The Will of the Empress (22 page)

“Maybe if you had women you didn’t treat as slaves, your clothes would hold up better,” Sandry continued, her hands white-knuckled on the reins. “Oh, but look. Your leather workers don’t do very well, either.”

Now the stitches on the leather tunics gave way, as did the stitching that secured each metal scale to the leather beneath it. Leather breeches came apart at the seams; boots fell to the ground in pieces.

“I doubt their saddlers like them, either,
Clehame
,” remarked one of the guards.

All the stitchery in the saddles, tack, and saddle blankets was unraveling. Men slid to the ground, reins in their hands, stumbling as they landed in piles of leather and cloth. Their belts gave way as Sandry’s thread magic called to the stitches that held the buckles in place. Leather-wrapped weapon hilts came apart in their owners’ fists. By the time Sandry was done, twenty naked men surrounded them. Only a few still held the better-made swords. Even the binding that secured the double-headed ax to its haft came apart, leaving Dymytur to scrabble for the sheathed sword that lay among his belongings. The horses fled, unnerved by the feel of things coming apart on their sensitive backs.

“I’d surrender if I were you,” yet another of Sandry’s guards advised. “She’s been nice. She hasn’t asked the redhead to look after you. The redhead isn’t at all nice.”

“I’ve been working on it,” complained Tris.

Ambros looked at the ring of naked men. “Do you know, I would have thought that, for a mission to kidnap a young girl, you’d all be better…equipped.”

“That’s why we needed her, curse you!” snarled Yeskoy. “A plumply dowered heiress—do you think one of the imperial pretty boys will serve you any better,
Viymese Clehame
?” Although he was covering his private parts, he still managed to look fierce. “You’d best get it into your head, magic or no, you’ll be married soon enough. You won’t hold your nose so high when you’ve a belly full of brats and
you’re locked up in someone’s country castle while he prances for the empress!”

Tris looked at Sandry. “What do you say? There’s hail coming in the next storm. I could hasten it along, bring the hail down here. By the time I’m done, they’ll look like they’ve been kicked by elephants.”

Sandry leaned forward. “I will
never
marry in Namorn, willing or no,” she said, her voice low and ferocious. “Never, never, never. Get out of my sight, before I tell my friend to send for that hail.”

Dymytur hesitated, his eyes still on Sandry. His uncle snarled wordlessly and dragged him back, away from Sandry’s group.

“The empress has mages, too!” Dymytur shouted, enraged. “Great mages who will tie up your power in a wee bow, so you’ll marry whoever she pleases as she commands. Then you’ll see about your never-never-never!”

He turned and ran for the nearby woods, his kin and his warriors following at a stumbling trot. Sandry spat on the ground in disgust, and kneed her mare forward down the road. After a moment’s hesitation, Ambros and their guards followed. Tris remained behind for a moment, undoing one of her wind braids. She drew out a fistful of its power, held it on her palm while she gave it a quick stir with a finger, then turned it loose. It circled the area in a powerful blast, strewing leather and cloth all over the wide fields around the road. Only then did she follow the others.

Sandry fumed in silence all the way back to the castle. How dare these people? she asked herself silently, over and over. How
dare
they? What gives them the right to assume they may tell me how I am to live? They don’t know
me.
They don’t even
care
to know me. They look at me and all they see is a womb and moneybags.

“Do people do this with
your
daughters?” she demanded sharply of Ambros after they had ridden several miles.

Her cousin cleared his throat. “Only a fraction of women are at risk. If a woman is already bound by marriage contract, like most of the young ladies at court, she is considered untouchable. There are women and girls who are related to families or individuals considered too powerful to offend, like Daja’s friends in Kugisko, the Bancanors and the Voskajos. The rest of us keep our daughters close to home in their maiden years.”

“And it’s considered safe to offend
my
family?” Sandry asked, her voice cutting.

“The head of
your
family is the empress,” Ambros murmured. “And the empress wants you to remain here.”

Sandry suggested what the empress could do about it in words she had learned from Briar.

Ambrose flinched and shook his head. “It was folly of me to let us come out with less than two squads of men, but we needed every free hand for the plowing. I thought we would be safe enough inside our borders. Holm and Haugh
must be desperate, to strike at you here.” He frowned. “And someone from Pofkim must have been in their pay, to let them know of our visit.”

