"He says that it is my choice to make," Miranda growled. "As if that is any help to me."
Octavia kept rubbing. "So what are you going to do?"
Miranda shook her head. "That's the problem: I've got no idea."
A mighty wind began to blow across the field, ripping the grass out of the soil, tearing the landscape apart. Octavia dissolved wordlessly into some sort of rag and patchwork doll which the wind tore to shreds, ripping her out of Miranda's grasp even as she tried to cling on to her.
"Octavia!" Miranda cried, rising to her feet, looking all around her. "Octavia?"
"Rebecca." The voice was soft and gentle, yet it cut through the howling wind like a knife.
Miranda gasped as her eyes widened. That voice. She recognised it once, though she had not heard it in so long.
"Rebecca," her mother whispered as the wind died down, as the dirt on which Miranda stood was turned to glass. She stood before her mother, the only person whom Miranda had ever allowed to use her given name. She was as Miranda recalled her, and yet not. Her shoulders were no longer hunched with care, her eyes no longer heavy with sorrow. No more did her back bend beneath the burden of three children and the whispers of her neighbours. Her eyes were bright, her skin was radiant, and her hair looked soft as velvet.
"Mother," Miranda murmured, her whole body trembling. She felt...she had never imagined...she felt a tear forming in the corner of her eye. "Mother!"
Her mother crossed the distance between them in an instant, taking her daughter in her arms. "I'm here, Rebecca. I'm always where you need me, my clever girl."
"What should I do, mother?" Miranda asked. "I've lost my way."
"Rebecca, do you remember what I told you, when you tried to heal your own leg?"
Miranda nodded. "You said that God had given me my magic to help others, not myself."
"Exactly," Mother said.
"But why not?" Miranda demanded. "Don't I deserve to be happy?"
Mother laughed. "You don't need magic to be happy, Rebecca. And you know that as well as I do."
"Help me, mother," Miranda whispered. "What am I supposed to do?"
"You don't need me to tell you what to do, you never did," Mother said. "Did you ever wonder why I spent so much more time with the boys than I did with you?"
Miranda nodded.
"It's because I knew that you'd be fine without me, and I couldn't say the same for them. My clever girl. So long as you remember that your magic is there to help others, to really help them, as they need to be helped, then you will do very well. And look after your brothers; they aren't as wise as you."
Miranda giggled. "I'll try and keep them out of trouble. Mother?"
"Yes, Rebecca?"
"Is this real? Or am I imagining all of this?"
Mother smiled. "What do you think?"
And then she woke up.
Beside her, in bed, Octavia murmured something indistinct, shifting a little under the covers.
Moving carefully, so as not to disturb her, Miranda sat up. The sky was dark outside, it was still night. The moon was barely visible through the shutters. Very little sound from the city reached her in her high tower, so she could almost believe the night was quiet. "If I wasn't dreaming, couldn't you have been a little less vague? A simple statement of who was right would have sufficed."
"It's strange, isn't it, how we expect wisdom from the dead, even when they were not particularly wise in life," Silwa said. "After all, the dead have no means of acquiring fresh knowledge, so logically the living should be better equipped to solve the problems which confront them."
Miranda gave a startled squeak and nearly jumped up in the air, barely stopping herself from falling to the floor with such a great crash that she would have woken Octavia for sure. Silwa stood leaning against the wall, her servant's garb discarded in favour of a pristine white slip, a spear held in the crook of her arm, resting on her shoulder. A pair of radiant white-gold wings spread from wall to wall.
"How did you..." Miranda began, before glancing from Silwa's wings to the open window. "Never mind. Why are you here?"
"To speak to you," Silwa said. "Hopefully I may be able to offer you better council than the dead. Or is my advice so unwelcome to you?"
"There is too much I don't understand about you to take your advice readily," Miranda said.
Silwa smiled. "You're very wise, my dear. Never take someone's advice until you can fathom what their agenda is."
Miranda shook her head. "Quirian will kill you if he finds you here."
