The Jewel and Her Lapidary

by Wilde, Fran

  Lapidaries must obey their Jewel. Sima clenched the aching fingers of her right hand around her left sleeve. In her cloak, hidden gems whispered to her. Escape. Any gem-speaker, trained lapidary or not, in the room would hear them and know of Sima’s doubts, her betrayals. Sima’s shoulders bent. None heard her shame. She was indeed the last lapidary.

  “And the rest of my terms. Where are they?” Nal said, so quietly that only Lin and Sima could hear. “The gems. Especially the Star Cabochon.”

  Sima startled. She had been so sure her father had hidden the cabochon for the commander to find or dispatched it to them after he’d pried loose the setting. How else to explain the fierce way the mountain army had followed their commander through the valley?

  But the cabochon was lost to Nal as well. Sima realized she could see a crack in the commander’s show of strength. She wanted power, but to hold it, she needed the gems.

  Sima’s own fears shook her as much as the look on Nal’s face. If someone found the gem and could not bind it properly; if a wild gem-speaker came across the cabochon . . . Sima could barely stand at the thought. Only the Jewels and their lapidaries could keep the valley safe from uncontrolled gems.

  But no one had thought the Jeweled Court could fall, leaving two teenage girls to fend for themselves.

  No one, thought Sima, except for the king’s own lapidary, in his madness.

  “Where is it,” Nal whispered again. She’d mistaken the girls’ silence for collusion. “You will give it to me. You will obey me,” she said to Lin. The commander’s face was turning red.

  Sima looked at Lin, praying she would remain silent. If they couldn’t escape, perhaps they could look useless.

  The guard who’d carried Sima into the hall stepped forward. He tore the gray cloak from Sima’s shoulders and threw it at Nal’s feet. Everyone heard the clatter that it made as the hem split and small gems spilled. The guard removed Sima’s belt and took the pouch from it. Poured Sima’s vows on the floor.

  Nal turned her eyes to Sima, recognition in her gaze. Her voice smoothed, suddenly back in control. “And you will speak it for me, lapidary.”

  Defeat, whispered the gems. Sima knew she would never escape now. She would be bound again, and not to Lin.

  Then Lin looked up, shards of skin and eye visible through small gaps in the chains. Her eyes spoke defiance. Revenge.

  * * *

  Lin hoped her voice carried clear across the court like her father’s voice had. “Lapidaries are difficult to control, Commander. They are not as strong as they seem, either. Look at what happened to your traitor.” She raised her eyes to meet Nal’s and felt the woman’s breath hot on her chains. A woman. With a son to marry. And a hunger for a kingdom of her own.

  Who needed a lapidary to speak the stones for her.

  While Sima stood stiff and shocked at Lin’s side, Lin continued to lie. “I ordered the Star Cabochon destroyed. All you will find in that cloak are minor gems. The kind we give to children.”

  Speaking the words almost made them true.

  Lin heard whispers behind her, the soldiers wondering at the name of the gem, at its fate. They were intrigued by their commander’s demand. By the gems on the floor. She’d promised them riches. The guards sorted through the small hoard.

  “Nothing shaped like a cabochon here, Commander,” said the one who had carried Sima through the door.

  Nal would never hold the cabochon, Lin vowed. Listening to the soldiers joke as they dragged her into the hall, she knew the Western Mountains wished to use it to enslave the valley’s own people. And then they would move on to the other kingdoms.

  Beside her, Sima stood steadfast in the face of Nal’s anger and Lin’s own betrayal. Lin drew strength from her presence. She straightened her back. Squared her shoulders.

  “You are lying,” Nal said. She raised her voice so that the soldiers assembled in the moonstone court could hear. “We know your father was too weak to use your valley’s gems properly, and too weak to destroy them.” Nal lowered her gaze and stared down her nose at Lin. “And you are no better than your father.”

  What would a proper Jewel do now? Lin thought quickly. Aba’s guidance was lacking here too. Lin’s father would have turned his back, as he’d done when his lapidary disagreed. Lin responded with silence, lifted her chin higher. Her veil chimed with the motion.

  Nal huffed softly and glared at Lin. Then, with a sweep of her cloak and her step ringing on the hall floor, the commander turned away from the Jewel and bowed to Sima.

