Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  To this Valeria offered no objection. She sat by the bed, holding Briana’s hand. When Kerrec came to stand beside her, she looked up.

  “It didn’t work,” she said. Her voice was steady and her eyes were dry, but there were tears in the words. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “She’s alive,” Kerrec said. “She’s asleep instead of unconscious. We didn’t fail.”

  “We didn’t succeed, either.”

  “She’ll heal,” the Healer said from the other side of the bed.

  “Not entirely,” said Valeria.

  “She’ll walk, talk, rule an empire,” said the Healer. “Her magic is intact. She’ll recover as fully as anyone could hope after such a blow as she took.”

  Valeria bit her lip. Clearly there was more she could have said, but she chose not to say it.

  Kerrec was glad. He was not ready to face it—not yet.

  For now, he would be glad of all the things that the Healer had said. He knew they were true. The other things could wait.

  He sat on the bed. Valeria offered to surrender Briana’s hand, but he shook his head. His sister did not need his touch to know he was there.

  It would be a long night, and he was bone-tired. He set the tiredness aside. He would rest when the time came. Tonight he needed to be here.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Long before she was properly awake, Briana heard the whispers. She might have ignored them, but even through a wall of healing spells the pain in her center threatened to swallow her whole. The whispers gave her a focus.

  At first there were no words. She heard hissing in the rhythm of speech, but she lacked the will to make sense of it. Then slowly as she swam toward wakefulness, the whispers’ meaning came clear.

  “It’s certain? There’s no doubt of it?”

  “None. The rest will recover. That, never.”

  “Do you think it was deliberate?”

  “Perhaps not. But it serves the one who did it very well indeed.”

  “Pray the gods we find him soon. No death is too slow, no pain too great—”

  “We’ll find him.”

  “It won’t change anything, will it? There won’t be any miracle. She will still be—”

  “She will still be alive. The rest we’ll face when we face it.”

  Briana opened her eyes. Light dazzled her. She blinked until her sight cleared.

  Daylight filled the room—afternoon light, slanting toward evening. The curtains were pulled back and the windows flung open. Warm sweet air poured in.

  It was as fine a healing draft as any potion. Briana let her eyelids fall shut again and simply breathed.

  That did not hurt as much as she had feared. The pain was dull and distant. Healers had been working their spells and brewing their medicines.

  Sleep caught her again and drew her down into the dark. Part of her resisted, but not enough to win its way.

  When she woke a second time, night had fallen. People were talking again—different voices, louder and less friendly. “So it’s true. What are we going to do about it?”

  “Wait for her to recover first. We can give her that much.”

  “Can we? There is nothing in the law that states—but—”

  “It will have to be confronted sooner or later. If she had been crowned first, there would be no question. But since she has not yet been formally instated…it changes things.”

  “Are you suggesting that we—that she—”

  “I am suggesting that certain consequences may be inevitable.”

  Briana was not ready for this. She was barely conscious, drugged and enspelled and badly wounded. But the empire did not wait on anyone’s convenience.

  She opened her eyes on lamplight and starlight and a circle of princely faces. Her privy council had gathered—not for a deathwatch, she hoped. She did not feel that she was dying, though when the Healers’ working wore off, she might wish she were.

  Her most high and noble advisors looked like children caught in mischief, guilty and trying hard to hide it. Most masked their expressions quickly behind the appearance of gladness. Some might even be honest about it.

  “Lady!” cried Duke Gallio. He was one of the honest ones. Tears streamed down his scarred and weathered face. He clutched her hand in his big rough ones and looked her over carefully.

  In spite of his refusal to play the game of masks and intrigue that plagued every court Briana had ever heard of, Gallio was no fool. His eyes probed her as deeply as she was minded to allow.

  What he saw there seemed to reassure him, though it did not smooth away the sadness. “Lady,” he said with remarkable gentleness. “It’s good to see you back to yourself again.”

  “Not quite,” Briana said, gritting her teeth as she tried to sit up.

  Between effort and pain, she nearly fainted. Gallio moved smoothly to support her. Lady Nerissa, who might or might not be honestly glad that Briana had survived, fetched pillows and banked her with them.

  Briana had to pause for a moment to breathe. Her council waited with courtly patience. She thought about pretending to faint, but that would only put off the inevitable.

  She scanned their faces, though by now they had all had time to put on whatever expression they wanted her to see. It was still useful to remind them that she was their empress, wounded though she might be.

  “Now that I’m awake,” she said, “suppose we dispense with the proprieties and get to the point. I won’t be walking the processional way in—is it seven days? Will I?”

  They glanced at one another. It was Nerissa who spoke for them. “Three days, lady. You had swum down deep by the time the healing found you. No, it’s not likely. The Healers say you’ll recover, but it will be slower than you might prefer.”

  Briana paused a moment to draw a breath. She must not let any of this shake her, or she would lose even more than she already had. “How slow?”

  Nerissa pursed her lips. “I never got past journeyman in the Healers’ order, but my betters tell me weeks at least. Possibly months.”

