The Usurper's Crown

by Sarah Zettel

  She caught sight of Avanasy beside her, gripping the cage. His skin cracked with heat and his face was blistered. His brows were a single smear of ash and pain turned him gray, but he held. His knees buckled under him, but still he held, and still he breathed out, a single long exhalation into the smoke and steam of her fire, swirling around the immortal bird, penetrating it, and binding it fast.

  The Firebird was only the size of a raven now, and Medeoan grasped the woven gold and bent the bars over its head. It flailed, striking out with wings and beak, and her hands burned where it touched and she screamed with the pain, but Avanasy cooled her flesh with his breath and she held her flames in control, and the cage began to weave itself closed under her fingers.

  You will pay for this, screamed the Firebird. Life and blood and realm I will have from you. You will pay with your whole life for this act!

  Medeoan shaped the gold and fire together, weaving them into a ring to hold the bars, to suspend the cage. But in the flicker of the flame she thought she saw images. She saw a young man, and she saw herself, impossibly aged, holding the tasseled girdle up before him. She saw Ingrid, no, not Ingrid, the girl had Avanasy’s face, standing before her, her expression full of bitter gall. She saw herself dying on a couch, alone, in the cold, and the Firebird soaring free over a stone tower.

  It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but what I do now. Medeoan drew on the last of her strength. Pain and blood and breath and magic, she drew out all she had, and sealed the ring, and the cage closed and the fire winked out.

  For one heartbeat, triumph raged through Medeoan’s blood. Then, Avanasy, still bound to her by all the strength of their working, crumpled to the ground.

  “Avanasy!” shrieked Medeoan, falling to her knees on the scorched earth beside him. Avanasy lay in the midst of the destruction, his skin white against the black ash, his golden hair filthy with char. He couldn’t seem to breathe. He could only choke and gasp.

  “No.” She seized his hand. “No, you cannot leave me. Not now.”

  But she was so tired. Weariness dragged at every muscle. Her throat cried out with a thirst that could never be slaked, and behind her, the bird and its miraculous cage burned so brightly, she could feel it pulsing in her blood, sapping what little strength remained to her.

  But Avanasy could not die. Not now. Now that she knew where her heart lay, now that he had saved her and all of Isavalta.

  Slowly, Avanasy reached out with his free hand. “Please,” he whispered. “Medeoan, help me.”

  Medeoan leaned across him. She looked in his eyes and she saw the love that was there even as their light died. She kissed him, open-mouthed, breathing her life, her magic into him. Bound as they were, this they could share. Source to source, spirit to spirit, she could give this to him, and she would, for their work, their need, their love, she pushed her magic hard into his heart, willing it strength to beat.

  And she found Ingrid there. Not herself, the stranger.

  Shock and rage threw Medeoan backward, all but severing the connection between them. Avanasy’s whole frame convulsed, and his throat gasped hard for air. His whole back arched as he struggled to breathe. She stared at him, heart beating hard, skin burning from what waited behind her, unable to believe that now, when they had been heart to heart, now when she had been willing to share with him her mortal breath, he still loved a stranger, a peasant, a nothing.

  Avanasy collapsed, the struggle finally becoming too much. Only his hand clenched itself. He was dying. She felt him ebbing, his spirit pulled away from his body by Grandfather Death, even as their cage had pulled the Firebird down.

  She saw then, in one blinding instant, how she could make all right. If Avanasy lived, if she gave her future to him, the Firebird’s hideous prophecy could not come true. Isavalta could stand free and strong. She could do as Vyshemir herself did and give her life for her realm, and go to the Land of Death and Spirit in Avanasy’s place.

  She could give him back to his lover.

  The thought made her hesitate, and she watched Avanasy’s hand curl tight once more, and then the fingers loosened, and his head rolled sideways. Medeoan cried out and threw herself forward, but she was too weak. His strength had been sustaining her, and she could only fall beside him. She pushed herself up, and tried to reach him, to kiss him, to breathe into him, to say she was sorry, that he must forgive her, that she was not thinking of herself, not really, that she loved him, that she needed him beside her.

