The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  Ananda came closer. She held out her hand over the holy artifact, but did not touch it. She just closed her fingers into a fist above it and lowered her arm until that fist was clenched at her side.

  “What are you doing?” she asked again.

  Mikkel draped the white silk over one of the nearby pews. “I’m not going to wait.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  To his surprise, he found himself smiling. “It’s what always happens in the ballads, isn’t it? The hero waits until everything else has been tried, until his whole family, or thousands of his people, or at very least his two older brothers, have died. Then and only then does he go out to fight the battle that was his in the first place. I do not have older brothers, and I am not going to wait.”

  Understanding robbed her face of color and expression. “Mikkel, this is not your battle.”

  He turned the pike over in his hands, feeling how the place where one’s hands would naturally grip had been worn to butter smoothness over the years. “How can it not be? It was my mother who brought this on. That creature will punish the whole of Isavalta for what she did.”

  “But how can you fight such a thing? You are not a sorcerer.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I am the emperor.”

  Ananda looked at him, fear filling the whole of her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really seen her afraid before, although he knew she had been many times. She’d told him all about what had happened to her while he was in durance, and they’d held each other and wept for each other’s suffering.

  “Mikkel, this is nonsense,” she said flatly. “The sorcerers have barely begun their studies. We do not even know the extent of what is happening.” He knew what she was really saying. She was really saying, “I have just found you. Don’t leave me again.”

  What answer did he have to that love? “The grounds are full of people too frightened to stay home, and you are talking about handing a child over to the sorcerers for their use should their own power fail them. How much worse should it get before I try to act?”

  Ananda pulled back, wounded, and he wanted to erase the words at once, but he could not, because they were the truth. “Is this because of what I said?”

  The god’s weapon lay warm in his hands, but dead. He wanted to cast it aside and embrace Ananda’s living form. He wanted never to have to speak a hard word to her, ever. She had suffered for him. Hers had been the first face he had seen when he came back to himself. Hers was the only true touch of love he had ever known. “I’d be lying if I said it was not in part because of that. But it is more.” He set the butt of the pike gently against the polished floor. “Ananda, I have been told all my life that the emperor is bound to the land, that he is its first and last defense. That there is a power in him that is beyond magic. It is akin to how a person may become divine.”

  Ananda wet her lips and tried several times to speak, but failed. At last she forced the words out. “Do you seek to become a god, my husband?”

  “No. I seek to become a whole man.”

  She stood before him, swaying on her feet, uncertain what to do, she who had kept herself alive and powerful for three years with no one to trust but Sakra. Mikkel held out his arm, and to his relief, Ananda rushed into his embrace, throwing her arms around him, pressing her whole self against him as if trying to meld the two of them into one creature.

  After a time, she said, “Will I be making myself ridiculous if I ask to come with you?”

  “No, never that.” He loosened his hold on her reluctantly. “But you cannot come. You have to be here in case …”

  “In case you die.” She spat the last word as if it were a curse. He understood that her anger was not for him. It was for the circumstances that pushed them both to this place.

  “In case sacrifice is all the Firebird will accept,” Mikkel amended gently. It might be that his life was the only thing the immortal power would accept. He was the first and last defense. He was ready for that. He had been through worse.

  Ananda, however, was not ready to make such concession yet. “Mikkel, what good can I do here? Alone? No one trusts me, and those I could trust have … are gone.” She looked over her shoulder, as if she hoped Sakra might suddenly appear. “It is you the lords look to. If I am left behind, they’ll be plotting my death before your ashes are cooled.”

  Mikkel looked at the floor. They were both the children of monarchs. They had both grown up in palaces. They knew well the schemes that could breed in gilded corridors. She was not exaggerating, only saying what needed to be said between them, but it was so hard. “Because you, by the fact that will-they nil-they you are empress, will be able to hold the court together long enough for Lord Master Peshek to be recalled from Tuukos. Peshek is esteemed. He can set up a board of regency to govern and choose a new emperor. Then, you can stay … or you can go home, if you want.”

