Part 23 (2/2)

”I'll go with you tonight, Karl, after I've sent Sali and the children on their way,” Mika told him. ”You'll need help with this.”

Karl shook his head. ”That's not necessary.”

”If ca'Rudka is s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Bastida by magic, then we all know who's going to be blamed and who's going to be hunted,” Mika said. ”For once, they'll be right in blaming the Numetodo, eh? But the response we get won't change whether you go alone or with a dozen of us, or whether you succeed or fail: just the attempt will be enough.”

”I'm not going to risk the lives of a dozen of us. I'm going to take two,” he said. ”Myself, and one other.”

Mika grinned. ”So I might as well make certain that you succeed-as long as ca'Rudka's alive, there's a chance he may find his way back to power, and that would be best for us.”

”I'm stronger than either one of you with the Scath c.u.mhacht,” Varina interjected. ”I'm going with you also.”

With that declaration, the knot in Karl's stomach tightened. He imagined Varina dead, or worse, captured. The pain of that thought made him grimace, made his head shake. ”There's no need. You have Nico to watch.”

Her lips tightened. She tapped the booth's table with her fingernails. ”Mika,” she said, ”I think we need another round here. Would you mind getting it?”

Mika blinked, puzzled. ”Just call Mara over and-” He stopped, then his eyes widened slightly. ”Oh,” he said, his lips pursing. ”Certainly. I'll go get it.”

He had barely left the booth when Varina turned in the bench seat to face Karl. Her voice was low and dangerous. ”Karl, I have spent years-years-doing the research and experiments to expand the catalog of spell formulae we now use regularly. I have thrown myself into understanding the Westlander magic and how it might work and how we might harness their ways. I have given up . . .” She stopped, biting her lower lip momentarily. ”I have given up the life I might have had for the Numetodo and a cause I thought we shared. And now you're going to relegate me to a babysitter? If you do that, Karl, you will be telling me that I've wasted all that time and all that effort and all those years. Is that what you're telling me? Is it?”

Her accusation sliced into him like a honed dagger. He lifted his hands from the table as if wounded. ”You don't understand-” he started to say.

”What don't I understand?” she shot back. ”That you don't think I'm of any use to you? That I don't . . . don't care enough for you to want to help?”

”No.” He shook his head helplessly. ”Varina, our odds aren't good here.”

”And they're better without me?”

Karl sighed. ”No. That's not what I'm saying. I don't want you hurt.”

”You're willing to let Mika take his chances, though? Why, Karl? Why is it different for me? Why?” The questions were hammer blows, and he thought there was a strange urgency to her questions, as if there were an answer she wanted him to give.

But he had no answers. He ducked his head, staring down at his mug, at the bubbles expiring on its rim, at the water ringing the bottom and staining the wood. ”If you want to go with me, Varina,” he said, ”then I will be glad for your help,” he told her. He lifted his head. She was staring at him with a fragile defiance. ”Thank you.”

Her mouth opened slightly, as if she were going to say more. Then she nodded.

Mika came back with more ale. He placed the mugs on the center of the table. ”Settled?” he asked.

”Yes,” Karl answered. ”Settled. If this is what you both truly want, then let's finish our drinks so we can go to our rooms and prepare the spells we'll need this evening. Mika, if you'd make sure that word gets pa.s.sed along that all Numetodo should leave the city or plan to make themselves very scarce for the foreseeable future . . .” He picked up his mug finally, and Mika and Varina lifted theirs. They touched them together. ”To luck,” he said. ”We'll need it.”

They drained their mugs as one.

Varina ci'Pallo.

”YOU LOOK AWFUL TIRED, Varina,” Nico said.

She was. She was exhausted, so tired that her bones ached. The afternoon had been spent preparing spells, shaping the Scath c.u.mhacht until the spell was complete, then placing the trigger word and gesture to release it in her mind. The spell-weariness dragged at her-it was worse now than it had been when she was younger, worse since she'd begun experimenting with the Tehuantin method. She'd gone to the small room where they kept Nico to bring him his supper and check on him.

”I'll be fine in a few turns,” she told Nico. ”I just have to go to sleep for a bit so I can recover.”

”Talis was always tired, too, when he did magic things, especially with that bowl. I thought it made him look old, too. Like you.”

The brutal honesty of a child. Varina touched her graying hair, the deep wrinkles that had carved themselves into her face in the last few years. ”We pay for magic this way,” she told Nico. ”Nothing ever comes to you in this world without cost. You'll learn that.” She smiled wryly. ”Sorry. That sounds like something a parent would say.”

Nico smiled: hesitantly, almost shyly. ”Matarh talks like that to me sometimes,” he told her. ”Like she's talking more to herself than me. I'll try to remember it, though.”

Varina laughed. She sat on the chair alongside his bed, leaning forward to tousle his hair. Nico frowned, sliding back a little on the bed. ”Nico,” Varina said, drawing her hand back, ”I have to talk to you. Things are happening, outside. Bad things. After I rest a little, I have to go do something, and when I get back, we're going to have to leave the city, very quickly.”

”Like I had to with Matarh?” He drew his doubled legs up to his chest as he sat on the bed, wrapping his hands around them. He looked at her over his knees.

”Yes, like that.”

”Are you in trouble?”

She had to smile at that. ”I'm about to be.”

He sniffed. ”Is it because of that man?”

”Karl, you mean? You might say that.”

He released his legs and glanced at the food on the tray but didn't touch it. ”Are you and Karl . . . ?”

She understood what he was asking without the word. ”No. What would make you think that?”

”You act like you are. When the two of you talk to each other, you remind me of Matarh and Talis.”

”Well, we're not . . . together. Not that way.”

”He likes you, I can tell.”

That made her smile, but the taste of it was bitter. ”Oh, you can, can you? When did you become so wise in the way of adults?”

Nico shrugged. ”I can tell,” he said again.

”Let's not talk about this,” she said, though she wanted to. She wondered what Karl would say to Nico if Nico told him the same thing. ”I need you to eat, and I need you to get some sleep because very likely we'll be leaving the city tonight. You need to be ready for that.”

”Will you take me to my matarh?”

”I wish I could, Nico. I really do. But I don't know where we'll be going, yet. I'll take you somewhere safe. That much I promise you. I won't let anything bad happen to you, and we'll try to get you back to your matarh. Do you understand me?”

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