The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  If I’d had time to ruminate, I’d have wanted to contemplate why, at the end of my life, my thoughts and feelings went primarily to Con. Odd how, in dying, one didn’t dwell much on politics and tasks left undone. All of my regret centered on my love, and what might have been. Too late now. Alas for that.

  If nothing else, Con would be amused that I’d finally put him first.

  Thinking of him, I let myself fall into the painless ease of death.

  22

  Vesno raced across the deck to me, wrapping himself around my legs as best as a huge wolfhound can, and pressed himself to me like a shivering puppy. “Vesno—what is it, boy?” I hunkered down, letting the dog lap my face, giving him the reassurance he seemed to suddenly need. The Last Resort—truly a pleasure yacht, ostentatious beyond imagining—pitched beneath me, sending my gut lurching, too.

  Or was that something else?

  My stomach hollowed out, my heart dropping into the hole it opened.

  Lia.

  “Conrí?” Kara put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me with it, making me realize I’d been crouching there some time, Vesno and I racked with grief. “Are you hurt, Conrí?”

  I only had my heart carved out of my body. I wouldn’t say aloud what I knew to be true. Lia had died. Though the Calantheans had been able to sense the marriage bond, it hadn’t ever felt like much to me. Now I recognized its sudden absence. Across the deck, Ibolya stood by the rail, facing me, tears running down her face. Lia had been alive until this moment. So close. Too late.

  I rubbed Vesno’s ears, which drooped with the same mourning that wanted to cleave me in two. Maybe Sondra lived. I’d recover Lia’s body and send her home, as I’d promised.

  After that …

  I had my suicide weapon. Agatha had shown me how it worked, though she wasn’t happy at the short delay from trigger to explosion. Knowing Lia was gone, I had no concerns about that. I would find a way to be in the same room as Anure, kill us both, and perhaps join Lia in Yilkay’s domain. Maybe if I died ridding the world of Anure, Yilkay would forgive a few of my more terrible acts and only punish me for a few millennia.

  “I’m fine.” I stood, Vesno still clinging to my legs, and faced down Kara’s dubious frown. “How close are we?”

  He turned to look at the sea, measuring the waves and the distant rocks, though I knew he already had an answer. Kara had the great gift of always knowing exactly where he was on the ocean. “With circling out and coming on the citadel from up coast, I’d say we could send you ashore within walking distance in another few hours. A brisk pace would get you there just past midnight. I’d like to get you closer, but…”

  “Better slow but sure,” I agreed, prompting another frown. All along I’d been chewing on Kara to get us there faster. Naturally he’d wonder at my sudden lack of urgency. “Do you mean Agatha’s brisk pace or mine?” I asked to distract him.

  “I can match any pace you set, Conrí,” Agatha informed me in her quietly slicing voice, having sidled up on our conversation in her unobtrusive way. “I’m an excellent runner.”

  With the shape my lungs were in, she could likely run circles around me. “All right. Agatha and I will row ashore as soon as you give the word, Kara.” I could at least row a boat with reasonable power. “We’ll get to the citadel, assess, and Agatha, at the very least, will meet you back at the rowboat by dawn.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, and I stopped her. “Once you get me in and find out what we need to know, I need you to take back that information.”

  “Getting into the citadel is far less problematic than getting out again,” she said, not for the first time, lines deepening on her papery skin.

  “Which is why I want you out again as fast as humanly possible. If all goes well, I’ll be with you, along with Sondra and—” My voice caught and I had to clear my throat. “I can carry Her Highness, if need be.”

  They didn’t love the plan, but no one had come up with a better one. Though none of us voiced it, the entire mission was truly one of sacrifice. When Kara clasped my shoulder in a goodbye, neither of us could speak the words. He gave me a long look, knowing me well enough to see my grief, that I’d lost hope. Likely he knew I didn’t expect to see him again on Ejarat’s soil.

  Of course, we’d all known this attempt was suicidal, even without the weapon. Even the plans for Agatha to return were born of optimism rather than any of us believing she would. The wraithlike woman never ceased to amaze me: she was clearly terrified of returning to the citadel, yet she’d never once wavered in her resolve to go.

