The Usurper's Crown (16 page)

A surge of sudden anger washed through her. Anger at her father for not being here himself and leaving her only dreams. Anger, again, hot and fresh, at Avanasy for his betrayal and leaving her alone. Anger at herself for not being able to trust Kacha absolutely and without question, which was what she desperately wanted.

Medeoan said not a word to her ladies. She just stood impatiently while they made her decent, and then she marched out of the apartment. She would do this quickly. She would find her answer and then she would be done. Then, she would find a way to apologize to Kacha for doubting him, and for not being able to rid her mind of a dream.

The ladies, guards and pages scrambled to keep pace with her. Fortunately, they had enough sense to keep silent. She led the entourage down the North Stairs with its pink marble and graceful pillars, down the secretary’s stairs which were plain, gray stone worn smooth by generations of feet, down into the earth where the vaults waited.

“Mistress,” ventured Checkhania as the page girls hurried forward to announce her arrival to the soldiers guarding the treasure houses and the under-ministers of the treasury who kept count of it all. “Mistress, if you could perhaps tell us what you wanted …”

Medeoan did not answer her. She just gripped her hems more tightly and kept her eyes straight ahead.

She strode up to the members of the house guard who flanked the door of the main treasury. They needed no spoken command. They unbarred the door and stood back, giving her the soldier’s reverence with their hands over their hearts.

The antechamber for the treasury was an undecorated stone room with two rows of copying desks, each manned by an under-minister with a huge ledger. As the door opened, all the servants of the storehouse leapt from their chairs and fell to their knees, properly respectful but obviously amazed at her presence.

“I require access to the treasury,” she barked out. “Now.”

The first under-minister, a little gnome of a man weighed down by his gold chain of office, sprang to his feet, but did not seem to consider it polite to stand up straight in the imperial presence. He fumbled with his bundle of keys that was almost as large as Medeoan’s own, and unlocked the inner door. He reverenced as he stood aside, and Medeoan entered the dim storehouse.

Medeoan paused, trying to regain her composure, trying to calm her anger. She would do this swiftly. She would lay her doubts in their proper resting place. She would never again place more credence in dreams than she did in Kacha’s word.

It was then she realized that her entire cluster of ladies had entered the storehouse behind her.

“Out of here,” Medeoan ordered. “All of you. Out into the hallway.” They stared at her, as baffled as a flock of startled hens. “Out!”

That got through to them. They grabbed up their skirts and scurried out the door, all their eyes wide in distress. Medeoan stared after them. How had she become surrounded by such a pack of fools?

You don’t worry about Prathad? Beloved, you should, I’ve seen her with the guardsmen … Beloved, it grieves me to bring you this tale, but your lady, Vladka, has been carrying letters … Dismiss Chekhania? What for, beloved? She looks so well beside you …

Medeoan shook her head violently to interrupt these unwanted memories.

It was cold in the treasury. Guards hurried in to light the waiting lamps and braziers, but their illumination was too feeble to warm the great stone chamber. Medeoan shivered and gazed around her. Some treasures waited out in the open. Sacks of silver coins gaped between the rows of chests that ran the length of the room. Ropes of pearls hung on hooks. Slabs of precious amber were stacked as high as Medeoan’s waist in the far corners.

These were baubles, Medeoan knew. They were there to impress visitors whom the emperors needed dazzled by the resources of Isavalta. Anything of true import waited safely locked in its chest and every chest was stacked in its appropriate place. Each chest was bound in metal, whether iron, copper, brass, or silver. Each had its separate lock, and each lock was graven with a symbol known only to the Lord Master Treasurer, or to members of the imperial family.

“Close the door,” said Medeoan without looking behind her.

Someone obeyed. The clang reverberated against stone and metal, making the entire chamber ring. Medeoan hesitated where she was for a moment, her hand smoothing down the bundle of keys at her waist.

Come now, do what you must. You cannot stand here all day
.

