Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  Fine words. Strong words. But Arwa could not let the bare-fisted blow of them mislead her.

  “I know what I know,” she said. She raised her head higher, jaw firm.

  Her mother had tried to teach her subtlety. But the art of folding secrets inside words and smiles, and hiding the knife of her anger until it was already in someone’s gut, too late to be escaped—those things had never been Arwa’s strength. Flighty, she’d been called as a child, and mercurial. She wore her heart, fierce and changeable as it was, right on her skin.

  For a handful of liminal years, she had learned to feign a veneer of placidity, for the sake of making herself an attractive prospect as a bride. She’d learned to smile and to be soft, to say gentle words when sharp ones came far more easily to her tongue, and in the end her hard-won calm—and her youth—had granted her the older, powerful husband her mother had hoped for her. For a time, she had been better than her true, barbed self. She’d been a commander’s wife. She’d been a noblewoman worthy of respect.

  But that was before the circle of blood and the eyes like gold. Before Kamran’s death.

  “I know,” Arwa said, “that you have scrolls that were sent to you by an Ambhan noble family. I didn’t recognize the seal upon them, which suggests to me that the seal is not real.” Before her father’s disgrace, he’d been a governor of a great province of the Empire. Her husband had been a commander of renown. Of course Arwa knew the seals of the great families; she’d learned them by careful rote as a young girl. “Someone of noble blood communicates with you but seeks to hide their true identity. I know you own a man’s bow more expensive than anything I have possessed in my lifetime, embellished in a manner intended to please the eyes at court. Your husband, then, was a politician and a courtier. You wear no jewels but I suspect it is not Roshana who is truly of highest standing in this hermitage. You are.”

  Arwa leaned forward, not allowing her gaze to falter.

  “You’re not a ghost of a woman, cut off from the world,” said Arwa. “You serve someone. You answer to someone powerful. And you seek to take care of me, of all people. Forgive me, if I do not think your motives are entirely benevolent.”

  “Well,” Gulshera said finally. “If we’re talking bluntly …” She leaned forward, intent, mirroring Arwa. “I am under no obligation to tell you anything. You have no power here. No standing. And if you truly believe I have so much influence, then you shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “Now that is a lie,” Gulshera said.

  “Then I apologize,” said Arwa. “I know you don’t have to tell me anything. I know I have no power. I could have been patient. I could have waited for you to reveal what you truly require, in the fullness of time. But I am tired of games, Lady Gulshera. If you do truly care of my welfare, then do me a kindness: Tell me what you want, then leave me alone to mourn.”

  “If you have a choice between being blunt or being patient in the future, then choose patient,” Gulshera said. But there was a thoughtful light in her eyes. “Come back here tomorrow morning, after breakfast. We’ll take a walk together.”

  Arwa let out a slow exhale. This, after she’d asked for no more games …

  “We’ll go down to the valley,” Gulshera said. “Just the two of us, where we can’t be overheard. And there, you can tell me about Darez Fort.”

  if you enjoyed

  EMPIRE OF SAND

  look out for

  TORN

  The Unraveled Kingdom: Book One

  by

  Rowenna Miller

  In a time of revolution, everyone must take a side.

  Sophie, a dressmaker and charm caster, has lifted her family out of poverty with a hard-won reputation for beautiful ball gowns and discreetly embroidered spells. A commission from the royal family could secure her future—and thrust her into a dangerous new world.

  Revolution is brewing. As Sophie’s brother, Kristos, rises to prominence in the growing anti-monarchist movement, it is only a matter of time before their fortunes collide.

  When the unrest erupts into violence, she and Kristos are drawn into a deadly magical plot. Sophie is torn—between her family and her future.

  1

  “MR. BURSIN,” I SAID, MY HANDS CONSTRICTING AROUND THE fine linen ruffles I was hemming, “I do not do that.”

  “But, miss, I would not ask if it were—if it were not the most pressing of circumstances. If it would not be best. For all concerned.”

