by Sarah Zettel
Yet, here she stood, in the imperial gardens of Vyshtavos palace, at midnight, under a canopy that bowed under the weight of the water that had collected on it. Beside her, a tin lantern hissed and steamed as raindrops and runoff from the canopy spattered against it.
Bridget shivered, despite the fur-trimmed cloak she wore over her woolen dress. She had sent her servants, Richikha and Prathad, to wait closer to the palace. The one she came to meet would not appear before so much of an audience. So, just now she was alone in this land of cold and magic, a world away from where she had been born. Here, where she was an attendant to an imperial family, and a sorceress, and beloved.
It was a strange thing. She had gone through much of her life alone, not because she wished to, but because she felt it was the only way she could survive. Now she was surrounded by people who sought her company or assistance, and she found herself frequently wishing she could be alone again, if only so she could think clearly.
Bridget rubbed her eyes. It was a heavy night, and it brought heavy thoughts. She had been through so many changes so quickly she hadn’t had time to adjust to them all. She would though, she was certain, and she would do so soon. After all, she had plenty of help.
Bridget lifted her head, and saw the Vixen sitting on the other side of the canal.
She had come in her guise as a female fox. Bridget knew she had other forms and faces, but this was the only one she had seen. The Vixen was the queen of the lokai, the fox spirits. Even in the gloom of the rainy night, her fur was a bright red and her chest blazed white. Indeed, there seemed to be moonlight where she was, although it shone nowhere else. She also seemed completely untouched by the freezing rain.
How convenient. Bridget immediately silenced the sardonic thought. The Vixen was powerful, cunning, mischievous, and untrustworthy, and if she was treated with anything but the deepest courtesy, she could become suddenly and permanently dangerous.
Bridget reverenced in the Isavaltan style — eyes lowered, one leg slightly extended, and her hands folded across her breast. When she looked up again, the Vixen had dropped her pointed muzzle open so that she looked to be laughing.
“You learn your lessons well, Bridget Lederle.” She spoke English, and Bridget found herself startled to hear her native tongue after so many months.
It took her a moment to rally an answer in the same language. “I do my best, ma’am.”
“And very properly too, I am sure.” The Vixen dipped her laughing muzzle. Although she appeared no larger than an ordinary fox, Bridget had the sudden sensation of being looked down upon. “The good and dutiful daughter, and the faithful lover.”
Bridget had resolved to remain calm through this interview but now she felt herself blush like a schoolgirl. True, she had not consummated her relationship with Sakra, but she had felt that desire, and it was growing stronger.
The Vixen was laughing again. Bridget struggled to regain her self-control.
“You wished to speak to me, I believe, ma’am,” she said, folding her hands in front of her, a gesture from her previous life when she wore an apron instead of mantles and brocades. She remembered Prathad divesting her of her grey work dress for the last time, and how the woman looked as if she’d like to burn the garment.
“So I did.” The Vixen tipped her head to one side. “I am surprised you were able to tell. I had not thought your sight to be so clear as it once was.”
“What could have changed?” Bridget clamped her mouth shut, but it was too late. The words were out.
Do not ask questions if you can help it, Sakra had advised her. Let her do as much of the talking as you can. Questions can reveal as much as answers.
The Vixen swished her bushy tail back and forth. “Perhaps much, perhaps little.” Bridget saw her green eyes gleam in her strange, isolated patch of moonlight. “Perhaps the dutiful daughter and lover has forgotten she had other duties to look to, and others who look to her.”
Bridget found her mind racing backward, to the lighthouse on Sand Island, to all her long, lonely days as keeper. She had worked hard, living alone, tending the light, and warning the sailors. The man she called her father was long dead. His ghost had forgiven her for all that had happened. She’d had a housekeeper, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs. Hansen’s son Samuel … had something happened to them? To the lighthouse?
But why would the Vixen care? Sand Island, Bayfield, and Lake Superior Islands had nothing to do with the lokai. They belonged to other powers. The Vixen’s place was here.
