The Firebird's Vengeance (21 page)

So no one remarked and few even noticed when she took her bucket through the nearest inner door into the dim and narrow corridors that were the world of the lowliest servants of Vyshtavos.

The back corridors were a maze. They actually took up most of the lower story of the palace, allowing the servants to flit back and forth and spend a minimum amount of time where they might actually be seen. Footmen and maids, valets, butlers, and waiting ladies might come into view of the high and the mighty, but old women with buckets … not unless absolutely necessary.

The advantage of all these hundreds of yards of corridors, storerooms, and cramped quarters was that if one wished to hide, one had plenty of choices. There were dozens of storerooms that would only be entered once or twice a year on set days to be aired and inventoried. Once, the illegitimate child of a scullery maid had been discovered living in one of these rooms two years after his mother had died of fever.

One of the smaller, unlocked rooms was a former drying room that was now full of nothing but bales of stained and unfashionable linens. Once they had been put there to be cleaned and mended, but that mending had never occurred and no subsequent mistress of the house had thought to throw them out. Senja set her bucket just inside the threshold, so she would have some warning if the unthinkable happened and someone besides herself decided to open this door.

With the door shut, the storeroom was pitch-black. In the late afternoon, a few slim shafts of light might squeeze through the ventilation slits, but that time was hours away. Senja, however, knew her way by touch. Behind a stack of bales her fingers found the cold skin of a tin lantern, then found the tinderbox stored inside it along with the whole tallow candle she had risked much to steal.

It was the work of a few patient moments to make her light. Senja closed the lantern housing and pushed it back into the deepest shadows under the shelves so that she had only a few slivers of light to see by, but no stray glimmer beneath the door would betray her. From under the nearest bale, she drew out a knotted bundle of canvas. There was no magic in the knot, only some tricks of tying so she would see if it had been meddled with. She was not a
murhata
to waste her gifts on trivia.

Those destined for bondage in the weaving shed, in the tannery, the forge or pottery were all carefully examined by the lord sorcerer to make sure that they had none of the invisible gifts about them. Not so the drudges in the scullery, or old women who swept the yards and carried the slops, not even when the lord sorcerer was on the prowl among the bondsmen to prove his diligence.

While Valin Kalami held the post of lord sorcerer, she had little need for such precautions as she now took. She had only to keep eyes and ears open to know that the cause of the Holy Island was being served. Senja was not even certain Kalami knew she was there, but she had kept her head down. If she was needed by him, blood and destiny would lead them to one another.

Senja smiled, remembering the day she had first seen Kalami. He was striding through the work yard on his way to interview the mistress of the weaving shed. He was so straight, so confident, already looking as if he owned the palace. She had smiled then as well, because he reminded her of other things, yet further back, that she sometimes wondered if she had dreamed.

He reminded her that there was a time when the sorcerers of the True Blood had met together openly in the sacred grove on the day the sun vanished and the day it returned. The bone fires had burned hot and red, and justice and prophecy had been spoken. The seer had not been broken then, living cramped, crooked, and half-mad in his cave. He had been tall and proud, the crown carved of antler and ivory on his brow. Senja had knelt before him when her time came, offering up the
viina
she had brewed herself in a bowl of glass as clear as ice that had cost her father three calves and three lambs. With a proud smile, he had accepted the drink and her petition to be tutored in the invisible arts, even though her voice had trembled as she spoke the request. She had felt warm at that smile, as if she were the one who had drunk the
viina
.

Senja closed her eyes for a moment. The glass. The glass had been real too. The most sacred art, combining all the elements, earth, fire, air, water, and metal, and synthesizing them into a form new and indivisible. She remembered the sharp smell of the furnaces, the heat of the blowpipes, the searing of steam in her lungs, the sparkle and brilliance of the finished creation.

