The Will of the Empress

by Tamora Pierce

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Ambros.

  The wind shifted. Tris no longer smelled whatever it was. Slowly she lowered her hand.

  “Maybe nothing,” Sandry replied to her cousin. “Maybe trouble coming.”

  “Maybe one of those villagers slipped off to warn someone we’d be coming this way—bandits or the like,” one of their guards suggested. When Ambros frowned at him, the man shrugged. “Sorry, my lord, but we couldn’t watch everyone. There’s no word the Pofkim folk have any dealings with outlaws, but you never know.”

  On they went, the guards with hands on their weapons, riding around Sandry and Ambros in a loose circle. Tris refused to retreat into their ranks. After seeing her work with the riverbanks, none of the guards insisted that she move inside their protection.

  They had gone two miles when a spurt of wind showed Tris metal plates sewn to leather and shoved the tang of sweat, oil, and iron into her sensitive nose. She sneezed and reined up. Twenty men trotted out from behind a stone outcrop at the bend of the road and rode wide to encircle them. Some guards tracked them with their bows, sighting on first one, then another rider. Ambros and the remaining guards drew their swords.

  Three of the newcomers halted directly in front of their party. One of them was an older man, gray with age and red-nosed from too much drinking, though his seat in the saddle was assured and his gaze clear. Another was a redheaded man in his thirties who wore a gaudy blue tunic over his armor. He grinned at them, but there was nothing friendly about the double-headed ax in one of his hands. The third man was barely older than Sandry and Tris themselves. He wore a metal cuirass and held a bared sword in his trembling grip.

  “Good day to you, Saghad fer Landreg,” the redheaded man said casually.

  Ambros looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Bidis fer Holm. Saghad fer Haugh.” He directed the glare that went with the Saghad title at the oldest newcomer. For the youngest of them, Ambros spared only a sniff of disdain. He spoke to Sandry, though his eyes never left the men in front of them. “Behold the least savory of the so-called nobles who haunt your borders in search of easy pickings. Saghad Yeskoy fer Haugh is uncle to Bidis Dymytur fer Holm and father to that young sprig of a rotten family tree.”

  “Ah, but Dymytur is your eternal slave, fair Clehame,” the redheaded man said, bowing mockingly in the saddle. “Now, which of you wenches would that be? Please tell me it’s not the fat one, Ambros. Fat redheads always spell trouble in our family—look at my mother. I suppose I could cut this one back on her feed, get her a little less padded.”

  Tris sighed and leaned on her saddlehorn. “I wouldn’t touch you to kick you,” she told him rudely, her brain working rapidly. Ambros must think I’m worn out from the river, she thought. Oh, dear. I suppose a little surprise won’t hurt him. He really ought to know that Sandry isn’t a helpless maiden. Now seems as good a time as any for him to learn.

  “You’re going to try that thing, aren’t you?” demanded Sandry, her eyes blazing. “You’re going to try and kidnap me and force me to sign a marriage contract so you’ll get my wealth and lands.”

  “Oh, not try, dearest, wealthy Clehame,” Dymytur assured Sandry. “We’re going to do it. Your party has eight swords, and we have twenty.”

  “Isn’t that just like a bully,” Sandry replied shortly. “You think you have a sword, so you don’t have any vulnerabilities. Out of my way!” she ordered the guards.

  They hesitated long enough to infuriate Sandry. Before she could shout at them, Tris said, “Do as she says, please.”

  The guards flinched at the sound of her voice. When they looked at Sandry and met her glare, they reluctantly kneed their horses to either side to open a passage for her. Ambros lunged forward to grab Sandry’s rein and missed. “Are you Emelanese mad?” he demanded coldly, his cheeks flushed.

  “No, we aren’t,” Tris told him quietly. “We know precisely what we’re doing.”

  Sandry rode forward until her mount stood between those of two guards.

  “I’m not going with these people,” Sandry replied, her blue eyes fixed on her would-be kidnappers. “I can’t abide men who don’t dress properly.”

  Tris saw the billow of silver fire that passed from Sandry to strike the three nobles in front of them. It spread to their followers, jumping from man to man, until it formed a ring that passed through them all. For a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened. The only sound was the wind over the grasslands around them.

