The Firebird's Vengeance (24 page)

If nothing else, it would keep them all from being paralyzed by their fear.

Mae Shan moved slowly, breathing, relaxing her muscles, letting soul and spirit flow, concentrating on the precision of each movement, raising the spear, sweep, stab, step to the side, kick, kick again, pivot, stab, step back, circle the spear, switch hands, sweep back, stab again. Concentrate. Don’t speed up. Breathe evenly down to the belly. Step, step, stab, sweep aside, pivot, kick, stab again, turn …

She caught sight of Tsan Nu, staring openmouthed past her.

“You’re not doing magic,” she said. “But they’re scared. They’re jumping up and down and yelling at each other.”

Concentrate, concentrate
, Mae Shan schooled herself. Turn again, sweep out, raise the spear, stab left, stab right, kick …

Whatever was happening in that invisible world, Tsan Nu seemed to gain confidence. She dampened her splinter and began drawing faint grey markings on the glazed tile that Mae Shan could only hope were enough for her art.

Don’t think of that. Concentrate. Step back. Breathe
.

Tsan Nu began to sing. Her voice was high and clear, a young girl’s confident soprano, calling out the spell language of those with the spirit gifts.

Concentrate
.

Mae Shan focused on her movements, on the rhythm of her breathing, on the sweep of her spear, its position, that it was level and straight at the correct height for each move. From the corner of her eye, she saw Chen and Kyun fall into closer time with her. Somehow, Tsan Nu’s singing made the shrieks of the crowd easier to dismiss, as if the girl were pushing the world back with her clear voice.

A fresh wind brushed ash into Mae Shan’s eyes. She blinked hard, but did not allow herself to pause. She stepped forward and slammed down the butt of her spear, as if at a fallen enemy, then swung the spear high and pivoted on one heel to stab behind her, pivoted again, sweeping out above her head.

In front of her, the ashes were dancing.

It was a silhouette of some strange creature, all smeared in ash. It had five horns and huge, clawed hands. Through the hollows where its eyes should have been, she could see the crowd battering hopelessly at the gate, as if the ashy shadow contained them all and laughed at what it saw.

Mae Shan’s movement faltered. The ash demon’s mouth gaped wider and it danced closer, hopping and spinning madly from one foot to another, in what Mae Shan realized was a parody of her own movements. Oddly, she did not find it in her to be afraid, only affronted at this thing’s rudeness.

“Lieutenant …” said Kyun, his voice shaking.

“Concentrate!” cried Mae Shan, trying to keep her hands from tightening on her spear. “Keep moving!”

To her relief, Tsan Nu’s song did not falter. The ashen demon twirled and swung its arms out, and Mae Shan drew herself back up to attention, and began the sequence once more.

The ash demon’s mouth stretched out in fury, and the wind rose again. A cluster of embers blew up from nowhere and brushed Mae Shan’s arms. Pain sparkled across her skin. She did not pause. She did not look. The ash demon danced before her in silent rage, but it did not press past her to where Tsan Nu knelt, singing her spell and capturing that song in the words she painted with the char of ruined homes.

Sweat poured down Mae Shan’s face, and her sleepless night weighed on her like iron chains. She saw the mob through the swaying, spinning form of the demon before her, heard their screams, heard Chen’s and Kyun’s breathing grow ragged, even as she heard Tsan Nu’s song grow hoarse with effort. They would not last much longer, and what then?

The demon leapt closer, as if sensing the doubt creeping into her thoughts. Keeping just beyond the sweep of Mae Shan’s spear, it drew its sword, miming her parry for parry. She could see the blade’s keen edge outlined in grey ash and for a moment her breath faltered. The demon threw its head back, its mouth gaping in triumph.

At that same moment, Tsan Nu staggered to her feet, grasping the tile to her chest as if it weighed four hundred pounds. She stumbled to the edge of the wall, raised the tile over her head, and hurled it down.

The ash demon dove after the tile, but it was too late. The red clay hit the stones and burst into a thousand pieces. At that exact moment, the Left Gate swung open and the mob, roaring its relief as it had a moment ago roared its frustration, poured through, spreading out like a flood of water, heading for the hills or the river, wherever they thought they could go for safety.