So why is she bringing up my past?
This time, Bridget kept the question silent.
The Vixen clacked her jaws and stood up, raising one paw as if to take a step. “Such eyes. Such sight, but always looking too far away. You should be looking close as skin, Bridget Lederle, close as blood.”
She was being goaded, and Bridget knew it. Perhaps she should just let the Vixen leave. If she did, though, night after night, the fact of this visit would gall her and Bridget would wonder what the Vixen might have said if she, Bridget, had spoken, if the Vixen had stayed just a moment longer. Bridget had no doubt the Vixen was fully aware of that.
Close as skin, close as blood … that spoke of family.
“I have no one of my blood who acknowledges me,” Bridget said.
The Vixen combed her ear with her paw. “No? Are you sure? Daughter and lover, niece and aunt, are you that sure of all your family?”
Oh, yes, thought Bridget. Of that I am very sure. “I thank you for your advice, ma’am. Was there anything else?”
The Vixen scratched her chin. “Well, that depends. Some time ago, you helped free something from your home. It has taken time, but it has returned to its own home, and it’s been busy. As you once did a favor for me and mine, I’d thought to show you how busy, but since your past is of so little interest to you, perhaps you would only be bored.”
Bridget’s heart skipped a beat. Could the Vixen be talking about the sorcerer Kalami? Or something older, and even more deadly?
“If you please,” said Bridget, trying not to sound too anxious. “I’d be glad to see whatever you might have to show me.”
The Vixen scratched her chin vigorously for a moment, apparently considering. Bridget’s mouth went dry. Had she misstepped too badly? But, at last, the Vixen sighed. “Very well. If you would see, close your right eye.”
The Vixen turned tail and whisked away, accompanied by her patch of moonlight. Bridget laid her hand over her right eye, and watched the Vixen’s departure. Although the lokai’s queen trotted away at a good clip, she did not appear to grow any more distant. It was as if she pulled Bridget along behind her, but Bridget did not feel herself move. The world around her faded away, and all Bridget could see was the red fox moving steadily through a place of formless darkness.
More familiar with such workings than she once had been, Bridget held still. She knew herself to no longer be in the gardens. She held tight to the idea that wherever she was, the Vixen had not brought her here to harm her. Probably.
The darkness moved. It writhed, it bulged, and in places, it lifted. Before her, Bridget saw a fantastical collection of creatures, each stranger than the last. A green, glittering serpent with a body thicker than her waist lay coiled beside a golden eagle the size of a full-grown man. There was a dragon, glowing red, gold, and silver with sharp, old intelligence in its strangely whiskered face. Beside it waited an animal Bridget could not name. It had a particolored body roughly the shape of a horse and a whiskered face like the dragon’s, only larger and more snubbed at the muzzle. A single, short, green horn protruded from its forehead.
In the middle of them all sat the Firebird. Formed entirely of flame and even larger than the eagle, the magnificent creature shone so brightly that it drew tears from Bridget’s eye. Despite the pain, she did not dare look away. Gold, orange, red, and white, the Firebird burned in the infinite blackness. The light of its flames shone in the eyes of the other creatures and played across their bodies.
The Vixen’s purposeful gait slowed to a saunter as she approached the other creatures. All of them turned to glower at her. Either she had grown larger at some point, or the others were not so big as Bridget had thought.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the Vixen said as she entered their circle. “Am I late? Do go on.” She sat down on her haunches, her tail swishing back and forth.
The eagle turned its glaring red eye back to the Firebird. “Speak then,” it said. “What is it you desire?”
“Retribution,” said the Firebird. Its voice was quiet and dangerous, like the crackle of a fresh wildfire creeping across the forest floor.
The others watched the Firebird in silence. “Retribution,” it said again. “It is mine to ask. I have been imprisoned and I have been unlawfully used. I may claim vengeance.”
The brown tortoise raised its ponderous head. “We are guardians,” it said in a voice as weighty as the earth itself. “We exist to protect. We are not furies, nor should we seek to be.”
