Copyright © 2020 by Claire Legrand
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
About the Author
1
Obritsa knew the flames had changed color when the other girls began to scream.
She looked up from the gown she was mending and watched the novices and their maidservants rush to the eastern windows. They crowded the glass, blessed and common alike—some of them squealing, some bursting into tears, some staring silently, wide-eyed. Hands covering their mouths, clutching their stomachs, fisted at their sides.
Past them, far across the Kirvayan capital city of Genzhar, the seven magisterial flames—which had been burning golden for the past week while the magisters deliberated—had turned a vivid scarlet.
The Magisterial Council had reached a decision.
And Obritsa, silently watching the chaos, was one of only two people in the temple who already knew their choice.
She would have to move, and quickly. It would take some time for the Grand Magister of the Pyre to make his way through the crowded capital streets to the temple, but there was much preparation to be done before then. And Obritsa would have to appear to be swept up in the mania of the day, or she would attract the wrong kind of attention.
No one could suspect her, not even for an instant, or everything she had been working toward would unravel, as would the efforts of the revolution.
But first, she allowed herself a few quiet breaths, alone and still in her dark corner. They would be some of the last she would enjoy as her familiar self—Obritsa, orphan, twelve years old, maidservant to Yeva of the Mountains, resident of the Temple of Her Own Daughters. An unfriendly sort, the sestras had often remarked of Obritsa, gossiping when they assumed she was dutifully listening to Yeva prattle on about whatever nonsense had swooped into the girl’s head that day. A taciturn child, they said, and rather sour, but hard-working, and excellent with a needle.
That, however, was the Obritsa of the temple—the orphan, the servant, the overlooked.
Soon, she would become a different Obritsa entirely.
Yeva bounded past her. “Obritsa! Hurry, we have to get ready!”
Obritsa rose from her chair and followed Yeva’s bouncing, squealing form down the hallway to her room.
It was one of the tiny cruelties of the world that Obritsa had been assigned to serve the most outgoing novice in the House, the girl most prone to random outbursts of noise and feeling.
But Obritsa would not have to tolerate her for much longer.
As she followed Yeva into her room, Obritsa couldn’t help but glance up at Artem, standing guard beside the door.
Artem didn’t smile. He was too devoted to the revolution for his facade to crack even on this day. But Obritsa saw in his steady brown eyes the slightest spark of delight.
Obritsa carefully hid her own triumph beneath a deferential expression. Her pride in her guard was absolute; Artem had been preparing for this day even longer than she had, and now, at last, his devotion would be rewarded with the most important mission anyone in the revolution had ever been assigned.
Anyone, of course, besides Obritsa herself.
She helped Yeva dress and ornament herself—gold baubles for her ears and wrists, rubies for her fingers. A velvet gown of deep crimson with intricate gold embroidery at the hems, and a heavy brocaded gold overlay with a silk sash that pinched thirteen-year-old Yeva’s tiny waist until she swooned. Over the past week, to achieve the shining platinum tresses that Saint Marzana had once boasted, Obritsa had painted Yeva’s dark hair with lightening paste until the girl had sobbed from the pain in her tingling scalp. Artem had been forced to hold down Yeva’s hands to keep her from shoving Obritsa away.
“You want this, my lady,” Obritsa had reminded her soothingly, drawing the brush along Yeva’s long, thick locks of dark hair. The acrid stench of the lightening paste had made Obritsa’s eyes water. “You want to be chosen. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Yeva had answered, her voice wobbling, tears streaking her pale cheeks. “I want it more than anything.”
Yes, Yeva wanted it—but for the wrong reasons, in Obritsa’s opinion. For the money, for the suitors, for the beautiful gowns and glittering midnight masquerades. Not to improve her homeland.
Not to liberate the countless people unlucky enough to be born without magic, trapped forever in service to Kirvaya’s powerful elemental elite.
Obritsa had glanced up at Artem, whose plain, placid face was the very picture of duty, and knew he was thinking the same thing.
“And that is why we must remake you in Saint Marzana’s image,” Obritsa had told Yeva. “That is why we pray to her every night and light your seven candles to echo the seven temple fires. The magisters will see you in their smoke, so beautiful with your hair white as snow and a crown of flames surrounding you as you pray with your casting, and they will think of Our Lady Saint Marzana the Brilliant. They will fall desperately in love with you and choose you as our next queen.”
Yeva had sniffed, looking up so trustingly that, for a moment, Obritsa had felt a distant kind of pity for the girl. “Do you really think so, Britsa?”
Obritsa had, as always, bristled at the shortening of her name. But she had continued working, her movements measured and gentle. “I do, my lady. You are a powerful firebrand, a true daughter of Marzana.”
