The Will of the Empress (27 page)

They were almost ready when she heard a familiar voice snap, “What is going on here?”

She looked up. It was that fellow Shan, the one who was the empress’s current lover.

Olfeon, who had stripped off his coat and was rolling up his sleeves, glared at the newcomer. “Not your affair, fer Roth.”

“Do you think she’ll be gratified if you kill her pet gardener?” Shan demanded. “She’ll be livid.”

“For all I know, she’ll be vexed with
me
if I dent one of her playtoys,” Briar said.

“Silence, clodhopper!” snapped Olfeon.

Briar looked at Daja and sniffed. “He’s so mean,” he said plaintively.

Daja tucked her tablet and the charcoal holder away. “I noticed that. You should be very offended and hit him first.”

As they had meant it to—it was how they’d have played it in the old days, when they were bonded—this exchange brought Olfeon hurtling at Briar, hands outstretched. Briar
let him get almost close enough to touch, then twisted to the side and smashed his knee into Olfeon’s belly.

Daja watched with interest as the fight continued. He learned a lot while he was away, she thought as Briar used new throws and twists to slam Olfeon to the ground time after time.

He knew better than to let the bigger man get both hands on him. Then Olfeon would use his superior weight and height to drag Briar down. Instead, Briar aimed for nerve points he had studied for medicine, added to his old street fighter’s arsenal of tricks. At the end of the fight, Briar’s foot rested on Olfeon’s neck, pressing the right side of his face into the grass as Olfeon flailed wildly. When he tried to grab Briar’s leg, Briar pressed harder. The Namornese collapsed at last, starved for air. Daja made the final tally. Briar had a black eye, several cuts, a split lip, ripped clothes, bruises, and perhaps a sprained knee. Olfeon had facial cuts, a sprained wrist, a broken nose, ripped clothes, and his own collection of bruises.

“Pay me by the end of today,” Daja called to the losing bettors. “I won’t take signatures in place of real coin, and I’m cross when people think to cheat me.” She looked around, about to call for Sandry to fix the clothes, when she saw her sister being handed down the stairs by Shan. Quenaill followed Sandry, a scowl on his long face.

As they approached, Shan said to Briar and Olfeon, “Did you think I’d leave you both to face Her Imperial
Majesty in
this
condition?
Clehame
Sandry will see to your clothes, Quen to your wounds.”

You just did it for an excuse to have Sandry hold you by the arm, Daja thought cynically. I bet you couldn’t care less for Briar or the other fellow.

Sandry glared at the two battered young men. “What was this about?”

Briar glared back. “Namornese sheep,” he retorted. “He claimed Namorn breeds sheep that think for themselves.”

“We fought over his right to wear that medallion,” said Olfeon. “Right, lads?”

The young men nodded. Through their magical connection Daja told Sandry,
It was over the empress. I suppose she would be vexed with Olfeon if she knew.

Sandry shook her head.
As if I would believe they would have a fistfight over Briar’s right to wear the mage medallion. They must think I drink stupid potion for my morning pick-me-up.

She walked briskly over to Briar. “I didn’t make those clothes for brawls,” she told him irritably. “I didn’t think even
you
could find a fight at the court of Namorn.” She set her hand on the ripped seam that had once joined sleeve to shirt. A rough tear over Briar’s knee was already starting to weave itself back together as grass and dirt stains trickled off his clothes.

“Well, you’re forever underestimating me,” Briar told her. “If there’s a fight about, it’s nearly guaranteed I’ll be in it.”

Sandry looked over at Olfeon. “You were lucky,” she said sharply. “He could have ripped you to pieces with thorns if he wanted.”

“No, no,” protested Briar, his eyes warning Sandry to be silent. “Blood’s horrible for grass, and there’s always some thorns left after. Don’t mind her,” he told Olfeon. “Girls have no appreciation for the rules of combat.”

Olfeon spat on the ground in disgust, then winced as Quenaill set to work healing his wounds. “Hold still and be silent,” Quenaill said, frowning. “The quicker this is done the better, unless you
want
to spend the winter in a log cabin on the Sea of Grass.”

“She says if we have that much spirit we can use it to fight the Yanjing emperor,” Shan explained to Sandry. No one doubted that “she” was the empress. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked Briar.

“Everywhere,” Briar replied, grinning at the tall huntsman. “And isn’t it a good thing for me?”

A tap on the back made Daja turn. Some of the men who had bet against her waited to pay their wagers.