In front of Mae Shan’s eyes, the ash demon scattered on the hot winds. She lowered her spear and wiped the sweat from her face. Tsan Nu stood before the battlements swaying on her feet. Mae Shan reached her just as she began to crumple, catching her thin, limp body and laying her down gently on the stones. She bent her ear to the child’s chest and heard her heart beat fast but steady, and felt the rise and fall of her chest. Tsan Nu was alive, and she would stay that way. She was only exhausted beyond her young endurance.

“Rest then, mistress,” said Mae Shan, lifting the girl into her arms. “Chen, Kyun, we must be gone.”

The boys gaped at her, and she could see that for once they were coming to understand what it truly meant to be a soldier and to serve until you had nothing left to give.
Their parents should be proud
, thought Mae Shan, for they both picked up their burdens and marched after her as she led them down to join the crowd and flee the city without once looking back.

Chapter Ten

Sakra stood outside the door of Ananda’s study, trying to rid himself of the childish wish to be elsewhere.

The golden-haired page girl reappeared. “You may enter,” she said carefully, as if she were new to her post and still needed to make extra sure she spoke her piece correctly.

Sakra gave the girl a smile he hoped was reassuring as he passed her. How old was she? Nine perhaps? The age of Bridget’s daughter.

In the study, Ananda sat at her new-made writing desk, placing the cap on a crystal inkwell. Light streamed in through the tall windows in the solarium that had over the past three months been converted to a study for her private use. The bright sun had topped the walls and the beams slanted through the tiny diamond panes, throwing warmth, gold bars, and tiny rainbows across the floor lined with rushes and the carefully dried petals of last year’s roses, raising up a faint, fresh perfume that spoke of the coming of summer.

On the other side of the room, her secretary, Mathura, worked steadily and quietly at his own copying. For the empress there was a great deal to be done. The long, slow dark season of contemplation, reading, and thoughtful conversation began to break up like the ice, opening clear, crooked paths that would turn into wide canals, and the torrent of the Isavaltan summer would soon flow free.

He had lived in the north for six years, but this still felt strange for Sakra. In Hastinapura where the clime ranged from warm to torrid, life proceeded at a steady pace. The only pause came with the first and second rains, and those lasted a total of two months. Snow and cold came only in the high mountains on the border of Hung-Tse. Elsewhere, planting, growing, reaping, and travel, these things were continuous and there was no need to hurry them.

But here, there were but a few short months before the cold came back, and the
rasputitsa
was the time when the whole world began to tense itself for the rush of warmth, green beauty, and dry roads that came with the spring.

For all administrators, it was a time to write letters, to examine old accounts and note down plans for putting into play all the ideas that came in winter’s night. For Ananda, it was also the time to write to her parents in Hastinapura and give them all the news, and ask for all the news of family and the Pearl Throne. The ships would be leaving even sooner than the overland messengers. There was no ambassador from Hastinapura in Vysthavos. Medeoan had sent the last one back in disgrace, declaring him a thief and a womanizer, and there had been no chance for a new ambassador to arrive before the harbors froze. So there was only Ananda to tell her father, and the court of the Pearl Throne what had happened here, how Mikkel had come to the throne, and how all was now well.

Or would have been well. Sakra’s jaw tightened.

“Imperial Majesty,” Sakra said, dropping automatically into the language of their old home as he gave the salute of trust. She touched the back of his head, signaling that she accepted the fealty of his gesture and he could stand straight again. They had only resumed formalities since Mikkel had ascended the throne, and Sakra had been able to return openly to Vyshtavos. Ananda said she missed the casualness their clandestine meetings had enforced, but Sakra insisted. She was empress now, and they would celebrate that truth with all the honor it merited.

Sakra straightened. He hoped she didn’t see how tired he was. His skin felt as if it had stretched itself tight across his bones. After Bridget had found her way to sleep, he had done nothing but walk the corridors, trying to understand what he felt, trying to decide for the first time since he was a boy what he wanted.

