A Kingdom for a Stage

by Heidi Heilig

  I pick the ten largest feathers and lay them on the damp carpet. They tremble in the breeze off the sea, and I can’t deny it—the feeling of excitement sparking in my stomach. How long had I waited for this kind of knowledge? “Now what?”

  The chains clink gently as Le Trépas shifts his weight, stretching his leg out before me. I gasp. It’s lined with scars—the methodical wounds of a man with a knife and need for his own blood. They are so much more orderly than mine, but I have seen scars like this before, on the tender thigh of the first girl who turned my head. She had her own malheur. The memory brings a stab of compassion, though I don’t know if the monk deserves it. “Do you have a knife?” he asks.

  With reluctance, Akra pulls the blade from his belt and holds it out. Still . . . I hesitate. Why? How many times had I drawn my own blood? But though Akra’s weapon is clean and well kept, when I take it, the handle feels slick and sticky on my palm. I drop it to the carpet, scrubbing my palm on my coveralls. “I can’t do it,” I say, feeling queasy.

  Without a word, my brother picks up the knife and makes the cut for me. Le Trépas hisses, but he jerks his chin toward the blood that’s running down his ankle. “Now the symbol,” he says through his teeth. “Life on each feather.”

  Steeling myself, I dip my finger into the warm blood, trying not to cringe. How different it is, when it is not my own. The feathers stick to my hand as I try to paint them; the symbol is little more than a smear. When I am done, I wipe my fingers clean on the carpet and sit back. Nothing happens. “Where are the souls?”

  “Just wait,” Le Trépas says, drawing his leg back. The cut was shallow, the blood already slowing. “They’re coming.”

  There is something in his tone—or his smile. It makes my gut twist. I glance over the black water, but there are no souls in the sky. I pick at my hem; I comb my fingers through my tangled hair. How long will it take? Trying to distract myself, I turn back to the wound on Le Trépas’s leg. Is there something I can use to bind it?

  I cast about, but aside from the mildewing carpet, there is nothing to use. Is there a clean patch on the tattered silken sails? I stand, but Le Trépas looks up sharply. “Don’t go now,” he says. “They’re coming.”

  In spite of everything, a thrill goes through me. But when I see the first soul, my mouth goes dry. Fluttering over the water, it approaches: amorphous, flickering, and the color of sapphires.

  My stomach drops as the spirit sweeps through the open balcony toward the bloody feathers. But instead of diving inside, it draws the bit of down up in its wake. The soul circles, as though waiting for my instruction. I draw back. Not even in the butcher’s market have I seen the vengeful soul of an animal.

  Another approaches then, and another; they swirl toward the feathers, all of them waiting, all of them full of rage. “Why do they want revenge?” I say as the fourth soul appears over the water.

  Le Trépas looks at me, surprised. “Because of what you did.”

  “What?” My stomach twists; I look at Akra, but he looks just as uncertain as I am. “What did I do?”

  “You’ve called them out of the lives they were living,” Le Trépas says. “These feathers are more than three days old. Where did you think their souls would be?”

  “I . . . I killed them?” I stare at the old monk, horror quickly turning to rage. “Tell me they were only birds!”

  “I don’t know what they might have been,” he says. “But you can tell yourself so.”

  * * *

  Dear Brother,

  You have tried to be my keeper. I owe it to you to be yours.

  If you do not stop, I will come and stop you.

  I am trying to be better than my blood. Will you?

  —Leo

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The first thing I do is feed the bloody feathers into the fire. The flames engulf the souls and the quills alike, and when the spirits spring free, they are the bright color of arvana. I am grateful for this reprieve, but I will not forget my crime so easily. I tuck each spirit into a tin grenade, and soon enough we have almost a dozen waiting for the avions.

  The next thing I do is take my dose of elixir. The act itself calms me, but only a little. And I take a bit less than I know I need, not quite half, but not quite three-quarters, either. Better to ration than to run out—I know this from the Hungry Year.

  When La Fleur returns the jar, the little lump of lytheum floating inside is no bigger than a fingernail. “You should have at least six weeks left in total,” she says.

