The Will of the Empress

by Tamora Pierce

  “He’s fifty-two or thereabouts, then,” Wenoura said. “By that count.” She turned: The maids had all stopped what they were doing to listen. “I don’t see supper magicking itself onto the table,” she said sharply. “Get back to work, you lazy drudges. We’ve supper and breakfast to fix and food for them and the nobles to eat on the road tomorrow while you gape like a field full of cows!”

  Zhegorz looked at Daja, trembling. “You’re going away?”

  Daja looked at Tris, who frowned at Zhegorz as she pulled on her lower lip. I remember that look, Daja thought. Just because we aren’t in each other’s minds doesn’t mean I don’t know what she’s thinking right now. And she won’t say another word until all her thoughts are lined up. She thinks he has magic. She’s thought it since she opened only one shutter. And it must be strange magic, or she’d have told him outright. Or there’s something peculiar in it.

  Just because Tris isn’t talking doesn’t mean I can’t, she told herself. “Yes, but it’s all right.” She reached over and closed her hands around Zhegorz’s trembling fingers again. “Yes, we’re going away, but you aren’t to worry, because you’ll be with us. It means you’ll be out of the city—it’s worse in the cities, you said?”

  Both Zhegorz and Tris nodded.

  “You’ll be with us. Zhegorz, you know my magic’s a little—odd, right?” Daja asked.

  Zhegorz nodded. Tris stopped pulling her lip and began to chew on the end of one of her thin lightning braids, lost in thought.

  Doesn’t that hurt? wondered Daja, watching in awe as the redhead nibbled her source of sparks. To Zhegorz, Daja said, “Well, hers is, too, and so are the magics of the lady who owns this house and our brother.” She spoke under the clatter as the maids and Wenoura got to work. “And the thing with having odd magic is that you are more inclined to spot it in somebody else. My friend here—her name is Tris—she’s already figured out you hear voices because she hears them, too, on the winds.”

  Zhegorz yanked around to stare up at Tris. “You hear them, too?” he asked in wonderment.

  “For years,” Daja said when Tris only nodded. “So part of what’s wrong with you is that you never learned a way to manage what you hear, or even that the problem was magic all along. We don’t know about the visions”—Daja glanced at Tris, who shook her head—“though maybe they’re on the winds?” Tris shrugged.

  “Well, she’ll figure it out, I suppose, and you’ll stay with

  us while she works on it.”

  Chime had endured enough of the maids and cook who now bustled around her napping place. She wriggled out between their legs and took flight, to land on the table in front of Zhegorz. The man flinched away and knocked the bench over to land on his back.

  “That’s just Chime,” said Tris, reaching down a hand. “She’s all right. She’s a living glass dragon. They’re not very common.”

  Daja snorted: In her dry way, Tris had made a joke. Zhegorz stared up at Tris, then cautiously took the offered hand. As she helped him to his feet, he said in a voice filled with wonder, “Are all of you decked in marvels? Are all of you as mad as she is?” He pointed to Daja with his free hand. “She walked into a burning building that was collapsing. And before she did it, she saved my life and the lives of others who were as mad as me. Madder.”

  “Collapsing buildings?” Tris asked Daja. She released Zhegorz to put the bench upright again. Gingerly the man sat to peer at Chime, who had decided to charm. As she wove her way around and between his hands and arms, chiming, Daja looked away from Tris.

  “A man I knew, supposedly a friend, was setting fires,” she mumbled. “It’s not something I like to discuss.”

  “She burned him up,” Zhegorz said, smoothing reverent fingers over Chime’s surface. “Her and other fire folk who were present at the execution. The governor was furious.” He looked at Daja. “It was quicker than letting him burn slow. And he broke the law.”

  Wenoura handed Tris a bowl of hot soup and a spoon. The redhead set them down in front of Zhegorz. She didn’t appear to see the single tear that escaped Daja’s eye before Daja blotted it away. Daja could still remember that cold afternoon and that roaring pillar of flame. Knowing she and the other fire mages had saved Bennat Ladradrun an agonizing death hadn’t soothed the pain of his betrayal.

  “Hush,” Tris was telling Zhegorz. “Some things you can’t fix by making excuses for them.”