They spent the rest of that week riding between Sablaliz and Landreg, attending social occasions with the imperial court. Finally, one night after a late supper at Landreg, Sandry looked at Ambros and Ealaga, then at her exhausted companions and guards, who wearily picked through their meals.

“I’m sorry,” she told her cousin and his wife. “But she’s
going to kill us at this rate, or our horses, at the very least. The court is returning to the palace in Dancruan. We must go with them, I think. Her Imperial Majesty has invited us to stay at the palace. I don’t believe I can refuse politely.”

“No,” Ambros replied, shaking his head. “She would be much offended if you did.”

“Gudruny will require maid’s clothes fit for the palace,” Ealaga said. “I’ll make certain she has some.”

Sandry drummed her fingers on the table. “If I only had
time
, between estate matters and the empress keeping me hopping, I could make her clothes myself!”

Gudruny looked up from her spot at the table, next to Tris. “My children?” she asked, her voice strained.

“They can stay at Landreg House in town,” Ambros said. “Along with Zhegorz. Your cousin Wenoura is our chief cook there, remember?”

“Truthfully, you won’t have to wait on me,” Sandry told Gudruny. “You can stay with the children—” She halted abruptly. There was a decidedly militant look in Gudruny’s eye.

“And have them say you don’t know how to get on as a proper noble?” the maid asked. “Their servants already turn up their noses because you have only one maid, and your friends have no servants at all. I heard them gossiping when they were here, spiteful creatures. I wouldn’t
think
of leaving you in the palace to be talked about! I’m waiting on you, and that’s that!”

Ambros’s mouth twitched in a smile. Briar looked from Gudruny to Sandry. “Who works for who?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

Tris excused herself quietly. When the other three went upstairs to bed, Briar found her in his room, talking quietly to Zhegorz as she hung onto the man’s bony hands. She looked up at Briar. “He’s afraid to go so close to court.”

Briar sighed. “It’s terrible, when a man has no faith. Did you tell him what you did, that first day at the palace? What you did to the pirate fleet?”

“Pirates?” Zhegorz asked with a wild start that jerked his hands from Tris’s hold. His eyes were so wide with terror that the white showed all the way around. “There are pirates coming?”

Now look what you did
, Tris thought at Briar, forgetting his mind was closed to her.
I’d just gotten him calmed down.

“Here you go, old man,” Briar said, pouring out a tiny cupful of the soothing cordial he gave Zhegorz for his bad moments. “These pirates were seven years ago, and they are most seriously dead.
She
did it.”

“You helped,” snapped Tris. “And Sandry, and Daja, and our teachers, and every mage in Winding Circle. And you
know
I don’t like that story repeated.”

Briar ignored her. “She did it with lightning,” he told his guest, putting the cork back in the bottle. “And when we first got to Dancruan? Some fishing boats were in danger of a storm on the Syth, but Coppercurls here sent a wind to
blow them home and another to eat the storm. She likes rescuing folk. So don’t you get yourself all worked up. You’ll hurt her feelings, letting her think she can’t protect you.”

“She didn’t protect you, wherever you were, in the bad place you dream about,” Zhegorz pointed out. He had bolted the cordial as if it were a glass of very nasty tea.

And here I thought I made that stuff taste nice! thought Briar in disgust, trying to ignore what their madman had said. I should’ve given him nasty tea instead of something I worked cursed hard over.

“You dream about it all the time,” Zhegorz insisted. “You toss and turn and yell about blood and Rosethorn and Evvy and Luvo.”

Tris raised her pale brows at him.

Briar was about to tell them both that his dreams were no cider of theirs, but there was something about the way Tris looked at him. He’d forgotten that side of her, that he had always been able to tell her the most horrific things, and she would never laugh, be shocked, or withdraw from him.

Briar slumped to the floor, leaning back against the stone that framed the hearth. The stone was warm, the fire a comforting crackle in his ear. “The emperor of Yanjing tried to conquer Gyongxe,” he muttered at last. “We were at the emperor’s court when we heard, and then we ran for it, Rosethorn and Evvy and me. That’s when we met Luvo, on our way to warn Gyongxe. Luvo’s this…creature, Zhegorz. He lives with Evvy now.”

“The Mother Temple of the Living Circle,” breathed Tris. “It’s in Gyongxe. The one all the other Circle temples look to. Their first and oldest Circle temple.”

