Nico Morel
NICO WAS CONFUSED and scared by the commotion. Too
much was happening too quickly. There’d been the furious knocking
at the door, and the man who was watching him had made a strange
motion with his hands before they’d heard the Ambassador’s voice on
the other side. The door was flung open, and several people rushed
in—they were half-carrying Varina, whose tashta was soaked with
blood. Nico tried to run to her, but someone pushed him back on his
crude bed with a snarl. There was lots of shouting and there were
too many people in the small room. In the candlelight, everything
was a confusion of shadows. He could only catch bits of what they
were saying.
“. . . need Karina;
she has the healing talent . . .”
“. . . can’t stay . .
. recognized us . . .”
“. . . tell the
others to make themselves scarce . . .”
“. . . Garde Kralji
will be out scouring already . . .”
“. . . torture and
kill any of us they catch . . .”
“. . . the child has
to go . . .”
Nico sat on his bed,
wanting to cry but afraid that it would draw attention to him when
he wanted nothing more than to be invisible. A face came out of the
chaos and loomed over him: Karl. “We have to leave Nessantico,” he
told Nico. “Varina told you that, right? You’ll be coming with me,
Nico. We can’t leave you behind, not with no one to look after
you.”
“I can stay in my old
house,” Nico said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Matarh would
look for me there, or Talis. And I know the people who live in the
other houses. I’ll just stay here.”
“We left a note for
Talis in your rooms, telling him where you were,” Karl said. “He
didn’t come.”
“He’ll come,” Nico
insisted. “He will.”
The man looked as
doubtful as Nico felt inside. “I’m sorry, Nico,” he said. “But we
need to go quickly, and you’ll need to come with us.”
Nico looked over
Karl’s shoulder toward the tumult in the room beyond. There were
several people in the room, and he couldn’t see Varina. “Is Varina
going to die?” he asked.
“No.” The man shook
his head emphatically. “She’s been hurt, but she’s not going to
die.” Nico nodded. “Nico, you’re going to need to be very brave,
and very quiet. If we’re found, well, Varina would die, and me, and maybe you as well. Do you
understand?”
He nodded again,
though he didn’t. He pressed his lips together and swallowed hard.
“That’s a good young man, then,” Karl said, ruffling Nico’s hair
like Talis sometimes did, and Varina, too. Nico wondered why adults
always did that when he didn’t like it. He knew that Karl had
children and great-children in Paeti—his matarh had once mentioned
to Talis that the Ambassador and Archigos Ana were “too close,” so
maybe those were the children of the Archigos. He imagined what it
might have been like, to be a child growing up in the dark,
cavernous confines of the temple, with the painted Moitidi fighting
on the domes overhead and téni-fire blazing in the huge braziers
around the quire.
“Nico! Come here.”
Karl was gesturing, and Nico went to him.
“. . . the city gates
will all be closed at any moment,” a gray-haired man was saying,
and Nico realized with a start that it was the Regent of
Nessantico: it must be him, with that nose made of silver shining
in the candlelight. Nico stared at it: he’d glimpsed the Regent a
few times on the ceremonial days, sitting next to Kraljiki Audric
as the royal carriage made its way around the Avi a’Parete. Nico
couldn’t understand why the Regent would be here, or how there
could be danger if he was. Matarh had shivered when she talked
about him, telling Nico tales about how the Regent had once been
the commandant, and how he had tortured people in the Bastida. The
Regent’s face seemed more tired than dangerous right now.
“Commandant cu’Falla knows the city as well as I do—I taught
him—and that’s a problem. He knows we need to get out, and he’ll
have people out looking for us.” The Regent tapped his nose. “Some
of us are far too recognizable.”
“Then we avoid the
gates,” Karl said. “If we can cross the Avi near Temple Park, well,
the old city walls are down there, and if we can get through the
north neighborhoods into the open farmland during the night,
there’s a heavily-forested strip of land there, just about a league
farther on in which we could stay during the day. Maybe go on to
Azay, and . . .” The Ambassador stopped, shrugging. “Then we do
whatever we need to do. Right now, we’re wasting
time.”
“Indeed,” the Regent
answered. “Can Varina be moved?”
“I can,” Nico heard
Varina say, though her voice sounded weak and trembling. He saw her
then, sitting up in the bed and swinging her feet over the edge.
The blood on her clothing was dark and wet-looking. “I’m ready.
Just let me change my clothes.” She waved a hand at them. “Go on,
get out of here. Wait for me outside. I’ll be just a mark of the
glass.”
“Come on, Nico,” Karl
said, nodding his head toward the door, but Nico shook his head,
hugging himself.
“Let him stay,”
Varina said. “I’ll bring him with me. Go on.”
“All right,” the
Ambassador replied, but he looked uncertain. “We’ll wait in the
antechamber. Hurry.”
The men left, and
Varina sank back on the bed for a moment, her breath quick and
pained. She moaned as she sat up again, groaning as she tried to
undo the ties of her tashta. “Nico,” she said. “I need your help .
. .”
He went over to her
and undid the ties, fumbling with the knots and trying not to
notice the blood that stained his fingers. She slid the tashta down
to her waist, and he looked away quickly, blushing a bit, as she
pushed herself one-handed to a standing position. Her breasts under
the binding cloth were smaller than Matarh’s, and looking at them
covered only by thin cloth made Nico feel strange. “There’s another
tashta in the chest at the foot of the bed,” she told him. “A blue
one; would you get it for me? That’s a good boy.”
He rummaged in the
chest, the smell of sweet herbs tied in linen sachets filling his
nostrils, and handed her the blue tashta. “Turn around a moment,”
she told him, and when he did he heard her soiled tashta slide
entirely to the floor. He heard her pulling up the new tashta
awkwardly with her injured arm, and when she cried out in pain, he
quickly went to help her, pulling the ribbon binding tight under
her breasts, tying the shoulder wraps and the back lacing. “There
are bandages in the bottom drawer of the chest,” she said. “If you
could bring me some . . .”
