A Sorcerer’s Treason

by Sarah Zettel

  Inside the court it was said that Medeoan’s premature aging was caused by a deal she had made with the ancient witch Baba Yaga, swapping years of life for an heir to the throne. It was a serviceable enough rumor, all the better for not having started with him or the dowager.

  The truth was, however, that what aged the dowager was a bargain far older and far more dangerous.

  Kalami dropped to his knees in front of the dowager, bowing until he pressed his head against the worn pattern of the carpet. As he had supposed, she said nothing immediately, just letting him remain in this uncomfortable and degrading posture. But he had been prepared for that, and was ready to wait.

  “Get up.”

  Kalami rose, keeping his gaze humbly cast down. He had failed. He was in disgrace. For the moment, at least, he needed to act the part.

  “What happened?”

  “Yvanka’s children attacked us and carried Bridget Lederle away.”

  Cloth and paper rustled. “And why would the crow’s stepchildren care what we do on the road through the Foxwood?”

  “It is possible that they have made an alliance with Sakra.”

  “Yes.” More rustling, and a gentle rush of wood against carpet as the chair was pushed back. He heard Medeoan rise, rattling the great bundle of keys she wore at her waist. Her faint shadow fell across the carpet in front of him. “And why did we not know of this bargain?”

  Because you banished him from court, allowing him to freely roam the countryside where we could not keep any sort of efficient watch on him. “Because my eyes failed Your Grand Majesty.”

  “Yes.” Silence filled the air between them, cold and profound. “Look at me, Lord Sorcerer.”

  Kalami lifted his eyes. Medeoan had been a tall woman once, golden-haired and fair-complected, or so the imperial artists had rendered her. But she had shrunken in on herself. The gold of her hair had turned to silver streaked with white. Her fair skin had shriveled, and where it had not spotted, it had turned the color of the old ivory on her writing desk. Only her eyes remained as bright as they were shown in those portraits. But where the renderings of her as a girl all showed mild, intelligent eyes, the eyes that looked at him now were hard and calculating, taking in every single detail so it could be judged, or used. In the dim light, those eyes appeared sunken in their own shadows.

  “I have not many years left to me, Kalami. Do you see that?”

  Kalami said nothing. To speak of an imperial death was tantamount to treason. Instead, he reverenced, showing that he believed whatever his sovereign chose to tell him.

  “I need allies around me, my realm needs allies, and that before the day my responsibilities take more from me than I can give them.” She took a step closer to Kalami and he could smell her breath, sour from encroaching illness.

  “Grand Majesty,” he said evenly. “I stand before you. I am ready to serve you however I may. I lay all my skills before you, as I always have.”

  The dowager turned his unflinching declaration over in her mind and accepted it. “Yes, yes.” She touched his hand and he felt how her skin was as dry as paper. “You have always been loyal to Isavalta, and your sacrifice unstinting. But it is not for you to save us.” Her gaze turned inward, the hardness of her eyes softening. “The wardship of kingdoms is the duty of bloodlines. She was born for this burden. That was why Avanasy sent her mother away, so that she might be born. I know that. It can be no other way, and now those foul Southerners have taken her, as they tried to take my son, as they mean to take Isavalta from my dead hands.” Those hands curled into fists around nothing but air.

  “Your enemies are Bridget Lederle’s enemies,” said Kalami. “She will not betray you any more than I will.”

  The dowager began to pace. “Today, today perhaps. But the Southerners have their ways. They would have turned my son against me if I had not taken action. They tried to turn me against my own realm once, and in my foolishness I almost let them succeed.”

  Kalami folded his hands behind himself. The litany was beginning, the recitation of failure, guilt and treachery that every person in the inner court had listened to and would deny to the death that they had heard. It was Medeoan’s inability to forgive herself for the failures of her girlhood, as much as the burdens of her rule, that racked her mind and heart. Much of Isavalta saw her as their savior, but she saw herself only as a penitent, somehow hoping for forgiveness from the soul of her realm.

