by Sarah Zettel
Both Medeoan and Grace leveled their gaze upon her. “Nor do we.”
She felt the words hit her heart. They brought freshly home how weary, how hungry she was, and reminded her that she too was expending herself, as was Sakra. How long did any of them have? She glanced down at her lifeline. Was it dimmer than it had been, or were her eyes growing tired?
Concentrate, Bridget. “She said you were fading.”
“Yes.” By some common agreement, Grace and Medeoan walked a few steps farther down the gallery. It was a strange, limping, sideways gait that both kept them pressed together, and allowed them to keep their attention focused on the portraits.
“And you will take her with you.” The fire at her back was too warm. Sweat prickled Bridget’s neck under her collar. Or was it fever? What was happening to the body that she seemed to have shed completely? How long could it survive without her vital essence giving it care?
“She is my possession.” Medeoan stopped to study one of the portraits that hung at eye level. “She gave herself to me. It cannot be helped.”
“You could let her go.”
“I told you, she will not let me.”
“Or you will not let her.”
“Yes.”
There is a way. There must be a way. I need only to find it.
Bridget gazed at her surroundings, casting about for some sign that would bring her inspiration. She half expected the portraits to be moving, to be ghosts within this dream of ghosts and spirits.
The portraits did not move, but the shadows between them did. They flitted between the carved and gilded frames. They crossed into the paintings of long-dead nobles and divines and swept out again, leaving no trace of themselves. They clustered as if in conversation. They knotted and writhed as if in combat. They stood alone and silently sobbed.
Who were they? They had no place in the pictures of the high and mighty, no clarity in this memory or fantasy that held Medeoan’s soul. Who could they be?
Who waited between the nobility?
The unknown. The soldiers and the clerks, the ladies-in-waiting and the ordinary people, the sorcerers in Isavalta and the children of the bureaucrats, the ones who were not there to sit for the portrait painters, but who were always there just the same, who made the paintings possible.
The ones whose lives were too short for them to be painted at all.
With those thoughts, Bridget found what she needed. A plan formed in her mind. Sakra had been mistaken in one thing. It was not Bridget who needed to convince Medeoan of what she needed to do. Medeoan had found someone else to cling to, even as she had in life clung to Avanasy, then Kalami, and then to the hope of Bridget.
“Such lovely pictures,” she said, turning toward the portraits and folding her hands behind her as if she were in a museum. “So many faces, so many parents and sons and daughters.” She tilted her head, feigning a casual attitude to match Medeoan’s. “Where’s your sister, Aunt Grace? Where’s my mother?”
Grace stirred, forcing Medeoan to shift her balance, to lean a little less. Grace’s eye swept back and forth, looking for something that was not there. Her mouth worked itself, struggling to form words though she apparently lacked the strength to lift her head from Medeoan’s shoulder.
“I can’t see her from here.” Aunt Grace’s voice was faint, but agitated. Shaking from the effort, she raised her head so she could crane her neck to see the portraits hung nearest the ceiling. Medeoan, as bound to Grace as Grace was to her, craned her neck identically. “I haven’t seen her in years.”
“I’ve seen her,” said Bridget. “Not four months ago. She came to me.”
Grace’s eyes flitted back and forth again. Did she see the shadows? Her knuckles lost a little of their whiteness as her hand loosened its grip on Medeoan’s arm. Her head wobbled on the stem of her neck, but it did not fall again. Her lips shaped a word.
Now Medeoan had to grip Grace more tightly. “You’re upsetting her. You should not.”
Bridget ignored the dowager. She circled around back of them so she stood on Grace’s side. “I’ve seen her,” she said again. “I know where she is. Would you like me to show her to you?”
Grace pulled farther away. It was a fraction of an inch, a bare loosening of hand and arm, but it was real. “Yes,” she said so softly Bridget could barely hear her.
“You cannot show,” snapped Medeoan. “You can only see.”
You do not know what I can do. But Bridget did not say that aloud. She did not have breath to spare. This must be a place of spirit, like the Shifting Lands. If that was true, then, like the Shifting Lands, strong desires, even wishes, could shape the world.
