The Firebird's Vengeance (39 page)

The words had either been exactly right, or exactly wrong, but they had hit home. The dowager stooped, seeming to become even older. “I needed them.”

Still speaking slowly, still putting force of will and of wish behind the words, Bridget stepped forward. “The one died for your need, the other you almost killed.” If she had been able to touch, she would have touched Aunt Grace now, rubbed up shoulder to shoulder with her. They could have even leaned together as Grace and Medeoan had done.

Medeoan’s arm shivered, but did not move. Perhaps it could not move. “Are you going to allow the child to say such things to me?”

At that, Aunt Grace finally lifted her hands away from Medeoan. Bridget’s heart soared, and she lost hold of her will and the portrait she had shaped began to blur. Aunt Grace just slammed her hands over her ears in the gesture of a child who can no longer bear what it hears.

“Please,” she said, the word coming out as half a sob. “Please. I do not want this.”

“You did. You do.” Medeoan was crabbed, aged, diminished, but she was not yet defeated. “You were the special one. It should have stayed that way.”

At first Bridget thought Grace was crying, but then she saw that her aunt’s face was growing indistinct, like the portrait, like the world itself. “But it didn’t. Whose fault is that?”

“You told me whose it was,” hissed Medeoan. “You told me how she left you.”

Grace lowered her hands, and she turned, slowly, hunched and shaking, as if she too were becoming an old woman, she faced the dowager. “I was wrong,” she said, and Bridget knew that was the first time she had said those words about this thing. “It was my fault what I became, not Ingrid’s.”

Grace backed away, each step a battle, each step a victory.

“No,” whispered the dowager. Bridget could barely hear her. Her skin was as white as her hair now, and the color had begun to drain even from her eyes.

Fading.

“Not like this,” breathed the dowager. “I came to help. I only wanted to help.”

It was this that Bridget had been waiting for. “Yes,” she said. “You wanted to be a good ruler. I’ve been told that so many times.”
But fear and pride and pain got in your way. Death brings great change and no change at all
. “I want to help Isavalta now. Tell me how to cage the Firebird.”

“I cannot.” Medeoan shrank away, growing young as she had grown old, a pale girl, scarcely a woman. A wraith.

“But you did cage it once.”

“Oh, yes.” The two words were filled with despair. “I did that.”

I killed a man
, she said with those simple words.
I killed so many
.

“Tell me how it was done,” urged Bridget. Neither one of them had moved, and yet the distance between them had grown. Bridget strained her ears and strained her senses, but her whole being felt already tensed to the breaking point. The ache in her wrist had become a burn, distracting her and sapping vital strength. “Let me help Isavalta. That was what you brought me to Vyshtavos to do.”

“The Firebird cannot be caged.”

“Then what can be done?”

“Nothing. It is immortal. It has been granted vengeance.” She lifted her head, for one heartbeat growing clear again in voice and visage. “You saw. You know.”

“Medeoan, you told my aunt you wanted to help Isavalta, that you wanted redemption.”

“They judge me, my parents, the gods. My spirit will be alone in the ice fields for all time.”

Bridget faltered. The burn from the lifeline had begun to throb like a heartbeat, like her heartbeat, laboring in her chest, calling her back to herself, breaking her connection with this place. Confusion washed through her, robbing her of her voice. She had to concentrate, but she could not. Her strength was finally beginning to fail, and the gallery, Medeoan, and Grace were all receding like the tide.

Grace moved. She straightened her heavy shoulders and threw back her head. She lifted her hands that had clutched Medeoan so slightly.

“I call the spirits,” she said, her voice deep and resonating. “I call the spirits to speak.”

It was ridiculous, it was the cheapest sort of theater.

It was what Aunt Grace had done for thirty years and what she knew as she knew her name. It was second nature to her, and in this place, it had power.

“Speak!” she called out. “We know the pain of being trapped between. We bring you rest. Speak and tell us of your burden, and be absolved and forgiven of all wrong. Be gathered into the fold where you seek shelter, where there is yet room for your soul. Speak and know peace.”

Medeoan moved forward, staring, her face filled with fear and wonder both. Her eyes were almost white now, as her skin, as her hair. The little girl, fading, all but gone.

