by Callie Bates
“Augustus and Phaedra?” I call.
“No…” She glances swiftly over her shoulder. “Come up! Hurry!”
I look around for Nestor, but he’s already trotting into the gatehouse. Well, if he wants to go after the Saranons, it’s his own skin he’s risking. And to tell the truth, I’d just as soon not see either one of them ever again.
I climb back up the stairs. El’s waiting for me at the top, rocking from foot to foot with impatience. She grabs my arm and tugs me back through the bedchambers, which are largely empty now, except for a few of our rebels admiring Phaedra’s collection of porcelain shepherdesses. They seem happy, laughing together in triumph, a strange counterpoint to Elanna’s urgency.
“The ministers are here,” she says.
“The ministers?” I echo. I thought they’d fled into Aexione town, or the country, along with all the courtiers.
“Yes…” She shakes her head. “Firmina brought them—to approve the new emperor. She never left Aexione when you told her to. She’s been here all along. They’re all in the Hall of Glass. Your aunt Cyra is there, too. I had to sneak out. I don’t think she saw me.”
A cold prickle runs down my back. There’s something strange about this—something strange in El’s manner, as well. “Won’t they support Lees?”
Elanna presses her lips together. “You might say so…” We’re nearing the grand staircase down to the Hall of Glass. She pulls me closer to her and whispers, “Jahan, I don’t want to say this, because I like Firmina. But she never told us that she would stay in Aexione. She’s never told us what her plan is, come to think of it. She never told us she intended to kill the emperor. And now she’s brought the ministers to the Hall of Glass, and demanded Leontius come down.”
“She wants what we do,” I say slowly, “or at least, she’s always claimed she does.”
“She wants sorcery to be legalized. She wants constitutional reform.” Elanna pauses. “But what else does she want?”
I’m staring at El, but I don’t quite see her. I’m seeing Firmina Triciphes, the consummate actress. The woman who murdered the emperor, her husband, ostensibly to help our cause. Who killed Quentin and those guards, just because she could.
A hot thrumming has begun in my hands. Do we really know Firmina Triciphes at all?
Elanna pulls me down the stairs. The doors to the Hall of Glass sit tightly closed, and guards stand outside them. The empress’s guards—their livery not purple and gold, but purple and white. Firmina not only brought the ministers, but also brought her own attendants—who are, presumably, loyal to her.
They recognize us. One opens a door and gestures us through.
We enter. Crystal beads shift under my feet; the earthquakes must have shattered several of the towering chandeliers. Only a few people occupy the far end of the cavernous room. Even from here, I can make out Firmina Triciphes, seated on the dais. Not on her usual stool, but on the emperor’s gilded throne. Bardas stands at her left side, solemn.
Firmina looks up and sees us. “Ah, Jahan! Elanna! Welcome.”
But I’ve stopped dead. Leontius is kneeling on the crimson carpet before her. No, it’s not only the carpet that’s red—it’s blood pouring out of the healed wound at the end of his arm. He’s slumped forward. He can’t even seem to muster the strength to lift his head to see us. Zollus crouches beside him, whispering to him, but as I watch in horror, Lees falls farther forward.
“Leontius!” I’m running for him.
And then it’s as if a great hand seizes me and jerks me back. I’m halted, struggling against the empty air.
“There’s nothing any of us can do for him, Jahan.” Firmina’s voice is delicate with grief, and I stare up at her. The invisible hand around me tightens as she gently closes her fist. It feels as if the air is being slowly squeezed from my lungs. “He was too weak to rule. We always knew he would be.”
To the left of the dais, the ministers are nodding. They all look mildly dazed. What has Firmina done to them? Some of our reformers have gathered on the dais’s right side—Tullea, Felix, Lucius Argyros, Pantoleon. They, too, stare at us with dull eyes. And among them, a woman with a dirty white feather in her hair. My aunt, Cyra. She watches me with a tight little frown, as if it’s a struggle to think. Her lips form a silent, questioning word—my name.
Firmina’s taken them all. Everyone. Even Aunt Cyra, who did nothing but help her. She must be using the power of her guards—not only them, but the ministers and reformers themselves, draining them and persuading them at the same time.
