The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

“Uncle,” said Mae Shan tentatively. “Is it possible the father’s spirit means no harm? That he only seeks to protect his daughter and see her safely home? There are legends that speak of such things …”

  Yes! That’s how it truly is, Mae Shan. Anna’s fists tightened. She longed to burst from the shadows, but Father held her steady.

  “Indeed, but such stories do not involve possession, nor do they come of calling a spirit forth from the Shifting Lands. Such magics bring only grief.”

  “What do I do? I have sworn an oath to protect the girl with my life.”

  Another tremor shook Anna’s frame. You see? She wants to believe what is right. When I tell her the truth …

  Keep listening, Anna. Be strong.

  “What do you know of the girl’s mother?”

  “Only that her mother is dead.” Mae Shan paused. “I don’t believe I’ve ever even heard her name.”

  I would have told you anything you wanted to know, thought Anna petulantly. I would have told you her name was Kaija and that she died when I was born, and that my father sent me to the Heart of the World so I could learn the magics and ways of Hung-Tse so one day I could be ambassador between Hung-Tse and Tuukos.

  “Then you do not know if she has maternal kin in Isavalta or Tuukos.”

  Father remained silent and still while Mae Shan shook her head. Anna wanted to go. Surely they’d heard everything they needed to. They didn’t need to stay here crouched on the floor and listen while Mae Shan kicked over the last part of what Anna thought of as her safe world.

  Uncle Lien smoothed his sparse beard thoughtfully. “You are right that the child cannot stay here to face what comes now that the heart has been cut from the body of our country. In fact, now that it is full dark those … sailors who you saw manning my walls are now manning the boats and making certain pairs of eyes think I am already gone. I am not sure that I will permit even Cai Yun to stay, although I may not be able to order her away … and with the throne having changed hands in Isavalta, my name and word there will not be what it once was …”

  “You served Isavalta?” said Mae Shan, shocked.

  “I aided the Empress Medeoan on occasion,” answered Uncle Lien calmly. “Do not look at me so, Mae Shan. You have known for years what I am. It is because of what I am that I can help you now.”

  Guiltily, Mae Shan dropped her gaze.

  Why do you listen to this thief? Anna felt tears start to stream her cheeks.

  Just a little longer, my brave child, said Father. There is one thing more we must learn.

  “I must make some final provision for your cousin and several others of my household,” Lien went on. “But as soon as that is done, I will take you and the child to the shores of Isavalta. You will have several letters and names with you that will be of help.”

  “And the ghost?”

  Anna’s mouth went dry.

  “I must consult my texts for the most efficacious method, but I believe by dawn I will be able to free the child.”

  There, murmured Father deep in the back of her mind. That is what I needed to hear. That tells us how much time we have.

  Mae Shan bowed again. “Thank you, Uncle. This was more than I could have hoped for. I hope … I want …” She stammered and tried again. “I will come back once Tsan Nu, Ah-na, is safe. I must go home and see that my parents are well, and then I must return to T’ien and do what I can. I hope …”

  Come now, Anna, Father said within her. They will not talk much longer and we cannot be seen.

  Anna ducked her head back, wiping her tears silently with her sleeve, something else Master Liaozhai would have chided her for, but Father remained silent about this as well. Back in the scroll room, Lien kept talking, unaware of her departure.

  “Your heart is with your duty, Mae Shan, and it will steer you correctly. I will tell you this much, my grievance was old and long, and with the Nine Elders. They have been punished in a way I could not foresee despite my art …”

  Whatever else Lien had to say to his niece, he said in private. Anna was beyond the range of his voice when she reached the stairs. She hurried up the steps and back into her room. Anna slipped into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She lay there, staring at the ceiling.

  Rest now, Anna. I’ll wake you when it’s time.