“Speak to me,” whispered Aunt Grace, gentle now, coaxing. She had solidified, grown taller and more stately, even as Medeoan had diminished. “Speak and be forgiven. Speak and be gathered in.”

The little girl who was Medeoan stood up on tiptoe and whispered into Aunt Grace’s ear. Aunt Grace listened, eyes closed, and at last nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Medeoan.”

Medeoan smiled, a delighted child’s smile. The two of them embraced, and slowly, like ice melting in the sun, Medeoan faded away in Aunt Grace’s arms, and was gone.

In the same instant, the pain in Bridget’s wrist became unbearable, robbing her exhausted mind of the last of its will to focus. The world became a blur of color and cold, and when it cleared, she was sitting on the bed, holding Aunt Grace, her face wet with tears.

In the circle of her arms, her aunt breathed easily, evenly, and without any sound except the healthy whisper of air through lungs that were whole and sound.

Grace stirred. Bridget meant to sit back, but she did not have the strength and instead slumped painfully against the brass headboard.

Sakra too gave up all pretense at dignity. His trembling hand plucked the scarlet band from his wrist, and he sat down at once on the floor.

Grace, though, Grace lifted her head, her eyes clear and a look of wonder on her face.

“What did she say?” croaked Bridget.

“It cannot be caged.” Grace spoke the words slowly, savoring them as if they were a beloved memory. “The cage won’t hold a second time, but if you can find the name of the man the Phoenix once was, it could be transformed.”

Chapter Sixteen

Mae Shan watched her young mistress trot steadily down the hill toward the riverside town of Huaxing and tried to be glad. Tsan Nu, or “Anna” as she was now insisting was her proper name, had been full of energy and good humor since she’d done her last spell, walking the whole long way without complaint. Mae Shan wanted to be glad that the girl could keep up and that she was following without question. She wanted to ignore the distance in “Anna’s” eyes and how only part of her attention seemed to be on where they were going.

Two things did lift Mae Shan’s spirits. The first was that she had been able to pick out the red roof of Uncle Lien’s house from the top of the last hill. The second was that no smoke rose from Huaxing, except for the benign white vapor from cooking fires.

The river itself was crowded with traffic. Boats of all sizes raced down its course, heading for the coast with all the sail they could raise. Mae Shan wondered where they were from and where they were bound, and if they knew for certain there was safety where they went. Uncertainty was beginning to tire her more than the journey, and she longed for answers.

They were almost alone on the hillside now. Most of the other refugees had chosen to flee deeper inland rather than take their chances on the river or at a town so close to the Heart. Or perhaps they had just been faster than Mae Shan and her charge, because although it was the middle of the day, Huaxing’s gates were shut fast. Mae Shan, however, saw ordered movement on the battlements. This told her that unlike in T’ien, the guards here had not yet abandoned their posts.

She also saw, as they drew closer, that those same guards were armed with bows, and the four men on either side of the gate were stationed with arrows already nocked.

“Mistress, wait here,” she said, pointing to a tangle of bushes at the roadside outside bow range. “Do not come until I call.”

Tsan Nu’s, Anna’s, eyes went dim for a moment and Mae Shan wondered if the child was speaking to the father, or the father to the child, and what was being said. Whatever it was, her mistress ducked obediently behind the bush, crouching down so as not to be seen.

Well enough
.

Mae Shan unslung her bundles and laid them beside those same bushes, certain the guards on the walls marked her movements. Then, unarmed and alone she walked down the center of the road to the gate.

“Stop there!” cried one of the guards on the left side of the gate when she drew within hail. “State your business!”

Mae Shan halted as she was ordered. “Lieutenant Mae Shan Jinn of the Heart’s Own Guard stationed at the Autumn Palace at the pleasure and the service of the Son of Heaven and Earth.”

Even from where she stood, she could see the man’s jaw drop.

“You lie!” he roared. “No one survived from the Heart!”

“I did, as did my mistress.” She held up her left hand. “I can show you my ring of service as proof.”

The officer turned and said something to his subordinates that Mae Shan could not hear. Then he and another disappeared from the battlements in order to emerge from a side portal. Mae Shan stayed where she was and let them come to her. Their armor was brown and edged with green. The officer wore a green sash and his subordinate a brown one. The subordinate still had his bow at the ready. Mae Shan did not move except to lower her hand so they might see her sigil ring. She hoped they would decide to admit they recognized it. Sneaking into Huaxing once they were refused entry at the gate would not be an adventure to look forward to.

