The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  As Mae Shan thanked Trainee Airic, Tsan Nu climbed up on the bed and threw open the shutters. To her disappointment, she found the window barred. She gripped the bars and twisted her head sideways, trying to see as much of the sky as she could.

  “Mistress, come down.”

  Tsan Nu ignored Mae Shan. Her heart was thundering so loudly, she barely heard anyway.

  The army of devils had arrayed itself atop the roiling hills of smoke and ash. The chief of the devils waved his sword, sweeping it out to indicate the whole of the city, maybe the whole world. The demons cheered, waving their banners, pikes, hooks, and axes.

  But they weren’t alone anymore. The smoke still rose in grey streamers and up those streamers swarmed the ghosts of the Heart.

  Many of them were soldiers, like Mae Shan, dressed in their armor and carrying their weapons on their backs. Others were officers who rode up the smoke on their horses, their servants behind them carrying their banners. Some seemed hesitant, confused, looking about themselves indecisively, but when they saw the devils they rallied at once and went to stand beside their fellows. Lords and ladies rose up on cushions of smoke, their sleeves billowing around them. Last came the emperors, borne on their platforms looking still and stern.

  The Chief Devil saw all this and threw back his head and laughed, the blast of his breath making the floating ash around him boil. His followers jeered, rattling their flags and weapons.

  But the Heart’s ghosts ignored them and moved into their own ranks, each general taking charge of a company. The lords and ladies climbed the smoke hills and stood looking down, their hands folded. The emperors rose until they were the highest of all, their faces impassive and dignified.

  This enraged the Chief Devil and he shouted and gestured madly to his followers. The lesser demons poured down the hills of smoke, brandishing their fearsome weapons. The ghosts of the Heart, though, did not hesitate. The officers gestured and called to their troops and charged the ranks of demons.

  “Mistress, what do you see now?” asked Mae Shan, her voice tightening, with worry or impatience, Tsan Nu couldn’t tell.

  “The imperial ghosts are fighting the devils,” she reported. “They’ve joined the battle. The Chief Devil is furious and he’s trying to reach the emperors, but they’re too high.” The noble ones lifted up their silk and bamboo fans, waving them in elegant patterns that Tsan Nu recognized from court dances. “The lords and ladies are raising the winds to clear the smoke so the demons won’t have anyplace to stand.”

  Mae Shan blinked. “How goes the battle?”

  Tsan Nu squinted up at the shifting sea of smoke and colors. “I can’t tell. I think it’s too soon to know.”

  Mae Shan licked her lips. “Then leave it for now, mistress. Climb in the bed and warm yourself.”

  As Mae Shan said those words, Tsan Nu felt how deeply tired she was. The air was cleaner in here, and it was easier to breathe and see, except her sore eyes were heavy with the need for sleep.

  Tsan Nu crawled under the covers. The rough fabric scraped against her skin. She wanted a clean nightdress. She wanted to swim in the lake in the Sun Garden so she could wash the awful itching feeling out of her hair. She wanted to tell Yi Qin she was sorry and that she’d make her a real amulet as soon as she had some more ribbons.

  She didn’t say any of this, because she couldn’t have any of these things and she knew that. She clutched her shoes to her chest. She wanted Father. But she wouldn’t be able to do any kind of working now. Not tired like this.

  In the meantime, Mae Shan brought her a dipper of water from the bucket in the corner. She drank every drop and looked up to see Mae Shan kneeling in front of the stove.

  “We will rest here and wait for news from the Heart.” Mae Shan scooped up a handful of tinder from the box and laid it gingerly over the coals. A yellow flame stretched up to lick at the twigs, and then another. Watching them and remembering all that had passed, Tsan Nu winced and pulled her knees up to her chin.

  “There won’t be any news,” said Tsan Nu bluntly. “The Heart is gone.”

  “The Nine Elders will have saved the emperor.” Mae Shan did not look at Tsan Nu. She just reached for a stick of kindling and cracked it in two to add to the stove. The fire burned innocently, as if it were no relation to the flames that had almost taken their lives, that had destroyed the palace of a thousand years.