  “She plots,” said the dowager, one hand clutching her ring of keys. “I feel her, twisting her threads and knotting her secrets. She thinks she may succeed where her cousin failed. But she shall not. She shall not. I have saved my son. I will save my realm. My need, my weakness brought her here when I should have known better. I, of all people, should have known.”

  Yes, you should have. Kalami dropped his gaze once again, because he did not trust his face to remain impassive as he watched the dowager and thought these thoughts. I tried to tell you that it would be so, but you would not listen. Your lord sorcerer, your faithful dog from Tuukos, is only good enough to risk his life so you can share your secrets with an untried girl. He may not presume to advise the great empress of Isavalta.

  “All the more reason we must find Bridget quickly, Grand Majesty,” said Kalami, when his control returned. “Before Sakra has the chance to use his persuasions on her.”

  The dowager paused in her pacing and regarded Kalami as if he had spoken some foreign tongue. “Yes,” she said after long moment. “You are quite correct, Lord Sorcerer. I thank you.”

  With her gaze once more turned outward, Medeoan strode across the room, reminding all who saw that there was strength in her yet. “My lord sorcerer shall attend me,” she announced for the benefit of her ladies, who had both jumped to their feet.

  At the far end of the study waited a small, unpretentious door that Medeoan opened with a brass key. The room on the other side was cold and dark. She stood aside and let the servant who followed them place a candelabrum within. Medeoan waved her hand. The servant reverenced and left, closing the door behind him.

  A soft ticking filled the chamber, worming its way into Kalami’s blood as if it sought to control the rhythm of his heart and breath. The contents of this room were a tribute to the artisans of Isavalta. Mirrors with cunningly worked frames of bronze or gold hung on the walls, carefully covered by lengths of linen. Clocks, all of them stopped at different times, stood on shelves between caskets of silver or precious tropical hardwoods.

  The prize of the room waited at its very center and was the source of the low, constant ticking noise. On a plain, polished table stood the Portrait of Worlds. The portrait was in actuality a model, the product of a hundred years of study by the lord sorcerer Rachek. He had served Medeoan’s grandmother, Nacherada, the last Isavaltan ruler to take for herself so humble a title as queen. Made of bronze and copper and etched with silver, the Portrait rose four feet high from the tabletop, a collection of spheres within spheres, bound together in the cages of their orbits. Each sphere moved independently of its neighbor in a slow dance, which now brought worlds together, now swung them apart with all the steady, punctuated grace that clockwork could provide.

  None of the infinitely precious objects that filled this room were of themselves magical, but great magic could be worked with such tools. The fibers of Kalami’s being thrummed as he thought of what could be done here, if only, if just for once, Medeoan would entrust him with the keys.

  Patience, he reminded himself. You will soon have a key of your own.

  Isavalta’s own world waited at the center of the Portrait. It turned at a stately pace on a spindle of bronze. Blue and green enamels picked out its continents and its oceans. Its sun, a ball of gold, and its moon, a bead of silver, sketched their own orbits around it. Hollow spheres woven of bronze and copper thread represented the realms that composed the Land of Death and Spirit. Each of these was held in its own position by its own carefully formed set of gears.

  “When
did they take her?” asked Medeoan.

  “At dusk.”

  Medeoan selected a small amber clock and set the hands for half past the hour of four, the time when the sun began to set. She wound the works and the clock’s gentle tick joined the chorus from the Portrait of Worlds.

  “Have you anything she has touched?”

  Kalami reached into the breast pocket of his coat and brought out several of the scraps of cloth that Bridget had given him when he needed to prove to her that he was not a madman. He had kept them against such an eventuality, although he had thought to be using them himself.

  Medeoan took the cloth he offered and pulled a length of lace from her own pocket. She closed her eyes and let out a long exhalation, her shrunken mouth beginning to move, forming words Kalami could not hear. Her long fingers swiftly knotted the cloth into the lace. Medeoan opened her eyes, spat on the lace, breathed on it and knotted that place tightly. Kalami felt the air grow cold and every hair on his arms rose with the awareness of a spell being formed from lace and cloth, breath, spittle and even the pattern of ticks and tocks that filled the chilling air.