  “You take our hopes with you, Conrí,” Kara said, his sere face grave.

  The words with their unfortunate evocation of the grave echoed in my head as I rowed our small boat to shore in the relatively calm cove. I felt on my shoulders the weight of the hopes of thousands who’d fought with me, supported our cause, often with their lives. I took them with me, yes, to their final end.

  Vesno’s mournful howl followed us across the water.

  * * *

  Agatha hadn’t exaggerated her knowledge, or endurance. We made it to the slumbering township outside the citadel walls faster than Kara had estimated—me pushing myself and my straining lungs, she keeping to a considerately slow pace. She guided us through stinking back alleys and down footpaths used by servants and slaves.

  I mostly managed not to think about what we’d find left of Lia, and if Sondra shared her fate.

  In deference to our disguises, I’d left the rock hammer behind. The bagiroca hung from its hook on my belt, looking like another of the burdens we both carried, and we wore rough and dirty clothing. For once I appreciated my scars and beaten appearance, because the Imperial Guards at the citadel’s Slave Gate barely even glanced as they admitted us.

  As Agatha had observed, getting in wasn’t so difficult. Certainly not for invisible folk like us.

  We trudged through the bowels of the place, making our way through a warren of poorly lit corridors. “Why do I smell burning vurgsten?” I asked her quietly.

  She didn’t hesitate. “His Imperial Majesty has it burning on the walls at all times.”

  That meant he had stores to squander, even without Vurgmun. Of course he’d have other sources, other mines. More slaves to mine his rock. We’d been doomed all along. I’d been the only one not to get that through my thick skull.

  The kitchens weren’t far in, venting another sort of smoke from their many ovens. A few low-tier souls were awake, tending the fires, some making dough for the breakfast breads that would be required in a few hours. A place as vast as this had servants awake and working at all hours.

  “Wait for me here,” Agatha said clearly, treating me like someone slow of mind. “Put down the sacks, unload the meal, and sit. Wait. Understand?”

  I nodded dully, and she slipped off into the smoky shadows. Keeping to my role as draft mule, I unloaded the surface contents of meal the guards had barely glanced at, surreptitiously readying the supplies for our true mission. Checking on the remarkably compact vurgsten weapon at the bottom.

  Then I waited for Agatha, trying not to reveal my simmering impatience. Being inside the citadel made my hair stand on end, and being so close to Anure … well, the wolf in me didn’t much care for the good reasons to wait. I wanted to rend and tear, to annihilate the man who killed my beautiful Lia.

  One of the bread makers offered me hot tea, and I accepted, figuring it fit my role and it gave me something to do with my hands.

  The tea was gone all too soon, and Agatha still hadn’t returned. What would I do if she’d been caught? Taking someone hostage and forcing them to lead me to the prison cells could work, but I’d need someone of high rank and low courage.

  “Who are you and why are you in my kitchens?” a woman’s voice demanded, startling me from dark thoughts of charging through the citadel, slaughtering everyone I came across.

  Fortunately, the surprise worked in my favor, and I blinked at her in dull confusion—
not easy with my nerves singing at high alert—and changed my instinctive grab for the bagiroca into an uncouth scratching of my ass. The woman glared at me. “Who let you in here? What is this stuff?” She kicked the sacks and I tensed, hoping the vurgsten bomb didn’t explode.

  “Sorry, madame,” Agatha said at my elbow, just about making me jump out of my skin, again. “My brother. Good for carrying things. Not so bright. We’ll get out of your kitchen now.”

  “And you are?”

  Agatha ducked her head and bobbed a clumsy curtsy. “Crawya. I brought the grain and delivered messages to the Guests.”

  “I don’t know you, but you look familiar…” The woman frowned in thought. I slid my hand surreptitiously to the bagiroca, just in case she recognized Agatha. Whatever Agatha’s history at the citadel was, I doubted she’d left under friendly conditions. What will you do, wolf? Lia’s voice chided me. You can’t just bash them all over the head.