Down the years, her ancestors had collected, confiscated, commissioned, or been given many artifacts of powerful magic. These were locked in chests banded with silver and marked with Vyshemir’s cup. Avanasy had spent many hours down here with her, teaching her the uses and histories of many of the objects. But there were some things that Avanasy was not allowed to know the use of. Some things about which even the lord sorcerer was kept in ignorance.

Medeoan paced up the left-hand aisle between the waiting boxes, each step carrying her farther from the lights. Her mind could not help but imagine that Father walked beside her. She could almost hear the rustle of his kaftan, and the heavy wheeze of his breath.

“Reach me down that small one, Daughter,” he had said.

She had been twelve then, and had to stand on tiptoe. Now, she had only to stretch out her arm to grasp the long, flat box on top of the pile of teakwood chests. She set it down on top of a cedar casket that was bound in iron. The box she had retrieved was bound with silver and had a lock framed with a silver braid. She had a matching silver key on her ring. Her hand shook as she inserted the key into the lock.

“There are some things you must keep secret. You must whisper of them only in your own heart,” Father’s voice told her solemnly from memory. “This is one such. I pray you will never have to use it.”

He took out a girdle that seemed to be woven of pure silver. A hundred tassels shimmered in the lantern light. As Medeoan peered at it, she could see a series of runes had been woven into the band, silver on silver. The power of the thing was meant to be hidden. It was made to look harmless.

“This girdle was made with the empire,” her father said solemnly, laying the shimmering band back on its blue velvet lining. “Its magic is strong. Anyone who wears it is placed in thrall to the one who ties it onto them. Their minds are clouded for as long as they wear the girdle and they can only do as they are told.” He closed the box. “When you are empress, should there ever be one you cannot act against openly, but whom you must silence and you have no other means, this is yours to use.”

It will be there
, insisted Medeoan to herself as she stared at the box and tried to still the trembling in her hands.
Of course it will be there
. The sorceress who had woven it was long dead. She had been old when she made it, and she had only told her mistress, Medeoan’s grandmother, of its properties. How could Kacha, let alone Yamuna, even know of its existence? Her dream was false.

Medeoan inserted the key into the lock and turned it. The click of the lock seemed as loud as the clanging of the door that had shut her in here. She lifted the lid.

Medeoan stood amidst the wealth of her empire and stared at the one empty box with its blue velvet lining. Disbelief came first. It had to be the wrong chest. She had made a mistake. She had only seen it once, after all, and she had been little more than a child then.

But try as she might she could not make her heart to believe that. Then came denial. Kacha was being deceived. There were traitors in the court, and at the foot of the Pearl Throne. They were using him for their own ends. She would root them out. They would be hanged in chains over a slow fire. They would be torn apart by horses. They would die, slowly and bloodily. All of them who dared to betray her. She would tell Kacha …

What could she possibly tell him? That she had used her magic to spy on him? That it had shown her … that it had shown her …

Grief then. Silent tears pouring down her cheeks, all unnoticed as her heart shattered. She could find no more reasons. She could form no more questions. She had been taught to trust her powers even more than she trusted her heart and her reason, and her powers had shown her too much.

Kacha was the traitor. He did serve his father, and his father’s sorcerer, and their cause. He had lied to her, from the beginning, about everything. Avanasy had tried to warn her.

Avanasy. Medeoan’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a sob. Avanasy had tried to warn her and she had turned on him, and now only the gods knew where he was. She had severed herself from her loyal servants and her truest friend. Now what would she do? Now that Kacha, her lover, her husband, meant to make her his slave?

It was that thought that finally brought fear crashing down on Medeoan. She swayed, pressing her palm against her mouth. She could not cry out. She could not let anyone hear. Too many people already knew she had come here. If Kacha heard …

No. No. No. This was not happening. It could not be. She was wrong. She had made a mistake. Kacha loved her. She loved him. This was wrong.

Wrong, yes, but this time she had not made a mistake. This knowledge was only the result of her mistakes.