Bridget wished with all her heart to see her mother. To see her as she had when her ghost had come to Vyshtavos, full of love, full of the wish to help, and to let it be known that she did love.
Bridget’s need then had been to free herself from what she held too tightly. It was Grace’s need now, in an even more tangible way.
The portrait in front of them began to blur. The stiff-backed man in imperial blue with a crown of sapphires and a beard that hung down to his waist turned to a mass of undefined color. Then, like her surroundings when Bridget first came to this place, the portrait became clear once again. The image there was a woman, in a plain dress and apron, with auburn hair and a strong face that had seen both sorrows and joys.
It was Bridget’s image of the mother she had seen only as a ghost and an old photograph. She had to pray it was close enough to the real thing for Grace.
In the next heartbeat, she knew it was. “Ingrid,” breathed Aunt Grace. She tried to step forward, and this time, Medeoan had to struggle to hold her back.
Bridget concentrated on Grace. Wishes could shape the spirit world. Desire could shape it. She wished for her aunt’s freedom. She wished for it with all the soul, with all the force of will Mistress Urshila taught her to bring to bear on a working.
“She forgives you, you know,” whispered Bridget. “I forgive you.”
“You do not,” spat the dowager with such vehemence that Bridget feared she had badly misjudged the game.
Grace acted as if Medeoan had not spoken at all. “But do I forgive you?” she mused. Her hand rested only lightly on Medeoan’s arm now, and if she did not stand straight, she at least bore her own weight on her own feet.
“Whether you forgive me is up to you,” Bridget told her aunt. “Will you come back home and tell me if you do?” She must not sound too eager. She must not lose the focus of her need. Freedom. Aunt Grace must be free. She must see her sister. She must find her own mind. It was she who invited Medeoan into her soul. It was she who must force the dowager out again.
Aunt Grace was dreadfully pale. She stood alone, but she swayed on her feet. Bridget felt herself begin to waver in response. How long had she been here? Her wrist hurt where the lifeline bound it. Her head ached from wishing.
“Her home is here now, with me. I am the one who needs her.” Medeoan drew herself up. She and Grace barely touched fingertips now, and Bridget could feel the pain, the struggle rolling off her in waves, but she could also feel the pull. It was almost as strong as the lifeline that brought her here. Bridget knew she would find it so easy to take one step, two, to wrap herself around Medeoan as Aunt Grace had. To no longer stand alone.
But this was costing Medeoan all of herself, Bridget could feel that as well.
“You’re using her,” Bridget said, slowly, clearly, biting off each word so not one syllable could be missed or mistaken. “You are using Grace as you used Avanasy, and your own son.”
The words had either been exactly right, or exactly wrong, but they had hit home. The dowager stooped, seeming to become even older. “I needed them.”
Still speaking slowly, still putting force of will and of wish behind the words, Bridget stepped forward. “The one died for your need, the other you almost killed.” If she had been able to touch, she would have touched Aunt Grace now, rubbed up shoulder
to shoulder with her. They could have even leaned together as Grace and Medeoan had done.
Medeoan’s arm shivered, but did not move. Perhaps it could not move. “Are you going to allow the child to say such things to me?”
At that, Aunt Grace finally lifted her hands away from Medeoan. Bridget’s heart soared, and she lost hold of her will and the portrait she had shaped began to blur. Aunt Grace just slammed her hands over her ears in the gesture of a child who can no longer bear what it hears.
“Please,” she said, the word coming out as half a sob. “Please. I do not want this.”
“You did. You do.” Medeoan was crabbed, aged, diminished, but she was not yet defeated. “You were the special one. It should have stayed that way.”
At first Bridget thought Grace was crying, but then she saw that her aunt’s face was growing indistinct, like the portrait, like the world itself. “But it didn’t. Whose fault is that?”
“You told me whose it was,” hissed Medeoan. “You told me how she left you.”
