It was the same room as always, at the end of the same hallway, with the same gorgeous woman on the far side of the table from Shirrin. This time she had brought food and drink. Not much, of course; just a few bits of fruit and a ewer full of tangy posca, enough to have something to delight the tongue during a long night of discussion, but little more than that. Athan and Shirrin had both dined on far more substantial fare earlier that afternoon, so it mattered little; really, Shirrin was more than anything else impressed by the consideration.
“It doesn’t feel right for two dies to have a long, meandering talk about their personal lives without some dainty little foodstuffs around,” Athan expined. “Though I don’t know why you insist on doing this so te in the evening.”
The better to make it seem that this was Eteocles’s secret affair with the Empress, of course. Shirrin arched an eyebrow theatrically and said, “I am a witch. The daytime disagrees with me.”
Athan ughed, an airy little chuckle that sent shivers down Shirrin’s spine. “What is a witch, anyway? They always seem to show up in the pys about the days of myth, and as vilins in the stories we tell to little children, but I’ve never quite understood what a witch is.”
Shirrin pressed her lips together. Once again the quandary: to satisfy her baser urges by speaking the truth to Athan, or to stick to the pn and keep her secrets. “I wouldn’t be a very good witch if I told you, now would I?”
“Of course, how foolish of me. Witches and their secrets.” Athan rolled her eyes, taking a bit of nectarine and, in a dispy of excellent showmanship, chewed it petuntly.
“Do not chew your nectarine at me, my Empress,” Shirrin said sardonically.
Athan continued to do just that, until eventually the fruit had been rendered down far enough to swallow. “You must forgive me for being irritated at your secrecy. It all seems so impractical, no? Keeping up this facade.”
“Do you not do the same?” Shirrin replied with a wry grin. Almost any criticism could be taken in good faith, if the person being criticized was a friend and the one doing the criticizing had the right expression on their face. “Imagine if you allowed the facade of Empress to drop, in front of all your subjects and all the nobles of the realm? Then where would you be?”
Athan wrinkled her nose. “You make a fair point, I suppose. But I have people who rely upon me. Who is it who relies upon you keeping up your witchly veil of secrecy?”
Shirrin had decided on her answer to that question eons ago. It was for the dead, and for the gods. The people of Chrysopolis would suffer for the sake of those yet unborn and those whose spilt blood had long since soaked into the soil. It was for those few, like Helen, like Frasalu and her company, who saw the Empire for what it was. It was for the children, and for the babies, and for the poor vilgers who toiled out in Near Trabakond, where the soreness of the yoke was still fresh.
“There are certain factors which must be maintained,” Shirrin said measuredly, gesturing at the air around her. “Certain things which only the illuminated are even aware of, whose fell moods must be answered to. That is as far as I can go.”
This was, in a sense, also the truth. Indeed, by even invoking the idea of that power which had granted her her magic, Shirrin could feel his eye fall very briefly upon her, bringing with it a sudden flush of heat. After a moment, he realized that he was only being invoked rhetorically, and moved on to other matters.
“The illuminated?” Athan asked guilelessly.
“Much as a priest must be anointed, or a craftsman entered into his apprenticeship, so too must a witch leave behind normality if she is to take up her mantle. Like a candle flickering to life in a dark room.”
“You used the feminine form,” Athan said, leaning forward over the table. “Are all witches women?”
“My Empress, I thought this was supposed to be idle conversation, two women sharing hearts. Since when did this become an interrogation?”
Athan raised an eyebrow. “When you announced that ‘I’m a witch, daylight disagrees with me’, that is when the conversation became about witchcraft. It isn’t my fault that I become curious when you say something occult.”
Shirrin’s attention was drawn to a part of Athan’s statement which was most likely not what she had intended.
“Do I really sound like that?”
“No!” the Empress said hurriedly, reaching out across the table to reassure her. “Your accent is fwless, I assure you. I’m simply making fun; you can be so absurd sometimes.”
Shirrin realized a second after it happened that Athan’s fingertips were touching the back of her hand. She allowed herself a moment to relish that touch, then sought to escape it by means of taking up a fresh grape and popping it into her mouth, biting it exactly in half with her mors before swallowing each piece.
“I’ll answer one st question, but no more,” Shirrin said. “No, not all witches are women. But most are. Witchcraft is… a solitary sort of art, very singur, and it is one that requires very particur attitudes towards the world in order to have even a chance at it. This is not a path that is lit by gold and the praise of one’s peers, but a path of censure, a path of outcasts and assassins, of those to whom the doors of normality and virtue are forever closed. Who better to pursue such a path than a woman?”
