The Will of the Empress

by Tamora Pierce

  Sandry was stitching an embroidered band for Ealaga when she realized the hair at the nape of her neck tickled lightly. A moment later she heard Daja’s voice in her mind.

  You’d best dress nicely and come downstairs, Daja told her. We have company.

  What sort of company? Sandry wanted to know.

  Daja showed her friend rather than told her. Through her eyes Sandry saw the empress and her court climbing the steps to the great hall of the Landregs. Daja stood there, watching, as Rizu, Caidy, Fin, and Jak rushed forward to greet Berenene and their friends.

  Sandry also noticed that the man standing at the empress’s right hand was Pershan fer Roth. She replied, I’m coming.

  Wait a moment, said Daja. Isn’t that the fellow you were talking to, that day in the imperial gardens? Shan? Why are you interested in him?

  Never you mind, retorted Sandry as she flung her wardrobe open. She had forgotten that Daja might notice who she looked at. Closing off her tie with her sister, she called, “Gudruny!”

  Her new maid rushed in. For the first time in three days, she was not accompanied by her children.

  “Where are the little ones?” asked Sandry, stripping off her plain overgown. Her crisp white linen undergown would do for a meeting in a country setting, but not the light blue wool gown she wore on top. She inspected her clothes. Blue silk, blue silk, blue satin, she thought, her fingers walking through the better clothes. Don’t I have any other colors than blue? Ah.

  She had found a crinkled silk overgown in a delicate blush pink. Carefully she drew it out and undid the top buttons so she could slide it on over her head.

  “The children are with Cook,” replied Gudruny, gathering up the discarded overgown. She put it on the bed and began to tug the pink silk into place. “They are afraid the empress will force me to return to their father.”

  “She can’t,” Sandry replied, trying to stand still. It’s just that I haven’t gone beyond the village in three days, she told herself, trying to excuse her sudden attack of the fidgets. I want to see new faces, that’s all. “I got Ambros to explain it all to me while you were getting your things, and he gave me the law books to read. No liege lord may interfere in her vassal’s dealings with her own people. My vassals, my commoners, answer only to me. Her Imperial Majesty would have to get my consent to make any ruling with regard to you, and I won’t give it. That’s my right, under the Namornese charter of noble privileges.”

  Gudruny shrugged. “I’m afraid my children won’t grasp the ins and outs of lawyers’ talk,” she explained, guiding Sandry over to the stool before the dressing table. “I shall have to think of a simpler way to explain it to them.”

  Something in what she had said distracted Sandry from her own appearance. “Were you worried she could make you go back?” Sandry asked as Gudruny bustled around the room, finding a veil to match the gown, then taking up a comb.

  “A little,” the maid admitted with a rueful smile. “Her lack of sympathy is so very well known, Clehame Sandry. She is one of those who cannot believe that not everyone has her strength of mind. There is a reason people will say a thing is as unbreakable as the will of the empress.” She bit her lip and added, “I also think those who kidnapped Her Imperial Majesty were far more gentle with her, more careful of doing her harm, than are those who steal women who are not imperial heiresses. I think perhaps she had more opportunity to escape, so she believes we all have such opportunities to escape.”

  “Oh, dear,” whispered Sandry. Horrified, she thought, That has the dreadful ring of the truth. No one would want to bruise a wife-to-be who might be empress one day, but it’s a different kettle of fish for a poor girl who has no interest in the local miller. I’ll bet Halmar tied Gudruny a lot tighter than anyone ever tied Berenene.

  She watched Gudruny in the mirror as the woman briskly neatened Sandry’s hair, then pinned the veil on her gleaming brown locks. She’s certainly grown in confidence since our first meeting, Sandry told herself. It’s a good thing I hired her, telling that husband that he had no more rights over her.

  Once Gudruny was done, Sandry leaned forward and patted her cheeks to get a little color into them, then bit her lips gently until they were more red.

  “I have face paint,” Gudruny offered. “Lash blackener, lip color, something to make your cheeks glow.”

  Sandry got to her feet hurriedly. “I don’t want anyone thinking that I, well, that I wanted to attract attention,” she said, nearly stumbling over her own tongue to make her reply sound innocent. “I just thought my cheeks were a little rough, that’s all.” She turned and fled from the room.