  “I’ve been away, ma’am,” Agatha was saying, “but I grew up in Pekoe, down the road. I’m back to care for my sick mother and idiot brother, here. Making some coin by delivering things to the citadel.”

  “Hmm. Well, don’t be leaving the likes of him stinking up my clean kitchens again.”

  “No, ma’am. Come on, brother.”

  I got to my feet, keeping my movements slow and dull, picking up our much lighter sacks and following Agatha out of the kitchens. She turned toward the Slave Gate, as if we meant to leave, then turned off into a side corridor.

  “Sorry it took so long,” she said. “My contact was asleep, and she had to wake someone else to get the information. But she found out where they’re being kept. We’ll take the back way.”

  “Just tell me where they are. You go back.”

  She gave me a stony look. “All right. They’re being held in tower five.”

  My frustration rumbled in my throat. “You can’t give directions?”

  Shrugging her bony shoulders, she shook her head. “Directions clear enough to keep you from getting caught? No. And what happens if someone else challenges you? I know how people think here. Let me do this, Conrí.”

  “You’re risking your life,” I felt I had to say.

  Her expression went withering. “With all due respect, I know that better than you. I’m risking more than my life: I’m risking my freedom and sanity.”

  “Then why do it? Just point. Draw me a picture. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do. I owe Her.” With that, Agatha turned and walked down the dim hall with the brisk, quiet pace of a longtime servant. I had no choice but to follow.

  Taking the servants’ passages made the journey circuitous and lengthy. Try as I might to track our relative location in the maze of the citadel, I soon got hopelessly turned around—and pathetically grateful for Agatha’s unerring guidance. Occasionally we passed another servant. Some stared curiously; others ignored us as we did them. I arranged the heavy sacks over one shoulder and unhooked the bagiroca, tucking my thumb loosely in my belt as I held it at the ready.

  Everyone else was asleep, the citadel as quiet as a tomb. Not like Lia’s palace, where the revelry had continued all night and into the early-morning hours. These grim walls hadn’t known anything like celebration in a long, long while. I hated everything about this place. Mostly I hated that Lia, child of sunshine and flowers, had spent her last days here.

  A guard stood at the base of tower five—or so I assumed—as Agatha continued up to him, head bowed deferentially. I did my best to shuffle stupidly behind her, holding the bagiroca and assessing him with my peripheral vision, while trying to subdue the desire to take him out, just to vent the need to kill something.

  “State your business,” the guard said, stifling a yawn.

  “Delivery for third floor, tower five guard station, syr,” Agatha muttered in the same bored tone.

  “Only one of you needs to go.”

  “I can’t carry the sacks and he’s too stupid to find his way alone.” Agatha gestured to her head, miming a brain problem.

  The guard studied me, and I did my best to look dull and ineffective. “Go. Be back in ten or I’m coming after you.”

  “Thank you, syr.” Agatha scurried past him and the main stairs to a shadowed door, and into a narrow servants’ stairway. I followed more slowly. My exposed back prickled with unease until I pulled the door shut again. Picking up the pace, we jogged up the stairs, well past the third floor. Finally we stopped at a landing, and Agatha pointed at the door, beckoning me to lean close. “Outside this door will be an antechamber, with doors to several cells. According to my source, they are in the second from the left. There will be guards.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. I just know there will be some, because prisoners are always guarded. We could get lucky, but…” She shrugged fatalistically. Yeah, our luck had held so far, but we were stretching it thin.

  She stepped back and huddled in the shadows of the wall, letting me handle this part. Setting down the sacks, I weighed the familiar heft of the bagiroca and eased the door open so I could see through the crack. Two guards, one relatively alert, the other sitting with his back against the wall, dozing. It would’ve been too much to ask that both would be sleepy, but the discipline of the citadel was clearly fierce enough for them to take shifts.

  Going for surprise, I threw open the door and charged straight for the standing guard, releasing all my pent-up rage in a burst of speed. My bagiroca connected with his helmet, stunning him into staggering against the wall. His buddy leapt to his feet, sword swinging for me with admirable speed for a guy who’d looked sound asleep. Not fast enough. I sidestepped the blade, continuing my own swing to take out his knees. He fell with a cry of pain that became a grunt when I kicked him in the face with my heavy boot.