  “The Nine Elders are dead,” said Tsan Nu. Didn’t Mae Shan hear her? The devils would not be free if the Nine Elders were still alive. “So is the emperor.”

  Mae Shan swallowed visibly. “You don’t know that, mistress.”

  “I do know.” Tsan Nu raised her chin. “This is what I saw when Minister Xuan asked me to cast that horoscope. I tried to tell him to get everybody away, but he wouldn’t listen.” Raw, shrill frustration filled Tsan Nu’s voice. Master Liaozhai would have been furious. Was he up there now, fighting the devils? She hadn’t been able to see his face. “They should have listened.”

  “Yes,” said Mae Shan, looking at the fire. “They should have.”

  She closed the grate on the stove and stared at the formless glow it made of the fire inside. “You will tell me what you see, mistress? You will make me listen?”

  “I’ll try,” said Tsan Nu in a small voice. Suddenly, she didn’t want to see anything. She didn’t want to know what was happening. She just wanted to hide her head under the covers and have morning come and be back in her bed with her maids bringing her breakfast and Master Liaozhai chiding her for being lazy.

  She pressed her cheek against the pillow, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. But sleep was heavier than sorrow and it soon took her mind down into darkness. Her last sight was Mae Shan sitting alone, lost in thought, her dagger in her hand.

  Chapter Five

  The spring morning dawned over Bayfield slow but blue. The puddles on the cobbled streets had thawed overnight and made miniature lakes to sparkle in the watery sunlight. The wind blew brisk and cold as Grace walked to the port, but it also held the fresh green smell that said winter was retreating at last.

  Good as his word, Frank waited on the deck of his tug, a battered, square-sterned steamer named the R. W. Currie. His peaked knit cap had been pulled down over his ears until it almost touched the collar of his coat. His pipe, as battered as his boat, smoked in his mouth, the wind dragging the plume inland.

  Finally. Today it would be over. She would finally be able to chase this voice from her head.

  All winter it had haunted her. It ruled her dreams, showing her images of the shuttered and empty lighthouse, the frozen lake, and the bleak winter island. Sometimes it took her as she tried to work her trade, showing her images that might have come from fairy tales; fantastic palaces, kings and queens in their splendor, a bird of flame in a golden cage. Always, always, the same desperate voice called from the shadows, begging for help.

  But never once did the owner of the voice show her its face. Not for all her searching with mind’s eye and gazing crystal could she see who called out to her.

  She had not slept the night through in months. Exhaustion grew heavier and the unwelcome burden of it made her increasingly frantic. She must end this. She would do anything, anything if this voice, this ghost, whoever it was, would just go away and let her sleep.

  Even cross the lake.

  Grace hurried down the dock, ignoring the blatantly curious stare from Charlie Raney, the harbormaster’s assistant. Frank extended a hand to help her up over the side of the tug, looking her squarely in the eye. She had seen him once or twice in the street over the long winter. Each time he had asked how she was, and commented on the weather. She thought she had seen that he would like to say more, but he never did. Perhaps that much was just her imagination anyway. Her vision was obviously less clear than it had once been.

  Now, though, she saw the question in his eyes quite clearly. “Are you sure?” he asked her silently. Her only answer was to step over the rail onto the dec
k. The boat rocked under her. Fear squeezed Grace’s heart. She swallowed hard. Frank thrust his hand into his pocket and stepped aside, curious, disquieted, and so obviously holding back his words that she was surprised he didn’t burst with what he wasn’t saying. Ashamed of her cowardice, Grace said nothing, but moved away into a sheltered spot behind the tiny wheelhouse. She felt his gaze rest heavily on her shoulders, as she laid her mittened hands on the rail and stared out at the lake and the chunks of ice that still floated on its restless, grey surface. The barrier and boundary of her world for so long.

  At last, she heard Frank turn away. His boots thudded on the decking, making the little tug rock restlessly. Grace gripped the rail and for a moment thought she would be sick.

