Kenne ca’Fionta
KENNE STOOD ON THE BALCONY outside his private
office, gazing down on the temple plaza. Below him, téni in their
green robes mingled with the normal throngs as they hurried to
escape the drizzle seeping from low, gray clouds. The weather
seemed to weigh down the wings of the pigeons in their cooing
huddles; as people hurried past, the birds would scurry away, heads
bobbing, but not take flight.
The foul, miserable
day matched Kenne’s mood.
He was a dead man if
he made the wrong move, and he wasn’t sure how to avoid that
fate.
Even if he avoided
physical death, he was dead within the Faith. He could already feel
the vultures beginning to gather: in the whispers of everyone from
the lowliest e’téni to the subtext of the messages he received from
the a’téni in their cities. When will we have
another Conclave? they asked. There are
urgent matters that we must all discuss. How should we respond to
the news from Nessantico? What is the Archigos’ thought on these
matters?
The subtext was
always below the innocent questions. It had begun even when he’d
been elevated to Archigos after poor Ana’s assassination. The
chorus had grown louder and more constant since Kraljiki Audric’s
death and the news of the Westlander invasion. The messages came
every day by courier: from Fossano, from Prajnoli, from Chivasso
and Belcanto and An Uaimth, from Kasama and Quibela and Wolhusen.
We don’t trust your leadership. Someone else
needs to be Archigos. That’s what they said underneath the
polite, indirect words they wrote. You should
be removed from Cénzi’s Throne.
Worst of all, he
found that he agreed with them. I never wanted
this, he wanted to write back to them. I never asked to sit in Ana’s place. I would have much
preferred that someone else take this task from me. He had
told Ana herself this long years ago, after he’d returned to
Nessantico to become A’Téni of Nessantico under her, after the
Firenzcian army had been dispersed. “You were here before I was,”
she’d said to him, looking almost embarrassed to be sitting behind
the desk that they both remembered Archigos Dhosti using. “By
rights, you should be here and not me, my friend.”
He had laughed at
that, shaking his head. “Archigos Dhosti told me, long ago, that I
was an excellent follower. He was right, too. I follow very well.
But I don’t lead. I don’t have whatever it is you have, Ana. Dhosti
saw those qualities in you, too—you can
lead. You’re strong, you’re talented, and you have a strength of
will that’s amazing. That’s why he made you his o’téni. Had he
lived, he would have groomed you for this anyway. Me . . .” Another
headshake. “I was destined to be what I am. No more. And I’m quite
content to have it that way.”
She had protested,
politely, but they both knew that—inside—she agreed with him. With
Dhosti.
Yet Cénzi had thrust
this on him late in life, and Kenne could only wonder whether that
had been some kind of cosmic joke.
The a’téni of the
Faith were one danger to Kenne, and the new Kraljica was another.
She was in pain—she would be in pain for the rest of her life,
almost certainly. She had been thrust into a terrible crisis with
the loss of the Hellins, the assassination of Audric, and now the
invasion of the Holdings itself by the Westlanders. There was
Firenzcia on her other side, no longer an ally but another enemy at
her back. She would be trying to consolidate her position. She
would be trying desperately to simply survive as Kraljica, and to
do that, she would be looking for people with strength who could
support her and she would be casting aside those she thought too
weak to be of help—because weakness in her allies was as much a
danger as the Westlanders or Firenzcians.
Kenne knew that
Sigourney’s opinion of him was perhaps even less high than that of
the a’téni. She would be maneuvering to have him replaced, and
quickly. Knowing the history of the Kralji in Nessantico, Kenne
could not rule out that her solution would be his own assassination
and replacement by someone more suitable for her. It had happened
to Archigi before Kenne when they had come into conflict with the
political rulers of the Holdings: such an Archigos might die under
mysterious circumstances. One had only to look back to Archigos
Dhosti himself, after all.
Kenne stared down at
the plaza below, where Dhosti’s broken body had once sprawled, the
blood flowing between the cobbles. He wondered if one day soon it
might be his body being tossed over the railing to fall, flailing
desperately, to the ground below.
“Archigos?”
Kenne shivered at the
call. He turned slowly, expecting to see Petros standing there. But
it wasn’t. It was, instead, a ghost.
“I know,” the ghost
said, and the voice’s accent confirmed his suspicions. “You didn’t
expect to see me again. Frankly, neither did I. Sorry to startle
you, Archigos. Petros was kind enough to let me in.”
“Karl . . .” Kenne
stepped back into the room, going around the desk to embrace the
Numetodo. “Look at you—your beard shaved, your hair dyed and cut
like some unranked person, and those horrible clothes. I wouldn’t
have recognized you . . . but I suppose that’s the idea, isn’t it?