Grace lowered her hands, and she turned, slowly, hunched and shaking, as if she too were becoming an old woman, she faced the dowager. “I was wrong,” she said, and Bridget knew that was the first time she had said those words about this thing. “It was my fault what I became, not Ingrid’s.”
Grace backed away, each step a battle, each step a victory.
“No,” whispered the dowager. Bridget could barely hear her. Her skin was as white as her hair now, and the color had begun to drain even from her eyes.
Fading.
“Not like this,” breathed the dowager. “I came to help. I only wanted to help.”
It was this that Bridget had been waiting for. “Yes,” she said. “You wanted to be a good ruler. I’ve been told that so many times.” But fear and pride and pain got in your way. Death brings great change and no change at all. “I want to help Isavalta now. Tell me how to cage the Firebird.”
“I cannot.” Medeoan shrank away, growing young as she had grown old, a pale girl, scarcely a woman. A wraith.
“But you did cage it once.”
“Oh, yes.” The two words were filled with despair. “I did that.”
I killed a man, she said with those simple words. I killed so many.
“Tell me how it was done,” urged Bridget. Neither one of them had moved, and yet the distance between them had grown. Bridget strained her ears and strained her senses, but her whole being felt already tensed to the breaking point. The ache in her wrist had become a burn, distracting her and sapping vital strength. “Let me help Isavalta. That was what you brought me to Vyshtavos to do.”
“The Firebird cannot be caged.”
“Then what can be done?”
“Nothing. It is immortal. It has been granted vengeance.” She lifted her head, for one heartbeat growing clear again in voice and visage. “You saw. You know.”
“Medeoan, you told my aunt you wanted to help Isavalta, that you wanted redemption.”
“They judge me, my parents, the gods. My spirit will be alone in the ice fields for all time.”
Bridget faltered. The burn from the lifeline had begun to throb like a heartbeat, like her heartbeat, laboring in her chest, calling her back to herself, breaking her connection with this place. Confusion washed through her, robbing her of her voice. She had to concentrate, but she could not. Her strength was finally beginning to fail, and the gallery, Medeoan, and Grace were all receding like the tide.
Grace moved. She straightened her heavy shoulders and threw back her head. She lifted her hands that had clutched Medeoan so slightly.
“I call the spirits,” she said, her voice deep and resonating. “I call the spirits to speak.”
It was ridiculous, it was the cheapest sort of theater.
It was what Aunt Grace had done for thirty years and what she knew as she knew her name. It was second nature to her, and in this place, it had power.
“Speak!” she called out. “We know the pain of being trapped between. We bring you rest. Speak and tell us of your burden, and be absolved and forgiven of all wrong. Be gathered into the fold where you seek shelter, where there is yet room for your soul. Speak and know peace.”
Medeoan moved forward, staring, her face filled with fear and wonder both. Her eyes were almost white now, as her skin, as her hair. The little girl, fading, all but gone.
“Speak to me,” whispered Aunt Grace, gentle now, coaxing. She had solidified, grown taller and more stately, even as Medeoan had diminished. “Speak and be forgiven. Speak and be gathered in.”
The little girl who was Medeoan stood up on tiptoe and whispered into Aunt Grace’s ear. Aunt Grace listened, eyes closed, and at last nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Medeoan.”
Medeoan smiled, a delighted child’s smile. The two of them embraced, and slowly, like ice melting in the sun, Medeoan faded away in Aunt Grace’s arms, and was gone.
In the same instant, the pain in Bridget’s wrist became unbearable, robbing her exhausted mind of the last of its will to focus. The world became a blur of color and cold, and when it cleared, she was sitting on the bed, holding Aunt Grace, her face wet with tears.
In the circle of her arms, her aunt breathed easily, evenly, and without any sound except the healthy whisper of air through lungs that were whole and sound.
Grace stirred. Bridget meant to sit back, but she did not have the strength and instead slumped painfully against the brass headboard.
Sakra too gave up all pretense at dignity. His trembling hand plucked the scarlet band from his wrist, and he sat down at once on the floor.
