The Usurper's Crown

by Sarah Zettel

  He lifted out another jar. This one was alabaster, opaque and milk white. The stone was smooth to his eye, but strangely rough under his hands. It seemed almost wasteful to reach into his hoard twice like this, but this was the time against which he had laid by this stock of workings. He would spend it all in pursuit of his destiny. After that, it would no longer matter. He would, when his godhood was achieved, see what an infinitesimally small effort it had been.

  Unlike the vial at his throat, the jar of alabaster was warm. He had bargained heavily for this jar when he was still a young man, giving away a small fortune and a large secret to possess it. The seal was of white clay engraved with symbols Yamuna could not read. Once it was opened, he would not be able to close it again, or duplicate what lay within. This jar was made by priests in the farthest of the southern islands who worshiped gods they would not name. Not even Yamuna could squeeze their secrets from them.

  Setting the jar on the floor, Yamuna drew his knife and cracked the seal. Again, he hesitated. Was there something he had forgotten?

  Yamuna shook his head angrily. What were these doubts that assailed him? Nothing had been forgotten. All preparations were complete.

  He lifted the heavy lid. An odor of iron and old copper wafted up. He laid the lid aside. The jar brimmed with deep, red blood, still fresh and liquid, even though the jar had been sealed over two hundred years before.

  Yamuna reached into the warm blood, and after a moment, his fingers found the soft treasure it concealed and nourished. He drew out a small bird, just barely fledged. It struggled hard against the clutch of his fingers to stretch its wings and gain its freedom.

  It smelled of flesh, of blood and of heat. Its heart beat frantically against his hand.

  Yamuna took the frightened nestling into his mouth and swallowed it whole.

  A shock of pain ran through him so strong that he saw darkness and stars. Even Yamuna could not stand against the fire and doubled over, clutching his stomach. His bones snapped within him, the jagged ends rearranging. Yamuna clamped his jaw down to keep from crying out, and felt his teeth shatter and sink into his gums as his jaw lengthened and the flesh around it peeled away. His joints popped as they dislocated and reformed. Too many changes, too much pain. Yamuna roared in agony, even as he felt the first of the feathers pushed through his skin.

  After that, he lost track of all but pain.

  When the pain ended, Yamuna was gone. There was only a white crane huddled on the polished floor beside an alabaster jar, empty except for a thin coating of red-brown dust on its inner surface. The crane blinked and flopped its wings clumsily so it could stand on its slender legs. Strutting delicately, as was the nature of its kind, it stepped out onto the broad balcony. Heedless of the rain, the crane launched itself into the air. Wheeling on the wind, it flapped its great wings and turned toward the north.

  Kacha reviewed the lists showing the levies of men with growing satisfaction. Barbarians these northerners might be, but that turned out to have its advantages. They were ever ready when it came to a fight. As they marched south, the army grew stronger. More lords arrived at the heads of columns of men, many of them trained, with letters and lists from their Lords Master, pledging their allegiance to the empress in this “great and long-overdue action.” All were placed under the command of officers of the House Guard, and the ranks swelled.

  He had thought long and hard before deciding to lead the campaign himself. So much required careful control at the summer palace. But, he reasoned, if he hoped to continue to rule in his own name, he must prove his manhood. He could not be seen to be sitting idle while Isavaltan men went out to fight. So, he had crafted his permission from the empress to go and lead the troops, and had ridden out at their head.

  Now he sat in a stone room in one of Isavalta’s many coastline fortresses. On the fields outside had sprung acres of tents like summer wheat. When he went out into the fresh air, the world was filled with shouts, the ring of the armorer’s hammer, the sounds of horses and the tramp of boots. He imagined the noise reaching down the peninsula and across the sea to Hung Tse and making their own border guards quake. Kacha smiled at the image.

