The Usurper's Crown

by Sarah Zettel

  After what felt like hours, they were at last able to see Avanasy and the empress, the only bits of color in a world gone black and gray with death. They stood near the far edge of the worst of the destruction. This must have been the head of the procession. Medeoan looked down at something, frozen, unmoving. As they came closer, Ingrid could make out a hand, an arm, sticking grotesquely out of the soot and char that had once been a man. It was as burnt and as black as all the rest of the dead Ingrid had tried not to see, but Medeoan seemed transfixed. She did not look up as Ingrid and Lien drew near enough to see the gleam of a golden ring on the dead hand, which must have been what attracted Medeoan’s eye to it in the first place.

  “I believe,” murmured Lien, “the empress has found her husband.”

  “So.” Medeoan spoke to the blackened limb, and her voice was as cold and brittle as glass. “This is where you’ve ended. Your plan worked and brought war to Isavalta. Are you happy? Are you pleased with how well you’ve succeeded?” Her skin showed white where tears had washed the ash and grime away from her face. “Did you know where I was? Did you even care? Did you spare me a single thought once I was no longer an obstacle?” Her voice rose and sharpened, becoming at last a scream. “I loved you! I gave over an empire to you and you gave me nothing but vicious, vicious lies!”

  Medeoan lifted her robe of blackened silk and aimed a swift and vicious kick at the pathetic remains, shattering them into flakes of ash. Then she turned away, and Avanasy put his hand on her shoulder.

  Ingrid found a small piece of herself that had not been numbed by her smoldering surroundings and felt pity for the young woman. To be so betrayed … could even what she saw now be worse than that?

  At last, the sound of their approach reached Avanasy. He looked around quickly, and when he saw Ingrid his face lit up with a joy incongruous to see in the midst of this burned world, but even so, her heart answered with an equal joy.

  “I knew you would find your way!” he cried as he wrapped his arms around her, covering her soot-smudged face with his kisses. “I knew, I always knew. Oh, Ingrid …” They kissed, long and deep then, and when he pulled away, Avanasy looked startled.

  “Did the Old Witch give you what we need?”

  Medeoan had come up behind Avanasy, her face cold as stone. Whether it was from the devastation of her people, or from what she had just seen between Ingrid and Avanasy, Ingrid could not tell.

  “Yes,” Avanasy answered for her, his voice thick with wonder. “Yes, she did, and Ingrid has given it to me.”

  “I would have warned you, if you had given me a moment,” she said, an odd gaiety taking hold in her now that her burden was lifted and Avanasy was before her, whole and sound.

  “What must we do?” demanded the empress. “How do we begin?”

  Avanasy’s eyes flicked back and forth, as if he were drawing out some deep memory. “We need a forge, or a crucible. We need gold and blood to shape the cage, and …” He froze and, under his coating of grime, he paled. “Mortal breath.”

  Medeoan bowed her head. “Of course,” she sighed. “It would be so, for such a thing, it would be so.”

  Despite the heat, Ingrid shivered. “I don’t understand.” She had carried the knowledge inside her, yes, but she had been a vessel only. It was Avanasy who knew what these things brought from the Silent Lands meant.

  “Mortal breath.” Avanasy was not looking at her. He was looking at Medeoan where she stood, turned away, her arms wrapped around herself. “Is the last breath. The dying breath.”

  Whatever Ingrid had thought to say died in her throat. Avanasy turned back toward her, his eyes soft.

  “Oh, no, Avanasy. You won’t … you wouldn’t …”

  He took both her hands. “Ingrid, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  “No.” She gripped him, hard. “No. Avanasy, listen to me. I’m with child. We’re going to have a baby.”

  Avanasy’s face went completely blank for a moment, as if he could not understand a word that she said. Then, he swept her into his arms and held her so closely she could scarcely breathe.

  “Oh, Ingrid,” he breathed against her shoulder. “Oh, my heart.”

  “You can’t send me away now. You can’t die.” Because he would do it. She had no doubts. He would not let the empress be the one to sacrifice herself. He would never do such a thing.

