The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Then my vision went dark and, my tongue thick in my mouth, I could say nothing. Heat, thick and stomach-roiling, rose up and dragged me under.

  * * *

  Pain and nausea greeted me when I regained consciousness. At least fury, cold and clean, followed quickly after, clearing the miasma from my head. I’d do no one any good if I was a weeping, puking weakhearted mess.

  With a feeling of desperate lunging, I reached for the dreamthink, beyond relieved to find I still had that. The familiar state of mental clarity and peace settled my mind further and I pushed out my senses to the world around me, finding the thoughts of a woman nearby, obscure in the way that all non-Calantheans are, with more opaque minds all around past her, and beyond them … nothing. Only the burning fires on the walls of Anure’s citadel, the oily smoke stinking even in the dreamthink.

  How I missed the brilliant purity of life in Calanthe. I would die in this place, and my body would never return to the land that birthed and formed me. In my despair, however, I imagined I scented orchids, and that I felt the petal-soft and florid brush of the orchid ring, and that helped more than I could ever describe.

  With a sigh, I opened my eyes, to find myself once again staring into Sondra’s intense blue ones. “This is getting to be tiresome,” I commented.

  To my vast surprise, she grinned at me. “Thank Ejarat. You must be all right if You have the strength to be mean.”

  My hand throbbed, sending burning fire up my arm, and I lifted it. How odd that I could feel pain there, because my hand was gone. Someone had bandaged the stump of my wrist, and washed the blood away.

  And the orchid sat—or, should I say, abided—higher up on my wrist. It had become a bracelet, as floridly lovely and fragrant as ever, vines twining decoratively around my forearm almost like one of Con’s gauntlets. I breathed a sigh of bone-shivering relief that I still had it, that they hadn’t started chopping off the rest of my arm. That Anure and those foul wizards hadn’t managed to take the ring for whatever horrible acts they planned. Lowering my arm gently back to my side, I looked to Sondra. “What happened?”

  “That question is getting to be tiresome, too,” she quipped wryly, then held out a goblet. “Drink some water.”

  I sat up, aware of my still-woozy head, vaguely surprised that Sondra lent me a steady arm. I needed the support, too, and no amount of pride would change that. Taking the goblet in my remaining hand, I drank, discovering my raging thirst as I did. “Is there more?”

  “Yeah. Blood loss and trauma will do that,” Sondra replied, refilling the goblet from a pitcher. “And You lost buckets of blood before they made up their minds that letting You die would be a bad idea—and likely still wouldn’t get them the ring. Um, bracelet. Gauntlet? Whatever.”

  As she poured, I took a look around the room. Windowless, featureless, lavishly appointed, yet still a prison. Neither of us wore the chains anymore, though we both still had the collars and cuffs locked on. Well, one cuff for me, obviously. Sondra handed me the full goblet and regarded me seriously. “I have to hand it to You, Your Highness. You are one stone-cold bitch.” She shook her head with a laugh. “Con said I’d underestimated You and he was right.”

  “Hardly,” I replied once I’d swallowed the water. “I fainted.”

  “Your Highness, they beat You, cut off Your finger, and then Your whole fucking hand, and then did nothing to stanch the blood loss for a long time.” Sondra cursed mildly and worked free a lock of hair that had caught in her collar. “I’m impressed. And this is belated, but I’m proud to call You my queen.” She inclined her head.

  Would wonders never cease. Much good may it do me. “I think you might as well call me Lia. Ejarat knows that Con does and so you probably do, too, behind my back.” She gave me a sheepish smile and I nodded to myself. “And since we seem to be stuck in this cell, formalities seem … superfluous.” I scanned it again as I spoke. How I hated that I would die in this place.

