The Usurper's Crown (66 page)

They went no lower, however. The officer conducted them toward the bow. They passed doors on both port and starboard. The officer opened one of the starboard doors, bowing to the empress. Shien led her through, and closed them in. Then, the officer opened a port door. Avanasy bowed his own thanks, and he and Ingrid filed into the cabin.

It was small, which Ingrid had expected, but it was also snug and dry. Two cozy bunks had been built into the wall. A gracefully carved table and high-backed bench stood under an unlit tin lantern. What illumination there was came from two portholes with glass so thick they turned the light watery.

Ingrid managed to take two steps toward the bench before the strength that had supported her this far failed and she collapsed. Avanasy caught her and they sank to the deck together. They knelt there for a time, doing nothing but holding onto each other, each reminding themself that the other was solid and real.

Eventually, by silent, mutual consent, they pulled themselves to their feet again. A carved chest had been lashed into one corner. Avanasy investigated the contents and pulled out Ingrid’s ordinary clothes, the thick skirt, apron, petticoats and stockings she had missed so recently. Avanasy’s black coat, trousers and boots were also inside.

Groaning with relief, Ingrid shucked her ruined silk and dressed in her clean, familiar clothing. Avanasy also reclaimed his traveling clothes, and when he turned to face her, he looked more comfortable than she had seen him in days. But at the same time, his face was troubled.

“Ingrid.” He took her hand and sat them both down on the carved bench. “Lien will be sailing us through the Land of Death and Spirit. This …” he touched the spell braid on her wrist, “will only provide you with some protection. You must not be asleep when we cross the veil.”

She nodded. “You’ll warn me when that’s to happen?”

“I will, but I must leave you for a time. I …”

He stood there for a moment, his hand against the smooth wood, as if looking for words in the pattern of the grain.

When he did not find them, Ingrid said, “If you want to go see the empress, you should.”

That turned him around. “Ingrid …” He stopped and started again. “I don’t wish you to have cause to doubt my love for you.”

“I don’t,” she said, and she meant it, but she did not speak further. She did not say how she still felt the sadness she had known the moment she first saw Avanasy and his young empress together. For in that moment she had seen not how much Avanasy loved empress Medeoan, but how much love shone from the young woman for him.

Did Avanasy still love Medeoan as other than pupil and monarch? Looking at him now, she saw that he did, but she could not bring herself to fear that love. She was too numb to do anything but accept that it was so. Later, she knew, she would have to weep, or rage, or do some other thing that she might regret in time, but now, she could do nothing but look at the man who was her husband and see the truth.

“Go,” she told him. “Say what you must.”

Avanasy crossed the distance between them in three swift strides. He kissed her long and lingeringly on the mouth, and left her there. That kiss, that love, was as true as the other, and she knew that as well, but that knowledge did nothing to lift the numbness that had settled over her heart.

Sad, tired and still bewildered by all that had happened, Ingrid found she had no trouble at all creeping beneath the covers on the lower bunk and falling gratefully into oblivion.

Avanasy stood outside the door that led to Medeoan’s cabin, trying to calm himself. He could scarcely number the emotions swirling through him. He felt like a nervous school-child. He felt like a courtier who knows he is out of favor. He felt like a parent who wanted desperately to comfort his child, but knew he had no comfort to offer. He told himself he was too tired for this, and surely Medeoan was as well. He wanted to run and take shelter in Ingrid’s arms until they reached the shores of Isavalta. He wanted to know that Medeoan had already gone to sleep so that he would not have to do this thing.

He raised his hand and knocked softly.

Shien opened the door a moment later. Behind her he saw the soft glow of morning through thick glass.

“Has her imperial majesty retired?” he asked.

“Not yet,” replied Shien. “I will see if she will grant you admittance.”

She closed the door, leaving Avanasy alone with his inner turmoil for a seemingly endless moment. Above, the capstan ground as it turned to the rhythm of stamping feet. The ship around him strained as shouts rose from a variety of throats.

Shien returned to the doorway and beckoned him inside.

