The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  It made sense. Why did it feel wrong? It wasn’t wrong. This was what the prophecy said. Ambrose had even reminded me of it, just a bit ago. And Lia had agreed to being bait from the beginning. We’d saved her precious island; she could do this for us. “You’ll protect her?”

  Sondra saluted. “With my life. No harm will come to the queen. I’ll just dangle her in view long enough for him to see. Make it look like he can grab her and escape.”

  Kara nodded grudgingly. “It’s a better plan than picking away at that hornet’s nest. We can hold here. Once Anure makes his move, we’ll strike.”

  Vesno pushed his head under my hand, looking up at me with worried eyes. “Tell her it will be all right. One last thing is all I ask, and then she’ll be free.” Surely Lia would forgive this. In many ways, I was doing this for her. Looking to Sondra, who gave me an odd look for talking to the dog, I said, “I’m trusting you with Lia’s life.”

  “Yes, Conrí. I won’t fail you. Or her,” she added. “Give me thirty minutes. I’ll signal. Once you have Anure, if you can, wait for me to get there?”

  “We’ll do our best. You’ll hold the torch to finish this day.”

  “All hail, Conrí!” She saluted once more then ran off, calling for a few of her trusted warriors to fall in with her. They went over the side to their boat.

  “Give them cover fire!” I ordered. The small boat rowed swiftly away. Sawehl curse me, I should’ve sent a message with Sondra for Lia. I stroked Vesno’s head, the wolfhound faithfully at my side. I didn’t need to send her a message. Lia would know.

  A boom, and vurgsten fire rained down on Sondra’s boat. “Dammit!” I yelled. “Take out that cannon.”

  “Can’t, Conrí! We don’t have the range,” someone yelled.

  “Send battleship two.”

  Kara didn’t argue with the order this time. He relayed it, and battleship two came around, sails billowing to sail at the ship firing on Sondra’s boat. Standing beside me, we both leaned out, willing them to escape. “Why are they firing on one rowboat out of so many?” he muttered viciously. “They can’t know it’s important.”

  “They can,” I corrected grimly. “Wizards.”

  Realization dawned on his face. “Then we’re fucked. Recall!” he roared. “Pull back!”

  “What?” I demanded. “No!”

  Kara ignored me. “Retreat! All ships—”

  A boom cut off Kara’s order and my arguments. Battleship two went up in a spectacular conflagration, the heat and force throwing us back. Our ship rocked, masts creaking. We got to our feet, staring in disbelief at the ruin of the battleship.

  “What did that?” Kara’s voice cracked.

  “Nothing we’ve seen before.” I raised my voice. “All in! Belay the retreat! Go! Everyone go!”

  “Conrí!” Kara gripped both of my arms. “They’ve outwitted us. They held something in reserve. We have to retreat or we’ll lose everything.”

  “We didn’t get this far by retreating. We can still win. They’re desperate. All we have to do is hold them until Sondra gets to Lia. Once Anure sees her, he’ll make his move.”

  “If we can hold them,” Kara said dourly, flames lighting his hard face in the gathering dusk. “If he’s alive.”

  “He is.” Three more of our midsized ships went down, burning as they sank. More blood for Calanthe. This time ours. “They wouldn’t still be fighting like this otherwise. He’s been playing dead, waiting for his chance. He’s obsessed with Lia. He’ll sacrifice everything to have her.” I gripped the railing, staring at the remaining fleet, willing my enemy to appear. “Come on, toad. You know you want her.”

  Kara gave me a sidelong look. “Conrí. I’ve never doubted you, but—”

  Boom! Our other battleship went up in flames. Farther away from us, it didn’t knock us down, but we had to duck the blazing pieces of wreckage that flew past. Vesno yelped, and I smothered a burning coal in his fur with my hand. Never felt it. Thick-skinned.

  “Conrí!” Kara shouted at me.

  “Don’t start doubting now,” I grated out. “We’re there. At the finish line. Wait for it. Don’t blink.”

  “We’re going down,” he snarled back. “Everything. All of our ships.”

  “Steady. Not much longer.” I lifted the long glass. “There she is.”

  Lia in all her glorious avenging-angel savage beauty strode out to the ragged end of the remaining pier. She carried a white flag. So fucking smart, my Lia. That’s my girl. Make him think you surrender.