The officer, a lieutenant from the insignia on his green sash, touched her ring with one gloved finger.

“Goddess of Mercy,” he whispered, a look of fear appearing on his face, as if he thought Mae Shan might vanish like a ghost. “We’ve been told no one survived. You must come with me at once. The mayor will want to speak with you.”

Mae Shan bowed in salute. “I will willingly speak to the honorable mayor as soon as possible, but first I must see my mistress safely installed in my uncle’s house.”

“Lieutenant Mae Shan.” The man dropped his voice. “Nowhere is safe. As the days pass without news from the Heart, the town is emptying out except for the looters. The mayor’s villa is still guarded. You must come at once.”

“My uncle is Lien Jinn,” she said firmly. “Are you saying anyone will dare attempt his house, or will succeed in that attempt?”

“Lien Jinn?” repeated the guard, stunned. Mae Shan nodded once. She watched his face shift back and forth as some internal struggle played itself out.

Perhaps it will be the riverside after all
.

He stared hard at her ring, now, she was sure, wondering whether she’d stolen it, but a soldier’s bearing was not something a casual thief could fake, and the the hunger for news was strong. “You’ll report to the mayor as soon as your mistress is safe?”

“I will come as soon as I am able.”

“Bring her and enter then.”

Mae Shan bowed in salute and thanks and returned to the thicket where she had left Anna–Tsan Nu and their gear.

“Come, mistress. We have been granted entry.” She hefted her bundle. Tsan Nu looked accusing.

“You did not say your uncle was Lien Jinn.”

“It is not a relationship I can acknowledge inside the Heart,” she said, taking her mistress’s hand.
Who is upset at this news? You or your father?
she wondered.

“My father says he is a pirate.”

“He is also a sorcerer,” Mae Shan told her. “And he is our only source of help right now.”

Tsan Nu fell silent, and permitted herself to be led through the guard’s portal by Mae Shan and the town’s lieutenant. He presented them with a hastily written passport stamped with his name and the city seal giving Mae Shan and her mistress permission to be out on the streets. Mae Shan tucked it into her sash, while declining his offer of escort. She knew her way.

Mae Shan had only found out about Uncle Lien by overhearing a conversation between her parents. There had been a drought, and things were hard with them. Then, a messenger with a scar over his eye had arrived bearing a letter and a string of silver. Mae Shan, as the tallest of her siblings, had been given the job of stretching up on tiptoe to peek through the window as Father read the missive. The messenger stood there with his thumbs tucked in his sash and his jaw moving constantly as he chewed betel nuts, or something equally noxious. Father weighed the silver in his hand and looked at Mother. Without a word, Mother took the silver and handed it back to the messenger.

“We will take nothing from such a man as Lien Jinn,” Father announced, dropping the letter onto the floor to show his total lack of respect for it. “He is a pirate and a rogue and I do not acknowledge him as family.”

The messenger shrugged, tucked the silver into his sleeve, and went away, without even bowing once.

The speculation that night in the sleeping room had been intense. Wei Lin claimed she had heard of Uncle Lien from her teachers. He was actually their grandfather’s brother. He was a sorcerer and a pirate and had a black beard two ells long that he could crack like a whip over the heads of his “nefarious” crew. Mae Shan wasn’t clear what “nefarious” meant, but it sounded appropriately awful. Her brother Zhi told Wei Lin not to be ridiculous, but he had heard from some older boys that Lien Jinn had once beheaded fifty men in a single hour with his machete because they had tried to hide one pearl from him.

In their excitement, they had forgotten to keep their voices down. Mother and Father had woken up furious, and Father had forbidden the name of Lien from ever passing his children’s lips again.

But Mae Shan’s imagination was fired, and from that time forward, she kept the net of her ears spread for any stories she might catch concerning her mysterious uncle, especially when she accompanied her father and older brother on the boat to sell their produce to the brokers at the markets. At her mother’s insistence, Mae Shan was forbidden to leave the boat, but that did not stop her from listening to the gossip that passed back and forth between the boats when Father and Zhi had gone to conduct their negotiations. It was amazing how much she could hear without leaving sight of the boat, or the warehouse door Father and Zhi had gone through.