The Will of the Empress (5 page)

She dragged fistfuls of blazing power from each and
squeezed them through the gaps between her fingers, creating about seven strips of lightning in each hand. “
Move!
” she screamed, and hurled them in the caravan’s wake. Lightning cracked like whips over the heads of horses and mules. It lashed close enough to one herd of sheep to singe wool and to leave scorch marks on the side of a nearby wagon. Daja saw Tris drag on it to keep it from touching the water. Thank the gods for that, she realized. One strike in the water and we all might cook.

Three lightning strips flew at the mimander, the caravan leaders, even Daja herself, nipping at the rumps of their horses. Thunder boomed in the canyon, startling the herds into a run. Animals, Traders, and non-Traders alike decided they’d had enough. They, Sandry, and Briar fled across the river with Tris behind them, just in back of the last wagons.

“Keep going!” Tris screamed, her voice hoarse. Now she used her lightning to goad the caravan’s rear and its front, scaring the horses and the oxen who pulled the wagons until they rushed up the inclining road. The end of the caravan was a scant twenty feet above the canyon floor when a rumbling sound made the cooler-headed riders stop.

Rocks pattered down the cliffs that overlooked the road. Bits of the ledge that overlooked the canyon floor crumbled away from its edge. In the distance they could hear a dull roar.

This time, Tris, clinging to her horse’s mane, didn’t need to speak. Everyone scrambled to move higher on the
steep road. They were sixty feet above the riverbed when a wall of tree- and stone-studded water snarled down the canyon to swamp the river flats. It ripped boulders from the ford, ground the road away, and plowed on down into the canyon again. Had they been just a little slower, the savage torrent would have swept them up and carried the remains far downstream.

“But there was no rain, no snowfall, higher in the mountains.” That lone voice belonged to the mimander. Daja did not look at his veiled eyes, out of consideration for his shame. Trader mimanders studied one aspect of magic all their lives. They chose their specialty when they were young, and risked their lives to learn all they could about winds, or the fall of water from the skies, or avalanches, or storms at sea.

How humiliating, she thought. It must look like he missed this coming, even after years of study. He knows this caravan puts its life in his hands.

And how humiliating, to yell at your sister because she doesn’t have time to save over two hundred people and explain herself, too.

Briar looked at the swirling mess below. He blinked. For a moment the trees were bodies: gaudily dressed men, women and children who were missing limbs or heads, their wounds streaking the brown water red. They were joined by the bloated corpses of yaks, goats, even birds, and by the corpses of soldiers. The stench of the rotting dead swamped him.

Not here, he thought, closing his eyes and clenching his teeth. Gansar, not Gyongxe. Peacetime, not war. Not here.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the remains of trees and the bulk of stones. Only the stench of death continued to haunt his nose.

He forced himself to study
this
flood, the one that was real right now. Already it was clawing at the earthen walls on the far side of the river flats. “You ask me, I think the dam broke upriver, master mimander,” he commented. “It was too old, maybe, or it needed fixing, or something, but some of those rocks look like dressed stone. It wasn’t your fault if that’s so. A dam break isn’t weather.”

Tris, limp along her mare’s neck, nodded briefly.

Daja was looking very sheepish, he saw. She rode over to Tris. “I’m sorry,” Briar heard her mutter. “I should have—”

“Trusted me?” Tris’s reply was muffled, but it clearly stung Daja. “Remembered it’s my favorite thing in all the world to act like a crazy person before strangers, and it would have been nice if my sisters and brother had said, ‘Oh, she’s peculiar, but she’s usually peculiar for a reason’? Go away, Daja. I don’t feel like blushing and accepting your kind apology just now, thanks all the same.”

Daja drew herself up. “All that traveling and all those conferences, and they never taught you how to be gracious.”

“You want Sandry for that. She’s up ahead. Leave me be.”

