The Sisters of the Crescent Empress Read online

  “Suppose so,” he mutters when we come to the steep steps leading down to the cellar. Just as no soul lights the bird’s eyes, none lit our way down. “But, mark my words, we shall have a feast to remember!”

  With all the grandiose waving of his arms, I manage to keep us both upright only barely. Out of sheer annoyance, a part of me is tempted to let him fall, or even push him down the stairs. But my sisters and I, we might yet need him. Even though Celestia hasn’t asked me to try and win over his trust, during the lonely nights, I have often asked myself: if it were to benefit us, would I share my bed with him?

  I don’t trust myself enough to provide an honest answer.

  We reach the door of the cellar. It’s plain and undecorated compared to the other doors of this house. And yet, a terrible sense of foreboding lands heavy on my shoulders. My gaze returns to the stain on his coat’s sleeve. Is it blood? And if it is, is it from the dead bird or from someone else that the previous owner of the coat let out of their days?

  “Mashed potatoes!” Captain Janlav pulls the door open triumphantly.

  His voice doesn’t echo in the corridor beyond. The walls are too porous to reflect back sound. But I sense . . . I don’t know, a presence of sorts, something vicious waiting for us. No, it’s just my imagination, a childish fear of the dark. If someone had been hiding in the house, the guards or Millie would have found them weeks ago already.

  “We shall have mashed potatoes and roasted onions!”

  This boisterous talk of his! I consider telling him to be silent, but I can’t go around giving orders, for that might sow in his mind the idea that I’m not as meek and demure as he thinks I am. As my sisters and I must be in his eyes for the time being. Though I don’t know what Celestia’s plan is, I know it depends on this.

  “I’ll gut this bird myself and take the carcass apart!”

  On the even, black floor he leans on me less. The smell of dark spring, of wet soil untouched by sun, and persistent mold and root vegetables floods my nostrils as we wander deeper down the corridor that is so very narrow, almost like a tunnel. He stumbles closer to me so that we can walk its length—a distance feeling longer than it possibly can be—side by side.

  “And a sauce! What would a roast be without a decent sauce?”

  I can’t stand thinking of him as a fool, though he would very much deserve to be called such now. For to be so close to him, to reclaim what I once cherished . . . I still find this man too much to my liking regardless of whom he serves now.

  “When did it get so dark, eh?” Captain Janlav laughs, a throaty sound accompanied by a friendly jab. “Can’t see a thing!”

  “Hold on to the wall, will you?” I’m more annoyed at him than anything else, and at myself for thinking of him and all that we once had. I really should have brought a lamp with me. But I didn’t have time to think, and going back isn’t an option. My sisters have no doubt retired for the night already. I don’t want to face the guards alone. And given his drunken state, Captain Janlav might well end up piercing himself in the hooks if left unattended for even a minute. Some boys never grow up. Some never get the chance.

  “The wall is gone,” Captain Janlav announces, and he sounds both proud and smug, as if he were a particularly keen student of a particularly harsh master.

  I can still feel the cold honeycomb of bricks against my trailing fingertips. But I sense the room widening off to our left, the tune of our soft footfalls changing. We turn, and there, right before us, faintly glows a narrow, rectangular window. A slanting ray of Moon’s light paints a white beam on the floor, and in this light, I see that the walls here in this low-ceilinged room are made of bare, frosted granite.

  “Ah, the hooks!” Captain Janlav sways toward the window, and I’m left behind.

  Though I’m comforted by my father’s presence, something in this space, in this sad room under the house, haunts me. It’s not the wooden crates of beetroots and potatoes, onions and carrots, and other simple things that people who don’t live in palaces rely on for sustenance during the long winter months. It’s not the pile of empty bottles waiting to be reused come next harvest. It’s something else.

  Father Moon, will you show me what it is?

  I step into the beam of the Moon’s light. At this spot, on this stripe halving the room, I’m safe.

  “Why, where is it?” Captain Janlav waves the pheasant in the air, near the wall where the Moon’s light can’t reach him. Feathers tall and small come off from the carcass. He will ruin the bird if I don’t stop his fumbling. I don’t like the thought of even one life lost in vain, not even an animal one.

  I stride to him, into the void under the Moon’s light. The darkness feels worse than it should. I want to return fast to where my father can see me. I crane at the ceiling while Captain Janlav mutters and meanders about. There, is that dull glint that of a hook? I reach up, rise on my toes. And it’s then that something—of course it’s but Captain Janlav—bumps into me, and my balance betrays me. I seek support from the wall to avoid taking him down with me.

  The rough stones are cold, the spaces between them colder. But it isn’t that which chills me. My fingers press against the round holes in cement, too many, too regular, to be anything else but . . .

  “Aha!” Captain Janlav spots the hooks at last.

  Breath flees my lungs. It can’t be. I feel for the shape of the holes, the smooth edges carved by metal, hoping to find any other explanation. But it’s always dark in this cellar and my father can’t see those who stand under the window.

  “Tangle-tang-tang-tangle there, birdy-bird-bird.”