Medeoan reached out and slammed the box lid shut. The sound echoed around the chamber for a long moment before it faded away. In the silence that followed, she turned away from the box and walked out. She could not see. The whole world was a great blur of color. She moved like a puppet, with some exterior force directing her. She could not even order her own thoughts. A jumble of images filled her mind, memories of her father, her mother, of Kacha, and all his bright promises, his whispered words of love, his warm touch.

“Imperial Majesty, did you find all in order?”

Medeoan blinked. Slowly, she forced her eyes to focus in the direction from which the voice came. The first under-minister of the treasury had unusually small eyes, she noted, round and dark like a rat’s. His shoulders hunched up around his ears, probably from leaning over his ledgers. How much had he been given to allow Kacha into the place where only she should have gone? What account did they keep together? Did it even matter now? All that mattered was that he was Kacha’s creature, which now made him her enemy. Her enemy, and Isavalta’s.

“Imperial Majesty?” The under-minister blinked rapidly several times.

“Yes,” said Medeoan. “I found all that I needed.”

Chapter Five

Hours later, Medeoan slumped, exhausted, into the one chair that waited in the room with the Portrait of Worlds.

She couldn’t find the stolen girdle. She had taxed her skill and strength to its limits. She had tried every symbol, every word, every prayer she could think of and she still could not find it. Kacha or Yamuna had hidden it from her most searching eye, and she could not even see how that had been accomplished.

Yet she knew Kacha had it in his possession and at any unguarded moment he might slip it around her waist, tie it tight, and then her mind would no longer be her own. She would belong only to him, unable to think or to act but as he bid.

She bowed her head into her hands, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes.

Help me
, she prayed.
Vyshemir, help me. You also found
your husband was your enemy, but I have no knife to use as you did. What do I do?

“Beloved?”

Medeoan’s head jerked up. Kacha’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. Her heart hammered in her chest, and for a long moment, she didn’t dare move. How could she face him? What could she say? She needed more time to think.

But she had no time. Kacha was outside, and she could not sit here with the locked door between them. If she did, he would know something was wrong.

Trembling, Medeoan got to her feet and opened the door.

Kacha stood there, the man she had loved so much for the past three years, and nothing about him had changed. He was still tall and strong, his face handsome and caring. He was so beautiful, despite his scars and his mismatched eyes. Even now, knowing all that she did, she yearned to throw herself into his arms and confess everything and ask what she should do. In that moment, she hated herself more than she could ever hate him. Despite all, Kacha was her friend as well as husband, her sole trusted advisor since Avanasy had left her.

Since I drove Avanasy away. Since I failed to believe in the one I should have trusted above all others
.

“The ambassador from my uncle’s court is safely here, beloved,” he said, not moving from his place in the doorway. Even he would not come in here without an invitation. Not when he could be seen, anyway. “I came to tell you so, and to see how your preparations were progressing for his reception, but your ladies tell me you have locked yourself in here all the day.”

She had to answer him. She could not simply stand here and stare. She must speak.

One art had she learned in all its perfection from her parents. Medeoan could lie, effortlessly and without any change of demeanor. Now she found she could work that art against Kacha, to whom she had sworn she would never lie, and from whom she had believed she would never have to hide.

“I’m sorry, Kacha,” she said, taking both his hands, the one that belonged to him and the one that did not, lifting her face to kiss him softly, and dying inside to find that the touch of his kiss had not changed at all. “I had a working which could not be attended to by the court sorcerers.” Which was true enough. “I wanted to see to things myself.”

“And what working is this?” asked Kacha, his eyebrows rising.

She shook her head, smiling a little shyly.
Answer him, answer him
, she ordered herself desperately. Any doubt, any mystery and he would … he would …

She could not bring herself to think of the consequences directly, but the fear brought the lie she needed to her lips. “I have been thinking about what you were saying to me the other day.” Medeoan smoothed her skirts down. “That we must be sure of the loyalty of the lords master. I may have found a means to help us in those determinations.”