Briar rode over and touched Daja on the arm. He jerked his head, a sign for her to come aside with him. When she
did, he whispered, “Remember? She gets all worked up, and she snaps at the first nice voice she hears. She was probably scared witless. I’ll put on the heavy gloves and gentle her some.” He winked and rode back to Tris, getting her attention by poking her in the arm. “Hey, Coppercurls, nice fireworks,” he said, keeping his voice light. She looked like one of the warrior dedicates right after battle: exhausted, but still not quite sure it was safe to stop fighting. Briar had learned to handle them carefully when they were in that state. “Maybe you ought to do like Chime and eat something so the lighting will come out of you in colors.”

Tris replied with a suggestion that Briar knew would be physically impossible. He grinned. Offering Tris his canteen, he said, “Have some water, and don’t spit it back in my face.”

As Tris obeyed, Briar looked at Daja and shrugged.

Daja smiled reluctantly. That’s right, Daja thought. Tris gets really frightened, and then she bites the heads off of people. I had forgotten.

I wonder what else I’ve forgotten—about Tris. About Sandry, and Briar.

I hope I remember really, really fast.

Sandry was livid. Had she been less aware of what she owed to the people around her, she would have shaken Tris until her teeth rattled. Furious as she was, she still remembered one of her uncle’s most often-repeated lessons: “Never express anger with a friend or a subordinate in public,”
Vedris always said. “They might forgive a private expression of anger or a deserved scolding, but they never forget a public humiliation. It is the surest way to destroy a friendship and to create enemies.”

The caravan found a wide cove off the road where they could halt to collect themselves and calm the children and the animals. Sandry then went to give Tris a piece of her mind. The mimander beat her there. He had backed Tris up against a tall stone by the road, his yellow-robed body shielding her from onlookers. Sandry moved to the side of the stone to eavesdrop.

“The world does not appreciate such stunts,” the man told Tris softly but fiercely. “Do you know the harm you could do with such dangerous magic? What if a wagon had rolled, or if animals had fallen? When you scry a thing, you announce it immediately—you do
not
stage a panic in mid-river! I mean to file a complaint with Winding Circle—”

“They will tell you your complaint has no merit.” Tris’s voice was low and cold. “I did not scry this. As soon as I knew it was coming, I told everyone with the ears to hear. Forgive me if I did not consult you. There
was no time.
”

“What am I supposed to believe,
kaq?
” demanded the mimander. He’d used the most insulting term for a non-Trader there was. “Did you see it on the wind, like some fabled mage of old? I suppose you—a child!—expect me to believe that!”

“Go away. Tell your bookkeeper goddess you’d rather
question the debt you owe me for your life than consider ways to repay me!” snapped Tris. “On second thought, don’t bother! There’s no coin small enough I’d consider worthwhile exchange for your life!”

Sandry smothered a gasp and pressed herself into a crevice behind the rock that hid her. Is she
mad
? Sandry wondered, horrified. If she were a Trader he’d have to kill her for so many insults! She said he was questioning his gods for letting him live. Then she told him not to bother repaying her—a Trader, not to repay!—and then she told him his life isn’t worth anything!

Finally the mimander replied, his voice shaking. “I expect no better of a
kaq.
”

He walked away.

Sandry’s temper blazed again. Tris not only orders us around like the Queen of Everything, but she insults our hosts! I have to remind her she used to have manners!

She yanked herself out of her crevice, shook her riding breeches clean of the leaf-litter that had collected there, took a deep breath, and walked around the rock. Tris had left it, to sit on a fallen tree next to the spring nearby. She patiently held one side of her snood, Chime the other, as her braids twined around each other, forming a snug ball. There was no way to tell now which had carried lightning and which had been lightning. Even the two thin braids that framed her face were neatly done up and tied again.

Sandry halted in front of her. “Never have I given you
the right to order me around. Neither have Briar or Daja. And we have certainly not given you the right to throw
lightning
at us.” Despite her resolve to be firm, her voice quivered.