  But Anna did not feel sleepy anymore. Too much of what she had heard was ringing through her mind. Mae Shan, who had saved her life and had seemed so nice, was talking about possession, even after Anna had told her that this was nothing like that. She was talking about stripping away Father’s ghost and leaving Anna alone again with no home and no friends and no teachers … and Lien calling Father treacherous. And Mae Shan believed him! Her duty was to Anna, she’d sworn it, no matter what her family said. She should not have sat there listening to those lies. Why would Mae Shan listen to lies?

  But she could find no answer, and if Father knew she asked that question, he said nothing. She listened awhile for Mae Shan’s step and did not hear it, so she rolled over and closed her eyes. But as sleep reached its soft hand to cradle her, unbidden, one question repeated itself to Anna.

  Why would Mae Shan listen to lies?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Through Anna’s slitted eyes, Kalami watched the bodyguard Mae Shan enter the darkened room and come to the bedside to inspect her charge. Kalami shut Anna’s eyes quickly. His daughter stirred a little in her sleep, but did not wake, although Kalami was startled to feel Mae Shan’s light touch smoothing Anna’s hair down.

  When he heard her move away again, he risked another look through Anna’s eyes. The body was so much easier to claim while she lay sweetly asleep, her mind occupied with her dreams. Mae Shan closed the latch on the man-sized shutters that opened onto the balcony and then considered the inner door, which had no means of being secured. At last, with a sigh, she shifted the pallet she had made up earlier and composed herself to sleep in front of the door.

  Eventually, Mae Shan’s breathing grew slow and even. Kalami lifted Anna’s little hands and pushed the covers back. Mae Shan did not stir. He stood Anna up on the floorboards, cooling now in the night’s chill. There was no interruption in the rhythm of the soldier’s breathing. The woman was no doubt very tired herself, and despite her automatic precautions, she most likely knew how difficult it was for someone to enter a sorcerer’s house unbidden or unwelcome. That sense of security dragged her into a deeper sleep than she might otherwise have known.

  But he could not count on that, so he moved Anna gently and patiently toward the shuttered balcony. It was odd. He felt himself within her body, perceived the world through her senses, and yet he felt distant. It was not the feeling of life. The deeper he reached, to know again the beat of her heart and the surge of her blood, the farther those pulses of life receded. It vexed him for reasons he could not understand and distracted him constantly. But his life had been one of concentration and control. There was no need for concern yet. He would surely become used to this new mode of existence.

  Under his guidance, Anna moved as deliberately and unconsciously as a sleepwalker. Her fingers quickly found the shutter’s latch and eased it back. Lien’s house was obviously well kept, for they came open without a creak. This was the dangerous part. Any change in the level of light would wake a trained bodyguard from the dead. He turned Anna so her body blocked the moonlight that tried to trickle past her shadow. He slipped her through the shutters quick as thought, closing them swiftly behind her. He held her there, listening. Her heart was surely pounding in her chest, and he longed to feel that beat, to know the press of breath again in his lungs. To feel warmth. He felt temperature only vaguely, although he could feel all other sensations through her hands, her skin. It was so strange that he should care about these things. As it was, he was well hidden and almost beyond harm. Very few magics could touch him, and his skills could keep Anna safe to shield and shelter him, and yet he did not want to remain as he was. He wanted with all his strength
to be alive again.

  No sound issued from within the room. Thankful, Kalami urged Anna forward.

  The balcony wrapped itself around much of the second story of the house, a style favored by those in the south of Hung-Tse grand enough to have a second story. Kalami made Anna flit lightly along its length. He felt her dreams twist and crowd against him. He tried not to touch them. He did not wish to intrude, although he did itch to know what those dreams told her. He did not know the whole of his daughter’s mind, and that worried him. He did not wish her to be able to hide from him.

  Well, perhaps that could be dealt with, but there were other matters to be settled first.

  The silver-and-shadow gardens spread out below the rail at Anna’s left shoulder. The doors and windows on the right were flanked by terracotta images of various guardian spirits — dogs and dragons, cranes and horses, even soldiers, some as big as Anna. But the household did not rely too much on such protection because all the portals were securely shuttered. Annoyance rippled through Kalami and Anna’s dreams stirred uneasily. Kalami calmed himself at once. This would all be easier if Anna could remain asleep. Clarity of thought was more difficult when she was awake. It was as if her mind intruded on his, instead of the other way about.