  Holes carved by metal . . . I pull my hand away, cradle it against my chest. I know why this house was built here, in the middle of nowhere. I know the people who used to live here, the crimes they committed against the empire. Of course I have wondered before what became of them, had an inkling of the truth. But now the truth is here, before my eyes. The bullets lodged into the cement between the stones. The demise of my mother’s sisters.

  “See?” Captain Janlav grabs my shoulders and yanks me into the Moon’s light. Dazed, I don’t resist. Wouldn’t, even if I could.

  The pheasant’s carcass, hanging from the string tied between its legs, swings on the hook, before the wall against which my mother’s sisters were once ushered. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was Captain Ansalov who oversaw the gagargi’s order carried out.

  “Did you know about this?” I grip Captain Janlav’s right wrist with both hands. His skin is sticky, but warm. Life pulses strong in his veins. “Did you know he had them shot?”

  Moon’s light frames his silhouette as he stares at me, puzzled. He hasn’t been the man I fell in love with in months. He has been but a soldier, fueled by his duty.

  But now, in this room, under my father’s gaze, his expression softens. The glaze over his eyes breaks, and they once more glow brown as young pines touched by the spring sun. “I didn’t know of the order. Not before Captain Ansalov showed the letter to me.”

  I hate them both, but one more than the other, and even more so I detest the man who made them that way. Both captains are Gagargi Prataslav’s pawns. He ordered my mother shot dead. He ordered her sisters executed so that no one could deny Celestia’s right to rule. And this is a very frightening thought. Though neither me nor my younger sisters have ever even dreamed of becoming the Crescent Empress, in the light of this new knowledge, does this not mean that in the gagargi’s eyes we are threats, to be disposed of when he comes to claim Celestia?

  “I . . .” How long would it take for people to forget my younger sisters and me, to start believing that we never existed, that we are just a myth, a story told to entertain children? I don’t want to find out the answer. As soon as the snows melt and we can think to survive the nights without cover, my sisters and I will have to flee, regardless of the risk. I need to make sure Celestia understands this.

  He cups my face like he did once upon a time, callused palms again
st my cheeks. His gaze, it is kinder, caring, familiar. “Elise, what is it?”

  And it’s as if he had never fallen under the gagargi’s spell.

  “Do you remember?” My voice trembles, and it’s not so by my choice. Would he help us if I so pleaded? Would he let us go without trying to stop us? Would he delay in reporting to Captain Ansalov, to give my sisters and me a head start so that we would be too long gone for the hounds to detect our scent? How can I know for certain without alerting him—he still thinks he’s keeping us safe, not captive.

  “I . . .” He stares at me, and the Moon’s light is so bright. There’s understanding and pain in his eyes. A personal struggle behind them.

  That night when the train halted in the snow, I didn’t want my father to intervene. But now I lay the safety of my sisters and I in his celestial hands. For surely it can’t be considered wrong to help the man I once loved to break the spell that makes him forget where his loyalties should lie.

  He jolts. His hands fling to cradle his head. He moans as if he had been punched and sways away from me, away from the Moon’s light, to lean against the vegetable crates. I rush after him. He’s hurt by my wish, by my father’s interference.

  “Janlav?” And now it’s me brushing his shoulder, comforting him.

  “The cause is just. The cause is right,” he repeats under his breath, his chest heaving as if he had fled for miles, until his legs could carry him no more, but he still needed to keep on running. “The cause is just. The cause is right.”

  “Hush, my dear, hush.” I wrap an arm around him, and there I am, so close to him, as if our ways had never parted. He remembers, even if it’s only for a mere moment, and that feels like a victory to me.

  “I’m only protecting you.” His knees give way, and he sits heavily down on the rough edge of the crate. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I take a seat next to him. I lean my head against his shoulder, so wide and muscular and familiar. I don’t care if he smells of cheap brandy. I don’t care if his coat is shedding fur. “I know.”

  “I was in the war.” He sounds confused, torn between what he thinks has come to pass and what actually happened. “I learnt life’s lessons the hard way. The life of one person doesn’t matter before the greater good.”

  I remember the night at the train depot, the gathering of the insurgents, the hopes and fears of the people who had had enough. The railway men and factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of the soldiers that marched into the war and never came back, that once believed in making a difference in the ranks of my mother, only to be bitterly betrayed. I remember and shall never forget them.

  “This new world . . . I don’t know if it will be better than the one we so easily discarded. But trying to turn back now, after so many lives lost, would be just needless waste. For my people, things are better. Things will get better. They have to get better. We’re almost done with the fighting. Only a rare few dare to stand against the gagargi’s might anymore. It will soon be over. It will soon be over.”

  These tidings . . . they are the first news I hear from the world outside this house. They aren’t good from my perspective. It seems like the report Celestia’s seed gave her before his demise was indeed correct, not just the gagargi cruelly toying with us. “I know.”

  The revolution isn’t only about my family but about our people and what benefits them the most.

  We sit there on the crate, side by side, both staring into the distance, seeing nothing at all, but too much still. It’s clear without either one of us saying it. If Celestia were to try and depose the gagargi, the wounds that have yet to heal would tear open again. The blood spilled would be that of the common people. Thinking in the grander scale of things, my life, that of my sisters, doesn’t matter a thing. For what is a drop compared to a tidal wave of blood?