She remembered Isavaltans riding their horses through the
ateljee
and the work of a hundred hands being smashed with a sound like the most fragile of bells. She remembered the blood and the smells of burning flesh as the priests and the sorcerers were pushed into the crucibles and the sound of the
murhata’
s laughter, and their curses as the glass cut the hides of their precious horses, as if that were the Tuukosov’s fault.

She remembered her own failing, standing there with the life blood of sorcerers flowing freely, with fire, water, and death, so much death. She remembered raising up her hands with their blood running down her bare arms and crying out every curse she knew, every prayer to bring down the lightning, the darkness, plague, fire, nightmare, and death, death, death.

Nothing had happened, nothing at all. She had been unable to think, unable to draw or shape the power she commanded. The
murhata
had laughed louder, believing her to be only a terrified young woman, and one of them had reached down for her. She was never sure after that just how she had gotten away, but she did and she remained hidden in the woods for the better part of a month. When she finally crept back, cold and starving, the world had changed. The Isavaltans were in control, and the sorcerers of the True Blood were hanging like fruit from the trees.

They called the Tuukosov dogs and whipped them through the streets. They called them worms and made them crawl, and Senja had vowed then to become what they believed she was. They believed she was a dog; she would live in their home until she found a way to bite. They believed she was a worm; she would dwell in their garden until she could infect its heart.

In the moment when she saw Valin Kalami in the work yard, it seemed to her that time had come. Now there would be more to do than wait and watch and relay what information she could to the seer. Kalami had played the weaknesses of Isavalta’s empress like a master musician, and almost,
almost
he had brought it all to the end.

He had fallen, and Senja had thought her heart would finally break when Mikkel took the throne, but now she saw the extent of Kalami’s triumph. He had brought all to the brink, and behind the rise of this new
murhata
emperor, all was still in motion. The last push was ready, and Isavalta would fall.

Inside her little bundle lay a stone mortar and pestle, a small packet of herbs gathered in the previous year and now dried almost to dust, another packet of coarse salt, a small but precious sphere of clear glass scarcely two fingers wide, and a short, sharp knife.

She picked up the sphere first. Despite the passage of years, she remembered the heat and the crucible stench of its making. It was called a witch’s eye, and if a
murhata
found it and recognized it, she would be hanged from the walls.

She’d smuggled in two of the precious spheres with her when she had first come to Vyshtavos, but the other had been sacrificed for other work.

From her sleeve she drew the kerchief she had lifted from the pocket of the one who called herself Urshila. She laid it across her hand and then laid the witch’s eye in it. Reverently, she kissed the sphere’s smooth surface to awaken its sight. She breathed across so that it might recognize the presence of its maker. Leaning close to it she whispered, drawing out the magic she’d placed into the eye at its making.

“Open, open and see. Show me the one who owned the cloth where you rest, by the first witch, the Old Witch, by the earth and the fire. Show me.”

She closed her eyes and touched the sphere to her right eye. As the glass warmed by her skin touched her eyelid, her private darkness bloomed into fresh light.

Senja recognized the lord sorcerer’s workroom right away. There was a mirror there that had known the sands of the Holy Island, that had long ago been shaped and smoothed by careful artisans who understood the craft of fires and of earths. It had been carelessly propped up on a shelf by some seemingly unthinking hand before the lord sorcerer had decided to ban the usual palace servants from his workroom. Her witch’s eye could take her easily through that mirror, allowing her to look, and to listen.

All the sorcerers in the court of Isavalta, save for two, were clustered around their lord sorcerer who collapsed in a chair, but their attention was not on him. It was on the one calling herself Urshila.

“Mistress Urshila, that is a cold thought,” said Korta, the youngest of them.

She did not look away at that, displaying some courage of conviction after all. “Death is colder.”

Luden craned his bent neck so he could look up at her. “I take it you do not mean to inform Mistress Bridget what you intend for her child.”

“What we intend.” Urshila enunciated each word clearly.

So
.

