The Firebird's Vengeance (34 page)

“You never cared for me, despite your blood, so I can only hope I have helped give you something you can care for.” Aunt Grace’s words were crabbed and full of mockery. Bridget whirled around and saw only Medeoan, aged and angry.

“You witch!” she shouted, grabbing Medeoan by the shoulders and shaking her hard. “I should have killed you myself for what you did to me! Where is she? Where is my daughter?”

“Bridget, stop! I know where she is!”

Sakra pulled her back and Bridget blinked, and the image before her shrank in on itself and became Grace again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I tried, I tried. I’m sorry.”

Bridget backed away, gripping the collar of her shirt so tightly the buttons strained. Anger, pity, confusion, and a hundred other feelings swept through her. She couldn’t stand to look at Grace anymore, not for another second. She knew herself to be as close to losing her mind as her aunt seemed to be. It was too much, being in this place. Fifteen years of pent-up frustration at Grace who had stood aside and done nothing boiled inside her, mixing with her fresher fury at a woman who had done far, far too much.

She faced Sakra instead. “How could … how could you know where Anna is?”

“The day I first saw you, I had just received news from my friend Captain Nisula that he had seen in the women’s palace of the Heart of the World a young girl with black hair and tan skin who was said to be the daughter of Valin Kalami. She was being held there as guest-hostage against his good behavior while he and the Hung-Tse planned the overthrow of Isavalta. That may very well be your Anna.”

The Heart of the World? She knew about the empire on Isavalta’s southern border from her studies with Mistress Urshila and her talks with Sakra. Urshila acknowledged it to be a place of learning and sophistication, but called its people treacherous. Sakra, speaking privately, said he had once believed it more civilized and comprehensible than Isavalta. It was certainly much older.

This was where Anna was? A hostage? The image of a little girl who was her baby in chains was almost more than she could bear.

Sakra covered her hands with his. “She was being well treated, Bridget. I swear. Despite what Mistress Urshila will have told you, they are an honorable people there.”

“Oh, yes,” sneered Medeoan’s voice behind her. “So honorable they sponsored Valin Kalami to betray me.”

Bridget felt something vital inside her snap in two. In a single instant, her blood turned to ice in her veins. One step at a time, she turned around. Medeoan stood before her in the translucent shell of Aunt Grace whose green eyes were terrified as they looked at Bridget.

“Get out, Medeoan,” Bridget said. She reached inside, she reached outside, she felt the magic in her, distant but she could touch it. It was hers, this place was hers, and she would not be jeered at by this dead woman who had ruined Bridget’s life before she even drew breath. “You’re dead and gone! You’re nothing! Get out!”

All unshaped, the magic swirled around her, a cold wind that somehow seemed to blow away breath itself. “Get out! Get out!”

“Stop!” Sakra ducked between them and brought both hands down hard on Bridget’s shoulders. “Bridget Loftfield Lederle, stop this!”

Awash in her own magic, Bridget barely heard him. She would do this thing. From memory she heard Aunt Grace’s own words.
For once, one of you will do what I say!
Medeoan would no longer be permitted to interfere with her, or with her family.

Aunt Grace, Medeoan shining through her very skin, raised her hands, seeking to divert the invisible current of Bridget’s power, but she was too late. The outpouring of strength brushed the gesture aside. Soon, her power would fill the room, flood every crevice and cranny. Her power, her strength, would encompass everything, and everything would bend before her will.

That understanding sent a shock of exhilaration before Bridget, and she stretched farther, throwing open the gates within her, dragging in the power around her. The walls shook. The countless china knickknacks rang like chimes as they rattled against each other, crashing one by one to the floor as the glass in the picture frames above them cracked and snapped, dagger-sharp pieces dropping like ice on top of the fragmented porcelain. A chair shuddered, dancing across the floor as if pushed by drunken hands. The gazing crystal rocked heavily on its stand, thumping back and forth, a bass note under all the fragile ringing destruction.

