The Firebird's Vengeance (20 page)

But the old woman was not done with her yet. “Is the emperor sincere?”

Always an excellent question with emperors. “He knows what it is to be in harsh bondage.”

Now the old woman looked over her shoulder. They were still out of earshot of the others whose business took them out into the muddy spring. “Will he give the island its freedom?” she asked softly, as if she did not believe their foreign tongue was enough to protect such words from being overheard and understood.

Urshila knew what she should answer. She should attest to the eternity and indivisibility of Isavalta. It was the only answer that could not be interpreted as treasonous. But for a moment, the old woman did not look shrewd, or mischievous, she only looked worried, and a little homesick. Something inside Urshila softened. “I believe he will give it freedom.”
And with that we must be content
.

That thought, however, did not seem to occur to her interrogator. “Is that answer the same as what I asked?” She turned the words so they had a cutting edge.

All Urshila could do was laugh. “Trade words with a sorcerer, Mother, and you will come away with a bad bargain.”

“What are the words of the lord sorcerer?”

“Many, and few to the point. I must go, Honored Mother.” She gathered her hems up again and stepped over the path onto the relatively dry grass on the other side.

“But how far, Daughter,” said the old woman to her back, “and where to?”

Urshila knew she should just keep walking and pretend she’d never heard those words or any others this morning. Now was not the time to argue the fate of Tuukos. Despite knowing all this, she turned, she bent close to the old woman, and she whispered, clearly and fiercely, “Mother, listen to me. My mother left Tuukos when I was a child. Do you have any idea how old I am? I’ll lay you long odds I remember the year of your birth. And for all that time and more have I been ashamed of the blood in me. Look elsewhere for your liberation. I am
not
Valin Kalami.”

There. She’d said it. The man was no savior, failed or otherwise. It was only luck that the emperor did not use what he had done to start up the slaughters again. Luck and, as much as she hated to admit it, the influence of his southern wife.

The old woman pursed her lips and for a moment Urshila thought she was going to spit. Instead she just moved closer, so close Urshila could smell her sour breath. One crabbed hand shot out and gripped her arm tightly. “Such shame. Yet where were you when Kalami threatened Isavalta? You sat quiet in your exile then. If you love Isavalta so much, why did you not challenge the lord sorcerer? No, do not answer me, Daughter.” The old woman pushed her away again. “Answer yourself.”

With surprising dexterity, the old woman reclaimed her burden and hobbled away. Urshila stared after her with the words “Because I did not wish to die” poised on her lips, but some small, treacherous part of her brain was already wondering if that was the whole of the truth.

Urshila fixed her gaze rigidly ahead. She wanted to turn back and return to the palace, but that would feel too much like retreat. She had come out to walk and think, and walk she would.

Should she say anything of this? How would she do so without giving herself away? Daren had already spent the past few months sniffing about for those of Tuukosov heritage in the work yard and sending them packing.

Which made her wonder how it was that old woman, whose name she had not bothered to ask, remained in service. Perhaps she too wore a mask of name and language. In which case she was a fine one to reproach Urshila.

If the new rulers knew their servants were being turned out without cause, they were doing nothing about it. The new chatelaine was certainly doing nothing. A word in her ear, perhaps …? And then have Daren hear about it and wonder why she cared? She had just gained the palace again after thirty years. Thirty years that should have been as nothing. Sorcerers were patient. They could afford to be. She knew that patience and the virtues of it, but there had been thirty years of isolation and poverty, because no one of name would have her in their household after she had been dismissed from imperial service. Thirty years as a midwife and a caster of horoscopes for milkmaids.

Why had she not worked against Valin Kalami? Why had none of them? Before Medeoan took the throne, there were a dozen sorcerers in the imperial court. After she ascended and took Kalami as her lord sorcerer, not one of them, not a single one lifted a finger to stand against him.

So angry? So frightened? So jealous? So patient?

So ready to let Isavalta fall for the sake of wounded pride?

Perhaps because we saw Isavalta rise and are not afraid to see it fall to the whims of emperors, despite all our oaths of loyalty. She bit her lip. Perhaps there is something to the way these southerners do things after all. Without families, children, or countries, perhaps it is necessary to bind us to some cause other than ourselves
.