  Gudruny’s right, thought Sandry as she prepared to descend the stairs to the main hall. I must have looked as if I were primping for…someone whose attention I’m trying to get. And I’m not. I’m glad Shan—I’m glad my cousin is here, after all. I want to get to know all of my family, even if Cousin Berenene refuses to see that I don’t intend to stay.

  From the shadows in the hall, Chime glided over to Sandry and perched on the girl’s shoulder. “Very well, you,” Sandry murmured, tugging her veil out from under the dragon’s hindquarters and straightening it. “But behave. No screeching.”

  Chime wrapped her tail gently around Sandry’s slender throat. It felt as if someone had placed a ring of cool ice around Sandry’s neck.

  “Now we’ll make an impression,” Sandry told Chime. Slowly she descended the stairs as if she had not hurried in the least. She sailed out the doors in Ambros’s wake. Everyone stood aside so that Sandry, as the highest in rank of the household, might go first. She pattered down the steps, knowing that the empress would not like her to remain higher than she was for long.

  “Cousin!” she cried, settling into a deep curtsy in front of Berenene. “What brings you all this way?”

  Berenene raised her up and kissed Sandry on each cheek as Sandry kissed her. “It was not so very far, my dear. I took it into my head to shift my household to the royal residence at Sablaliz, just twenty miles northeast of here, on the Syth. It’s an agreeable summer residence—so much cooler than the palace! And it makes it easier for me to get to know my young cousin better while she attends to her home estates.” She turned and looked at Rizu, Caidy, Jak, and Fin. “Have my four wicked ones kept you tolerably well-entertained?”

  “They’ve been wonderful company, Your Imperial Majesty,” Sandry replied. “I don’t know how you could manage without them to amuse you.”

  “It was a sacrifice, I admit,” said Berenene.

  She looked at Ealaga, who promptly curtsied. “We have refreshments in the summer room,” Ealaga said. “Rougher fare than you’re accustomed to, Imperial Majesty, but I think I can safely say that our wines are good.”

  As the empress and her companions entered the great hall, Daja found that Rizu had somehow slipped out of the gathering around her patron and come to stand with her. “I suppose you’ll be happy to get back to the round of court entertainment,” Daja suggested, feeling a little depressed. It’s just that the place was fairly quiet, and now it’ll be all noisy, she told herself.

  “I was enjoying myself here,” said Rizu. “I manage to enjoy myself wherever I land. A good thing, too, when you’re in the empress’s service.”

  “Did she send you along with us to spy?” Daja asked, not looking at Rizu.

  The young woman chuckled. “She doesn’t need me to spy. The people she has for that are very good at it.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “You four are an odd crew.”

  Daja looked at her, confused by the remark. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, anyone at court and quite a few people not at court would kill for the chance to join Her Imperial Majesty’s circle. And yet you all stand aloof. Is Emelan so much more filled with diversions and interesting people, compared with here?”

  Diversions? thought Daja, confused. “Our work is in Emelan. I have a house, with a forge, of my own. The Trader caravans know to find me there. My teacher
Frostpine is nearby, and the temple libraries, for when I want to tackle something magically complicated. Sandry is her uncle’s assistant, and he needs her. I don’t know about Briar, but Tris means to go to Lightsbridge to learn academic magic. I suppose you could say we’re not really the ‘diversions’ sort.”

  “But there are forges here in Namorn,” Rizu pointed out. “Sandry could advise the empress, I suppose, if she cared to.” She looked down. “I know I would like you to stay.”

  Daja’s heart thudded in her chest. A fizzing sensation filled her body, while her mouth went dry. “Me?” she asked, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat. “We’ll be here most of the summer,” she replied, trying to sound relaxed. “You’ll be more than tired of us all by then. We’re a difficult lot, and we usually only get on with difficult people.”

  Rizu raised her eyebrows. “Usually the difficult need people who aren’t in the least difficult around them. I try to be very un-difficult. Daja…” She put her hand on Daja’s arm.

  “Rizu! Daja!” Caidy stood in the open doorway. “She’s looking for you!” When she spoke that way, “She” meant only one person. To Daja, Caidy said, “Have you any idea where Briar got to? She’s asking for him, too, and she’s got that wrinkle between her brows.”