“We judge. We punish the transgressors and the impious.” The Firebird spread its brilliant wings. “It is our duty. I claim that duty and that right!”
The serpent lifted itself, uncoiling its body until its eyes were level with the Firebird’s. The light played along its scales, making them appear to be moving even when the great snake held itself still. “We may all see who has transgressed. But who are the impious?”
The Firebird beat its wings once against the empty night. Bridget imagined she could feel an incredible heat waft off them. “They summoned me to their need, and did me no honor. They left me in the hands of the enemy of the sacred lands, as if I were only the spoils of the war from which they begged to be saved. It cannot be condoned.”
“What was done, that was done for the sake of protecting those who stood helpless against your power,” said the eagle. Its voice was harsh where the Firebird’s was smooth. Its feathers were like burnished bronze. “That is right and natural, and is allowed by the laws.”
The Firebird crouched low and drew in its fiery wings. Eye to eye it faced the great eagle. “Not like this,” it hissed. “Thirty years in a cage, always under the threat that I might be turned against my own people. No rest, no respite or quarter. There was only the pain of the bars and the binding spells, and those who owed me honor, who sacrificed and were sacrificed, did nothing to bring me ease or release. They would have permitted me to be made into a profane thing and then tried to destroy me.”
The creatures all stood silent at that, but Bridget felt that they did more than imagine what had happened to the Firebird. They shared it. Each of them felt the constriction of those bars and the dreadful heaviness of whatever force could hold such a creature against its will.
These creatures knew patience and they knew duty, but they also knew mercy, Bridget was sure of it, although she could not have said why. But there was no mercy for this, none at all.
“I will not oppose your retribution,” said the dragon slowly.
“Nor I,” said the tortoise.
The eagle hung its great, proud head. “Nor I.”
That same answer echoed around the circle of fantastic judges, until it came to the Vixen.
“Tell me,” said the fox mildly, “when you have taken your retribution, what then?”
“What can that matter to you?” retorted the Phoenix.
The Vixen blinked her green eyes. “Little, little. This is, of course, only to satisfy my idle curiosity.”
“We have seen your kits sport in other ruins.” The snake shifted its coils silently. “I would think this deed exactly to your taste.”
The Vixen opened her mouth in her expression of silent laughter. “Oh, the opportunities for such sport will be many, I am sure, and yet, that is not what I asked. I asked, when this retribution is done, what will our revered compatriot do then?”
“I will return to my home,” the Firebird replied.
“Will you?” The Vixen clacked her jaws together once. “Will you, indeed?”
“Do you withhold your consent?” asked the dragon, its trailing whiskers bristling with impatience.
The Vixen turned and nosed her tail, setting the brush of it in order. “Oh, no, no. Certainly not. I only wondered.”
The horse-shaped creature for which Bridget could find no name stomped its foot and shook its shaggy head. “It is agreed, then,” it said solemnly. “The Phoenix may have its retribution and no guardian shall oppose or intervene.”
At those words, the creatures faded back into the darkness until only the Firebird and the Vixen remained.
The Firebird stretched out its neck, towering high over the Vixen, the living flames streaming from its back and wings.
“What do you want of me?” it demanded.
The Vixen shrugged. Her coat glowed bright red in the shifting light of the Firebird, so bright it almost seemed to be the color of blood. “Nothing at all.”
“You are no proper guardian. You have no right to judge me.”
“You have no comprehension of what I stand guard over,” replied the Vixen, and Bridget saw how her teeth shone sharp and yellow. “Take your vengeance if you must, but be wary. There will come times after your vengeance when you may yet be called to answer. Such as you cannot bring about true endings. That is for others.”
“Do you threaten me?”
“Not I.” The Vixen twitched the tip of her tail.
The Firebird thrust its head forward. “Then leave me to my business.”
The Vixen’s eyes took in the living flames and reflected them back without flinching. “Go then.” She pointed with her muzzle. “I am not the one who keeps you here.”