A movement near the far wall catches my eye. Rayka, with Lathiel crouched behind him. They’re fighting the persuasion, I can feel it, using the grotto well to try to push Firmina back. But so far, it’s not enough. Rayka’s sweating, and Lathiel’s limbs shake with the effort.
Now Leontius falls to the floor with a soft gasp. I struggle to take another step forward, but the fist tightens about me and my breath gets even more shallow. Zollus is kneeling beside Lees, tugging on the prince’s whole hand, weeping. I can’t even turn my head to look for Elanna.
But I hear her. “Of course you’re right!” she says with false cheer. El isn’t half the actress Firmina is, and I know the empress is going to recognize it. But nevertheless, Elanna strides past me with confidence, approaching the throne. “I’m so glad we allied. Sophy will be delighted to join forces with a fellow female monarch.”
A fellow monarch? But of course: Now I see the golden diadem encircling Firmina’s brow. This must have been her plan all along—to destroy the Saranons one by one, then claim the throne for herself. She told me as much. She and Bardas both said the Saranons would never accept reform or change. At the time, I didn’t recognize it for the warning it was.
Firmina smiles at El, distracted. Her fist loosens ever so slightly. I can hear the whisper of her persuasion wrapping around the ministers. Firmina will be empress of Paladis. She will make an excellent empress. We want no one else. The same words spin around the reformers, just loud enough for me to hear them. To recognize them.
If we can break her concentration, maybe we can break the persuasion as well.
“Paladis deserves a good empress,” Firmina is saying. “Someone who listens to the needs of her people. Someone who has the power to take care of everyone in the empire, and protect them.”
Beside her, Bardas nods. “It’s all any of us have ever wanted,” he says to me, pointedly.
Elanna’s drawing closer to the throne. I wet my lips. The pressure has softened enough for me to speak. “Of course, that’s what our great empire deserves,” I say, and Firmina’s gaze flashes to me. “Protection. The way you protected us from the Saranons.”
If Firmina hears the dryness in my tone, she doesn’t react to it. A particular smile warms her face. She leans forward, and I notice she’s wearing a sleeveless silk-velvet robe over her gown—a coronation robe. She seems to have thought of everything. “The empress needs a consort to rule by her side,” she says invitingly. “Someone who the people know and trust. Someone they revere as a hero.”
I want to laugh—because if Firmina means me, then she’s just made Elanna a great deal angrier than she was even to start with. But I swallow it. There’s something about Firmina that makes me want to take her very seriously indeed. Perhaps it’s the sight of Leontius bleeding to death on the floor.
And there’s a hunger in her eyes that I recognize. I’ve seen this kind of desperation before, in my mother.
“You could heal the prince,” I say. “He would abdicate the throne, if you asked.”
Her lips pinch with disdain. “My dear stepson? He sees it as his duty to protect Paladis from my ambitions.” She sighs a little. “Perhaps we should simply finish it.”
She closes her fist. Leontius, whom I didn’t think had any breath left to lose, draws in a ragged gasp. His eyes grow
too large. She’s done this to her husband. To the guards. And now she’s doing it to my friend.
And in order to do it, she’s drawing power from the ministers gathered around. From the guards, and from the reformers. From my aunt. The minister of state falls to his knees, his face gray, pressing his hands to his heart.
I lunge toward Firmina, breaking the last of the grip she had on me. Zollus is on my heels. I charge past Elanna to the throne, snatching for Firmina’s hands. Guards shout at me to stand back. I hear muskets being cocked.
But Firmina’s concentration breaks. She blinks at me, and laughs. “Dear Jahan, I wanted to spare you this. But if it’s what you want…”
Pieces of tile shoot up from the floor, peppering me. I fling up my arms. One catches me across the face. My cheek stings. Someone’s shouting—Elanna. Someone else slams into the empress—Zollus. But she casts him casually aside. His head cracks on the floor. The minister of state has crumpled now, along with two guardsmen. Another tile slams into my ribs. I double over, retching. Got to get up—got to help—
Crack.
