Varina ci’Pallo
“THAT’SIT...With the chant, think of the fibers of the
wood opening like you’re pushing aside a curtain.”
Varina spoke quietly
and encouragingly to Karl as he chanted the spell-words, staring at
the walking stick he held in his right hand while his left made the
necessary motions. She could see the grain of the wood shivering
and parting, strangely and disconcertingly malleable. She could see
the effort he was using to create the spell; Karl was panting and
sweating as hard as if he’d run the entire circuit of the Avi
a’Parete.
“Now—this bit is
trickier—hold it apart while you place inside it the spell you’ve
already prepared,” Varina told him. He didn’t glance back at her;
she knew he didn’t dare look away from the staff: the wood would
snap back together or the stick would shatter entirely—there were
still splinters in Karl’s fingers from previous attempts. “Go on,”
she continued. “You should be able to feel the light spell you
prepared. I always feel it like a tiny ball of energy in your head,
ready to burst. Imagine it moving from your mind and sliding into
the space you’ve just made on the walking stick. Imagine it nestled
in there. Carefully. Good. Good. And . . . Let everything
go!”
Karl ended the chant,
let his hand fall to his side. The gap in the wood clapped together
again, a sound like two boards slamming together, and the walking
stick was whole and undamaged in his hand, as if nothing had
happened to it at all. Karl sagged against the back of the chair in
which he was sitting. He wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his
bashta as Varina laughed, clapping her hands together once. He sat
there for what seemed to be several marks of the glass, trying to
catch his breath.
“You did it that
time,” she said.
“I certainly hope
so.”
“You want to try it
to make sure? Just hold the stick and speak the release
word.”
“After all that
trouble?” he told her. “I think I’ll just believe you for now.” He
sighed, letting his head drop back and closing his eyes. “By Cénzi,
that was hard. No wonder Mahri looked the way he did.”
She laughed again at
that, but she could hear a certain, unwilling bitterness in the
sound. Her fingers touched her own face, tracing the lines that
hadn’t been visible a year ago. She buried her worry in words.
“It’s a matter of finding the right word and gestures to move the
energy, only you have to hold both the spell and the object being
spelled at the same time—that’s what makes it difficult. From what
we know of the Westlanders, they attribute the power to one of
their own gods, as the téni do here, but it’s just a matter of the
right chant, the right movements. Science, not faith. The advantage
is that once you’ve done the task, it’s the object that holds the spell, not you, and as long
as the object is of good craftsmanship in the first place and isn’t
broken afterward, it could conceivably hold the spell indefinitely,
I suspect. Still . . .” Fingers drifted over the lines of her face
again, brushed back graying, dry hair. “It’s a damned expensive way to do things, if you ask
me.”
“I can understand
that,” Karl told her. “I feel entirely drained.”
He didn’t understand.
He couldn’t understand. Not yet. She smiled again. She reached out
as if to pat his hand, but drew back at the last moment. That was
part of the uncomfortable dance they’d been doing for days
now.
They were ten days
back in Nessantico. They’d returned to the city with Serafina, who
had taken up residence in her old rooms. She invited Varina and
Karl to stay with her, an offer they’d accepted—the old Numetodo
haunts were undoubtedly being watched by Garde Kralji, and they’d
seen none of the Numetodo in Oldtown at all. They’d scoured the
neighborhood with Serafina, asking about Nico, but no one
remembered seeing the boy, certainly not after the day they’d
helped the Regent escape the Bastida. If Nico had indeed returned
to Nessantico, as Varina had been certain he had, he seemed to have
somehow vanished; if Talis were still in the city, he remained
hidden as well.
And for Varina . . .
after their awkward conversation in Ville Paisli, she didn’t seem
to know quite how to act around Karl. Her admission that she had
wanted more of him than friendship . . . Why did she say that to
him? He looked at her strangely now, as if he were thinking back on
all the interactions they’d had over the years and reinterpreting
them, casting their conversations in the light of this revelation
and wondering.
Why did you tell him? Why did you admit
it?
Her hand retreated
from his. He started to reach over to her. “Varina . .
.”
“I’m back!” The call
came as the door to the room opened and Serafina came in. She
carried a cloth bag from which a long loaf of bread protruded.
