The Will of the Empress

by Tamora Pierce

  “No,” Ambros replied, shaking his head. “She would be much offended if you did.”

  “Gudruny will require maid’s clothes fit for the palace,” Ealaga said. “I’ll make certain she has some.”

  Sandry drummed her fingers on the table. “If I only had time, between estate matters and the empress keeping me hopping, I could make her clothes myself!”

  Gudruny looked up from her spot at the table, next to Tris. “My children?” she asked, her voice strained.

  “They can stay at Landreg House in town,” Ambros said. “Along with Zhegorz. Your cousin Wenoura is our chief cook there, remember?”

  “Truthfully, you won’t have to wait on me,” Sandry told Gudruny. “You can stay with the children—” She halted abruptly. There was a decidedly militant look in Gudruny’s eye.

  “And have them say you don’t know how to get on as a proper noble?” the maid asked. “Their servants already turn up their noses because you have only one maid, and your friends have no servants at all. I heard them gossiping when they were here, spiteful creatures. I wouldn’t think of leaving you in the palace to be talked about! I’m waiting on you, and that’s that!”

  Ambros’s mouth twitched in a smile. Briar looked from Gudruny to Sandry. “Who works for who?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  Tris excused herself quietly. When the other three went upstairs to bed, Briar found her in his room, talking quietly to Zhegorz as she hung onto the man’s bony hands. She looked up at Briar. “He’s afraid to go so close to court.”

  Briar sighed. “It’s terrible, when a man has no faith. Did you tell him what you did, that first day at the palace? What you did to the pirate fleet?”

  “Pirates?” Zhegorz asked with a wild start that jerked his hands from Tris’s hold. His eyes were so wide with terror that the white showed all the way around. “There are pirates coming?”

  Now look what you did, Tris thought at Briar, forgetting his mind was closed to her. I’d just gotten him calmed down.

  “Here you go, old man,” Briar said, pouring out a tiny cupful of the soothing cordial he gave Zhegorz for his bad moments. “These pirates were seven years ago, and they are most seriously dead. She did it.”

  “You helped,” snapped Tris. “And Sandry, and Daja, and our teachers, and every mage in Winding Circle. And you know I don’t like that story repeated.”

  Briar ignored her. “She did it with lightning,” he told his guest, putting the cork back in the bottle. “And when we first got to Dancruan? Some fishing boats were in danger of a storm on the Syth, but Coppercurls here sent a wind to blow them home and another to eat the storm. She likes rescuing folk. So don’t you get yourself all worked up. You’ll hurt her feelings, letting her think she can’t protect you.”

  “She didn’t protect you, wherever you were, in the bad place you dream about,” Zhegorz pointed out. He had bolted the cordial as if it were a glass of very nasty tea.

  And here I thought I made that stuff taste nice! thought Briar in disgust, trying to ignore what their madman had said. I should’ve given him nasty tea instead of something I worked cursed hard over.

  “You dream about it all the time,” Zhegorz insisted. “You toss and turn and yell about blood and Rosethorn and Evvy and Luvo.”

  Tris raised her pale brows at him.

  Briar was about to tell them both that his dreams were no cider of theirs, but there was something about the way Tris looked at him. He’d forgotten that side of her, that he had always been able to tell her the most horrific things, and she would never laugh, be shocked, or withdraw from him.

  Briar slumped to the floor, leaning back against the stone that framed the hearth. The stone was warm, the fire a comforting crackle in his ear. “The emperor of Yanjing tried to conquer Gyongxe,” he muttered at last. “We were at the emperor’s court when we heard, and then we ran for it, Rosethorn and Evvy and me. That’s when we met Luvo, on our way to warn Gyongxe. Luvo’s this…creature, Zhegorz. He lives with Evvy now.”

  “The Mother Temple of the Living Circle,” breathed Tris. “It’s in Gyongxe. The one all the other Circle temples look to. Their first and oldest Circle temple.”

  Briar nodded. Zhegorz slid down the side of the bed so he, too, could sit on the floor and lean against the bed. It seemed to be his way to comfort Briar. Chime, who had spent suppertime around Tris’s neck, now glided over and settled into Briar’s lap. He stroked the little creature, feeling her cool surfaces against his palms.

  “So we fought our way into Gyongxe, and then we fought the emperor, and then we came home,” Briar whispered, closing his eyes. “The pirates was nothin’ to it, Coppercurls.” In his distress he had slipped back into the language of the streets he had left seven years before. “The whole countryside was afire, or so it seemed. The dead…everywhere. The emperor’s army filled the roads for miles, and they didn’t care what they did to folk in the lands they marched through. So sure, I dream about it all the time. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be seeing a mind healer when we get home,” Tris said firmly. “I’ve heard of this. People who have been through some terrible thing, it leaves scars where no one can see. The scars hurt, so they dream, and they snap at people for doing things that seem silly compared to the horrors. Sometimes they see and smell the thing all over again.”