  Then a man yelped. He wore a leather and metal plate jerkin over his heavy tunic. Now the tunic collapsed into pieces, squirmed out from under the leather, and fell to the ground. Another man in Tris’s view grunted as his breeches fell apart at the seams and wriggled off. The tunic under the youngest noble’s breastplate also went to pieces and crawled away, while the cloak tied around his neck disintegrated into a heap of threads. Yeskoy hitched his chin, as if trying to adjust the shirt under his armor. Instead, a cloud of threads trickled from his sleeves and the hem of his armor, like milkweed down.

  “Maybe if you had women you didn’t treat as slaves, your clothes would hold up better,” Sandry continued, her hands white-knuckled on the reins. “Oh, but look. Your leather workers don’t do very well, either.”

  Now the stitches on the leather tunics gave way, as did the stitching that secured each metal scale to the leather beneath it. Leather breeches came apart at the seams; boots fell to the ground in pieces.

  “I doubt their saddlers like them, either, Clehame,” remarked one of the guards.

  All the stitchery in the saddles, tack, and saddle blankets was unraveling. Men slid to the ground, reins in their hands, stumbling as they landed in piles of leather and cloth. Their belts gave way as Sandry’s thread magic called to the stitches that held the buckles in place. Leather-wrapped weapon hilts came apart in their owners’ fists. By the time Sandry was done, twenty naked men surrounded them. Only a few still held the better-made swords. Even the binding that secured the double-headed ax to its haft came apart, leaving Dymytur to scrabble for the sheathed sword that lay among his belongings. The horses fled, unnerved by the feel of things coming apart on their sensitive backs.

  “I’d surrender if I were you,” yet another of Sandry’s guards advised. “She’s been nice. She hasn’t asked the redhead to look after you. The redhead isn’t at all nice.”

  “I’ve been working on it,” complained Tris.

  Ambros looked at the ring of naked men. “Do you know, I would have thought that, for a mission to kidnap a young girl, you’d all be better…equipped.”

  “That’s why we needed her, curse you!” snarled Yeskoy. “A plumply dowered heiress—do you think one of the imperial pretty boys will serve you any better, Viymese Clehame?” Although he was covering his private parts, he still managed to look fierce. “You’d best get it into your head, magic or no, you’ll be married soon enough. You won’t hold your nose so high when you’ve a belly full of brats and you’re locked up in someone’s country castle while he prances for the empress!”

  Tris looked at Sandry. “What do you say? There’s hail coming in the next storm. I could hasten it along, bring the hail down here. By the time I’m done, they’ll look like they’ve been kicked by elephants.”

  Sandry leaned forward. “I will never marry in Namorn, willing or no,” she said, her voice low and ferocious. “Never, never, never. Get out of my sight, before I tell my friend to send for that hail.”

  Dymytur hesitated, his eyes still on Sandry. His uncle snarled wordlessly and dragged him back, away from Sandry’s group.

  “The empress has mages, too!” Dymytur shouted, enraged. “Great mages who will tie up your power in a wee bow, so you’ll marry whoever she pleases as she commands. Then you’ll see about your never-never-never!”

  He turned and ran for the nearby woods, his kin and his warriors following at a stumbling trot. Sandry spat on the ground in disgust, and kneed her mare forward down the road. After a moment
’s hesitation, Ambros and their guards followed. Tris remained behind for a moment, undoing one of her wind braids. She drew out a fistful of its power, held it on her palm while she gave it a quick stir with a finger, then turned it loose. It circled the area in a powerful blast, strewing leather and cloth all over the wide fields around the road. Only then did she follow the others.

  Sandry fumed in silence all the way back to the castle. How dare these people? she asked herself silently, over and over. How dare they? What gives them the right to assume they may tell me how I am to live? They don’t know me. They don’t even care to know me. They look at me and all they see is a womb and moneybags.

  “Do people do this with your daughters?” she demanded sharply of Ambros after they had ridden several miles.