  She looked so calm and brave, apparently alone out there. Her crown, her warrior gown of metallic feathers—all caught the last of the dying light and reflected the flames of the blazing harbor, making her bright as a star. Oddly enough, her pale skin reminded me of those orchids in the forest canopy, glowing in the gloaming. I couldn’t make out her expression, or see her eyes, but every line of her body was regally composed.

  From the knot of the wreckage of Anure’s fleet, a small, sleek ship moved. It moved fast and without sails. Propelled by magic, it had to be. “There he is!” I shouted. “After him!”

  Sailors called. Ropes snapped. Sails billowed and the flagship wheeled to make chase. I lost sight of Lia as we came about, but I trusted Sondra. She’d have seen what I did. She’d have moved to whisk Lia away.

  “Conrí,” Kara yelled over the booming of sails and renewed fire. “We’re sailing right at the live ship. We can’t—”

  “Use everything we have! Take them out. We have Anure now.”

  A rattle of fire in the rigging. Sailors swarmed to put it out. Kara seized me by both arms.

  “We’re two battleships down. We’ll be their next target. We have to—”

  A burning bag wafted gently overhead. Almost lazily, it lowered to land on the deck, as if guided by an invisible hand.

  “Abandon ship!” I roared. Grabbing Vesno, I threw him overboard and dove after. Dogs can swim, right? Better than exploding.

  The water was fouled with detritus, body parts, and oily residue, the vurgsten stink sliding down my throat as I cast about. Sailors, soldiers landed in the water around me, frantically swimming. Kara, too, not far away. Where was the dog?

  There. Vesno paddled valiantly beside me. I struck out, swimming away from the battleship as fast as I could, the wolfhound pacing me.

  The battleship went up in flames behind us. The explosion made a wave that swamped us. Brain rattled, ears ringing, I fought for direction. Swam to the surface. Unable to find it. A hard yank my hair and my head popped above water. Vesno, my hair clamped in his jaws.

  “Good dog,” I panted. Or tried to. A skiff came up to us, and Kara reached down, hauling me in. Other hands grabbed Vesno. “After that ship,” I choked out.

  Kara looked grim, snapping out orders. A small escort flanked us. Night had truly fallen, lit only by the many fires, showing us the way through the wreckage. At least Anure’s remaining live ships couldn’t see us to fire upon us.

  The oily smoke and heavy night parted, showing Anure’s ship at the dock. Triumph cleared my head. We had him. Dead to rights. Probably Sondra was already aboard, holding him for us. We pulled alongside. So did several of our escort.

  “Prepare to grapple!” Kara ordered.

  They threw the grappling hooks over. I reined in my impatience. At last at last at last, the voices howled. Our soldiers flowed over the rail of Anure’s personal yacht, all manner of weapons in hand as they cleared the decks of the few Imperial Guards that mustered themselves to fight.

  He hadn’t surrounded himself with enough, though. My people cut through them like grass.

  I went in with the second wave, rock hammer in hand, bagiroca spinning. Rocks. Hammer. Rocks. Hammer.

  If I had any disappointment, it was that I’d fought so little myself. Naval battles don’t lend themselves to up-close-and-personal fights. But that was all right. I would have Anure. That would be more than personal enough.

  I would have this final, decis
ive victory. The battle and the war.

  “Anure!” I roared. “Show yourself, toad!”

  Vesno streaked past me, weaving through the corpses and burning detritus. I ran after, feeling Lia’s presence with me, the taste of savage victory in my mouth. We’d triumph and live through this. How sweet that would be.

  We ended at a barricaded door—fancily embossed—Vesno snarling at it. We’d beaten Sondra here after all. Nudging Vesno out of the way, I hooked my bagiroca to my belt and swung the rock hammer.

  Boom! The wood splintered.

  Boom! The door sagged in the frame, coming away from the hinges.

  Boom! A final swing and the door imploded. Vesno and I leapt over it into the lavishly appointed cabin.

  Empty.

  Vesno sniffed along the jumbled interior, whining. With a yelp, Vesno went to a closed door.

  I yanked it open, hammer at the ready.

  Tertulyn sat within, hands folded serenely. I halted my swing, gaping at her.