  “And less if we need more grenades.”

  “There isn’t enough in the jar to bother with more,” she replies with a twist of her lips. “Let’s just hope I was wrong about the birds coming back.”

  “Let’s hope,” I say, staring into the fire, but neither of us is so foolish as to actually do such a thing.

  The pile of grenades is shockingly small. Theodora transports them to a berth on the far side of the ship—away from the water, out of the weather, and far enough from the rest of us that if something goes wrong, the explosion would be as contained as possible. Still, I can see them in my mind’s eye. Ten tin cans, packed with fire and iron and the soul of something I killed.

  Ten dead, just like that. Who or what, and where? I’ll never know. It might have been ten birds. Or ten beetles. Ten eyeless crawling worms, their wet bodies already returning to the soil. But it could have been ten soldiers. Ten mothers. Ten children.

  Is saving a village worth the price? Of course it is. Of course. I tell myself that, again and again, as I watch the fire dance.

  “Jetta?”

  I look up, but there is no one beside me—it is only my brother’s voice. I almost don’t want to answer; I know what he will say. “Don’t tell me,” I say under my breath. “I should have known not to trust him.”

  “You know now,” he says, and the sadness in his voice is thick as burned sugar. “You shouldn’t dwell on it.”

  I stifle a laugh. “I’m supposed to just forget?”

  “Only the dead forget,” he says. “Or monsters passing as men. You’re not a monster, Jetta. Stop thinking that you are.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” I say, heat rising on the back of my neck. Can he spy on my thoughts?

  “Because I’ve killed too.” His tone brings me up short—I knew that already, but I’d never heard him say it quite so softly. Not a boast or a threat, but a confession. “Le Trépas was right about one thing, Jetta. In war, everyone has blood on their hands.”

  “Some of us more than others,” I mutter, looking down at the scabs on my fingers, the cuts on my palms. But the sound my brother makes is cut short, bitten off, and I can’t tell if it was a laugh or a sob. I look for him over my shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of his face across the hall, but Akra is facing the water.

  “Trust me, Jetta,” he says at last. “You haven’t done half so much wrong as I have.”

  I take a breath—the memory surfaces. The rebel woman in the camp outside of Nokhor Khat, her teeth bared as she spit Akra’s rank back in his face: capitaine. The story she’d told, her village razed, her parents killed. But looking at my brother’s back—his bowed head, the slope of his shoulders—all I want to do is comfort him. He is the still the boy who’d taught me to hold a paper butterfly so it trembled like a living thing. The boy who sang in the fields. The boy who joined the armée to save my life.

  Looking down at my own battered hands, I think of Akra’s scars. The terrible things he had done left marks on his body—none worse than the scar that marked what I’d done to him. Only the dead forget, he’d said. Sometimes, not even then.

  “You’re not a monster either,” I say softly, and I hear his sigh, see his shoulders rise and fall.

  “I’ll try to remember that,” he says.

  “Why don’t you sing anymore?” I ask. “You used to do it all the time, do you remember? While you worked. While you carved. When you were trying
to flirt with Mina Amadee and her brother shook a cleaver at you because he said you sounded like a dying rooster.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” he says, and now I can hear the hint of a smile.

  “I still heard your voice after you left,” I say, softer now. “Singing in the fields. I never told you. But your voice was the first one I heard when I . . . started hearing things.”

  “And I thought war was hell,” he says mildly, and the joke is so unexpected that I have to stifle a laugh.

  “I wasn’t ready for you to go,” I say, the words rushing out. “I wasn’t ready, that night at Hell’s Court. But it wasn’t my choice to make.”

  “I’m glad you did it,” he says, and I blink.

  “You wouldn’t have preferred to . . . to forget?”

  “What I have instead is a chance to make up for some of it,” he says. “Maybe that’s better.”

  “Maybe,” I say. How much will I have to atone for by the time this war is over? But I know now why Theodora is so eager to blame Pique . . . why Leo couldn’t shoot his father . . . why Cam glances at La Fleur out of the corner of his eyes. Perhaps none of us are righteous when it comes to the ones we love.