  This had proved to be the right decision. He was able here to gain the trust of the truly powerful men of the empire, and the news from Vaknevos was all good. Chekhania reported that the status of the “empress” continued healthful, and that her belly swelled daily and she glowed with health, meaning their child was alive and lively in her womb, readying himself to be born and take his place in the world. Ambassador Girilal held a number of conferences with the Council Lords who were jointly acting in regency until the empress would finish her confinement. The bemusements held. Yamuna’s magics and Chekhania’s cooperation allowed him to see still into the palace. She had developed a real talent for imitating Medeoan’s style in her messages to the council.

  A dull ache began behind Kacha’s right eye, surely a reminder that despite all, Yamuna was not at ease. Yamuna believed that Medeoan had taken refuge in the Heart of the World, but no word of confirmation had been received, nor had definite news that her ally Avanasy had died. Several popular and prominent landlords had not sent their levies yet, and their reasons for the delay were slow in coming and vague when they arrived. Most notable among these was Pachalka Ursulsyn Rzhovyn, father of the house guard captain Peshek who had disappeared with Medeoan. Peshek had also not been found.

  These were little things against the might of the army in the camp surrounding him, but little things might be enough to change the course of empires. Kacha had studied enough history to know that much.

  The head secretary coughed politely. “Imperial Majesty? Did you wish to continue?”

  Kacha rubbed his eye, but it did nothing to lessen his ache. No voice whispered to him from the back of his mind, no compulsion radiated to him from his withered right hand. He felt alone for the first time in years, and the sensation frightened him.

  “No,” he said abruptly to the secretaries. “I do not wish to continue. Take what you have and get the documents fair copied as soon as possible. Send someone to find General Adka.”

  “Imperial Majesty.” The four secretaries reverenced and gathered up their sheaves of paper, scuttling out the door like the flock of old women that they were. The ache behind his eye deepened, but it remained only an ache.

  If you want something, Yamuna, you are going to have to give me a better sign than this. Kacha lifted his silver tankard from the tray and found it empty, likewise the pitcher beside it. Only the smell of beer remained.

  “Boy!” he shouted and the waiting page ran in. Kacha stuffed the pitcher into the boy’s hands. No other order was needed. The child reverenced and ran out again, nearly colliding with General Adka as the man reached the door.

  Adka sidestepped the page and let the door close behind him. He gave the soldier’s reverence. “You sent for me, Imperial Majesty?”

  “I am concerned about the levies, General,” said Kacha as he beckoned Adka to take a chair. “Specifically, I am concerned about who has not delivered them yet.”

  “We do have men enough for the actions we have planned before winter.” Adka sat stiffly, unwilling to relax his formal posture even for a moment. Adka was a square man, not overly tall, but broad and solid with thick hands, hardened from their life’s work. His caftan of imperial blue strained at the seams, giving Kacha the impression that the man had not worn it much before he was called up on these actions. He preferred, doubtlessly, some less cumbersome, more well-worn coat when not in the presence of his autocrat. He also firmly believed that Hung Tse was a constant danger to Eternal Isavalta, and so had been more than ready to answer when Kacha called.

  “That is not the point, General,” said Kacha, pushing himself fully upright in his chair. The ache continued, becoming a low throb in his bones. “I am concerned that a traitor’s father has not yielded up his men, as is his duty.”

  “Lord Pachalka was a member of the house guard.
He knows his duty.” Adka spoke the words as if saying someone knew the sun would rise tomorrow. Duty was an unalterable fact with him.

  “Captain Peshek was also a member of the guard,” answered Kacha evenly. “Despite that, he ran off with some scullery maid in complete breach of that same duty.” That reminder made the stalwart man drop his gaze.

  The page boy chose that moment to return with the pitcher of beer. With a child’s extra care, he filled Kacha’s tankard. Kacha gave him a nod, and he filled another for the general. Adka accepted the beer, but did not drink. Kacha took several swallows of the black brew, only to find it did nothing for his ache.

  “Now.” Kacha leaned forward. The movement sharpened the pain in his eye. “I do not wish to trouble her imperial majesty with this. You will select a detail of men, and I will grant them police powers. They will go investigate the reasons for Pachalka’s lateness. If necessary, they will make an example of him and his, and they will collect the levies after that. Is this clear?”