  I understood. Mr. Bursin’s mother-in-law simply refused to die. She was old, infirm, and her mind was half-gone, but still she clung to life—and, as it turned out, bound the inheritance to her daughter and son-in-law in a legal tangle that would all go away once she was safely interred. Still.

  “I do not wish ill on anyone. Ever. I sew charms, never curses.” My words were final, but I thought of another avenue. “I could, of course, wish good fortune on you, Mr. Bursin. Or your wife.”

  He wavered. “Would … would a kerchief be sufficient?” He glanced at the rows of ruffled neckerchiefs lining my windows, modeled by stuffed linen busts.

  “Oh, most certainly, Mr. Bursin. The ruffled style is very fashionable this season. Would you like to place the order now, or do you need to consult with your wife regarding style and fabric?”

  He didn’t need to consult with his wife. She would wear the commission he bought from me, whether she liked the ruffles or not. He chose the cheapest fabric I offered—a coarser linen than was fashionable—and no decorative embroidery.

  My markup for the charm still ensured a hefty sum would be leaving Mr. Bursin’s wallet and entering my cipher book.

  “Add cutting another ruffled kerchief to your to-do list this morning, Penny,” I called to one of my assistants. I didn’t employ apprentices—apprentices learn one’s trade. The art of charm casting wasn’t one I could pass on to the women I hired. Several assistants had already come and gone from my shop, gaining practice draping, cutting, fitting—but never charm casting. Alice and Penny, both sixteen and as wide-eyed at the prospect of learning their trade as I had been at their age, were perhaps my most promising employees yet.

  “Another?” Penny’s voice was muffled. I poked my head around the corner. She was on her back under a mannequin, hidden inside the voluminous skirts of a court gown.

  “And what, pray tell, are you doing?” I stifled a laugh. Penny was a good seamstress with the potential to be a great one, but only when she resisted the impulse to cut corners.

  Penny scooted out from under the gown, her pleated jacket bunching around her armpits. “Marking the hem,” she replied with a vivid crimson blush.

  “Is that how I showed you to do it?” I asked, a stubborn smile forcing its way onto my face.

  “No,” she replied meekly, and continued with her work.

  I returned to the front of the shop. Three packages, wrapped in brown paper, awaiting delivery. One was a new riding habit with a protective cast, the second a pelisse for an old woman with a good health charm, and the third a pleated caraco jacket.

  A plain, simple caraco. No magic, no spells. Just my own beautiful draping and my assistant Alice’s neat stitching.

  Sometimes I wished I had earned my prominence as a dressmaker on that draping and stitching alone, but I knew my popularity had far more to do with my charms, the fact that they had a reputation for working, and my distinction as the only couture charm caster in Galitha City. Though there were other charm casters in the city, the way that I stitched charms into fashionable clothing made the foreign practice palatable to the city’s elite. The other casters, all hailing from the far-off island nation of Pellia by either birth or, like me, ancestry, etched charms into clay tablets and infused sachets of herbs with good luck or health, but I was the only charm caster in the city—the only one I knew of at all—who translated charms into lines of functional stitching and decorative embroidery.

  Even among charm casters I was di
fferent, selling to Galatines, and the Galatine elite, who didn’t frequent the Pellian market or any other Pellian businesses. I had managed to infuse the practice with enough cachet and intrigue that the wealthy could forget it was a bumpkin superstition from a backwater nation. Long before I owned my shop, I had attempted charming and selling simple thread buttons on the street. Incredibly, Galatines bought them—maybe it was the lack of pungent herb scents and ugly clay pendants that marked Pellian charms, or maybe it was the appeal of wearing a charm no one could see. Maybe it was merely novelty. In either case, I had made the valuable discovery that, with some modifications, Galatines would buy charms. When I finally landed a permanent assistant’s job in a small atelier with a clientele of merchants’ wives and lesser nobility, I wheedled a few into trying a charm, and, when the charms worked, I swiftly gathered a cult following of women seeking my particular skill. After a couple of years, I had enough clients that I was able to prove myself and open my own shop. Galatines were neither particularly superstitious nor religious, but the novelty of a charm stitched into their finery captivated their interest, and I in turn had a market for my work.