  “The one that means she’s deciding whether to be offended or not,” said Rizu. “Do you know where your brother is?”

  Daja quested out with her power. She found Sandry and Tris instantly. Her connection to Sandry was reopened all the way, so that Sandry blazed bright in Daja’s magical vision. Tris had not thawed, but the lightning in her was clear to the fire in Daja’s magic. Briar was still completely invisible.

  But maybe not to everyone, she thought. Looking at Caidy, Daja said, “I can’t find him, but Tris might. She usually keeps an eye on Briar.”

  Tris shook her head when Caidy, Rizu, and Daja asked her where Briar was—but she had an idea. She felt the finest cobweb of a bond between her and Briar. Perhaps it was there because after everything else was said and done, Tris had taught Briar to read, and they could still talk about books together. Neither Sandry nor Daja read as much as they did, or shared books with them. Shared reading made for solid friendships, like her relationship with Duke Vedris, Tris had found.

  She excused herself politely to the courtiers and wandered away with relief. How many times in one day can a person curtsy or bow without tripping over their own feet? she asked herself. It gives me a headache, and I don’t have to live at court.

  She wandered down the back halls of the castle, pretending to ignore the servants who edged away from her. Word about the river repairs at Pofkim had spread in the last three days.

  Forget it, Tris ordered herself as she passed through the kitchen, a cook stepping away from her. When I have my Lightsbridge credential, I’ll be able to work in a way that won’t make people nervous. Nobody shrinks from the village healer or the woman who sells charms in the marketplace. I’ll be able to keep to small magics, and people will stop looking at me as if I had two heads.

  Her steps carried her down a corridor where the store-rooms were located. A stair at the end led her down into the cellars. There she found a light shining through the open door of the room nearest the stairs. She poked her head inside. This was a cold room, spelled to hold winter temperatures all year long. Here the castle stored things that would spoil. In the outer room, they stored meat, butter, eggs, urns of milk and cream, and large cheeses. In the room off the main one, Tris saw the silver bloom of magic. Briar was working with household medicines.

  She sent a pulse down their hair-thin magical connection so she wouldn’t startle him, then entered the smaller room. Briar had a series of small bottles in front of him, each holding a seed of magical fire. Three, off to one side, held more than a seed. Standing with his hands around one bottle, Briar was waking up the green power of the plants that had gone into its contents.

  “You’ll freeze down here in that dress,” he said without looking up. He wore heavy woolen clothes. “Why are you bothering me, anyway? I thought you had Zhegorz to teach meditation to, and Gudruny’s kids for their letters.”

  “Zhegorz is hiding in the wardrobe in your room,” Tris said calmly. She was starting to shiver.

  “Now why in the Green Man’s name is he doing that?” Briar inquired absently. The magic in the bottle flowered into bright strength.

  “He’s afraid your friend the empress will realize all he has overheard and decide to execute him for the realm’s safety,” Tris continued, her voice even. “He’s convinced she knows every scrap he’s ever picked up.”

  “What a bleat-brain,” Briar replied. “Even if she could do such a thing, and she can’t, she’s never laid eyes on him.”

  “He’s convinced she might, what with her being in the summer room right now,” said Tris. “That’s an aid to digestion you’re fixing, isn’t it?”

  Briar’s head snapped up. He stared at Tris. “Here? She’s here?”

  “I thought that would get your attention,” murmured Tris. “She’s here and she’s asking for you. Perhaps you should change shirts.”

  Briar raced out of the room. Shaking her head, Tris went to the medicine he’d just finished working on and marked the label so the castle staff would know it had been strengthened. She took her time about leaving, making sure the other medicines he’d handled were also marked, and returning the neglected medicines to their proper shelves. Despite the cold, she was in no hurry to rejoin the hustle and bustle upstairs. The drafts upstairs had been filling her ears with the courtiers’ babble since their arrival.

  Too bad I can’t hide in a wardrobe like Zhegorz, she thought as she casually renewed the cold spells on the rooms. But no, she added with a sigh, I’m a mage. Mages are supposed to take such things in stride.