  Adka set down his untouched tankard and laid his thick hand over his heart. “Yes, Imperial Majesty.”

  Kacha meant to nod and dismiss the man, but at that moment pain stabbed hard behind hand and eye. He felt his finger twist, crabbing up like old roots. His eye swelled until it pressed against the bones of its socket. Long practiced at enduring pain, Kacha did not cry out, but neither could he speak: His bones writhed under his skin and his eye twisted in answer. But throughout all this torture, Yamuna’s voice remained silent. No hint of why this was happening touched his mind. Unfamiliar, dizzying fear worsened the pain.

  “Majesty?” Adka held out his hand. “Majesty, is something …”

  “Get out!” cried Kacha. “Get out of my sight!”

  Adka blanched white and retreated at once. Alone, Kacha ground his teeth together and fought to master the pain. Through his right eye now, he only saw a blur of meaningless color that swam and shifted like oil poured on water. And his hand … Kacha looked down at his hand with his good eye, and bit his tongue to stop the scream.

  His skin had tightened against his bones and his fingers had grown long and brittle. The hand Yamuna had given Kacha to work his will now resembled nothing so much as the claw of some great bird. Trembling, he moved a plate of dainties from a silver tray and strained to see the wavering relection in its etched surface.

  And he saw how Yamuna’s eye had become round and black, and how it bulged grotesquely in its orbit, and how it was in no way a human eye any longer.

  It was a spell, it must be. Some working of Yamuna’s, for who else could have done this? What other power could have touched them? Kacha’s heart froze. That Yamuna could use a spell of such power that it transformed the hand that was no longer completely the sorcerer’s own, from a distance of a thousand miles … that he would do it without thought or warning of how it would effect Kacha… .

  Kacha threw the tray aside, because he could not bear to see. What have you done to us? Mothers All! Yamuna, what have you done!

  But Yamuna did not answer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Medeoan had lost track of days. She only knew there had been too many of them. The leather shift which was her only clothing had chafed welts under her arms. Some of them were beginning to bleed. The silent women who were sent in to search her every day saw the weals, and did nothing. Not even ointment was permitted her. She was brought regular meals of fairly good food — fresh meats, pastries, rice and vegetables — well, if plainly, prepared, but she ate under their watchful gaze, and all that was brought in was removed again as soon as she was finished. A chamber pot was provided at these times so she could do what was needful, but not even that was left to her when she was alone.

  With the first meal each morning came the search. Her shift was removed and inspected. The leather mattress was turned over and examined closely for any irregularity in the stitching, in case she had managed to use her fingers to loosen the gut to get at the ticking or to conceal something inside. The bare room was inspected. Medeoan’s cropped hair was rifled. Only when all was found to be in order did they permit Medeoan to sit and break her fast.

  After her guards departed, it had become Medeoan’s custom to sit in the window for a time, looking down at the gardens and across the walls to the city. She watched the green sea of trees waving below her and the flights of distant birds. After the first few days, she realized that it was becoming increasingly unlikely that she would be released alive. True, she was not being treated quite as a common prisoner. She was not in chains, but would the Nine Elders really want their honor impugned by stories of how they treated the lawful empress of another realm? No. They meant to make her a prisoner for life, and they were the ones who would determine how long her life would be.

  When she was sure her guards were going to stay outside, when she heard no footsteps coming or going in the narrow hallway just beyond her door, she would leave her window and push her mattress away from its corner.

  To her eye, it was easy to see the circle of braided silk plastered to the floor with a mixture of blood and less pleasant things. Inside the circle lay a delicately formed weaving of blond hairs. It looked like a short chain of flowers, their stems wound and knotted together to hold them in place.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Medeoan pulled three more hairs from her head. She had ceased to wince at this small pain. She wet them with her spittle and twirled them together to make a slender thread. Then, she took a deep breath and carefully, tentatively, she drew up her magic. She did not seek to release a river of power, which she normally would, especially for so complex a spell as she created now, but only a soft trickle. If her power rose too strongly, the Nine Elders would feel it. They would come and search her chamber with magic and find this working, her one chance at escape.