  “Do you hate me now?” he asks.

  “Hate you?” I press my head more firmly against his chest. No matter how I were to try and persuade the man who once loved me, he won’t go against the cause. This stand comes from his heart, not from Gagargi Prataslav’s spell. “No, how could I when you only have the best interest of our people in your mind.”

  And that is the truth. I don’t hate him. Not yet, in any case.

  But one day I might.

  Chapter 5: Celestia

  I watch my sisters play Catch the Goose in the garden through the window of the room I share with Sibilia. Even though the sun has reclaimed its brightness, the lake is still covered with translucent gray ice that the slowly warming days haven’t yet managed to melt. Here, behind the Moon’s back, winter lasts long, spring is feeble, and summer comes only when all hope is lost. This is the time of the year when my people starve, when my aviating kin freeze from their feet to shallow waters. And yet, as Elise, Merile, and Alina run down the slippery paths, they look happier than they have been in weeks, if not for months.

  It is curious how soon people get accustomed to new circumstances. Even though my sisters and I have been through some hardship, it is nothing compared to that which my people must suffer in the inevitable aftermath of Gagargi Prataslav’s coup. I am certain he has exerted his wrath upon those loyal to my family, regardless of rank and personage, age or gender. I know this is just the beginning. Once the initial resistance has been crushed, he will start enforcing his rules upon my people, state new laws and put them into action. The cost of that will not be light.

  Outside, Elise the goose catches Alina, lifts her up, and spins her around. Though glass and distance stand between us, I know that my little sister squeals with glee. A year ago this time, she wouldn’t have been considered a full human yet. If the law the gagargi has in his mind had been in place then, he would no doubt have demanded that she be fed to the Great Thinking Machine, to fuel the mechanical creation that tirelessly crunches through numbers and instructions to distribute every resource available equally to all corners of the empire.

  It is insanity, the equal redistribution of resources a logistical impossibility. The gagargi’s promises may sound good in the ears of those who feel oppressed by the way the world works. But taking something one’s family has possessed and cherished for centuries, dividing lands and property earned by hard work, sending one’s fathers and mothers and sons and daughters to the other side of the empire because the machine so decides, will bring only mayhem in its wake, not the time of plenty.

  I can’t let this happen to my people.

  Neither this idea of equal redistribution of resources nor the law he plans on setting in place to fuel his foul machine comes from my father, regardless of what the gagargi might insist. I know by heart every single line of the holy scriptures. Our souls anchor to our bodies at the age of six, when we announce our names for the first time. But that doesn’t mean that it would be by any means right to extract souls from children younger than that. For I remember knowing my name already before my sixth name day. Elise knew hers before as well. She whispered it to me, boldly, accompanied with a smile. The thought of the gagargi going through with his plan, of enforcing the law to tax every other child, chills me more than what he did to me.

  I lost a part of my soul. I may not ever be able to bear children. I will never fly again.

  The hollow of my stomach aches as I lean against the windowsill, my palms flat against the cool, white stone. Even after three months, sometimes I still wake up to blood dripping through my nightgown, occurrences Sibilia has noticed, but hasn’t dared to ask about—I must make sure she doesn’t mention them to anyone, not even Elise. But even more frighteningly, I find myself thinking that I should have let the gagargi’s seed grow into a baby. Residues of the spell he imposed on me still linger behind. Perhaps it is because I couldn’t fully reclaim my soul, because in my body dwells now the soul of a swan he killed on the night of the coup.

  Be it as it may, considering everything that unfolded after that night, what happened to my soul and my body doesn’t matter. An empress
must place her empire above her own needs, and at this point, my people are the ones who have suffered the most, and will continue to do so. I don’t need Elise to tell me that too much blood has been shed already, that if the fields aren’t plowed in time, if the mines don’t remain open and the factories productive, our people will soon perish of starvation, exposure, and poverty. I have no right to feel sad for the demise of my mother or my seed, for blood spilled on the palace floor or trampled on dirty snow. That is a luxury that I am not entitled to. Not anymore.

  A magpie, a bird blessed by my father, lands on the other side of the glass, and I think it might be the same one that has been watching our dance practices lately. Its charcoal gray beak parts, but the pane between us prevents me from hearing the croaks. I tap the glass with my forefinger, but the bird is bold. It cants its black head toward the garden where my sisters play under the half-watchful eyes of Captain Janlav and Boy. The wind tugs at the hair of my younger sisters, and yet they beam with smiles. Merile’s lean dogs bounce from one girl to another, the silver-black dog slightly faster than the copper brown one. They could run for miles and miles without tiring. But my sisters and I, we can’t, not even after months of building up our stamina with the daily dance practices.

  “My sisters trust in me,” I say aloud, for words spoken have always borne more weight than those said idly in one’s mind.

  There is no one around to hear me but the magpie. The door of the room I share with Sibilia is closed. Now that it is finally warm enough to spend time outside, the guards take full advantage of this. I can see Beard and Belly and Tabard and Boots smoking cigarettes on what will be untended lawn come summer. “I will not fail them again.”