Wren the Fox Witch es-6

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Omar knelt beside the prince and poked the trinket with a single finger. He whispered, “Koschei’s?”

  Radu nodded.

  Omar held out his hand and the wide-eyed prince yanked the chain over his head and dropped the golden heart into his palm. Omar closed his hand around it, stood up, and began walking back up the street. The soldiers parted before him, dashed back to either side to let him pass. He climbed the slope of the road, feeling for the first time how truly steep it really was, and how sharply the houses seemed to lean in order to keep their walls true and plumb.

  He stepped on things. Red things, black things, blue cloth. His mind still recoiled from it, but his blood and bones had no strength left for fear or pain or misery. His body was numb and empty. He walked over the dead bodies, up and up the hill, until he stood before Koschei the Deathless.

  The Rus giant grinned at him. “Grigori! There you are!”

  “Yes, here I am, and God forgive me for it.” He looked up into the barbarian’s shining black eyes, and shoved his seireiken into the man’s chest. The sun-steel blade slipped in as though drenched in oil, and the man’s flesh burst into flame at the touch of the white-hot blade.

  Koschei reached for the blade, only to have it incinerate his fingers on contact, and he fell to the ground, his teeth clenched, and only a wordless grunting growl emanating from his throat. Omar stood over him, held out his fist, and then let the little golden heart fall. The trinket struck the blazing white sword and vanished with a soft hiss.

  Instantly, Koschei fell still and silent. The flames quickly engulfed his body, which slumped down flat on the ground. The seireiken burned through the flesh in half a breath, and then toppled over onto the ground, where the cobblestones began to glow a dull red and the puddles of blood began to boil. Omar picked up the weapon slowly, and by the time he had raised it up to look at the blade, it was entirely clean, washed pure by its own divine fire. Omar exhaled slowly and slipped the sword away.

  Then he walked back down the street to the bottom where the soldiers and marines and princes stood, still watching him in curious and wary silence. He looked over at one of the young Hellan marines, and said, “Take me back to the palace now, please. I’m ready to leave.”

  Chapter 26. Wreckage

  Wren stood very still in the half-light of the underground chamber. Two of their torches had gone out and no one had relit them. Everyone stood or sat in silence gazing up at the black ceiling, listening.

  The bombs thumped and thudded, and tiny trickles of dust fell on the silent clerks and servants and soldiers.

  Boom, boom-boom… boom.

  Wren’s fox ears twitched with each reverberation as she tried to guess exactly where the bombs were falling.

  They’re not falling on top of us, that’s for sure.

  As the minutes passed, the detonations grew fainter by degrees until the floor stopped shuddering and the inkwells stopped clinking and even Wren herself had trouble hearing the deep vibrations in the earth.

  “They’re moving away,” she said softly.

  Tycho nodded. “But there are three of them out there. They might pass over the city one by one. The next one might be coming.”

  “Unless Vlad’s plan worked,” Wren said. “What if they reached Stamballa and managed to distract the other two airships? Maybe only one of them is over Constantia.”

  “I have little faith in the prince at this point,” Salvator said. He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Still, it may be that the airships were ordered to attack different targets. One to bomb the palace. The others to attack the bridges or harbors.”

  “Maybe.” The major turned away and caught the attention of a young soldier standing near one of the extinguished torches. “Corporal, I want you to run up and take a quick look around outside. Just get a glimpse of where the airships are and which way they’re going, and come back. Understood?”

  The young man nodded and jogged out through the main doors.

  “I should go too,” Wren said.

  “Just wait a moment. Let’s see what the corporal finds,” Tycho said. “If there’s trouble out there, we could find ourselves down here for a very long time. And to be blunt, you’re the strongest weapon we have to protect the Duchess. So if you need aether to protect her, then I want to keep you down here near the aether.”

  Wren pouted.

  Well, he did say I’m the strongest one down here. I suppose I can’t be too upset with him.