  Her cousin cleared his throat. “Only a fraction of women are at risk. If a woman is already bound by marriage contract, like most of the young ladies at court, she is considered untouchable. There are women and girls who are related to families or individuals considered too powerful to offend, like Daja’s friends in Kugisko, the Bancanors and the Voskajos. The rest of us keep our daughters close to home in their maiden years.”

  “And it’s considered safe to offend my family?” Sandry asked, her voice cutting.

  “The head of your family is the empress,” Ambros murmured. “And the empress wants you to remain here.”

  Sandry suggested what the empress could do about it in words she had learned from Briar.

  Ambrose flinched and shook his head. “It was folly of me to let us come out with less than two squads of men, but we needed every free hand for the plowing. I thought we would be safe enough inside our borders. Holm and Haugh must be desperate, to strike at you here.” He frowned. “And someone from Pofkim must have been in their pay, to let them know of our visit.”

  “Or someone at the castle got the word out when you announced this jaunt last night,” Tris said, matter-of-factly.

  Sandry glared at her.

  “What?” demanded Tris. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t venture outside your precious walls. It isn’t as if we didn’t handle the whole mess with no bloodshed. Though I don’t see why you didn’t arrest the nobles, at least,” she told Ambros. “It was highway robbery, in a manner of speaking.”

  “I wanted to get Sandry home,” Ambros said. “We’d have had our work cut out for us, to round them up and hold them, even without their weapons. And, well, there is the matter of the unspoken law.”

  “What unspoken law?” Sandry wanted to know.

  Ambros sighed and scratched his head. If he hadn’t been such a dignified man, Sandry would have described his look as sheepish. “The one of runaway marriages,” he said reluctantly at last. “No magistrate will penalize a man who kidnaps an unmarried woman for the purposes of marriage. Or if they do, it’s a fine, and one so tiny that it’s insulting. The only exception is if someone is killed during the kidnapping. Then the man must die.”

  “Mila of the Grain, of course we must punish him if he kills someone, but kidnapping?” cried Sandry. “A mere bit of manly folly! I’m sure if he apologizes to the woman and gives her flowers, she’ll come to thank him!”

  Wincing, Ambros continued in his dry way: “The custom’s from the old empire, the one west of the Syth. Those we’ve conquered since have chosen to, well, honor it.” “That’s barbaric!” snapped the girl.

  All around them the guards from Landreg bristled.

  “It is!” Sandry insisted, swiveling to look at them. “Around the Pebbled Sea, women control their own lives, within limits. No one can force us to marry against our will!”

  “Actually, they can, but they have to be sneakier about it,” remarked Tris, watching the clouds overhead. “Contracts, and bride prices. Telling the girl it’s for the good of the family, that sort of thing.”

  “It’s not right, the Namornese custom is barbaric, and I won’t be forced to marry anyone!” Sandry snapped. “Anyone who tries to force me will learn a sharp lesson!”

  “Any would-be kidnapper with chain mail would still be wearing it even after you were done with your spell,” Ambros observed. “And if they know what you can do, they’ll be sure to prepare ahead of time.”

  “I am not helpless deadweight,” Sandry whispered, her eyes blazing. “I am no victim, no pawn, no weakling.”

  Tris sighed as they trotted onto the road that would take them to the castle gate. “No weakling against the imperial mages? Ishabal is a great mage. So’s Quenaill. Do you even know if you could face down great mages, if one was trying to kidnap you?”

  “If you three weren’t fighting what we used to be, I wouldn’t think twice about it!” cried Sandry, furious. “But no, you fear I’ll discover something naughty in your minds. Or silly. Or ugly. It’s like the three of you went off to have your adventures and then you come home and blame me because we’re all different! I want us to be what we were, and all you care about is that travel broadened you!” To her disgust she realized she was weeping as she shouted her resentments. “Forgive me for wanting my family back!” Before she disgraced herself even further, she kicked her horse into a gallop and pelted headlong up the hill to Landreg Castle.

  On their return Sandry retreated to her rooms. As they waited for the bell to call them to the dining hall, it was left to Tris to tell Briar and Daja what had happened that day.

  Daja nodded when Tris told them about Sandry’s last outburst. “She mentioned that to me, back home,” she admitted.