Neda frowned hard, glancing about the room. For a moment, Senja thought her gaze rested on the mirror, but all she said was, “I have heard no one else here agree to this plan.”

“There is no plan, only hopes and fears.”

The tiny, golden woman spread her hands. “Is this what we are driven to?”

Urshila did not even hesitate. “Yes.” Her gaze held steady and she turned it on each of the sorcerers in turn. “If we can find another way, then let us find it, but we may fail, or we may be too few or too weak. In that case, we will need power from wherever we can find it.”

Korta did not look at her; instead he studied the depths of the wine cup he held. “Surely Vyshko and Vyshemir will not permit the Firebird to destroy their realm.”

It was Sidor who answered, and his voice held the tone of defeat. “They permitted the Firebird to be released.”

Luden wagged his ancient head. “I do not like this, but I fear she is right.”

Lord Daren gripped the arm of his chair, as if hanging on for grim life. His whole body trembled, and for a moment Senja thought he was going to have a seizure, but he only spoke. “Let … it be done.”

So
.

Senja lowered the witch’s eye. There would be more discussion, more planning certainly, and more swearing to secrecy. Things it would be useful to know would be said, but it did not do to spy too long on sorcerers through magic. She had what she most wanted from them. She needed to take the precious time she had left to communicate what she now knew.

Using the witch’s eye was tiring, but not as bad as what was to come. Senja tucked the glass sphere away under the bale so that if she was discovered, it, at least, would not be. Then, she took the herbs and the salt and poured them into the mortar. She rolled back her sleeve and laid the knife’s edge against her forearm.

The cut was swift and shallow. Glistening blood welled up immediately. She took up the pestle and began to steadily grind down the herbs and salt. The blood flowed from her arm, down her hand and down the pestle into the mortar. Her grinding mixed it well with the salt and the scrape of stone on stone mixed with the scents of the herbs, with the darkness and the blood.

When at last the paste was smooth, Senja dipped two fingers into it and smeared a quantity on her lips, the tang of salt and iron stinging her flesh, adding a bright flash of pain to the weaving.

“Earth to earth, air to air, blood to blood, breath to breath,” she murmured, drawing the magic in, pouring the magic out. “Knowing to knowing, Senja to Niku.”

Over and again she repeated the chant until she felt as if she had begun to fade. She was lighter than air, she was nothing but thought. She could be anywhere. She could be everywhere.

“Earth to earth, air to air …”

Senja
. Niku’s voice, deep and solid as stone, sounded in her mind.
What news?

Discipline helped Senja form a single thought. She might otherwise pour her whole mind out to Niku, leaving him with too much information to understand, and leaving her with nothing at all to return to.
The Firebird comes to Isavalta. The sorcerers struggle to find a way to stand against it
.

They will fail
. There was no smugness in Niku’s tone, only calm certainty.

Urshila herself was less sure.
Perhaps. What do the bones say of Ulla?
She used Urshila’s true birth name. It was important to speak only truths when speaking mind to mind. Lies weakened the link, opened the gates to loose and losing thought.

She is weary and loses touch. We may not depend on her. Not yet. Her role is yet unclear
.

Which was as she thought.
Do the bones still speak of Kalami’s return?

Past life, past death. Blood calls him back. It is still part of the song
.

I have seen, I think, how it may be
.

Niku paused for a single heartbeat, but Senja felt his mind quicken.
Tell me
.

Senja felt her distant body smile with its bloody lips. She carefully fashioned memories of memories, showing Niku the meeting of the sorcerers. The song was true. Father and child would return, and the future would be complete in them. The
murhata
would fall in fire and blood, and Tuukos would have the victory too long denied.

The Holy Island would at last, at
last
, be free.

Chapter Nine

The long, hot day wore away. Mae Shan watched over Tsan Nu as the child slept, tossing and turning in what was surely the rudest bed she had ever known. Mae Shan dozed a few times, but always brought herself sharply awake. There was no one else to take this watch.