  “No windows, one door,” Sondra said crisply, reporting to me as she would to Con, I realized. “The stones are tight and the mortar sealed with something. No crumbling. The door is metal, on hinges, at least three locks, but they’re well oiled and maintained, so there might be more than I could hear. They cut off Your hand at the wrist, severing the tendons, but—and I couldn’t see well, only overhear—but the orchid moved again, to Your arm.” She nodded at it. “They debated about cutting off Your arm, too, but those old guys—were they the wizards?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anure really does have wizards,” she said reflectively, as if trying to convince herself. “I thought you all were spinning fantasies. Agatha’s messed up in a lot of ways, so I thought, You know, evil wizards was a metaphor for her. But no. Four wizards. We are so fucked. We never could have won this war, could we?”

  “I don’t see how,” I replied, trying to be gentle but firm. Con had even me believing in the possibility for a while, so I could hardly blame her. “So they decided against cutting off My arm—or killing Me outright?”

  “Yet,” she said grimly. “The wizards disagreed, but ultimately they worried that if they cut off Your arm, the ring would just move to another, more central part of Your body. Then the one in black pointed out that they didn’t have the secret of transference from You, and with You all passed out they weren’t getting it soon. The fuckers finally decided that if You did die, it could be the orchid would die, too, and then they’d be out of luck.”

  “Hmm.” That could be true. “They discussed all of this in front of Anure’s court?”

  “No. Several people fainted, even before You did, then one lady puked when Your hand came off, and the toad started screaming for them to clear out.”

  “You’d think Anure’s court would be inured to displays like that. I have to lie down again.” I hated to make the admission, but better that than passing out—or vomiting up that water I needed—and my vision was going black at the edges again.

  “Of course.” Surprisingly gentle, Sondra eased me back on the bed. “Truly, I’m amazed You woke up already.”

  “You don’t have to use the honorific,” I said, staring at the low, ugly ceiling.

  “I owe You that honor,” Sondra replied. “Though I’m surprised You can hear the capitalization.”

  “I can always hear it,” I mused. “I especially hear when it’s not there. They gave us water, but did they provide food?”

  “Yes. Can You eat?” She sounded dubious.

  I rolled my head on the pillow in negation. “I asked only because I wanted to be sure you have nutrition. You’ll need it. Do they know who you are?”

  She shook her head. “They think I’m one of Your ladies-in-waiting. A charity case.” She passed a hand over her scarred face and smiled wryly.

  “You were born nobility, Lady Sondra,” I said. I held up the stump. “Our physical wounds don’t change that.”

  She regarded me with rare emotion in her quite lovely eyes, and for a moment I glimpsed the vivacious court butterfly she’d been, delighting all with her golden voice and native ebullience.

  “Also, giving us food is an indication of their plans. They’ll keep us alive, for now.”

  “We might decide we’d rather die than remain captive,” Sondra said gravely, arranging the covers to make me as comfortable as she could.

  The pain ground at me, making me feel weak and helpless, but I forced my eyes open. The eye on the side where the guard hit me didn’t seem to work very well. “Could you do it—kill Me and then yourself?”

  She firmed her lips and nodded. “They took my weapons, but I could find a way. Do You want to do it now?”

  “Not yet.” Maybe it was a sign of profound cowardice, but I couldn’t choose death right then. Maybe soon, when the last of my ability to hope faded away. Though I didn’t know what I hoped for. The orchid ring—bracelet—sent a shiver of sweetness through me, and I clung to that. “Is that all right with you?” I asked Sondra. Con had charged her to protect
me with her life—she’d said so when she came to me with the plan to draw Anure out. I knew she wouldn’t suicide while I lived. “Can you bear to live awhile longer, until I gather the courage? Or,” I added, “I might yet perish of this injury and then you’d be free of the onus of My life.”

  Sondra smiled a little. “Stone-cold bitch with the heart of a lion,” she said. “I’m Yours to command, my queen.” She dampened a cloth and smoothed it over my temples and forehead, dabbing at the swollen side. It felt lovely and cool, and I sighed with that simple relief, even though a sting indicated they’d broken skin.

  “You’ve got an impressive black eye,” Sondra informed me. “And Your cheek is bruised and swollen, but I don’t think they broke any bones.”

  “Small mercies,” I commented wryly.