  “Oh, look,” she chirped. “If it isn’t Lia’s pet dogs. His Imperial Majesty Anure, Emperor of All the Lands, regrets to inform you that he had an urgent engagement elsewhere, with his new prize. I hope you’re not too fond of Euthalia.” She smiled sweetly. “You lose, Slave King.”

  I raced out to the deck, flinging myself to the rail. Peering through the smoke and gloom at the dock. Frantically scanning.

  No sign of Lia or Sondra.

  “Lia!” The scream ripped out of me as I flung an impotent hand to bridge the distance. Beside me, Vesno added his voice, my ragged howl blending with his.

  You lose, Slave King.

  19

  I woke to the foreign sensation of a boat swaying under me. For a moment, I felt sure this was yet another nightmare, the one of my father’s death and the consignment of his withered corpse to the sea. I hadn’t set foot on a boat since that day. Not that I’d needed to make an issue of it. Calanthe needed me on Her soil, and I’d had no reason to sail anywhere. It had been easy to avoid sailing ships, except in the occasional bad dream.

  Con had said he dreamed of his father’s death, trying to save him. I hadn’t found it in myself to confess I sometimes had that same dream, or similar.

  No, this was a living nightmare. I was on a sailing ship, and the waters were rougher than Calanthe’s. With the art of long practice, I kept to the pretense of sleep, allowing the dreamthink to settle around me, and reached out. Nothing. For the first time in my entire life, nothing and no one answered my silent call.

  I was no longer on or near Calanthe.

  This was bad. Very bad. The worst had happened.

  “Your Highness?” a hoarse voice whispered. “Lia. Are you awake?”

  I cracked my eyes open to see Sondra’s, barely a handbreadth away. With distant curiosity, I observed that she’d called me by Con’s nickname, and that I didn’t mind. “I can’t remember anything,” I told her quietly.

  “Do you remember the battle?” she asked in the same murmur. We lay on a bed together, on our sides, facing each other in the stifling dark of a ship’s cabin, the chinks in the wood allowing daylight through. Heavy chains bound my wrists and trailed from a similar collar around my neck. Sondra wore an iron collar, too, with chains running through a ring at the front, so I imagined that’s what I had on me.

  “I remember that, yes.” Every impact of vurgsten, every fire, each death—all had felt like physical blows hammering on me. Worse, Calanthe had felt them, rumbling awake as I’d feared. It had taken everything in me to keep Her subdued, and I’d been shredded to a flimsy, brittle version of myself when Sondra arrived. I’d agreed to the plan with resignation, knowing what would come, praying this last gambit of Con’s would work.

  I’d carried the surrender flag out to the pier, luring Anure in, and …

  “Nothing after waving the surrender flag.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, the blue intense. “We were captured. A kind of … cloud fell over you. I ran out, but it was nothing I could fight. Then I woke up here. I failed in my duty to you, and to Conrí.”

  “I appreciate your attempt to defend Me, but it was magic. Nothing even your mighty sword could slay.”

  Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “If Anure has us…”

  She didn’t finish, didn’t have to. “Of course it’s him,” I said. Oddly, I didn’t feel the terror I’d expected. Instead that same fatalism persisted. The worst had finally occurred, so I didn’t have to dread it any longer. At least I’d left a wizard on Calanthe, so my realm might yet survive. I’d done my best to hold Her in check all that long, bloody, horrible battle. Now Ambrose would do the same. I hoped. “Are you injured?”

  “I don’t think so. Just numb. I think we’ve been lying here awhile. I just woke up, too.”

  My hands were bound behind my back, but the familiar cool velvet freshness of the orchid ring brushed against my skin. The dreamthink was there, but empty of anything. I tried again, reaching through the ring’s connection to Calanthe, looking for Vesno’s mind. He greeted me with a leap of gladness, and I took a moment to reassure him, though I had no way to push the message through to Con. I caught a glimpse of Con, back on land, surrounded by smoke and fires, raging. Angry but apparently whole. “Con is alive. Pissed as hell. I don’t see Ambrose, but General Kara is with him.”

  Sondra smiled a little, then frowned. “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” I adjusted my neck. “Did they take My crown?”

  “This is what you’re worried about?”

