Jan
ca’Vörl
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 téni-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 snatched 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 Hïrzg 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.