by Sarah Zettel
There was a pause that might have been for Luden to nod, or just to collect his breath for more speech. “Even more so than the mother, if the worst happens and our efforts prove futile.” The words were dry. He might have been speaking of the prospects for rain in the coming spring.
Discussing making use of a child. For without that child everyone might die, the empire might collapse.
Had such thoughts gone through his mother’s head when she decided to make use of him?
Ananda moved closer, her warmth touching his skin. “The child is a sorcerer,” she murmured, her voice heavy with resignation. “The gods gave us them for our use, our protection, and our blessing. It is their duty to serve.”
For a moment, Mikkel could not believe what he was hearing. He looked toward her automatically, and saw only shadow. “That is different.” He strove to keep his voice low, so the sorcerers would not hear them in disagreement, or at least not hear the nature of the disagreement. “This child is not bound to us.”
“Her mother has taken the loyalty oath, has she not?” There was something hard under Ananda’s words, as if she were forcing them out. Ananda? he wanted to say. Is this truly you speaking to me? “That makes the child subject to us.”
“But still a child.”
“Yes, and I am sorry it is so.”
Mikkel swallowed. What to do? What must he do? It might not come to the worst. The child might not have to be … used, whatever the sorcerers meant by that. Power could be transferred between them, he knew. Was that what they meant to do? And if he was truly emperor, could he ignore a resource or an action that might save his empire?
We could die if the fires are not rekindled. I don’t care for me, I walked around dead for so many years, I’ll probably feel at home when the Grandfather comes for me, but Isavalta could die from this. This place she did not trust to my hands. This empire she was determined to take to the grave with her. All these people who were waiting for me to wake up, who must wonder now couldn’t he have fought harder? Couldn’t he have tried? It’s my duty to use whatever means I must to save them.
“Yes,” he said, and the word dropped from his lips like a stone. “If the child lives, let its mother find it and bring it here.”
“Yes, Imperial Majesty,” said Luden.
“Yes, Imperial Majesty,” said Sidor.
The darkness was complete now. There was only the sound of old men’s footsteps shuffling, trying not to stumble, of cloth dragging slowly on stone, of fingertips brushing this surface and that until the faint creak of metal, wood scraping stone and a wafting of cold, wood-scented air that told that the door had been found, and opened, and closed again.
Silence in the darkness, except for the breathing of a few frightened souls.
“Husband Imperial,” said Ananda, mindful of the servants out there in the blackness that was his private room. “There is nothing that can be done until the light returns. It is useless us standing here until night’s cold settles into our blood. If it is your wish, let us return to bed to wait for dawn, for I doubt sleep will come again to any of us.”
“Yes,” said Mikkel, although he was not sure which statement exactly he was agreeing to. “Take to bed, all of you, until the light comes. We must all be ready to work, and work quickly.”
For it will return. I waited in darkness for three years, I can wait a few hours longer. This is different. This time I am not trapped. This time I can make myself heard, and I will.
Chapter Eleven
Bridget was in the Red Library when the light flickered and went out.
The day itself had been spent trying to get answers and audiences. Not a single court sorcerer had found a moment to spare for her. All of them were engaged in the hunt for the Firebird. She had spent some time in her rooms attempting to apply the arts Mistress Urshila had tried to teach her to induce a vision to come, but all she had induced was a headache. Sakra said even he had not been able to get in to see the empress, who had been closeted with the emperor and the ambassador from Hung-Tse. Mistress Urshila had sequestered herself with the other court sorcerers, none of whom would give Bridget any kind of straight answer when she asked them what was happening. Where Sakra was now, she didn’t know, and although it felt cowardly, she did not seek him out. As much as she wanted answers, she wanted to be alone to think and to plan her course of action.
She wanted to leave, now, this second. She wanted to pack a bundle and walk away, the way she had walked here. Surely, Mistress Urshila exaggerated the dangers. What importance was Bridget to anyone? Today had shown that not even this one grand household held her in serious esteem, for all they had spoken so many pretty words to her recently.
She did, however, recognize that to walk away without permission was to burn her bridges behind her. She would not be easily able to come back to Isavalta, and if she did find Anna, then what? She could not go back to Bayfield where she would be penniless and without employment. Here she had a house she could bring Anna to, if it was not quite a home yet. Here, she hoped, was a life she could live openly and without censure.
As the empress evidently had no need of her services, and there was a limit to the amount of pacing she could do without driving herself completely to distraction, Bridget took herself to the Red Library. Named for the red marble pillars that served as its ornamentation, the Red Library was the imperial collection of texts on magic. There had to be something in there on scrying for the living, or the dead. Perhaps she did not have to try to get back to Bayfield at all. Perhaps there was a way to be sure without leaving Isavalta.
So, Bridget hunched over what she thought might be likely tomes and scrolls, painfully spelling out the words one letter at a time, trying to remember the tenses of the various verbs, and wishing to heaven that she had a dictionary. Richikha brought her supper, and later Prathad brought a candle and a brazier.
