“They have escaped, Empress.” The soldier’s eyes were lowered and his head bowed, as if mourning a fallen comrade, but he was smart enough to avoid stammering or obfuscating his bad news. The court was silent, the only sound the wind blowing golden red leaves across the flagstone floor, to match the golden rays of sun streaming in through a high, open roof of elegant arches down onto the brilliant red crowns of maple trees which surrounded the courtyard. The three dozen courtiers stood as silent as the reporting soldiers; they knew well the risks of interrupting their Empress.

 

“Escaped?” The Empress said, her voice delicate, deadly. The wind picked up for a moment, and a leaf blew up into the air to swirl around the soldier who had spoken. He almost avoided flinching.

 

“We injured one, the prisoner, but the rescuer threw some kind of weapon which incapacitated us.” The Empress had but to raise her eyebrows for the soldier to explain further. “A bag, Empress, of canvas cloth. When it hit the ground it exploded into ice.” He swallowed hard in his attempt to continue without a hitch in his voice. “Icicles are as dangerous as spears when hurled with enough force.”

 

Tension held sway in the Court of Autumn. Winter had used its power against them at last, the declaration of war they had been waiting for—and all to spring a single spy from captivity. The entire court held their breaths, waiting to hear what the Empress would decree.

 

“They have signed their deaths,” she whispered, the words twisting on the wind between the fluttering leaves of the trees. “Muster your troops, Captain Ikkan. We march in one week.”

 

“Yes, Empress,” Ikkan said with a low bow before leading his soldiers out of the court. No one spoke. War was a heavy topic which none knew how to broach with their Empress. None but one.

 

“Is war prudent, Mistress?” asked Yanav, Guide to the Empress. Her voice held none of the trepidation apparent in the others, despite her place by the Empress’s left arm.

 

The Empress of the Autumn turned her head now for the first time since the soldiers had entered to look down at Yanav. The lines on her angled face only deepened the sense of power and brilliance which radiated from her, aided by the brightly feathered robe and crown of leaves, both sharp enough to slice through skin. “Does my Guide advise inaction?”

 

“Certainly not, Mistress,” Yanav said, venom in her voice. “Winter must be punished. But the snow is near, it is almost their day, and I fear our resources will not be enough to match Winter’s at full power.”

 

The Empress nodded—accepting Yanav’s opinion with the equanimity due from an Empress to her Guide, although the advice need not be followed, in the end. “Excused,” she said in a flat voice, and within ten seconds each courtier was out of sight. Within twenty they would be out of the courtyard entirely, or risk dire punishment. Yanav was the only one who stayed standing respectfully where she had been, hands folded behind her back; a Guide’s task was to shadow the Empress, to see what she saw so her opinion could be given judiciously when needed.

 

“What do you propose, Yanav? A defensive stance?” the Empress asked. Her voice was softer now that they were alone; Yanav and the current Empress of the Autumn had known each other a long time, and even the formality of their positions couldn’t erase half a lifetime of friendship.

 

Still, Yanav took a deep breath before answering. This wasn’t to be like her usual advice. “No. We need to strike, that has been made clear. But we need stealth, rather than might, at this time of year.” She glanced out through the trunks of the trees where a sliver of window was visible, showing the bare branches and the yellow, dying grass outside the Court of Autumn. Snow would fall within weeks, said the Seasonsayers, and when Yanav had felt the biting wind and heavy air that morning, she believed them.

 

“Assassins?” the Empressed asked. “Are they truly more likely to succeed than an army?”

 

“They are if they include an Empress.”

 

The Empress of the Autumn stared, for once struck dumb by her Guide. Then she began to laugh, a deep, rich laugh which reminded Yanav of honey on the tongue, or a rich stew on a cold eve; it was something she didn’t hear enough anymore, and she always counted a day as blessed when she could make her friend laugh.

 

“Are you not the one who always preaches safety?” The Empress asked, amazed. “I have had to fight you tooth and nail in order to lead a raiding party! And now you suggest I sneak into Winter?”

 

“A bold move on their part deserves one of ours, Mistress. There are rites of conflict older even than your monarchy. Besides,” she added with a smile. “I shall be there to keep my Mistress safe.”

 

“Very well.” The Empress’s smiles were as powerful as her scowls. “Prepare a party of not more than five. We shall leave tonight.”