"He will certainly try," Silwa said, patting the spearshaft with one hand. "This is not Line Breaker, nor any substitute for it, but I cannot fear Quirian, having done battle against Cupas."
"Why?" Miranda asked.
"Why what, dear?"
"Why the deception?" Miranda asked. "What business had a god in disguising themselves as a slave and serving me?"
Silwa's smile widened a little. "You are more important than you give yourself credit for. Why should I not wish to know you, the first inheritor of the Aurelian magic in centuries? You may be vital to my plans one day, and it would not do for you to be a stranger to me at that point."
"Your plans?" Miranda said. "What plans?"
"My plans to defeat evil, Miranda, my plans to save mankind and perhaps the world," Silwa said casually, as if such things were mere trivial baubles of no consequence. "But leave such things for now; I am here to council you, if I can, not burden you with distant troubles. Or is my presence so unwelcome that you will bid me go?"
"You are less unwelcome now than you were as Abigail," Miranda said. "Your servility offended me then, but I understand it now. You could afford to take a relaxed attitude to your enslavement because you knew it was only temporary. Would that the same could be said of all those bound in chains."
"You have been more concerned with princes than with slaves recently," Silwa said.
Miranda closed her eyes and sighed. "I know. Sometimes it pricks my conscience, that I have so much while others have so little. Other times I tell myself that I have more because I can do more, because I am more. Whether I am entitled to this seat of power over any fishwife in the street I do not know, I only know that I have this position and am as entitled to it as the Lord Commenae." She paused for a moment. "Two brothers and a sister. One a good if somewhat bland man, with a wife of I am very fond, whom I would go so far as to say I love. The other brother is grasping, greedy and full of low cunning. And the sister may be clever, but it is impossible to tell beneath all the insane nonsense she professes to believe in. If you had to give supreme power to one of them, which would it be?"
"None of them," Silwa said. "Supreme power is too much to be given even to the very best of men, and they are none of them flawless."
"But the power exists, the golems exist," Miranda said. "Someone must control them."
"The golems can be destroyed," Silwa said. "As for the power, it is in your keeping, my dear. Do you wish to be controlled your entire life?"
"Of course not."
"Then go," Silwa said. "Leave the city. Leave the Empire, if you wish, though you may find life in the wilds of Mavenor very trying for you. You are under no obligation to serve at the whim of princes or Emperors. In fact it might be better if you did not. Humans have a lamentable habit of collating physical, magical and political power in their minds as though the three had anything to do with one another. So great warriors become kings, kings are expected to be great warriors and mages are lauded above common men for an accident of birth."
"Leave?" Miranda said. "That is the counsel of the goddess of wisdom? Run away? Since when has that solved anything?"
"It has saved more than one life," Silwa remarked. "Including mine, upon occasion."
"Helen Manzikes has tried to kill me, and failed," Miranda said. "My life is not in such great danger that I will turn my tail and flee, abandoning all those who depend on me, those I love."
"It is not only your
life you put in danger by staying here," Silwa said darkly.
"And I will put lives in danger if I go," Miranda replied. "Portia could die without my protection."
"She has managed these two years without you."
"Two years," Miranda said. "Two years in which she has failed to give the Emperor a child, failed to give the Empire an heir. She has no friends among the nobility. Soon they will start to whisper about her: 'the Empress is barren. She will never birth an heir to the throne.' They will demand that she be set aside, that the Emperor take a more fertile wife, a maid of some good family possessed of important connections and alliances. And Portia...Portia they will kill, for the heinous crime of being born devoid of great name or great wealth, and for rising higher than she should have dared to climb. She will die without me."
"Why do you care about that?" Silwa asked. "She is nothing like you."
"If I only cared for people who were like me I'd be a monster, and a very lonely one at that," Miranda said. "Besides, in a world that so admires warriors and spits on peace, I think that someone ought to stand for lovelorn girls who dream of romance." She glanced back towards Octavia. "Certainly the wider world will not. And that is another reason I must stay."
"To make the Empire more respectful of lovelorn girls?" Silwa asked with mockery in her tone.