  Akra’s voice interrupts my musing. “Didn’t I start this entire conversation by telling you not to dwell?”

  I fling up my hands, exasperated. “What do you want me to do instead?”

  Heads swivel—Theodora, and Camreon, and Tia too. Leo murmurs something to them, an explanation—and for a moment, the feeling is too familiar: whispers and silence and significant looks. Strange that magic can look so much like madness. A blush starts across my cheeks, but then my brother’s answer rings out across the room so everyone could hear it. “How about a little music?”

  Tia perks up at the question. “Now that is a good idea.”

  There are still no souls about, but somehow Akra’s suggestion has brought life aboard. Almost immediately, Leo snaps the clasps on his violin case, and Tia hums scales while he tunes. Even Papa sits up on his mattress, an eager smile on his face. Though it is late, I can feel my exhaustion easing with each note that shimmers in the air.

  The warm-up always thrills me. All excitement, no pressure. I want to join in. My hand itches for a fantouche, but all I have are the grenades, the ballast stones, the tattered book of souls . . . and the scrap of red silk in my pocket.

  I am a better puppeteer than a dancer, but even before the music starts, my body aches to move. I pull the silk from my pocket, running it through my hands; the fabric flutters, more graceful than I am. When Leo finishes tuning, he lifts his violin. The first few notes are a salve, and when I hear Tia’s smoky voice, I am transported back to Le Perl.

  The flicker of the candles, the smell of perfume and backstage dust, the way the glitter stuck to my skin long after we’d left it behind. But Le Perl exists only in memory now: Tia and Leo conjure it with their music. As the harmony wraps around us, the run-down dining hall is transformed. The musty room feels intimate, and the dim light of the smoky cookfire casts the splintered walls into a dramatic light. And in the makeshift spotlight, I dance.

  Tossing the red silk up, the soul of the hawk takes to the air; at my whisper, she banks, the scarlet fabric streaming like a ribbon as I whirl. When I make circles with my hand, she swirls like a conjuring; I throw up my hands, and she snaps her silken wings wide.

  All around me, the spirit soars, my feet turn and flicker across the soft floor as my blood thrums to the melody. It has been too long since I felt so alive. But as I turn, I catch sight of Akra. He has cocked his ear to listen to the music, and even across the room, I can see the dreamy smile on his face.

  Will he sing? I hope so. But each song moves into the next as the moon rises and falls in the sky, and I do not hear Akra’s voice. Not even in my head.

  Days later, the avions return.

  We are nearing our destination—only another few days, according to Cam’s map. The rain has cleared for a while, and Papa and I are taking a halting stroll across the deck when he sights the flock. He clenches his hand around my elbow and hisses through his teeth; that’s when I look up and see them too.

  They approach at speed—another cadre of six—and this time their target is clear: a pretty fishing village tucked into a cove. I call to the others as I hurry Papa down the stairs; my heart is pounding, but I force myself to go as slow as he needs. Once he is safe below, I make a beeline for the stock of grenades. Theodora is already there.

  “You have to fill the can with water and light the wick,” she says as I pick one up, pointing at a long piece of twine dangling from the tin.

  “I thought lytheum explodes in water.” I look at her askance, but she shakes her head, frustrated.

  “It’s a chemical reaction that creates a flammable gas. The water left behind is actually the elixir—”

  “We can go over chemistry later,” Cam interjects, gathering an armful of the grenades and starting toward the deck.

  Gingerly, I pick up two cans and follow. “Once we light the wick, how long do we have?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Theodora admits. “Just try to keep the fire away from the gas.”

  “You’re not sure?” My head reels—ten grenades suddenly seems far too few. But the avions are already too close to the village; when we reach the deck, Cam starts lining up the grenades, and Leo meets us with a lighter and a bucket full of water. “Hurry,” I say, and he dunks one of the tins into the bucket.

  Immediately, air starts hissing through the hole in the top, where the wick protrudes. “Should I light it?” Leo asks, nervous, but I coax the soul upward till the twine is dangling beneath—away from the gas. Gritting his teeth, Leo flicks his lighter to life; we hold our breath as he lights the wick and I send the grenade spinning toward the first avion.