Briar nodded. Zhegorz slid down the side of the bed so he, too, could sit on the floor and lean against the bed. It seemed to be his way to comfort Briar. Chime, who had spent suppertime around Tris’s neck, now glided over and settled into Briar’s lap. He stroked the little creature, feeling her cool surfaces against his palms.

“So we fought our way into Gyongxe, and then we fought the emperor, and then we came home,” Briar whispered, closing his eyes. “The pirates was nothin’ to it, Coppercurls.” In his distress he had slipped back into the language of the streets he had left seven years before. “The whole countryside was afire, or so it seemed. The dead…everywhere. The emperor’s army filled the roads for
miles
, and they didn’t care what they did to folk in the lands they marched through. So sure, I dream about it all the time. I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be seeing a mind healer when we get home,” Tris said firmly. “I’ve heard of this. People who have been through some terrible thing, it leaves scars where no one can see. The scars hurt, so they dream, and they snap at people for doing things that seem silly compared to the horrors. Sometimes they see and smell the thing all over again.”

“So I’m just some boohoo bleater, looking for a mama because I have bad dreams?” Briar asked rudely, though he
didn’t open his eyes. “Looking for a handkerchief everywhere I go so folk will think I’m tragic and interesting?”

“If the scars were on your flesh, would you even ask me those things?” retorted Tris.

There was a long pause. At last Zhegorz said hesitantly, “She’s right.”

“She ’most always is, when it comes to other folk,” replied Briar softly. “I got off lucky. She’s being nice right now.” Inside the magic they shared, he said,
I missed you, Coppercurls. With you there
, we
might’ve conquered Yanjing.

She looked down, her thin swinging braids not quite hiding her tiny smile. She waved a hand in awkward dismissal.

Briar waited until he was sure of his command over himself before he looked at Zhegorz. “So don’t you worry about being at Landreg House, you hear? It’s just for six more weeks or so, and then we take the road home.”

“But the city,” whispered Zhegorz, his eyes haunted. “The roads. The chatter, and the visions. The headaches, the gossip, the lies, the weeping—”

“Stop that,” Tris said sharply. “We’ve talked about you working yourself into swivets.”

Briar rubbed his chin in thought. “He’s right, though,” he remarked slowly. “He’s going to be out in the wind, with all the talk it brings. I remember you, as jumpy as a mouse on a griddle for days, when you started getting a grip on what you were hearing. And it’s worse for the old man,
here, because he’s crazy to begin with. You were just a little daft.”

“Well, we certainly can’t leave you here,” Tris drawled, looking at Zhegorz. “And Green Man knows potions or oils won’t work for long. And you can’t wear my spectacles for the scraps of things you see, because my spectacles are specially ground for my bad eyes. It’s too bad it isn’t a matter of a living metal leg, or living metal gloves…living metal spectacles?”

“Maybe like nets?” suggested Briar. “To catch visions in?”

“Or sounds. No, that’s mad. Perhaps. Let’s go see Daja,” Tris said.

“Daja will do something mad?” asked Zhegorz, now thoroughly confused.

Tris sighed. “Daja can make spell nets of wire, and she can make a leg that works like a real one. She was even crafting a living metal eye, once. Maybe she can think of something in living metal to help you.”

Briar and Tris were both dozing on Daja’s bed as the smith finished the pieces they had decided might serve their crazy man best. Zhegorz himself sat on the floor by the hearth, watching Daja work.

For Zhegorz’s ears, Daja had fashioned a pair of small, living metal pieces that looked like plump beads pierced by small holes. Once they were done, she wrote a series of
magical signs on them under a magnifying lens, using a steel tool with a razor-sharp tip.

“You understand, this will take adjustments,” she told Zhegorz softly. “Depending on what you want them to do, just speak the name for each sign. Then the pieces should let that much more sound into your ears.” She knelt beside Zhegorz and gently fit one of the living metal pieces into his left ear. Watching as it shaped itself to fill the opening precisely, Daja asked, “How is that? Comfortable?”

“It’s warm,” whispered Zhegorz, looking up at her.

“I’m not going to put cold metal in your ears,” Daja said, a little miffed that he would suspect that of her. Once she checked the fit of the first piece, she gently turned Zhegorz’s head and inserted the second. “There,” she whispered, deliberately speaking more quietly to test the ability of the pieces to pick up everyday sound. She recited the first lines of her favorite story. “In the long ago, Trader Koma and his bride, Bookkeeper Oti, saw that they had no savings in their accounts books, no warm memories laid up for the cold times.”