by Sarah Zettel
“You know I speak the truth,” said Kalami. “You know there is nothing else to be done.”
She opened her mouth, and he stepped closer, ready for her surrender, ready to drink it in and savor its sweetness.
But Medeoan turned her face. “Guard!” she called. “Guard!”
Before Kalami had chance to draw another breath, the hall’s doors banged open and Chadek and his men swarmed into the room, surrounding the dais, their axes ready. It was discipline that held them at the foot of the dais, for Kalami had no time to step back, no time to make appearances what they should be.
“Take the lord sorcerer out of here,” said Medeoan, backing away until she could sit herself on the throne again. “Keep him close. I will send for him later.”
The world around Kalami turned red in his eyes. He felt hot and cold together, and he had to clench his jaw so tightly his teeth ached so that he would not scream out his rage in Medeoan’s sick, old, useless presence.
“Lord Sorcerer,” said Chadek. “If you would?”
I would. I will. Kalami stepped back. He walked down the dais, turned, and faced the dowager. She still trembled. She should tremble. Kalami reverenced. “I await your orders, as ever, Grand Majesty.”
Medeoan did not look at him.
Kalami smiled at that, and let the guard form around him and march him away. He held his peace until the Great Hall’s doors slammed behind him, and Chadek’s men steered him through the antechamber toward the left-hand door, which led to the Topaz Hall, and from there possibly to the understairs, and the lower stairs, and the cells.
“Chadek,” he whispered urgently to the captain. “Chadek, you must confine me in my room.”
Chadek did not answer. Chadek did not even turn his head. Why should he? Chadek was sympathetic to Kalami and his position. He had worked his way up the ranks and been taken into the house guard even though his third name had been given as a guess at who his grandfather was. But he was steadfastly loyal to his oaths, and Kalami had been accused of poisoning the emperor. Chadek would have struck his head off then and there had Medeoan ordered it.
Servants opened the doors to the Topaz Hall, staring openly at Kalami as the guard marched him through. How much had they already heard? “Chadek, Ananda has orchestrated a fresh set of lies. She’s deceiving the Avanasidoch.”
Chadek did not even blink. The tromp of boots rang off the walls of pale yellow plaster set with the stones that gave the hall its name. “Chadek, please. Even the council lords do not say I have done anything. You were ordered to keep me close. Her Grand Majesty did not say where.”
A spot of color appeared on Chadek’s cheek, indicating that despite all he was listening.
“There is no other sorcerer here, Chadek. Her Grand Majesty is in danger. Lock me away and she is lost.”
Believe me, believe me, he urged silently. The doors at the other end of the hall were opened. The stairs approached from the shadows. Voices whispered all around them, servants come to watch the show. He could hear them even over the sounds of marching.
Kalami spoke the words he had hoped to avoid. “By our friendship, Chadek. I beg you.”
The escort turned a corner, forcing Kalami to turn with them. The stairway loomed in front of them, a carved stone banister leading up, a plain wooden banister leading down.
Chadek.
Chadek turned again, and led the escort up the stone steps to the imperial floor and from there to Kalami’s own apartments.
When at last they halted in front of Kalami’s door, Chadek held out his hand. Kalami knew what he wanted, and he handed over his key. Chadek unlocked the apartment and with a grunt ordered one of the oversergeants to accompany him. Kalami waited while they poked the fire to life and searched his room for accomplices or obvious contraband.
“Let him in,” said Chadek, finally.
The escort parted, allowing Kalami access to his door. The over-sergeant withdrew at once, but Chadek lingered for a last moment, looking into Kalami’s eyes.
“For our friendship,” he said quietly. “Break this word between us, and I will chase you to the ends of the earth.”
“I understand,” replied Kalami.
Chadek gave no answer. He just marched out to join his men, and he closed the door behind himself. He had not, Kalami noted with a sardonic smile, returned the key, but then, Kalami had not expected it. Chadek was already taking an enormous risk. Any of his men might report this in hope of promotion.