  “Weeks,” said Briana. She had known before she asked, but saying it made it real. “So then. My lord Augur, you’ll choose another and equally propitious day—shall we say, in the autumn?”

  The Chief Augur bowed. He had never been a robust man, but it seemed to Briana that since she last saw him only two—no, five days before, he had grown terribly white and thin.

  His voice was still strong and richly beautiful. “As my lady wishes,” he said.

  If there was any doubt in him, he was too wise a courtier to show it. Briana bent her head to him and turned back to Gallio. “I will speak to my people as soon as I can—in a day or two, I hope. Meanwhile, will you reassure them? I’m far from dead, and I have no intention of being indisposed for long.”

  “I can see that, lady,” Gallio said.

  “Good,” said Briana. “Now, as little as I like it, I should rest.”

  They accepted the dismissal. All eight of them bowed low, turned and filed out in order of precedence.

  Briana pretended not to see the glance Gallio shot her, promising another and less public meeting later. From him she would expect no less.

  She was not as exhausted as she had let them think, but the presence of any human thing was more than she could bear just then. There were servants nearby, alert for any need, but they knew better than to intrude. She was as alone as an imperial lady could hope to be.

  She lay back in her mound of pillows and closed her eyes. Her heart shrank from what her mind insisted on doing. She made herself do it before she lost all courage.

  After any working of magic, a mage learned to take inventory. She reckoned the paths of power in her body one by one and made certain that all of them were flowing smoothly. If any was interrupted, she did her best to restore it.

  It was dangerous, even deadly, not to do this. Briana had been doing it half-consciously while she slept. Now she focused her awareness on it and faced what all those voices had
tried to keep her from facing.

  She was badly wounded—she had known that as soon as the mage-bolt struck. Healing was well advanced in most of her body and spirit. Her magic was recovering, refreshed from the deep well of the empire’s heart.

  One thing was not going to come back. The bolt had destroyed it as surely and completely as if a mortal soldier had taken a spear and stabbed her in the belly.

  The flesh was mending. In time even the pain would go away. But the heart’s pain would never leave her.

  She could not touch it—it hurt too much. She spread her hands above it. Time was when she had thought to make that gesture in joy, cherishing the child who would be born to inherit the empire after she was gone.

  There would be no child now. That had been taken from her.

  Her throat closed. The cry that welled up had nowhere to go. It caught in a sob that wrenched her body, then escaped in tears.

  She did not weep for long. She had always been practical, and she was bred for a clear head and a cold heart.

  She could well see what Gallio and Nerissa had spoken of while she was still asleep. The single most important duty of any imperial heir was to produce her own heir. If she could not, there were others willing and indeed eager to claim the position—but now of all times, she could not afford to fritter away her power in dynastic squabbles.

  If she had fallen like an idiot into this ambush after she was crowned, it would have been much simpler. She would be empress without a doubt, and she could name her own heir in her own time. But she was still, in law, princess regent and heir apparent. If she could not fulfill her imperial duty, her right to claim the throne was suspect and her ability to keep it impaired.

  She had done an unspeakably foolish thing, and the consequences might be equally unspeakable. Courts were like packs of wolves—they thrived on the weakness of others. Briana was as weak as it was possible to be while she was still alive and conscious and able to claim what belonged to her.

  She breathed as deep as her outraged body would allow and forced herself to be calm. A little hysteria was a healthy thing, but only if she followed it with a clear plan.

  She spoke to the air, knowing her servants would hear. “Bring the rider Valeria to me, if she will come.”

  The response was silence, but Briana had been heard. She let herself give way to exhaustion for a while, until Valeria answered her summons.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Valeria was numb. The Dance had succeeded—Briana was alive. But she had paid a price that might yet destroy her.

  When Briana’s summons came, Valeria was in the stables, cleaning stalls with a ferocity that made the stallions keep a prudent distance. The page in imperial livery picked his way delicately down the aisle. That was hardly fair of him, since Valeria had just finished sweeping the floor until it shone, but he was a courtier. Courtiers liked to imagine that they did not breathe the same air or walk the same earth as the rest of humanity.

  He delivered his message in a clear singsong. Valeria suppressed the urge to bolt toward the palace. She finished the stall she had been cleaning, deposited the barrow of sweepings in the kitchen garden then paused to wash her hands and face and rake her fingers through her hair. There was no salvaging her clothes, which were her oldest and most ragged, but Briana would not care for that.

  On her way to the palace, Valeria had more than enough time for second thoughts. She never quite turned back, but her steps began to drag. She wanted to see Briana awake and well—more than anything—but she was not sure she could bear the grief that went with it.

  Valeria might be a fool but she was no coward. She pressed forward as if against a strong wind.

  Briana seemed unconscious, but Valeria could feel her awareness, brisk and keen like a wind off the sea. There was nothing maimed about that or the magic that filled the room. They were as strong as ever.

  Valeria bent to kiss the broad clear forehead. As she drew back, she met Briana’s eyes. They were dark and quiet.

  For a wishful moment Valeria thought Briana did not know what had happened to her. But that was foolish. Of course she did. She lived in that body.