  Sharp pain sliced my side and I spun, grabbing the other guard by the throat with my free hand and crushing the fragile cartilage there. His eyes in the narrow opening of the helmet bulged, and he dropped his sword in his panic—bad training there—and clawed at my fist. I squeezed harder and his windpipe collapsed with a satisfying crunch. Dropping his lifeless body to the floor, I checked his buddy, then strangled him, too. Not too much blood to betray a problem, and most of it not obvious in the grimy lighting.

  I checked the other doors, finding one cell unlocked and empty, then dragged both bodies in there. With them out of sight of anyone who happened by, I searched for keys, finding none. Going back to Agatha, I found her huddled on the landing, arms wrapped around herself, face strained and eyes wide as they went to the blood on my hands. Nothing like having to wait to make fear grow. But she showed no signs of cracking.

  “I took out two guards and don’t see more,” I said quietly. “But no keys. Am I missing something?”

  “Probably whoever brings the food in the morning has the keys,” she replied, looking stricken. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “That’s all right. I did.” I got out one of Brenda’s new toys and my vurgsten sparker. “What are the odds anyone is close enough to hear a small bang?”

  “Low?” She frowned. “I hope. The doors are pretty thick.”

  “Keep hoping.” Checking that no one had come up or down the main stairs, I tied the cloth bag to the handle of the cell Agatha had indicated. It didn’t catch immediately, but soon began to smolder. When the flame licked into life, I slipped around the corner of the stairs leading up, figuring someone would be most likely to come from that way. My bagiroca in hand, I alternated between checking the burning bag on the cell door and bending my ears for approaching footsteps.

  The bag blew with a considerable bang—louder than I’d hoped—and I ran for the cell door. The lock had cleanly blown, pushing the door nearly off the hinges. Shoving it aside, I pushed into the room. “Songrhhh…” My voice went to a garble, breath stopped by the forearm around my throat, crushing my own windpipe, Sondra like ferocious burr on my back.

  “Conrí?” she w
hispered, astonished, and let go.

  “Yes. Lia?”

  “They took Her.” Sondra stowed a makeshift knife and grabbed a few things. “I don’t know where. They take Her every day, but this has been much longer. Conrí, I don’t know if—”

  “We’ll find her.” Sondra didn’t know Lia had died. I hadn’t expected that they’d bring her corpse back to the holding cell. Still, I’d hoped … what? I knew she was dead. I needed to get a grip on that. “Let’s go. This way.”

  Sondra looked only briefly surprised when I pulled her away from the main stairs and to the servants’ door, but that was nothing to her shock when Agatha rose from her protective crouch. “Lady Sondra,” she said. “Good to see you. Her Highness?”

  “Not here. They took her away this morning.”

  “Who did?” Agatha asked sharply. “Be specific.”

  “Agatha knows the citadel,” I supplied when Sondra slid me a sideways look.

  “They were Imperial Guards. They’ve been taking Her to the wizards to be … interrogated.”

  I growled at Sondra’s words, and she nodded. “Agatha was right. Four wizards. Guess you have experience with them, huh?”

  “You have no idea,” Agatha replied in a hollow voice. She turned to move down the stairs, but I stopped her.

  “I’ll take the lead to the bottom. We’ll want to remove that guard. If he hasn’t started up after us yet. We’re close to that ten-minute deadline.” Agatha nodded and followed behind us. “Are you hurt at all?” I asked Sondra.

  “No. They didn’t hurt me,” she replied with enough emphasis that it would’ve told me all I needed to know regardless. “How did you get in—is Ambrose helping you?”

  I shook my head and signaled for silence. We hurried down the stairs, short runs to each landing, then a pause at each to peer around the corner and listen for pursuit from above or below. At the final landing, I heard footsteps. One man, moving cautiously. That worked just fine for him to come to me. Signaling for Sondra to guard Agatha, I crept forward, keeping just back behind the curve of the wall. Waiting. Listening. Sondra drew her makeshift blade and held position.