noise, her body shielding Nico. She turned slowly back, and Nico could see again. Karl was reaching across the table to the bowl, which still had smoke rising from it. There was a strange smell in the air, like Nico imagined that the underworld of the Moitidi might smell like.

"That was just a sprinkle of it," Talis was saying. "I would say you could imagine what a large amount of black sand could do, but I don't really think you can."

"I can," Karl said. He'd been examining the bowl; the way it was tilted, Nico could see that the bottom of the bowl was blackened as if it had been scorched. Karl's face was grim as he set the bowl down. "I was there when Ana died."

Talis pressed his lips together.

Varina pushed the bowl away. She lifted her head, seeeming to hear the fading sound of Audric's funeral procession for the first time. "The Kraljiki." Her eyes widened. "The rumors . . ."

". . . are quite possibly true, from what I've heard," Talis finished for her. "But that also wasn't my doing." He gestured at Nico. "The boy can tell you that. I was with him when it happened. We heard the wind-horns calling. Didn't we, Nico?"

Nico nodded.

"Westlander magic . . ." Karl breathed. He'd picked up the bowl again, staring at the sooty interior as if answers were written there. "We're just starting to understand it, and I can tell you, Talis, that it doesn't come from your G.o.ds any more than teni magic comes from Cenzi."

"Then you still don't understand," Talis said. "This isn't magic. At least not the black sand itself. It's no more magic than making bread, if you know the recipe for making it."

"You said you know who's responsible," Karl said. "Give me a name."

Talis took a long breath. "His name is Uly. He has a stall at the River Market. He's a Westlander, sent here at the same time I was. He's a warrior. His job was to report back to the Tecuhtli-the Tecuhtli is what your Kraljiki might be if he were also the Commandant of the Garde Civile. I was here for the Nahual, the head of my order, to help Uly and also to find out what happened to Mahri. And . . ." Talis took another breath. "I made a mistake. It was we nahualli-the spellcasters-who discovered how to create black sand; it's a secret we've kept-and yes, if others thought it was magic, we didn't correct their misconception. But Uly . . . we were here so long and he was the only person I knew who spoke my language, and until I met Sera-" he glanced at Nico's matarh and smiled, "-he was the only person who seemed to care about me. I did what I shouldn't have done. I had him help me make black sand. I tried to keep the details from him, but . . ." Talis took the bowl from the table and placed it back in his pouch. "Uly wasn't stupid. He could have easily seen enough to reproduce the process. His job was to provide me the ingredients, after all."

"You're saying this Uly a.s.sa.s.sinated Ana?" Karl asked. "That's what you want us to believe now?"

Talis lifted a shoulder. "I'm saying it's possible. Probable. I know it wasn't me. And it was definitely bosh luum that did it. Not Westlander magic. Not Numetodo magic either."

Karl's hands were clenched on the tabletop. "Where's this Uly?"

"I haven't seen him since after you attacked me," Talis answered. "I told Uly about it and said that I was going to disappear for awhile, and haven't heard from him since. I suppose the best place to start to find him would be River Market, but . . ." Talis began, but Nico squirmed in his matarh's arms.

"He's not there," Nico said. They were all looking at him now, and his matarh's arms loosened as she looked down at him on her lap.

"Nico?"

"It's true, Matarh," he said. "Uly's not there. After I left Tantzia Alisa's and walked here, I thought Uly could tell me where Talis was," Nico said. "But when I went to the River Market, Uly's stall was empty and the pepper-seller lady said he was gone."

Talis was nodding. "I thought that would be the case. I don't know where he is," Talis said. "Still in the city, probably, but where . . ."

"The pepper lady said that he might be in Oldtown Market," Nico told them.

Karl was already standing. Now Talis rose also. "I don't know that Uly did it, Amba.s.sador," he said. "You don't know it either."

"I intend to find out."

"Then I'll go with you."

"Why?" Karl asked. "To stop him if he tells me that it was actually you, or that he hasn't the faintest clue how to make this black sand of yours?"

"He won't talk to you, no matter what you do to him," Talis said. "He's a warrior; he's been trained to die first. He trusts me. You? The first time you ask him something that arouses his suspicions, he'll kill you and run. Or he'll happily die in the attempt."

"I'll be with him," Varina said. She was standing, too, her arm laced with Karl's. "And we're stronger than you think."

"You'll need me," Talis insisted.

"Fine," Karl said finally. "But not with that." He gestured at Talis' walking stick.

Talis grimaced. "I can't leave that here. I won't."

"Then you'll stay with it."

Talis seemed to consider that a moment. "All right," he said. "I'll leave it. This one time. I'm going."

"I'll come, too," Nico said.

All three of them turned to him, and he could feel his matarh looking down at him as well. "No!" they said, all four of them at the same time.

Niente.

THE VISION IN THE SCRYING BOWL troubled him. He could feel Tecuhtli Zolin studying his face for any sign of what the visions indicated, and he lowered his head even further into the swirling blue mist rising from it.