Now, with the temple fires burning scarlet on the horizon, Obritsa stood behind Yeva and braided her stiff white hair. Once, she looked up at the mirror and saw Yeva gazing with ferocious envy at Obritsa’s own hair, which grew out of her scalp the pure white of high winter. Even though her skin was a light, sandy brown, while Saint Marzana’s had been pale, Obritsa’s delicate features, white hair, and keen hazel eyes were similar enough to the beloved Kirvayan saint to draw the attention of every eye that beheld her.
It was one of the reasons she had been chosen at the tender age of two to lead the oppressed human population of her country to revolution.
Obritsa tied the final golden cord to the ludicrous, elaborate mess of Yeva’s hair—coiled braids and fine gold netting and pearl-tipped pins.
“Finished,” she proclaimed. “Your beauty would shame even Our Beloved Lady.”
“Britsa!” Yeva looked back at her with wide eyes. “That is unholy of you!”
“Forgive me, my lady. My excitement has gotten the better of me.” Then, watchi
ng Yeva fuss over her hair in the mirror, Obritsa felt a slight twinge in her breast. She smoothed over the feeling at once, but Yeva, for all her foolishness, had quick eyes.
“Britsa.” Yeva turned, her painted lips red as fresh blood. She cupped Obritsa’s hands in her own and brought them gently to her heart, her eyes shining. “I’ll miss you too, if I’m chosen. I’ll miss you more than I can say.”
Obritsa bowed her head and kissed each of Yeva’s hands. When she murmured, “It has been an honor to serve you, my lady,” it was not the truth, but it was not entirely a lie.
The clarion peal of bells split the silence.
Obritsa’s eyes met Artem’s in the mirror.
The Grand Magister of the Pyre had arrived.
* * *
The Grand Magister’s vestments were so stiff with needlework, depicting swirling firebirds with long, trailing wings, that he moved slowly, like a man infirm, aided at every turn by a passel of acolytes wearing crimson robes trimmed with gold.
He shuffled across the receiving hall in slippers hidden beneath heavy folds of fabric. The massive room, normally plain, had been festooned with golden garlands, bright as midday, and bouquets of firelilies, their orange-tipped white petals shivering in the torchlight.
Obritsa watched him shift into position at the feet of Saint Marzana’s statue. He kissed his fingers, then touched them to his right temple.
Obritsa, and Artem, and Yeva, and all the other novices, guards, and maidservants gathered in the room, as well as the white-robed sestras hovering behind them like nervous hens, echoed his movements.
The Grand Magister began his prayer to Saint Marzana with the Fire Rite, but Obritsa only half listened.
She was concentrating on breathing in and out. She must continue breathing in and out and think of what the next few minutes would bring. She had rehearsed the scene thousands of times—both in her mind and, secretly, with Artem, whenever they could sneak away to the tangled pockets of the temple gardens that the sestras were too lazy to groom. She had imagined what the responses of the other girls would be. Shock, of course, and anger. There would be violence, perhaps, but anyone stupid enough to attack her would be burned by the holy guard.
Obritsa had spent many a night lying awake, preparing herself to see one of her fellow maidservants, full of wrath that her lady had not been chosen, shot through the heart with an arrow of flame or slammed lifeless to the ground by a blast of fire.
She had painted the scene in her mind again and again, until the imagined sight of those angry flames filled her with neither fear nor anger. Not with sadness or regret or remorse.
She had forced her mind through the future of this day until the horrors it would bring sat calmly in her mind like dull stones at the bottom of a silt-clogged river.
“—and so, on this most holy day, I come to you with tidings of joy and celebration,” the Grand Magister was saying. “I come to you with the name of Kirvaya’s new queen.”
Obritsa squeezed Yeva’s hand. The girl was trembling, her bright eyes fixed hungrily on the Grand Magister’s wrinkled brown face.
As he slowly looked about the room, Obritsa made sure to drop her gaze to the ground, as the other maidservants had done, and whisper prayers to Saint Marzana that her lady, her Yeva, would be the one to take the Blazing Throne.
At last, the Grand Magister’s voice dropped with the weight of mountains: “Obritsa Nevemskaya.”
The receiving hall plunged into a silence that writhed for the space of two breaths.
Then voices erupted, horrified and furious—from behind Obritsa, from beside her, from across the room. Yeva whirled, took two unsteady steps back. She wore an expression of shock so complete that Obritsa, a tiny wild feeling tickling the back of her throat, nearly laughed.
But she was Obritsa Nevemskaya, daughter of the revolution, the chosen queen of Kirvaya, and she had a part to play.
She cried out in despair, reaching for Yeva. “My lady, there has been a mistake!” When Yeva hurriedly backed away, Obritsa fell to her knees. “My lady, they know not of what they speak!”
“What is the meaning of this, Grand Magister?” Sestra Feodora stormed forward, her white robes flying, but this was insolence not to be borne. One of the Grand Magister’s acolytes intercepted her, wielding a flame-tipped spear, and knocked the sestra flat on her back.