  I must come to a good understanding of this way of being or I will remain in danger.

  A set of stone stairs led down to the lower floor of the house. At the bottom, it did not take much looking to see that the lower entryways were also shuttered tightly. In the distance, he thought he heard, or perhaps Anna thought she heard, the crackle of a fresh fire starting. Somewhere beyond the garden walls, someone shouted. Kalami suppressed his impatience. This was no good. The prospect of riots on his doorstep had made their host careful. It would have to be the garden. Together he and Anna were surely strong enough for what needed to be done. The little distance might give them a certain advantage.

  Any sorcerer could feel a spell being created or destroyed, especially if it was being done nearby. Inside Lien’s house there were surely tools for magic that would make what he had to do easier, but the risk of the old man’s sensing the working was greater. Outside there was far less to work with, but the chances of discovery were also fewer.

  Kalami turned Anna’s path across the grass. The dew had fallen and her bare feet quickly grew wet. She must have felt the damp and chill, for Anna’s own mind stretched and opened. She woke.

  “Father? What is it?” She blinked, looking around her, her footsteps hesitating and a child’s startled fear running through her.

  Be easy, Daughter. It is time to arrange our escape.

  “You said you’d wake me.”

  And so I have. I needed to get you out of your room before I did. I did not want you to make any sound that might have woken Mae Shan.

  Anna accepted this answer. Where do we go, Father?

  Down to the trees.

  Light, swift, and strong, Anna ran across the lawn toward the grove. Her dexterous child’s fingers quickly stripped the twigs from the tree branches Kalami indicated and she deposited them in her deep sleeve. Kalami found a moment to marvel in what it was to be a child again. His own boyhood was so far away and the visceral memory of it had been let fall wherever his body lay.

  But there was no time to revel in this. Who knew how long the bodyguard would remain asleep, or whether diligent Cai Yun would take it into her head to make a midnight tour of the gardens now that the “sailors” had been sent away on other errands.

  Now, we need a round stone and a sharp stone, and a place by one of the ponds or streams where we will not be easily seen.

  A stream chattered and murmured beyond the trees. In the style of Hung-Tse gardens, it had been carefully routed in an auspicious direction, its bed worked over until the right mix of stone and sand gave it its particular pleasing song. Anna’s eyes were as quick as her fingers and she picked up a knife-edged flint from the shallow edge of the stream and a water-rounded piece of sparkling granite from the bank. She retreated deep under the branches of an ancient willow and knelt down, spilling her finds out onto the grass that grew sparsely among the hunching roots.

  Now, Anna, you must remain quiet and let me work. As I begin, you must draw on your magic for the shaping. Can you do this?

  “I will try, Father.”

  You will succeed, Daughter. With these things, we will put the household to sleep. Let us begin.

  Gently, as he had once reached out to encompass the shaping of spells, Kalami took his daughter’s hands and the fibers of her voice. She was nervous, and he tried to soothe her, but he had little attention he could spare. He had to think now, to remember clearly. He knew this working. He only had to bring it to him again, but it seemed so very far away. Anna’s hands shook a little as they began laying the twigs out in neat piles beside the granite stone.

  “I am come into the dark night. I am knelt beside the flowing waters before the clean washed stone. I have taken the sacrifice of the forest and brought it to the earth.”

  Anna, holding herself still inside her own mind, felt the pattern inherent in the words and the laying out of the tools and reached within and without and drew up the magic.

  Kalami almost lost himself in the rush of it. He had expected a stream, this was a torrent, a roaring flood. Had he lived, this would have drowned him. As it was he had to struggle to keep from being washed away. He could no longer move Anna’s hands, he could only hold them frozen while he tried to grasp even the tenth part of Anna’s power to shape into what suddenly seemed his pathetic weaving.