“It makes the idea of a Witch-Queen sound somewhat paradoxical,” Athan said immediately. A moment’s pause ter, she let out a groan, slouched in her seat, and said, “I promised no more questions, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”
Shirrin frowned. “You know, I had never thought of it that way before.”
She hadn’t really ever treated her queendom as anything other than a means to an end. It was a simple logic: if she was to seize her revenge against Peleus, she would need to have information, and lots of it, more than could be acquired through simple scrying or bribery. She would need power. And then she would need to take hold of Peleus’s attention so firmly that he would have no choice but to allow her into his innermost circles, which would also, itself, require a great deal of power. And how better to get power than to take the society that, victims of Macarian empire-building though they were, had nonetheless ensved her, and bend that society to her will?
Perhaps that was something to regret. A brief fantasy fshed before Shirrin’s eyes, of a route not taken, where she had found her revenge by becoming a greater ruler than Peleus had ever been, through magic turning the disunited tribes of Far Trabakond into the greatest army that the world had ever known, until the children of a hundred generations hence would know Macaria as nothing but a footnote.
But then, she would hardly be any better than Peleus was, would she have been? One empire repced with another, more sves and peasants thrown into the mortar and pestle of history. Mastery was the easy route, the route of cowards and the selfish. To destroy from without was the only way, to tear something down without repcing it with more of the same. Shirrin would not allow herself to perpetuate the cycle, no matter how much doing so might satisfy the cruel whims of her patrons.
Shirrin and Athan had been flinging words back and forth while Shirrin pondered, though the words had barely registered. She wanted to change the topic.
“Did you hear about what happened at the holiday… what was it called, Long Torch?”
“Lone Torch,” Athan said reflexively. Her tone instantly changed, her expression darkening. “And of course I heard about what happened. Peleus told me directly.”
“Is it true that he had the man executed?” Shirrin said. “I hear all sorts of rumors.”
“I…” Athan tapped her nail against the table, making firm eye contact with the st of the figs. “…convinced him that killing the poor fool would only worsen his reputation. One ugh? He only needed a sp on the wrist. I understand he was whipped and sent home.”
“For ughing when the Emperor of all Macaria stumbled over his words during a speech,” Shirrin said with a sigh. “I suppose not whipping him would also damage Peleus’s reputation.”
“What would you have had me do?” Athan said, making Shirrin jump at the sudden raising of her voice. “He is the Emperor! By blood right he rules and I, I follow. It is the Golden Lord’s power and grace from which the Emperor’s authority flows, and for a man to ugh at him in the Golden Lord’s own temple, on a holiday? That’s…”
Athan suddenly shrank. Her hands fell into her p, her brow furrowed. “It’s only to be expected, isn’t it?”
“Have I offended you, my Empress? Should I leave?”
“No! You may stay.” Athan looked up at Shirrin for but a moment, her eyes starting to water. “Nobody wishes to see an Empress cry. I must ever be stolid and cunning and careful, or I’ll be branded as a mere outgrowth of Peleus’s base desires. But you, you’re a sve. You don’t care… do you?”
“Of course not,” said Shirrin. “I’ll give you a minute.”
She rose from the table, retiring for a moment to sit on the edge of the single bed. Athan remained at the table, staring into her p with an occasional sniffle. Guilt and envy coursed through Shirrin, the awful sting of regret she felt for upsetting Athan mixing with the knowledge that the Empress had no doubt in amidst these very sheets with the object of all Shirrin’s rage. Athan seemed to genuinely feel free to be vulnerable around Shirrin when they were alone together in this pce, but Shirrin was only here to fool Athan’s husband.
Without even realizing it, Shirrin allowed quite some time to pass. Then, the Empress spoke. “Do you hold to faith, Shirrin?”
“What?”
“I said, do you hold to faith?”
“Of course I do. A witch must.”
Athan turned around to meet Shirrin’s gaze. “Here in Chrysopolis, we worship the Golden Lord. Do you know of the Golden Lord up in Trabakond? I remember reading a report once that mentioned you all worship the same gods as we do.”
“In a sense, yes,” said Shirrin. “The Old Gods are many, and they are omnipresent. They command every aspect of our lives. Just the same as all men must eat bread, so too do all men in every country of the world serve the same gods.”