  “Show me,” the dowager murmured to her creation. “Show me.”

  The room was closed and locked, and inside a stone palace, but a wind, wild and frigid, blew through it anyway. The wind a swept the knotted lace off Medeoan’s palm, carrying it swiftly toward the Portrait, and tangling it around one of the spheres of bronze and copper wire, one that had a ruby mounted at its center.

  “So.” Medeoan pressed her mouth into a thin line. “Sakra does not have her, or, at least, not anymore. She is with the lokai.”

  The lokai. The fox spirits. Kalami felt his blood run chill. Had the Vixen guessed the extent of the game Kalami had played with her sons? Had she taken Bridget in payment?

  No, no, Kalami reassured himself. The Vixen would do nothing so straightforward. Some other current runs here.

  As if reading his thoughts, the dowager said, “We will understand the why of it later. What is important now is that Bridget Lederle come to us.” Her gaze swept the room and paused on one of the silver caskets. She reached the box down and unlocked it with a matching silver key. From inside, she drew a ring of gold set with bright emeralds.

  “Go to the Vixen. Give her this my gift.” The dowager held the ring out to Kalami. “If that is not enough to secure Bridget Lederle’s safe passage to us, hear her terms.”

  Kalami took the ring, placing it in his coat pocket, and reverenced deeply. “She will be with us to wait upon Your Grand Majesty before another day is over.”

  “I know this is true.” The dowager laid her hand briefly on his head in blessing. “Leave me now. Take rest and food, but do not stay too long. If we found her, it is possible that Sakra, by his tricks, may do so also.”

  “Grand Majesty.” Kalami reverenced briefly one more time and left the room.

  Once in the corridor, he strode its length swiftly, looking neither left nor right at the carved pillars, the tapestries, the murals, portraits and mosaics, which he had seen a thousand times before. He used the one palace key that was in his keeping and opened the door to his own apartments, sweeping through them as swiftly as he had walked the corridor. When he reached the outer wall, he hauled aside the curtain that covered the door to his balcony. Cold air blasted against him as he flung that door open and walked into the night. A swirl of snow brushed his cheek. Kalami inhaled deeply, savoring the cold that knifed through his lungs. Pain would clear his head, cold would damp down the hot eagerness running through his veins.

  Is this my chance? Is this how I may finally be free of the shadow of Ingrid and Avanasy’s bastard daughter?

  “My lord Kalami?”

  Kalami slung around, for one searing instant afraid his thoughts had been overheard.

  “Who’s there?”

  From inside his chamber a gravelly voice replied, “Finon, my lord. With your meal, as requested.”

  Kalami knew he had requested no meal, and of course Finon did too. It would make no difference. Finon would have heard the moment he had returned and, as ever, had made shift to reach him.

  Kalami took one last breath of the clean, cold air. “And welcome as ever.” He pushed the heavy curtain aside, closing the balcony door behind himself.

  Finon was a slight man with only a few wisps of white hair still clinging to his age-spotted scalp. His frame appeared overwhelmed by the gold and braid of the imperial livery. This harmless appearance had served them both in good stead. Most dismissed him as nothing more than an aging servant without bothering to see how clear his black eyes remained or how strong and steady his hands were as they went about their tasks — as they did now, pouring hot wine from a silver ewer, laying out bread and cold beef spread thick with paté and rolls of thin pastry stuffed full of honey and nuts.

  “Honored Father,” said Kalami to Finon in the language they both shared, giving him the title of respect due to an elder man from a younger. “There is no need. There is none to see. Let me serve you.”

  It was Finon who had seen the possibilities of Kalami’s power when Kalami was still a boy and learning his own history in dark barns, behind sheds and in cellars, all of it whispered to him by the servants of the lord master of Tuukos, to whom his father had indentured him. It was Finon who said he should try to come to the imperial court, to insinuate himself into the seat of power. Then, Finon had said, then we may find our way again to freedom.