  “But she said when we left she didn’t mind,” Briar complained. They had gathered in his chambers, watching as he put together a blemish cure for Ambros’s oldest daughter. He spoke to his sisters as if he were doing nothing else, but his hands were sure as he added a drop of this and two drops of that to the contents of a small bowl. “She told us to stop being silly and grab the chance when it was

  offered.”

  “What else could she say?” Daja wanted to know. “If you’ve forgotten, she hates to distress people.”

  “That wasn’t apparent today,” Tris murmured, watching the flames in Briar’s hearth. “She left those kidnappers in plenty of distress. And she certainly gave us the rough edge of her tongue, coming back. I can’t recall ever seeing her angry enough to yell.”

  “She hates being treated like a thing,” Daja reminded them. “She always hated it when people looked at her and saw a noble girl, not a human being. And she’s been running Duke’s Citadel since a few months after we were all gone. It must be hard, going from mistress of a castle and adviser to a nation’s ruler to someone who’s supposed to go where she’s bid and do as she’s told.”

  “If she doesn’t like it, let her sign it over to Ambros,” Briar suggested, wiping off the slender reeds he used as droppers. “Sign it all over and go home.”

  “I think it’s a matter of pride,” Tris remarked slowly. “She hates being treated like a noble, except when she wants to act like one. Like today. She was happy enough with the villagers and everything. It was when those idiots tried to make her into a prize that she got all on her dignity. If she gives up these estates now, it will be like she’s been forced to surrender what’s rightly hers out of fear.”

  “She’ll think she’s shirking,” added Daja. “She already thinks it, with all the things that didn’t get done because they had to pay so much out to her, and because of people like Gudruny.”

  “No, it’s not that she’s afraid to shirk, though Lakik knows she hates that,” Briar told them, pouring his cure into a small glass bottle. “She’s got the bit between her teeth now. It’s how she always gets, when someone says she has to do anything she thinks challenges her rights. Remember when I stole my shakkan and Crane and his people were chasing me?” He reached out and stroked the tree, which he kept nearby whenever he was working. “There she was, all of ten and no bigger than an itch, standing in front of the house and telling Crane and his students she forbade them to come onto her ground.” He shook his head wit
h an admiring grin. “Nothing between her and them but a flimsy old wooden fence and gate, and there she was, telling them they weren’t allowed to pass.”

  Daja chuckled. “Or the time she said she wanted me to sit at table with her, and the other nobles balked, and she pulled rank on them. She was that strong-willed even eight years ago.”

  “Then she must hate all this,” said a soft voice from the doorway. The door had been open, but they had thought everyone else had gone downstairs. Now Rizu leaned against the frame, her arms crossed over her full bosom. Her large, dark eyes were filled with pity. “Noble girls don’t usually get to dictate the terms of their lives in the empire. I was wondering how she’d come by the regal manner. I suppose it was losing her parents that made her grow up so fast?”

  The three looked at one another. Tris shrugged, then Briar, indicating Daja could decide what to tell the older woman. Briar thought it would be all right to trust Rizu a little. He’d noticed she listened more than she gossiped, and she hardly ever said a hurtful word. Briar liked her, for all that he felt she was unavailable to the likes of him. Since she was always friendly, he knew it wasn’t that she had problems with his being a commoner or a mage. He just wasn’t her type. That was fine with Briar. Caidy, with her sly eyes and her habit of touching his arm, or his shoulder, or his chest, was far more intriguing.

  “Well, her parents traveled a great deal, you know that,” Daja replied to Rizu’s question. “She was with adults more than children, and her parents could be a little…”

  “Distracted,” Briar supplied, writing down instructions for the use of his blemish cure.

  “That,” agreed Daja. “And once Niko, who found us four, once he saw we had magic, we were spending more time among adults, and with each other. Then there was the earthquake, and the pirates.”

  “Forest fire,” added Tris softly. “Plague. His Grace’s heart attack.”

  “And getting caught up in murders, and having a student to teach, and handling a kind of magic most of us can’t even see,” Briar explained. “It rearranges the way you look at the world.”