Varina saw Serafina glance at them strangely before she walked over
to the table and placed the bag there. She lifted out the loaf of
bread, then a half-round of cheese and a paper bag of
marsh-berries. They watched her, not speaking, and she sighed and
shook her head.
“What’s going on?”
she asked.
“I don’t know what
you mean,” Varina said. She wondered whether Serafina had seen them
working the magic, but she was shaking her head with a
half-smile.
“The two of you,” she
said, glancing from Varina to Karl. “It’s obvious enough that
you’re not married, no matter what you told my sister back in Ville
Paisli. But it’s also obvious there’s something between the two of you, and that neither
of you are sure what to do about it. I understand; that’s the way
it was with Talis and me at first. I’d been hurt too much by a
previous lover who didn’t care about me but only himself, and I
thought that was the way it was going to be with everyone. But
Talis . . . he was a good man. He cared about me, and when Nico
came, he was a good vatarh as well. But the damned Numetodo . . .”
She bit her lower lip as Varina looked at Karl and raised an
eyebrow.
“The Numetodo?” Karl
asked.
“Talis said the
Ambassador tried to kill him; that’s why he sent me and Nico
away—because he thought the Numetodo would come after him, and
since the Ambassador was friendly with Regent ca’Rudka, that the
Garde Kralji would be after him as well. I guess that’s nothing he
has to worry about now,” she added with a wry smile. “The Kraljiki
seems to like the Regent and Ambassador less than
Talis.”
“Talis hasn’t
contacted you?” Karl persisted.
Serafina shook her
head. “He will, when he thinks it’s safe. He’ll know I’m here soon,
if he doesn’t already. Maybe he’s found Nico, too.” She sighed, and
Varina saw her blink away tears. She put her hand on Serafina’s
shoulder in comfort as the woman sniffed and brushed the tears
away. “Anyway,” she said, “I was saying that I’ve watched the two
of you circling each other like you’re promenading around the Avi
a’Parete, and . . . well, I was glad when I finally let myself
admit that I was in love with Talis. It was the best thing I’d done
in a long time. That’s all.”
She smiled, and
patted Varina’s hand, still on her shoulder. “I’m going to walk to
the butcher’s and see what he has. Then I’m going to look for Nico
around Temple Park; he always liked to go there.”
“I’ll come with you,”
Varina said, but Serafina shook her head.
“No,” she told them.
“I’d like to be on my own for a bit. I’ll be home before Third
Call, and we can make a supper then.”
She smiled at them
again, picked up her cloth bag, and left the rooms again. They
heard the snick of the lock behind her. Varina could feel Karl
staring at her. “What are we going to do if we find Talis, Karl?”
she asked. “Or if she finds Nico? She loves Talis, and Nico would
recognize both of us. What do we do then?”
“I don’t know,” Karl
told her. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Varina nodded at
that, and the silence between them slowly lengthened. She could
feel the weight of it, wrapping around them like the greasy chains
of a Bastida cell. Varina puttered with the bread and cheese,
putting them in a woven basket.
“Varina,” Karl said
finally, and she stopped. “Serafina’s right. It’s just . . .” His
fingers tapped the walking stick. “I still hurt whenever I think
about Ana,” he said. “She . . .”
“I know,” Varina told
him. “I saw . . .” she began, then dropped her gaze to the table.
“A few times, on the street, I saw the grandes horizontales you
hired to . . .” Her gaze came back up. “To me, they all looked like
her: the same coloring, the same
build.”
He dropped his gaze,
guiltily. “Varina—”
“No,” she told him,
interrupting. “I understood. I did. But it still hurt, because you
didn’t see me, when that’s . . .” She
closed her mouth, pressed her lips tightly together. She wouldn’t
say the rest. She wouldn’t.
Karl lifted his
hands, let them drop back to the table. “Serafina’s right. Because
of my obsession, I missed what was right in front of my nose. I was
stupid. Worse, I was cruel, and that’s something I never wanted to
be. Not to you, Varina. Never to you. You’ve always been someone I
admired and trusted. I always thought of you as a friend. And now .
. . I don’t know if . . .”
“I don’t know
either,” she told him. Go on, she heard
a voice inside her say. Go on. Say it.
“Karl, we can both continue to wonder. Or—”
She let the word hang
there, as bright in his mind as spell-fire.
He held out his hand
to her.
She took
it.