  Ananda moved away from him, cupping her arm where his had touched her. Was she already imagining what it would be like to never have the hope of such a touch again? “Have you thought of anything but this for the past day?” she asked, exasperation coloring her fear.

  “I have thought I would be very sorry not to live long enough to meet your children.”

  And Ananda was in his arms again, and he was kissing her as if it were the first time, as if it were the last time, as if it were all that mattered. The Firebird could have come and burned the world down around them at that moment, and nothing would touch them. There was only their kiss and each other.

  When at long last they separated, Ananda, as was her wont, returned immediately to the practical. “The Firebird could be anywhere. How will you know where to look?”

  Mikkel smiled and nodded toward one of the murals that showed a landscape crowned by deep summer-green trees. “I believe I know who to ask.”

  The Vixen paced delicately along the empty shore at the edge of a great blue sea. Once again she had abandoned her fox’s shape to walk as a woman, her red hair cascading down the back of her simple shift. A small smile played about her lips as she turned toward the ocean to observe the spectacle upon the surging waves.

  On the green waters danced a ring of women. They were each of them naked except for their headdresses and girdles of pearls around their waists. Each of them held something in their hands — a white flower, a bowl, a sword, a living bird. These things they passed among them, tossing them back and forth in flashing patterns that no mortal juggler could have matched. Their feet stamped on the water, disturbing it, roiling it, sending their dance forth on the tides of the water over and over again. Always changing, yet always repeating, closed and open at the same time, the shining brown women danced together and alone. Because while they flashed around in their perfect circle, sometimes there seemed to be seven of them, and other times there seemed to be only one.

  The Vixen arched one eyebrow.

  Though there was no music to this dance, there was no escaping the rhythm of it. Even the Vixen felt its power. This dance, these goddesses, reached out to shape and reshape the world they ruled. The Vixen felt those shapings buffet her, pulling and compelling, seeking the truth and seeking to bring it new forms. Beneath their feet the mortal world churned in the waters of the ocean. Its very tides answered their compulsion, and those tides in turn shaped their dance.

  “Very cyclical. Quite lovely,” the Vixen murmured. “But don’t you find the damp a bit much at times?”

  As she spoke, one of the women caught the bowl tossed to her by her fellows. Her headdress was a filigree of gold and dripped with diamonds. She lifted the bronze vessel high and swung it low, catching up some seawater and scattering it as she spun. The drops flashed in the pale light of the green sky. All at once, where there had been one woman, there were two; the one who danced in the ring, passing on the bowl and receiving instead the white bird, and the other, identical, except she was draped in silk that was the color of the sky and of the water. She trod as lightly and steadily on the ocean as i
f she walked on a marble floor. She approached the Vixen and regarded her with eyes that were dark as night, but seemed at the same time filled with light.

  The Vixen returned that fiery gaze calmly.

  “As you have taken the trouble to come all this way, I suppose I should give you greeting,” said the goddess.

  “Never let it be said that Her Majesty Jalaja, the Queen of Earth, is not the epitome of all that is gracious.” The Vixen dropped a curtsy and held the pose.

  Jalaja looked down her long nose at the Vixen and said nothing. Eventually, the Vixen straightened up and folded her hands in front of her, waiting patiently.

  A spasm of annoyance crossed Jalaja’s perfect face. “Will you sit?” she inquired. Because her words were part of the dance of shaping there were at once two thrones on the empty sand, one carved of wood behind the Vixen, and one formed of gold behind Jalaja.

  “Ah, yes.” The Vixen examined the chair for a moment before she sat, reclining on one elbow. “This indeed is the courtesy and welcome I remember from five thousand years ago. I don’t know how I’ve stayed away so long, my sister.”

  “I am no sister to you,” snapped Jalaja. “My sisters are makers, not destroyers, and if you remember your last welcome, do you also remember how your children bedeviled our chosen and tried, by your word, to throw our lands into darkness?”