I’m sorry, Chadek, Kalami thought toward the captain. Truly.
But there was no more time to think of that. What mattered now was understanding. His plans had gone horribly wrong, and they must be corrected. He must understand what he had failed to predict.
Kalami reached beneath his shirt for the leather bag he carried there. He pulled out a narrow band of yarn that contained, quite literally, every color of the rainbow. It had been knitted on pins of copper and of silver. He kissed the band and breathed over it before he pressed it first to his right eye and then to his left.
Then, it seemed to his eyes that there appeared a shelf along the far wall of the room, set high enough that the tallest of men would be able to walk under it and not know it was there. Its edge had been carved with a pattern that matched the pattern on the knitted band. Four chests of oak and silver waited there.
Kalami reached down the leftmost chest and took it to his desk. He unlocked it with a key he also drew from his bag. Inside the chest waited a collection of parchment scrolls, most of them his notes, maps and casual remarks. Nothing that could be incriminating, should anyone find them, but all that could be said to be private if he were ever questioned. A few though, contained his most careful observations.
Kalami plucked out one of the scrolls and undid the green ribbon that tied it. He spread parchment out on the desk. The scroll contained an elaborate tracery of symbols connected by a web of straight lines, themselves connected by curves that made up semi- and hemicircles, or great swinging ellipses.
As ever, Kalami could not help remembering the first time he had seen such a thing. He had been a boy, in a hut of crumbling stone, chinked and roofed with moss. The room had been entirely black except for the small circle illuminated by a candle that burned with a pale orange light. The old man beside him smelled of fish and foulness, and Kalami was more scared of him even than the darkness.
“This,” the old man hissed through his rotting teeth. “This your twice-great-grandfather made.”
On the dirt floor, the old man had unfolded a piece of skin so old it was impossible to tell what animal it had once belonged to. On the other side, drawn in fading inks, Kalami had seen stars and planets connected to one another with dashed lines, and other symbols too — a crude castle, a sword, a flame, a broken staff, and others he could not make out.
“He was a sorcerer, see? He knew the old magics. He spoke to the stars, and wrote down what they said.” His greasy finger traced the path of one particular line, careful not to actually touch the flaking leather. “See? See here?”
Kalami looked close and did try to see. He saw a red planet, and he saw the sun, and he saw the sword, the fire, and a castle growing closer together, and the end of the line he saw only the broken staff.
“That shows that Isavalta will not hold us forever. It shows that Tuukos will one day be free again.”
“How does it show that?” Kalami the boy had demanded. “How do you know?”
The old man shook his head heavily. “I don’t know. No sorcerer, me. None of the old learning in my family.”
“Master Ubish never said anything about something like this.”
The old man winked. “What’s he know about our old learning? He’s an Isavaltan sorcerer. He can only teach their ways.”
“But I want to learn this.” Kalami stabbed at the fragile leather with a child’s thoughtlessness, and got his hand swatted for his enthusiasm. “I want to learn to write down the future,” he went on, ignoring the slap.
And he had, from a half-blind old woman who sat in the corner of the lord master’s yard, plucking the feathers from dead fowl and stuffing of them into sacks for later use. She had taught him in the dark of night, in the deepest secret. No one knew she was a sorceress. She had escaped the slaughter that had taken his own great-uncle and had survived by becoming deaf, drooling and stupid. Or at least, by appearing to do so.
When he had finally reached the court of Isavalta, Kalami had put her patient teaching to good work. At least, he thought he had. There was Bridget’s symbol. There were the stars and planets of her old world, carefully traced from his own observations. There was himself, nothing more than a circle on the map, and there came her golden, five-pointed star, closer, and closer yet, until the two became one symbol, and together moved to overtake and claim the tiny red bird, and together the three of them broke the crown and the staff.
What had he missed? What had he left undone? Kalami stared at the parchment, fighting to think, fighting to suppress the anger that made him want to tear the useless chart in two. He had missed something. He had to see it now, or he might as well walk out into the snow to die because he would have failed, finally, utterly, and absolutely.