She did not rise.
Other sestras surged forward to help Feodora, to supplicate themselves before the Grand Magister, to beg an explanation. Yeva sank to the floor, her face glassed over with shock. Other novices flocked to her, forming a haphazard, jeweled shield around her. The temple’s favored daughter, ignored by the Council? Not just ignored, but shunned?
Obritsa wept bitterly. She scrambled toward Yeva, babbling apologies. One of the novices circling Yeva let out a savage cry and lifted her left arm, which bore a thick, gold-plated band. The band flared to life, flames gathering fast. The novice reared back to fling the fire at Obritsa, her eyes glittering with furious tears.
But Artem got there first.
He threw his body between Obritsa and the attacking novice, whipping a heavy black staff through the air. The guards were ordinarily forbidden to work their magic within the walls of the temple; that was a privilege accorded only to the novices.
This, however, was not an ordinary day.
Artem swiftly slammed the staff to the ground.
The hall shook, throwing nearly everyone off their feet, including the attacking novice. The smell of earthshaker magic ripped through the air, rich and sweet like fertile soil.
“You will bow before your queen,” Artem roared, and Obritsa did not have to feign the quiet look of horror she cast up at him as he approached. She had never heard Artem make such a sound, nor seen such a furious expression split his face.
And, for all Artem’s loyalty—even though she knew full well what he was capable of and that she had nothing to fear from him—she could not suppress the revulsion that swept through her at the reminder that he was one of them. An elemental.
Artem lowered his staff and knelt before her.
“My queen,” he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I do not claim to understand this choice. This is…” He faltered. His jaw worked.
Oh, he was good. Obritsa watched him, trembling. They would look at her, all of them, and see nothing but a confused, fearful child.
“This is unprecedented and frightening,” Artem continued, “but we must not doubt the magisters, nor can we question the wisdom of Our Beloved Lady Saint Marzana.”
“Quite right,” the Grand Magister said at last, having watched the chaos placidly from the room’s heart. He surveyed them all—the knot of novices sheltering Yeva; the sestras tending to Feodora; the maidservants, scattered and uncertain.
And Obritsa herself, alone, clutching her shift to her throat as if that could shield her.
“Rise, my queen,” the Grand Magister commanded, his voice suddenly, startlingly kind.
Obritsa hesitated. Everything depended on this moment.
She held her breath and rose to her feet. She would not cower, though she felt many hateful eyes upon her. She would obey the Grand Magister, but more importantly, she would prove to those gathered that she deserved the title she had been given.
Even if she was a mere common human with no elemental magic in her veins.
Even if the empirium, to their knowledge, was closed to her.
In Obritsa’s heart bloomed the anger she had lived with since she was a young girl living in those dark basement rooms below the River Street slums, learning from Sasha about the tyranny of the Blazing Throne.
Why should she be punished simply because she could not touch the empirium as elementals could?
And why had she, and others like her, been denied this gift that would have ensured th
em lives of safety and happiness?
“I trust your wisdom, Grand Magister,” she said, ensuring that her voice wavered, though she could have easily spoken steel. “I trust it, though I do not understand it. I am not an elemental and do not enjoy the talent and power of the lady I have served faithfully for these five blessed years.”
Behind her, Yeva uttered a pitiful sob.
Obritsa ignored her. “Despite this truth, I must trust that you, and all the most holy magisters, have chosen what is best for my beloved country.” She piously lowered her gaze. “And so, I shall ask you only one thing on this, the day of my coronation.”
The Grand Magister sounded pleased. “And what is that, Your Grace?”
“I request that you show mercy to the girls and women in this most holy house,” she replied, “and send your healers to tend to their injuries and their wounded spirits as carefully as you would tend to mine.”
She looked up to see the Grand Magister bow his head. “As you wish, Your Grace. Your first act is one of mercy. A queen most holy indeed.”
Then he moved aside and allowed his acolytes to approach, bearing the queen’s cloak—a tapestry of velvet and brocade, scarlet and gold and midnight blue, firebirds and flames and Saint Marzana’s blazing shield.
Cries of shock scattered through the room, as if some had been able to convince themselves this was all a terrible dream until they saw the acolytes place the cloak on Obritsa’s thin shoulders.
The heavy fabric settled upon her with the weight of all the centuries that had passed since Saint Marzana’s death. The cloak had rested atop the saint’s body as every citizen of Kirvaya filed by to pay tribute, and it had graced the shoulders of every queen since.
And now, Obritsa thought, her heart pounding with the certainty of a war drum, it is mine.
The acolytes pushed open the heavy temple doors. Midday sunlight poured across the polished foyer tiles. With it came the roar of the capital—thousands of voices raised in exultation, clamoring for the first sight of their new queen.
Obritsa squared her shoulders and glanced to the left at Artem.
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