  A guard grappled Lin by her chains and dragged her to the pit. She struggled but forced her mouth shut. She would not call out. She spun in her captor’s arms and looked at Sima once more. The lapidary’s eyes were wide with shock.

  Nal spoke in the crisp cadence of command. “Lapidary, you abandoned your vows once already today by running away. Do it again. Leave your Jewel and serve me instead.” Then her voice softened. She reached out to Sima. “Your Jewel has declared you weak. I think you are strong. Cut new stones, train new lapidaries. Undo the chain bindings. Speak the gems for me. You will be well rewarded.”

  Lin held her breath as they lowered her into the pit, hoping to hear Sima’s answer over the sound of the chains against the metal walls.

  * * *

  Under Nal’s gaze, Sima began to sweat. If Nal were the ruler now, she could command a lapidary of her own. But Sima was bound to Lin. Or she had been.

  Power, whispered the stones.

  Sima thought of the long river and the world beyond the valley. A world she had never seen. She looked at Lin. A lapidary protects their Jewel.

  Sima shook her head. She tried to shape her words as disappointment, not dissent. “The cutting wheels were broken before your army came, Commander. There are no more gems. And I am not a very good lapidary.”

  Nal narrowed her eyes. “You risk her life as well as yours.”

  Sima shook her head again. “To do otherwise would destroy me. As it destroyed my father.” As you destroyed him, she thought.

  Despair, whispered the small gems scattered on the floor.

  Nal growled, “Find a way around your vows, or you will both die like your fathers.” Her boots struck the moonstone, scratched it raw. Sima looked up in time to see a glimmer of fear behind the anger in the commander’s eyes before the guards dragged Sima to the pit.

  Sima recoiled at the thought of more time among the dry bones and echoes of the palace in her ears. But the guards did not hesitate as Nal looked on. They wrapped a long rope around Sima’s chest. Her spine scraped the cold walls and her armpits ached as they sent her down again. Her ears rang with the sound of the grate sliding shut and locking this time. The distant echoes of Lin’s weeping.

  Sima’s shoe brushed something soft, then slipped on a bloody robe. She stifled a cry. The morning light shone through the grate, revealing the ancient boneyard’s base. Sima’s foot rested on her father’s robe, beside his broken body.

  If she began screaming now, she thought, she might not be able to stop.

  * * *

  Lin untangled the platinum chains from around her feet and scrambled away from the soft pile of cloth she’d landed on. She smelled dried blood and fluids and, beneath it, an edge of rot. She heard a rat skitter away as a dislodged finger bone clattered to the floor.

  A Jewel does not cry.

  Slowly Lin moved toward a heavy body splayed on the ground. To where a bare foot held an obscene angle. The tumble had freed it from heavily embroidered purple robes and soft shoes plucked of their jewels. She rested her hand on her father’s ankle, seeing it clearly: cold and stiff. Gone.

  No one was coming to help, not from the Eastern Seas or any of the kingdoms. No one knew what had happened.

  She bit back a sob. She could find her brothers’ and sisters’ bodies in the pit. She could lie down among them and die here. She could end the Jeweled Valley kingdom and thwart Nal that way.

  But if she did that, the valley’s peop
le would be enslaved by the army. Forced to work the mines until Nal found more gems. If Lin lived, she might help the people, somehow. And her father had cared more about the people than anything else.

  Lin tried to lift her hand, to pull away from the dead. Her body resisted. “Let me go, then,” she whispered. “Let me lead them.”

  She found she could stand. Her chains still hung heavy on her, but as she rose away from her father’s corpse, she began to think of all the lessons she’d learned hiding behind curtains and at doorways. She might not know how to fight like a Jewel, but she knew enough to form her own plan. She would need to best the Western Mountains commander.

  Tomorrow Nal would force Lin to marry a child and gain herself a kingdom. She would search until the cabochon was found, then use it. Unless, Lin thought. Unless there was a way to bind Nal, to make her choose differently.

  She could offer Commander Nal a different gem, dug from one of the old skulls in the pit. Or perhaps she could find a silent one, something she and Sima had missed in their previous search. She could offer that. Lie about its powers. Lin had heard such tactics discussed over the price of mail and baubles sent beyond the valley. Of prices for gemstones with the valley’s mystique, but, due to cut or disposition, without their power.