 

~ * ~

 

Yanav met her Mistress, the Empress of Autumn, under a cold moon in a field of dying grass. Yanav’s garb included a windproof woolen coat, heavy enough to keep out most of the cold while allowing her enough movement to back up the rest of the party if need be. Her long, silver knife had ceremonial significance, but Yanav knew as well as any how to use it for baser purposes. The Empress, on the other hand, wore only a tight-fitting jumpsuit with a thin coat and cowl—it was said she hadn’t felt the cold of the wind since being raised as Empress, and she had no need for weapons—and the two trained assassins who accompanied them were wearing even less, their short, deadly swords visible strapped to their sides.

 

They walked quickly, almost a jog, but even still it took three hours to reach the edge of Winter’s land. Yanav had visited the other seasons before, of course, but she was always surprised when crossing one of those borders how similar the land looked, as if, for one moment, the boundaries between seasons which seemed so fundamental were in fact mere artifices of human-made chaos. On this particular night, an image in her mind of the frozen star-pattern still visible on the ground outside the Court of Autumn was enough to banish this blasphemous thought.

 

Anyway, the illusion of similarity between their two kingdoms vanished only an hour or so later when the Winter Palace came into view. Where the Court of Autumn was open and airy, colorful and cozy, the Winter Palace was all hard lines and sharp white peaks. A jagged mountain of ice, the Winter Palace had the look of an asymmetrical, deadly crown stuck askew into the frozen ground. The ice looked transparent, but though the moon, which was by now beginning to set, shone brightly if distorted through its crystal clarity, nothing of the interior of the palace was visible from the outside. Yanav shivered at the looming sight of it.

 

Thankfully, Autumn’s spies had long ago taught them the location of a secret entrance to the Winter Palace, a trapdoor hidden under a mound of earth masquerading as a hill outside the walls. The disused tunnel which they raced down had once been a service entrance, to haul food and trinkets from faraway lands into the palace without bothering with the tightly guarded front gate. Even here, on the edges of the palace in corridors barely used, the ice held sway, the walls white with frost, the floors hard and ever so slightly slippery. They took servant paths and hidden shortcuts detailed in the spies’ faithful maps, and managed to reach the inner sanctum before coming across any guards.

 

And these guards were dispatched with ease. None on the inside of the palace assumed they’d be needed for anything but ceremony, and most didn’t even have their weapons out. The Empress of the Autumn let her assassins do most of the work, hanging back to watch the skillful kills, the flash of metal as their swords left their scabbards for a second only, leaving lounging guards dead without a sound.

 

With less resistance than Yanav could have hoped for, they had reached the Winter Garden. A kind of mockery of the Court of Autumn, the Winter Garden was laid out in a similar way, open to the air, with trees dotting the area and paths winding through, all emanating from a central clearing where the Winter King held his court. But unlike in Autumn’s court, these trees were bare, all their leaves scattered brown and dead across the ground. The grass which should have surrounded the paths was yellow and shriveled, where it wasn’t missing altogether, compact, frozen dirt in its place. And the clearing which might have been handsome, lined with a similar thick stone as the Court of Autumn, was marred by a jagged, icy throne from which spread a stain of ice across the ground.

 

The assassins fell back, now, joining Yanav behind the Empress. This would be her time. To quench the fire of war which might melt both cold-weather seasons, this attack would need to feel personal, targeted. The Winter Court was in session, early as it was, and a dozen faces turned as four intruders stepped into their midst. The courtiers of Winter held no appreciable difference from those in Autumn; nobles were the same, it seemed, from kingdom to kingdom, and Yanav suspected she wouldn’t notice if they each traded places every year in mockery of their oaths. They stepped back instinctively at the sight of the black-garbed assassins, not even trying to pretend to protect their King.

 

The Winter King had once been a strong, hard leader, and had seen his kingdom through an age of skirmish, followed by an even longer age of hard-fought peace—but he was old now, his back bent against the uncomfortable icy throne, his eyes vague as he peered out at the intruders. It had been clear for some time that he hadn’t been behind Winter’s actions, and now Yanav saw why Winter had gone to so much trouble to free their prisoner from Autumn’s clutches.

 

Next to the King stood a proud, straight-backed man, the only other who hadn’t retreated upon the assassins’ entrance. He still wore the riding cloak and blood-stained trousers he had been captured in, and Yanav could see a bandage under that cloak over a fresh wound in his side. Still, he stood his ground, head high and face hard. His hand rested on the arm of his King, and a heavy signet ring on his second finger named him: Prince Alard, son to the Winter King. The true power, Yanav was suddenly sure, behind the throne of ice.