  “I will only do what I must, Ingrid,” he said, but the soft words had all the force of an oath. Then he drew away, and looked her steadily in the eyes. “But you must be safe. That is what will sustain me. If I can think on you and our child without fear, I will live. But I cannot do that while this battle may touch you. I beg you, go home. Let Master Lien return you to Sand Island. Wait for me there. I will come for you as soon as I can.”

  “But the Firebird may be finished,” she said, grasping at straws. “Perhaps this is all it was sent to do …”

  “No, mistress,” said Lien. Ingrid started. She had forgotten him entirely. “The Phoenix will not stop at so little when the whole of an empire has been arrayed against Hung Tse.”

  So little? Ingrid wanted to cry and sweep her hands out to encompass the devastation, but she could only stand and tremble for a moment while the implications of Lien’s words sank into her.

  “I cannot abandon this now,” she said stubbornly. “I cannot abandon you now, Avanasy. I also have a stake in what happens here.”

  “Think of our child, Ingrid,” whispered Avanasy. “Take our child to safety.”

  Ingrid’s throat closed. “I came here to stay,” she said, laying her hand across her belly. “This child belongs in Isavalta, with its father.”

  “Ingrid.” Avanasy took both her hands and led her a little ways from the others. “Ingrid, listen to me,” he whispered. “I never thought to father a child. I was told from the moment it became known I was a sorcerer that such a thing was difficult, that it had only happened a handful of times. I feel as if a star has been placed in my keeping. I …” His fingertips brushed her cheeks. “Isavalta may burn, Ingrid, if we are not successful. How can I let this star, this love, fall into that inferno? I am begging you, my love, take yourself, take our child, into safety. Let me be sure of that.”

  Ingrid kissed Avanasy then, all other doubts, all other fears drowned in the terrible knowledge that she might never see him again.

  When she drew back, he wrapped his arms still more tightly around her and pulled her against him again. “I will come back to you,” he said, and she felt his breath warm against her cheek as he spoke. “I swear it, by all that is in me, I swear it.”

  She nodded. She did not trust her voice. Avanasy released her and turned to Lien.

  “Lien, will you return her to her home? You can then go back to Hung Tse and take your niece to safety, in case we fail.”

  “If you fail, there will in truth be no safety for us,” replied Lien, looking stooped and aged. “But for what she has tried, I will carry Mistress Ingrid to her home.”

  “Can we go now?” asked Ingrid, her voice breaking, as she had known it would. “I can’t … I don’t want …”

  “Go, Ingrid,” said Avanasy. “Go and let me know that you are safe.”

  She did not say good-bye. She did not look back. She turned on her heel and marched away through the ruin of what had been an army. Lien was beside her, and he took her hand. She did not resist him. He began to chant, to draw on his power, but all she could feel was the touch of Avanasy’s lips against hers. All she could think of was the sound of his voice.

  She barely noticed when the world faded away from around her.

  Medeoan stood at Avanasy’s side and tried not to be impatient. One moment, Ingrid and Lien walked through the ruins. The next moment, they were gone. It was not until the wind blew again and raised a whorl of hot ash where they had stood that Avanasy was able to turn away.

  She saw the pain in his eyes, and had to resist the urge to shout at him. What of Isavalta? she wanted to cry. What of me?


  But she saw the ravage his emotions had wrought on his face and held her tongue.

  “Come, Majesty,” said Avanasy roughly. “We must see what we can salvage.”

  The work was as grim, as hard and as filthy as she imagined it would be. The ash was greasy with grisly fat, making what debris there was slick. The stench filled her to the brim. She wrapped her sleeves around her hands to try to stave off the smoldering heat, but it did not work well. She would have blisters soon.

  But she went on. All the ruination around her reminded her of Lien’s words. This could be Vyshtavos. It could be Camaracost, or Biradost. It could be the whole of Isavalta from Tuukos to Miateshcha, wherever the Firebird decided to fly. She glanced at the horizon, again and again, terrified at the thought that she would see fresh plumes of smoke.