  “Don’t go,” she breathed the words into his mouth, reaching inside herself for the last of her strength, searching her sorcery for the barest thread of their connection. “Don’t leave me.” She pressed her mouth against his, and breathed out the last of herself.

  Blackness swirled around her then, and Medeoan slipped forward to meet it.

  Ingrid dozed on the deck of Lien’s ship, surrounded by the white mists of the Land of Death and Spirit. Mindful of the warnings and dangers, she had tried hard to stay awake, but the day and the parting had been too much, and her mind and soul sought a relief that she had no strength left to deny.

  “Ingrid.”

  Ingrid was dreaming. She knew it. The cabin deck was warm with sunlight and she could see waves sparkling over the side, but there was no sun here. She sailed no real ocean. She dreamed and she should wake herself.

  But it was a wonderful dream, for Avanasy knelt beside her, gazing at her with eyes full of love.

  She reached out to take his hand, but although he was there, and she could see him, she could not touch him.

  “Come closer,” she said, in the manner of dreams.

  “I’m here beside you,” he told her. “Where I’ll be forever.”

  “But I can’t touch you.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Soon.”

  “Not for years to come, Ingrid. For you must live now.”

  Cold dread seized her, and she tried to tell herself this was only a dream. Nothing more, but part of her knew that was a lie.

  “No, Avanasy. Be here. You can’t … you can’t …”

  Avanasy was silent. He reached out to stroke her hair, but she felt nothing at all.

  “You promised.”

  “It was not for lack of love, Ingrid, I swear.”

  “No,” she said, with a rock-hard certainty. “Not alone. Not without you.” Her fingers found the wristlet he had made for her, and began tearing at the knot.

  “Stop, Ingrid. Don’t do this.”

  “I am not going to live without you,” she said doggedly. “You’re all I have.”

  “And you are all our babe has now.” Ingrid stilled her hand.

  “You must live for her, and for yourself, Ingrid. You must see her living into the world, for all our sakes.”

  “Say you’ll be beside me. Say you will be there with us.”

  “As close as I can be, Ingrid. As close as I am allowed.”

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispered, reaching again, and failing to touch him, yet again.

  “I love you, Ingrid. Carry that with you always. Tell our daughter that.”

  He was fading like a ghost, like a dream, he was pulling away from her.

  “No! Avanasy! No!”

  And she was awake and on her feet, staring out at the swirling mists and green islands, and strange dark trees, and the whole empty world between worlds.

  Ingrid bowed her head and began to weep. Her tears fell into the mist, and were gone.

  Epilogue

  Lien’s men rowed her ashore in the early morning, and left her on the sand of Eastbay. As soon as their boat returned, the ship raised sail and vanished from her sight.

  It was cold, and the trees were bare. November already maybe. Maybe only October. It didn’t matter. It was cold and the wind bit hard at her bones.

  Ingrid entered Avanasy’s shack and sat in his chair. She could not think. She was numb. All she could do was sit and stare at the empty stove, and remember how he had lain in the now empty be
d and let her sing him back to the world.

  Eventually, cold overcame even numbness, and Ingrid found matches in a tin can, and some tinder, and some kindling, and with only a little trouble, managed to light the stove. On a shelf, there was coffee, and tins of beans, and some others of beef. She ate some of the beans, and returned to Avanasy’s chair, and curled up in it, watching the fire through the grate in the old stove.

  She lived for two or three days that way, doing no more than absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together. She did not weep. She could not seem to remember how.

  Then, one morning, she had lost count of the mornings, as she knelt to light the stove, she heard a footstep outside, and the door swung open.

  “Ingrid?”

  Still on her knees, Ingrid turned, and saw Everett Lederle standing in the doorway.

  She rose, but could find nothing to say.

