And clearly Inga ruled the women of the seraglio now—perhaps far more than that, given the hints she’d dropped.
Hulda’s servants tried to stop me, but they crumbled before me, giving way as they would for a man. I used male command language ruthlessly, combining it with my imperial manners and the confidence I’d gained over the years. First Kaja had taught me how to handle myself, to rely on my sense of justice to step in where clear decisions were needed, and not to back down from bullies. Then Ochieng and the elephants had taught me the certainty of purpose. An elephant has no reason to heed the tiny human clinging to her back. Only knowing where I wanted to go, without wavering, could convince an elephant she wanted to go there, too.
I used all of that to scatter the servants and defenders of Hulda’s apartments.
And ran smack into Hede.
She smiled with cruel vindication at the sight of me, her whip uncoiled and ready in her hand. “So, the rumors are true. Faithless Jenna, slinking home again. Did you think to regain your rank, your pampered life?”
“I want nothing from this place,” I answered. Inside, Jenna stirred at the words, full of bloodthirsty rage. It can be useful, if you’re pointed at the right thing. I slipped some of the control off my inner demon, carefully pointed her.
“That works out, because nothing is what you’ll have,” Hede sneered, cracking the whip. “You are nothing and no one now. What is more wretched than a woman who refuses her husband? You brought shame upon your mother, your entire family, and upon those of us who tried to raise you to be a decent wife.” She flicked the whip, eyes hard. “I’m going to enjoy exacting punishment from that ugly skin of yours.”
I laughed, giving her pause. “I suggest you get out of my way,” I said pleasantly.
“You don’t command me,” she bit out.
“You’re right, I don’t. When I said I wanted nothing of this place, that included my rank. I have no wish to command you, but if you don’t get out of my way, I will kill you.”
She recovered fast, though not enough to completely cover her shock. “I’ll be gentle this time,” she sneered, “because you’ll never escape again, and I’ll want to enjoy whipping you for a long time.”
Her whip cracked out, a strike for my face, to sap my spirit and perhaps scar me. When I’d been the treasured pearl of the empire, she hadn’t been able to harm my pretty face. No surprise that she went for it first, a satisfying payback for the little restraint she’d had to exercise.
I dropped into a low lunge, drawing my daggers from the thigh sheaths—and fully unleashing Jenna from within. She let out a scream of rage, driving up and into Hede, who staggered back against the wall as one dagger drove into her gut and the other pressed up against her throat, shoving her jaw high.
Really, it was far too easy. “Drop the whip,” I hissed.
Eyes rolling back in her head, she obeyed. “Not so simple, is it, Hede?” I asked sweetly, with syrupy sympathy. “You know how to whip children into obedience. How to threaten rekjabrel with disfiguring scars so they’ll be cast out if they dare refuse being brutalized and raped nightly by the cruel men who call for them. You know how to force terrified and unwilling brides back to their husbands.”
“It was my job, Your Imperial Highness,” she stammered, shaking with real fear. “I was only doing my job.”
“The weak excuse of the bully.” I tsked, shaking my head, twisting the blade in her gut. She screamed weakly, already losing her strength. “I was there. You loved the paltry power you held over us. Over me.”
“I was only enforcing the rules,” she panted. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll serve you, in any way you wish.”
“The world has no need of more bullies,” I replied calmly. “I could make you suffer, for all those women who died under your whip, for all the ways you tried to break me. But I am not so cruel as you would’ve made me.”
“Thank you, Princess,” she sobbed. “I promise I’ll—” She broke off in a gargle when I cut her throat, her worthless promises crumpling along with her body.
I looked down at the empty shell of her. “I lied,” I said conversationally. “I was always going to kill you.”
Stepping over her, I thrust aside the curtains, and entered my mother’s inner sanctum.