  And how did you learn that? Daja wondered. Or is it something you just never forgot, after you killed all those pirates?

  Tris looked around. “I should ask the housekeeper if there’s a guest room that can be made up for you.”

  “I’ll take him.” Briar strolled in, hands in his pockets. They hadn’t seen him arrive. “The servants can put a cot in my room. You’ll want me close by anyway, old fellow. If you get the horrors, I have drops that will help.”

  “Putting him in a room on the downwind side of the house will help even more,” Tris replied. “I think part of his problem now is he’s had too many such drops.”

  “Sleeping drops, with no magic in them, then,” Briar said. He sat next to Zhegorz and offered a hand. “Briar Moss. These two are my mates.” Not everyone knew this was slang for close friends, so he added, “My sisters.”

  Gingerly, Zhegorz offered his own hand. “I can tell,” he said, his voice soft.

  Briar clasped his hand, then let go and glared at Tris. “You know, I don’t go around feeding everybody magic the first time they sneeze,” he said belligerently. “It’s not good for them. You get used to it, and it stops helping. You’d be a lackwit not to know that.”

  “Not wanting to butt in or anything,” said one of the maids with a wink at Briar, “but shouldn’t you be asking my lady before you go bringing in…” She rethought the word she was about to use and supplied, “Guests?”

  Briar, Daja, and Tris all exchanged glances. Daja could see they felt just as she did. They were bewildered at the thought of having to ask such a thing of one of them.

  “But I had a house and it didn’t bother us then,” she said.

  “You’re different,” Briar and Tris said together. They looked at each other and smiled wryly.

  “Then it shouldn’t be different here.” Sandry emerged from the shadows by the door into the kitchen. “Don’t I get to meet our new guest?”

  Zhegorz lunged to his feet so fast that he ended up knocking the bench over again. He and Briar went sprawling onto their backs. Sandry helped Briar to his feet as Tris assisted Zhegorz again. Chime rose onto her hindquarters and made a crisp series of splintering glass noises at Sandry. It sounded rather like a scolding. Sandry almost dropped Briar on his rump again when she clapped both hands over her mouth to cover her giggle. He staggered to stay on his feet, then grabbed the bench and set it back up.

  Sandry looked at them, waved for the maids and the cook to stop curtsying, and said quietly, “I’m still me, you know. And you were very right to scold me. I didn’t think to ask you.”

  Tris propped her fists on her hips. “It’s just as well now,” she said, eyeing Zhegorz. “He’ll need someplace quieter than this to stay until we can sort him out.”

  Zhegorz blinked down at his stout protectress. Standing, he was five inches taller than Tris. He should have more of a presence, thought Tris. He’s a grown man, after all, older almost than the four of us together. But maybe it’s that he’s spent so much of his life running and hiding from things, and being locked up. Maybe inside he’s not that much older than fifteen.

  “I’ll make sure you have a room, and somewhere we must have spare clothing,” Sandry assured Zhegorz softly. “Will you mind a day’s ride tomorrow?”

  The man’s eyes shuttled from Sandry to Briar, to Daja, then to Tris. “You won’t want to adopt me when all your secrets come popping out of my mouth,” he warned them, rubbing a temple. “It always happens.”

  Briar clapped Zhegorz on the back. “Well, if it happens, and I doubt it, we’ll mak
e sure you’ve got a pack full of clothes and food, at least.”

  “We’re not going to get rid of you,” Daja said, glaring at Briar. “We blurt people’s secrets all the time. You’ll be safer with us.”

  “It’s settled, then. Come on, Zhegorz,” said Briar companionably.

  As he led their new comrade off, Sandry looked at Tris. “Will we be able to help him?” she asked.

  Tris was looking at the chewed end of one braid. “At least enough to get him back to Winding Circle,” she murmured. “I think he’ll have to go there in the end.”

  “But you’re going to be nice, right?” Daja asked. “You’re going to be gentle with him, because he’s all broken to pieces inside.”

  “When am I not nice?” demanded Tris with a scowl.

  That reduced Daja and Sandry to laughter. Each time they met Tris’s glaring gray eyes, a fresh surge of laughter began. Finally Tris herself began to smile crookedly. “Well, nice by my standards, anyway. Treat me right, or I’ll make sure you get rained on all the way to Landreg in the morning.”