But even as she thought that, she tasted bitterness like a trace of gall in the back of her throat. Did she want to be chained? To be walled in and imprisoned in a life that was not hers?

Did she want Isavalta or Tuukos? Peace or power?

And how much longer was she willing to wait while emperors rose and fell, taking her fortunes with them?

Damn the woman! There was no time for this. There was a danger hanging over them that would not care who was Isavaltan, who was Kasatani or Stovorish, and who was Tuukosov. That was where her mind should be.

But in trying to turn her thoughts from Tuukos, she found she could think of nothing else, and her frustration just redoubled.

“Mistress Urshila!”

At once startled and relieved, Urshila turned her head. A young boy in imperial blue with a gold sash around his waist splashed through the mud and puddles, barely keeping his feet as he skidded to a halt in front of her.

“What’s the matter?” asked Urshila at once. Despite his exercise, the boy was nearly white.

The boy opened his mouth, but he was panting so hard he could not speak. He swallowed hard to clear his throat and tried again. “The lord sorcerer has collapsed!” he gasped. “They found him … it was … you’re wanted. All the sorcerers are wanted.”

“Take me to him.” Urshila caught up her hems almost to the point of immodesty and followed the page boy, concentrating only on picking her way across mud and slick grass as fast as she could without turning an ankle.

They squelched through the work yard with the guards at the gate giving them no more than a curious glance. They skidded and slipped through the back hallways, leaving dollops of spring behind them. By the time they reached the front of the house, their soles were relatively dry and the boy could run and Urshila could stride close behind.

Lord Daren collapsed?
The words rang through her mind again, and again.
What was he trying to do?

Whatever it was, it must not have worked, or he would have gone straight to the emperor for credit and not bothered with the rest of them.

She had thought the page would take her to Daren’s apartments, but instead he led her up the west stairs to the palace’s third story, where the minor courtiers and
boyars
were housed, and where the lord sorcerer’s new workroom had been created.

It was a long, low chamber running along the northwest wall that had once been a music room. There were still pegs on the walls where instruments had hung and the inlaid floor had a pattern of roses, harps, and lutes. Most of the furnishings had been cleared away to make room for long tables and writing desks. The tables were covered with rich and filigreed artifacts; silver clocks, gold-framed mirrors, bottles of colored glass with swan necks and sealed corks, small chests of sweet-scented woods banded and locked with brass or copper, large oak chests banded with iron.

These were part of Medeoan’s legacy to Isavalta. In her isolation, she had collected or commissioned a startling variety of artifacts that were either themselves magical or could be used in the working of spells. Once they had all been locked in one room of the imperial apartments, but now it was the work of the lord sorcerer and his assistants to sort them out, to understand them and to catalogue them for the treasury.

At the far end of the room, under the largest windows, was a single great table spread with a white linen cloth. On it waited fragments of wire, loose jewels, delicate filigree spheres of bronze, gold, and copper that had been dented and twisted. Gears, cogs, and springs lay in tidy rows between bits of ruined art.

This was Lord Daren’s personal labor. Once these fragments had been the Portrait of Worlds, the greatest tool of divination ever created. If it had still been whole, the Firebird could never have hidden from them. They would have known at once where Bridget’s lost child was, even if she was the tiniest wisp in the Land of Death and Spirit. Medeoan, however, had smashed it before she fled to her doom. Daren had sworn he would repair the Portrait, or duplicate it, if it took a hundred years, as, indeed, it might.

But there was no work in Daren now. He slumped in a heavy chair, his skin a muddy grey and his head hanging to the side as if he lacked the strength to hold it up. His hands twitched and scrabbled at the chair arms, making sounds like mice skittering behind the walls. Korta, the youngest of the recalled sorcerers, stood beside his chair with a wooden goblet in his hands. Red stains on Daren’s beard said he had not even been able to drink the wine.

There should have been a dozen there to attend him, but they were only six, counting the lord sorcerer and young Korta. The recall of the old court sorcerers had been proceeding only slowly. Some had vanished, some were believed murdered, but the emperor was insistent that all should be offered their old places before new court sorcerers should be chosen. He might come to regret that stubbornness.