A woman sat on a glowing throne, her face twisted by pain and horribly scarred, one eye missing. An army moved through the mist behind her . . . There, a boy and an older woman, and behind them also an army, though with banners of black and silver, not the blue and gold of the Holdings . . . A man wearing a necklace of a sh.e.l.l, and with him-could it be?-a nahualli who looked like Talis, though he was embracing a woman and child who were not Tehuantin, but Easterners . . .

The images were coming too fast, and Niente tried to still them with his mind, trying to force them farther out in time, to show the wisps of the future that might come. He prayed to Axat for clarity, he thought of their own army and the ships riding on the river close by . . .

The ships swayed in the midst of a storm, but the storm rained fire down from the sky. Armies crawled over the land, and there were the bright explosions of black sand, and smoke hung heavy over trampled fields . . . But the mist seemed to divide in twain-as sometimes happened when Axat wished to show two possible outcomes. He saw a field littered with the bodies of Tehuantin warriors, and a single ship of their fleet with tattered sails, hurrying away westward into a falling sun as the other ships burned in orange flame to the water . . . "Westward . . . home . . ." He could almost hear the words in the wind . . .

But that vision closed, and the other came . . .

In the second vision, there was a fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y battle on the fields before the city, and the army of blue and gold retreated behind the solid walls of a city . . . The same city now, with broken walls, and through the smoke and the mist of the vision it was difficult to see, but he thought he glimpsed the army of the Tehuantin spilling through the breaches . . .

Another city lay beyond it, far greater, and it seemed to beckon . . .

And there it was again . . . the image of a dead Tehuantin warrior, with a nahualli lying next to him . . .

"What is it you're trying to show me, Axat?" Niente asked, his voice cracking.

"Nahual?"

Niente glanced up; the mist spilled from the scrying bowl and died.

The Tehuantin encampment was noisy and busy around them as a wan sun tried to penetrate high, thin clouds. Niente found himself missing the fiercer, warmer sun of his own land; this place was colder than he liked, as if it leeched the heat from his blood. Tecuhtli Zolin stared at him, the white of his eyes gleaming against the black lines inscribed around the sockets, the red eagle on his skull seeming to want to take flight. There was eagerness in his face. Flanking him on either side were Citlali and Mazatl, and their glances were no less eager. "What did the vision tell you?" Zolin asked Niente. "What did it say?"

"Very little," he answered, and annoyance showed over the Tecuhtli's face in a flash of teeth.

"Very little," he said, mocking Niente's tone. "Tecuhtli Necalli used to tell me how your visions in the scrying bowl would give him strategies, guide the way he placed the warriors and moved through the terrain. He said you were Axat's Nahual, showing us the way to victory. But all you give me is 'very little.' "

"I give you nothing," Niente told him, and Zolin scowled in response. "As I gave Tecuhtli Necalli nothing also. I am only Axat's conduit. I can relay what Axat shows me, but it's not my vision. It's Hers. All I have to give is what Axat offers. If you wish to complain about how little that is, talk to Her."

"Then tell me this very little, Nahual," he answered. He pointed eastward, to where the outlier scouts had said that an army of the Holdings waited for them, outside the city a half day's march away. Niente had ridden forward with Tecuhtli Zolin to see the city-far larger than the mostly-abandoned villages through which they had marched in the last several days, though not as elaborate or huge as the city in the scrying bowl, this Nessantico where the Kraljiki lived. Still, the city huddled behind its walls and spilling out beyond them was easily half the size of Tlaxcala or the other great island cities of the Tehuantin empire, and larger than either Munereo or Karnor.

It seemed that the Kraljiki would permit them to go no farther untested. If Zolin wanted this city, he must fight for it. Niente knew that would bother the Tecuhtli not at all.

"I glimpsed a battle," Niente told him. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the scenes flashing past in the scrying bowl. "In Axat's vision, the army of the Holdings fought, but then fell behind the walls of the city when we came upon them. I saw the walls broken, and Tehuantin entering through . . ."

"Xatli Ket!" Niente stopped as Zolin uttered the war cry of his caste-Citlali and Mazatl echoed the Techutli, and the cry was taken up-fainter and fainter-by the other warriors nearby. "Then Axat has shown you our victory," Zolin said. He slapped at the bamboo-slatted armor covering his chest.

"Perhaps," Niente hurried to say. "But she also showed me our army and the fleet destroyed, and a ship hurrying to the west. Tecuhtli, that is also a possible future-a sign. If we return now, if we put our army on the ships and return home, then that's a future we will never face. The Easterners will fear to ever come to our land again. We have already shown them the consequences; there's nothing left here to prove."

Zolin coughed a derisive laugh. Citlali frowned, and Mazatl looked away as if in disgust. "Retreat, Nahual?"

"Not retreat," Niente persisted. "To realize that we have given these Easterners their lesson with the ruins of Munereo and Karnor, and to return home in victory."

"Victory?" Zolin spat on the ground between them. "They would think they have won the victory, that we ran as soon as we saw their army."