“Or someone at the castle got the word out when you announced this jaunt last night,” Tris said, matter-of-factly.

Sandry glared at her.

“What?” demanded Tris. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t venture outside your precious walls. It isn’t as if we didn’t handle the whole mess with no bloodshed. Though I don’t see why you didn’t arrest the nobles, at least,” she told Ambros. “It
was
highway robbery, in a manner of speaking.”

“I wanted to get Sandry home,” Ambros said. “We’d have had our work cut out for us, to round them up and hold them, even without their weapons. And, well, there is the matter of the unspoken law.”

“What unspoken law?” Sandry wanted to know.

Ambros sighed and scratched his head. If he hadn’t been such a dignified man, Sandry would have described his look as sheepish. “The one of runaway marriages,” he said reluctantly at last. “No magistrate will penalize a man who kidnaps an unmarried woman for the purposes of marriage. Or if they do, it’s a fine, and one so tiny that it’s insulting. The only exception is if someone is killed during the kidnapping. Then the man must die.”

“Mila of the Grain, of course we must punish him if he kills someone, but kidnapping?” cried Sandry. “A mere bit
of manly folly! I’m sure if he apologizes to the woman and gives her flowers, she’ll come to thank him!”

Wincing, Ambros continued in his dry way: “The custom’s from the old empire, the one west of the Syth. Those we’ve conquered since have chosen to, well, honor it.” “That’s barbaric!” snapped the girl.

All around them the guards from Landreg bristled.

“It
is
!” Sandry insisted, swiveling to look at them. “Around the Pebbled Sea, women control their own lives, within limits. No one can force us to marry against our will!”

“Actually, they can, but they have to be sneakier about it,” remarked Tris, watching the clouds overhead. “Contracts, and bride prices. Telling the girl it’s for the good of the family, that sort of thing.”

“It’s not right, the Namornese custom is barbaric, and I won’t be forced to marry anyone!” Sandry snapped. “Anyone who tries to force me will learn a sharp lesson!”

“Any would-be kidnapper with chain mail would still be wearing it even after you were done with your spell,” Ambros observed. “And if they know what you can do, they’ll be sure to prepare ahead of time.”

“I am not helpless deadweight,” Sandry whispered, her eyes blazing. “I am no victim, no pawn, no weakling.”

Tris sighed as they trotted onto the road that would take them to the castle gate. “No weakling against the imperial mages? Ishabal is a great mage. So’s Quenaill. Do
you even know if you could face down great mages, if one was trying to kidnap you?”

“If you three weren’t fighting what we used to be, I wouldn’t think twice about it!” cried Sandry, furious. “But no, you fear I’ll discover something naughty in your minds. Or silly. Or ugly. It’s like the three of you went off to have your adventures and then you come home and blame
me
because we’re all different! I want us to be what we were, and all you care about is that travel broadened you!” To her disgust she realized she was weeping as she shouted her resentments. “Forgive me for wanting my family back!” Before she disgraced herself even further, she kicked her horse into a gallop and pelted headlong up the hill to Landreg Castle.

On their return Sandry retreated to her rooms. As they waited for the bell to call them to the dining hall, it was left to Tris to tell Briar and Daja what had happened that day.

Daja nodded when Tris told them about Sandry’s last outburst. “She mentioned that to me, back home,” she admitted.

“But she said when we left she didn’t mind,” Briar complained. They had gathered in his chambers, watching as he put together a blemish cure for Ambros’s oldest daughter. He spoke to his sisters as if he were doing nothing else, but his hands were sure as he added a drop of this and two drops of that to the contents of a small bowl. “She told us
to stop being silly and grab the chance when it was

offered.”

“What else could she say?” Daja wanted to know. “If you’ve forgotten, she hates to distress people.”

“That wasn’t apparent today,” Tris murmured, watching the flames in Briar’s hearth. “She left those kidnappers in plenty of distress. And she certainly gave
us
the rough edge of her tongue, coming back. I can’t recall ever seeing her angry enough to yell.”