He hurried to get
them for her, rising with the white strips of soft cloth in his
hands to see her unwrapping her arm. He gasped as he saw the deep,
long, and jagged cut there, still oozing blood and gaping wide, the
edges pulling apart even as he watched, so deep that he thought he
saw white bone at the bottom. He gulped, feeling nauseous. “I
know,” she told him. “It looks bad, and I’m going to need to find a
healer to sew it up. But right now, I need to tie a new bandage on
this to keep it closed. I can’t do it one-handed. Can you help
me?”
Nico nodded,
swallowing hard. As she directed him, he placed a folded pad of the
bandages on top of the wound, then—as she pressed the edges
together as well as she could—he wrapped the bandage around it. “As
tight as you can,” she told him. “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.”
She showed him how to tear the end of the bandage in two, then tie
it off to hold it in place.
She was crying as he
finished, looking at her hand as she tried to move her fingers.
They moved, but slowly, and she couldn’t bring her lower arm up.
“It’ll be better, Varina,” he said. “It just needs time to
heal.”
She smiled at him
through the tears and pulled him to her with her good hand. “Thank
you,” she whispered into his hair. “Now—some water. I want to get
the blood off my hands and yours.
A quarter turn of the
glass later, they left the room, with Varina walking pale-faced but
steady.
It was raining, it
was cold, it was dark, and Nico was miserable.
Nico stayed close to
Varina as they hurried across the Avi a’Parete under the seeming
glare of the famous téni-lamps of the city. The Regent was with
Nico, and Varina and Karl; the other Numetodo—the one named
Mika—had left them, going another way through the city. Nico had
seen a squadron of Garde Kralji hurrying down the Avi toward
Nortegate, splashing through the puddles on the cobbled roadway;
the Regent made them pause in the shadow of a building—rain
dripping hard on them from clogged gutters above—until the gardai
had vanished around the curve of the Avi, then he led them at a run
into the warren of houses on the north side of the Avi. There, they
quickly abandoned the main streets for side streets and alleys,
staying away from the few people out in the weather and
occasionally sliding into alleyways as they heard others
approaching. Once, a trio of utilino passed them, and they pressed
their backs to the cold, damp stones of the nearest building,
holding their breaths as the utilino, obviously searching the faces
of the passersby, moved on. They kept moving north: as the houses
were farther apart, now separated by fields and pastures; as the
lights of the city became only a glow on the clouds above them; as
the cobbled streets gave way to muddy, rutted roadways and finally
to a narrow, sloppy lane. By the time they stopped, Nico felt as if
he’d been running all night. His feet and legs hurt, and he was
panting from the effort of keeping up with the adults. Varina
collapsed to the ground as soon as they stopped.
“We’ll rest here for
a few minutes,” the Regent said. “If anyone’s coming, we should see
them long before they’ll notice us.” They were well away from any
of the farmhouses, and the rain had subsided to an erratic drizzle.
Nico stood next to Varina as she leaned again the stone wall
bordering the lane and closed her eyes, clutching her injured arm
with her good one.
“The forest is a mile
or so up the road; we should reach it in half a turn of the glass,”
the Regent continued. “We should probably get off the road; if I
were the commandant, I’d be sending riders out along toward all the
villages, looking for us.”
“Then where?” Karl
asked.
The Regent shook
water from his graying hair; droplets beaded on his silver nose.
“Firenzcia,” he grunted.
Karl gave a laugh
that seemed more cough. “You’re joking, Sergei. That’s going from
the chopping block into the pot. Firenzcia? Archigos ca’Cellibrecca
is nothing more than a younger image of his marriage-vatarh; they’d
love to have the Ambassador of the Numetodo to torture and hang in
a gibbet for everyone to see. Firenzcia? That might be fine for
you, but Varina and I have a better chance of survival trying to
swim the Strettosei to Paeti. We might as well just surrender to
the Garde Kralji now.”
Varina’s eyes had
opened, and Nico saw that she was watching the discussion. The
Regent sniffed. “Firenzcia is the Kralji’s enemy. Now, so are we. I
know Allesandra from her time here; so do you. With Fynn
assassinated, she’ll be the Hïrzg; she’ll take us in.”
“Unless the Numetodo
are being conveniently blamed for Hïrzg Fynn’s murder,” the
Ambassador said, and Varina nodded vigorously.
“Where else would you
go?” the Regent asked them.
“To one of the
northern countries, where they’re more sympathetic to the Numetodo.
Maybe Il Trebbio.”
“That’s still in the
Holdings, and Audric will have sent word to them to capture us if
we’re seen.”
“And Firenzcia won’t
do the same?” Varina interjected.
“We could take ship
from Chivasso to Paeti, or keep going north out of the Holdings
into Boail,” the Ambassador said.
“And what are our
chances of making that long trek without being noticed?” The Regent
sniffed again.
Nico listened to them
argue, pulling his cloak tightly around him. He didn’t want to go
to Firenczia or Il Trebbio or Paeti or any of those places. He
liked Varina and he was sorry that she was hurt, but he wanted to
be with his matarh or Talis. The adults weren’t paying attention to
him; they were too intent on their discussion.
Slowly, Nico pulled
himself up until he was sitting on the stone wall. He turned, his
legs dangling over the far side. No one noticed him; no one said
anything to him. He let himself drop into the high, tall grass of
the field. He could still hear them arguing, and he began scurrying
quickly away on the far side of the stone wall—back toward
Nessantico. Back toward the only home he knew.
When he could barely
hear the voices, he started to run: into the night, into the rain,
toward the city-glow in the distance.