Destruction, all the world changing shape, magic pouring forth like breath, like blood from her veins. And it was glorious. She could break apart the whole world, shatter it into pieces and remake it the way it should be, with Medeoan gone to Hell itself if she so chose and Anna beside her. All things were within her compass, and no one was going to determine their shape but her.
No one
.

The window frames creaked as the glass within them shuddered. Aunt Grace screamed again, and a thin trickle of blood ran down her forehead. Good. Good. Break her apart, let the ghost out and seal her tight again …

Slowly, beneath the ringing, cracking, screaming, swirling, breathing, bleeding that was all her own, Bridget became aware of words. Steady, careful words, words of peace, words of stillness. Deep words that sought to bind up the glory of her power, that meant to unmake her remaking.

That meant to stop her.

Bridget’s power poured out fast, and faster yet, but now there was a dam between her flood and the world. She could see nothing but obstruction and wrong shaping, nothing of her, nothing but what she would, could, must make. Must break the dam of words first, then the whole of the world, must break, must, must must …

But the wall of words grew thicker, and stronger, and Bridget realized it was binding up her own power. The more she poured out, the stronger it became. She was fighting herself, and she would not break. A new scream sounded, torn from her own throat as the wall surrounded her, and the power rose around her like water in a well, ready to drown her utterly, but she could not stop, not even as the walls pressed closer and her hands lashed out to beat off a force that was not solid, barely real, but so strong, strong as blood, as water, as waves in a gale, sweeping her off her feet and covering her over until she could not breathe and all the world went away.

Sometime later, Bridget woke to a blinding headache and the realization that she was a mess. Sweat soaked her clothes, and bile stained the front of her shirt. Its bitterness filled her parched mouth.

She lifted her head, deeply, completely ashamed of herself. Sakra knelt before her, straight-backed, his long face calm but his eyes wary. Dark blotches showed on his skin, like the beginnings of bruises, on his cheek and around his eye.

Beside him, huddled on her knees, was Aunt Grace. A thread of blood traced a ragged, red line down her utterly white cheek, but her terrified eyes were all her own.

“Don’t, please, no more,” begged Grace so pitifully that Bridget’s empty stomach curdled. “She can’t help it. She tries, but death is the last change, and she is only what she was when she died and when she died she was so torn. Don’t.” She wagged her head slowly back and forth. “Help us. Help me.”

Bridget moved her lips, but not a single word came to her. She managed to push herself up onto her hands, but it was Sakra who wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Yes. We will help you. But you must rest now. Come.”

He raised Grace up. Supporting her weight, he walked with her, brushing past the beaded curtain with his shoulder. He would have had no hard time guessing what that curtain covered. Bridget heard the whisper of heavy cloth and the creak of a bed’s frame and springs. Trembling, Bridget pulled herself up onto the settee. The horsehair pricked her palms like so many tiny pins. She tried to sort out what had happened. She remembered the sounds of shattering glass and breaking porcelain, but as she looked around her, she saw all the photos whole in their frames, and the little knickknacks standing in their usual jumble.

Had none of it happened? Or was this Sakra’s work?

Sakra reappeared from behind the curtain. One look at his exhausted eyes and Bridget knew which of those things was true. Sakra had stopped her torrent, and healed her damage, and it had cost him heavily to do so.

“Your aunt sleeps,” he reported.

Sakra walked past her to the windows. He found the trick of the sash and the shutters and threw them both open, letting in a rush of cold spring air. For a time, he did nothing but stand there and breathe deeply, grounding himself, bringing order back to his mind.

“Is she hurt?” asked Bridget softly, remembering the blood. “Does she need attention?”

“No.”

Bridget’s fingers knotted in her stained skirt. It was an old gesture, one she had strived to rid herself of in that place where she was more likely to be wearing linens and brocades rather than plain, starched work clothes.

“This is what they were all afraid of. This … explosion.”

“Yes.”

She could only see his profile from where she was. The dark blotch of a bruise darkened his temple.
Turn around. Look at me
.

Forgive me
.