  “True enough,” Sondra replied cheerfully. “I think You won’t die on your own. The wizards did something so You wouldn’t get an infection. I heard them tell Anure that. And Your color is remarkably good for someone who should be dead. I’ve seen a lot of people die, so I know.”

  I breathed a laugh, beginning to understand why Con loved this woman. She had a bone-deep lack of sentimentality that somehow made the unbearable easier to face. No wonder she’d survived what so few had.

  “I didn’t know You were bald,” Sondra commented, sounding interested and not at all disgusted. She freshened the cloth and wiped it over my scalp, which felt lovely, too. “I mean, obviously You wear wigs, but I thought that was an affectation. Why bother?”

  “Because I’m not fully bald, am I? I know My real hair is growing in.”

  “Is that what that is? I was worried You were getting a skin fungus or mold or something in this creepy place.”

  I laughed aloud, surprisingly, and it jarred me painfully. “No. That’s the real Me. Normally My ladies keep my scalp shaved, but with recent events…”

  “Yeah. No time for primping during war. But why wigs? If I were You, I’d just wear my crown on my bald head and let the critics go fuck themselves.”

  “This from the woman who refuses to cut her hair ever again.”

  “Conrí told You about that, huh?” She tucked a flowing strand of pale hair behind her ear. “I think it’s different, because they forced that on me, on all of us. Having shorn heads marked us as slaves. No one forced this on You. I don’t think anyone could make You do anything.”

  “Patently untrue, given our current circumstances,” I commented wryly, but she shook her head.

  “You stood up to them. Whatever Your reasons for being bald, I’m sure they’re good ones. Besides,” she added, with a twist of a smile, “You manage to be more gorgeous with no hair than anyone else with a full head of the stuff.”

  “Con says I have an elegant skull,” I said. The memory of his touch came back to me so vividly, and with such aching regret, that it drowned out the physical pain. To my shame, tears pooled in the corners of my eyes and leaked down my temples.

  Sondra didn’t comment on my tears, simply wiped them away.

  “I didn’t treat him well,” I confessed. “I should’ve been kinder to Con.” It occurred to me in that moment that Sondra was being kind to me, and she had no agenda. I could do nothing for her, and she offered kindness anyway.

  She snorted, the rude noise startling me. “Conrí doesn’t need kindness,” she said matter-of-factly. “He needs a woman to kick him out of his funks and challenge him. And to be the cool head of reason to balance his hotheadedness. And mine. You do that. You’ve been good for him,” she added grudgingly. “I didn’t want it to be true, but You are.”

  I thought about how Con had asked me to befriend Sondra and how I’d resisted. Ironic, in a way, that she might be the last person to see me alive.

  “Your real hair is kind of pretty, actually, in a weird way,” she said after a bit of silence. “Now that I’m not worried You have brain mold and I’m really looking at it. Like a fuzzy green lawn. It even looks like little leaves and a flower bud or two.”

  I sighed for the inevitability of that.

  “The wizards, while they were debating, they called You an earth witch,” she continued on in her practical way. “One of their ideas, if they accidentally killed You, was to plant Your body and see if they could harvest magical orchids from You.”

  I considered that, and what I knew of my own nature. “That might work. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t even think about it.” For the first time, she sounded truly appalled.

  I lifted my good hand and clasped hers. “I’m not. Even if I’m never brave enough to ask you to kill Me, I’m asking now for you to make sure they can’t … use My body like that. Find a way to burn My body.”

  “With my last breath, if necessary,” she replied, solemn as the vow. She laughed a little. “Back on Vurgmun, when I helped Conrí burn my former king’s corpse, and we said the old prayers for Conrí’s father, I told him I’d follow him to the end of my days, and that I asked only to hold the torch. Of course, I meant so I could burn Anure’s empire down, but I suppose this would come close.” She sobered, though still with a crooked smile.

  I summoned something of a smile and squeezed her hand. “I suspect ‘close’ is as good as we can hope for.”

  She was quiet a moment. “He’ll try to come after us. I know Conrí, and while he lives, he’ll try.”