 

But not yet King. The Empress of the Autumn stepped forward and raised up her arms.

 

“Begone, witch!” the prince yelled. “Guards!”

 

Before any guards could arrive, however, the Empress began her attack. The wind picked up, whirling in a wide circle around the courtyard, surrounding the courtiers and buffeting them back as they tried to run. The brown leaves—no more than dead taunts to Autumn’s beauty, strewn across the ground for looks alone—flew up into the air and joined the circular wall, regaining their red and gold hues as they flew, giving the impenetrable boundary a flashing, colorful impression.

 

The prince, no coward, pulled out his sword and held it before him, but he hesitated to strike, unsure from where the Empress’s first true attack would come, and still nursing his injured side. Yanav and the two assassins unsheathed their weapons to match, but none moved, sure their Empress would need minimal help now. Indeed, when the first of the leaves slashed inward from its whirling place around the clearing, sharp and brittle and blood red, the prince barely had time to slash it away. The second spinning leaf sliced across his arm, opening up a new wound to join the one healing on his side. Yanav heard screams of terror from the nobles who were now huddled as far from the throne as they could get.

 

The branches of the trees which stood within the Empress’s windy circle began to tremble, then bend, and finally, as if shaking off a paralysis of millenia, the trees pulled themselves up from the ground and stood at the ready, alive and alert. The Empress flicked a wrist, and the living trees charged at the frightened nobles, pinning them down to the ground, able only to watch as leaves began to whip into the center, clanking off steel and ice, occasionally slicing skin and bone.

 

Once, the Winter King might have struck back with as much power as the Empress, with shards of ice and rains of hail to freeze Autumn where it stood, but his powers had diminished with age, and his son, not yet King, had only his sword to defend him against the magical onslaught. The guards and wizards of Winter who might have, together, matched the Empress in power were asleep in their beds, or running even now down the long icy hallways of the palace, too late to save their King.

 

“Winter King, you have attacked my people with steel and with ice!” the Empress yelled over the gale, her voice booming across the garden. “This affront to the natural order of the seasons cannot go unpunished. For this you must pay!” She raised a hand toward the King, and a golden leaf shot in from behind the Empress and directly through the Winter King’s heart, smashing the throne behind him on its way into the ground. Screams could be heard from the nobles behind. The King slumped sideways in his throne.

 

The Empress turned to face the prince now, who stood still frozen to the spot, his sword outstretched but useless. “You gave the order,” the Empress said. The prince did not answer, did not soften his hard stare, and a moment later he fell, pierced by the same leaf as his father.

 

Yanav expected the wind to die down, now that their purpose had been fulfilled. She sheathed her knife and turned to look at the entrance to the garden, wondering if the guards had made it there yet. But the wind only increased, the leaves knocking into each other with the grinding, screeching sounds of broken metal mechanisms. Yanav looked to her Empress, whose face was a mask of fury.

 

“Winter must know the price of its actions!” she cried, and turned to face the courtiers, still cowering under the living branches.

 

“No!” Yanav yelled, running to her Empress’s side. “Mistress, this is not the way! We have done what we came to do!”

 

The Empress did not seem to hear. She advanced upon the helpless nobles. Razor sharp leaves broke off from the deadly wall of wind and circled around her head. The trees grunted as they crushed their prisoners down into the hard earth.

 

Yanav grabbed the Empress’s arm, but a whip of wind slapped her away, hard enough to cause a stinging, red welt to form on the back of her hand. The leaves reared back, moments from falling upon their wailing prey.

 

“Hæfas,” Yanav said in a low, pleading voice. The Empress turned her head as if slapped, stared at her Guide with wide eyes. “Hæfas, don’t do this. They did nothing to you.”

 

The wind slowed. The leaves fell lifeless to the ground. “Yanav…” The Empress’s voice was heavy with emotion. The trees fell back from atop the courtiers with loud clatters against the ice and stone.

 

“We have done what we came to do,” Yanav said again, and the Empress of the Autumn, whose name had once been Hæfas, nodded slowly. The wind died.

 

By the time the guards had forced open the doors to the Winter Garden, which had grown into each other, the wood merging as if it was still alive, the assassins of Autumn were gone, and all they could do was gather up the scarred courtiers and tend to the bodies of their monarchs, one with the gentle hands of grief, and one with the quick, embarrassed work of citizens who knew their kingdom had just been saved by the hand of another’s Empress, and that Empress’s Guide.

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