The Will of the Empress (33 page)

The man nodded. Berenene got to her feet. As the dancers stopped and the conversation came to a halt, she smiled. “Amuse yourselves, friends. Imperial business calls me away, but there is no reason for you to interrupt your evening.” She left by the rear entrance rather than have her departure slowed by farewells. “Did you read this?” she asked Ishabal as she strode along, the older woman at her side and Quen rushing to keep up.

“I would not presume,” Ishabal replied stiffly.

Berenene slowed down and handed over Sandry’s note. Ishabal read it, twice, closed her eyes briefly as if in prayer, then passed it to Quen. “Who would be fool enough to assault a noblewoman in the imperial palace?” Quen wanted to know. “And how would such an idiot think he could do it and escape?”

“We’ll learn soon enough,” retorted Berenene, stopping to collect herself. “After which I shall decide what to do with that fool, and with anyone idiot enough to assist him. But first, I would like the two of you to be ready. I would hate to learn the hard way that their teachers had underestimated our guests’ control over themselves when they granted them their medallions so young.”

Taking a breath, Berenene smoothed her gold skirts.
Then, as leisurely as if she walked in her gardens, she led her mages to her private audience chamber.

A guardsman stood outside. Years of service kept his face blank, though confusion showed in his eyes: Most visitors to the private audience chamber arrived during the day. When the empress stopped in front of him, he bowed and held the door open for her and her companions.

The three young mages seated there got to their feet as Berenene came in. All three, including Sandry, wore their medallions outside their clothes. Tris looked disheveled, two fat, kinked hanks of hair hanging loose from her usual netted bundle. Her face was pale and glistening with sweat, but her gray eyes were ice cold. The glass dragon sat on her shoulder with one paw in her hair, like a guardian statue.

Briar, too, was sweating. His face was unreadable as he looked at the empress.

Ishabal’s description of Sandrilene’s looks was about right. Sandry’s hair was a tumbled mess, tangled and knotted. Her clothes at least were unrumpled, a testament to her power over thread, but her hands and feet were masses of rag bandages. Her face was dust-streaked and bruised. The look in her cornflower blue eyes was pure steel.

“My dearest Sandrilene,” the empress said, striding toward her with her hands out. “Whatever happened to you?”

Sandry’s eyes caught and held hers. “Finlach fer Hurich happened to me,” she said, her voice an alien croak. “Fin,
and that disgusting kidnap custom you let thrive in this country.” She began to cough, wincing as she did. Tears of pain streamed down her face. She dashed them away angrily.

Berenene halted and blinked at the girl. “What?” she asked, baffled. “Fin—Finlach—is in the ballroom at this moment.” Her brain worked swiftly, as it always did in a crisis. As she had trained it to. “What happened to your voice?”

“Screaming does that to a person,” Briar said coldly. “May I go to my quarters to get something for her throat?”

“Quen, see to it, please,” Berenene ordered.

As Quenaill walked over to Sandry, the girl backed away. Briar went to stand next to him. “Be very careful with what you do,” Briar said quietly. “Our patience is just about gone.”

“Understood,” Quen replied. “It’s just a mild healing spell,
Clehame.
” He leaned forward to place one broad palm on Sandry’s grimy throat. She flinched, then closed her eyes. After a moment, Quen drew away from her.

Am I to understand Finlach did this
in my own palace?
Berenene wondered, ice closing around her heart. How? Not alone, surely. And how did he think he might escape?

She selected a chair, rather than the throne, and settled onto it. “I think I will understand your meaning so much better if you explain, Sandrilene,” she said coolly. “Sit, everyone, please. If you have a grievance, I am certain it can be resolved.”

“As I am certain,” repeated Sandry, taking a chair. Her
voice was rough, but understandable. “Tris, please, sit before you fall down.”

“I’m not some dainty flower, worn out by my own magic,” retorted Tris. “I could lower us to the foot of the cliffs again right now, if you like. Though speaking of the cliffs…” She took a chair and drew a long braid from its place in the coil.

Berenene saw that Ishabal’s attention was locked on the redhead. From a belt pouch the older woman drew a rope of silk twined with an assortment of powerful charms, each keyed to different protective spells. Her fingers were twined around one charm that the empress knew would throw a magical prison around Tris.

