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 passed 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 Scáth Cumhacht 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’téni 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 Scáth Cumhacht 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, Ambassador, 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, Ambassador. A bit of poor clothing
and dirt on your face doesn’t disguise you well. I really hope you
weren’t thinking you could pass unnoticed in Oldtown.”
“You felt my spell.
That means you’re one of the Westlander téni, like
Mahri.”
“Perhaps I only
turned because I heard you speak a word, Ambassador. Spell? I’ve
seen the fire-téni 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, Ambassador; 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 Ambassador 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 Hellins were, and your people fought against that invasion
just as ours are doing now. Perhaps we should be allies,
Ambassador, 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 téni . . . 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: “Saighneán!”—and with the word and the motion,
blue-white lightning crackled and arced from Karl toward the
mocking Westlander.
But the man had moved
at the same time, his hand lifting his walking stick. A glow
erupted impossibly from the stick, the glare blinding Karl as
tendrils of aching brilliance crawled through the air as if they
were fingers clawing at a huge, invisible globe. The ethereal
fingers snared his lightning and squeezed, a small sun seeming to
hang in the air between them as thunder boomed. He heard laughter.
Frightened now, he spoke another word: a shielding spell against
the attack he was certain would follow.
But the shield fell
away unused, and through the shifting curtains of afterimages, he
saw that the tiny lane was empty. Talis was gone. Karl shouted his
frustration (as heads began to peer cautiously from shuttered
windows, as calls and shouts of alarm came from the houses nearest
him, as tendrils of smoke curled from charred facades on either
side of the street) and Karl ran to the intersection down which the
boy had gone.
Neither boy nor
Westlander were visible. Karl pounded his fist on the nearest wall
and cursed.