The Will of the Empress

by Tamora Pierce

  Daja cut him off by resting her hand on his arm. “When did you eat last?” she asked. Cupping his elbow in her free hand, she steered him down a narrow side street, away from the gawkers and any spies who might report his ravings to the crown. Her horse followed calmly when she tugged on his reins. “And where in Hakkoi’s name have you been sleeping?”

  “Beach caves,” he replied, watching everything but the street in front of them. Daja braced him when he nearly tripped over a mound of horse droppings, and maneuvered him past hazards after that. “Sand’s good for scrubbing clothes, and there’s a stream, but I had to come because of the game pieces—”

  “You can tell me about the pieces later, Zhegorz. When did you eat?”

  He shrugged. Daja had the peculiar notion that if she looked into his eyes she would see comets and whirling stars where common sense ought to be. With a sigh, she pulled him around the corner onto Kylea Street, where she found a strawberry vendor’s cart. She grabbed a woven reed basket filled with strawberries and flipped a silver argib coin to the vendor who sold them, then thrust the basket at Zhegorz. “Eat those,” she ordered. She had to spend the next several minutes showing him how to remove the leafy crown after he ate one strawberry whole. He was silent as he worked his way through the basket, popping fruit after fruit into his mouth.

  He’s starving, thought Daja as she continued to steer him along the back way to the town house. The Namornese gods are cruel, to make someone like him mad. For all his raving, he’s got a good heart. Most crazy people would have run off on their own in that fire, or never even offered to help. Not that he offered, but he did as I told him when I ordered him to. And he didn’t want me to walk back into the burning hospital. That was sweet.

  The servants’ gate at Landreg House was open. Gently, Daja guided Zhegorz inside and turned her mount over to a hostler who came for it. Then she looked at her charge. “If I put you in a hot tub in the bathhouse, will you stay there?” she asked him.

  Zhegorz ran a quivering hand over his chopped hair, his eyes scuttling back and forth. “Is the tub hot or the water hot?” he asked. “Specifics, what’s to be heated and what’s not—”

  Daja interrupted him again. “I forbid you to talk crazy,” she told him sternly. “Not here. Here you will talk like a normal human being or say nothing, one or the other.”

  “What’s normal?” the man asked. He rubbed his long, bumpy nose. His thin lips trembled.

  Daja frowned at him. “I don’t know. You’re older than me—you think of something. But don’t frighten the servants, all right? I’m going to put you in the bathhouse to wash up, and I’m going to see about fresh clothes. You stay in the bathhouse until I come for you, understand?”

  “Do I shave?” Zhegorz asked. He was hollow-cheeked and stubbly. Daja shuddered to think of him with a sharp blade. Someone had shaved him recently enough that his salt-and-pepper beard was only stubble now. “Some other time,” she said, grateful not to deal with that on top of everything else. She led him into the bathhouse and waited as he undressed behind a screen, wrapped a towel around his waist, then climbed into a tub full of steaming water. The servants kept the baths ready at this time of day for anyone who might come in.

  “Stay,” she ordered as he leaned back against the side of the tub. He nodded, thin lips tightly closed. It seemed he had chosen silence of the alternatives she had given him. Daja could accept that. Off she went in search of clothes and something more for him to eat.

  Shan left Sandry and the rest of her party at the town house gate with a bow, a smile, and a cheerful good-bye. Briar and Tris nodded, but otherwise said nothing as they surrendered their mounts to the stable hands and followed Sandry into the house.

  “I believe Daja will be bringing a, a guest of some sort,” Sandry told the head footman. “See that they have whatever they need, and please tell Daja she will find me in the book room.” I can’t wait to hear what that was about! she thought.

  She then found the ground floor book room. She wanted nothing more than to sit and put her feet up on a hassock—attendance on an empress involved a great deal of standing, even when one was privileged enough to be allowed to sit in her presence now and then. She was just relaxing when she realized that Briar and Tris, instead of going to their rooms, had come in behind her and shut the door. They both stood there, Briar with his arms crossed over his chest, Tris with her fists propped on her hips.

  “What?” demanded Sandry as they glared at her. “What did I do?”