Tris’s eyes flicked to Sandry dangerously, though Tris’s hold on the snood remained steady as her braids moved and wriggled to fit themselves inside. “Pardon me for not kissing your hand and saying pretty please, since that’s what you’re used to these days,” she replied, acid dripping in her voice. “Had I known I would offend,
Clehame
”—she turned Sandry’s Namornese title into an insult—“I would have let everyone die so I wouldn’t inconvenience you.”

“I know you are ever so much more clever and educated than the rest of us, but it’s not as if we are dolts. We
did
get our medallions at the same time as you. We have something between our ears besides hummus! And if the bond between us were open, there would have been no need for such antics!” replied Sandry, losing her temper in spite of herself.

Tris let go of the snood. With a flap of her wings, Chime leaped on top of her head to keep it in place. If either girl had not been in a rage, they might have thought it funny.

“Did it occur to you that you might not like what is in my head now?” demanded Tris. She hurriedly grabbed a fistful of hairpins and began to pin her net in place. “Or do you think I’ll be easier to control once you’re behind my eyes, Your Ladyship?”

Sandry’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. She felt as if Tris had slapped her. “Do you really think that of me?”

“I don’t know what I think,” growled Tris, taking off her spectacles. “Go away, will you? I have the most vile headache. I just want to be alone.” Chime took flight off of Tris’s head.

“With pleasure,” Sandry replied with all the dignity she had left. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be a caravan of one, just as alone as you please.”

“I cannot believe you, my lady.” Unknown to the two girls, the caravan’s leader had come over. “She has saved all of our lives with fearsome magic, she is pale and sweating—and you choose to quarrel with her?” To Tris, the woman said, “My wagon is cushioned, with heavy drapes to close out the light, and there is cool mint tea. Will you rest your head there? Briar says he has a headache medicine that may help you.”

Sandry turned and fled. If anything, she felt even smaller than she had when Tris had accused her of wanting to control her. Why didn’t I notice she was ill? she wondered. And why is she being so mean to the three of us? She was that way to strangers when we lived together, but not us. Unless…of course. We’re strangers.

She stopped, her back to the caravan. Reaching into the small pouch that always hung around her neck, she brought out the thread with its four equally spaced lumps. Sandry turned it around in her fingers, handling each lump, feeling each familiar bit of magic. Maybe we were this cord once, but for now it’s only a symbol, she thought wearily. A
symbol of four children. Now we’re four adults who have become strangers. I have to get used to that. I have to get used to it, and think of ways to make us stop being strangers once and for all.

She sighed, and returned the thread circle to its pouch. And how will I do that? I have no notion in the least.

The 27th day of Goose Moon, 1043 K. F.

Twelve miles outside Dancruan,

Capital of the Namorn Empire

I
f Chime had not seen a magpie in the meadow and given chase—she had developed a furious dislike of the vivid black-and-white birds on their way north—the four would have quietly entered Dancruan as part of Third Caravan Saralan. Their arrival would have followed the structure of diplomatic propriety. They would have been introduced to the court as so many others were introduced, as part of the summer flow of guests from abroad. Instead, not long after the caravan emerged from the shelter of Mollyno Forest, the magpie flew at Chime and smacked the glass dragon with its wings, plainly outraged by Chime’s very existence. Chime voiced a scraped-glass shriek of rage and gave chase over a nearby meadow.

“Tris!” yelled Briar. “Do something!”

“She’ll be back,” replied Tris calmly. She turned a page in the book she was reading as she rode.

The sun inched higher in the sky, with no sign of Chime. Sandry finally sighed and found Saralan’s ride
leader. “You’d best go on ahead,” she told him. “I know you have ships to meet at the docks today. Business is business.”

“I don’t like it,” said Daja behind her. “It’s not what’s due to your consequence, entering Dancruan with just us for company.”

Sandry giggled. “As if I cared about such things!”