That’s good, Berenene thought. Someone needs to watch
Viymese
Chandler. “Won’t you sit,
Viynain
Moss?” Berenene asked with a smile.

His expression didn’t change. “I’ll stand, thank you, Your Imperial Majesty,” he replied politely. He stayed where he was, legs planted, hands clasped before him, his eyes somber. For a moment Berenene feared that she had lost this young man’s regard, or even worse, his friendship. She brushed the idea aside. Of far more importance was learning who had possessed the effrontery to attempt to kidnap her kinswoman in her palace.

“Finlach fer Hurich came to escort me to the ball,” Sandry told the three Namornese, her voice cold and steady. “Instead, he led me down a back passage, claiming I was to
stand beside Your Imperial Majesty as you entered the room from the rear.”

“Did anyone see you with Fin?” asked Quenaill.

Berenene shot him a glare for interrupting, but Sandry was shaking her head. “Not after we turned away from the main corridors. I didn’t see anyone else. When we turned a corner back there, someone placed a cloth over my face. It was soaked in a potion that made me unconscious. I woke up in a
box.
” Her voice trembled slightly. She got it under control. “The inside was filled with spells to cripple a thread mage. Fin was outside. He said his uncle had helped him. He said he was taking me out to a house with the same spells on it. And he said I would leave only when I signed the marriage contract and put my lip print on it in blood, so a mage could use it against me if I tried to break it. He seemed to think you would let him get away with it, Cousin, since you admire bold young men so. Everyone knows you want me to stay in Namorn. And you expect women to escape like you did. Of course, I doubt that you were put in a box.” The huskiness in her voice thickened. “I doubt that the head of the Namornese Mages’ Society put spells on you and guaranteed to keep them there until you signed the contract. It would have been harder to escape under those circumstances, don’t you think?”

“Then how did you escape?” Berenene asked coolly. The beginnings of a headache pounded in her temples.

“I found her,” Briar said flatly.

“But how?” insisted Berenene. What she really wanted to know was, Did you use that magical connection my spies told me was closed? She could not ask that, of course. They trusted her little as it was. Adults understood that people spied on one another, but these young people were idealists, not realists. She doubted that they would understand that everyone spied on everyone who might be important.

“I…forget,” Briar said coldly. “I have a terrible memory when it comes to secrets I don’t wish to tell.”

Berenene glanced at Tris. The redhead had undone a third of the braid she had pulled from her hairstyle. Now Tris ran her fingers through the loose hairs over and over, her attention locked on them.

“She’s working magic,” Ishabal said. “I cannot tell what kind, but she is cloaked in power.”

“Then stop her,” ordered Berenene.

Tris looked up, gray eyes glinting through her loose tresses. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Tris, you’ll never be a success as a diplomat,” announced Briar. “You may as well put that right out of your mind.” He turned his own bright green eyes on Ishabal and Berenene. “We all swear on our medallions, this isn’t something that would affect Your Imperial Majesty in any way,” he said, his voice as bland as cream. “In fact, Tris here is actually doing you and your devoted servants a favor.”

“And if they stop me now, I can’t promise the cliff under the palace wall won’t drop into the Syth,” muttered Tris.

“Pay her no mind,” Briar continued as Sandry glared at Tris. “It’s not a threat she’s making, just a warning. You know how it is with mages and interruptions. Anyway, I suppose you didn’t know it, or you’d have seen for yourself, but your palace has rats. Big ones. Doesn’t it,
Clehame
fa Landreg?”

“Big ones,” Sandry replied. “I don’t know how she missed them, but anything is possible.”

“She’s an empress,” Briar told her, his tone pure conciliation. “You can’t expect her to know every rathole that opens up.” To the empress and her mages, he explained: “This one is a real beauty. It opens in a northeast wing of the palace—I don’t think anyone’s dusted in there in months. And it tunnels all the way down through the cliff. Through solid stone, even under the curtain wall, can you believe it? Down at the bottom, it opens onto a cove of the Syth.”

Berenene’s veins filled with ice. The Julih Tunnel, she realized, horrified. How in Vrohain’s name did Fin—his uncle. Notalos dung-grubbing fer Hurich. The Mages’ Society is said to have the plans of the palace from its first construction—and I shall have his skin.