“She hates being treated like a
thing
,” Daja reminded them. “She always hated it when people looked at her and saw a noble girl, not a human being. And she’s been running Duke’s Citadel since a few months after we were all gone. It must be hard, going from mistress of a castle and adviser to a nation’s ruler to someone who’s supposed to go where she’s bid and do as she’s told.”

“If she doesn’t like it, let her sign it over to Ambros,” Briar suggested, wiping off the slender reeds he used as droppers. “Sign it all over and go home.”

“I think it’s a matter of pride,” Tris remarked slowly. “She hates being treated like a noble, except when she wants to act like one. Like today. She was happy enough with the villagers and everything. It was when those idiots tried to make her into a prize that she got all on her dignity. If she gives up these estates now, it will be like she’s been forced to surrender what’s rightly hers out of fear.”

“She’ll think she’s shirking,” added Daja. “She already thinks it, with all the things that didn’t get done because they had to pay so much out to her, and because of people like Gudruny.”

“No, it’s not that she’s afraid to shirk, though Lakik knows she hates that,” Briar told them, pouring his cure into a small glass bottle. “She’s got the bit between her teeth now. It’s how she always gets, when someone says she has to do anything she thinks challenges her rights. Remember when I stole my
shakkan
and Crane and his people were chasing me?” He reached out and stroked the tree, which he kept nearby whenever he was working. “There she was, all of ten and no bigger than an itch, standing in front of the house and telling Crane and his students she
forbade
them to come onto her ground.” He shook his head with an admiring grin. “Nothing between her and them but a flimsy old wooden fence and gate, and there she was, telling them they weren’t allowed to pass.”

Daja chuckled. “Or the time she said she wanted me to sit at table with her, and the other nobles balked, and she pulled rank on them. She was that strong-willed even eight years ago.”

“Then she must hate all this,” said a soft voice from the doorway. The door had been open, but they had thought everyone else had gone downstairs. Now Rizu leaned against the frame, her arms crossed over her full bosom. Her large, dark eyes were filled with pity. “Noble girls don’t
usually get to dictate the terms of their lives in the empire. I was wondering how she’d come by the regal manner. I suppose it was losing her parents that made her grow up so fast?”

The three looked at one another. Tris shrugged, then Briar, indicating Daja could decide what to tell the older woman. Briar thought it would be all right to trust Rizu a little. He’d noticed she listened more than she gossiped, and she hardly ever said a hurtful word. Briar liked her, for all that he felt she was unavailable to the likes of him. Since she was always friendly, he knew it wasn’t that she had problems with his being a commoner or a mage. He just wasn’t her type. That was fine with Briar. Caidy, with her sly eyes and her habit of touching his arm, or his shoulder, or his chest, was far more intriguing.

“Well, her parents traveled a great deal, you know that,” Daja replied to Rizu’s question. “She was with adults more than children, and her parents could be a little…”

“Distracted,” Briar supplied, writing down instructions for the use of his blemish cure.

“That,” agreed Daja. “And once Niko, who found us four, once he saw we had magic, we were spending more time among adults, and with each other. Then there was the earthquake, and the pirates.”

“Forest fire,” added Tris softly. “Plague. His Grace’s heart attack.”

“And getting caught up in murders, and having a student to teach, and handling a kind of magic most of us can’t
even see,” Briar explained. “It rearranges the way you look at the world.”

“I should think so!” said Rizu, awed. “You’ve led such adventurous lives!” She leaned her curly head against the door frame. “All this must make her feel like a bird in a cage, then,” she commented. “Maybe the three of you feel that way, too?”

Briar grinned as Tris chuckled and Daja shrugged. “We don’t like cages,” Briar replied for all three of them. “We tend to stay away from them while we can.”

“You’re lucky you’re not noble, then,” said Rizu, a shadow passing over her face. “We’re supposed to think our cages are open air.”

The supper bell chimed at last. Daja was the first to get up and leave the room. As she passed Rizu, she linked her arm through the woman’s, drawing her along with her. “Come away with us, then,” she offered casually. “Live without cages.”

Rizu threw her head back to laugh. The light gilded the line from her chin down to her bosom. Daja looked at that gilding, and away, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.