She had hoped to exhaust herself eventually, but although her eyes burned and her fingers felt as dry as the parchment pages they turned, Bridget felt as awake as ever. Nervous energy drove away all possibility of sleep, even though she noted the moon making its way up the star-filled dome of the sky, and then back down again.
Then the candle went out as suddenly as if an invisible snuffer had been clapped over the flame. In the darkness, Bridget’s eyes automatically strained to see, and she saw …
A black-haired woman kneeling before an old man, trying in vain to stanch the blood flowing from a wound in his belly.
The Firebird sitting on the crooked branch of a dead tree, with the Vixen crouched down below, just beyond the reach of the trailing flames of its wings.
An ancient man in a cave with walls so slick it appeared as if they were perspiring. He wore nothing but a kilt of hides with the hair still on. He hunched his crooked back over a stone mortar and pestle, grinding down something that steamed in the flickering orange light of his fire.
The old man lifted his head. He looked directly at Bridget, and he grinned.
Bridget started, but the vision did not break. Instead the man beckoned with one hand, pointing at his mortar with one grimy finger.
This should not be happening. The palace is protected from magics. How can this be happening?
Her sight drew closer to the ancient man, whose skin was as slick and shining as the cave walls. Her vision showed her the mortar was filled with dank water, swirling with some dark liquid that might have been ink or might have been blood. At the very bottom, she saw a piece of pale, scraped hide. The vision pulled her in, so it seemed she leaned right over the bowl, seeing the dark swirl in the rippling water and the white hide … and words. Words in no language she could read, but that she nonetheless understood.
You will not find your daughter.
Bridget felt her body jerk back, felt her head lift up, but her vision was held fast. She could see nothing but the bowl and its missive.
“Who are you?” she heard herself demand, although she understood no sound could be imparted
through such a forced vision as this.
But it seemed she was wrong about that as well, because the ancient man stabbed his finger into the mortar, swirling the water and ink (just ink, though for such magic as this blood was spilled somewhere), and the words changed.
I am a seer, like you.
“What do you know of me?”
The old man’s finger stirred the water again. I know you will not find your daughter. She is not in the compasses of the world where you walk.
Bridget’s throat closed. She ground her teeth together. What did he mean, this … seer, whoever and whatever he was? Did he mean Anna was truly dead? That her shade walked the Land of Death and Spirit? Or did he mean she was still in the world of her birth somehow?
“Who are you?” she demanded a second time.
The one who can find your daughter. The one who can call her back from where she has gone.
Bridget’s fists and eyes squeezed shut. But the words stayed before her mind’s eye. “No!” she shouted. “No! I will not hear this!”
The water swirled, the gnarled finger pointed, the words changed. Your aid is all that is required. You cannot find her alone. I can call her back for you.
“No!” screamed Bridget at the top of her lungs, and she lurched to her feet, reaching down into the seat of her will. “You will leave me alone!”
Then, there was only darkness and the echo of her own voice ringing in her ears.
“Mistress Bridget?” called a faint voice from off to her right. “Are you all right?”
Bridget’s hand flew to her freshly raw throat. What had happened? What had been done to her?
Why was it every stranger, every power seemed to know about Anna? What could Anna possibly matter to anyone but her? She was a babe in arms. She was nothing yet. She was everything.
“Mistress Bridget?”
The anxious voice was coming from outside the door. Her candle and brazier had gone completely dead and there was nothing left but the faintest moonlight to show her the outline of the table and books before her.
“I’m all right!” She called out the lie with as much conviction as she could manage.
All right, except that I am in the dark without means of making a light and I am being bribed with the life of my nine-years-gone daughter by a filthy sorcerer who wants God knows what from me.
What is happening? And what about the other things I saw? The aftermath of attempted murder? The Firebird, and the Vixen. They had the feel of true visions that came of her own second sight.
The Firebird, and the Vixen.
She came to warn us that the Firebird is seeking revenge! she heard her own voice say from memory.
She came to help us all, did she? And just, incidently, to tell you the one piece of news guaranteed to drive you insane?
God Almighty, what if Urshila was right?
Bridget smoothed down the skirts of her robe. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see her way to the door. Standing here in the dark would accomplish nothing, and motion would be easier than thought. She reached gingerly for the edge of the brazier, but found it had gone stone cold.
How long did that … seer hold me for? Forced visions could bend time. She squinted at the moon, which still showed a full inch of itself above the roofs. She could not have been … gone for that long. The brazier should at least have been warm.
Foreboding leapt into the forefront of her mind. Bridget quickly rounded the table and opened the door onto the blackened corridor. To her surprise, voices called out, faint but clear.
“Where is that girl?”
“What’s happening? Why can’t you make a light?”
“I need a light! A light!”
It’s started. Fear sent Bridget’s blood surging. It’s come.
When she had first seen the Firebird in the golden cage woven by the Dowager Medeoan and Bridget’s own father, Avanasy, its presence had opened her second sight, and she had seen what it could do. She had seen it burn cities by bringing too much fire, but she had also seen it freeze them, by taking the fire away.
No wonder the brazier was so cold, she thought dazedly as the calls and cries of a small city’s worth of people suddenly found themselves lost in their own home.
