The Firebird's Vengeance (59 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

The Vixen stalked toward the sacred grove, she paused, one foot raised, ears turned forward. Nothing moved. Seemingly relaxed, she trotted forward, pausing to nose around the bases of the scarlet trees, taking in the scents of the past and the future.

The grass did not even rustle beneath her feet as she came to the aftermath. Human bodies lay scattered in every direction. The child collapsed against her mother. Before them huddled Xuan, the Minister of Fire, small, middle-aged, and merely human once more. The woman soldier lay sprawled beside the rainwater pool, staining its waters red with her blood. The two sorcerers, one old, one young, fell side by side, the younger still with his hands on the shaft where it protruded from the chest of the elder.

The spring wind blew. The Vixen sneezed. “Dear me,” she murmured to herself. “How very untidy.”

Picking her way between the fallen humans, the Vixen walked up to the edge of the pool. She paused once, briefly to breathe across Bridget Lederle’s face, and once to lap at Mae Shan’s wounded arm. She sat down by the edge of the pool, and scratched her chin with her hind foot.

“Valin Kalami,” she said. “I think you had better come out of there.”

The ghost rose from the pool of night, naked and shivering with the cold and fear of his second death.

“No!” he wailed when he saw her and her fangs and hungry eyes. “No! You have no more claim on me!”

“Nor has she.”

The Vixen cocked her head, baring her fangs as she did. Behind her, Baba Yaga leaned on her pestle, her two great mastiffs at her sides.

“You are wrong,” the Vixen flattened her ears against her skull. “He shed the blood of my children, there is no renouncing that claim.”

“Your children lost him, he came to me. Will you fight for him?” The mastiffs too laid their ears back, baring their teeth from under curling lips, and their teeth were sharp as razors. “Will you take him back from me?”

The Vixen looked at the dogs, growling and straining against their mistress’s invisible hold. She looked at the Old Witch with her iron teeth and her pestle stained by ancient blood. She knew by scent which gods, which powers, had belonged to that blood. She looked at the eyes older than Grandfather Death.

She looked at the thin human ghost that would have killed her sons for his games of power.

“Very well,” she sighed. “Take him.”

The ghost tried to scream, but with a snap of her long fingers, Baba Yaga choked off the sound. Then, she reached out and plucked him up, and stuffed him into the leather sack at her waist.

“Very good,” said the Old Witch. “Remember this the next time you want something that is mine.”

She vanished. The Vixen whisked her tail back and forth a few times. “Oh, I shall, you may be assured.”

One of the humans stirred. Bridget. The Vixen trotted over and sat on her haunches.

Bridget’s eyes fluttered open. “You,” she began.

“Yes.” The Vixen scratched her chin.

Displaying a laudable mother’s instinct, her hand went immediately out to her child. She felt the warmth of the girl’s skin, and the rise and fall of her chest.
Alive
, she thought.
My child is alive
.

Only then did other thoughts come into her mind, her gaze darted to the bodyguard and the sorcerers. “What about …?”

“The others?” The Vixen scratched her chin. “You have done a few services for me, whether you knew it or not. I have reason to be grateful. So, I have decided those with you will live.”

She swallowed. This, the Vixen saw, was only partially welcome news. Still, the woman was sensible enough not to argue with the current position of herself and her family. “Thank you.”

The Vixen inclined her head. “You’re welcome.”

Bridget gently moved her daughter’s head and arm so she could stand, test her strength, try to make herself ready. For surely, something else must happen. The woman was not yet ready to believe nothing more would happen to her. “What about Kalami?” she said, gazing into the sacred and bloody pool where shattered glass now glimmered in the mud.

The Vixen showed her yellow teeth. “He will not trouble you again. Baba Yaga has him.”

Again proving her basic sensibility, fear took hold in Bridget at the mention of the Old Witch. “She …?”

“Yes.” The Vixen plunked back onto haunches, nosing her tail, setting her fur in order. “You see, she is wise in many things, the Witch with the Iron Teeth, although don’t tell her I said so.” The Vixen flashed her open-mouthed grin. “She told me once that my children were unsafe guardians for Kalami, that they would grow bored with the chase and careless in their hunt. Valin Kalami would have been free from us, eventually. She was right.