The fire had warmed the room enough that Kalami impatiently shed his heavy velvet coat and much of the brocade in favor of his lighter, everyday kaftan, tying the sash impatiently. Finon had laid down his life for this. Kalami must not fail him. He thrust his hands into the kaftan’s pockets, and stared again at the parchment. Something brushed his fingertips. He seized on it and pulled out. It was a twist of red hair. Fox hair.
The Vixen.
Kalami crushed the twist of hair into his fist. He had not counted on the Vixen and her machinations when he had drawn this. He remembered how she had licked Bridget’s eye in her den. Had she done something to Bridget then? Increased her ability to see? But why? She had not even wanted to give Bridget back to him. She had tried to gain entrance to the palace to take Bridget away. Or was that a ruse? Something to divert his suspicions? If it was, it had worked magnificently. He had known it was dangerous to involve her when he had first conceived the plan to lead her sons into danger, but the risk had been worth it. Sakra, the one who had spilled her children’s blood, had almost died of it, would have died of it had it not been for Bridget.
“So,” he murmured to the night. “Your gift had a second edge, and you wish to revoke it. Is that it?”
But no answer came, nor would any come to him here. His time in this court was ended. That much was clear. Medeoan would throw him to the slaughter as soon as she needed to. But he would have her in the end, because he would have her precious Bridget. If Bridget would not serve him from love, she would serve him from pain. There were ways.
But he could not work them here. This room was no longer shelter for him or his works. With some small regret, Kalami went to another chest and pulled out a traveling pack and winter clothing made of skins of sheep, seals and reindeer. From under his bed came a set of skis that had been tied to the frame along with a long pole. It was time now to affect a final change, to become again what he truly was. After tonight, all illusions were stripped away. Truth alone remained.
Part of that truth was that he held Medeoan’s and Bridget’s lives in his hands. They were simply unaware of it yet.
Kalami set to work. Anything from the freshly revealed chests that he could not pack he dropped into the fire. He discarded his court clothing without a second thought. He moved quickly and quietly. No need to alert whoever Chadek left on guard outside to his movements.
At last, Kalami laced his pack tightly shut and slung it over the shoulders. His court persona was quite gone. Anyone who saw him would take him for a peasant. He wore a coat of unshorn fleece with the wool side against his skin. Sealskin boots encased his feet, and reindeer-hide leggings tied with laces of sinew wrapped around his legs. A piece of white silk screened his face.
They forgot, these idle and useless people behind their walls of stone. They did not know how to truly face the cold. They hid from it. But he had not forgotten. He was of the true North, and it would take more than this persistent snow to trap him indoors.
Kalami picked up his skis, his pole and a length of rope, and walked calmly out the door onto his snow-filled balcony. The barest crescent of a waxing moon shone crystal clear above, and the frigid wind carried only the lightest sprinkle of snow to brush against his eyelashes. He knotted the rope swiftly around the balcony rail. When he finished, he pitched his pole down into the snow. It sank into the soft side of the drift almost its entire length. That told what he needed to know. If he climbed down in just his boots he would be hopelessly mired in the snow. Kalami strapped on his skis.
Awkwardly, Kalami swung first one leg, and then the other over the railing. His fleece-lined mittens protected him from the friction of the rope as well as from the cold, and one slow patient inch at a time, he lowered himself to the ground.
He settled gently onto the drift and untied the rope from his waist.
No voice shouted at him to stop. No eye observed him. They all huddled behind their curtains, plotting their plots. No one could go forth on such a night.
Kalami wanted to laugh. He settled for thrusting first one end, then the other of his pole into the snow and striding forward on his lengths of carved wood, gliding easily over the snow, as easily as any of them could have run across firm ground.