  As she spoke, an image formed on the rippling water. A young man ran through an orchard, his eyes wide with terror. At his heels ran dozens of foxes, some white, some red, some grey, some the size of wolves, and some tiny kits just out of their burrows. They yipped and snarled. Blood ran down the young man’s back and legs.

  The Vixen considered the image.

  “That was no fault of my sons …”

  “No, it never is, is it?” said Jalaja coldly.

  The Vixen’s gaze faltered for one sliver of an instant. “As I recall, they were not your lands at the time, but shall two such as we quibble over details?”

  “Why have you come?”

  “To talk of this and that.” The Vixen gestured dismissively and the scene in the ocean waves vanished. “To renew the bonds of sisterhood that have so long been severed between you and I.”

  Jalaja heard these words and only looked sour. “It has been five millennia since you were banished from my lands by my servants. Do not think you will gain entry again so easily.”

  The Vixen’s smile grew sharp. “Such a thought never entered my mind, I assure you.”

  “You should look to your own lands. The Firebird is there now, wreaking its vengeance.”

  “My lands?” The Vixen laid her hand on her bosom and arched her brows in surprise. “You are mistaken, Your Majesty. I have no lands. I have only my poor family to give me comfort as I wander from place to place. Denied entrance by so many …”

  Jalaja’s expression again turned sour, but the Vixen’s smile only spread wider.

  “I ask you again, what do you want?”

  “I have come to claim the favor you owe me.” The Vixen smoothed her skirt down. “One so schooled in all arts of courtesy and diplomacy such as yourself will not have forgotten such a promise.”

  Jalaja hissed through her teeth. “The promise was made by my sister. Ask her your favor.”

  “But it was you she promised I should have it from.” The Vixen’s words took on an edge. “When she came a-begging for a pretty toy that had fallen into my hands so that this game of guardians, cages, and vengeance could begin.”

  “You had stolen the heart of the Old Witch and trapped her in her house. Had she been able to roam the world, the man Yamuna would have been her prey for his transgressions, and the Firebird would not have been released.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not.” The Vixen smiled again. “Perhaps if fish could fly they would mate with the birds, and then what good would all our nets be? But even you and I may not rewrite what has happened. The Firebird was brought into being, and you owe me a favor.”

  Jalaja’s face was hard. Her hand curled on her thigh. From the corner of her eye, the Vixen saw a sword cut through the shimmering air, swinging down into the water and slicing the waves in twain. That sword was sharp enough to cut a mortal soul from its body without troubling its flesh, she knew. She also knew Queen Jalaja noted the glance she gave it.

  “What is it that you want?” Jalaja asked at last.

  The Vixen sighed and looked down at her hands. “Oh, it is a small thing. A trifle. I am almost loath to trouble you with it, but there is this promise between us.”

  “A small thing, from you?” Jalaja laughed grimly. “I doubt that greatly. What is it?”

  “It is a matter of timing. There is a living soul who needs your aid.”

  “The soldier? That does seem a paltry thing. You could easily do what is needful yourself.”

  “Alas, I cannot.” The Vixen’s careless tone was strained.

  “And why is that?” Jalaja cocked her head. Diamonds rang against gold. The Vixen said nothing, and Jalaja raised one finger and pointed it at the fox woman. “Because she is a child of Hung-Tse. You cannot touch her life, despite your sneaking.” Again the Vixen made no reply and Jalaja threw back her head and laughed. “So! You have found your limit! I never thought I would see this day.”

  “I am not the one who claims to be the queen of all creation,” muttered the Vixen. “Will you honor the bargain between us?”

  Jalaja’s face grew calculating. She saw that there was some game underneath the Vixen’s words, and she sought to see the way the pieces waited on the board. “The soldier is none of ours. You should be speaking with Szu Yi.”

  The Vixen sighed, and looked down at her hands. “The Goddess of Mercy is rather busy at present. I do not wish to trouble her.”