She reclined, as she always had, on her mound of silk pillows, her opos pipe nearby. And, also as she always had been, she was impeccably groomed. Perhaps she’d been at court earlier, but that would be incidental. My mother had dressed herself to perfection every moment of her life, even in the middle of the night, always conscious of her duty to be ornamental. I’d never seen her not draped in an empire’s wealth in jewels, without her beauty-enhancing makeup and elaborately styled hair.
At every moment, she lived and breathed being Empress of Dasnaria.
And she was beautiful. I’d forgotten the impact of her striking beauty—perhaps I’d thought my memories distorted by youthful admiration of the person who’d loomed largest in my life—but my travels through the world only reinforced how extraordinary my mother was. With jarring impact, I realized my mother was younger than Zalaika. And that when I left the seraglio forever, my mother had been younger than I was now.
She’d never lived outside this seraglio or the one she grew up in until she left at sixteen to wed the emperor. She was like this place, meticulously polished to present a perfect veneer, while beneath she was hollow. Corrupt, vile, ambitious, with no understanding of the vastness of the world, she was what they’d made her. What she’d tried to make me into. Had she ever loved me at all—or had she been incapable of it?
She looked me over, waiting pointedly. “Have you forgotten all of your manners along with your honor and duty?” she finally demanded. “Show me the courtesy my rank demands.”
“I am,” I replied. “You get no courtesy from me—and I bow and scrape to no one.”
Her lushly painted mouth curled in an ugly sneer. “What have you done to your skin?” she demanded. “All those milk baths, all that effort to ensuring that your skin remained a pure smooth ivory, and what? You might as well have roasted yourself over a fire. I made you into a rare beauty and you threw it away to become this… awful thing.”
“And hello to you, too, Mother,” I replied, kicking myself for having wanted anything from her. Kaja and Zalaika had been truer mothers to me than this… wax doll had been. It was almost funny, how disappointing we found each other. Except it wasn’t funny at all.
“You’re covered in blood,” she commented, gaze lingering on me with obvious distaste. “And where in the empire did you dig up that cheap, disgusting klút? You’ll go bathe and change immediately. I’ll send girls to do your hair and makeup. Maybe they can cover up some of that awful skin. I’ve made certain your rooms remained unoccupied and are ready for you, with plenty of proper klúts to choose from.”
Of course she’d kept it all the same, the cage door invitingly open, should I be so foolish as to return. “I’m not here to primp, Mother,” I said.
“Nevertheless, you will do it. No daughter of mine will be seen like that. Though I’m afraid nothing can disguise how you’ve let yourself go.”
“I am not your daughter.” As I said the words, the relief swept through me, more cleansing and refreshing than any bath. “You forfeited the right to call me that when you sold me to further your ambition.”
“Our ambition,” she snapped. “You always were a bit dense. Your father’s blood, no doubt. Tell me, did you kill Rodolf?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, unsurprised. “I thought you had that much of me in you. But you should have waited until you were installed in Arynherk. Your stupidity and frivolous defection stymied plans carefully laid for decades.”
I’d known this, thought I’d understood her, but her obstinate focus on power above all still came as a revelation. “You didn’t care at all what I suffered at his hands.” Not a question.
She waved that off. “Bah. It’s a woman�
�s lot to suffer. Why should you be any different?”
“Because you were supposed to protect me.” The words were angry, but a childish plaintiveness stirred beneath. I hadn’t realized how betrayed I still felt. My mother had never been kind to me. She’d had me beaten to teach me lessons, had poisoned me so I’d understand the dangers of life in the seraglio, and had been exacting to the point of cruelty. But after all of that, I’d still thought she valued me in some way. And apparently fragile young Jenna still carried that inner pain of discovering that her mother hadn’t cared about her at all.
“Protection creates weakness. I did better by you. I made you tough, strong enough to kill a weasel like Rodolf. Look at you now.” She gestured to my bloodstained klút, sticking to me, it was so drenched. “I assume that’s Hede’s blood.”
“Yes, I killed her, too.”
“You always did bear her a grudge, and I don’t blame you. I’m not angry. She’d outlived her usefulness anyway. Especially now that I have you.” My mother studied me, then smiled. “I’m proud of you.”