  I supposed it didn’t matter, and I decided better not to mention that I was glad they’d managed to remove it without taking my wig. Sondra would never understand that. Still, it felt like adding insult to injury. I’d lost my magic. It felt like I’d lost half of my soul, hollowing me out. I’d never in my life been away from Calanthe, so I hadn’t known, had never realized how much Her magic suffused my being. I felt like a plucked and wilted flower, dying for lack of water.

  I would die. This was what the dreams had warned of.

  But I had my pride, my resolve, and I wouldn’t go without a fight. I’d endured this long and I wouldn’t just wither and die because Anure had plucked me. A spark of anger lit in my heart, and I carefully fanned that flame. I would need it to be the venomous blossom, poised to dig my thorns into Anure’s flesh. I was back to my original plan, the one I’d crafted all those years before Con arrived on my island. Alone again, I was on my own. But I would do my utmost to take Anure down with me.

  The cabin door opened with a startling bang. Sondra flinched, lines of fear bracketing her mouth, all toughness gone from her ravaged face. In that moment, I clearly saw the brutalized girl she’d been. “Pretend to sleep,” I murmured, gratified that she obeyed instantly.

  I rolled back enough to lift my head to look over her shoulder at the Imperial Guards. “How dare you treat Me so,” I addressed them with my most regal disdain, going on the attack, as worked best with subordinates like these. “Unchain Me immediately.”

  The older guard, clearly ingrained to obey commands, started forward before his younger companion spoke up. “Your Highness,” he said. “You are a prisoner of His Imperial Majesty Anure, Emperor of All the Lands. Your Highness will have to request that His Imperial Majesty have the chains removed.”

  I let out a heavy sigh, as if impossibly bored with their incompetence. “Then take Me to His Imperial Majesty at once.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Relieved to be able to obey, the older one moved quickly to unlock my chains from the bed.

  The younger guard snorted in disgust. “We follow His Imperial Majesty’s orders. He sent us to bring Your Highness to him, so don’t be thinking You give the orders here.”

  I refrained from pointing out that his habitual use of my honorifics showed otherwise. After unbinding my wrists from each other, the older guard solicitously helped me sit up. Though my body protested the movement—apparently Sondra had correctly assess
ed that we’d been unconscious and in one position for a long time—I forced myself to move with at least a facsimile of regal grace.

  Adjusting my crumpled gown as best the ruined thing could be, I then stretched and used the opportunity to surreptitiously check my wig. Fortunately Ibolya had used extra glue, anticipating the long day of fighting, and it seemed in place. I hoped she and my ladies had survived and escaped capture.

  The older guard helped me stand, giving a little bow as he did, eyeing the orchid ring with awe. I let him look, holding up my shackled wrists in question. One long chain connected them, running through the loop of the collar, dragging on my neck. “Apologies, Your Highness,” he muttered. Dragging his fascinated gaze from the ring, he locked my wrist manacles together rather than releasing me.

  I raised a brow. “I am not to be allowed to freshen up before meeting His Imperial Majesty?” I inquired, as if aghast at the breach of protocol. “Where are My ladies-in-waiting?”

  “Listen to that,” the younger guard snickered. “All You’ve got is the warrior bitch there, and You’re a prisoner, Queen of Flowers. So start working those royal slippers instead of that mouth.” The older guard looked appalled, but the younger—and unfortunately, apparently senior—guard chortled at his own wit. He flung open the door to lead the way. “Bring Her.”

  “Your Highness.” The older guard hovered his hand near my arm, needing to obey and also hesitant to give offense. In the bright light coming through the open door, I could see his lined face. Very likely he remembered life before Anure. I pretended to be slightly dizzy. It didn’t take any acting, not with my being unconscious for so long, my stays and the understructure of the gown biting into my flesh, as well as the lingering effects of whatever Anure’s wizards had done to me. I swayed, murmuring, “If I might take your arm, kind syr? I don’t feel quite well.”

  “The honor is mine, Your Highness,” he breathed with reverence.

  I laid my hand, the orchid ring prominent, on his proffered forearm. We stepped out onto the deck of a sleek sailing ship, cannons studding the rails every few feet. I’d seen what those cannons could do, and even with the salty sea breezes blowing, filling the sails taut, I smelled vurgsten. Familiar now from Cradysica as well as my dreams, and I understood full well why Con hated that smell, and found it so impossible to forget.