  “When you finish the hem, start the trim for Madame Pliny’s court gown,” I told Penny. The commission wasn’t due until spring, but the elaborate court gowns required so much work that I was starting early. It was our first court gown commission—a sign, I hoped, that we were establishing a reputation for the quality of our work as well as for the charms. “And I’m late to go file for the license already—the Lord of Coin’s offices have been open for an hour.”

  “The line is going to be awful,” Alice said from the workroom. “Can’t you go tomorrow?”

  “I don’t want to put it off,” I answered. The process was never sure; if I didn’t get through the line today, or if I was missing something the clerk demanded, I wanted several days to make it up.

  “Fair enough,” Alice answered. “Wait—two messages came while you were with Mr. Bursin. Did you want—”

  “Yes, quickly.” I tore open the two notes. One was an invoice for two bolts of linen I had bought. I set it aside. And the other—

  “Damn,” I muttered. A canceled order. Mrs. Penneray, a merchant’s wife, had ordered an elaborate dinner gown that would, single-handedly, pay a week’s wages for both of my assistants. We hadn’t begun it yet, and so, per my own contract, I would have to agree to cancel it.

  I glanced at our order board. We were still busy enough, but this was a major blow. Most of the orders on our slate were small charmed pieces—kerchiefs, caps. Even with my upcharge for charms, they didn’t profit us nearly as much as a gown. Early winter usually meant a lull in business, but this year was going to be worse than usual.

  “Anything amiss?” Penny’s brow wrinkled in concern, and I realized that I was fretting the paper with my fingers.

  “No, just a canceled order. Frankly, I didn’t care for the orange shot silk Mrs. Penneray chose anyway, did you?” I asked, wiping her order from the board with the flat of my hand. “And I really do need to go now.”

  Alice’s prediction was right; the line to submit papers to the Lord of Coin was interminable. It snaked from the offices of the bureau into the corridors of the drafty stone building and into the street, where a cold rain pelted the petitioners. Puddles congregated in the low-lying areas of the flagstone floor, making the whole shabby establishment even damper and less welcoming than usual.

  I held my leather portfolio under my fine wool cloak, only slightly dampened from the rain. Inside were the year’s records for my shop, invoices and payment dates, lists of inventory, dossiers on my assistants and my ability to pay them. Proof that I was a successful business and worthy of granting another year’s license. I traced my name inscribed on the front, tooled delicately into the pale calfskin by the leatherworker whose shop was four doors down from mine. I had indulged in the pretty piece after years of juggling papers bound with linen tape and mashed between layers of pasteboard. I had a feeling the ladylike, costly presentation, combined with the fashionable silk gown I wore like an advertisement of my skills and merchandise, couldn’t hurt my chances at a swift approval from the Lord of Coin’s clerk.

  I was among a rare set of young women, not widows, with their own shop fronts when I opened almost ten years ago, and remained so. My business survived and even grew, if slowly, and I loved my trade—and I couldn’t complain about the profits that elevated my brother, Kristos, and me from common day laborers to a small but somewhat prosperous class of business owners.

  “No pushing!” a stout voice behind me complained. I stiffened. We didn’t need any disruptions in the queue—any rowdiness and the soldiers posted around the building were likely to send us all home.

  “I didn’t touch you!” another voice answered.

  “Foot’s not attached to you, eh? Because how else did I get this muddy shoeprint on my leg?”

  “Probably there when you hiked in from the parsnip farm or wherever you came from!”

  I hazarded a look behind me. Two bareheaded men wearing poorly fitted linsey-woolsey suits jostled one another. One had the sun-leathered skin of a fisherman or dockworker; the other had the pale shock of flaxen hair common in the mountains of northeastern Galitha. Neither had seemed to think that the occasion warranted a fresh shave or a bath.