I’d once longed to hear those words. Now they turned my stomach. “For killing Hede.”
“For the woman you’ve become, despite your ugliness—a real pity there—but look at you. Lethal. Cunning. Ruthless. You owe all of that to me.” Satisfied, she drew on her opos pipe.
“I am who I am despite you,” I replied steadily, feeling the truth of it. “And thanks to women who actually did care for me.”
“Credit whoever you like. I’m not so weak as to need your mewling affection. Don’t let it bother you that you turned out just like me. We’ll make a powerful team because of that.”
“Team?” I echoed, raising a brow, recognizing the cool contempt of the gesture as the same as Inga’s.
“Yes. I have not been idle all these years. I have recruited powerful allies to repair the strategy you carelessly undermined.” She gave me a falsely affectionate smile that made my skin crawl, though I was glad to find it no longer affected me as it once had. She had no idea, I realized, that Deyrr had been defeated. Inga and Helva had neatly cut my mother out of the communications web of the Imperial Palace, leaving her so isolated she hadn’t even noticed her ignorance. A neat justice there, for the woman who’d worked so hard to make sure I knew only what fit into her use for me.
“You can be empress, Jenna,” my mother said into my silence. “That fool brother of yours ran off, for a rekjabrel of all things, but you are firstborn, mine and Einarr’s. It’s time to reclaim your birthright. Remember what I taught you, the most important thing in the world?” Her jewel bright blue eyes hardened. “Power. And now at last it will be ours.”
“You’re wrong.” I shook my head when she snarled at my impertinence. “Though you are right about one thing. The fact that you no longer have power over me does fill me with gladness. That’s important. I’m sorry for your life, that you lived in a sunless room and were twisted into this monster who believes only power matters.”
“Don’t waste your pity. Power is all that matters. You are young and foolish still, to think otherwise.” But she hesitated, looking me over, perhaps noticing the passage of time. Perhaps wondering if I had grown daughters of my own.
“That’s not true. There’s a whole world of more, Mother. There’s love and—”
“Love is an illusion.” She rolled her eyes, inhaling the opos smoke.
“Love is more real than power,” I persisted, though I didn’t know why. “Between people and between us and the animals of the world. The beauty of the sky, of sunrise and sunset, of the ocean and the grasslands—they stir the soul more than any jewel or embroidered silk ever could. There are people out there who are kind and help just because they can. People who protected me for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do. People who share their homes and food, because it gives them joy, because they know we aren’t all dogs fighting over a bone.”
“A bone!” She laughed at me, a harsh metallic edge to the once melodic voice, the bitterness inside leaking out. “With the power that I’ve resurrected, I will have all the world, and I will live forever.”
“Resurrected?” I spun the dagger in my hand, drawing her unwilling eye. “Do you mean the High Priestess of Deyrr? I imagine she offered you immortality.”
She regarded me with a hint of respect—and perhaps a glimmer of unease. “So you know about that. And it’s no idle offer. I saw her mummified remains return to life with my own eyes, her eternal youth and beauty restored by the hand of the god.”
“By your actions, you caused the deaths of thousands of people and horrible suffering for those who survived.”
She drew on the opos. “What do I care for those miserable, meaningless lives? They are nothing to me.”
“They are something to me, and to the goddess Danu. Her hand guides my blade and her clear-eyed wisdom guides the justice I bring to the source of the evil you unleashed upon the world.”
She frowned, perhaps at last perceiving the danger. “It’s not too late, Jenna. If you do as I tell you, I can find my way to forgiving you, and I will share this power with you. You, too, can be immortal.”
“The High Priestess is dead, and Deyrr defeated.”
“What do you say?” Her gaze stayed on my bloodied blade, understanding dawning at last. “That can’t be.”
“It can and is. I’m here to deal the final stroke of justice. Your death won’t make up for all the deaths you caused, all the suffering you’ve wrought with your vanity, pride, and empty ambition. But it will keep you from hurting anyone, ever again.”
