Plain Kate

EIGHTEEN AN EXCHANGE OF GIFTS

Linay’s face had a blank, soft-mouthed look, like a man in a dream. One hand was tied to the stone pillar. The other held a jagged fragment of sword blade. Blood dripped off the blade tip and dribbled over the wood at his feet, and as each drop fell, it caught fire. The little flames made spots of smoldering in the pitch-soaked wood.

“Katerina?” said Linay again. “What happens next?”

Plain Kate was shaking.“You don’t want to burn, Linay.”

“But I do,” he insisted. “I’ve planned it. I’ve worked for it. For years.” His voice was still polite, a little distant, but he was beginning to tremble. There was pitch smeared on the white skirts of his zupan, smoke eddying around his knees. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I can do this,” he said. “I want to do this.”

Kate edged toward him. Drina was crouched on the platform steps, Taggle in her arms.“Mira,” she pleaded—and then the name she was never supposed to say again: “Linay…”

“I wish you weren’t here, though,” Linay said. “Everyone here…”

Kate could feel it, behind the clouds, the shadow and the rusalka drawing together, lowering like a slow storm. The blood, the fire: The spell was beginning.“Everyone here is going to die,” said Kate.

Linay made a noise deep in his throat, and stepped sideways, away from the fire. The tie on his wrist brought him up short. Kate reached to help him and the winged carving cut into her hip. Suddenly she knew exactly what to do.“Why?” she said.

Linay gave the heartbroken, startled laugh she’d tricked from him once or twice before. “But you know!” His eyes shifted to Drina, and he pleaded: “To save her! To save my sister!”

Kate held the carving out to him.“This is her. Your sister’s face.”

Linay looked thunderstruck, staring at the carving.“Lenore…” he said. And the thing behind the clouds seemed to answer:yes.

Kate set the carving on the smoking wood at Linay’s knee.

“What are you doing?” said Linay. “Don’t burn it!” Hot smoke made his zupan skirts swirl. The fire ticked and fluttered.

“Would she want to be saved, like this?”

“She was a witch. She understood—the exchange of gifts. The sacrifice.” His eyes darted sideways to the carved face of his sister. “Pick that up.”

“If you’ll answer me. Would Lenore have wanted this?” Fire was raising around the carved face, pushing up from under it and arching above it with fast-beating wings.

Linay’s bound wrist was jerking and jerking like a mink in a trap. He didn’t seem to be aware of it, or aware that he had pulled as far away from the growing fire as the lashing allowed. “Kate,” he said, his breath shuddering. And she lunged forward to cut him free.

Linay flung up a hand between them, and cowered as if from a blow. Kate found herself caught again, in his spell of glass air.

“I can do this. I can do this.” Blood dripped from his cut hand, from his bound and twitching wrist, and fell burning, burning, burning. “Lenore!” he cried, and sobbed as he cried.

“She wouldn’t want this!” Kate had to shout above the roar of fire. “Linay! Let me go!”

Flames were snarling in Linay’s clothes, hot yellow winds lifting his hair. Kate knew how it felt, the pain and panic. And yet still the force of his will held, and she was caught, helpless before the fire as a chestnut on the coals. Her masterpiece was turning black, flames eating through the thinnest places in the wings. “Look at her!” Kate shouted. “Look at her face and tell me she would want this!”

Above them the clouds rumbled and an ugly death stirred.

And from below, high and hysterical, came Drina’s voice. “Lie to her!” Drina shouted. “Lie to her—it will kill you. It can all be over. Just lie to her!”

Linay’s face—it too was turning black—suddenly calmed, suddenly hardened, and his eyes locked with Kate’s. “Yes,” he said. “Lenore would want this.” And he folded up as if he swallowed a sword.

The glass around Kate shattered. She plunged into the flame, clambering over the smoking wood, her knife in her hand. She sliced his wrist free, shouting,“Drina!”

Linay rolled from the fire, and Drina tugged at his arm. Blood poured from his mouth, where the lie had cut him. Kate leapt from the woodpile and crashed, rolling beside them. She saw Linay look at her, his eyes dreamy, and then they turned to the sky.“Sister…” he whispered.

Kate yanked her carving from the bonfire, scorching her hands. She waved it in Linay’s face. “Don’t!”

“Sister,” Linay whispered. “Please. Help me.”

And so called, out of the green-black sky, the winged thing came. Down into the trampled dead and nearly dead, the people heaped at the gates, it swooped like a striking eagle. Kate saw the double wings—fog-white and clotted shadow—saw the bodies sink into a sick, black fire.

“Take it back!” she screamed at Linay. She thrust Lenore’s carved nose at his nose, though his ice-pale eyes were thawing into dull water. “Take it back! Stop it!”

The wing Kate was holding snapped, and the carving fell to the stone and broke open along hot lines. Kate crouched over it, over Linay.“Please,” she said. He was dying in front of her, burned everywhere, his red mouth open. “Please stop it!”

“There’s only one way to stop it,” came a voice from her elbow. She turned. It was Taggle, sitting on the lip of the burning platform, solemn. “And you know what it is.”

Kate looked down at the knife in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” said the cat. The rusalka was coming across the square slowly, tearing at the piles of the dead. It grew bigger as it fed, filling the air above them like a ship at sail. “It has to be you who kills me,” said Taggle. “I was his gift to you. You must be the one to give it back.”

She felt her jaw open, her head shake itself from side to side.

“You can survive it,” said Taggle. “And that is all I want. You do not need me. You can find your own place, with your strength alone.” Behind him, the wings loomed. “Katerina, Star of My Heart. Be brave. Lift your knife.”

Kate met his golden eyes.

She lifted her knife.