  And we haven’t even left shore yet. She closed her eyes.

  The boiler was already stoked and the steam drifted overhead. A moment later the engine chugged into life, making the deck thrum, and they were away.

  The Apostle Islands sprouted in a ragged cluster around the small peninsula that held Bayfield and a half-dozen other logging and fishing towns. Sand Island and Devil’s Island clung to the outer edge of the cluster. Grace had grown up with Ingrid, two other sisters, and two brothers on Sand Island. Mamma and Papa had passed on years ago. Leo still lived there with his family, fishing and doing a little farming and timbering. The others had left, making their way down to Milwaukee, or out to Chicago. She had heard nothing more of them, not for years.

  The wind smelled of cold, water, and the coal and ash of the boiler. Her hands ached from clutching the rail. Fear weakened her knees and roiled in her stomach with each small bobble of the waves beneath the hull. Screams formed in her throat and she clenched her teeth against them.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Grace recalled that in summer, the trip out to Sand Island could be pleasant enough. Lake Superior would be blue-grey under the sun and passing islands wore emerald crowns of trees on their red stone cliffs. This early in the spring, however, those crowns were evergreen and grey over slabs of blood red stone still splattered with the stubborn white ice. No other boats sailed past with crews to raise a hand or blow a whistle in greeting. It was only them, and the water. The shifting, deceiving curtain of water that hid the dead men, the ones who waited for warmth, who promised life, if only she came back, she must come back, come down, come drown …

  Grace stuffed her hand into her mouth to stifle her shriek and reeled toward the stern. She tore open the door to the wheelhouse and staggered inside. The boiler’s warmth rolled over her, startling her and clearing her vision. She saw Frank stood at the wheel, guiding the tug with a strong but dexterous hand, chewing on his pipe stem.

  Looking at her with a sympathy she’d never thought she’d see again from anyone.

  “You all right, Grace?” he asked softly.

  Grace could not find her voice, but she found she could dredge up some shreds of dignity. The warmth of the wheelhouse and the throaty chug of the motor that covered the slap of the waves against the hull helped. She nodded, drew herself up straight, and closed the door firmly behind herself.

  “It’s good and clear, at any rate,” Frank said around his pipe stem. Sailors and islanders begin any conversation with the weather. “Should hold too,” he went on. “Wouldn’t want to push it, though.”

  You’re not going to say anything. You’re going to let me decide what to tell. Grace bowed her head. Thank you, Frank. She knew she should say that aloud, but the words would not come to her. “I don’t expect to be long,” she murmured instead.

  “Okay then. I’m going to drop you off at Lighthouse Pointe. You can do what it is you need to while I run ‘round to Eastbay with the mail and some canned goods for the store, pick up whoever’s set to go. I’ll be back in four, maybe five hours.”

  “I’ll be ready for you.”

  “That’ll be fine then.” Frank clamped his mouth closed around the stem of his pipe, his attention all on the water.

  Grace too stared out at the water. Only one hardy gull wheeled in the bright, brittle blue sky. The lake had no touch of that blue in it today. It was as grey as it had been the long ago day, the day the squall had come up, and the waves, so small and civilized today, had swelled into curving walls of water, and come crashing down across the deck of the old tug, wrapping her tight and hauling her over and forcing her down into the dark, into the cold …

  Grace tried desperately to push those memories aside. She instead turned her mind to thoughts of her niece. Unfortunately, her two or three direct memories of Bridget did not give her much to chew over. She’d kept track of the doings up at the lighthouse through gossips like Hilda, or through genuine news, such as when a ship ran aground. Only occasionally had she actually seen the girl Bridget, or the woman she became. Everett Lederle had never stopped to call on Grace when he was in Bayfield, and she, of course, had never gone back to the island.

  The dead had always been able to compel her more forcefully than the living.

