Leena Likitalo - The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

“We must decide together how we wish to proceed.” And I lay down the facts and only the facts, no feeble promises of better prospects. I couldn’t change the orders Captain Ansalov received. Captain Janlav’s offer, born from a moment of opportunity, is something we can but forget. Now that the gagargi’s orders are in the air for both his guards and Captain Ansalov’s men to hear, defying them and engaging in a fight that is likely to end in gunshots and blood spilled is not something he is willing to risk.

“One.” Merile picks the black dog up in her arms. It climbs to rest against her shoulder, prods my sister’s neck with its nose. “So you must choose one of us to go with you?”

Alina intently studies my shadow, that of Elise. She nods to herself and kneels to summon the brown dog to her. “I know who you should pick.”

Out of all of us, Alina is the one least afraid. She alone still believes that I will live up to my promise. A thought bordering on delirious comes to me. Could it be that my frail little sister can glimpse our future in the shadows? If I had thought to ask this earlier, could I have saved us? Could any knowledge have made the difference?

“Either we all go or no one goes,” Sibilia repeats. She must have realized, too, that with his mind tampered with, Captain Ansalov will order anyone staying behind in this house executed.

“I don’t agree with you.” Elise has her chin angled up, gray eyes afire with defiance. “Celestia, you are the Crescent Empress. What will become of our people if we meet our end in this house? With us gone, there will be no one left to champion for them. Don’t say no to the gagargi’s generous offer for purely selfish reasons.”

For a moment, there is but silence, for what else could there be? And in this silence, the room feels smaller, the shadows in the corners darker, the light of the chandeliers feebler, the carpet akin to sinking ground. Where once the whole empire was mine, now I am hesitant to confront my own sister. For I don’t know if there is anything I can say to make her see that I am not defying the gagargi because I loathe him for what he did to me, what he did to us and our mother and her sisters. I am saying no to his plan to save her and our younger sisters and the whole empire from oblivion.

In the end, I don’t have to say a thing. A thin, white shape forms beside Elise.

“Drinking,” Olesia wails. Her shape is translucent. “Men drinking downstairs.”

“Oh no,” Sibilia gasps, a hand flinging to cover her mouth. “Celestia…”

I lift my forefinger minutely, a sign she shouldn’t say more. Men drink to gather courage when faced with commands they aren’t willing to obey sober. This is no longer my choice. The two captains will force me to go to the gagargi, to abandon my sisters. Or then, the order they think they must obey is the grimmer one, the one from the past that has already been once carried out, that led Irina and Olesia to their graves. But Captain Ansalov may not remember that, and it is my fault and no one else’s.

“My sisters…” I have always known that as the Crescent Empress I might need to choose from two equally appalling options. But never did it even occur to me to speculate which of my sisters deserves to live the most. For that is a decision I can’t make, one that I can’t ask them to make for me either. “I…”

“Celestia, wait,” Sibilia says, so quietly, so shyly, uncertain and yet so sure of herself. “There is one more thing that we could try.”

“Tell us.” Merile speaks in my place.

Without saying another word, Sibilia strides to the window closest to our rooms and yanks at the curtains. It takes her three attempts to fully part them. The thread tears loose just as we gather around her.

My beloved, he hasn’t yet risen to the sky. Yet, where there should be but dark, a faintest silvery glow emerges. It finds its way into the room through the crack in the glass, the gap between the planks, past the open curtains. “Our father showed me something that for a long while only confused me. But I just realized what he might have meant. That is, I’m pretty sure I know what he was after.”

The silvery light draws me toward it. My sisters and Olesia hear the call, too. It can be but a message from our father, for we are all his daughters.

“When I read the scriptures, I came across a spell that might enable me to change the souls between two willing bodies.” Sibilia glances at Alina and Merile, and then… at the two dogs. No wonder that my sister is hesitant. Her idea is straight out of a children’s story. “He has shown me the dogs running through the forest, following the magpie. I think that…”

She doesn’t need to say more. She is suggesting switching Alina’s and Merile’s souls with those of the two dogs, to be guided to safety by the witch who demanded too much from me in her greed. And then she wants me to leave the house with…

“Could you bind the spell?” I ask, though this is a ludicrous conversation to have in the first place. But I must know the answer to make a decision of any sort. It is very challenging to maintain a spell while moving, and if the spell were to snap, the souls would no doubt return back to their original bodies.

“I’ll stay here,” Sibilia replies, her voice steadier than mine. “Captain Ansalov will have no reason to go after the dogs.”

The rest of her plan dawns on me. She wants me to leave the house with Elise. Elise, of all people!

“No.” I cup Sibilia’s cheeks, kiss her forehead. My dear sister, the one I once chose to stay behind with me, the one I promised to never abandon, is ready to sacrifice herself to save her younger and older sisters—a duty that was mine, but which I couldn’t carry through. “No, no, and no.”

But my sisters care little of me rejecting the dreadful idea. They don’t yet understand the price it bears, the sheer number of unknowns. What would happen to our youngest sisters once their bodies cease to breathe? Would they remain captive in those of the two dogs forever? Or would the witch know a way to bring them back?

“Yes, that’s it!” Elise claps her hands. She isn’t cheerful as much as relieved. “Celestia, can you not see it? This is our father’s will.”

Alina squeals with delight. “I’d be a dog!”

“But what of my dear sillies?” Merile asks in a quiet voice, though she must know the answer already. There is nothing left in this house for us, for them, but despair.

“Please, be quiet,” I plead with them, pacing away from the pale light. Sibilia’s plan is far-fetched, its implications more terrible still. If her spell were to fail, the lives of our youngest sisters would be forfeit. If it were to work, beyond all logic, beyond all sanity, four of us would have a chance to live. But one of us would fall.

“Rifles.” Olesia’s shrill whisper interrupts my train of thought. “Irina says… Men loading rifles.”

“Father Moon, forgive me,” Sibilia mumbles even as she marches to me. She grabs my wrists and pulls me with her into the beam of light. “Will you show your wife your will and let us get on with it?”

Before I can tell her that it is outrageous of her to ask this of our father, demand my husband show me what he sees when he hasn’t chosen to do so before, impossibly, the light turns luminous. I can’t move, wouldn’t even want to move, as it swallows me whole. My beloved reveals his blessed face to me, the drawing room fills with his silvery presence, and I can at last see that which has come to pass under his celestial gaze.

The Great Thinking Machine has grown in size. It is blacker than the night, an oiled creature with a thousand spindly, insect legs. It hisses in hunger, though dozens of men feed it small amber beads in a constant supply. Another group of men piles holed paper sheets in its gaping maw, questions that the gagargi demands answered. The cogs and wheels spin as the machine crunches through numbers without thought or care. All this is possible only because…