Shirrin held herself back from completing the thought. All men in every country of the world serve the same gods… except for the Macarians. The Macarians had, in their hubris, abandoned the Old Gods as anything other than stories to entertain, afterthoughts compared to their unceasing praise and worship of the one they called the Golden Lord. They had sacrificed everything in the name of he who they believed brought them their empire. But Athan did not need to know of such things, just as she did not need to know about Shirrin’s true intentions.
“What do you call the Golden Lord where you come from, then?”
Shirrin stood up, fshing Athan a ghoulish grin. “Hygmir, the Reaver. He is our god of war, patron of berserkers, as well as being he who brings thunder and lightning and storm.”
Athan grimaced. “Rather grim, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes. But it only makes sense that he would be a bringer of empire, don’t you think? It certainly wasn’t a bountiful harvest or the bonds of love that caused Macaria to swell to its current proportions.”
“Of course,” Athan said. “I’m assuming from the way you speak about him that the Golden Lord has little space in your prayers.”
“No. I am hardly a warrior, though like any good leader I give a sacrifice before battle.”
Only once in her life had Shirrin ever led an army to war, and she had made no sacrifice then. She had had no intention of victory. Besides, the Golden Lord had thrown his weight behind Macaria; what point was there in attempting to sway a god from his chosen course?
“I pray to the Golden Lord regurly,” Athan said. “Every evening I pray for… for all sorts of things. I give offerings every seventh day, I sacrifice and sacrifice, and yet…”
Shirrin stood over Athan’s shoulder, wondering whether it would be appropriate to give her a supporting hand. “Is there something you want from him that he has not been willing to give?”
“Many things. Relief. I want my husband to be a better man, I want my daughter to survive, I want to feel more like a complete woman. I pray and pray, I give sacrifices that none without the wealth of an Empress could possibly give, and yet I get no response. Have I done something to anger him?”
“You look up at me with doe-like eyes as though I am a priest,” said Shirrin. “I am no priest. I cannot tell you if you are performing the rituals correctly. I hardly even know them.”
Athan’s eyes fell back down into her p. “Of course. I am sorry. I… I hear so much about your vast knowledge, how you see all… I suppose I had forgotten who you actually were.”
“It often happens.” Shirrin slowly pivoted around the chair where Athan sat, then dropped down into a crouch until she could look up at Athan from below. “Would you like my advice regardless?”
“If you have anything you think might help me, yes, I would like to hear it,” said Athan.
“You are praying to the wrong god,” Shirrin said. Her heart raced, ephemeral energy dancing at her lips. “The Golden Lord brings plenty, wealth and beneficence and food to those who do not have enough. But he does not soothe. I would recommend sacrificing to Xalia, the hearth-goddess, for concord in the home, and Morthan the Inevitable if you wish to save your daughter’s life from the pgue which has taken her.”
Athan’s brow wrinkled, her lips pressed together. “You really believe so?”
“Yes,” Shirrin said with a nod. “The Golden Lord may have brought you this empire, but the Old Gods have overseen sick children and stressed fathers since the dawn of man.”
“Thank you, Shirrin.” But her tone was just the same as it had been, still quivering with unexpressed doubts.
“Does something trouble you, my Empress?”
She nodded. “My mother once said that she prayed when she was upset, when things were uncertain, and it made her feel more secure about the world. That the gods decided all of our fates, and perhaps even a princess had someone greater than them who might notice her woes. Prayer has never felt reassuring to me, and I wonder if that is my fault or the gods.”
Shirrin smiled softly at the grim irony. “I admit, that is not a problem I have ever had to rete to. I know the gods take interest in me—I could not be a witch otherwise—and yet at the same time I have never found that retionship particurly reassuring. Motivating, perhaps, but never reassuring.”
Athan opened her mouth as though to ask another question, but shut it just as quickly. “What a fascinating retionship with the divine…”
Without any warning, Athan began to cry again. A single tear slid down her face, then another, then another. The Empress wiped them away, but they wouldn’t stop. “Oh, now look what I’ve done. I’ve fallen apart.”
“I am deeply sorry, my Empress,” Shirrin said, rising from up off the floor. “What do you need of me?”
“Something,” Athan said. “Anything. Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sorry, I can’t… Everything’s going to pieces…”
Shirrin reached out with her hands, the base human empathy overriding all of her tactical concerns. But those hands only reached so far as to lightly grace Athan’s shoulders before she regained her senses.
“Would it help you if we cut this short? You could sleep, or cry, or do whatever you please in private.”
