The Will of the Empress (42 page)

Threads shot from the mages’ collars and jackets, darting into their wearers’ open mouths. Their upper garments continued to unravel into their mouths until they couldn’t even close their jaws. Sandry relented at the last minute, making sure that the thread inside their mouths simply wove itself into a tight ball rather than choke them. It then attached itself to a strap wound around the mages’ heads. She didn’t want to kill them. She just wanted them silent and out of her way. A hard gag would do the task.

Sandry heard a thud. Shan was fighting to get to the knife in his belt. A twist of her will sent his sleeves down over his hands and into the fabric of his breeches, weaving them together.

Sandry gathered up a blanket of her power and flung it over them all. It separated as it draped over each person, trickling down into that man’s or that woman’s clothes. Threads in their garments broke free and linked themselves together. With her magic to shape them, the fibers sped as garments unraveled and rewove. She was so angry that her will did not falter once, even when the people on the ground began to spin in place. Seeing that her cocoons were coming along nicely, Sandry looked for appropriate places to display them.

I have to be careful with the trees, she reminded herself.
I don’t want a bough to drop someone on the head. And Briar would never forgive me if I hurt a tree. But I do want to make them the laughingstock of the empire when I’m done.

She chose her trees, and her display place for Shan, then checked the progress of her spinning. The two mages were done first, their shoulders and heads bare, the rest of them completely embraced in thread. Sandry called the man’s cocoon to her first, holding out her hand for the rope that trailed below his feet. Once she had it in her grip, she threw it at a solid oak’s branch. It whirled up and over the bough, drawing its human burden up until the man dangled several feet above the ground. She directed the rope to wind itself around the branch five times. Then she rewove the loose end into the human cocoon. The weavings and the cocoon itself were more than strong enough to hold the gagged mage until help should come. She appraised her work, hands on hips, testing it to make sure there were no fatal weaknesses in her work. Satisfied, she turned to do the same with Shan’s remaining companions. All along they tried to fight, as Shan did, but their efforts were useless. She had practiced her craft hard and long: They were gagged before they even knew to make a sound, secured before they understood she was awake. By the time Shan and his followers understood they were cocooned so tightly they could neither squeak nor move.

Shan himself she placed on a large, table-like rock near
the spot where the horses were picketed. Using her power, she commanded the rope that ended in his cocoon to drag him onto the rock. As he bumped across the grass, she rewove three saddle blankets to make a second rope. Gently she placed one end on Shan’s chest as he cursed her to Blaze-Ice Bay and back—she had left his mouth and head uncovered—then gave both ropes their orders. They wove themselves together and went flying, as if they ran on invisible shuttles around the rock.

When she finished, Sandry patted Shan’s chest. “You can tell all Namorn this is what happens when I’m vexed,” she informed him softly.

“Little
bitch,
” he snapped.

Sandry looked him over soberly. “If you had understood that earlier, we could have avoided this unpleasantness,” she replied.

Ignoring his curses, she helped herself to apples, bread, and water from someone’s supplies.
I’m coming back
, she told Daja and Briar, who sent her a wave of relief in answer. She took Shan’s horse. The gelding was a fine animal that deserved a better master than Shan. Mounting it, she realized she was still wearing her nightgown. Cursing Shan for the indignity, she hauled the thin garment up around her thighs to get her feet in the stirrups and her behind, where it should be.

It’s not how
I
envisioned the kidnapped woman’s return after triumphing over her would-be captors, she thought
angrily. Why is the real thing always so much more ordinary than the vision?

She had no fear she would be lost. The tie that bound her to Briar and Daja stretched, thickly silver, down the road. There was one last thing to do before she followed it, however.

She urged the gelding over to Shan, whose face was purple with rage and helplessness. “Now you know,” she said hotly. “When I say I don’t like you, it
really
means
I don’t like you
!”

The 4th – 11th days of Mead, 1043 K. F.