“You should,” the ride leader told her soberly. “You will find they care about it very much at the imperial court.” He raised his staff and galloped to the front of the caravan, voicing the long, trilling cry that was the signal to move out. Everyone who had gotten down from horses or wagons to stretch their legs took their places once more. The caravan rolled on without their four guests: Traders kept their good-byes short, to avoid the appearance of owing anything to those they left behind. Sandry had always liked that philosophy, but then, the nursemaid who had practically raised her had also been a Trader. Now she and her friends waved their farewells to their companions.

As the last wagons and herds left them behind, Sandry felt a weight fall from her slender shoulders. While she had enjoyed riding with the caravan, she was glad to be rid of the witnesses to the squabbles that had continued all the way here. Now, with the Traders out of earshot and the other three silent, she heard actual quiet. Only birdsong and the whiffle of the wind passing over acres of meadow grass met her ears. Mages were accustomed to time alone. That had been scarce on the long trip north.

Enjoy it while it lasts, she told herself, filling her mind with the jingle of bridles and the shush of moving air. Once we get to Dancruan, things are bound to be noisy. Music, politics, gossip. It’s bad enough when Uncle receives his nobles. I hear my cousin’s court is much larger and, unlike Uncle, she holds her court all year round.

She turned her horse in order to look at her brother and sisters, wondering yet again how they would fare—how
she
would fare—in a sophisticated place like the imperial palace. Briar had unsaddled his horse and flopped onto the meadow grass, his bronze face turned up to the sun. He had even taken his
shakkan
from its traveling basket and set it on the ground, more like a pet than a plant. All the grass around him was in motion, straining to touch him or the
shakkan
without blocking the sun that fell on their two new friends.

He isn’t frowning, thought Sandry, amazed. I don’t think I’ve seen him without a hint of a scowl since he came home. When he’s like this, if he weren’t my brother, I’d even find him handsome. Certainly the Trader girls seemed to think so!

When someone blew a horn in the distance, Briar stirred to glare at Tris. “You
know
where your monster is. Will you kindly get her back here?”

Sandry looked at Tris, who had remained in her saddle to read. The redhead turned a fresh page of her book and did not reply.

Briar sighed his exasperation. “We could be eating midday by now.”

“I was enjoying the quiet,” Sandry remarked mournfully. She looked at Daja. “Weren’t you enjoying the quiet?”

Daja, who had dismounted to practice combat moves with her Trader’s staff, brought the long ebony weapon up to the rest position, exhaled, then looked up at Sandry. “I’m staying out of this one. So should you,” she advised Sandry. “Otherwise, they’ll start a quarrel with us when they get bored of fighting with each other.”

“I’m not quarreling,” Tris said mildly. “I’m reading.”

“
Girls
,” Briar said with disgust. “Aggrimentatious, argufying—”

“Is it that you learned too many languages, and so you must mangle the ones you have?” Sandry asked, curious.

Tris closed her book with a snap and freed a braid from the coil at the back of her head. “Chime’s coming. She’s being chased by riders,” she said, thrusting her book into her tunic pocket. “Nobles. There are falconers far behind them. I suppose they were hunting.” She scowled. “Right now they’re hunting Chime.”

Daja walked over to stand next to Sandry, leaning on her staff. “The wind’s blowing toward us. Tris could just be hearing them,” she remarked. “Except how would she know about the falconers? I think she’s
seeing
things on the wind, these days.”

Sandry looked at Tris. The breeze came out of the north, making Tris’s braids stream back from her face. “Don’t be silly,” replied Sandry. “Even her teacher can’t do
that
, and Niko’s one of the greatest sight mages in the world. Most of the mages who try to see things on the wind go mad.”

“But now and then, one has to succeed,” Daja murmured. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be stories of those who can do it.”