  Briar had difficulty getting to sleep that night. Bedding down alone—alone in the bed, Zhegorz had a cot in the dressing room not fifty feet away—was a strange new experience for him of late. He hadn’t deliberately set out to ensure there was always someone warm and cuddly to share his blankets with, but it was an agreeable coincidence. It helped that he was so friendly, and the ladies were so friendly in return. He certainly could tell none of them, or worse, tell his sisters, that he had a horror of sleeping alone. Admitting that to anyone would force him to admit there was something wrong with him.

  He lay awake for over an hour, listening to the small noises that Zhegorz made, settling into his mattress, then falling to sleep. The crazy man buzzed in place of snoring. It was a soothing kind of noise, hardly crazy at all. When Briar finally realized what it was, it soon lulled him to sleep.

  He ran through a series of rock-sided canyons, all of them stripped of vegetation. He reached every way around him with his magic, seeking even a blade of grass to keep him company, but the ground here was bare and dry, a desert high above the forests and plains of all the world. He kept looking for a way out of the canyons, but all he saw was smooth rock walls, innocent of cracks or ledges.

  Behind him Briar heard the thud of Yanjingyi war drums, a loud, flat thump echoed by thousands of marching feet. The sound had followed him into the stone corridors, driving him like game in the dark. Now came the thin, shrill blast of the Yanjing emperor’s battle trumpets, and the frightful first roars of the black powder called boom dust. They were blowing up the stone canyons…

  …which turned into the twisting hallways of the First Temple of the Living Circle, jammed with dedicates, fleeing the attacking Yanjingyi army. Briar fought against their rushing tide, trying to find Rosethorn and Evvy, his student. Where were they? Evvy was small, yet—she could have been trampled in this chaos! He screamed her name, but it was lost in the cries of the frightened civilians who had taken shelter in the temple.

  Everything went dark. Suddenly Briar was crawling over heaps of loose and wet bodies, feeling his way, shuddering. He knew he was crawling on the bodies of the dead. He reached out and felt a dying flare of green magic, plant magic. Screaming, he clutched the dying Rosethorn to his chest.

  “…know it’s a bad idea to wake a dreamer, but it didn’t sound like you’re enjoying yourself and if I can’t get you to wake I’ll have to get one of the Viymeses, though perhaps—”

  Briar grabbed Zhegorz’s skinny arm and sat up, glaring into the older man’s eyes. He could see them clearly: Zhegorz had managed to light a candle. “Don’t you dare,” Briar ordered softly. “They’re not to know you caught me bleatin’ like a kid, you got me, daftie? Elsewise I’ll plant a bit of green on your lip that will grow your teeth shut, you got me?”

  Zhegorz blinked at him, his odd blue-gray eyes bright. “I don’t think that’s possible,” he replied. “I don’t believe it would cling.”

  “It’s got stickers on it, and they sink in the cracks.” Realizing the man had no intention of telling on him, Briar released Zhegorz’s arm. “It’s only a dream.”

  Zhegorz sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “So you’ll give me drops for my dreams, but not yours?”

  Briar rubbed his aching head. “Just what I need—a daftie that makes sense,” he grumbled. “Besides, your dreams is bleating, and mine is real. Except for some bits. And those might have been real.”

  “But Viymese Tris thinks some of mine are real, too,” Zhegorz pointed out in a reasonable tone.

  “Viymese Tris thinks too much, and she yatters about it too much,” Briar grumbled. “You’d best learn that right off.”

  “If I learn it, will you take the drops?” asked Zhegorz.

  Briar stared at him, baffled and confused, then began to chuckle. “Crazy you may be, but when you get an idea in your head, you stick to it,” he said when Zhegorz raised an eyebrow. “How about I just make us both some sleepy tea instead? We’ll be all right with a cup of that in our bellies.”

  The tea sent Zhegorz back to bed, at least. Briar had known it would have no other effect on him than to calm him down. Instead he pulled his chair up to his work desk and put his hands around the base of his shakkan, letting the tree’s centuries of calm banish the last shivers from the dreams that had made him so reluctant to sleep alone anymore. Looking at it, he realized that while he’d been occupied with preparing for court, the shakkan had slyly put out a handful of new buds.