Miranda shook her head. "You tell me to walk away, but in one respect I think Princess Romana is right: the Empire cannot continue as it is."
"Why not?"
"Because it's falling apart," Miranda said, as though that should have been obvious. "Something has to be done!"
"That 'something' does not require the Aurelian magic."
"Then what do you suggest?" Miranda demanded angrily.
Silwa was silent for a moment, staring through the gaps in the shutter out at the night sky. "The Empire must survive," she murmured. "There is no time for another way, not now. Fragmentation will mean disaster. But the Empire cannot be defended, mankind cannot be defended, by golems of stone. Without its army the Empire is worthless."
"Then it is worthless," Miranda replied. It was a sentiment she found herself increasingly in agreement with.
Silwa said, "Such a pity. I had hoped that you would understand."
"You haven't given me anything to understand," Miranda said.
"Perhaps not," Silwa said. "But I doubt you'd appreciate it if I did. And now I must go. I don't want to get you into trouble after all." She placed a hand on Miranda's shoulder. "Farewell for now, my dear. We will meet again." She brushed past Miranda and leapt off the balcony. Her white-gold wings embraced the air and bore her up, carrying her before the stars and over the rooftops of Eternal Pantheia.
Miranda watched her go, wondering why she would take such an interest in the survival of the Empire. Why should a god concern herself with the realms of men? What was it to heaven if princes rose or fell? Michael believed that temporal princes derived their power from the will of the gods, but Miranda had witnessed too much here to believe that. If the Emperor was divinely ordained, then how could Prince Antiochus go against the will of the gods in conspiring for the throne? How could Princess Romana call herself a faithful servant of the Empress while at the same time dreaming of the day when she would replace the Empress' anointed earthly sovereign? It was all smoke and mirrors, a distraction for the credulous, a way to keep the poor in line in spite of all their hardship. Power derived from strength, nothing more, and the reason that the nobility so hated her was that she represented a challenge to the military strength that had, for centuries, been their monopoly. But she had power of her own, power to match theirs perhaps, and they did not like that one bit.
Miranda smiled at that. She did not much care for them either. They would hurt those she cared for if they could, and she would not allow that. She did not seek their destruction, but nor would she flinch from it, if it became necessary.
"The Empire is worthless without its army, you say," Miranda mused. "But it strikes me that, without its army, the Empire might finally have a chance to become a decent nation."
The door opened, and Ascanius Posci came in, his sword drawn and a knife in his free hand. Julian slunk in behind, his pace more measured, with only a hand upon the hilt of a blade still in its sheath.
Ascanius' dark eyes darted here and there. "I thought I heard something."
"Silwa was here," Miranda said softly. "She's gone now."
Ascanius' face gave nothing away. Julian was not so successful at dissembling. "Gods above. A Novar god, living amongst us."
"We don't know she was a god," Ascanius said.
"Lord Quirian seems to think she is," Julia murmured.
"Lord Quirian doesn't know everything, else he'd be a god himself," Ascanius snapped.
"I believe her," Miranda murmured. "Why would anyone lie about something like that? And she does have power, I've seen it myself."
Ascanius blinked. "It might be so, but I hope it isn't. Gods shouldn't concern themselves with mortal men. Their place is being worshipped, not walking amongst us." His eyes darted from Miranda to Octavia to Julian, as if he feared that any one of them might also be a young god in disguise.
"Do you fear she may have seen you at your worst?" Miranda asked.
Julian said, "Unless she was in Oretar with us, there's no way she could have seen us at our worst. We might not be at our best here, but we are much better than we've been before."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it," Ascanius said. "Gods...what a job this has turned out to be."
"What did Silwa want from you?" Julian asked.
"She wanted me to leave the city," Miranda said. "Turn my back on all of this. Go...anywhere but here."
A smirk flashed across Ascanius' face. "God or no that might not be such a bad idea. Golems, princes, politics; is that really what you thought you were getting into when you came to this city?"