As it was, the court sorcerers were divided, cantankerous, and few in number. There was crabbed, old Luden who had been bribed by Mother Nacherada to forsake his warlord master and serve the imperial throne, and who had stuck by his oath since then. With him stood Sidor, whose grey beard hung down to his waist and who leaned on a walking stick he had carved with a pattern of braids Urshila still had not been able to decipher. Nedu, the only other woman present, was golden and petite. Her head barely came up to Urshila’s shoulder. Her delicate appearance disguised a subtle sorceress and it was a common mistake to underestimate her.

If either Bridget or Sakra had been sent for, they were not here yet.

“What happened?” demanded Urshila.

Daren lifted his gaze to look at her, but his eyes were cloudy and unfocused. It was Sidor who answered, gripping his stick so tightly that his hand trembled. “The lord sorcerer has seen the Firebird. It is coming.”

Urshila felt herself blanch. “When?”

“Soon,” croaked Daren. His bleary eyes rolled to try to take in the whole assemblage. “I tried … to stand … it scarce looked at me …” His breath rattled in his throat.

Urshila had once healed a man whose house had succumbed to fire. He’d inhaled a quantity of smoke, and his breath had sounded as the lord sorcerer’s did now. It had been most painful, but Urshila’s sympathy refused to rise.

“You tried to stand before the Firebird?” she cried. “Alone? What in Vyshko’s name did you think you could do?”

Daren stared at her. So did all the others.

“We should not be casting blame at this time,” began proper, petite Nedu. “The lord sorcerer is ill.”

“And whose fault is that?” Urshila planted her fists against her hips. “His pride and his need to prove himself in his new position led him to do something the gods themselves would hesitate to do, and look what he has accomplished. We will be without his strength for days.”

“What would you have him do?” croaked Luden. His eyes were still bright in his wizened face. How old was he? Twice her age? Three times? “We are vulnerable here.”

“We are vulnerable everywhere.” Urshila tried to collect herself. This would not do. “We have been scattered to the four winds, our most powerful tools are lost or locked away in chests, for which we do not even have the keys anymore.” She glowered at the nearest box locked with silver and magic. “This thing finds us not only unready but jostling each other for pride and position in a brand-new court.”

“I ask again, Mistress Urshila, what would you have him, have us, do?” Luden spread his hands. “We are as we are, and this thing comes, whether we like our circumstances or not. Would you have us remake its cage? Excellent. Where is that knowledge please?”

Urshila’s mouth hardened into a straight line. Luden’s criticism was a fair one, if wholly unwelcome.

“We must destroy it,” she heard herself say, as if from a long way off.

The statement was greeted with absolute silence, except for the rasping breath of the lord sorcerer.

“Not enough power …” he gasped. “Never be enough …”

“There might be, my lord.” Urshila straightened her back and met the eyes of her compatriots. “The Vixen has informed Bridget Lederle that the daughter she thought lost is still alive. That daughter is a third-generation sorcerer. With such power as she will possess at our command, we will have enough. Bridget wishes to find her daughter. Let me recommend she be allowed to do so. While she is gone, we can find the knowledge to put the power of that child to use.”

Vyshemir help me if I am wrong
, she thought as she watched them take in the possibilities.
But, oh, Vyshemir help me if I am right, for I am offering up the life of a child to try to save such a meaningless thing as an empire
.

It had taken a life to cage the Firebird. How much more would it take to destroy it?

Oh, Vyshemir, help us all
.

Senja Palo, who had masked herself many years ago with the
murhata
name of Samona, hobbled across the muddy work yard. Each step brought muck oozing up through the loose soles of her shoes, adding to the filth already caked on her feet. She entered the scullery with its blast of heat and stink, and shrugged the yoke off her shoulders. She grabbed up one of the buckets that she’d filled from the canal and lugged it across the kitchen. Preparations for the midday meal were proceeding in their usual frenzy of banging, clattering, thumping, and shouting. No one spared a moment for one old woman with a bucket of water. Let her finish whatever her errand happened to be and give her another when her bucket was empty.