  “Nice,” he said with a grim smile. “But you still don’t get to keep them.”

  When the maid came to wake them before dawn, she found Briar asleep with his head on his desk, one arm around his shakkan. Tiny clippings from the tree lay next to its tray from its late night trimming.

  8

  The 30th day of Goose Moon, 1043 K. F.

  Landreg House, Dancruan, to

  Clehamat Landreg (Landreg Estate), Namorn

  Rizu, Jak, Fin, and Caidlene arrived with the dawn, just as the hostlers were bringing out horses for Sandry and her escorts. They all greeted one another sleepily. No one was inclined to conversation at that hour. Zhegorz, who had shown a tendency to talk rapidly in bursts the night before, huddled silently in the patched coat they had found for him. He rolled his eyes at the sleepy-eyed cob who had been saddled for his use, but once he was on the sturdy gelding’s back, he seemed to do well enough.

  Ambros, pulling on his riding gloves, frowned as he looked at their scarecrow. “How shall we explain him?” Sandry’s cousin wanted to know. “You can’t just go around adding strangers to your entourage without questions being asked, Cousin, particularly not when you came to us without a single guardsman or maid.”

  Sandry looked crisp in her blossom pink riding tunic and wide-legged breeches, but her brain had yet to catch up. “Ambros, how can you even think of such a thing at this hour?” she demanded, and yawned.

  He gazed up at her as she sat on her mare, his blue eyes frosty. “Because there are going to be at least two spies outside the gates, and more on the way,” he added. “Young women in Namorn do not enjoy the license they appear to do in the south, Cousin. There are good reasons for that.”

  Jak leaned drowsily on his saddle horn. “Can’t we just let the spies guess and decide when we’re awake?” he asked.

  Ambros glared at him, his mouth tight.

  “I think we’re probably supposed to be spies, too,” said Caidlene, who had been lively enough the afternoon before. “Which is silly, because we’d have to be awake to be spies.” She sipped from a flask that steamed in the chilly spring air. “Tea, anyone?”

  “He’s my secretary, all right?” demanded Sandry, out of patience with it all. “I didn’t realize what a complicated social life I should be leading in Namorn, so I had to hire a Namornese secretary, Cousin—will that satisfy you? May we get on with our lives?”

  Ambros snorted and mounted his gelding. Zhegor
z looked around at his traveling companions and their guards. “Secretary? I don’t even have pens, or ink, or—”

  Briar leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll set you up in style,” he reassured Zhegorz. “You’ll be a king of secretaries.”

  As a pair of guards opened the gates, their company formed up in pairs to ride through. Leading the way with Ambros, Sandry heard Zhegorz complain, “I’m not sure I even know how to write.”

  And here I thought Tris was the one who was always bringing home strays, thought Sandry, shaking her head as they rode onto High Street. Now she’s got Daja and Briar and me doing it, too. She glanced sidelong at Ambros, whose long mouth was tight. She couldn’t help it: Her own lips twitched. I would love to hear Ambros explain how I can have a social secretary who can’t write.

  Just as Tris had vaguely warned them the day before, rain began to fall as the servants closed the house gates behind them. Ambros halted their party, looking at Sandry as Rizu moaned and Caidlene sneezed.

  Sandry turned in the saddle. “Tris?” she asked.

  Tris, who already had a book in one hand, looked up, startled. Sandry indicated that water was falling from the sky—though surely even Tris would notice when her book got wet! she thought.

  The redhead glared up at the clouds. Though Sandry saw or felt nothing, the soft rain parted, streaming to either side of their company, just as if they were protected by a glass shield. Tris looked around, making sure that everyone, including their guards and packhorses, was included under her protection. Then she raised her eyebrows to silently ask, All right?

  That’s our Tris, thought Sandry, resigned to her sister’s eccentricities. She nodded and turned to Ambros, who stared at Tris, unnerved. Sandry nudged him with a booted foot. Remembering where he was, Ambros set his horse in motion, though his eyes followed the curve of the rain as it rolled away over his head. The others followed, though the guards and the courtiers visibly hesitated.