“Stop gabbing and
move
,” ordered Briar. He saddled his horse and Daja’s with a speed none of the girls could match. “You want whoever is coming to catch you on the ground?” He swung himself into his saddle and took a cloth-wrapped ball from the pocket of his open jacket. Just to vex him, Daja spun her staff lazily around in her hand until it rested on one of her shoulders. Only after she had carefully holstered the length of wood did she gracefully mount her horse.

Over the nearest rise in the ground came Chime, the sun glinting in darts of light from her wings. Seeing them, she voiced her grating alarm screech and sped up. Shooting past Tris, she stopped herself by tangling her claws in the back of the redhead’s tunic. Tris made not a sound, her eyes on the hill as Chime hid behind her.

Like Tris, Sandry focused on the crest in the ground and the party of riders who surged over it. She was quick to note that their hunting clothes and horses’ tack alike were edged in gold and silver embroidery, the work of countless hands. They were accompanied by guardsmen, business-like
warriors in leather jerkins sewn with metal plates, worn over full-sleeved red shirts and baggy pants. The guards wore round armor caps and held crossbows on their laps.

“Is this your witch-thing, peasants?” demanded a big, handsome young man as the hunting party came within shouting distance. “It ruined our sport! Drove off every grouse and wood pigeon for miles!”

Daja asked her friends, “Did he say ‘peasants’?”

Briar looked over his shoulder at her. “He definitely said ‘peasants.’”

“Someone needs spectacles.” Tris pushed her own spectacles higher on her nose.

Sandry crossed mental fingers. For the first time since they had reunited, they sounded as they once had at Discipline cottage.

A woman rode forward, past the man who had shouted at them. Four of the guards and another richly dressed man who glinted a magical silver trotted their horses to catch up with her. Briar whistled in soft admiration for the woman. Sandry couldn’t blame him. The lady was a splendid creature who wore her russet hair curled, coiled, and pinned under a bronze velvet cap in an artless tumble. It framed an ivory-skinned face, large brown eyes, an intriguing mouth over a square and stubborn chin, and a small, slight slip of a nose. Her clothing hugged a very shapely figure.

Eyeing the lady’s bronze velvet high-necked coat and wide breeches, Sandry felt a pinch in the place where she
kept her pride in the clothes she made and wore. Lark warned me I’d get a dreadful case of style envy at the Namornese court, she told herself with the tiniest of sighs. There’s just something to this lady’s garments that gives them the, the
sauciest
look. And what I wouldn’t give for a nice, close look at those lapel and seam embroideries! I can see a few magical signs to ward off injury and enemies, but I
think
there are others, ones I don’t recognize.

Remembering her manners, Sandry met the lady’s amused eyes once more. This time she realized there was something familiar about that beautiful face. Among her family heirlooms Sandry had portraits, including those of her mother’s parents. This woman looked very much like Sandry’s grandmother. Belatedly the young woman realized who she must be. Blushing deeply, Sandry dismounted to curtsy deeply to her cousin Berenene dor Ocmore, empress of Namorn. Briar was next to dismount, followed by Tris and Daja. As Tris curtsied, Briar and Daja bowed, as befitted a young man in breeches and a Trader in leggings.

Berenene rode forward until her mount stood a yard from Sandry. “Look at me, child,” she said in a voice like warm music.

Sandry obeyed. From the way the empress’s horse shifted, the woman was startled, though that beautiful face showed not one drop of surprise. “Qunoc bless us,” Berenene whispered, naming the west Namornese goddess of crops.
“Lady Sandrilene fa Toren? You are the image of your mother.”

Sandry would have argued—her mother had not possessed a button of a nose—but arguing and empresses did not mix. “I’m honored, Your Imperial Majesty.”

The empress looked their company over. A slight crease appeared between her perfectly arched brows; the tucked corners of her mouth deepened. “But where is your entourage? Your guardsmen, your ladies-in-waiting? Do not tell me you came all the way from Emelan with just these few persons.” She looked at Tris and Daja. “Unless these young women are your ladies?” Her tone made it clear she believed they were nothing of the sort.