  It had taken years, but as a sorcerer, Kalami had them. Finon, however did not. He was an old man now, however well preserved, and it grieved Kalami to see him so. His victory would be much lessened if Finon, who had begun the journey with him, was not there to see its end.

  “It is good to see you still have your manners.” Finon did not pause. He laid out a linen napkin beside the food and then turned away to kindle a taper at the firepit and light the room’s candles. “But you know and I know that we are always watched.”

  “A fact I shall not dispute, Honored Father.” In truth, the scent of the food was making his mouth water and Kalami set himself down readily and began to eat. He savored the wine especially. It was a luxury of which he had grown particularly fond, and he felt more than a little guilty for so doing. Wine was an Isavaltan affectation.

  “Did you find what you sought?” asked Finon, blowing out the taper.

  “Found it, and lost it.” Kalami stabbed the tip of the silver knife into a slice of beef. “The dowager is not the only power interested in the Avanasidoch.”

  Finon stood silent for a moment, twirling the taper between his strong, blunt fingers. “Perhaps it is as well. Perhaps it could stay lost.”

  “Believe me, Honored Father, I have thought of that.” More than thought. He had yearned for it in the depths of his heart. What if, his mind whispered to him, what if you fail in your mission? What if the Vixen will not be placated, no matter what you try? What if she keeps Bridget with her to be one of her foxes? Then where will Medeoan turn? There will be no one left but you with whom she could share the secrets she keeps so close to her heart.

  It was a plan that would not work had Bridget merely been captured by Sakra. Kalami was supposed to be Sakra’s match, or at least he must appear to be so. But the Vixen was one of the great powers of the world. If she had set her will against him, what could he do?

  Kalami looked down at his plate and realized he had shredded the beef, slicing it into strips without even feeling his fingers work the knife. Finon deftly took the plate away, replacing it with the arrangement of pastry rolls.

  “You wish to tell me why this is not a wise course,” Finon prompted him.

  “Because we need the power the Avanasidoch carries. If I try to maintain the empress’s cage myself, it will devour me as it has devoured Medeoan. No.” He shook his head and took another swallow of the rich, spiced wine. “In order for Tuukos to rule the three empires, we must have the Firebird.”

  Finon crossed to his side, topping off hi
s wine cup. “But does Tuukos need to rule? If Isavalta falls, we are free, as we were. Surely, that is all we need.”

  Kalami stared into the depths of his cup. The wine was dark, almost black and so sweet it needed the spices in order to be palatable. “No, that is not all we need. We need to be safe in order to keep our freedom. We need power, and the bones of our dead need their revenge.”

  The bones of the dead. His great-uncle, a sorcerer trained in the old ways who should have been there to train Kalami. But Great-uncle had been hanged by the overlord for using the blood and the drums to find out a newborn child’s true name for its parents. Kalami dreamed of him often, swaying at the end of the rope in the courtyard tree, his eyes wide open, demanding of his great-nephew why those who did this were not yet punished.

  Kalami set the cup down. “Do not worry, Honored Father. Bridget Lederle has served me before all unwitting. She will serve me again. And now” — Kalami pushed his chair back from the table and stood — “I must make ready. My mistress imperial has given me my orders and I must obey.”

  Without another word, Finon cleared away the dishes and left Kalami to himself. Kalami shook his head. Finon was old man and a wise man. He would understand when Tuukos held the cage and all the power it contained. Then he would know what it was to rule, and he would understand why it had to be this way.

  • • •

  When Kalami left her, Medeoan stayed where she was for a moment, swaying on her feet and fighting down exhaustion by sheer willpower. The voice, the thin susurrating voice that filled the palace, was so loud here that she could almost make out its words. It took so much strength to work her magic with that voice whispering to her that sometimes she felt the simplest spell or most basic decision had finally become beyond her capacity.

  But that was not possible. She ruled Isavalta, and she must rule until Bridget Lederle came to take her burdens, as Bridget’s father had, and until she could rid herself of Ananda, so that she could pass her throne to her son, and her son alone.

  The whisper flickered louder.