The Firebird lifted its blazing wings and launched itself into darkness, and was gone, and Bridget was back under her canopy in the freezing rain of the garden.
Bridget lowered her hand from her right eye. Her lungs heaved as if she had just run a mile. The Vixen was nowhere to be seen.
The Firebird is coming back. Bridget swallowed hard, afraid to move in case the Vixen should suddenly reappear with some last cryptic bit of news. The Firebird is coming for revenge.
When the Vixen did not reappear, Bridget snatched up her hems in one hand and the lantern in the other and raced across the lawn toward the darkened palace.
The Firebird was one of the four guardians of the empire of Hung-Tse that lay to the south of Isavalta. Twenty-eight years earlier, the measure of Bridget’s life, Empress Medeoan of Isavalta had managed to cage the creature. Her death the previous winter had freed it, and it had vanished. The sorcerers whom the new emperor, Mikkel, brought to court had searched the realms of the flesh and the spirit and found no trace of it. It was determined the creature had returned to the fire from which it was born.
Apparently they’d been wrong.
Bridget’s feet found the road up to Vyshtavos’s main gates. In daylight, the palace was an elaborate octagonal stone edifice, thick with lacelike trimming and formidable gargoyles. Now, all that separated it from the night were the lanterns and torches of the guards on patrol around its walls and a few lights in widely scattered windows.
Richikha, Prathad, and the two soldiers Bridget had been assigned for this night emerged from the guardhouse. Richikha tried to slip a fresh cloak over Bridget’s shoulders, but Bridget waved her off.
“I must see the emperor. Right now.”
“He is sure to be asleep, mistress …” began Richikha.
Bridget didn’t let her finish. “For this he’ll wake up. I’ve received a vision from the Vixen.”
“I’ll go,” said Prathad. She was an older woman. Her dark hair had gone almost entirely grey and a perpetual sadness haunted her brown eyes.
“Make sure Sakra and the lord sorcerer are told as well.”
Prathad reverenced hastily and strode off to find the guard who would find the page who would find the manservant, who would have the unenviable job of waking up the emperor of Isavalta.
All of which would take some time. Bridget now allowed Richikha to strip off her sodden coat and drape a dry one over her shoulders. She had to admit it felt better.
“Thank you,” she remembered to say as she strode across the cobbled courtyard. A few lights looked down on her passage. One of those lights would be Sakra. He had not told Bridget he would be waiting up for her. There was no need. They both knew it would be so. If her news was not so dire, that knowledge would have made Bridget smile.
As they reached the main doors, the guards were ready to pull open the great portals and servants waited inside with lamps to light the way up the grand staircase to the imperial floor.
Richikha deftly relieved Bridget of her new coat. “With your permission, mistress …?” she began. Bridget nodded and the serving woman scurried away toward Bridget’s room to deal with both the wet and dry outer garments.
Bridget entered the imperial antechamber. The doors to the apartments themselves were still closed, but the guards and pages on duty looked quite alert. Evidently, Prathad had already completed part of her errand, because Sakra waited here as well.
Sakra was a dark man with eyes the color of amber. His long hair was parted into dozens of small braids. They spilled down his back, drawn into a tidy bundle with red ribbon. This was the mark of a sorcerer from his far southern homeland of Hastinapura. Each braid was part of some spell that would be released if he unbound it. Despite his foreign origins, he wore the clothes of a noble of Isavalta — a wine-colored kaftan and a sable sash and pantaloons tucked into leather boots.
“What’s happened, Bridget?”
Bridget glanced toward the guards and held up her hand. Sakra understood and asked no more. He just touched her hand briefly in acknowledgment of the pallor he surely saw on her face.
Just then the lord sorcerer, Daren Dobrilosyn Abukanvin, rounded the corner with Prathad two steps behind. Unlike Sakra, Lord Daren had obviously been roused from his sleep. His clothes, hair, and beard were all disordered and he was attempting to smooth them down as he strode forward.