I thought, after you helped Sergei escape, that you’d have fled the
city.” He shook his head. “These are dark times,” he said wearily,
the depression washing over him again. “Terrible times. But—I
forget myself. You look tired and hungry. Can I have Petros bring
something?”
But Karl was already
shaking his head. “No, Archigos. There isn’t time, and I shouldn’t
stay here longer than necessary. I . . . I need a
favor.”
“If it’s within my
power,” Kenne told him, and had to quash the thought that followed:
as weak as my power is, I’m afraid . .
.
“It is, I hope,” Karl
said. “Please, Archigos, sit. This may take some time. I know, at
least I think I know, who killed Ana.”
Kenne listened to
Karl’s tale with growing dread, suspicion, and horror. By the end
he was sitting in his chair behind his desk, shaking his
head.
“A man named Gairdi
ci’Tomisi, you say?” Kenne said finally. The name had shocked him;
he wondered what else he had not known. “A Firenzcian? He did this
with help from Westlander magic?”
“Firenzcian, yes,”
Karl stated. “But you must understand that there was no magic
involved. No—this black sand isn’t of your Cénzi’s making, nor that
of the Westlander gods, either. It’s not magical, not of the Second
World—just the product of a person’s imagination and logic.” Karl
tapped his head. “And that makes it even more dangerous. Look . .
.”
Karl took a small
pouch from the pocket of his grimy and tattered bashta, spilling a
dark, granular powder on the blotter of Kenne’s desk. Kenne prodded
it with a curious finger. “Uly had a stash of this in his rooms; I
bribed the innkeeper to let me in. Uly had the ingredients there in
his rooms so we know what they are. Varina thinks she can reproduce
this mixture even if Talis won’t help us. Sitting there like that,
the black sand’s innocent enough, but put a flame to it, and . . .”
Karl’s voice trailed off, and he looked away. Kenne knew what the
man was remembering; he remembered it, too, all too
well.
“What can I do?”
Kenne asked him. He stared down at his soiled desk.
“See if you can find
out more about this Gairdi ci’Tomisi that Uly
mentioned.”
Kenne looked at him
bleakly. “I know him. At least I think I do. He’s a trader with
Writs of Passage from both Brezno and Nessantico, and goes back and
forth over the border. We—both Ana and I—have used him. We thought
. . . we thought he was our man, our
spy. He carried messages from us to the téni within the Brezno
Temple that we thought we could trust, and brought back their
messages to us about Archigos Semini. Now . . .” Kenne looked up at
the Numetodo. “If he was actually a dual agent, in the employ of
Semini ca’Cellibrecca . . .”
“. . . Then it was
ca’Cellibrecca who ordered Ana killed,” Karl finished for him. His
jaw shut audibly.
Kenne felt the
remnants of his lunch rise into his throat. He swallowed hard
against the bile. Yes, he believed ca’Cellibrecca would be capable
of murder—after all, the man had been a war-téni for most of his
life. He had no doubt killed hundreds of soldiers with the
mage-fire. But he wouldn’t have killed Ana without a reason. Kenne
was afraid that he knew exactly what the reason might be: that
ca’Cellibrecca expected the person placed in Ana’s stead would be
weak, and that he might exploit that weakness to reunite the Faith
again—with ca’Cellibrecca as Archigos in Nessantico as well as
Brezno.
Because he knew it would be me. He’s probably already
speaking to the Kraljica, making his overtures.
“Archigos?” Kenne
took a long breath before looking up at Karl. “No Numetodo killed
Audric,” Karl declared. “No Numetodo killed Ana. That killed them both.” Karl gestured at the black
sand on Kenne’s desk. “That makes me think that the same person is
responsible for both murders.”
It seemed a
reasonable assumption to Kenne, but he’d been wrong about so much
that he no longer trusted his own reasoning. “What . . . what do
you want me to do?” Kenne lifted his hands from the desk, a
fingertip dark with the powder he’d touched. “How can I
help?”
“See what more you
can find out,” Karl told him. “See if Semini really did this—if he
did, I want to make the man pay. But Varin . . .” He stopped. “I
mean, Ana wouldn’t want me to do
anything until I knew, knew for
certain. Can you help me with that?” Karl pointed again to the
drift of black sand on Kenne’s blotter. “You know what that is,
don’t you?” the Numetodo asked. Kenne could only shake his
head.
“That’s the ashes of
magic, Archigos,” Karl said. “That’s what magic looks like when
it’s dead.”
Kenne glanced down
again. It felt like he was looking at his own remains.