“These are my foster-sisters, Your Imperial Majesty,” Sandry replied, still deep in her curtsy. Tris’s was beginning to wobble. “And Briar is my foster-brother. We traveled with Third Caravan Saralan—”

The empress cut her off. “Traders? Where are they now?”

“We sent them ahead,” Sandry replied. “We needed to rest, and they had a ship to catch.”

The empress leaned forward, resting her arm on her saddle horn. “All of you, please rise, before the redheaded foster-sister falls over,” she commanded. Tris blushed a deep plum color as she rose. Daja and Briar straightened.

“You brought your foster family,” the empress said, her brown eyes dancing. “What are their names, if you please?”

“Forgive me, Your Imperial Majesty,” replied Sandry, her voice even. I’d bet every stitch I have on she already knows quite well who everyone is, she thought. “
Ravvikki
”—Namornese for a young woman—“Trisana Chandler.” Tris curtsied again. “
Ravvikki
Daja Kisubo.” Daja bowed. Using the word for a young man, Sandry continued, “
Ravvotki
Briar Moss.” Before they had entered Namorn, they had agreed that they were not going to claim the title of mage unless a crisis arose. By then they had all been thoroughly sick of explaining how they could be accredited mages at eighteen.

“Welcome to my empire,” said Berenene with a gracious nod. To Sandry she added, “My dear, two sisters and a brother, however devoted, are not sufficient protection for a maiden of your wealth and position. Men of few principles might see your unguarded state as the chance to capture a wealthy young bride.”

Sandry noticed Briar’s tiny smirk and the sudden, bored droop of Tris’s eyes. Only Daja’s face had the perfect, polite expression that told onlookers nothing of her true thoughts. Daja and I should have spent the trip teaching them a diplomat’s facial expressions as well as Namornese, Sandry thought, vexed. It would be impossible not to guess that Briar and Tris thought they were a match for would-be kidnappers, something that would never cross the mind of an ordinary young man or woman.

Stop fussing, Sandry ordered herself. I know very well my cousin has had spies on me for years, and she is aware we’re all mages.

Now that the empress’s riders had stopped chasing her, Chime decided it was safe to move. She wriggled out from under Tris’s loose riding tunic and up to the redhead’s shoulder.

Instantly Berenene’s companion, the one who was not in uniform, moved in front of the empress, one hand up. The silver fire of magic flared from his palm to wrap around Berenene like a shimmering cocoon.

“He’s good,” Briar muttered to Daja out of the corner of his mouth. “I thought you said her boss mage was some old woman named Ladyhammer.”

“Do you see any old women riding with this crowd if they don’t have to?” Daja inquired.

Chime ignored the magic. She rose to her hindquarters on Tris’s shoulder, one paw clutching Tris’s hair for balance, surveying the Namornese curiously.

Chime, you show-off, thought Sandry with affection. “That’s Chime, Your Imperial Majesty,” she told Berenene. “She’s a curiosity that Tris
found
in the far south.”

“Curious indeed,” said the mage who still guarded the empress. His dark eyes had been amused when they first rode up, but they were steady and serious now. “It’s not an illusion, or an animated poppet. It looks like glass, or perhaps moving ice.”

“Tris,” Sandry said, a hint for the redhead to explain.

Tris sighed. “She’s mage made. A new mage, one who started out as a glassblower, had an accident. It turned out to be Chime.”

“I don’t believe the imperial glassmaker,
Viynain
”—the Namornese word for a male mage—“Warder, has ever made anything of the kind,” the empress remarked. “If he could, he would have done so for me. My dear Quenaill, if the creature had meant harm to us, surely it would have attacked by now. I can hardly see my cousin Sandrilene, who has been gone for so long. My dear, allow me to present the great mage Quenaill Shieldsman. Doubtless you have heard of him at Winding Circle.”