“The Old Witch, however, does not grow bored, and she will not ever let go of what is hers.”

The Vixen’s fangs shone briefly as she laughed, and then she was gone, leaving Bridget on her own to cope with the living and the dead.

In the end, it took them two days to climb down from the mountain. They went slowly, trying to regain their strength, but it was not easy. Food was scarce in the early spring, even with what Anna remembered of her father’s teachings. Anna would only speak sporadically on the way down from the forest, and mostly kept close to Mae Shan, who tried to find ways to comfort and cheer her, while at the same time supporting Xuan, who, while strong, seemed bewildered at having only a human body and human mind again.

The boat was still on the shore. Now that Sakra knew its nature, he was able to work with the enchanted sails and take them round the coast to the city of Ahde. They made it to shore safely, but could make it no farther. Tuukosov fishermen found their boat stuck in the harbor mud, dirty, bloody, worn from hunger and thirst, and recognizing them as foreigners, called the Isavaltan guards, who in turn called for carts to carry them to the high house, and Lord Master Peshek.

When Bridget at last awoke after a full night’s sleep in a clean bed, with nothing more hanging over her than the weight of memory, she closed her eyes, and then opened them again, to be sure she was not dreaming.

She did not ache. If she was hungry and thirsty, it was with the usual proportions of waking up first thing in the morning after a long sleep. It felt … luxurious, like something to be celebrated. There was so much to do, so much to try to understand and reconcile, but now, for this moment, she could just be.

Bridget swung her feet out of bed. Feeling positively wanton, she threw on only the lightest robe and slippers that had been provided. Half-dressed by Isavaltan standards, she slipped out into the grey stone hallway and down the winding stairs to the spring garden contained by the high house’s daunting stone walls.

The air smelled of flowers, mud, greenery, and distantly cooking porridge. There was no scent of ash, of burning, of blood. There was only the world coming to life. Bridget stretched up her arms, spreading her fingertips out toward the sun as if to cup it in her hands and bring it to earth to admire. She was alive, alive!

Bridget swung her arms down with a satisfied sigh, and saw Anna standing in the shadow of a bush laden with lavender buds, and staring.

Caught between embarrassment and the strong desire to run to the girl and wrap her arms around her, Bridget settled for closing her robe a little more decently.

“Hello, Anna.” She managed to say the words fairly smoothly.

Anna started to bow, but then stopped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what the custom is here.”

There was something in the way she spoke, half confusion, half frustration, that made Bridget smile. “Between you and me, I think hello will do.”

“Oh.”

She was beautiful. Her hair hung in long, black ringlets, badly in need of a comb. Her eyes were wide, and slightly slanted above her high cheekbones. Oh, she was going to break hearts with those eyes one day. She was going to be tall too.

Bridget’s knees quivered, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stand up much longer. The garden was studded with stone benches, the nearest one still damp from the night and partly moss-covered, but Bridget sat down anyway, and searched desperately for a neutral topic of conversation.

“Have you seen Mae Shan this morning?”

“She is with Minister Xuan in the other wing of the garden.” Anna looked over her shoulder, seeing if they had company or looking for a way to escape this conversation, Bridget couldn’t tell. “Shall I go get her for you?”

“No, that’s all right.”
Don’t leave. Stay here. Let me look at you, my beautiful, beautiful child
. “Is she well?”

“She says she’s much better.”

“Good.” The wind blew hard for a moment, making the heavy, gaudy flowers nod and bow. Anna fidgeted. Bridget tried not to knot her fingers together.

“And you,” she said, hoping it was not too daring, that she wouldn’t frighten her child away. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m much better too, thank you.” It was polite, a reply she had been probably taught to make. It told Bridget nothing except that her daughter had manners, which was good to know, but not what she wanted. She wanted to reach out, to end this feeling of Anna being directly in front of her and yet a thousand miles away.

Because there was nothing else for her to do, Bridget decided to be honest.