"No," Miranda admitted. "But it is the place that I have made for myself nonetheless. I cannot say I love this game the nobles play, I cannot say I want to play it...but having found myself seated at their table I do not feel I can just get up and leave. Not until the round is done and won."
"And if you die?" Ascanius asked. "What then? What will she do?" He jerked his thumb towards Octavia, still slumbering.
Miranda looked away. "So you would have me run away?"
Ascanius was silent for a moment, his breathing heavy. "You could come with us, love, to Dervalut. We'll make you a queen among the savages, Julian and I. Someone as clever as you, as kind as you, as powerful as you... you'll have them living better than the poor in Eternal Pantheia in no time. And you'll feel alive out there, I guarantee it. I never felt so alive as when I was out in the field, even in the mountains. To be your own master, to make your own decisions, to be beholden to none, with no lords or Emperors to look down their noses at you? Doesn't that sound grand? Doesn't that sound better than this place, with all these proud patricians acting like they're so much better than us?"
"You told me that your dream was to go there yourself and become king," Miranda said. "Now you offer to serve me there, as your queen? Why go to Dervalut only to serve another?"
She looked back at Ascanius in time to see him shrug. "You aren't like others that I've served: the lords, the officers. You...you care. I think if you were a queen, you'd care for your subjects. You wouldn't use them like they were weapons in your hands; you wouldn't send them off to die in wars for glory or pride. You wouldn't get them killed and then tell yourself it was all well done so long as it was for the greatness of the realm. You have a good heart, Miranda. That's rare enough in my experience. But to combine it with a wit quick as yours...any nation would be lucky to have you sitting its throne; and I think that I could serve you more easily than any other man alive."
Miranda smiled. "If you weren't well aware that I was taken, I'd almost think that you were confessing love to me."
Ascanius smirked. "You're a bit young for me, love, I'm afraid."
"That wouldn't stop you, if she fancied men," Julian muttered.
Miranda chuckled. "Well, it was very gallant of you to offer, but I don't think the wilds would make me feel alive, quite the opposite. I may not care for politics but city comforts certainly have their appeal. And I will not run, not just because I might lose."
"Because of your pride?" Julian asked.
"Because people are depending on me," Miranda said. "The whole of the Empire is depending on me."
"The Empire doesn't know you exist," Ascanius spat.
"Yet they need me nonetheless," Miranda insisted. "Things cannot go on as they are."
Ascanius laughed sourly.
"What?" Miranda asked.
"You can talk all you want about being pragmatic, sensible, seeing the world clearly all that; but you're as much a hero as the best of them. Or the worst."
Miranda thought about it for a moment, and could not restrain the smile from her face. "I suppose I am, in a way. Goodnight, Ascanius. Goodnight, Julian."
"Filia," Julian said, bowing his head and touching his forelock.
"Goodnight love," Ascanius said with a shake of his head. "For what it's worth, I'm rooting for you."
"Miranda?" Empress Portia asked anxiously, leaning forward to place one pale hand gently on Miranda's arm. "Miranda, darling, are you all right?"
Miranda started a little. She had been thinking about Silwa and last night's conversation and had clearly allowed herself to become so distant from what was going on around her that her companions had obviously noticed. Portia looked concerned; Princess Romana seemed more intrigued than anything.
Miranda smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, Portia, I was preoccupied. I trust you weren't offended."
"Oh, of course not," Portia said. Today she was wearing a blue dress that brought out the colour of her eyes, with a string of diamonds hanging loosely from around her snowy neck. Her luscious golden curls dangled artlessly around her lovely face. "What's the matter, Miranda? Anything that I can do to help, you only have to ask and I will see it done. What is good of being Empress if you can't help your friends, eh?"
"A princess should serve the Empire, not the other way around," Romana murmured. The princess was not wearing armour today, but rather a gown of lavender with the occasional touch of purple here and there, her purple hair - of the three siblings of the Imperial family only she had inherited the purple hair and purple eyes that were the legacy of Aegea's bloodline - arranged in an elegant twist behind a silver tiara. Portia either did not hear her or pretended not to.
Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