  “Did it occur to you that perhaps we might like to be consulted on yet another long ride?” demanded Tris.

  Briar added, his voice mockingly proper, “Thanks ever so for asking, Clehame Sandry. Our lives are yours to arrange like you arrange embroidery silks. We have no minds—or rumps—of our own to help us decide if we want a daylong journey so soon.”

  “I asked you, didn’t I?” demanded Sandry, startled. “I was sure I asked you. I told Cousin Ambros.”

  “You did not,” snapped Tris. “You told us, like you’d tell ‘Cousin Ambros.’ In front of the empress and her court, so it’s not like we could discuss it with you.”

  “Well, you could have said something before now,” replied Sandry with a shrug. “My lands are the main reason I came.”

  “Tell you in front of the court, or the servants, or the empress?” Briar demanded. “Is all this royalness making you soft in the head?”

  Sandry tightened her lips. “No one would have known if you’d spoken to me the way we used to talk to each other,” she said mulishly. “Silently. Remember? No one to eavesdrop, ever. Now stop complaining. If you want to stay here, I’ll go on to my estates with Ambros by myself.”

  “And have the imperial friends who’re coming along report back that we gave them the cold shoulder?” asked Briar. “Maybe you don’t have to worry about them getting us in trouble, but we aren’t highborn. We’re vulnerable.”

  “You’re just being disagreeable,” Sandry told them both. “I’ll say you both got sick, will that silence you?”

  “You treating us like equals instead of servants—that will silence us,” Tris replied. “You didn’t act like this back at Winding Circle. Either we’re your household or your family. Make up your mind.”

  Sandry’s mouth quivered. I’m homesick, she realized, distressed. I’m homesick, and I don’t want them to scold me anymore. “Oh, leave me alone!” she cried, wanting them out of the room before she actually began to cry. “I didn’t ask for you to come! It was Uncle’s idea—I just wanted to make him easy in his mind! How was I to know you two had gotten all, all prideful and arrogant?” She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  “We’re prideful and arrogant?” demanded Briar, shocked. “Who’s issuing orders around here, Clehame?”

  “Oh, splendid. Tears. That solves ever so much,” snarled Tris. She flung the door open and stamped out of the room.

  Briar followed her out after he allowed himself one parting shot, “See you at dawn, my fine lady.”

  Sandry managed to wait for the door to close behind them before her eyes overflowed. I didn’t feel so blue on the road, she thought, tears spilling over her cheeks. There was too much to do, and we had the Traders with us. But this court, with its standing and sitting and curtsying and sitting and bowing and standing and walking and gossiping and curtsying…Uncle never makes anyone carry on like that! We bow or curtsy when we see him, and that’s that for the day. And I never, ever felt like I was surrounded by envious people in Emelan, not like I do here. Everyone wants what I have, and I just want to go home!

  Her soft mouth hardened. And Briar and Tris can just go and do as they like. Obviously we had something wonderful as children that we can’t have now we’re grown. I was a fool to think we could, and now I have more important things to worry about.

  Tris climbed up the flights of stairs to her room and proceeded to shed the clothes she had worn to court as Chime fluttered around her in welcome. All of them
had decided Chime was too excitable for their first day at court. Although her mind knew that Sandry had woven all kinds of protections against stains, wrinkles, and mishaps into the fine cloth and seams, Tris could never be as comfortable in her dressup clothes as she could her other garments. Now she tugged on a linen shift and a blue cotton gown with a sigh of relief. Her court shoes came off to be replaced by leather slippers.

  Comfortable at last, with Chime on her shoulder, Tris was on her way downstairs again when she nearly ran into Ambros fer Landreg. “Excuse me, Saghad,” she said, curtsying for what felt like the hundredth time that day. They had been introduced briefly over breakfast that morning.

  “Viymese Trisana,” he said, with a bow. “Did you enjoy your visit to the palace?”

  As much as I’d enjoy a rat pasty, she thought, but she did not say it. “Please, it’s just Tris. I’m not much for titles as a rule.”