The imperial hunting lodge, the Carakathy Mountains to the Olart border crossing, the Imperial Highway South, Namorn

The empress of Namorn and her escort were always given the right-of-way on the roads. They passed Deepdene Road not long after Sandry and her party turned down it in search of the Canyon Inn. By the time Sandry had escaped Shan’s trap, recovered, and returned to the road for two days, Berenene had taken up residence in the imperial hunting lodge near the Olart border.

With the empress came imperial business, including her spies’ reports. Reading them, Ishabal learned that Quen had been left in a cage of wire and thorns, while the imperial
Master of the Hunt had been found, with his companions, trapped in thread cocoons. She took these reports to Berenene, who had been a difficult companion since they had left Dancruan.

“So the children have power,” the empress snapped, tossing the papers to the floor. “We knew that. Do you know what the gossips will make of this? The wench spurned
two
of my favorites—never mind that Quen is no longer a favorite and he wasn’t trying to marry her. That’s what they’ll say. Two! And they’ll whisper that perhaps my favorites are not so devoted to the old woman as they pretend to be!”

“Imperial Majesty,
I
am old,” replied Isha gently. “
You
are in your prime.”

“I’m sure the Yanjingyi emperor will see it just that way!” retorted Berenene. “No, Isha. I cannot afford even the
appearance
of weakness. You of all people know that. When they get to the border, I want you to raise its defenses against them.”

Isha gathered up the reports, trying to think of a tactful way to speak her thoughts. She could think of none. “Imperial Majesty, what if the borders fail?”

Berenene’s eyes bulged.
“What?”

“We must consider the possibility,” Isha went on. “Two of these children bested Quen, who has spent six years defending Your Imperial Majesty with his power. He has been tested by great mages and succeeded, but a girl and a
boy wrapped him up in a neat bundle. Lady Sandrilene did the same with
seven people
, two of them mages. Not great mages, but good ones. The possibility of failure must be considered.”

“If you approach it with that attitude, you open the door to failure,” snapped the empress.

Ishabal sighed. “All of our work in recent years has gone to the barriers in the southeast and the east, where our greatest enemies are. We have had neither the funds nor the mages to reinforce everything. I know that, given time and preparation, Quen and I could walk through the protection wall at Olart. We must ask ourselves if these three young people might now manage it as well. Majesty,
Quen could not break out of the cage Briar and Daja made without a mage’s help.
” Isha watched nervously as Berenene took a chair and sat in it. Calmly she continued: “You are angry because you fear you’ll be seen as weak, Majesty, but it need not be so. All we need do is announce that your cousin and her friends are returning home. It is earlier than planned, to be sure, but stories can be spread that our court is far too sophisticated for them! There are still ways to make it seem as if they fled with their tails between their legs.” She took a deep breath. “But if you raise the border against them, and they break through, that will be far worse than stories that say they fled our men. All of your neighbors will know you tried to keep them, and failed. You will have exposed a weakness.”

“I do not believe the border will fail,” Berenene said flatly, her mouth a hard, tight line.

Isha shrugged. “Nor do I, but I must examine possibilities and damage if you will not. The chance of failure
must be considered.
I beg you, let them go.”

“I will not be defied.” The refusal was a quick one, but she had not ordered Isha out of her sight. There was an opening in the empress’s thinking.

Isha rushed through it. “Then let me go, alone, to do it,” she said. “You remain here. If they fail to pass the wall, I shall bring them here to you. If I fail to hold the wall against them, you can say I am weary from travel and the wall needs work. It has gone neglected and now it will be seen to. No one will know this was in any way a matter in which you were involved. They will speculate, no doubt, but they will not prove.”

Berenene looked down in thought at her perfectly cared for hands.

Isha pressed. “You have always said it is far better to appear innocent while others take the blame.”

Berenene rubbed her temples. “You ask me to surrender my pride.”

Isha bowed her head. “Only when it is a liability, Imperial Majesty.”

“You are willing to take the blame if the border fails.”

“If
this
traditionally safe border fails,” corrected Isha. “If this seldom renewed border fails. If older, weary me fails
against three powerful young things who just tied my best assistant in a knot.”