Sakra did not turn. He watched the night through the window, drinking in deep draughts of air that smelled of clean water and returning green.

Bridget’s fingers wove themselves together. Sakra had been a source of strength and reassurance to her almost since she’d met him, and now she wanted to be anywhere but next to him. “Were you afraid too?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you came.” She spoke the words as a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Under the bruise, a muscle twitched. “I am not your teacher, Bridget. She did tell you, and you did not listen.”

“If you had told me …”

“You still would not have listened.” He threw back his head, looking to Heaven for strength or patience. “I have never known anyone who longed so much for place, for purpose, but when those ties you want so desperately bind you, you fight like a tiger to be free, and look surprised when those around you are hurt!” At last, Sakra granted her wish, and he looked at her, but there was no forgiveness in the gesture, instead there were bruised eyes full of bewilderment, and hurt, of his body and of his spirit. “You want change, but do not want yourself to change or be changed. You want to be given obedience without giving any in return. Mothers All! How can you have reached such an age and not realized the living world does not work in this fashion!”

His words might have jolted Bridget to her feet, but her knees were too weak to support her. Rage thrummed dangerously through her mind, and the memory of how strong she could truly be set her fingertips twitching, but she also heard the memory of breaking glass and saw afresh the heavy bruises on Sakra’s face.

She had been warned, time and again, by Mistress Urshila, and she had dismissed those warnings. She had taken an oath of loyalty to the emperor and empress, and she had dismissed that as well.

She thought about her years at the lighthouse. Was there ever anyone more mistress of their domain than she? Nothing to do days and nights but keep her house, read her books, tend the light, and be alone with her memories. She had no one to answer to but the lighthouse board, and as long as the lamp stayed lit, and the inspector they sent out ever few years could see that regulations were being followed, they left her alone.

She had always thought of herself as a prisoner, but there had been a kind of freedom to her life. The freedom that came of having nothing outside oneself to hold on to.

That was what she had truly given up when she returned to Isavalta, and she had done so without realizing it.

Sakra was again looking out the window across the dark and sleeping expanse of Bayfield.

“You must decide,” he said. “Now. Do you accept a life that binds you to others, or do you return to your light and your freedom?” His face was rigid. There were so many things she knew he would not say. He would not say, “Do you care for me?” He would not say, “What of your daughter?” He would not say, “I cannot let you return to Isavalta as you are. You may lose control again.”

But I want to come back. I want my past, my daughter, my love. I don’t want to be lonely and lost anymore
.

But could she? After all her years alone,
could
she throw herself into such a life? She had made a very poor job of it so far.

She could go back, turn away. Stay here. If she couldn’t go back to the light, there was surely somewhere she could go, to be alone, to be free.

Amid the surging jumble of thoughts, two things were very clear. If she stayed here, she would still be aware every moment of the untutored, uncontrolled power she carried within her, and she would know she had turned her back on Anna. Neither thing would ever leave her free again.

“I cannot do this alone,” she said, her voice hoarse with more emotions than she could name. “I cannot be alone anymore, and I do not want to be alone anymore.” Slowly, she unwound her fingers from each other and laid her long, work-worn hands on her knees. “I do not know what to do. I’m only certain of what must be done. I must help Aunt Grace. I must find Anna. Even if … even if she were not my daughter, she is a child trapped by disaster, and should be helped.”

Slowly Sakra nodded. “I can help with these things, if you permit. But we do not have much time. I feel there is more happening here than our immediate concerns. The dead are not lightly involved in the affairs of the living.”

“I don’t understand. Medeoan involved herself.”

“There is very little the dead can do if they are not permitted to. There is great freedom in death, and there is no freedom at all.”

Bridget wanted to say that was nonsense, but bit the words back and tried to think of what she knew instead. She remembered her mother’s ghost, coming to her on the night of the solstice in Vyshtavos, speaking of this meeting being permitted, by time, by Vyshko and Vyshemir. Even the dead had choices and limitations. Even the dead could be used.