Athan slouched in upon herself, shuddering as the tears flowed ever more freely. Her chin twitched, which Shirrin chose to interpret as a nod, so the Witch-Queen relinquished her feeble grasp and made for the exit of the room. The Empress made no sign that she did not wish to be alone; and so Shirrin stepped outside of the door and let it fall shut behind her, silencing the sound of Athan’s tears.
As soon as the door closed, Shirrin dwindled, her body and accoutrements colpsing in on themselves until where she had stood a moment before remained only a mouse. Then the mouse took off down the hall with all the urgency of its frantic species. But instead of rat-catchers and pet cats, this particur mouse was avoiding spies.
The Emperor, in his growing paranoia, had set himself upon attempting to catch Eteocles in the act of seducing, or attempting to seduce, Athan. As incredible as it would have been at first to arrange matters such that Eteocles did get caught in the act, Shirrin also knew that there was such a thing as moving too hastily; any momentary success that could be gained by having Eteocles getting caught in the act would rapidly be undone. Only when Peleus’s distress and growing madness had reached its apex could the movement be brought to its conclusion.
And so, while Peleus’s spies patrolled the halls in the guise of sves and sneak-thieves, guards and sleepwalkers, a little brown mouse wove swiftly through their feet, eliciting nothing more than a quick jump out of the way or a gasp of disgust. The pace at night was shockingly quiet as compared to its daytime bustle, the Emperor’s fell mood having infected his servants.
But there was one other sound to be heard. It was not frequent, thankfully, but when the sound was made it pierced the air like a dagger through tender skin, and was simirly ruinous towards the mood. It was a sound that nearly all men had heard before, and yet one whose ill tidings never ceased to bring forth misery and despair no matter how often it was repeated. It was the shrill, racking cough of a child on the very verge of death.
The mouse stopped in its tracks. Athan’s sobs could not be heard, muffled as they were both by the Empress’s desperate attempts at maintaining her dignity and by the walls of the chamber. Not even the mouse’s ears could pick them out. And yet, those tears were as keen, as present to the mouse as was the stone below its paws and the scent of human skin on the air. The mouse took one step forward, then another. Then, all at once, it turned about, swerving aside from its course of escape to follow the guidelines of its tiny, pragmatic heart.
Aissa’s sickroom was cold, dark, and still. All the windows were open to keep the air as fresh as possible, and the only light came from slow-burning candles impregnated with fragrant oils, whose cloying smell kept the air in the chamber free of miasma. Maids and doctors surrounded her, never more than three or four at a time but constantly cycling in and out to ensure that the girl was always cared for. All of them were sound asleep, insensate to the world as a tiny brown mouse crammed itself under the crack in the door and approached to the girl’s bedside.
Then Shirrin was there. She stood, gazing down with tears in her eyes and nails digging into her palms at the little girl with sweat-drenched skin and brittle hair. What she was doing was foolish, Shirrin knew, but her body had seized control of the reins. After a moment spent confronting herself, Shirrin began to move, searching every corner of the room as quickly and as quietly as she could until, at st, she found it.
The golden bracelet with amber beads sat in a small jewelry box on a shelf in the corner. Aissa was not even wearing it, indeed she had not worn it in a very long time, and yet the curse had continued to take its toll from the moment she had first pced the damnable thing upon her wrist. Shirrin took the bracelet in her fist, looking around the room to make sure nobody had stirred from their sleep. She could burn the bracelet, melt it into sg, toss it into the sea and let it be drowned, submerge it in aqua regia and chant spells over it until the thing’s very existence had been unmade.
And then what would she do? Let Aissa live? Let Athan live? Stab Peleus and Eteocles in their sleep and let the Senate elect a new Emperor, her revenge seized? To give up before her work was done would be a betrayal, to herself but also more fatally to her patron. To spare Aissa now would merely be a deferral of her inevitable execution, a selfish act whose only real purpose was to temporarily spare Shirrin’s feelings.
And Shirrin could make peace with that. Perhaps this was all just a lengthy means by which to assuage her own shattered heart. All the time spent thinking about the Trabakondai warriors she had betrayed had proven to Shirrin that her pn was far from the most merciful. The question, the problem of Shirrin being so easily swayed by Athan’s moods, would be addressed at a ter time. To hold both images in mind, of the righteousness of her quest and the fundamentally emotional nature of it, was impossible; but for Athan’s approval, Shirrin would do it with gusto.
She cmbered up over the sill of the open window, then pced the bracelet between her lips in preparation for the spell that would allow for her escape. The woods, she thought. She would destroy the bracelet in the woods, with acid.
SaffronDragon