  It took several minutes for the corporal to cross back through the length of the Sunken Palace, climb the long stair to the surface, and scout the area, and then come back to report. When he did jog back in through the doors, he was sweating and breathing hard.

  “All clear, sir,” he said breathlessly. “There’s only one airship on our side of the Strait, and it’s not dropping bombs anymore. It’s moving north along the waterfront at the moment. The other two airships are out over the water. One of the men upstairs thinks they might be there to bomb our ships, eventually.”

  “Good, thank you.” Tycho dismissed the young soldier and turned back to Wren. “There. Safe as houses, so to speak.”

  The major took a few minutes to speak with the Duchess and arranged for most of the soldiers to remain down in the palace with Lady Nerissa and her staff while Tycho ventured out with a handful of guards and Wren. Salvator sat in his chair breathing hard, and at one point he announced that he would remain at the Duchess’s side to ensure her safety. The Duchess replied with a thin smile.

  The journey back through the cells and cisterns was dark and dank, and seemed to go on forever, but eventually Wren and Tycho reached the stairs, and those seems to go on forever as well. Finally they emerged from the small mausoleum and stepped out onto the brown lawn of the empty estate and looked up.

  Smoke filled the eastern sky. Some of it rose from within the walls of the Palace of Constantine, but even more seemed to be rising from the far shores of Stamballa. The bright glare of the afternoon sky hurt her eyes and she slipped her blue glasses onto her nose, and looked again. And there, in the distance, she saw the tiny flickers of yellow and red where the homes of the Turks were burning.

  “The palace.” Tycho’s voice fell with exhaustion and misery.

  Wren looked again at the base of the smoke and saw the shattered edges of the walls and the buildings just barely visible in the distance. Higher and to her left, she saw the lone airship hovering above another neighborhood farther north. But the tiny gray and white houses and shops along the shore appeared to be intact, as did the tiny white fishing boats bobbing along the waterfront.

  “I suppose there’s no point in going back to look right now,” Tycho said. “It’ll be just as broken and ruined tomorrow as it is today. The bastards. The Palace of Constantine is fifteen centuries old… or it was. At least we got everyone out in time. At least no one was hurt.”

  Wren nodded. “Do you know where everyone else went?”

  “No, there wasn’t time to plan anything. We just sent out the word to move as far from the water as possible. Why?” Tycho smiled a little. “Were you hoping to round up the kitchen staff to have a little hot lunch?”

  “No, I was just wondering where they took Yaga. I wanted to check on her, if I could.” She watched the playful glint in his eye fade. “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just… She was still in the tower, wasn’t she?”

  Wren nodded. “Sleeping. But the maids would have gotten her, wouldn’t they?”

  Tycho set his jaw for a moment, and then said, “I really can’t say. In all that confusion, in all that rush and chaos, I really don’t know if anyone would have remembered to go get her. I didn’t give any instructions about her, and I doubt that any of the servants would have gone looking for Yaga on their own. I don’t know that for certain, but I doubt it.”

  Wren felt her face tightening up as she pressed her lips together and looked away. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. Regret? Anger? Fear? She
crossed her arms over her belly, and with each hand felt the many silver bracelets on her wrists. “I left her there, defenseless, asleep. And I didn’t think…”

  “Well, even if she was caught in the bombing, she is immortal after all,” Tycho said quietly. “She can survive anything, can’t she?”

  Wren nodded slowly. “She’s alive. But she’s still an old woman. If something fell on her, if she’s buried in the rubble, if she’s in pain, then that’s exactly where she’ll stay until someone finds her.” Wren started walking across the lawn.

  “Wait!” Tycho ran after her, and his four guards ran after him.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” Wren said. “You have duties here, I know that. But this is something I have to do.”

  Why? Why is it something I have to do? I don’t owe Yaga anything. She put me through hell. She nearly killed me.

  But she’s also just like me.

  And now she’s all alone.