  “Another,” I say, and Cam dunks the next tin into the bucket. But the metal birds fly far faster than my little grenades. I only have three in the air by the time the avions start to circle above the village. I send up a fourth as the massacre starts.

  Cozy grass huts burst into flame: two hundred souls scatter as the avions chase them down the beach. Soon the shore is a conflagration, from the coconut palms to the long bamboo pier. Families flee to the brightly painted coracles, pushing them out on the water only to have the sea catch fire beneath them. The sight of it all snaps something in me; enraged, I send the last ballast stone after the birds as Camreon prepares another grenade.

  By now, the first explosive has reached an avion. I send the spirit down into the cockpit to wait—and wait. Has something gone wrong? I am only half watching as I send the other bombs to chase the rest of the avions—my eyes are riveted to the first as my target pours another gout of flame down on the village. I have started to despair when the bird judders in the sky.

  Above the screams and the fire, I hadn’t even heard the far-off explosion. But I can see the smoke drifting from the avion as it banks—is that blood gleaming on the metal wings? The remains of the pilot slump in the cockpit; the avion wheels away from the fire, no longer so keen to attack the village without orders. But she doesn’t fall, either. Xavier must have ensouled all the avions himself.

  I don’t have time for frustration. Instead, I urge the rest of the grenades nearer to their targets. One of the bombs bursts too early—I see the flash of fire, then the soul rising like a phoenix from the explosion. Another grenade misses the mark as an avion swoops: I send the bomb around again, but the wick has burned too close. The explosion is hard to see through the thickening smoke. The next shot is luckier—my fourth grenade shatters the glass of the cockpit and the skull of the pilot. Red bursts across the steel as the avion beats her wings in panic. Then, to my dismay, the rest of the warbirds wheel south, speeding back toward the capitol.

  The ones without pilots follow, as do the grenades. The next explosion sends its target reeling as the rest of the flock pulls ahead; this time, the flame reaches the accelerant in a blast that seems t
o shake the ship itself. I shout in triumph as pieces of metal spin away to splash into the water—one avion down.

  But the rest of the grenades are lagging, and one by one, they burst ineffectively against the sky. The ballast stone is my last chance for a final strike, and I sent it plunging through one avion’s metal wing. The creature goes spinning through the air, but with a few frantic wingbeats, it rights itself and trails after the others. I watch the sky, but I’ve lost sight of the stone. In the end, all that is left to send after the birds is my curses.

  My heart sinks; my eyes burn. I stare at the remains of the village, the charred bodies bobbing in the shallows. Some of them are so small. “Maybe Le Trépas was right,” I say softly. “Maybe it would be best if our blood had never fallen into the wrong hands.”

  “Jetta . . .” Leo reaches for me, but I step back.

  “I don’t want comfort,” I say, but what I mean is I don’t deserve it.

  “I can improve the design,” Theodora says, staring resolutely at the remaining grenade. There is only one left. And are those tears in her own eyes? “As long as we get more lytheum.”

  “Take it all,” I say, slinging the satchel off my shoulder, but she shakes her head.

  “I told you,” she says. “There’s hardly enough left to make a difference—”

  “I don’t care!” My shout brings her up short. I bite my lip, ashamed. I’m not mad at her. I lower my voice, holding out the satchel again. “Even one more avion down is worth it.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Cam says firmly. “We need you, Jetta, like it or not. Between you and Le Trépas, we’ll bring them all down. But we won’t win every time. You need to get used to that.”

  I stare at him, bitter. “Why should I?”

  “Because there will be another fight,” he says. “And another and another. And we can lose most of them and still win the war. But if we lose hope, we’ve lost everything.”

  I grit my teeth, turning back toward the rail, the satchel still gripped tightly in my fist. Half of me wants to sling it, along with the elixir, into the foaming sea. Near the shore, waves toss the burning coracles. For a moment, I imagine the rest of the avions plunging down among them—the entire flock, blasted from the sky. At first, it tastes like justice, but by the time the smoking village passes over the horizon, I know by the bitterness in my mouth it is only vengeance.