Medeoan sat on the lower of two bunks, wrapped in a woolen blanket. Underneath, he glimpsed a robe of bright blue cotton, a shade very close to the imperial blue she should have been wearing. Avanasy had no doubt Lien had specifically arranged for that. Her bright, cropped hair had been loosened and brushed. She looked far too thin, and too pale.

Shien ducked out the door and closed it again behind her. Medeoan did not look up at her departure. She just stared at the deck and rubbed her thin, wounded hands together.

What have you been through, Medeoan?
Avanasy wanted to blurt out. He did not. He simply knelt, as was proper before his empress. The deck rocked under him and Avanasy swayed gracelessly as the ship slowly slipped forward.

The motion lifted Medeoan’s head. She glanced toward the ceiling and the sounds of men’s orders and creaking ropes. Then, she finally seemed to see him there, kneeling in reverence before her.

“There is no need for such between us, Avanasy,” she said, running a hand through her badly shorn locks. “I would have thought that much you would remember.”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” he said, getting to his feet again. “Including the fact that you are now empress of Eternal Isavalta.”

“Such an empress as the world has never seen,” she snorted. “Crop-headed, imprisoned, alone …”

“Never alone,” he said, moving to her side.

“Oh, but I was.” She gazed up at him, and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. “You will never know … I’m sorry, Avanasy. I should have known you would not betray me. This is my fault.”

Hearing the dejection in her words, Avanasy knelt again, but this time it was so he could look directly into Medeoan’s eyes. They were under way. The ship rocked with its own easy motion as they moved out into the bay. They were making good their escape. His heart should have been light, but guilt grown old weighed it down.

“No. The fault is mine. I should have gone to your father with what I suspected. I should have …”

She smiled and straightened up a little, shaking her head to stop his words. “There are so many things we both should have done.” She ran both hands through her shorn hair again.

“I should have found a lady in the Heart of the World who knows how to cut hair!”

They laughed a little at that, but too soon Medeoan grew serious again. “He did not take the crown,” she said, staring out of the tiny porthole. “I gave it to him.”

“No, Medeoan.”

“Yes, Avanasy.” Her face hardened. “All I could think to do was run, and I did. I left Isavalta in his hands. I
gave
it to him.” She spat the words. “Because I was such a child, I couldn’t understand, I couldn’t accept who I truly was. I stood at the foot of my father’s throne and I swore to Vyshemir and Vyshko I would protect Isavalta, that I would be a true daughter, and at the first opportunity, I abandoned them.”

“The gods forgive, Medeoan,” he said, laying a hand on the edge of her bunk, as close as he dared come to touching her. “They know it was not them you ran from. They will welcome your return.”

“Yes.” She was not looking at him. She looked out the portal at the green-brown river and the brightening sky. Avanasy was not sure what she saw there, but it turned her expression to stone. “We will return together, and together we will make Kacha rue what he has done to Isavalta, and to me.”

It was then Avanasy saw the depths of the bitterness that had taken hold in Medeoan. Imprisonment had only fostered it. It had begun with Kacha, whom she had truly loved, and who had committed betrayal on top of betrayal. She had a right to her anger, he could not say otherwise, but it chilled him to the heart to see the hard light it sparked in her eyes.

“Medeoan, thinking too much on blame will not help you do what must be done,” he ventured.

She smiled mirthlessly. “I am sure you are right. But it is past time I opened my eyes …” She shook herself, and did not finish the phrase. “So, tell me, Avanasy, where have you been, and who is this woman you are traveling with?”

All that Avanasy had thought of saying crowded into his mind at that moment — the evasions, the careful words, the partial and more easy truths — but he pushed the babble of it aside. Instead, he settled into the cabin’s one chair and told her, fully and deliberately, of his time on Sand Island, of his life as a fisher, which at least made her smile, of the ghost and of Ingrid and her sister. He told her how, dying, Iakush found him there, and how he determined at once to return, but could not leave Ingrid behind.

“She is worthy of you then, Avanasy?” asked Medeoan softly.

“More than I am of her, I sometimes think.” He could not help but smile as he thought of Ingrid’s warmth and courage again.