Then, a steady, martial voice cut across the rising babble. “Their Majesties Imperial bid you keep to your rooms until daylight.” It was Commander Chadek, head of the house guard, out in the night although his rank meant he served his turn during the daylight hours.
Oh, yes, it had started, and the panic would only spread from here, despite Chadek’s best efforts, and there was reason for panic. Slowly, like water welling up through the loose seam of a boat, what it meant that there was no fire and no means of making one in this great palace began to sink into her. Bridget lived with fire, worked with it. When she was a lighthouse keeper every night she lit the four-wicked lamp in her tower. If the light went out, it could spell doom for an entire ship. She had certainly lived through more than one winter where the lack of a fire could mean far worse than discomfort, and how would any food be cooked?
And now that it has come, who will let you go haring off on your own errands? Bridget stopped in her tracks. No. Her fists curled up. This was not some simple errand. She could not start to think like that. This was life and death, as much as any other disaster.
Life and death of one or two, against that of hundreds, perhaps thousands. Her life until recently had been devoted to the cause of saving other lives. If she left now, she was turning her back on the only meaning all those empty years had.
But those hundreds and thousands have hundreds of others to care for them. Anna has no one but me.
You cannot find her alone. I can call her back for you.
Bridget hardened her mind against the memory of the stranger’s words. She swayed on her feet. God Almighty, she was tired. How long until sunrise? How long until she could move again?
“Who’s there?” demanded Captain Chadek. His voice was near. She’d been so sunken in her own thoughts, she hadn’t even heard the footsteps.
“Bridget Lederle, Commander,” she croaked. Her throat had gone dry and her tongue felt swollen in her mouth. “I was in the Red Library.”
“Mistress Bridget, all are instructed to return to their rooms.”
Bridget’s eyes could not stop from straining in the corridor’s darkness. There was not even any moonlight from the library windows. She could just make out the commander’s straight shadow. “I am embarrassed to admit it, Commander, but I don’t think I can find my room from here.”
“Then I will escort you. Over-Lieutenant, continue the rounds. Do not lose the under-sergeant.” Bridget was sure he had meant that last as a joke, but there was honest worry under the words.
“Sir,” said a pair of strange voices. Boots tramped against wood and the breeze of motion passed Bridget by.
“If you will permit me, mistress.” The commander’s hand found her arm and he took hold of her as if they were a couple courting, steering her down the corridor opposite from the way his men had gone.
His pace was measured, but in the dark it felt fast. Bridget tried not to clamp her hand around his arm and trusted he would not deliberately lead her into any doorways. Her feet moved reluctantly, trying to feel their way, now stumbling over nothing, now hurrying to catch up with Chadek.
“How is it you can find your way so well?” she asked.
“Years of drill, mistress,” came the reply. “We are told we must all know Vyshtavos blind. This is our chance to prove it.”
“Has anyone said what’s happened?”
“Not to me, mistress.”
And you would not ask. You know your place, as you know these corridors.
They turned and walked, and turned again. Bridget had walked these halls almost every day since she came, but she still felt completely lost.
“Here, mistress. On the left. Instruct your people that they should remain behind doors with you until
daylight.”
“Yes, Commander.” Bridget reached out and felt the grain of the wooden door. After a small amount of fumbling she found the handle. She turned it, and the door swung open. At that sound, Commander Chadek’s boot heels clacked against the floor as he turned back to his rounds.
“Prathad? Richikha?” Bridget shuffled into the room. Without Chadek to set the pace, her feet grew timid.
“Mistress?” answered Richikha. “Are you there?”
“I do seem to be,” said Bridget tartly, but she quickly regretted the words. “Yes, Richikha, I am. Prathad?” Bridget moved forward a few cautious steps and let the door swing softly shut behind her.
“I am here, mistress.” The older woman’s voice was accompanied by the rustle of cloth and the scrape of wood on stone. “Is it known what is happening?”
Bridget hesitated, then set her jaw. These two were her people. She was responsible for them. “The Firebird has come.”
Sharp intakes of breath, one to the left, one to the right, and again the rustle of cloth.
“What does it want?” asked Richikha.
But it was Sakra’s voice that came in answer. “Payment for thirty years.”
Bridget turned reflexively, although she could see nothing but darkness. “Has there been any new word?” And how did you find your way here?
“Very little.” Footsteps came closer, a hint of human warmth touched her skin. “The lord sorcerer tried to stop its coming, and failed. Now all are seeking a way to destroy it, or at least cage it again.” His voice darkened as he spoke. He did not approve of something that was happening. Before Bridget could question him further he said, “But our quest is different.”
“Sakra …” she began. What am I to do? I can’t think straight knowing Anna might be out there …
“I have just come from Master Luden. You and I are to travel at once to find the truth about your daughter and return as quickly as may be.”
Bridget felt as if there were no air left in the room. “It’s agreed? But … how?”
“I spoke with the empress.” His voice was still tight. Something uncomfortable had passed between them. That thought only flitted through Bridget’s mind.