  Jalaja’s eyes shone with a knowing light. “You do not want her to know that your progeny have snuck back into her realm.”

  The Vixen lifted one hand languidly, studying her perfect fingers, and still avoiding Jalaja’s burning gaze. “She will see for herself, as soon as she looks.”

  “And what will she do then?” Jalaja leaned forward, trying to catch the Vixen’s eye, but the Vixen looked quickly out over the waters, apparently watching the dance. “She and her kin will be furious,” Jalaja answered her own question. “You are risking the anger of a goddess, but you come to use the debt between us for the life of one soldier.”

  The Vixen sighed. Out on the ocean, the dance continued, sword, bowl, lotus, and bird flashing from hand to hand as the goddesses spun out their eternal pattern. “Despite the things that are said about me, I do have some understanding of my place. No matter what the favor, you would not help the likes of me against a fellow goddess.”

  Jalaja lifted her own brows. “Would I not?”

  Slowly, as if it took a moment for Jalaja’s words to sink in, the Vixen turned back toward her. “What is it you are saying?”

  “Tch, and you are the one with the reputation for such subtlety.” Jalaja sat back in her throne, curling her hands lightly around its golden arms. “Her people have been harassing those I protect for too long. Now, I myself could not interfere in her lands in such a fashion …”

  The Vixen’s eyes narrowed. “But if it were I who asked, you could assist in her, shall we say, distraction, and claim it to be against your will.”

  “It would of course be against my will,” said Jalaja evenly. “But what could I do? I am in debt to you, as you point out.”

  Now it was the Vixen’s turn to sit back and take on an air of calculation. “And what of the soldier? She guards a thing I require.”

  “So you do have some care for Isavalta after all.” Jalaja watched her sisters and herself dancing upon the waters. “One of our own will soon be going that way. He could still help, were he in the right place at the right time.”

  “But you would not arrange that for nothing,” said the Vixen blandly.

  “No.” Jalaja’s smile burned like her eyes did. “You would be bound in
debt to me.”

  “Such majesty bound with such a creature as I? No, I hate to see what is so perfect sullied. I was wrong to come.” The Vixen rose to her feet.

  “Now you admit you are wrong!” Jalaja laughed. “This is a time of miracles such as to astonish gods. But stay awhile yet.” She held up her hand and her smile softened, just a little.

  The Vixen sank back into her chair, watching Jalaja closely as if waiting for the trap to be sprung.

  “You can have your entry into Hung-Tse and the life of this soldier, if you acknowledge the debt bond to me, here and now, aloud. It is everything that you wanted, and more than you came for, and as a debt, it is after all a small thing.”

  “For you, perhaps. I do not enter into debt bond with anyone. I have never done so.”

  Jalaja shrugged. “Very well. Then you may have the life of the soldier, which you have asked for, and I … well, I must speak to Szu Yi from time to time, must I not? I fear I cannot promise that I may not make a passing remark about your family’s new travels.”

  The Vixen looked quickly inland, toward the mist that gave the illusion of true distance to the shifting world. Her tongue protruded slightly between her red lips as she considered her options and her normally calm face grew drawn and anxious. Then, at last, the Vixen hung her proud head. “Yes, I acknowledge there is now a debt bond between us. You need do nothing. You do this as a favor to me, and may lay claim to that which is mine in return if I do not fulfill the debt in good order.”

  “Very good.” Jalaja rose, as did the Vixen. The thrones vanished and again there was only shore and sea and the eternal dance. “Go then. Your request will be granted.”

  The Vixen turned away, and was a red fox again, very much out of place on the seaside, slinking away into the dunes with head and tail lowered. Behind her, Jalaja laughed and rejoined herself in the dance.

  But as soon as she topped the dunes, the Vixen paused and looked back on the dance through the screen of thin grasses, her green eyes gleaming.

  “What is mine is yours, O Queen. And since you lay claim to what is mine, I must deliver it to you, in your land, must I not?”