The Will of the Empress (28 page)

“That’s a Trader tale,” Zhegorz said. “It’s about how the Trader and the Bookkeeper created the
Tsaw’ha
and wrote their names in the great books.”

Daja sat back on her heels. “On the way to Dancruan you can tell me how you learned Trader stories,” she told him with a smile. “Not now. I
would
like to get some sleep
tonight.” She reached over to her worktable and carefully picked up her second creation. Tris had sacrificed a pair of spectacles for this piece. Daja had replaced the lenses with circles of living metal hammered as thin as tissue. Once they were fixed over the wire frames, she used her sharppointed tool to write in signs to fix the metal in place and cause it to work as she wished it to.

Gingerly she settled the bridge on Zhegorz’s bony nose and hooked the earpieces in place. I really don’t know about this, she thought, nibbling her lower lip. I’ve made plenty of odd things, that’s certain, but eyeglass lenses that let someone see normally and not magically? Only Tris would even come up with the idea.

“Can you see me?” she asked.

Zhegorz nodded.

“He’d have to be wrapped in steel not to see you, Daja,” said a grumpy and drowsy Tris from the bed. “You’re a big girl and you’re right in front of him. Chime, will you fly around? Zhegorz, can you see Chime?”

Daja watched Zhegorz follow the glass dragon’s flight as Chime dove and soared around the wood carvings of the ceiling. She began to grin, elated. “I begin to think I can cure dry rot with this stuff,” she said, proudly stroking the living metal on the back of her hand.

“Rosethorn would say pride will trip you on the stairs,” Briar said with a yawn. “Come on, Zhegorz. We’ll give those things a
real
trial in the morning.”

Daja got to her feet, wincing as her back complained after hours bent over her work. She was stretching when Zhegorz patted her shoulder. “I’ll tell you what they do in the morning. I’m sorry I ever said no one could see through metal spectacles.” He scuttled out of the room as Daja shook her head over him.

Tris caught her by surprise, swooping in to press a rare kiss on Daja’s cheek. “I know they’ll work,” she said. “Thank you, for him.”

“He’s my crazy man, too,” Daja said as Tris hurried from the room.

The 6th – 8th days of Rose Moon, 1043 K. F.

Clehamat Landreg to
Dancruan, Namorn

T
hey traveled the next day with Ambros, his family and personal servants, their own servants, and ten men-at-arms for company, plowing or no. Even in the short time they had stayed at Landreg, Sandry noticed plenty of changes. The fields now flourished with assorted grain crops, made heartier and more immune to blight by Briar. He had done the same work in the orchards. Workers labored on the restoration of the bridge on the road to Dancruan. “By the time we return, it will be fixed,” Ambros said as Sandry waved to yet another knot of farmers who bowed to her from the fields.

It’s good to see all this progress being made, Sandry thought as they passed two wagonloads of mortar and slates destined for the repairs at Pofkim. Back at the castle, jewels that had belonged to her mother alone and were not part of the Landreg estate now lay in a locked box in Ambros’s study. In that same box were three copies of Sandry’s
handwritten orders to her cousin. He was to sell the gems for any future work required to keep the estate thriving.

As they passed through the estate’s boundary walls, Tris scowled at her sister.

“What?” Sandry demanded, flushing slightly.

Tris drew even with her. “Will you just leave things like that?” she asked quietly. “The estate paying out to you and vulnerable to the empress’s taxes? They’re still in danger from those.”

“I’m going to see an advocate in Dancruan,” Sandry replied, keeping her voice soft. Ambros didn’t know her plans. “I’ll get a letter drawn up reducing my share and allowing Ambros to default on it entirely if taxes and estate work are high that year.” When Tris’s frown deepened, Sandry felt her temper start to boil. She stuck out her chin. “They’re
my
lands, left to
me
by
my mother
,” she whispered hotly. “I’m in the
direct
line of descent. As long as I have breath in my body, I will
preserve
that line of descent and inheritance, all fourteen generations of it! Those lands are mine—no one else’s! Don’t you
dare
lecture me about it, Tris. You don’t know the least thing about being nobleborn. About our ties to our lands and our names. My younger children will have Landreg to ensure their place in the world and the continuance of the Landreg name and bloodlines.”

Tris clenched and unclenched her hands on the reins.
Heat bloomed under her breastbone as her face turned red in fury over the rebuke. She did not see the guards on her far side or the people who rode behind her check and move away as sparks raced over her coiled braids. Sandry got even angrier. Now they know we’re quarreling! she thought. Why can’t Tris ever keep her feelings to herself? Why does the world
always
have to know when she’s vexed?

Chime wasn’t afraid of lightning. It was the blood through which her magic flowed. She glided up to Tris from her seat on Daja’s saddle and landed on Tris’s head. Slowly, gently, the glass dragon sank her claws into Tris’s scalp.