  She had met Bridget face-to-face just once. It had been ten … no, almost fifteen years ago. Grace had arranged a seance to try to drum up some extra business. Her clientele had fallen off and she needed to raise a little talk about herself. She hadn’t been so foolish as to actually invite a newspaperman, of course, but she had advertised in the paper so that all “seekers of truth” might “receive the words of those who have gone before.”

  She remembered sweeping into the parlor, not in gypsy gauds that day, but a severe black skirt and blouse, and her hair pulled back in a tight bun, every inch the distant and respectable woman. She’d delivered a general message to each of the ladies sitting there, some token that she could elaborate on during the actual seance. Then, the thin girl in the face-covering sunbonnet had lifted her head, and Grace had stared into Bridget’s eyes. She’d known her at once, the girl looked so much like Ingrid. She’d almost stammered then. She knew why Bridget had come. Bridget had the second sight. Everyone knew it. Her visions of the future were real, and they invariably came true.

  Bridget had come to her aunt, who was supposed to have the same gift. She had come for comfort, guidance, and companionship.

  And Grace had let her down.

  Grace bit her lip. A stream of guilt chittered through her mind and she had to steel herself against it. It was not she, but Ingrid who was responsible for the life the girl led. If Ingrid hadn’t run off, if she hadn’t left Grace alone with ghosts and gossips, it all would have been different.

  Usually, Grace could work up some righteous indignation to warm her cold depths with those thoughts, but not today. Today, caught between the empty sky and the grey water, she just felt tired of them.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Frank watching her. She turned her gaze toward him, and he was already looking out at the lake again.

  Despite everything, Grace felt a small smile form. “Should I ask what you’re thinking, Frank?” she called over the noise of the engines.

  “Probably not,” said Frank around his pipe. He removed the much used object from his mouth, inspected it to see that it had well and truly gone out, and tucked it into his pocket. “I was thinking ‘bout you as a girl,” he said.

  “Ah.” Not a safe subject. No.

  But now that he had begun, Frank did not seem inclined to stop. “Prettiest thing for miles around, you were, with a smile for everybody.”

  As if she had forgotten that girl. “That was a long time ago.”

  “What happened, Grace?” A plaintive note crept into Frank’s voice. It sounded strange coming from so solidly built a man. “You didn’t have to go this way.”

  Grace’s mouth twitched. She should keep silent, she knew, but she was worn to the bone with fear and cold. There was no strength left in her to hold back her words.

  “What happened? Ingrid vanished with that … fisherman Avan, and Papa decided he was going to take it out on me. When I got to Bayfield, and I was made … promises, by first one young man and then an
other. Fool that I was, I believed my pretty face and my smile were enough to make them keep those promises. But they went off with other girls who knew better ways to make them keep their word, and had fathers who would back them up. Then, I met a man who said what he wanted from me up-front, and paid by showing me how I might earn a living for myself.”

  A traveling spiritualist had come to her boardinghouse. He’d organized a seance in the parlor to drum up interest in his trade. Grace had heard the knocks and rattles, and saw the automatic writing, and saw not a single real ghost. She kept her mouth shut however, and when he’d approached her later, in private, she’d told him flatly he was nothing but a fraud.

  He’d smiled then, and shrugged. “So I am, but it’s a good living, if you can manage it.” She remembered how he’d eyed her, appraisingly, not lasciviously. “In fact, I’d say a sharp girl like you should be able to pick the fat cats of this town over easy.”

  He’d been right, and he’d been generous in teaching her the tricks and the patter, letting her participate in his several seances to practice her own abilities at cold reading and falling into “trances.” Grace couldn’t say she remembered the man fondly, but by his own standards, he’d been honest.

  None of which Frank would understand, especially not with the despairing light that shone in his eye. “Couldn’t you have gone into service? Or one of the shops?”

  Grace fussed with the ends of her shawls rather than look at him. “Evidently not.”

  “Couldn’t you …” Frank clamped his mouth down to cut off the rest of that sentence.

  Grace let him have his silence. Partial payment for the favor he now did her. But she found herself recalling how Frank had no wife, and no children, and for the first time it occurred to her to wonder why.