The Firebird's Vengeance (38 page)

She thought it would be something like entering the Land of Death and Spirit; the green light, the silence, the sense of some vital element missing from the air. She had been mistaken. It was like drowning. A cold heaviness rose around her, not parting to let her in, but yielding as she forced her way into its alien element. Image and light spread out, rippling and blending. Only the slender line she was pulled by remained clear.

I will see. I must. You cannot remain hidden from my sight. I do not permit it
.

In her mind she heard again the strains of Sakra’s spell song. She held them tight, weaving her determined thoughts into them, willing them outward to the watery blur of light and color that her world had become.

So slowly that her eyes strained and her head ached, the new world took shape.

To her surprise, Bridget found herself in the Long Gallery of the palace Vyshtavos. It was complete in every detail, with all the portraits in their places on the walls and fires crackling in the three fireplaces.

Medeoan and Aunt Grace stood before the center fireplace, clinging tightly to each other’s hands and leaning together so closely and at such drastic angles that if one of them let go, the other would surely fall. Their heads were both tilted up in identical attitudes and they gazed at one particular portrait.

Bridget walked forward, Sakra’s lifeline now no more than a shining thread wrapped around her wrist. Medeoan stirred a little, gradually becoming aware of Bridget’s approach, although she made no noise. The dowager lowered her eyes to take in Bridget. Stiffly, puppetlike, Aunt Grace mimicked the dowager’s gesture.

“These were my parents,” said Medeoan, returning her gaze again to the portrait. Aunt Grace’s head turned and tilted as well. “My husband murdered them.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Bridget licked her lips. “Hello, Aunt Grace.”

Aunt Grace did not look at her, nor did she loosen her hold on the dowager. It would have been comic were it not so appalling, two aging women in a gallery of portraits, looking back over the past, clinging only to each other.

“They’re waiting for me, with Vyshko and Vyshemir.” Medeoan spoke the words fatalistically. “I will have to answer for what I’ve done.”

There was nothing Bridget could say to that. Grace leaned a little closer to the dowager. Her fingers dug into Medeoan’s sagging skin.

If Medeoan felt any pain, she did not show it. She just tightened her own grip on Aunt Grace, leaving white circles around each fingertip on Grace’s skin. “I didn’t feel that way when I ruled. I felt I was right. I did what was necessary for Isavalta. There is not an emperor in the whole of history without blood on their hands. Most especially the blood of their family. I knew that.”

“You knew a great deal,” said Bridget carefully. She knew that she was seeing what was true, but only to an extent. The truths here were metaphoric, a representation of what was happening within Aunt Grace. The truth was the two of them were growing closer, not farther apart, and they were hurting each other to do so. Medeoan had no life left to lose, but Grace could still so easily lose hers.

“I did know so much. I still do.” The dowager sounded wistful.

Bridget hesitated, uncertain of how to proceed. Part of her wanted to storm across the space between herself and the spirits and force them apart, but she held back. A hammer blow at this point might shatter all, and she must not forget they needed Medeoan who was weakening even as Aunt Grace was.

Aunt Grace rested her head on Medeoan’s shoulder in a dreadful parody of affection. Somehow it was seeing that which broke Bridget’s paralysis. “May I speak with my aunt?”

Medeoan shrugged. The gesture made Grace’s head bobble grotesquely. “I am not the one who holds her silent.”

“Aunt Grace?”

Aunt Grace turned her head, pressing her face against the dowager’s neck, a child looking for comfort.

But it was Medeoan who staggered then, and Grace who steadied her. “It seems she has nothing to say to you.” The dowager’s voice grew breathier, as if she were also short of air.

“I don’t believe that.”

Medeoan’s answering smile was thin and a little sad. “You doubt the evidence of your eyes at last?”

Anger finally made its way through Bridget’s fear and hesitation, goading her into motion. She rounded the duo until her back was to the fire and the walls of portraits. “Aunt Grace, it’s Bridget.”

Grace lifted her head, looking about her curiously, as if she just found herself in this place, but it seemed to be of only mild interest. Yet her hands maintained their death-grip on Medeoan, and the two women swayed as if blown by a wind.

“I don’t believe she can hear you,” said the dowager, her voice was mild, but the tone fell flat.

Bridget reached out, uncertain whether she just meant to touch her aunt, or to try to grab her and shake her. Her arms would not reach. She could see the women, leaning together, less than two steps away from her, but when she stretched out her hands, she could not reach them. “Aunt Grace!” she cried. Grace continued to contemplate the paintings over Bridget’s shoulder. “Is this your doing?” Bridget demanded of Medeoan.

“You did this between you.” The dowager tried to shake her head, but she managed only a tremor.
Not much time left
, that thought and fresh fear stabbed at Bridget.

Fear banished thoughts of subtlety. “Will you let her go?”

“No.” Bridget would not have thought it possible, but the dowager pressed herself closer yet to Aunt Grace, and Aunt Grace gathered her near.

“Why not?”

Medeoan looked at her as if she were simple. “We need each other to be.”

Memories came crowding into Bridget’s mind, thick and fast as she faced the dowager’s mildness. She remembered the fearsome, frightened woman in the golden robes. She remembered seeing her crumbled on the floor beneath the Firebird’s cage, and seeing the vision of Mikkel’s murder at his mother’s orders. She remembered excoriating Medeoan for what she had allowed herself to become. All the memories jabbed at her temper and her own fists tightened.
Stay calm
, she ordered herself.
Keep your wits together. Try to find out what’s really happening in front of you
.

“Why does Aunt Grace need you?”

But Medeoan did not appear disposed to be helpful. Like Grace, she returned to the contemplation of the portraits. “You will have to ask her that.”

“But you said she cannot hear me.”

“Yes, I did.”

For a moment, Bridget felt the absurd impulse to laugh. “I do not have time for this.”

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.”