“Jenna, wait!” She held out a hand. “Please, I—”
I threw the dagger, nailing her through her pretty jeweled eye—and she collapsed back, dead on the silk pillows.
“My name is Ivariel now,” I said, and walked away.
~ 17 ~
They’d gathered all the women of the seraglio to sit around the big lagoon, Jepp stood guard over a small group that looked rebellious and sulky, including the charming Jasmyra. Two women in servant garb stood with her, apparently chatting companionably. Jepp caught my eye in question, and I nodded. She gave me a salute of sorts, fist over heart with a slight bow.
“She’s dead,” I told Inga and Helva, by way of greeting. Maybe I’d feel the reaction later, but at the moment I felt nothing at all, except a sense of resolution. I’d felt the same way knowing Rodolf was dead. Perhaps I was an unfeeling monster, made in my mother’s image. “As is Hede. Any word from outside?” I was ready to leave this place.
Inga raised a brow, but didn’t comment. “As you may note, not everyone is thrilled about our revolution.” She waved dismissively at the group Jepp guarded. “We woke the children and moved them into Jilliya’s old apartments, where they’ll be safe with the elders looking after them. Word from outside is that Hestar accepted the bjoja at haseti. Loke is serving as Hestar’s second and Harlan as Kral’s. They were to engage in combat at any moment. I will receive word when they do. Odds currently favor Kral,” she added.
Of course they did. Kral, the golden boy, could hardly fail. I looked to Jepp again. She had an ear cocked in our direction and a harsh look on her face. I wondered if she worried more about Kral losing to Hestar—or what would happen if he won.
“Your people are on the way to opening the seraglio,” Helva added, sliding an inquiring glance at Inga.
“Yes, and our people are assisting them. I expect them at any time, so your speech will have to be short.” Inga gestured to a raised platform. “Karyn found something for you to stand on.”
“My speech?” I echoed.
“Yes, the rallying cry of the avenging angel. Inspire your troops, Sister.”
I glared at Karyn as I made my way over, and she beamed back at me. “I hadn’t planned on a speech,” I told her.
“Did you have another plan for rallying them?” She sounded far too innocent.
I supposed I’d thought it would be like moving elephants, tha
t I’d gesture and we’d charge. Just figured that people would be more difficult.
Karyn put a hand on my arm. “Tell them your story. If I hadn’t known about you, I would never have had the courage to try to live in the outside world. Just give them your truth.”
“I tried to tell my mother…” Ah, there was the emotion, grief tangled with a rage that might never fade. “She didn’t listen.”
“Maybe she couldn’t hear it,” Karyn offered. “When Jepp first offered me a way out, all I could hear was my own fear. Maybe if someone had offered Hulda a way out long ago, her life might’ve been different. It’s too late for her, but it’s not too late for these women. Not all of them.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That helps.”
I stepped onto the platform, my bare feet remembering its smooth texture. I’d once danced on this, practicing the tight circles of the ducerse. Believing that perfecting the dance would give me everything I desired. Instead, I’d crawled through the broken pieces of myself to find what I hadn’t known to want.
I’d found happiness. And that’s what I’d brought back with me.
Looking out over the sea of faces—the wives, the concubines, the rekjabrel—I recognized some. Many I didn’t. And yet, I needed to reach all of them. Another performance, but a critical one, to lead us all to freedom.
I summoned the dance, calling on Danu to guide not my feet or blade this time, but my words.
“Some of you remember me,” I said, my voice carrying into the quiet, belling over the calm water of the lagoon. “Many may not have been here when I lived in this place, but you know of me. You’ve heard the stories. Now hear my truth. I was born in this seraglio, played among these ferns and palms. I grew up and lived among you for eighteen years as Imperial Princess Jenna. I lived the life of a Dasnarian woman, submissive, obedient, trained to serve the men who ran our lives.
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