The Will of the Empress (40 page)

“Just like a man, not to offer a solution!” scolded a woman—obviously the innkeeper’s wife—as she thrust her way through the crowd. Reaching Sandry’s fence of guards, she curtsied. “
Clehame
, forgive my silly clunch of a husband. He’s forgot the Canyon Inn. It’s just ten miles
down Deepdene Road.” She pointed to a road that led west. “Truly, it’s far better for a refined young lady and her household. ’Tis small, quiet, not well-known, but well-kept. My sister-in-law owns it. They’ve some guests now, but not enough to fill the house. My sister-in-law is not so good a cook as I am, but no one grumbles about her fare.”

Daja leaned on her staff and looked the woman over. “If this place is such a gem, why isn’t it full?”

“It’s ten miles off, for one,” said the innkeeper, clearly relieved his wife had stepped in. “And it’s more to the noble style and hunters’ style. They’re full when hunt season begins, sure enough, and with the fur traders in the winter, but less so this time of year.”

Sandry had borne enough. Her head was killing her. “Let’s go,” she ordered her companions. “The sooner I lie down, the better.”

One of the guards flipped coins to the innkeeper and his wife. Briar and half the guards followed Sandry, while Daja muttered for Zhegorz to be silent. He obeyed only briefly. Sandry was barely a mile down the smaller road when he cried, “Silks, brocades, swords—I see them on the wind!”

“Because Sandry and her guards are upwind of you, Zhegorz,” Daja told him. “Are you going to behave, or will I have to make you take your drops?”

“I said I’d watch over you,” Zhegorz informed her with dignity. “You should listen when I’m watching over you.”

Daja looked at Gudruny. “Is this what having children is like?”

The maid sighed. “Very like.”

“Hush, or take drops,” Daja ordered Zhegorz. “I don’t care which.”

Zhegorz hushed, falling back to the rear where he could ride with the more sympathetic Briar.

When they reached the Canyon Inn, Daja was relieved to find a very different situation from the last inn. The only other guests were four soldiers on leave from the army, which meant there were rooms for everyone but Sandry’s guards in the main house. Her guards were happy to make camp outside, on the nearby riverbank. The innkeeper immediately took their party over, escorting Sandry to a cool room, clean sheets, water to wash herself with, and quiet. As the others relaxed, Daja lingered in the common room to talk to their fellow guests.

“It’s not as expensive as it is later in the year,” one of the men explained. “And honestly,
Ravvikki,
my friends and I are glad for the quiet.”

One of the others nodded. “We’re here to fish, explore the river, and forget there ever was a place called the Sea of Grass. That was our last posting. We’re on leave, thank the gods.”

“You’ve come a long way, then,” Daja remarked.

“Thousands of miles, as fast as possible,” one man said reverently, to the rueful laughter of his companions. “And
now we’re done. That Yanjingyi emperor is a cruel, hard fellow. We’re hoping our next post is a safe little soldier box in maybe Dancruan.”

“Talk to my brother Briar when he comes down from his nap,” Daja suggested as she got to her feet. “You can trade curses on the emperor’s name. He just got back from Gyongxe this spring.”

The men traded looks. “Saw some fighting there, did he?” the first one to speak asked. “He’s a busy fellow, that emperor. But we may not be around this afternoon.” He coughed into his fist. “We were thinking of riding off to the horse fair this evening for a spot of entertainment.”

“It’s odd,” Daja told Briar later, when he came downstairs. By then, the men were long gone. “They didn’t seem like they were going much of anywhere.” She stretched. “I’m going to practice my staff. Care to swap a few blows?”

Briar grimaced. “When there’s a river and greenery practically on our doorstep, and the little ones sound asleep, so they won’t trail me everywhere? Thanks, no. Go see if one of our guards wants to get his fingers cracked.”

Briar’s wish for solitude was meant to go unfulfilled. He was inspecting a small patch of ferns, wondering if he could get them home if he used one of the small pots in his packs, when Zhegorz found him. The older man knelt abruptly, missing the ferns by an inch.

“You almost killed a plant, Zhegorz. Lakik’s teeth, you got to use your eyes for something other than visions,” Briar
said patiently, making sure the moss under Zhegorz’s bony knees was not damaged. “If you won’t watch where you’re stepping or kneeling or whatever, you can’t be following me around.”