  “Then you must call me Ambros,” he said in his quiet way. “You are Sandry’s sister, after all, which makes us kin of some kind. At least we are better than acquaintances, or should be.”

  Tris smiled at him, appreciating that tiny hint of a joke. She liked this man; she had thought she might. Everything she had heard of him from the duke and from Sandry had spoken well of him. Sandry called him prosy and picky all the way here, but in her shoes, I’d want someone meticulous and careful looking after my affairs, Tris thought. Someone I could trust to check everything.

  She realized she had a piece of information that he might want. “I’m afraid there are going to be a few more of us visiting Landreg than you had expected,” she explained. “Her Imperial Majesty invited four of her courtiers to bear us company, and I think—I’m not sure—Daja met a friend she means to invite to stay for a while.” It had been interesting to see Daja go all protective over someone as unendearing as a crazed beggar in the street.

  Ambros grimaced. “I had anticipated the noble company,” he admitted. “Her Imperial Majesty won’t want Sandry to forget the attractions of life at court if it can be helped. I am grateful we have only four extra nobles. I half-expected Her Imperial Majesty herself to come to call.”

  “Shan fer Roth mentioned something about a cousin from Lairan coming to visit the palace,” Tris offered.

  “Ah. That would explain it. Thank you for the warning, though, Viy—Tris.” Ambros smiled at her. “You’ll find Landreg can house all manner of guests. My family is already there.” He bowed and headed on up to his rooms, while Tris continued down to the kitchen.

  Wenoura, the cook, looked at her from where she chopped onions and gave a leopard’s grin. “Someone I can trust to chop without dismembering herself,” she said. She and Tris had gotten acquainted the day before, when Tris had needed something to do with her hands. “Aprons are on those hooks. I sent the maids out to shop and they aren’t back. Take over for me while I warm soup for that one.” She jerked her head toward the table at the end of the room.

  Daja sat there with her friend. Her face might as well have “don’t ask” written on it in light, Tris thought, helping herself to an apron. Chime unwrapped herself from Tris’s neck and glided down to the floor to curl up under the worktable. Onions had no charm for the glass dragon. As Tris tied the apron over her dress, she yanked a thread of breeze from the back door to carry the scent of the onions away before they reached her sensitive nose. She yanked a second, fatter thread of air from the front of the house past Daja so that she could eavesdrop on what she said to the bony man. Only when those bits of business were taken care of did she begin to cut up the peeled onions that awaited her attention.

  “Zhegorz, why are you here?” Daja asked the man as he drank from a heavy mug. “I thought you’d still be in Kugisko—”

  “Locked up,” said the man—Zhegorz, Tris repeated to herself—when Daja fumbled her words. “I got out of the hospital. I told them I was cured. I acted cured. I can do that. They didn’t have the kitchen witch look at me. She always knows the truth, see, and she would have told them. Maybe she smells it on me, I don’t know, but I pretended to be like them for a whole week. The locked wing was crowded and there were more like me waiting so they asked me questions and gave me an argib and new clothes and let me out.”

  “That green robe you were wearing isn’t new,” Daja said as Wenoura set a pot of soup to heat on one of the small stoves. “That’s the robe you wore when you helped me get the others out during the fire. It’s still got scorch marks on it.”

  “I told them it was my lucky charm,” Zhegorz replied. “It is my lucky charm. I wore it and even though I knew the governor saw me at the fire and I knew his torturers would come for me, I pretended to be like the outside people and fled Kugisko, and it worked. So the robe is lucky because the torturers didn’t get me. I truly was better outside the city, in the grasslands, or they’re grasslands when there’s no snow. But it’s hard to eat grass and I’m no hunter, so I go back to the cities and towns and I leave those places when the voices get to be too much but I have to eat.” He hung his head. “I made my way here alone with my, my…” He sighed, his bony shoulders slumped. “Madness.”

  Wenoura rolled her eyes at Tris, who had finished the onions and started on the parsnips. It was getting stuffy in the kitchen. The cook went to a set of shutters and opened them.

  “But there are voices, don’t you hear them?” asked Zhegorz suddenly.