  “I’m sorry,” Valeria said. It was crashingly inadequate, but it was all she could think of to say.

  “It was the Unmaking,” Briana said. Her voice was very quiet. “It’s in the earth, hidden deep, but it’s infected the land’s magic. It laid a trap and I walked straight into it.”

  Valeria lowered herself slowly to the chair beside the bed. “Yes,” she said. “I felt it. Who woke it? The priest Maurus saw?”

  Briana nodded. “He was the bait for the trap.”

  “This is my fault,” Valeria said bleakly. “If I hadn’t made all those wrong choices, I would never have gone near the Book of Unmaking.”

  “We’ve all chosen badly,” Briana said.

  “You know what’s inside me,” said Valeria. “Now it’s spread to the land I live in.”

  “I don’t think you did that,” Briana said. “Long before you were Called to the Mountain, the tribes were our enemies. They’ve been trying to destroy us for two hundred years. It’s our misfortune that they’ve turned toward magic—the one thing we have that they’ve always refused to touch. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s my father’s, for taking a concubine who happened to be a madwoman—and who bore him a son as mad as she was, who also happened to be a mage.”

  “Your brother is a year dead,” Valeria said, “but I think this priest was one of his acolytes. This thing that was done to you reeks of him.”

  “It reeks of malice,” Briana said. She drew a deep breath through visible pain. “Valeria. I have to ask something of you.”

  “I have to tell you something,” Valeria said at the same time.

  There was a pause. Briana tilted her head. Valeria swallowed hard and said it before she lost courage. “When I left here last year—when I went to the Mountain—I was pregnant. I was an idiot. I didn’t know until my mother told me why I was so sick in the mornings. Grania was born in the spring.”

  “I knew,” said Briana. “The Lady told me.”

  For a long moment Valeria’s mind spun onward, trying to rattle off words that no longer mattered. She reined it in sharply. “We should have told you,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Valeria could find no anger in that, and no outrage, either. The guilt was entirely her own. It robbed her of grace but not of words. “We wanted to surprise you with her. Then my mother and I saw something that might have been this and might have been worse, and we were afraid to let anyone off the Mountain know, because she would be a target. By blood she’s your heir, even if by law she can’t be. And she’s ours. What would all our enemies’ malice do to a little child?”

  “I understand,” Briana said. She sounded ineffably tired.

  Valeria’s hands were cold. She did not want to say the words, but there was no choice. “That’s what you’re going to ask, aren’t you? You want her. You can change the law and make us give her to the empire.”

  “No,” said Briana.

  For the second time in that all-too-difficult conversation, Valeria was brought up short. “No? But—”

  “She belongs to the riders,” Briana said. She drew a breath, which caught—inevitably—on pain. “I need her father.”

  Of course she did. The thought was dim and far away. Valeria had an answer for her, a clear and cogent one, but all that came out was babble. “You need—what? If you can’t, then what use would—” She stopped and made herself start again. “He can’t, either. The law says—”

  “Laws can change,” Briana said. Her voice must have been trying to be gentle. It only succeeded in sounding flat. “There is no one left in the direct line. The cousins are numerous but distant. Choose one of them and it’s war with the rest. Whereas if I choose him—”

  “You can’t force him to be emperor,” Valeria said. She did her best to say it calmly.

  “Nor would I
try,” said Briana. “I intend to take what is mine. But for the rest of it, for the part that was taken from me, I need him. I need you to understand.”

  “Understand what?” Valeria was being deliberately dense. If she was dense enough, all of this would stop. Briana would give up and find another way. Kerrec would not be sold off to the highest bidder as princes had been since the world was new.

  Briana’s gaze was compassionate but her will was unbending. “I would never ask if there were a choice.”

  “There are choices!” Valeria burst out. “You have a hundred cousins. Choose one. Quash the rest. You have the power to do it.”

  She could have finished what the priest had begun, and blasted Briana to ash. Briana could hardly fail to know that, but she did not even flinch. “At what cost?” she asked. “This circumvents them all. He remains outside of the line of succession, but his sons or daughters—”

  “Your nobles would never allow it,” Valeria said. Gods, had Briana lost her grasp on simple statecraft? Could she not see how preposterous this was? “A rider in such a position? Unconscionable.”

  “A rider who remains a rider, but whose blood and lineage serve the empire as only they can.”

  Valeria’s throat hurt. It felt as if she had been screaming instead of holding back the scream.

  The terrible part was that she did understand. She could see why Briana was doing this, and why so quickly. Briana had to firm her grip on the empire now or risk losing it all—and not only for herself. Whatever had wounded her could strike again, this time against the whole court or the city or even the whole of Aurelia. She had to be ready for it.

  Understanding could not prevent Valeria’s heart from breaking. Even the wave of pure white fury could not do that. “Who will win the bidding for him? Or does it even matter?”

  “I’ll have to consult my council,” Briana said. “They’ll present candidates. He’ll be able to choose.”

  There, thought Valeria. There was the flaw, the great weakness in the plan. There was their escape. “Have you even asked him?” she demanded. “How do you know he’ll submit to it?”