Grace, though, Grace lifted her head, her eyes clear and a look of wonder on her face.
“What did she say?” croaked Bridget.
“It cannot be caged.” Grace spoke the words slowly, savoring them as if they were a beloved memory. “The cage won’t hold a second time, but if you can find the name of the man the Phoenix once was, it could be transformed.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mae Shan watched her young mistress trot steadily down the hill toward the riverside town of Huaxing and tried to be glad. Tsan Nu, or “Anna” as she was now insisting was her proper name, had been full of energy and good humor since she’d done her last spell, walking the whole long way without complaint. Mae Shan wanted to be glad that the girl could keep up and that she was following without question. She wanted to ignore the distance in “Anna’s” eyes and how only part of her attention seemed to be on where they were going.
Two things did lift Mae Shan’s spirits. The first was that she had been able to pick out the red roof of Uncle Lien’s house from the top of the last hill. The second was that no smoke rose from Huaxing, except for the benign white vapor from cooking fires.
The river itself was crowded with traffic. Boats of all sizes raced down its course, heading for the coast with all the sail they could raise. Mae Shan wondered where they were from and where they were bound, and if they knew for certain there was safety where they went. Uncertainty was beginning to tire her more than the journey, and she longed for answers.
They were almost alone on the hillside now. Most of the other refugees had chosen to flee deeper inland rather than take their chances on the river or at a town so close to the Heart. Or perhaps they had just been faster than Mae Shan and her charge, because although it was the middle of the day, Huaxing’s gates were shut fast. Mae Shan, however, saw ordered movement on the battlements. This told her that unlike in T’ien, the guards here had not yet abandoned their posts.
She also saw, as they drew closer, that those same guards were armed with bows, and the four men on either side of the gate were stationed with arrows already nocked.
“Mistress, wait here,” she said, pointing to a tangle of bushes at the roadside outside bow range. “Do not come until I call.”
Tsan Nu’s, Anna’s, eyes went dim for a moment and Mae Shan wondered if the child was speaking to the father, or the father to the
child, and what was being said. Whatever it was, her mistress ducked obediently behind the bush, crouching down so as not to be seen.
Well enough.
Mae Shan unslung her bundles and laid them beside those same bushes, certain the guards on the walls marked her movements. Then, unarmed and alone she walked down the center of the road to the gate.
“Stop there!” cried one of the guards on the left side of the gate when she drew within hail. “State your business!”
Mae Shan halted as she was ordered. “Lieutenant Mae Shan Jinn of the Heart’s Own Guard stationed at the Autumn Palace at the pleasure and the service of the Son of Heaven and Earth.”
Even from where she stood, she could see the man’s jaw drop.
“You lie!” he roared. “No one survived from the Heart!”
“I did, as did my mistress.” She held up her left hand. “I can show you my ring of service as proof.”
The officer turned and said something to his subordinates that Mae Shan could not hear. Then he and another disappeared from the battlements in order to emerge from a side portal. Mae Shan stayed where she was and let them come to her. Their armor was brown and edged with green. The officer wore a green sash and his subordinate a brown one. The subordinate still had his bow at the ready. Mae Shan did not move except to lower her hand so they might see her sigil ring. She hoped they would decide to admit they recognized it. Sneaking into Huaxing once they were refused entry at the gate would not be an adventure to look forward to.
The officer, a lieutenant from the insignia on his green sash, touched her ring with one gloved finger.
“Goddess of Mercy,” he whispered, a look of fear appearing on his face, as if he thought Mae Shan might vanish like a ghost. “We’ve been told no one survived. You must come with me at once. The mayor will want to speak with you.”
Mae Shan bowed in salute. “I will willingly speak to the honorable mayor as soon as possible, but first I must see my mistress safely installed in my uncle’s house.”
“Lieutenant Mae Shan.” The man dropped his voice. “Nowhere is safe. As the days pass without news from the Heart, the town is emptying out except for the looters. The mayor’s villa is still guarded. You must come at once.”