  If there wasn’t a suitable gem, Lin thought, she could fall back on her original plan: resistance. Nal was the usurper. Lin was the Jewel. Perhaps, in time, her actions—and her horrible, hot, chafing veil—might inspire the people of the valley to rebel against their captors.

  Perhaps Lin could live with that. Especially with Sima by her side. And especially if Nal did not have the Star Cabochon.

  The kingdom is your setting. You are its light.

  She looked at her father’s waxen face then, at the long stretch of his body. It was up to her, now.

  She would be the valley’s Jewel, no matter the cost.

  From the other side of the pit, she heard commotion. Sima scrambled against the wall as she was lowered into the pit. She had refused Nal too.

  The lapidary had always been at her side. Lin breathed relief. She would remain so. Even now, as the light’s angle changed and the pit grew dim and the echoes of the dead swelled in Lin’s ears.

  * * *

  A lapidary protects their Jewel.

  “Come away, Lin,” Sima said. Her Jewel stared unblinking at her father’s corpse and did not respond. Sima found a corner clear of bones and steered Lin toward it.

  Commander Nal called to them from above, “Your baubles and trinkets are worthless, lapidary.” A rain of the smallest lesser gems pelted Sima and hit Lin’s veil with hard sounds. “None of them do anything.” Opals and topaz littered the floor, kept from breaking by their settings. Sima noticed Nal had not tossed down the emeralds and sapphires.

  Still, she did not respond. She did not look up.

  “Next time, it won’t be gems I pour through this grate. You will have better answers for me in the morning,” Nal said, then walked away, her heels loud above them. Her retreat was followed by sounds of the army clearing the hall, headed for softer quarters. Then nothing beyond the whispers of topaz and opal. Despair. Loss.

  They tugged at her mind, trying to break it. But the gems were bound, still. And Sima still had two vows. She would not let them tempt her to set them free.

  “Can you hear them, Highness?” Sima asked. Lin shook her head. That was a blessing.

  Sima’s father’s blue cloak had fallen from his body. She’d picked it up from the ground and kneaded it in her hands now. No more gems hidden in seams or pockets. Sima kept her eye on the bodies as she folded the cloak for Lin.

  “We are the kingdom now,” Lin whispered as the links of her platinum veil rattled against the stone walls of their prison. Then she laughed. “Nal thought we would be easy.”

  “The valley made chain mail and baubles, Highness. Not fighters,” Sima said. “Without the great gems to protect us, Nal is right.”

  In the shadows that her eyes were slowly becoming accustomed to, Sima saw Lin’s head dip under the weight of her veil. She knew so well the sharp angles of Lin’s cheekbones, the soft curve of her ear. These were features that demanded a fine gold diadem linked to a thin nose ring, to draw the eye down to the lips. Not heavy chains.

  “If I were a proper lapidary,” Sima began, remembering what Lin had said to Nal.

  “Your father was a proper lapidary,” Lin countered, before she pressed her hands to her lips.

  “He could hear gems, and control them. He mastered the art of binding; he could cut new gems. All of this made him powerful and greedy for more. But without his vows, he was no lapidary.” Sima choked the words out. “As for me? I abandoned you, then failed to run away. I am no better at my vows.”

  Lin looked at Sima, holding her gaze. “You kept your vows. You did not betray me.” She stroked Sima’s hair. The platinum chains jangled as her hand moved.

  With her words, the gems were silenced. Sima breathed relief. A lapidary obeys their Jewel.

  When she was three, she’d heard the gems for the first time and her father had celebrated, showering the court with garnets and carnelian. She’d clawed her ears bloody until her father had given her the first vow. Had taken the voices away with heat and metal. “Only lapidaries can hear the gems, though all are compelled to obey. Only lapidaries can speak the gems,” he’d praised her, cautiously. More bands followed against the endless barrage of whispers from the valley’s gems. She’d traced her vows until her fingers ached. A lapidary must. A lapidary must not.