  Everett pulled off his cap and stepped inside. “I heard you’d been seen.”

  “Did you?” Ingrid smoothed down her worn and filthy dress.

  Everett took another tentative step toward her. “Your family is saying they won’t have you back.”

  “I’m not surprised.” It was hard, but she made herself think of her family, of how she had come to be in this place. “Did you speak with Grace?”

  Everett shook his head. “She’s gone to Bayfield.”

  Ingrid laid her hand on the edge of the warming stove. “She’s better off there.”

  Silence hung between them while Ingrid stared past Everett to the doorway, wondering if her paralysis was because she wanted Everett to go, or because she wanted Avanasy to come for her.

  “Ingrid, you can’t stay here.”

  Ingrid shrugged. “It’s only for a few days,” she lied, “until I can convince the tug to take me across to Bayfield. I’ll find work.”

  “Where?” asked Everett. “It’s all over how you ran off.”

  “If no one will have me in Bayfield, then I’ll just have to go further.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. She did not want to see how earnestly he looked at her. She did not want to see love on another man’s face.

  “You could come with me,” he said.

  Now it was Ingrid’s turn to shake her head. “You don’t want me, Everett.”

  “I’ve never wanted anyone else.” He did not move closer to her. He relied on his words to reach her. He had no idea how far they had to travel.

  Better to end this now. Ingrid laid her hand against her belly. “I’m pregnant, Everett.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Those soft words caused Ingrid to finally raise her eyes and look directly at him. A good man. He had always been such a good man. Even now, as he stood ready to forgive her so much, she could feel only regret, only grief, and love for another.

  “Come with me,” urged Everett. “If not for your own sake, then for the baby’s.”

  The baby. Yes, she had to think of the baby, her baby, Avanasy’s baby. What would life be like for it, born a bastard, even more of an outcast than it needed to be?

  Everett held out his hand.

  “I don’t know if I will ever love you, Everett.”

  “But you don’t know that you won’t,” Everett answered.

  His faith was warming, like a fire at her back. He believed. He believed if he loved her enough that the dry tinder of her heart would catch fire. Maybe he was right. They could hope. Even now, they could still hope. If there was hope, then what she did was not a lie. Her child would be born healthy and alive to a loving mother and father, and then one day, one day she would find a way to return to Isavalta, just a little while, just so the child would know that part of its heritage, would at least know the land of its father. Then, she would return to Everett whom she would have learned to love. If she could hold tight to that hope, then this was not a lie. If she could hold tight to that hope she could find some corner of her heart that could hold love for Everett as well as for Avanasy.

  Ingrid gave Everett her hand, answering his soft smile with her own as he took her arm and led her to his home.

  Medeoan entered the long pavilion with her entourage behind her. A gleaming trestle table had been placed in the center. At either side sat the representatives of Hung Tse — generals in lacquered armor, scholars in modest black-and-white coats, and, at the far end, two of the Nine Elders; the Minister of Earth and the Minister of the North.

  They had left the carved chair at the foot of the table for her. Prathad pulled it out for her and Medeoan sat, letting her ladies adjust her trains and sleeves, while the Council Lords and secretaries arrayed themselves behind her with their caskets and scrolls and other small burdens.

  Captain Peshek, in his crisp coat and gleaming breastplate, stood at Medeoan’s right hand.

  Peasants had found them both. Peshek had been carried from the ruin. Medeoan, they had not dared touch because of the Firebird caged beside her. When she had woken, with the ones who had found her and the keeper of their village god house as a ragged escort, she had carried cage and captive to their lord’s estate. He had not doubted who she was, and, no matter who he had followed before, he knelt to her and her cage now and sent instant word to the lord master, who knelt himself, and proclaimed his fealty.

  Later, she would sort out who had remained true, who had been bemused by Kacha and Yamuna, and who had truly betrayed. For now, it was enough that they obeyed and gave her what men were left to march in procession to the next fortress, the next manor, the next lord and lord master. Word flew ahead of her, the tale of betrayal and duplicity, and the countryside turned out to cheer her return at the head of her growing guard.