“Ow!” Tris winced: Her concentration broke, and the lightning began to die. With no more new sparks being spawned, Chime began to lick up those that remained.

“No, I’m not noble,” Tris finally told Sandry in a voice that trembled. “And given that you’re turning into one just like the rest of those at court, I’m
glad
I’m not.” She turned her mount and rode back to Zhegorz, Gudruny, and her children, who rode in a luggage cart behind the others.

“Is something wrong?” Ealaga asked Sandry after Tris rode out of earshot.

Sandry shook her head, keeping it down so no one could see the tears of anger that sparkled in her eyes. Tris doesn’t know what being a noble means! Sandry thought. You can’t go about ignoring your family’s long history or the things all your ancestors did to build your name and your lands. It’s like telling them they never counted, if I lose
my holdings as a Landreg, or worse, if I give them up. If I let Berenene take them for some reason. I owe my parents—my ancestors—the continuation of our line, and our name. Mama didn’t surrender the title when she married Papa. What excuse do
I
have?

Once they started to pass other people on the highway, Briar kept an eye on Zhegorz. It took some effort to do it without laughing, at least at first. Zhegorz was a sight, perched atop one of Sandry’s traveling trunks, a well-dressed scarecrow in a good clerk’s sensible gray coat and breeches, wearing what looked like shiny amber spectacles on his eyes. Sandry had even tied his hair back in a horsetail with a ribbon that was the same color as his spectacles. At first passersby got no chance to appreciate his new eyewear. As they came within view, Zhegorz pulled his broad-brimmed hat low over his face and bent down, trying to hide in plain sight. Later, he got more bold as parties overtook and passed them, or parties rode by. He flinched less and watched more.

Finally Briar could no longer bear the suspense. He rode over to the cart. “Zhegorz! The ear things, and the spectacles. Are they working?”

Zhegorz beamed. “I hear only our people’s talk, and only from close by. I see only what is in front of my nose. No flying pictures, no conversations popping into my ears! It’s wonderful—I’m cured! I don’t need the lessons anymore. I’m sane, sane as a bird, sane as a sheep, sane as a—ow!”

While he had been babbling, Tris had ridden up on his other side. She had leaned over and flicked him on the ear with her finger, producing his cry of pain. When he turned to glare at her, Tris asked drily, “And if you lose the spectacles?”

“Or if the ear beads fall out?” Briar wanted to know. “The magic’s still there, old man.” To Gudruny’s children, who had listened to this exchange with open mouths, he explained, “The magic’s
always
still there.”

“The lessons continue,” said Tris. “Take out one of the beads, and practice managing what you hear in just one ear.”

Zhegorz sighed; his shoulders drooped. He looked at Gudruny and shrugged. “It was lovely to dream about, anyway.”

“Dream all you like,” Briar suggested cheerfully. “Just keep practicing.”

The roads were drier than they had been the first time the four mages had come that way. With better footing they made better time, reaching the Landreg town house by midafternoon. That night was spent settling Ambros and his family in for the palace social season, and introducing Gudruny’s children and Zhegorz to Wenoura.

They woke the next morning to learn that the imperial party had arrived at the same time they did and was still settling in. Sandry declared that they couldn’t interrupt the court while it unpacked. Instead, she went out to confer
with an advocate and to shop with Gudruny. Briar, too, went shopping, for
shakkans
and potting soil, placing an order for a very large pottery dish made specifically for several
shakkans.
It was part of the gift he had planned for the empress. Tris remained to work with Zhegorz on meditation and on limiting the number of things he heard and saw. Daja thought to shop as well. When she realized that the only things she wished to buy were expensive gifts for Rizu, who was not related to her in any way, she returned home to do whatever metalwork was in the house.

The next day the four and Gudruny moved to the imperial palace. Footmen raced ahead of them to let the palace staff know they had arrived. More footmen took charge of their horses and their belongings, vanishing down a side road with them. Briar was prepared to fight over the handling of his own
shakkan
and the ones he’d bought for the empress, but when two of the footmen showed themselves adept at handling both plants and crockery, he had let them take over.

A very superior footman led them to the first story in the northwest wing. He bowed Sandry into one suite near the intersection with the palace’s north wing, and Tris into the other. With a sugary smile he led Daja to a suite halfway down the same hall. Briar he showed to rooms at the very end that looked out over the formal flower gardens.

Tris, Daja, and Briar soon discovered they had also been assigned maids to look after them. “At least they don’t
sleep
in our rooms,” Tris grumbled when they met at mid-hall to compare situations.

“You don’t have to worry about her snooping in your mage kit, unless you want her to brush your hair,” retorted Briar.

Tris grimaced. “Please! I can brush my own hair, thank you all the same!” She smiled. “And it would be a fatal exercise if anyone else tried,” she admitted slyly. “I need special brushes and combs to manage it, myself.”