“I promised Tris I would look after everyone, but no one will listen,” Zhegorz muttered. “How can I make you listen when the air is full of plots and the wind hung with sights of plotters?”

“Because you keep saying the same thing, and you say it about everyone, old man,” Briar told him. Dealing with Zhegorz required the same kind of patience that dealing with acorns on the ground demanded. All of them clamored to sprout and put down roots, and they didn’t understand that not all of them could. It always took time to get through to them. “You’ve got to concentrate harder and give us more details. And you’ve got to learn to tell what’s a real danger from what’s always there. Imperial soldiers are always there—the empire’s lousy with them, like the fellows Daja was talking to.”

“They don’t talk imperial,” Zhegorz mumbled.

“
Belbun
dung,” Briar said, half-listening. “Green Man bless us,
you’re
a long way from home.” The tree beside the one that sheltered the ferns was stocky for a tree, with leaves marked by distinctively silvery undersides. “Zhegorz, have a look. This is a Gyongxe sorbus. Someone had to plant this here. It’s not natural to Namorn, though I suppose it would do all right. Soil’s a little rich for you, though, girl.”

“They don’t talk imperial,” Zhegorz insisted.

“They’re trees, they don’t talk at all,” Briar replied. “Well, not so
you’d
hear…”

“Those men. They talked about ‘my lord,’ and rabbits in traps, and ‘beats catching a flogging for tarnished brass.’”

“They’re imperial soldiers on leave, and their troops are commanded by nobles,” Briar insisted, sending his power into the sorbus to fortify it against any hazards that might plague a foreigner in Namorn. “And they’re here to hunt. I wouldn’t talk imperial, either, if I was on leave after fighting Yanjing. Stop fussing.”

“They talked about
weddings
,” Zhegorz insisted.

“Men on leave get married. If you don’t have anything more serious, go soak your head in the river,” Briar snapped. “I mean it, Zhegorz. Tris just told you to come with us so you wouldn’t lurk about Landreg House giving her the fidgets. Once they’ve fixed you up at Winding Circle, you’ll be able to manage better. Now scat! And put your spectacles and both ear beads back on!”

Without a word, Zhegorz got to his feet and returned to the inn. Watching him go, Briar felt a rare twinge of conscience. He kicked that out, too. I’ll make it up to him later, he promised himself. But truthfully, sometimes a fellow needs time alone with green things. They won’t talk me half to death.

Tired of people, he returned to the inn for his
shakkan.
With it in his hands, he went out onto the riverbank and
settled between the roots of an immense willow. There he spent the afternoon, the
shakkan
at his side, soaking in the feel of all that green life around him.

While Briar relaxed, Daja offered to take Gudruny’s children off her hands for a while. Gudruny accepted with gratitude. Once they were awake, Daja took them on a hike along the canyon that opened to the rear of the inn, where she could sense some metal veins in the rock walls. Sandry and Gudruny dozed and read. Zhegorz sulked in the stable, then paced outside the inn, restless under the threat of his calming drops from Sandry.

Everyone ate a quiet supper. Briar’s impulse to apologize to Zhegorz died under the older man’s glare during supper. He was happy to watch Zhegorz climb the stairs to go to bed early. Briar wasn’t sure he could keep his temper if Zhegorz continued to stare at him as if Briar had just murdered his firstborn. Instead, Briar listened to Sandry tell Gudruny’s children a bedtime story. Once they had gone upstairs, he helped Sandry straighten her embroidery silks. Despite the naps nearly everyone had taken, all of them were yawning not long after twilight had faded. They soon went to bed. Even the staff vanished. When Briar got up to close the front door, he saw that the guards were asleep around their fire. He had planned to set his
shakkan
back with the packs before he turned in, but something made him change his mind. After trying to think, and
nearly splitting his jaws as he yawned, Briar had simply carried the old pine upstairs.

Zhegorz was already sound asleep in the other bed, a mild buzz of a snore issuing from his lips. Grateful not to have to have to talk to him, Briar set the
shakkan
on the floor and took off his clothes. Clad only in his loincloth, he crawled under the covers.