  I suppressed a disapproving sigh. New petitioners, no doubt, with little hope of getting approval to open their businesses, and much more chance of disrupting everyone else. I glanced again; neither seemed to carry anything like enough paperwork to prove themselves. And their appearance—I tried not to wrinkle my nose, but they looked more like field hands than business owners. Fair or not, that wouldn’t help their cases.

  Most of the line, of course, was made up of similar petitioners. Scattered among the new petitioners who were allowed, one week out of the year, to present their cases to open a business, were long-standing business owners filing their standard continuation requests. It grated me to have to wait in line, crawling at a snail’s pace toward the single clerk who represented the Lord of Coin, when I owned an established business. Business was strictly regulated in the city; careful ratios of how many storefronts per district, per trade, per capita were maintained. The nobility judged the chance of failed business a greater risk than denying a petitioner a permit. Even indulgences such as confectioners and upscale seamstresses like me were regulated, not only necessities like butchers and bakers and smiths. If I didn’t file for my annual permit this week, I could lose my shop.

  As we moved forward down the corridor a few flagstones at a time, more and more dejected petitioners passed us after unsuccessful interviews with the clerk. I knew that disappointment well enough. My first proposal was rejected, and I had to wait a whole year to apply again. I took a different tack that second year, developing as much clientele as I could among minor nobility, hoping to reach the curious ears of nobles closer to the Lord of Coin and influence his decision. It worked—at least, I assumed it had, as one of the first customers when my shop opened a year later was the Lord of Coin’s wife, inquiring after a charmed cap to relieve her headaches.

  The scuffle behind me escalated, more voices turning the argument into a chorus.

  “Not his fault you have to wait in this damn line!” A strong voice took control of the swelling discontent and put it to words.

  “Damn right!” several voices agreed, and the murmuring assents grew louder. “You don’t see no nobles queuing up to get their papers stamped.”

  “Lining us up like cattle on the killing floor!” The shouting grew louder, and I could feel the press of people behind me begin to move and pulse like waves in the harbor whipped by the wind.

  “No right to restrict us!” the strong voice continued. “This is madness, and I say we stand up to it!”

  “You and what army?” demanded the southern petitioner who had been in the original scuffle.

  “We’re an army, even if they don’t realize it yet,” h
e replied boldly. I edged as far away as I could. I couldn’t afford to affiliate myself, even by mere proximity, with treasonous talk. “If we all marched right up to the Lord of Coin, what could he do? If we all opened our shops without his consent, could he jail all of us?”

  “Shut up before you get us all thrown out,” an older woman hissed.

  I turned in time to see a punch thrown, two men finally coming to blows, but before I could see any more, the older woman jumped out of the way and the heavy reed basket swinging on her arm collided into me. I stumbled and fell into the silver-buttoned uniform of a city soldier.

  I looked up as he gripped my wrist, terrified of being thrown out and barred from the building. He looked down at me.

  “Miss?”

  I swallowed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

  “I know.” He glanced back at the rest of his company subduing what had turned into a minor riot. They had two men on the floor already; one was the towheaded man who had started the argument. “Come with me.”

  “Please, I didn’t want to cause trouble. I just want to file—”

  “Of course.” He loosened his grip on my wrist. “Did you think I was going to throw you out?” He laughed. “No, I have a feeling that the Lord of Coin will close the doors after this, and you’re clearly one of the only people in line who even ought to be here. I’m putting you to the front.”

  I breathed relief, but it was tinged with guilt. He was right; few others had any chance at all of being granted approval, but cutting the line wouldn’t make me look good among the others waiting, as though I had bought favor. Still, I needed my license, and I wasn’t going to get it today unless I let the soldier help me. I followed him, leaving behind the beginnings of a riot truncated before it could bloom. The soldiers were already sending the lines of petitioners behind me back into the streets.