  Tycho fell into step beside her, and she slowed a little to let him keep pace with her, and the other Hellans followed closed behind them. They hurried up the wide empty avenue behind the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, with its marvelous golden domes which appeared to have survived the bombing unscathed, and they soon came to the palace gates and entered the First Courtyard.

  The bombing had begun to their right, punching huge black holes in the green park to the southeast of the palace, but then the bombs had fallen on the buildings as they worked north and west. The Church of Saint Irene had lost most of its north wall, and half of its roof. The stables along the eastern side of the Second Courtyard had been reduced to gravel and splinters, except for the last three stalls, which remained miraculously intact. The doors and columns of the portico of the Chamber of Petitions lay in shattered pieces all across the courtyard, and much of the building itself was burning, and every few minutes something inside it would moan and growl and crash. And on the far side of the courtyard, the Tower of Justice lay on its side, smashed into dozens of large chunks of masonry and stone like a broken finger pointing to the south.

  Wren ran across the courtyard and climbed up on the rubble of the tower, scrambling over the cracked stones and charred beams, until she reached what had once been the central stair that had spiraled up to the balcony and down into the cellar. Now, all she could see were ragged slabs of rock covered in gray dust. She knelt down and placed her hands on the stones, and with a few gentle swirls of her soul, she dragged a few fragile threads of aether back and forth through the earth beneath her, searching for a tug, for a sensation of resistance. Searching for a soul.

  Wren opened her eyes. “She’s down there.”

  Tycho nodded. “Can you use your power to lift the stones?”

  She shook her head as she reached down and picked up a small rock, and tossed it away. “Aether can only touch the spirit, not the flesh, and definitely not a stone.”

  She threw aside another rock, and another. Tycho and the four guards climbed up beside her, and they all began tossing the bits of debris away from the tower stairs.

  After a quarter hour, they had managed to throw, carry, or push aside most of the rubble covering the entrance to the cellar and found the way down blocked by one last block of masonry, a large section of wall that had not broken and now stood at a slight angle in the stairwell itself, leaving gaps that only a mouse could get through.

  The six diggers sat down to rest.

  “You know,” said Tycho. “The floor under us still solid, so the ceiling over Yaga’s head is probably still intact as well. She’s trapped for the moment, but she may not be hurt at all.”

  Wren nodded. The thought had occurred to her as well, but there was no way to know for certain and she didn’t want to guess or assume. She wanted to know. She knelt by one of the gaps around the fallen wall and called down, “Yaga! Hello? Can you hear me? It’s Wren!”

  There was no answer.

  “Look for tools,” Tycho said to his men. “Hammers, shovels, anything. Maybe we can break up this wall, or pull it out of the way somehow.”

  The guards nodded and wandered off in separate directions.

  Wren sat down by the top of the stair to wait, and Tycho sat beside her. After a moment he said, “What you did before in the cistern, to save the Duchess, to save all of us, that was… the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.”

  She wanted to smile. She wanted to enjoy that moment, but she was too tired and worried and distracted.

  What happened to Yaga? Where is everyone else? What am I supposed to do next?

  Wren reached over and took his hand. “Thanks.”

  Boots thumped and crunched across the gravel courtyard behind them, approaching at a quick step, and Wren turned, hoping to see one of the guards returning with some remarkable device for clearing huge walls but instead she something more familiar. “Omar?”

  The Aegyptian’s face was paler than usual and his eyes were a bit narrower, and his lips a bit thinner. But he strode along quite quickly and came to stand at the bottom of the rubble, and looked up at her. “I thought I might find you here. But I didn’t think the damage would be this bad. At least, I’d hoped the palace would be spared, somehow.” He looked ill.

  Wren stood up. “Are you all right?”

  Omar shrugged and glanced away, squinting at the quietly burning ruins all around them.

  “Vlad?” Tycho asked. “Koschei?”

  “Vlad is fine. So is his brother.” Omar hesitated. “Koschei is dead.”

