The
White Stone
NESSANTICO . . .
She had never seen
the city before, though of course she’d heard much about it. Even
with the Holdings sundered, even with the previous Kraljiki having
been a pale shadow of his famous matarh, and even with the current
Kraljiki a frail boy who—rumors said—wouldn’t live to his majority,
Nessantico retained her allure.
The White Stone had
always known she would eventually come here, as anyone with
ambition must. The pull of the city was irresistible, and for a
person in her line of business, Nessantico was a rich and fertile
field to be exploited. But she had not expected to come here so
quickly or for these reasons.
After the
nearly-botched and hasty assassination of the Hïrzg, she had
thought it too dangerous to stay in the Coalition. She’d slipped
back into her beggar role as Elzbet, hiding herself among the poor
who were so often invisible to the ca’-and-cu’, and she’d made her
way from Brezno to Montbataille in the eastern mountains that
formed the border of Nessantico and Firenzcia, and then down the
River A’Sele to the great city itself.
Playing her role, she
settled herself in Oldtown. That was the best way to avoid drawing
attention to herself. She was just another of the nameless poor
walking the streets of the known world’s greatest city, and if she
conversed with the voices in her head as she walked, no one would
particularly notice or care. Just another crazed soul, a mad-woman
babbling and muttering to herself, walking in some interior world
at odds with the reality around her.
“You’ll pay for this. You can’t kill me
and not pay. They’ll find you. They’ll track
you down and kill you.”
“Who?” she asked
Fynn’s strident voice as the others inside her laughed and jeered
at him. She put her hand to her tashta, feeling underneath the
cloth the small leather pouch tied around her neck, and inside it
the smooth, pale stone she kept with her always. “Who will come
find me? I told you who hired me. Is she going to search for me?”
“You’re worried that someone else will figure it out.
You’re worried that word will get out that the White Stone was also
the woman who was Jan ca’Vörl’s lover. They’ve seen your face; they
would recognize you, and the White Stone’s face can’t be
known.”
“Shut up!” she nearly
screamed at him, and the screech caused heads to turn toward her. A
passing utilino stopped in the midst of his rounds, his téni-lit
lantern swinging over to focus on her. She shielded her eyes from
the light, stooping over and grinning at the man with what she
hoped was a mad leer. The utilino uttered a sound of disgust and
the light moved away from her; the other people had already looked
away, turning back to their own business.
The voices of her
victims were laughing and chuckling and chortling as she turned the
corner into Oldtown Center. The famous téni-lamps of Nessantico
gleamed and twinkled on the iron posts set around the open plaza.
She gazed up at the placards of the shops along the street. Here in
the large plaza the shops were still open, though most of those
along the side streets had been shuttered since full dark: the téni
might light the lamps of Oldtown Center, but they didn’t come to
the narrow and ancient streets that led off the Center. They’d set
the ring of the Avi A’Parete ablaze all around the city, so that
Nessantico seemed to wear a collar of yellow brilliance, and they
would illuminate the wide streets of the South Bank where most of
the ca’-and-cu’ lived, but Oldtown was left to dwell in
night.
The moon had slid
behind a cloud, and a drizzle threatened to turn into a hard rain.
She hurried along toward the Center, knowing that the weather would
send everyone home and set the shopkeepers to shuttering their
stores.
There: she saw the
mortar and pestle of an apothecary just down the lane, and she
shuffled toward it through the rapidly-thinning crowds, keeping her
back near the bricks and stones of the buildings and her head down.
Once, a passing man touched her arm: a graybeard, who leered at her
with missing teeth and breath that smelled of beer and cheese. “I
have money,” he said to her without prelude, his face slick with
rain. “Come with me.”
Whore! the voices called out at her gleefully,
mocking. Why not?—you let them pay you for
other services. She glared at him, and showed him the hilt
of the knife at her waist. “I’m not a whore,” she told him, told
them. Her hand grasped the knife, and raindrops scattered from her
cloak with the motion. “Back away.”
The man laughed,
gap-toothed, and spread his hands. “As you wish, Vajica. No harm,
eh?” Then his gaze slid away from her and he walked on, splashing
in the gathering puddles. She watched him go.
She could rid herself
of him, but not of the others. They were with her
always.
She’d reached the
apothecary and glanced inside the open shutters. There was no one
inside except for the balding proprietor. She went inside, the man
glancing up from his jars and vials behind the counter as the bell
on the door jingled brightly.
“Good evening to you.
A foul night—I was just about to close up. How can I help you,
Vajica?” His words were pleasant, but the tone of them and the look
he gave her were less inviting. He seemed torn between coming from
behind the counter and returning to his interrupted preparations to
close. “A potion for headaches? Something to ease a
cough?”
The White Stone would
have been firm, would have been certain, but she wasn’t the White
Stone now, only an unranked, nondescript young woman dripping on
the floor, a person who could be mistaken for a common prostitute
walking the streets or trying to escape the weather for a
moment.
Is this what you really want? She wasn’t sure who
asked the question, or whether it was her own self who asked. The
voices had been quiet when she’d been with Jan. Somehow, being with
him had quieted the turmoil inside her head, and that had been at
least part of the attraction he’d had for her, had been why she’d
let herself grow far more attached than she should have. With Jan,
for that little time, she’d felt herself healing. She’d thought
that maybe she could become someone other than the White Stone,
could become normal. Jan . . . She
wondered what he was thinking now, whether he was feeling that he’d
been played the fool, or if he ever thought of her with regret. She
wondered whether he knew who she’d been, that she’d killed his
uncle, or if he thought she’d fled only because she pretended to be
someone she wasn’t and had been found out.
“Vajica?”
She wondered if he
would ever know just how much she regretted it all.
She touched her
stomach gently again, as she had more and more recently. She should
have had her monthly bleeding even before she’d killed Fynn
ca’Vörl. She’d thought perhaps it was the stress that had made it a
few days late. But the bleeding hadn’t come during her flight; it
still hadn’t come during the days she’d been in Nessantico, and
there was now the strange nausea when she woke and there were
stranger feelings inside.
It’s all you will have of him. Do you really want to do
this?
It might have been
her own voice. It might have been all of them.
“Vajica? I don’t have
all evening. The rain . . .”
She shook her head,
blinking. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I . . .” Her hand touched her
abdomen again.
He was staring at
her, at the motion of her hand on her belly. His chin lifted and
fell, and he rubbed a hand over his bald head as if smoothing
invisible hair. “I may have what you want, Vajica,” he said, and
his voice was gentler now. “Young ladies of your age, they come to
me sometimes, and like you, they don’t quite know what to say. I
have a potion that will bring on your bleeding. That’s what you
need, isn’t it? However, I must tell you that it’s not easy to
make, and therefore not cheap.”
She stared at him.
She listened. She put her hand to the collar of her soaked tashta
and felt the stone in its leather pouch.
The voices were
silent.
Silent.
“No,” she told him.
She backed away, hearing the door jingle as her heel slammed into
it. “No. I don’t want your potion. I don’t want it.”
She turned then and
fled into the plaza and the harsh assault of the rain, the
téni-lights flaring around her and reflecting on the wet
streets.
That was when she
heard the wind-horns begin to blow alarm, all across the
city.