  I let go of her hand and stared at the ceiling. “If he does, we’ll only have to watch him die.” Would I be able to hold out then? Probably not.

  “They’d use it against you,” Sondra said, as if reading my thoughts. “They’d torture him to get You to give up the information on the ring. Even without him, they might try using me to get You to crack,” she added, after a thought. “You should be prepared for that eventuality.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re not friends,” I said, “or that might work.”

  She laughed, that hoarse sound with a hint of old music in it. “See? That was my plan all along.”

  21

  We left Cradysica and traveled back to the palace. It made no sense to stay any longer in Cradysica. They had a great deal to rebuild. The citizens who’d fled returned to bury their dead or nurse the injured back to health. Having me and my people there only added to the burden.

  Besides, they all hated me, and I couldn’t blame them for it. I’d brought about the destruction of their home as surely as if I’d aimed the cannons myself.

  So after doing what little I could—everything I thought Lia would do if she were there—I left behind a group of able-bodied troops to help with rebuilding, and led everyone else back to the palace.

  It was a grim march, and I found myself acutely missing the festivity—however false it might’ve been—of Lia’s parade on the way to Cradysica. No small part of that was desperately missing her.

  I left the carriages to the ladies and rode the mount that had been Sondra’s. Kara had taken our most salvageable oceangoing vessel down the coast, coaxing it along and limping it to the shipyards of Calanthe’s best shipbuilders.

  As soon as it was ready, I’d sail it, along with a crew of volunteers, to Yekpehr and Anure’s citadel. Even though I had no idea what we’d do there. Even knowing it would be far too late to save Lia and Sondra. I had to try.

  I had no one to keep me company on the journey—really, no one wanted to speak to me, whether because they blamed me for the disaster at Cradysica or because I wasn’t fit company—and that suited me fine. Vesno ran beside me, ever faithful, and the quiet let me think, turning the knot of the impossible problem over and over in my head.

  It said something, however, that I missed even Ambrose’s taunts and mind puzzles. Had Anure and his wizards somehow captured Ambrose, too? It seemed that they must have, for he’d disappeared as if he’d never been. Of course, it could be that he’d been killed or injured—if a wizard could be, I didn’t know—but surely we’d have found at least his body. Or Merle.

  But nothing. People sure had a way of disappea
ring on Calanthe.

  In between casting about for some way to infiltrate the citadel, I thought a lot about the defeat at Cradysica on that long day’s journey. For it had been a defeat of crushing magnitude, no matter what anyone said about the battle itself. Lia had been right all along in her assessments that we’d never really had a chance of winning. Looking back to that day in Keiost, when we stood in the golden tower and I’d thought I’d be able to grab some magic ring and use it to smite Anure … Well, I seemed like a child in comparison with now. So full of ignorance and hubris.

  Now I felt ancient, ground down, and it seemed my punishment would be to live on. Maybe that’s how it had always been. I was doomed to continue on with my miserable, worthless life while everyone else around me died.

  So I decided I would put Calanthe’s business in order as best I could, and leave the throne in Lord Dearsley’s hands. He’d been handling things in Lia’s absence from the palace and could continue to do so. He wasn’t a true heir, but at least he was born of Calanthe, and he knew the realm intimately. That made him a far better ruler than I could ever be, no matter what Kara said. At least the earth tremors had settled, so the fears about Calanthe somehow rising like a monster from the sea wouldn’t come to pass.

  If I died trying to rescue Lia and Sondra—if they were already dead—then I could at least make one more last attempt to take Anure with me.

  * * *

  “I need a weapon,” I told the assembled group of Lia’s scholars. “Something I can carry on my person, with enough power to do serious damage.”

  We met in Lia’s private courtyard, which felt both right and agonizingly wrong. Every leaf rustling in the sea breeze, each sweetly wafting fragrance from some exotic bloom, had me expecting to see her. At any moment, my heart whispered, she’ll walk into the periphery of my vision, and she’ll be there—impossibly lovely, dripping with flowers and sparkling with jewels. She’ll give me that long, level look that assesses all of my flaws and failures, then give me a cool smile.