Briar continued, “Energetic little
nalizes
, rats, aren’t they? To dig all that way. We stumbled on their hole purely by chance. Well, Sandry didn’t stumble
entirely
by chance. So Tris here got all alarmed, because she hates rats, so she’s stopping up that hole at the foot of the cliff. She’s getting the lake to help. Some of the stones she’s using are pretty big.”

Tris looked up, her face relaxed and at ease. “It really is in your interest, Your Imperial Majesty. Who could sleep, knowing rats could get in at will? With that rathole closed, Your Imperial Majesty may sleep easily.”

Berenene clenched her hands against her skirts. If the wench is doing what she claimed to do, she is trying to close the secret exit that saved my life in that assassination attempt years ago. Of course, it’s no good to me now if
Viynain
fer Hurich has decided he need not obey his vow to keep those plans secret. “Can she do it?” she asked Ishabal. There were magical wards on the tunnel.

Ishabal watched Tris for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. “She
is
doing it.” She asked Tris, “What if anyone is in the chamber at the base of the cliff?”

“I won’t weep a tear if they drown,” Sandry snapped, her voice rough. “But they could always climb. Tris is just stopping up the exit. You ought to put maids with brooms at the other end of the hole, to beat the rats when they come out.”

The skin at the back of Berenene’s neck crawled. She sighed lightly, as if she’d asked for a glass of wine only to be told there was no more. One of the hardest parts of being imperial was learning when to back off from a fight. “Quen, be a dear and send a message to the captain of my guard. Harm no one who comes out, please. I wish to have anyone who appears questioned.” Quen bowed and went to give the message to the guard at the door. As he did so, the
empress said, “Please continue, Trisana. Ishabal will watch all that you do.” Berenene looked at Sandry once more. “So. Briar found you in a way he does not remember.”

“Tris joined us,” said Briar, his eyes cold. “We got Sandry out of the crate.”

Berenene shook her head as Quen returned to them. “Cousin, what can I say?” she asked helplessly. “Finlach has committed a serious offense against you, without my knowledge or approval.” Her voice hardened despite her struggle for an appearance of calm. “He forgot his duty to me. I assure you, he will be arrested and punished. You will see how quickly justice is done here.”

“Cousin, justice should be done
very
quickly,” Sandry replied, her face hard. “We are returning to Emelan as soon as we can pack.”

Isha flinched despite her years at court. Quen halted rather than come closer. Slowly, Berenene replied, trying to think, “But the summer is only half done.”

“I don’t want to see how I will feel after an entire summer,” Sandry retorted. “That a
custom
that permits such things against the women in this realm continues under a monarch who is female herself—”

“I am not the empress of weaklings,” said Berenene. “A strong woman would find a way to escape, as I did. As you have. They have families to help them, if their families are strong.”

Sandry shook her head. Her hands trembled as they lay folded in her lap. “Not all women or families are strong in the same way. They are entitled to your protection. I will not remain in a country that withholds that protection. And it’s been made clear to me that I cannot even count myself safe in your own palace, Cousin.”

Berenene felt as if the chit had slapped her. “You dare…,” she began to say, furious, then met Sandry’s eyes. Of course she dares, thought Berenene. And she is right. I was so secure in my power that I did not realize spirited young animals, like my courtiers, are forever testing the leash and the rein. I relaxed my vigilance and she was offered an intolerable insult. The custom is supposed to apply only to women taken in the open, not when they are under the protection of their liege lords. In shattering my protection, Fin destroyed my credit with every parent who entrusts an unmarried daughter to my care.

She smoothed her skirts. “You are hurt and recovering from a bad fright,” she said in her most soothing voice. “In the morning, you will feel differently. Would you really turn your back on all Namorn has to offer?” She met Briar’s eyes when she said this.

It was Briar who answered. “If this is what Namorn offers, yes. It is only as a courtesy to you that I don’t address Fin myself. It’s
my
sister he tried to kidnap, and our magic is plenty thicker than blood. Or maybe I should just give
him to Sandry when he
doesn’t
have drugs and spells to make him the big man.” His voice was heavy with contempt. “You think a strong woman can always beat this? I call it rape, in any country.”