  He had known himself to be strong in life. He had known Anna’s mother carried a strength even greater, but neither of them could be compared to what they had created together.

  What would Bridget have thought had she known?

  “Who’s Bridget?” asked Anna.

  Kalami started and snapped back to himself, fighting to stay whole against the wild current of Anna’s gift.

  Help me, Daughter, we must concentrate.

  Anna, schooled to obedience of her elders, immediately began to concentrate. In control of himself and her once again, Kalami reached for the flint. He pressed the fine edge against Anna’s palm.

  Anna balked, but Kalami held her hands still. It is necessary, Anna. It is a small thing, but it is the only true power we have.

  “But it is blood magic. Master Liaozhai forbid …”

  Master Liaozhai is dead and his understanding is over. If we do not do this, Lien will take me from you.

  That silenced Anna’s protests, and Kalami swiftly tore the soft skin of her palm, feeling her wince with the pain.

  My brave child, he told her approvingly. To himself he thought there was a great deal his daughter had to unlearn.

  But he must concentrate. The tide of her magic would ebb otherwise. He must bring his mind and her spirit to the task. Kalami focused on the world before him, on the blood that welled from his daughter’s palm and on the shining stone.

  “As my blood covers the stone, so shall my will cover the house of Lien.” Anna’s voice was light, almost a whisper, as he pressed her palm against the stone’s curving surface. She winced again, although he held her still.

  “As the stone is surrounded by the sacrifice of the forest, so shall the house of Lien be surrounded.”

  One twig from each tree, their ends overlapping to form the beginning of the pattern. Bitter willow, poison laburnum, chokeberry, bright fire maple, and all the rest. With Kalami’s silent prodding, Anna found the pattern, laying down the twigs, making three rings of seven twigs each around the stone. This was not the sort of working she was used to, but with Kalami there to guide her hands, her power moved willingly to the strange shape, and her mouth spoke the words, adding another guide, another shape, another way to draw the power to the work. He found the rhythm of it, and the rhythm guided the current of the power, drawing in and down to wash into the working, and Kalami knew himself to be strong once again.

  “I
have made three walls of stone and three gates of iron and in them place the house of Lien. Let no creature stir, let no vapor enter or exit, let no thing that flies or creeps or walks find entrance or egress from the house of Lien …”

  Again Anna hesitated. To her, the red palm print of her blood over the stone seemed to glow in the moonlight. Fear touched her spirit, raising her thoughts into sharp relief. This was too strong, too much. Her will trembled under the rush of her own power. Would this not smother them? She felt her power being drawn into the stone through the weaving, through her blood, and it frightened her, even as she realized this was a great working and she could complete it easily.

  Kalami held back his anger with difficulty. He had to concentrate, had to hold the shape of the working.

  No, no, Daughter. They will not smother. When we are gone, the wind will blow away the twigs and break the spell. We are only buying time to make our escape.

  Her fear abated some and Kalami held tighter to her.

  “I have made three walls of stone and three gates of iron.” Anna’s hands gathered up the last of the twigs and began to lay them down. “And in them I place the house of Lien. Let no creature stir, let no vapor enter or exit, let no thing that flies or creeps or walks find entrance or egress from the house of Lien …”

  The whole world was the sticks and the stones, the bright red blood and the power that spilled forth, making the words true, shaping the world. Anna ceased to struggle or fear, caught up in her own strength and the delight of it.

  How great his daughter would be when he returned her to Tuukos. What they would accomplish together!

  “This is my word and …”

  Motion flashed across Anna’s field of vision, scattering the twigs and knocking the stone into the stream. Startled, Kalami lost his hold and Anna stared up into Lien’s thunderous face.

  “Did you think my house so poorly defended, Valin Kalami? Did you think I would not know what you do here?”

  Anger rushed through Kalami, too swift to be contained. He thrust Anna aside and took hold of her voice.