  Tris freed her string of breeze now that she was finished with the onions, letting it mingle with the larger one. The maids had returned, their voices blurring Daja’s and Zhegorz’s. One of them took over on chopping.

  “Well, the maids are back,” Daja told him. Tris removed her apron and hung it up, then went to wash her hands near where the pair sat so she could hear.

  “No!” Zhegorz cried. “Voices everywhere in the cities and towns, voices in the air, talking of love and fighting and money and families and—”

  Daja trapped his hands in hers, holding his eyes with her own. “Calm down,” she told him sternly. “You’re safe.”

  Tris dried her hands with a frown.

  “But sometimes the voices and visions, though I haven’t seen so many visions, sometimes they have secrets and if you let them slip, husbands and fathers and soldiers come for you with knives!” protested Zhegorz. He trembled from top to toe. “They hunt for you and they hurt you to see how you know their scheming, so nowhere is safe—even when it’s just the blacksmith meeting his best friend’s wife in a barn, they hurt you because they think you spy!”

  Tris went over and closed the open window.

  “It’s hot in here!” Wenoura protested. “We need fresh air!”

  Tris turned to look at Zhegorz. He had gone silent, white-faced under his stubble. Daja released him so he could cover his face with his hands. He was still trembling.

  Tris opened just one of the shutters this time, the half that wouldn’t let air blow directly toward Daja’s table. Neither Daja nor Zhegorz seemed to notice, though the cook and maids sighed their relief. The kitchen was heating up.

  Tris went over and plumped herself down next to Zhegorz. “Where are you from?”

  He flinched from her.

  “Stop scowling at him,” ordered Daja, frowning at the redhead. “You’d frighten a Trader’s dozen of crazy people with that frown. Zhegorz is my friend, and I won’t have you scaring him.”

  “She’s not scaring me, I don’t think,” muttered Zhegorz.

  “Well, you should be scared,” Daja told him stoutly. “Most sensible people are.” She forestalled his protest by raising her brassy hand. “You’re sensible enough, even if you are crazy.”

  “If he is, maybe he has reason to be,” Tris said, closing her eyes. “How old are you, Zhegorz?”

  He blinked, his thin mouth trembling. “I…don’t know,” he said at last. “One emperor and two empresses…”

  “Forty-five, maybe fifty,” Wenoura said behind Tris. “Were you too little to remember the old emperor’s death?” />
  Zhegorz shook his head, appearing to search his memory.

  I don’t envy him the task, Tris thought, watching him count on his fingers. No doubt it’s under layers and layers of magical potions and treatments and being locked up. It wasn’t readily apparent to her daily vision, but that could mean simply that if he did have power, as she suspected, he’d tried to bury it. Deep inside herself she worked a change over her vision, closing her eyes before she brought it up to them. For the second time that day she placed a layer of magic over her eyes, though this was very different from the one she had used to see the fishing fleet. Once she felt her eyes begin to sting—they didn’t like this trick, not in the least—she opened them.

  Normally she saw magics, including traces, as silver. This particular spell, one she had learned not long before her return to Emelan, showed her different magics in different colors. From this perspective, Zhegorz was coated with patch on patch of power, different spells from different mages. He’d been given all kinds of healing potions for his madness, ordinary healings for illnesses, broken bones, and decayed teeth, and a number of truth spells for the secrets he wasn’t supposed to know. Threaded around and through them, almost vanishing under her gaze before it emerged in its full strength, or part strength, was a bright gold thread that belonged to Zhegorz himself.

  Tris got up and walked around the table, eyeing him from every angle. The man was an insane patchwork doll of all the spells that had been worked on him since—“When did they first say you were mad?” she asked him.

  He would not look at her. “Fifteen,” he mumbled. “For my birthday they sent me to Yorgiry’s House, because I talked to the voices. I went home sometimes after, but I always got worse. They began to leave baskets of food and clothes at the garden gate, but they’d lock the gate. They wouldn’t come out until I was gone. That happened two or three times. Then one time the healers let me out and my family wasn’t there anymore. They had sold the house and moved away. I think I was twenty.” He looked at Daja. “The old emperor died around my fifteenth birthday. All of us who were mad got new black coats to wear for mourning.”