Avanasy looked again into Medeoan’s eyes, and saw fresh pain there. His throat tightened. Vyshemir’s knife, what was she thinking? Cut off, alone, frightened, waiting for him to come to her, as she had been, what had happened in her heart? She was still so very young. Had a dream of love come to her, as it had once to him? He had found the truth of love in Ingrid, but Medeoan had only lost that love she thought she had. Had she hoped to turn to him?

While he looked into those eyes, he saw that this was true, and for a moment he was afraid that he might feel his old, reluctantly acknowledged love stirring. But he thought of Ingrid waiting for him, and he knew that other wistful, unformed love was now no more than tender memory.

He could only hope that he would find the words to make Medeoan understand.

But Medeoan only touched his hand and said, “What else?”

Relieved that the moment he had dreaded had passed so easily, Avanasy spun the tale to the end, bringing her news of Peshek’s continued bravery and his quest to raise a loyal army in Isavalta, of the certainty that Kacha meant to war with Hung Tse, and how that war had probably already begun, and how he was certain they had been permitted to escape.

Medeoan’s jaw worked itself back and forth. “He plays this game with my land?” she rasped. “With my people now? In my name?” She spat the final word. “And then, after all, he would blame me for his wars! I won’t leave enough of him left for his mother to mourn!”

The force of her words rocked Avanasy back.

“We need to be home,” she announced. “We need to find Peshek, and then Kacha.”

“Lien speeds us on the way. There is no one better able to sail through the Land of Death and Spirit.”

An unfamiliar, calculating expression crossed her face. “Avanasy, could he raise more than one crew of men?”

“I believe he can.”

“Good. We will speak to him as soon as we are safe in Isavalta. His men could come in useful to whatever force Peshek has managed to raise.” She stood, and as the morning’s watery light flickered across her, Avanasy saw how very much she looked like her father. “You will stand beside me then.”

“As ever, Imperial Majesty.” He bowed his head, and this time she did not reject the gesture.

“Thank you.” Even those words sounded stern. “There is nothing to be done at this moment. You should try to sleep. I’ll need you awake when we arrive.”

Avanasy rose and gave a formal reverence. “You should also sleep.”

“I’ll try, I promise,” she said, sounding a little more like the child he remembered. Avanasy let himself be content with that and showed himself out the door.

In the passage, he lifted his eyes to the gods.
Vyshko, Vyshemir, protect your daughter. She is ready to become what she must be, but I beg you, do not let her forget what she should be
.

“They are gone. We have failed.” Anh Thao, the Minister of the North, spoke the words. She, with the other Nine Elders, knelt on the dais, a gesture of apology and an admission of guilt all at once.

“We have searched the house of the pirate Lien, but they have already been taken away,” added Shaiming, the Minister of Metal. “Nothing has been learned from questioning his niece.”

Pa K’un held himself still and silent, letting the Nine Elders bask for a moment in his disapproval. Then, when he judged that moment had lasted long enough, he signed swiftly to his Voice. Seeing him ready to speak, the Nine Elders stood.

“We must turn our minds to what may be done about this invasion,” the Voice intoned solemnly. “And we must do so now. We have information that tells us the Isavaltans hasten toward Erh Huan. They mean to attack there, and if they do not have plans to attack soon by sea, they are fools.”

“If the story the three from Isavalta told is true …” began the Minister of the North, but Pa K’un cut her off with a gesture.

“If it is true, then the security of Hung Tse will be the Isavaltans’ last consideration. The empress will return with her advisors to try to take her own land back. It may be she will be able to do so swiftly, but can we rely on that? Their winter comes early and hard. If she must stage a pitched campaign, she will not be able to do so until the spring thaw. That will give the usurper time to dig in on our borders, and prepare at home for her assault, if he has not already begun to do so.” The Voice spoke sternly, in good reflection of the emperor’s mood. “And if she has lied to us, and works with her Hastinapuran husband rather than against him, she has escaped with whatever information or advantage her magics were able to procure. No, Ministers, we have no choice. We must act swiftly.”

He did not say it. He was not permitted to say it. But as he gazed at the nine solemn faces before him, he knew they saw the direction in which his words led.