  Wren swallowed.

  Koschei is dead?

  She pointed to the broken wall behind her. “Yaga is trapped in here. The men are looking for tools to get her out.”

  Omar grimaced and climbed up the rubble to stand beside her. “Move back,” he said softly as he drew his seireiken. The sword’s blinding light swept over the destruction, painting the near sides of the stones white and the shadowed sides black. And then Omar slammed the tip of the sword into a fine crack in the broken wall, and a small chunk broke away. He struck the wall again, and another piece fell. Bit by bit, he chipped away at the stone until the pieces were small enough for them to lift, and they cleared the entrance to the stair in silence.

  Down in the cellar the only light came from Omar’s sword and it revealed that while the ceiling had remained intact, one of the walls had toppled into the room, dropping several large stone blocks onto the legs of the white-haired woman stretched out on the pile of carpets in the center of the space.

  As Omar moved to deal with the stones, Wren knelt beside the woman’s head, gently stroking her silvery hair back from her wrinkled face. “Yaga? Can you hear me? We’ve come to take you out of here. And there’s someone else here. Omar. I mean, Grigori. Grigori is here, too.”

  Yaga sighed and her eyes opened halfway. “Grigori?”

  Omar continued clearing the rocks. “I’m here.”

  But the old woman didn’t look at him. She looked up at Wren and said, “I’m tired, little sister.”

  “I know. You still need more sleep.”

  “No, not that.” Yaga shook her head. “I’m tired of all this. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to slip away into the quiet places, the dark places, and sleep forever.”

  Wren glanced at Tycho and Omar, who could only give her sympathetic looks in reply. Wren said, “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I’m ready to die now, you silly girl.” Yaga stared up at the ceiling through lidded, unfocused eyes.

  “What about your son, Koschei?” Wren asked.

  Do I tell her that he’s already dead? He was her entire world yesterday, but now, everything has changed.

  Omar paused in his work and glanced at them.

  “He’s a grown man,” Yaga whispered. “And I’m a grown woman. And this is my life, and my choice. I want to die now, please.”

  Wren leaned back and looked at Omar again. “What should I do?”

  He took half a step back, his face lined
with age and worry in the harsh light of the seireiken. “Do whatever you think is right. Stop asking me. She’s talking to you, not me.”

  Useless.

  Wren looked down at Yaga again. “All right.”

  Yaga pulled the necklace from inside her dress and pressed the little golden heart into Wren’s hand. “Take it.”

  Wren looked at the sun-steel pendant. “I can’t destroy this. I can’t release your soul. We’ll need Omar’s sword. Your soul can rest in the seireiken.”

  Yaga grimaced. “Is there no other place? Your ring, perhaps?”

  Wren glanced down at the golden band of Denveller and she thought of the eight valas already in there, and what it might be like to have Baba Yaga among them.

  “My ring? Not one of your bracelets?”

  Yaga laid one of her thin hands on Wren’s arm, and she smiled. “Your ring.”

  Wren nodded. “All right.”

  The last time someone gave her soul to this ring, she bit off the end of her own tongue and smashed her bloody face on it.

  She held out her hand with the ring toward the old witch. “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  Omar pushed aside the last of the stones and gently moved Yaga’s broken legs up closer to where she was sitting. The old Rus woman winced and pressed her hand to her foot for a moment, and then exhaled and opened her eyes. “It’s fine now. Thank you, Grigori.” And she turned her back to him.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just need a small cut, a little blood,” said Wren.

  “Don’t be squeamish, child.” Yaga took one of the small bird skulls dangling from her necklace and ripped its beak across her open palm, releasing a small red sea into the center of her hand. “Quickly!”

  Wren shivered as Yaga reached out and wrapped her bloody hand around Wren’s fingers, and the ring of Denveller. As the blood faded into the golden ring, the old woman’s face went gray and slack and she fell over on her blankets, dead. Wren looked from the body to the ring on her finger and back again.