  She’d learned to bind weak gems with metal bands, quieting them. She’d set them and taught them to whisper small hopes, to reflect her intent, not amplify her fears. She’d learned to draw a bead of solder along a join with heat. But the greater gems had refused to answer her or obey. Father had smoothed her hair so when she’d failed to invoke a gem, though his hands trembled. “The greater gems ignore you,” he’d said, “because you fear them. You have no reason to fear them. A setting stills a gem’s wildness. Your vows protect you from their whispers. With a great gem in an expert bezel, you can bind a kingdom, or destroy it.”

  Sima had tried harder. But when the king betrothed the youngest Jewel, the last of his children, to a son of the Eastern Seas, Sima’s father smiled. “He won’t send a powerful lapidary to a seaside court. There is hope for you.”

  Now, as her doubts flared, the opals and topaz on the pit floor muttered Escape. Despair.

  When Lin finally laid her head on the blue cloak, Sima rose and crossed the damp pit to tend the bodies. Soon, the king lay in as much state as Sima could give him, his arms crossed, his body wrapped in purple. The terrible burns on his mouth, Sima covered with a strip of cloth torn from her own gown. He’d choked and clawed at his throat as the burning poison concealed in his wine had ended him. Had ended the kingdom. Aqua fortis: alumen from the mountains. Used by lapidaries to separate valley diamonds from their mineral cloaks.

  A lapidary must not betray their Jewel.

  She turned to stand over her father’s body. All angles and shards now. Her anger surged. How could he do this to the court? To her?

  He’d shouted curses and horrors from the moment he’d betrayed the king and unbound the Star Cabochon, Sima realized. Shouted more as he broke the other major gems, before he let Sima and Lin out of the pit. He’d babbled the plan at them as he’d climbed the steps up the wall, words tumbling from his mouth like water over river rocks. But he hadn’t made a single sound when he fell.

  He, whose pride was his ability to speak. Who had screamed and struggled for control, arguing with the gems, once his vows had broken. He had fallen silent, his jaw locked tight before he died.

  Sima reached her fingers out to touch her father’s mouth. It was dry as paper in the damp pit. She pulled on his lip, pressing down until his jaw parted. On her father’s swollen tongue, the Star Cabochon sparkled red and wild. Sima gasped and shut the dead man’s mouth before the stone could w
hisper her mad too.

  Her father’s skull, Sima realized, was what held the Star Cabochon quiet now. Kept her from going mad with its demands. Her hands shook at the thought. How they needed that gem. But could she bind it? And if she did manage that, could she command it?

  Sima reached into her sleeve and groaned. Her tools were in her cloak, which Nal had taken.

  A lapidary is never without their tools.

  She touched her father’s sleeve. Felt the hidden pocket. Loosed an inner tie. His stash of files, cutters, needle pliers, the small bezel wires and the large, the tiny strike-torch—the trust of a Jeweled Valley lapidary—unrolled onto the floor.

  She looked at her father’s closed mouth one last time. A lapidary obeys Jewel first, gem second.

  Then she whispered her vows over and over to deaden the voice of the ruby. She pried the gem from her father’s mouth. She wrapped it as fast as her fingers would allow in a low bezel.

  The six-armed star, a titanium dioxide flaw made radiant by what surrounded it, began to glow within the ruby.

  It whispered Power. It sang Control. Sima’s mind spun with images of herself on the amber throne.

  She worked faster, singing to drown the gem’s voice. She laced thicker platinum wire to form a claw bezel. Pressed that tight over the gem. Soldered it down. The star dimmed when she wrapped the claws, six of them, over its white arms. When she finished, Sima was drenched in sweat. Her head pounded. And she held the Star Cabochon in her palm.

  She raised her head to find Lin standing beside her. She hadn’t heard the Jewel’s chains, she’d been so focused on the gem.

  “That is beautiful work,” Lin said, staring at the gem and at the body of the royal lapidary. She turned and searched Sima’s face. “Can you command it?”

  “I don’t know. I have only tried to bind it.” To quiet it. Sima thought she saw a flicker of worry cross Lin’s face. “I do not want to risk betraying you. The cabochon will ask me to, if I am not strong enough. It wants its freedom.”

  “I know you will not betray me now,” Lin said. “But I ask one thing before you try to speak the gem.” Her hands traced her veil at her brow, where she wanted the cabochon’s bezel placed. “Solder the joins so that no seams exist. And bring out the lesser gems Nal threw back, too.”