“Do you have any questions, Anna? I don’t know where to begin to talk about everything that’s happened over the past few days, let alone how … we came to be here.”

Anna dug her toe into the lawn and looked down as she did. Maybe she had no questions. Maybe she didn’t want to talk. Maybe this was the exact wrong thing to do, and she had frightened the child.

God Almighty, how am I to know what to do?

But at last, Anna looked up. “Is there … where am I to go?”

Of course
. Bridget found she could breathe again.
Of course you’d want to know that
. She smoothed the skirt of her robe down, hoping to look casual, and fairly sure she was failing utterly. “Well, I have a house near the imperial palace where there’s more than enough room. I thought we might go there, until full summer at least, then we might go stay in Vienska when the emperor and empress go traveling. It’s very pretty there, they tell me. There’s a large lake for swimming in.” An idea struck her. “Do you know how to swim?”

“No.”

Carefully, afraid of frightening her, afraid of frightening herself, Bridget said, “I could teach you if you like, and how to sail a boat. On the lake, anyway.” She added, “I’m not much of a hand on the ocean.”

“Is there a difference?” asked Anna, a little genuine curiosity showing through.

“Oh, yes, a big difference.”

Her brow furrowed. Her toe continued to worry at the grass. “Did my father know how to sail on the ocean?”

Bridget swallowed. A bird was singing full-throated welcome in the tree. She wished she could point that out instead, or say something about how good the porridge smelled.
She will have questions. You are the only one left to answer them
. “Yes, he did.”

Anna went back to watching her toes again. The one working at the grass had found the dirt beneath and was beginning to dig a small hole. What was it looking for? “Did he love me?”

What reply could she possibly make to that? “Anna, I don’t know.”

The hole grew a little bigger as the toe worked at it. Then the toe stopped, the foot withdrew, and Anna looked up. “Did you?”

Bridget’s throat seized up and for a moment she was not sure she would be able to make a single sound. When she could finally speak, it was only in a hoarse whisper. “Yes, I did.” Very much. “When I thought you had died, I didn’t think I’d ever love anybody so much again.”

Anna contemplated this very seriously for a time. “Did you?”

Bridget nodded. “Yes. The minute I saw you and knew who you were.”

Anna looked away, watching the flowers bowing to the wind. She stared up in the trees, trying to see the bird, who was joined now by a rival, or perhaps it was a mate. Her toe began worrying at its hole again, spreading it out, making it just a bit deeper. “I think I would like to learn how to swim.”

Bridget’s heart swelled until she thought it would burst. She allowed herself to believe a small smile would not overwhelm Anna. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s lots of fun.”

“Master Liaozhai said it is only when we are learning something new that we truly understand the beauty of what we know,” her daughter volunteered.

Bridget arched her eyebrows. “I think you must tell me more about Master Liaozhai one day,” she said, meaning it. She wanted to know about every second of Anna’s life up until now.

“All right.” Anna looked up to the trees again, and back over her shoulder. Bridget, half amused, half distressed that her daughter could find something more interesting than her mother, decided the interview was probably at an end.

Bridget mustered a brisk tone. “Right now, however, I’m not fit to be seen in public.” She stood, adjusting her robe so it more fully covered her nightdress. “I’m going to go get dressed so I can go in to breakfast and thank Lord Master Peshek for his hospitality. I’ll see you there, all right?”

“All right.” Anna bowed again, stopped midway through the gesture again, and straightened up. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” Bridget turned with forced calm back toward the little winding stairs, congratulating herself on not fleeing as fast as her feet would carry her. Movement in the arched window overhead caught her eye, and she saw Sakra’s face looking down at her.

Eavesdropper
, she thought primly, even as she gathered her hems to hurry up the stairs to meet him. If she could not talk to someone about her meeting with Anna, she felt she would suffocate on unspoken words.

Sakra seemed to realize this. As soon as she reentered the drafty, stony hall he said, “Did it go well?” He held out his hand.

Bridget took it and held it tightly, letting out a long breath. “Yes. I think so. We made some sort of start, anyway. I don’t think the idea of coming to live with me terrifies her, and she has agreed to swimming lessons.”