Someone screams. I gasp in a breath. The wood of the dais is creaking—it’s moving. Two great claws reach up from it, grasping toward the ceiling. A musket goes off. My ears are ringing.
Elanna stands below the dais, her hands thrust upward. The wood imitates her gesture, climbing and climbing into a cage that surrounds the empress. Firmina is struggling—one of the wooden bars breaks—but her concentration is slipping and now I see several ministers heave in breaths, and the reformers stirring from their trance.
“Arrest this woman!” the minister of finance is shouting. “Guards! Arrest her!”
“Down with the Triciphes!” Felix bellows.
Firmina breaks another bar, but she’s realizing that she’s lost her grip on the room. She seizes a piece of broken wood. It animates itself and strikes Elanna across the face. She falls. No, no, not El!
I’m running toward her, but Firmina stamps a foot and the floor shakes. I stumble and nearly fall. A crack runs down the marble steps of the dais. The cage splits in two. All the gods, she’s going to get out—
Felix is pointing a pistol at the empress. “Stand down, or I’ll shoot!”
Firmina flings up her arms. Felix collapses, the pistol flying from his hand, the energy yanked from his body. The ceiling quivers. I stare up, along with everyone else, as the ceiling rises. Pieces of plaster crumble down into the Hall of Glass, chips of chandelier striking people in the face, but Firmina has sliced the roof cleanly off the chamber. More people are falling, guards, reformers, ministers. The roof is lifting up, up…
It’s going to fall. I see it the moment before it does, as all the rubble and chunks of parquet and plaster hang suspended there in the air.
I reach for the power of the grotto well and pour it into the ruined ceiling. I hold it up with all my might, grunting at the almost-physical weight of it. If it falls, it will crush us all. I try to gather all the pieces in my mind. And then I push them—letting them spill out into the garden, onto the lawn. It takes so much effort I seem to be pushing pieces of myself, as well. My shoulders shake. Sweat slicks my spine. But the ceiling moves and then, with an enormous thunder, it falls. Plaster and dust rain down. The open blue sky stares at us overhead.
I drop back into myself. I’m gasping for breath, covered in sweat. Many people lie upon the floor, drained. At least one of the ministers is dead, but Felix is crawling slowly onto his knees, thank all the gods. Rayka seizes Felix’s pistol and aims it at the empress. She’s holding her hands up, her gaze flitting wide-eyed over the room. It fixes on me, desperate with hope. But I’m not Firmina Triciphes’s savior. I see Elanna sitting up, gingerly, to my left. Thank all the gods. I thought Firmina might have ended her life.
“Arrest the empress,” I tell Felix and the others, and then I turn toward Elanna.
But just as I swivel, Firmina throws her arms up again. We all flinch instinctively—but she doesn’t reanimate the pieces of ceiling, or make the walls fall in on us.
She transforms.
Her coronation robe falls. Her arms spread, growing long and feathered. With a light hop, she leaps into the air—not a woman any longer, but a swift, small falcon. She bobs a little, gaining her wings.
And as she gathers air, Bardas crumples to the floor, his arms outspread. His face is slack. Lifeless.
I’m staring. He helped Firmina in everything, and she used him. She killed him.
A shot explodes. Rayka, aiming the pistol at the empress. But the shot only sprays into the plaster. She’s winging up into the sky. She’s gone.
I’m running after her. I reach for the grotto well, for all the power harnessed there, but it doesn’t feel like enough. It will never be enough to stop Firmina Triciphes.
So I reach into myself. Into the part of me that dreamed it could fly. Into the part of me that not only wanted comfort from Mantius, but wanted to be Mantius.
And I’m running—up into the air. No, not running. I’m pumping my arms—my wings. My body is compressing and growing impossibly light at the same time. The air beats through my feathers. I’m the Korakos. A raven. Black-feathered as Mantius. I’m lifting high, high above the ruined Hall of Glass, up into the clear air, until the entire palace lies beneath me. Even though my wings are new, I’m gasping in this freedom, this new strength I dreamed of but never imagined I could possess.