Given all the yawning he had done, he had thought he would be asleep the moment he put his head down. Instead, he felt imprisoned by his clean cotton sheets. His brain felt as if it were weighed down by clouds; his nose was stuffy. The feeling was one he knew, one his tired brain associated with blood and weapons in the night. Briar half-heard the roar of Yanjingyi rockets overhead and the shriek of dying people all around. He fought the clouds, turning his fingers to brambles to claw his way out of them. The clouds thickened. Desperate, he made his fingers into hooked thorns and slashed through layers of heavy mist.

The clouds parted slightly. Briar thrust a vine of power out through the opening, groping blindly for help with the weight that made it hard for him to breathe or move. He fumbled and reached—and touched his
shakkan.
White fire blazed, burning the clouds away in a heartbeat. Briar took deep breaths of clean air and woke up.

For a moment he thought he lay in a Gyongxe temple. The scent of sandalwood and patchouli was heavy in his
nose; the ghosts of warning gongs thudded in his ears. When he put his feet on the floor, however, they met thin carpet, not stone. The smells faded in his nose; straining, he heard no war gongs. He wasn’t in Gyongxe. He was in a Namornese room. The two had only one thing in common: Someone very powerful was trying to keep him asleep.

He used the water pitcher to fill his washbasin—tricky work when his hands shook so badly. Then he ducked his face in the basin and splashed water on the back of his head, cleaning off some of the nightmare sweat. They’re powerful, whoever they are, but they ain’t the Yanjingyi emperor’s mages, he thought grimly. He checked the bond that linked him with Sandry. She was missing.

Not again! he thought angrily. Don’t these clod-headed bleaters ever give up?

He looked over at Zhegorz. Normally their scarecrow, less of a scarecrow after some weeks of decent meals, would have been up after the noise Briar had made. He slept very lightly, but not tonight. Briar shook him with no result.

Sorry, old man, he silently told the sleeping mage. You were right all along.

Briar grabbed his mage kit, yanked open the door, and raced down the hall to Sandry’s room. Gudruny and the children were sound asleep on pallets on the floor. Sandry was not in the empty bed. Instead, he saw a complex sign, written in pure magic, on his friend’s mattress. Briar had
never seen anything like it. He tried to inspect the curls and twists inside the thing, only to find he was swaying on his feet, sleep already blurring his mind.

This sign felt different, more powerful, from the fog of sleep that had wrapped him around beginning in the common room. Briar dug in his kit until he produced the slender vial whose contents he had labeled
wake the dead.
Once he removed the cork, he quickly stuck the vial under his nose and took a breath. For a moment his nose and brain felt as if they might well be on fire. He yanked the bottle away and recorked it, then wiped his streaming eyes and took a second look at the design. It tugged at him, urging sleep, so he hung on to the bottle of scent. Bending down to risk a closer look, he saw the design was done in oil. Moreover, it bled along the threads of the sheet, uncontained.

Done like that, it wouldn’t last very long, he realized. Which means I’m not looking at the original spell. He stripped away the sheets to reveal the mattress. There, too, the design had bled up and through. Briar shoved the mattress aside. On the slats that kept it up he found the original spell. It was done on parchment in oils, and kept within the bounds of the parchment by a circle drawn in ink. Briar turned the parchment over: The mage who had made it had glued spelled silk onto the back and had written signs to enclose on that, to keep the spell from leaking down.

Musta been under the mattress for hours, to bleed up
through everything, Briar decided. The energy in the oils had to move somewhere. The only way the mage that made the spell left it to go was up.

He couldn’t say how he knew the mage was a man, but he did. Moreover, the fiery brightness of the original spell and its complexity, even if he didn’t know how it was made, told him that they faced a very powerful mage, even a great mage. It was as bright as any work done by the four’s teachers.

To keep her asleep longer and deeper than the spell on us, I bet, thought Briar, recognizing some of the signs written into the original spell. To keep her out for days, not a day. And it woulda seeped into her power slow, so she’d never feel it coming over her. She’d be halfway across Namorn before she’d wake.

As soon as we get the rest of the household up and on her trail, we’ll destroy this and wake her up. Won’t that be a fine surprise for whoever’s got her? He smiled thinly and placed the parchment on the frame of the bed. Mage kit in hand, he went to Daja’s room. She slept as soundly as the others. Once more, Briar uncorked his wake-up potion and put the vial under her nose. She gasped, choked, and opened her eyes. Coughing, she swung a fist out to clip Briar’s head. Expecting it—the potion had that effect on many people—he dodged the blow.