Isha knew that remote look on Berenene’s face as the empress smoothed her fingers over her sleeve. She was always glad to see it, because it meant that her mistress was turning a thousand thoughts over in her mind, seeing a multitude of outcomes and weighing them all. Few people glimpsed this cold calculation on the empress’s beautiful features. She didn’t want them to. It suited her that people thought of her as a passionate creature delighting in love and money. Few realized that Berenene cooled off far sooner than she let on, and that she did nothing that would not enhance her standing in the eyes of her people and the world.

Finally Berenene shook out her cuffs and got to her feet. “Very well, Isha. Do what you must. And I’m going to change. I’ve a mind to ride along the lake today.”

Sandry refused to stay a second night in the Canyon Inn.
I don’t trust them,
she told Daja and Briar.
If Shan had their help, I don’t want to punish them. I know how hard it is to refuse a noble. But I don’t want to stay here, either.

I have potions. I could find out,
offered Briar.

They’ve had enough magic
, said Daja, who had watched the staff skitter around the caged Quen.
Let’s just go. If you’re feeling so energetic, grovel to Zhegorz some more.

Briar winced. All three of them were doing some serious apologizing to Zhegorz. Sandry even invited him to
ride beside her as they left the Canyon Inn. Strangely, the whole mess seemed to have calmed Zhegorz down. Even when they passed the next imperial fort, he kept warnings about palace matters to himself. He was learning to sift images and his words more.

Since they were only two riders, Ambros and Tris had an easier time on the road in some ways, despite Tris’s weakness. When Tris felt she could stay in the saddle not another moment, she wove ropes of wind to bind her to it and her mare, and trapped two more pads of air to keep her upright. If she grew vexed at traffic, she sent winds ahead to drive those in the road to its sides until she and Ambros passed by. When those attending the horse fair did not respond to wind, she reddened and began to play with balls of lightning. The people scattered. She, Ambros, and Chime passed through the meeting of the highway and Deepdene Road far more quickly than had Sandry and her companions.

By then, Tris was able to sense Briar and Daja. Her strength returned with each day she rode, though her hips ached fiercely when she dismounted for the night. She said nothing about it. She also said nothing when Ambros paid for a private room for each of them at the inns when they halted. By the time they passed the fort beyond the Blendroad Inn, Tris had begun to ride part of the time at the trot. Briar, Daja, and Sandry were telling her that Zhegorz was in a bad state, babbling about walls of glass. Tris knew
what he meant, just as her brother and sisters knew: There were magical walls ahead. Tris fidgeted when they rested the horses, and she slept badly, always wanting to get on the road at dawn. It was one thing to talk to her friends, another to shift power to them. She needed to be closer.

Ten days after they’d left Quen and Shan, Sandry, Briar, Daja, Gudruny, her children, and Zhegorz topped a rise in the Imperial Highway. Before them lay a great green plain dotted with villages, and a massive blue lake. The border fortress was on the far side of the gleaming water. To the east lay the smoky foothills of the Carakathy Mountains, where the empress was said to have a hunting lodge. According to Tris, Berenene and Ishabal Ladyhammer were there now.

“Out in the open,” muttered Zhegorz, staring at that broad emerald expanse. “No place to hide from watchers, no place to hide from the wind.”

“As long as my imperial cousin and her pawns do nothing but watch,” retorted Sandry. “As long as they keep out of the way.” She urged their company forward, down the slope to the plain.

It took them two days to cross it and skirt the lake. On the third day, Briar woke to find Zhegorz gone from his bed and his saddlebags missing. He was also missing from breakfast. “Now that’s a worry,” Briar told Sandry. “Zhegorz has lived hungry too long to miss any meals.”

Gudruny’s children searched the inn and its outbuildings, but there was no sign of their crazy man. They did find his saddlebags in the stable with his horse, but there was no trace of the man himself.

Sandry paced in the courtyard, working steadily more intricate cats’ cradles in her fingers. “I don’t want to leave him, and I don’t like not knowing where he is,” she complained. She had yet to give the order to saddle the horses or to hitch up Gudruny’s cart. “I didn’t know I’d need to put a leash on him. Who can scry among us?”