  Briar hardly noticed Zhegorz when he yanked his wardrobe open and grabbed the first decent-looking shirt and breeches he saw. He closed the wardrobe, then remembered he’d need an over robe. This time when he opened the doors he noticed Zhegorz huddled in the farthest corner.

  “She’s no mage,” he told the man. “She can’t see what you’ve heard, even if you could sort out anything she wanted kept secret from the whole mess of things she doesn’t care about.” He left the wardrobe open as he stripped off his work clothes.

  “Easy for you to say,” snapped Zhegorz. “You don’t hear all the bits and pieces that make a single damning whole.”

  Pulling on his breeches, Briar asked, “And have you patched one together? A single damning whole that makes sense?”

  “I could,” Zhegorz insisted, “if I put my mind to it.”

  Briar did up the buttons on his long shirt cuffs. “Old man, your mind is in a thousand places. You lost it in a swamp of words and visions,” he said, not unkindly. “Nobody can use them to harm you until you put them together and tell someone. Do you even want to do that?”

  Zhegorz straightened slightly. “No,” he replied slowly. “There’s too much, and it’s all a mess.” He rubbed his bony nose. “You don’t think someone could torture me to speak it all and put it together out of that?”

  “They’d be as overwhelmed as you,” Briar said, tugging on his boots. “Lakik’s teeth, Zhegorz, you’ve been like this for thirty years. It’s all swirled together inside your poor cracked head. Only another madman would want to fish for something real in there.” He took out his handkerchief and gave the boots an extra wipe, shining the dull spots. “If you think she’s so powerful, just leave Namorn.”

  “Just leave Namorn?” Zhegorz repeated, straightening even more.

  Briar looked up, saw the peril to his clothes, and moved them away from the madman. While his mind knew that Sandry had made his garments to withstand all common wrinkles, his heart worried for his beautiful things. “Just leave Namorn,” he said. “No Namorn, no empress. No empress, no torturers with painful spikes and tweezers and spells with your name on them. You haven’t heard enough in any other count
ry to make it worth their while, only here.” He shrugged into his over robe and glanced into his mirror. One of the good things about very short hair was that it never required combing. “Do you think I should grow a mustache?”

  When no answer came, he looked around. Zhegorz sat, his long legs half-in, half-out of the wardrobe, with tears running down his cheeks.

  Briar found his handkerchiefs. He took one over to Zhegorz. “You have to relax,” he told Zhegorz sternly. “You’ll rattle yourself to pieces at this rate. What’s wrong now? Or is it the thought of me in a mustache that made you get all weepy?”

  “So simple,” the man replied in a voice that cracked. He blew his nose with a loud honk. “You, you and Daja and Tris, you take the knot that has built up for so long, and you just…cut through it. I’ve tried for years to untie it, and you chop it to pieces in a matter of days. Why didn’t I see that? I have the years of a man, while you’re just children yet—”

  “Watch the ‘children’ stuff,” Briar advised. “It’s taken me all my life to shed that name. I’ll thank you to keep it in mind.”

  Zhegorz gave his nose a second blow. “You’ve shed half a dozen names,” he said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief. “But there’s one you’ll never lose, and that’s ‘friend.’”

  “That’s it,” Briar said, checking his cuffs. He was always embarrassed by emotional talk. “I’m going to go pay compliments to the empress. You can stay here, but you’ll be a lot more comfortable in a chair, or on the bed.”

  Without looking back, he left the room, closing the door gently behind him. He’ll do better once he’s out of Namorn, Briar thought as he trotted down the stairs. Maybe better enough to salvage a decent life for himself with the years he’s got left.

  As he reached the ground floor he thought, Someone’s got to do a better job of finding us peculiar ones, before they end up like Zhegorz.

  He found the empress and her courtiers in the summer room of the castle, the one that caught the most light, and on the terrace outside it. Berenene sat on a chair placed against the terrace rail, where she could enjoy the scent of the roses that twined around the stone rail from the garden just below. Briar approached her and bowed deep, summoning a rose with an as-yet-unopened bud to him. The empress moved aside as the vine thrust its thorny arm out to Briar. The bud swelled, then bloomed as it came closer to him, revealing a heart as crimson as blood. He used his belt knife to carefully cut the blossom free, trimming its thorns and healing the cut on the main vine before he sent it back to the others.