Nico Morel
IN THE DISTANCE, Nico could hear the wailing cornets
and zinkes as Kraljiki Audric’s funeral procession proceeded along
the Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procesthe
Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procession
might look like—all the ca’-and-cu’ parading behind the funeral
coach, the téni using their magic to turn the wheels, the new
Kraljica Signourney following behind in her own special coach. It
would be splendid, that procession. A wonder. Audric hadn’t been
much older than he was, and Nico wondered what it would be like to
be so young and also Kraljiki. He wondered how someone could have
hated Audric so much that he would kill him. Nico couldn’t imagine
hating anyone that much.
No one else in the
room seemed to notice the sounds of the funeral—or perhaps they
chose to ignore it.
“I didn’t kill
Archigos Ana.”
Nico sat in his
matarh’s lap. She hardly let him go since she’d seen him. Not that
he minded; he was quite content to sit encircled by her arms,
protected. The feeling made him realize just how much he had missed
her, just how scared he had been for so long. He and his matarh
were sitting on the hearth, the fire warming his side. Talis was
sitting at the table in the center of the room; Karl and Varina
were on the other side. Nico could almost see the tension arcing
between them, a fire nearly as hot as the one at his back. His
matarh felt it, too; he could feel the shivering in her muscles and
how tightly she held him, and he knew she was afraid that something
was going to happen.
“I didn’t kill her,”
Talis said again. “It’s the truth.”
“Right,” Karl
answered. “And we’re just supposed to simply believe that. Because
you say it’s so.”
Talis shrugged,
leaning back in his chair. “You don’t want to believe me, fine.
It’s still the truth. But . . .” Talis licked his lips. “I know
how she was killed, and I know who must
have been at least partially responsible.”
“Go on,” Karl
said.
“It was this . . .”
Talis reached into the pouch on his belt. Nico saw both Varina and
Karl stiffen at that, and his matarh sucked in her breath. Karl’s
hands were suddenly up, as if ready to cast a spell. Talis froze.
“No magic,” he said. “I wouldn’t, not with Sera and Nico here. I
wouldn’t.”
After a moment, Karl
let his hands rest on the tabletop again, and Talis opened the
pouch. He brought out a small cloth bag and untied the string
holding it together. He spilled out a small mound of dark powder on
the table. Karl stared at it. “There was black dust all around the
High Lectern and on Ana’s clothes,” he said. “That . . . that’s the
same thing?”
Talis nodded. “Yes.”
He scooped up all but a pinch of the powder and put it back in the
bag. “We call it bosh luum in our
language. Black sand, in yours. Here . . .” From the pouch, he took
a low, wide brass bowl, marked with strange figures around the rim.
He brushed the remnants of the powder into the bowl and set it in
the center of the table. “I’ll leave this to you—put a small fire
spell in the bowl, just the tiniest spark.” He smiled, a brief
flicker. “And don’t put your face too near it if you want to keep
that beard.”
Karl glanced at
Varina, obviously uncertain. Varina looked at Nico’s matarh.
“Sera?” she asked. “We can trust him?”
Nico felt rather than
saw his matarh nod, but her hands tightened even more around him at
the same time. Varina made a quick motion with her hand, and spoke
a word in another language. The word sounded like “tihn-eh” to him,
and as soon as Varina spoke it, a spark appeared between her
fingers and she flicked her hand in the direction of the bowl, the
spark flying away.
As soon as the spark
entered the bowl, there was a simultaneous flash and boom, as if a
thunderstorm had broken inside the bowl. The bowl itself jumped and
rang, and white smoke erupted. Someone shouted; Nico couldn’t tell
who. His matarh had turned with the noise, her body shielding Nico.
She turned slowly back, and Nico could see again. Karl was reaching
across the table to the bowl, which still had smoke rising from it.
There was a strange smell in the air, like Nico imagined that the
underworld of the Moitidi might smell like.
“That was just a
sprinkle of it,” Talis was saying. “I would say you could imagine
what a large amount of black sand could do, but I don’t really
think you can.”
“I can,” Karl said. He’d been examining the bowl;
the way it was tilted, Nico could see that the bottom of the bowl
was blackened as if it had been scorched. Karl’s face was grim as
he set the bowl down. “I was there when Ana died.”
Talis pressed his
lips together.
Varina pushed the
bowl away. She lifted her head, seeeming to hear the fading sound
of Audric’s funeral procession for the first time. “The Kraljiki.”