Oh, the moon might show any who cared to look what he was doing, and where he was headed. But how long would it take them to don the proper footgear, to chase after him? The snow was too deep for horses. They kept no reindeer here. Deer were for peasants and the Tuukosov. The palace had no ramparts. The dowager’s grandfather had insisted there be none. This was a palace, not a fortress. He had it built as a symbol of how safely and securely he held his empire, with no fear of invading armies. Had it not been for that man’s arrogance, there might now have been a place where the house guard could have stationed men to shoot him with arrows, and then he might have had something to worry about. As it was, he was alone with only the whistle of the wind and hissing of his skis against the snow.
Behind his silk mask, Kalami smiled and let the night swallow him whole.
Chapter Seventeen
When the bath attendants and body servants paraded Mikkel back into his apartments, they found Ananda standing beside the firepit, a gentle blaze reflecting off her rich court garb and imperial coronet.
“Thank you,” she said as the startled procession dropped to knees, all but Mikkel, who stood, as ever, blank and unheeding, his eyes shifting restlessly back and forth, looking for something they never seemed to find. “You are all dismissed. I shall attend my husband tonight.”
But the first among the body servants, his rank indicated by the golden collar around his neck and the golden sash around his kaftan, stood in her presence, as none should have done. He was not one of the jackanapes whom she had seen so cruelly teasing Mikkel before. This was a true servant, staunch and loyal to his emperor.
And thus disposed to think the worst of me, for I am the one who afflicts them both.
“Forgive me, Majesty Imperial,” the man said. “But that is not possible.”
“You would contradict your empress?” she said, drawing herself up to full height.
“Never in life.” He cast his eyes down. “But my oath is to Her Grand Majesty the Dowager Empress as long as the emperor’s illness of spirit lasts, and I may not disobey her.”
Ananda tried to hold on to hope. If this man was what he seemed, one who was loyal to his emperor but deceived by the dowager’s lies, all might be over in a moment, for how could any such not desire to hear Mikkel’s freedom was at hand?
“Then rejoice, good man. The gods have heard the prayers on this holy day. They have told me how the emperor is to be cured.”
The man’s jaw worked back and forth for a moment. “As much as I would like to believe this, Majesty Imperial,
I can do nothing without the orders of Her Grand Majesty the Dowager.”
Of course. The man was loyal, probably they all were. Ananda’s gaze traveled across the rest of the kneeling attendants, but they also believed that the emperor’s enchantment was Ananda’s doing.
And if what was to come next did not work, Ananda was dead. As she waited in the dark, she had come to understand what held her back. Her own shields now were cell walls. It was her lies that kept her from Mikkel tonight. Truth alone would let her near him.
“You believe, as you have been told, that I did this to the one who is my husband and your emperor,” she said. Speaking the words was a relief. An end to lies. Tonight, one way or another, the illusions were done. “But I say to you that I could not have, because I am not a sorceress.”
The man’s head snapped up. “Your Majesty Imperial jests with me.”
Ananda shook her head. “The word of my sorcerous nature is a lie. It is a lie told by those who did not wish alliance between Hastinapura and Isavalta, and it is a lie I fostered, to my shame, so that what was done to the emperor might not be attempted on me.”
Anger was all that showed on the man’s face. She saw clearly that he would scoff at her, if he dared. “What enemy could you fear, Majesty Imperial?”
Ananda stood silent before him, letting him reach understanding on his own. She watched his anger deepen. “Majesty Imperial, please go. Do not make me call the guards and shame us both.”
“I tell you, a girdle has been tied around your emperor’s waist,” she said as calmly as she could. “It has robbed him of his mind and will. I did not place it there. I lack the skills. My soul, as yours, is divided.” She risked a step forward to create the smallest intimacy between them. “Our bond of marriage, though, permits me to remove it. Call the guard to escort me away, if you will. But know that as you do, you condemn your emperor for the rest of his life.”
The servant spread his hands. “Majesty Imperial, how can I believe you? You ask me to betray my loyalties and you can offer me no proof of what you say. On the strength of this, I am to let you lay hands on the emperor?”