  Concentrating, and attempting to relax at the same time, she spun the single new thread into the weaving, and that was all. To do more than that at one sitting was to invite detection. She laid her working back in its circle of protection, repeating the spell that caused it to be overlooked.

  “I, Medeoan, servant of Vyshko and Vyshemir, place my working with a stone barrier about it, closed with a stone door, locked with three times nine locks and three times nine keys, with one key and one lock let no one cross this barrier, no bird fly over it, no eye light on it.”

  She replaced the mattress. Then, there was nothing to do but return to her window to wait and watch until the next meal. She had so often wished to be left alone, to not be princess or empress. Now, she had that wish, and she was locked up in a single room without any sort of help. Her captors attempted to make her nothing and nobody. But even they had not succeeded. She was still the empress of Isavalta. She was still Medeoan the sorceress, and she would make them remember that before the end.

  And Avanasy will come for me.

  She held fast to that hope most of all. As the sun crept across the sky, her only measure of the hours, she would picture him coming to the Heart of the World, and to her. Sometimes, in her dreams, he arrived at night, alone and stealth, and they eluded the guards and their magics flew them over the walls. Sometimes he arrived with Peshek and a legion of loyal soldiers, leading a proud horse, and she would mount it in broad daylight and ride in triumph back to Isavalta, where Kacha would kneel at her feet and beg for mercy. He would find none. She might, she thought sometimes, choose to keep him in the dungeons long enough for a public trial, but then he would die. She would have him beheaded in the courtyard as befitted his rank and crimes.

  Each day, she found it a little easier to think of Kacha without longing, and with a clearer view to who he was and what he had truly done to her. It was his fault she was prisoner here, locked away and struggling for her freedom. She would see this added to the list of crimes that would be read out at his trial. If she chose to give him a trial. If she did not simply choose to have Peshek, or some other loyal guard, run him through the moment she saw him again. That would prevent
him from using his honeyed words to try to soften her heart toward him again, not that it would work, but she was not certain she wished to hear him try.

  Then there would only be her and Avanasy. She would make him lord sorcerer for his loyal service to her. She would have it published and proclaimed that it was only Kacha’s treachery that had caused him to be banished. She would rule Isavalta wisely and well, just as her father had wished, and he would be chief among her advisors, and she would never turn him away again.

  And perhaps, in time, he would become more than advisor, more than teacher and friend.

  This dream she permitted herself to dwell on only occasionally, even though she found it warmed her the way no other plan could. She had to remind herself that she did not know what state Avanasy would be in when he returned. He might be angry with her for a time for not valuing his loyalty more highly, for throwing him aside for a traitor. It might take time for him to forgive her so much, but they would have that time. There would be so much to do. Starting with renewing the loyalty oaths of all the lords master. Then it would probably be necessary to appoint a new council, as Kacha could not be acting alone at this point. The traitors would have to be tried and sentenced before any other work could be done. Then … then … then …

  Dreaming her unfamiliar dreams of empire, Medeoan smiled out across the walls of the Heart of the World, worked her magics and learned to bide her time.

  In the end, Ingrid and Avanasy traveled to the Heart of the World in fine style. Lien hired them a troop of guards, and saw that both Ingrid and Avanasy were properly outfitted with silk robes and riding in a sedan chair carried by six bearers. Avanasy had thought they should ride horseback to the gates in Isavaltan fashion, but Ingrid had to admit she had never been on a horse in her life, so it was the sedan.

  They did not go unannounced. Three days before, a hired messenger had accompanied the hired guards into the Heart of the World bearing a courteous message written on translucent rice paper naming Avanasy, and Ingrid, as messengers from the empress of Isavalta who begged an audience with the emperor of Hung Tse so that they might deliver the empress’s “sagacious and urgent words.” Two days ago, a message sealed in saffron ribbons had been returned, fixing the time for their arrival.