And I see her—Firmina. I catch the scent of her passing. Power courses through me, both mine and the grotto well’s. I compress space with an ease I never have before.
The impact of different air hits me. I tumble, flapping hard, and right myself. Firmina is closer, soaring upward on a current of warm air. Does she know I’m behind her?
I compress space again. This time the warm air lifts me up, a sudden bounce, and I’m soaring just below her. She’s seen me, but she doesn’t know who I am. I compress space within the warm air current, and she seems to recognize then what’s going on. She flaps her wings, but I’m on top of her. I nip at the back of her head. She flips over, her claws digging into my stomach. But I bite her again, hard this time. She lets out a piercing cry. Her claws rake at me. I wrestle past them until I’ve got a grip on her.
We’re tumbling now through the air, down from the stream of warmth, falling toward the distant ground. The sleek falcon struggles, but I grip her tighter. I nip at her neck. She flaps her wings, one last bid to escape, but the ground is spinning up close beneath us.
Her back strikes it, and, quick as that, she’s human again, and naked. The impact must knock the wind out of her, but she’s grabbed my wings now, in her human hands, ripping at them as if she can pull them off.
I tug at that part inside myself, somewhere in my gut, and then I’m human, too, taller than her and stronger. She’s clawing at my arms, but I knee her in the stomach. She falls backward. This time her head hits the earth. I hesitate, bringing my hands up, but she just lies there. Her chest rises and falls. Her eyes stay open, blinking, full of the sky.
I crouch warily beside her. She’s begun to cry—pathetic tears seeping through her eyelashes. As if some demonstration of fragility can move me, after what she’s done. “Oh, Jahan—I’m so sorry—what if we—”
“I’m not bargaining with you.” I shake her a little, and she goes limp. But I can feel something stirring—she’s pulling on an energy. It pushes at my chest. Just a faint prod. But soon it will be stronger.
I know what I have to do. I’m not sure whether I can manage it—but I’m going to try.
“Hold very still,” I breathe to the empress. “I’m going to help you. You’ve hurt yourself.”
She gasps a little. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve hit your head. I’m going to heal it.” I pat her hair, even though it sickens me a little to comfort this woman. “Then we’ll make our p
lans together. How do you like that?”
More tears escape down her cheeks. Her hand scrabbles up, closing over mine. “Oh, Jahan. I knew you would understand.”
Understand? I close my mouth. I don’t have any words. Because I do understand; I know why she struggled against the Saranons and tried to overcome them all. Because my mother was like her, caged and desperate.
But that can’t change what I need to do. I lean over her, putting my hands on either side of her face. She closes her eyes with a soft sigh. She trusts me, for the moment, though she shouldn’t.
I reach into her mind. If I can heal others, if I can change Leontius’s memories, perhaps I can do the opposite to Firmina. Madiya changed the way our minds work. She created patterns that were, before, only potential.
If those patterns can be created, they can be destroyed.
I reach into her mind. It is a chaos of bright sparks and long twisting lines. I swallow hard. I’ve never attempted this before—I’m not quite sure where to find the correct pathways that will affect her magic. But Madiya has experimented on Firmina. She’s created new patterns—and these I can sense. They feel different—newer, almost raw, as if she stripped open too much, too quickly.
Close, I order them. The empress lies trustingly under my hands, and it almost pains me to give her hope, only to be taking everything away.
Almost. But what would this woman do, with access to her power?
I reach for the patterns again. Close. Snug and tight. Sewn up, as if you were never there.
Too slowly, they begin to shrink. To contract. Firmina’s begun moaning. It must hurt. Maybe that’s why Madiya always put us under when she performed her experiments. I focus harder, pulling the patterns tight. Close, you bastards!
When they are nothing more than nubs, barely open potential, I let her go.
Her face is blank, her eyes closed. She seems to have passed out.
I try to get up and sag instead onto the ground next to her. Everything hurts. My stomach is scored with bright-red scratches, and my muscles quiver at the faintest pressure. I can’t stand; my feet can’t seem to figure out whether or not they are actually talons. And I’m naked. I sag back on the ground, aching.