And Taggle, who was beautiful, who had never misjudged a jump in his life, leapt toward her with his forelegs out-flung. He landed clean on the blade. There was a sound like someone biting into an apple. And then he was in her arms, with the blade sticking out of his back.

Kate folded up. Taggle was curled in her arms, with the knife handle sticking out of his chest like a peg. She put her hand flat around it; it stuck out between her fingers. Blood came between them too, dark heart’s blood, bubbling like a spring. Drina tried to tug her farther from the fire, and Kate batted her hands away. “Taggle,” she sobbed.

The cat stirred, flinched—and smiled. Not a quirk of whiskers, but a human thing, turning up the corners of his mouth. “Katerina…”

The rusalka was coming toward them, its wings beating steady as a heart.

“Taggle,” whispered Kate. His heartbeat slowed under her hand.

“More…” His voice was only breath.

“More than a cat.”

“And I do not regret it.” His eyes clouded. “Could you…this itchy bit…”

She scratched his favorite place, where the fur swirled above the hard nub of his jawbone. The heat from the fire lifted tears from one side of her face.

Taggle took one more breath.

The rusalka’s shadow wings folded closed. Taggle’s heart fluttered. The rusalka took a step forward, shrinking, and the wings sagged. Another heartbeat. Another step. The darkness trailed from the white woman’s shoulders like the train of a dress. Another heartbeat, and the shadow-wing dragged itself against the cobbles.

And then it was a shadow. And Taggle’s heart was still.

Kate pulled her knife out. The cat didn’t stir. No new blood came.

She put her knife—her knife, her knife—down where the fire could take it, and she thought about lying down beside it.

Beside them, Linay was breathing, eyes open, calm as a man asleep. Below them, in the square, a woman stood. Her witch-white face was stiff with horror. Her shadow jittered behind her as the pyre blazed. The woman lifted a hand against the awful light, squinting. She spread her fingers and shouted something.

The fire went out.

Drina flung herself down the steps and into the woman’s arms.“Dajena!” she shouted, and then she was crying.“Dajena…” She buried her face in the woman’s shining shoulder.

“Mira cheya,” the woman muttered.“Drina. What are you doing here? Stay out of sight, I must see to this poor soul.…” But Drina wouldn’t move from her side. So she held the sobbing girl in one arm and tilted up her chin at the stone pillar. Then she stepped forward, dainty as a deer but grim-faced, and climbed the steps, Drina stumbling along beside her.

Kate stood up.

It was surprising, how light Taggle’s body was. All the substance of him seemed to have gone into Kate, into the bloody smock that stuck to her front—into her knife hand—into her body itself. Taggle was thistledown. There was nothing of him left.

And then Lenore and Kate were standing face-to-face, with Linay at their feet. He sprawled with arms and legs bent like a tossed puppet. He looked up first at Kate, then at Lenore, and then—blankly—at the clearing sky. “I feel strange,” he said. “I think I’m dying.”

Kate, with the little body in her arms, answered,“Good. We don’t like you.” But she knelt beside him and took his raw hand.

“Let me,” Lenore murmured, crouching beside them. Kate felt human warmth in the brush of her arm. “Who are you, brother? Tell me your name and I can help you with the pain.” Kate heard her voice slip halfway to song. “Who did this to you?”

“Oh, no,” Linay sang back. “I did it to myself. Don’t you see? A life for a life—how magic must be.”

“Linay?” Lenore’s voice broke with shock. “By the Black Lady—what have you done?”

Avenged your death, thought Kate.Undone your fate. Traded his life for yours. But she couldn’t say any of it.

“Lenore,” Linay breathed, “I love…” But his breath quavered and he could only blink at her. Lenore smoothed what had been his hair back from his forehead, singing. The life-tension was going out of him, like a frozen rope thawing in a puddle of water. Kate watched, with Taggle’s body stiffening against hers. “He’s dead,” said Lenore, holding the limp body in her arms. “My brother is dead! What is happening?”

“The guard will be coming,” Kate said. “Listen.” It seemed to her she could hear the whole city, thousands of sounds jumbled into the pounding in her ears.

“Who are you?” Lenore stood and seized Kate’s arm. Kate jerked away, twisting to keep her body around Taggle—but Lenore didn’t let go, and Kate’s arm was pulled straight and her sleeve fell back, baring the cuts of the bloodletting. The woman who had been the rusalka shivered. “Iknow you.”

“Dajena…” Drina tugged at her hand.“She’s my friend. Let her go.”

But Lenore ignored her daughter, looking around.“I remember this. I was dead. They tried to burn me.” She looked into the pyre, and down at the charred fragments of her own face. “Look.” She stooped, scooping up a black-edged piece: an eye and a twist of hair, a glimpse of wing.

Drina eased the charred thing out of her hand.“Dajena.”

Lenore let the carving go and sleepwalked to the edge of the platform, where she stood looking down at the dark surface of the canal.“I died here. I remember it.” Her face went strange. “And,” she said in a voice that could have withered grass, “I remember after.”

“You don’t have to think about that,” said Drina. “You’re saved. We saved you.”

Lenore shook herself and turned.“My daughter. Oh, Drina.” She fingered Drina’s chopped black hair. The sun was just coming out, long fingers of light piercing them, making the woman shine like a wax-cloth window. “You’ve grown.” She took Drina by both shoulders, her eyes huge. “You are marvelous,” she said. “Youare brave as the sun.”

And Kate held Taggle’s body tighter.Star of My Heart. Her father had died saying that and for years she had thought he was seeing her mother, standing at the door of death. But he had looked at her, just as Lenore was looking now. He had seen her. Her father had seen her.

“Let us go,” said Lenore, and swept down the stairs like a beam of light. Kate and Drina followed.