“Marutha, I require privacy,” said Ananda. Marutha had apparently anticipated this, for his ink was capped and he laid a protective sheet of linen over his completed, dried correspondence. He reverenced, and took himself from the room.

“What’s wrong, Sakra?” asked Ananda as soon as the door closed. She waved him to a chair. Of course she had seen it. They knew each other well. She looked weary herself, and he wondered what was the matter. He should not be here like this. She did not need any more troubles.

I have looked after this girl, this woman, all of her life. Can she ever truly be less than the thing uppermost in my mind?

“I am only tired, Majesty,” he said.

“And you have something difficult to say,” prompted Ananda. “What news do you bring me, Sakra?”

He knew her small, slightly apprehensive smile better than any other expression. His parents’ faces and the sights of his old home had long since settled into the deeper recesses of memory, but Ananda was ever before him, as it should be.

Yet, all of a sudden he couldn’t look at her. He turned his face to the window. Below them spread Vyshtavos’s garden, the black and grey trees shedding their winter coverings of snow, and waiting for spring to bring their green robes. The imperial canal was a straight black line between banks patched brown and white like the coat of a mongrel dog.

In his mind’s eye, he saw how Bridget looked the night before when she had fallen asleep. Her face had softened, and he saw how she might look in times to come, when the years of loneliness and struggle were put behind her, when she had a life with friends who esteemed her. When she had love.

He remembered how he had been struck when he first saw her. Even when he thought she was Ananda’s enemy and therefore his, he found her magnificent. Not just for her beauty, although she was beautiful, nor for her power, which was blinding, but for the sheer strength of self and spirit in her. She would never bow, never bend, but meet her fate proudly.

Even if it broke her. Sakra hung his head. Even if he broke her.

How would it feel to meet Bridget’s child? To see her as a mother? How would it be to live beside her, to care for another child as he had cared for Ananda? Could he? Would duty permit?

Did duty allow him room in his heart for anything but duty itself?

I hate this place
, he thought suddenly, vehemently toward the thawing garden.
I hate this barbarian wilderness where its people dance through the chaos and don’t even realize there is a better way. It gets into the blood and the brain, and makes a new wilderness within. It is this place that has done this to me. I should not be thinking these things. I should not be feeling so for this woman. I am bound to Ananda, and that is my life until hers is over and I am freed, if I am freed, for there will be children and they too will need me
.

Mother Chitrani help me, for I also do not want this wilderness to forsake me
.

Without turning around, Sakra told Ananda of his conversation with Bridget the previous night, and of his conversation with Mistress Urshila earlier that morning. He heard no movement from Ananda. She sat still, drinking in his words, most likely trying to understand what in them was so important that he could not even look at her as he spoke. A child, a child thought dead and now alive. Ananda hoped for a child of her own soon. Sakra knew he would never have any. It was one of the prices of being a sorcerer. One, it seemed, of many, many prices.

“Thank you for coming to me with this,” said Ananda, her voice tense and breathy beneath the formality of the statement. “I’ll now be ready when Bridget comes.”

Sakra turned toward her again. “What will you say?” He felt as brittle as glass, and feared for a moment her answer might break him in two.

She looked at him with startled eyes.
Surely you know what I must say?
her expression told him before she could speak. “That such a quest must wait until we know whether we have anything to fear from the Firebird.”

Sakra was silent. She was so different from the girl he had shepherded to this wilderness. He wondered if Ananda herself even knew all the changes that had taken root within her. She was a diplomat and negotiator. She could give an order as frostily as any Isavaltan lady and command obedience as readily as her mother the First of All Queens did. She could see what was best for the realm she now ruled, and do what she had to, whether she wanted to or not.

“You do not believe she will take such news well,” said Ananda with exaggerated mildness.

He knew the remark was intended to raise the smile. He could not oblige.

“What’s the matter, Sakra?” asked Ananda.

What is the matter?
Sakra’s arms tightened until the individual fibers spasmed beneath the skin. “I am betraying her,” he whispered, for there was no shout loud enough to release the anguish in him.