  At last, she and Avanasy, filthy, wheezing, and burning with heat and with thirst, assembled what they had been able to find. Avanasy had ranged back along where they thought the baggage train had been and found the smith’s cart with its small forge and anvil. They righted it as best they could, but could not move it, so they would perform their working beside it. Medeoan had guessed that Kacha would not be far from the war chest his army carried, and she was right. Some of the gold was only partially melted, and she was able to retrieve the misshapen bits of still-hot metal in the skirts of her robe.

  They would need blood as well, but there was no shortage of ways to let that flow.

  Behind them, the last rays of the sun shone over the hills. Medeoan imagined she could hear the distant rush of wings that was the Firebird.

  Stop! she wanted to cry out. If you want to fight Isavalta, you will come to me!

  She wiped her brow and tried to calm such thoughts. They would call the Firebird to them soon enough. Avanasy, his voice rough with thirst and ash, had told her what they must do. Pain made his face haggard, but he held himself still and strong.

  He had split open a blackened cart rail and found that its center still burned red. Carefully, he took those coals and applied them to the heap of charcoal underneath the iron brazier that was what was left of the portable forge. Medeoan held her breath, and concentrated, and pushed the ruined world, the world where the Firebird roamed at will, away. In this world, her world, there was only Avanasy and the spreading flames, lapping at the half-burned splinters they used for kindling, and the charcoaled wood they had laid on top. In this world there was only the fire and Avanasy’s injured hands.

  Avanasy’s hands that had held Ingrid’s face so gently before he kissed her farewell.

  Stop that. There is no place for that here. You are not a child. You are Empress, and he serves you. That is all you require.

  “Now, Medeoan.”

  Relief washed over her at those words. As Avanasy stood and stepped back, Medeoan knelt in front of the fire. Individual flames danced in front of her eyes, in all their shades of gold. Each one could be a feather in the Firebird’s plumage, or each one a bar in its cage. It was up to her. This, at last, was one thing she could do for her people, her empire, and for herself.

  Medeoan steeled herself. She reached out until the heat of the flames became too much for her already seared and tender skin. With a supreme effort she shut out the sensations of the world one by one — the hot wind, the scents of smoke and burning, the crackle as yet another bone or bracing broke and fell — until all that remained was the pounding of her own heart. She reached down deep, past that familiar rhythm, past the surge of her breath, past the current of her blood and into her spirit. There she drew up the magic cradled there until it flowed freely down her fingertips and into the fire. The barrier of their heat dissolved, and she pushed past it as easily as if it had been cool well water, until she cupped the flames in her hands.

  They were soft to hold, and smooth and delicate as the petals of the rarest flower. Her fingers stroked them lovingly and her magic willed them to grow, to spread, to become white with heat and life. The flames responded to her urgings, turning from individual petals into silken sheets of pure white light. She was aware of the heat in some distant part of her mind but it was of no significance. This fire was hers and could do her no harm. It could only serve. Not even the Phoenix could wrest this fire from her.

  She felt the touch of Avanasy’s magic even before she glimpsed him kneeling beside her. He was cool and strong, as he ever had been, earth and metal to her fire and air. She welcomed the touch of him, the solid, familiar and loved, yes, loved, presence beside her. The manifestation of her spirit that was her magic opened and made room for his, the pair of them twining together even as he lifted the charred board where they had laid the lumps of gold and emptied them into her fire.

  Magic, fire and hands caught the gold. Guided by her will and her work, the flames encircled the gold, claiming its shape, softening it to the texture of molten glass. Avanasy drizzled their pitiful store of water, claimed from a stream nearby, into the crucible, sending up great clouds of steam, and only increasing the greed of Medeoan’s fire, and then he bent close, so close his mouth almost touched her fingers, and he breathed out, long and cool across the molten gold.

  Medeoan caught the gold and their magic up and her fingers began to spin it into threads, long, hair-fine and pure, as strong as steel and pliable as flax. In her mind, she fixed the image of the cage, a filigree thing of shining gold, made of all these threads, woven together by sorcery, skill and need. It would be made of all the elements of the world summoned together, and the work of her hands. Her fingers moved, and her mind moved and the gold took shape.