Her eyes widened. “The rumors . . .”
“. . . are quite
possibly true, from what I’ve heard,” Talis finished for her. “But
that also wasn’t my doing.” He gestured at Nico. “The boy can tell
you that. I was with him when it happened. We heard the wind-horns
calling. Didn’t we, Nico?”
Nico
nodded.
“Westlander magic . .
.” Karl breathed. He’d picked up the bowl again, staring at the
sooty interior as if answers were written there. “We’re just
starting to understand it, and I can tell you, Talis, that it
doesn’t come from your gods any more than téni magic comes from
Cénzi.”
“Then you still don’t
understand,” Talis said. “This isn’t
magic. At least not the black sand itself. It’s no more magic than
making bread, if you know the recipe for making it.”
“You said you know
who’s responsible,” Karl said. “Give me a name.”
Talis took a long
breath. “His name is Uly. He has a stall at the River Market. He’s
a Westlander, sent here at the same time I was. He’s a warrior. His
job was to report back to the Tecuhtli—the Tecuhtli is what your
Kraljiki might be if he were also the Commandant of the Garde
Civile. I was here for the Nahual, the head of my order, to help
Uly and also to find out what happened to Mahri. And . . .” Talis
took another breath. “I made a mistake. It was we nahualli—the
spellcasters—who discovered how to create black sand; it’s a secret
we’ve kept—and yes, if others thought it was magic, we didn’t
correct their misconception. But Uly . . . we were here so long and
he was the only person I knew who spoke my language, and until I
met Sera—” he glanced at Nico’s matarh and smiled, “—he was the
only person who seemed to care about me. I did what I shouldn’t
have done. I had him help me make black sand. I tried to keep the
details from him, but . . .” Talis took the bowl from the table and
placed it back in his pouch. “Uly wasn’t stupid. He could have
easily seen enough to reproduce the process. His job was to provide
me the ingredients, after all.”
“You’re saying this
Uly assassinated Ana?” Karl asked. “That’s what you want us to
believe now?”
Talis lifted a
shoulder. “I’m saying it’s possible. Probable. I know it wasn’t me. And it was definitely
bosh luum that did it. Not Westlander
magic. Not Numetodo magic either.”
Karl’s hands were
clenched on the tabletop. “Where’s this Uly?”
“I haven’t seen him
since after you attacked me,” Talis answered. “I told Uly about it
and said that I was going to disappear for awhile, and haven’t
heard from him since. I suppose the best place to start to find him
would be River Market, but . . .” Talis began, but Nico squirmed in
his matarh’s arms.
“He’s not there,”
Nico said. They were all looking at him now, and his matarh’s arms
loosened as she looked down at him on her lap.
“Nico?”
“It’s true, Matarh,”
he said. “Uly’s not there. After I left Tantzia Alisa’s and walked
here, I thought Uly could tell me where Talis was,” Nico said. “But
when I went to the River Market, Uly’s stall was empty and the
pepper-seller lady said he was gone.”
Talis was nodding. “I
thought that would be the case. I don’t know where he is,” Talis
said. “Still in the city, probably, but where . . .”
“The pepper lady said
that he might be in Oldtown Market,” Nico told them.
Karl was already
standing. Now Talis rose also. “I don’t know that Uly did it, Ambassador,” he said. “You
don’t know it either.”
“I intend to find
out.”
“Then I’ll go with
you.”
“Why?” Karl asked.
“To stop him if he tells me that it was actually you, or that he
hasn’t the faintest clue how to make this black sand of
yours?”
“He won’t talk to
you, no matter what you do to him,” Talis said. “He’s a warrior;
he’s been trained to die first. He trusts me. You? The first time
you ask him something that arouses his suspicions, he’ll kill you
and run. Or he’ll happily die in the attempt.”
“I’ll be with him,”
Varina said. She was standing, too, her arm laced with Karl’s. “And
we’re stronger than you think.”
“You’ll need me,”
Talis insisted.
“Fine,” Karl said
finally. “But not with that.” He gestured at Talis’ walking
stick.
Talis grimaced. “I
can’t leave that here. I won’t.”
“Then you’ll stay
with it.”
Talis seemed to
consider that a moment. “All right,” he said. “I’ll leave it. This
one time. I’m going.”
“I’ll come, too,”
Nico said.
All three of them
turned to him, and he could feel his matarh looking down at him as
well. “No!” they said, all four of them at the same
time.