  She kept the cage covered.

  By the time they reached Vaknevos, the whole of the palace turned out to greet her. With Yamuna’s death, the spells he had laid with Kacha’s help had broken and the newly freed seized the traitors, or the supposed traitors, and offered them up to her in exchange for forgiveness. They waited in the cells for her judgment, all except one.

  The woman Chekhania sailed in chains to Hastinapura, her belly big with Kacha’s bastard. The Hastinapuran ambassador’s head in a jar of honey was her accompaniment.

  That left Hung Tse’s army massing at Miateshcha, and their navy gathering its strength in the southern sea. So, she had made her arrangements, and had ridden here to meet with the representatives of Hung Tse. She’d had to come herself, as until she’d had time to investigate what had happened in her absence, there was still no way to know who she could really trust.

  The Minister of the North bowed her head in acknowledgment of Medeoan’s arrival. “We thank Your Majesty Imperial for appearing before us. We are certain that this recent misunderstanding between yourself and the Heart of Heaven and Earth can be quickly resolved and appropriate reparation made.”

  She looked from one of the ministers to the other. Their faces behind their tattoos were bland, but their eyes were not easy. They were wondering, she knew, why she lived. She should have been dead. She should have been ash and char.

  “Ministers of the Heart of the World,” she replied evenly. “I am not here to speak of reparations. I am here to confirm that Isavalta has no lawful quarrel with Hung Tse. Our armies have been removed and disbanded and we hope soon to exchange ambassadors with the Heart of the World. We expect that our Brother Emperor will give similar orders as soon as you carry my word back to him.” She gestured to her chief secretary, who walked to the ministers and handed over a scroll bound with sapphire ribbons and sealed with red wax.

  The Minister of the North received the missive in silence.

  “We are of course delighted to hear that Your Majesty Imperial has understood that this quarrel previously standing between our empires has no basis in the laws of earth or heaven,” said the Minister of Earth. “But, it is Hung Tse that was attacked and …”

  Medeoan did not let him finish. “We will not speak of attacks, Minister. We will not speak of damages or reparations. We have withdrawn.
You will withdraw. That is all.”

  “It is Hung Tse that was attacked,” the Minister of Earth repeated. “You have acknowledged that this attack was unlawful. That entitles Hung Tse to reparations from Isavalta.”

  Medeoan looked to Peshek. Peshek turned to the commander of the House Guard, who handed him the object covered with black cloth that he carried. Peshek set the object in front of Medeoan.

  All the representatives of Hung Tse shifted uneasily at their end of the table.

  Medeoan pulled away the black cloth, revealing a curved jar of purest crystal. Inside lay a single feather that at first glance appeared to be perfectly formed of shining gold, but if one looked longer and more closely, one saw how lights of orange, red and white played along its length.

  She lifted the curved jar from its base. The air touched the feather, and it burst at once into a single gout of flame that burned for an instant, and was gone.

  The two sorcerers of Hung Tse let their gaze linger on the now empty jar, and then, slowly lifted their gaze to meet Medeoan’s.

  Medeoan replaced the crystal jar on its base, and Peshek lifted it away.

  “We will not speak of attacks,” she said. “We will not speak of reparations. We have withdrawn our forces. Hung Tse will also withdraw. That is all.”

  Medeoan left the pavilion. Her grooms had her horse waiting for her, and she mounted. Without looking behind even to see if her escort followed, she mounted and rode back across the plain to the encampment that had been made around her banner with the golden imperial eagle on its bright blue field.

  At one time, she might have found her tent cramped and uncomfortable, for all its carpets and finely made furniture. No longer. She had known far rougher accommodation. Prathad hurried about, directing the other ladies, all new, and all chosen by her, to take her outer coat, to fetch small beer and refreshment, and to do all else that was needful for the maintenance of their empress.