“I just told mine that she’d best tell me now where her family is, so if she meddles with my kit, I know where to send the body,” remarked Daja. “She squeaked. I think my kit’s safe.”

Sandry would have argued at the imposition of two more maids and two footmen to wait upon her, but Gudruny gently urged her young mistress to see the dresses she’d laid out for the welcoming party that night. Once Sandry was in the bedroom inspecting the clothes, Gudruny closed the door.

“Please, my lady, they’re already sneering at me and saying I can’t be very good, if I haven’t taught you what’s due to your station,” she explained. “With more servants to direct, I grow more important in the servants’ areas. Then they’ll
all
serve us as they should. It may sound like little things to you, but one of those little things is your bath water. We’d both like it to be hot when it gets here. Servants are far more snobbish than nobles.”

Sandry gazed at her sidelong. Gudruny got nervous if
Sandry looked her in the eyes: It was yet another of the many things that meant trouble between nobles and commoners in Namorn. “This isn’t a story you’re telling me?”

Gudruny shook her head. “I tried to warn you back home, but it was all I could do to get you to take
my
service,” she reminded Sandry. “You’re going back south soon enough. Surely you can afford to play by their rules until then.”

Sandry slumped. “Very well, Gudruny. They can stay. Happy?” She was trying to decide between a blush pink overgown or a pale blue one when she realized that Gudruny looked uncomfortable. “What?” Sandry wanted to know.

“Well, begging my lady’s pardon, but there’s the matter of the hairdresser,” Gudruny explained. “He’s agreed to fit you in after midday. He dresses most of the ladies-in-waiting’s hair, and we were lucky that he agreed to see you. I believe the empress herself had a word with him.”

With a loud groan, Sandry collapsed onto a chair.

Tris waited until after her new maid had taken away the remains of her midday to explore her new chambers thoroughly. Much to her surprise, Tris noticed the history of Namorn she had found that first day in the palace was placed beside her bed. In fact, someone had taken the small blue-and-gold dressing room that Tris would never use and turned it into a library, stuffed with books on Namornese history, wildlife, crafts, religions, magic, and languages. Fascinated, Tris plopped into an armchair and began to
read as Chime soared around the much-carved and painted chambers, exploring moldings and hanging lamps. She had just returned to curl up on Tris’s lap when someone knocked on the door.

Tris opened it to find Ishabal there. “I thought we might talk,” the older mage said. “May I enter?”

Tris let the imperial mage in. Closing the door, she asked, “Were you the one who picked out the books?”

“I directed one of the imperial librarians to select what might interest a learned stranger,” Ishabal replied. “I take it she chose well?”

“Please be seated,” Tris replied instead of answering the question. She returned to her own chair as Ishabal took the seat.

“What was found for you in no way represents the total of books on those subjects,” Ishabal pointed out. “The imperial libraries are vast. If you were to choose to serve Her Imperial Majesty, you would have the key to such libraries. Moreover, you would have the wealth to create a proper library of your own.”

If Tris was greedy for anything, it was books. Her sisters and brother had learned early on that her personal books were not to be touched without permission, and handled carefully with it. For a moment she had a vision of a two-story room with books on shelves that reached to the ceiling, all filled with volumes on anything that did or might interest her. It’s certainly possible, she mused. I doubt
Berenene is stingy with her mages—not the way Quenaill and Ishabal dress. Simple, but elegant, and costly.

“Her Imperial Majesty wishes to employ me as a war mage.” Tris said it flatly. She had been approached with offers of work before, all of them with the same price attached. Why do they always assume a lightning mage wants to kill people? she wondered tiredly.

“Actually, she would like to offer you employment as anything you choose,” replied Ishabal smoothly. “On the Syth, the ability to banish storms is always in great demand. Moreover, we have reports that you have been able to create rain—”

“Not create it,” Tris interrupted. “I don’t
create
weather. I draw it from someplace else.”

“Very well. The empire is vast, as your books will tell you. It is always raining somewhere,” Ishabal said evenly. “You could draw rain to those places who need it. You could give winds to becalmed ships here and on our coast on the Endless Sea. Your value to the imperial crown is endless, Tris. Her Imperial Majesty is a gracious employer who rewards good service, and she does not overwork her mages. You would have time for your own projects.”

Tris removed her spectacles and rubbed the dent they always left in the top of her long nose. Even if they don’t say they want war magic, they usually do, she thought. If they know you can do it, they always end up wanting it. I certainly got asked for it often enough, traveling with Niko. Even
when they start out nicely, it always comes down to “Kill people for me.”

“I am flattered, of course,” she replied, her voice quiet and polite. Three years earlier she might have been cruder, but she had learned a few things. Nowadays she always thought before she spoke in these situations. “Deeply flattered. Might I have time to consider this?”