  All at once, she saw the Firebird. Burning bright and deadly, she saw it streaking across the pale blue sky on its own mission. She gasped and her fingers snapped the thread they held in two. The heat bit hard into her skin and her magic faltered.

  But there was Avanasy, to catch the broken thread and cup her hands again. He breathed across her fingertips and the heat receded. His power swirled around her, supporting her like bones, like the bars of a golden cage, their cage, the Firebird’s cage.

  Together, they spun the molten gold. Together they wove the bars of her fire and Avanasy’s breath and their mingled blood and in the midst of raging war and the flood of magics, Medeoan felt she at last knew the meaning of her own love.

  The mind of the Phoenix burned bright with thoughts of vengeance. The invaders dared to wake its anger, dared to approach the threshold of its home and flail at its people. They would know the fire and they would know a generation of fear. The Phoenix opened its mouth and cried aloud to let its people know they were not abandoned.

  Fire gripped Avanasy. Its spirit dragged his down into the flames, spinning it with the gold flames, weaving it into bars. He was the cage, was the fire, was the spell, reaching up and out to find the Firebird. It burned bright. He hungered after it, longed to hold it close. It was his purpose, his need for being. He would give his all to encompass that wildness.

  Ingrid. Think also of Ingrid and your child. She waits for you, and you must hold on.

  But, oh, how the bird soared free in its beauty, and how brightly it burned, how the gold shimmered with its own fire, and it pulled him, pulled breath from his body, pulled will from his soul.

  And Medeoan needed him, and Isavalta needed him.

  The cage rose before him, impossibly balanced on the crucible, open like a filigree flower, reaching, waiting.

  “Now,” whispered Medeoan. “Now.”

  She plunged her hands and her magic deep into the fire.

  Vyshemir, I never knew her true strength. She caught him up as easily as a handful of chaff and flung him into the air. He soared free on the gout of flame, his own power the connection between flame and cage, and the flame sought its living avatar, and flashed toward the Phoenix, and touched the bird, and merged as it must, for that was the nature of the world.

  And Avanasy, suspended between earth and sky, began to pull.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I am stretched
too far. There is too much heat. I can’t breathe.

  I must breathe. I must live.

  Ingrid waited for him. He had to live to cross to her, to carry her home. She carried their child.

  Avanasy breathed, and Avanasy, with all the strength of purely human need, pulled.

  The Firebird was impossibly huge. The sun never burned so brightly, nor in so many colors of flame. Its cry was sharper than the screams of the dying, more thunderous than the wood that exploded at the merest brush of its wings. It was vengeance, it was protection. It was fire in all its forms set loose. It cast no shadow, for it was nothing but light.

  It surely must consume the world.

  But then, the Firebird paused in its flight, hovering over the darkening plains. Then it spread its wings and loosed a strange, new cry. Fire leapt up from the ranges it had left, fresh fire, strange fire. The new flame stretched out and it and the bird’s fiery plumage melted into one.

  Then the Firebird began to sink.

  No! screamed the Firebird.

  Medeoan started, and almost dropped the weaving again. She had not expected the creature to have a voice.

  The heat of it was volcanic. It seared the skin on her face and scalp. Medeoan felt she must burst into flame at any second. Her fire seemed such a slender thread by comparison, but it held, and it dragged the great Phoenix down to her cage.

  Their cage. Avanasy clung tightly to the delicate bars, holding the weaving together with magic and will as the bird fell closer, pulled by her fire.

  Stop! You have no right to interfere! screamed the bird inside her mind.

  “I am the Empress of Isavalta!” cried out Medeoan. “I will protect my own!”

  The Firebird shrank and shriveled, its fire fading as her flame bound it ever more tightly. Now it was the size of a swan, then a crane, a heron, a great golden eagle. Now, it was the size of a hawk, and Medeoan’s flame pulled it down into the waiting cage that balanced atop the crucible.

  It was then Medeoan felt it. The real burning. Not the physical fire that blistered her skin and singed her hair. She felt the burning inside, the fire that stretched from the center of the earth to the stars and the sun, the single flame at the heart of all fire. It lanced through her like pain and elation, and she knew all at once what she was trying to bind.