  “So I’m just some boohoo bleater, looking for a mama because I have bad dreams?” Briar asked rudely, though he didn’t open his eyes. “Looking for a handkerchief everywhere I go so folk will think I’m tragic and interesting?”

  “If the scars were on your flesh, would you even ask me those things?” retorted Tris.

  There was a long pause. At last Zhegorz said hesitantly, “She’s right.”

  “She ’most always is, when it comes to other folk,” replied Briar softly. “I got off lucky. She’s being nice right now.” Inside the magic they shared, he said, I missed you, Coppercurls. With you there, we might’ve conquered Yanjing.

  She looked down, her thin swinging braids not quite hiding her tiny smile. She waved a hand in awkward dismissal.

  Briar waited until he was sure of his command over himself before he looked at Zhegorz. “So don’t you worry about being at Landreg House, you hear? It’s just for six more weeks or so, and then we take the road home.”

  “But the city,” whispered Zhegorz, his eyes haunted. “The roads. The chatter, and the visions. The headaches, the gossip, the lies, the weeping—”

  “Stop that,” Tris said sharply. “We’ve talked about you working yourself into swivets.”

  Briar rubbed his chin in thought. “He’s right, though,” he remarked slowly. “He’s going to be out in the wind, with all the talk it brings. I remember you, as jumpy as a mouse on a griddle for days, when you started getting a grip on what you were hearing. And it’s worse for the old man, here, because he’s crazy to begin with. You were just a little daft.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t leave you here,” Tris drawled, looking at Zhegorz. “And Green Man knows potions or oils won’t work for long. And you can’t wear my spectacles for the scraps of things you see, because my spectacles are specially ground for my bad eyes. It’s too bad it isn’t a matter of a living metal leg, or living metal gloves…living metal spectacles?”

  “Maybe like nets?” suggested Briar. “To catch visions in?”

  “Or sounds. No, that’s mad. Perhaps. Let’s go see Daja,” Tris said.

  “Daja will do something mad?” asked Zhegorz, now thoroughly confused.

  Tris sighed. “Daja can make spell nets of wire, and she can make a leg that works like a real one. She was even crafting a living metal eye, once. Maybe she can think of something in living metal to help you.”

  Briar and Tris were both dozing on Daja’s bed as the smith finished the pieces they had decided might serve their crazy man best. Zhegorz himself sat on the floor by the hearth, watching Daja work.

  For Zhegorz’s ears, Daja had fashioned a pair of sma
ll, living metal pieces that looked like plump beads pierced by small holes. Once they were done, she wrote a series of magical signs on them under a magnifying lens, using a steel tool with a razor-sharp tip.

  “You understand, this will take adjustments,” she told Zhegorz softly. “Depending on what you want them to do, just speak the name for each sign. Then the pieces should let that much more sound into your ears.” She knelt beside Zhegorz and gently fit one of the living metal pieces into his left ear. Watching as it shaped itself to fill the opening precisely, Daja asked, “How is that? Comfortable?”

  “It’s warm,” whispered Zhegorz, looking up at her.

  “I’m not going to put cold metal in your ears,” Daja said, a little miffed that he would suspect that of her. Once she checked the fit of the first piece, she gently turned Zhegorz’s head and inserted the second. “There,” she whispered, deliberately speaking more quietly to test the ability of the pieces to pick up everyday sound. She recited the first lines of her favorite story. “In the long ago, Trader Koma and his bride, Bookkeeper Oti, saw that they had no savings in their accounts books, no warm memories laid up for the cold times.”

  “That’s a Trader tale,” Zhegorz said. “It’s about how the Trader and the Bookkeeper created the Tsaw’ha and wrote their names in the great books.”

  Daja sat back on her heels. “On the way to Dancruan you can tell me how you learned Trader stories,” she told him with a smile. “Not now. I would like to get some sleep tonight.” She reached over to her worktable and carefully picked up her second creation. Tris had sacrificed a pair of spectacles for this piece. Daja had replaced the lenses with circles of living metal hammered as thin as tissue. Once they were fixed over the wire frames, she used her sharppointed tool to write in signs to fix the metal in place and cause it to work as she wished it to.

  Gingerly she settled the bridge on Zhegorz’s bony nose and hooked the earpieces in place. I really don’t know about this, she thought, nibbling her lower lip. I’ve made plenty of odd things, that’s certain, but eyeglass lenses that let someone see normally and not magically? Only Tris would even come up with the idea.

  “Can you see me?” she asked.

  Zhegorz nodded.

  “He’d have to be wrapped in steel not to see you, Daja,” said a grumpy and drowsy Tris from the bed. “You’re a big girl and you’re right in front of him. Chime, will you fly around? Zhegorz, can you see Chime?”

  Daja watched Zhegorz follow the glass dragon’s flight as Chime dove and soared around the wood carvings of the ceiling. She began to grin, elated. “I begin to think I can cure dry rot with this stuff,” she said, proudly stroking the living metal on the back of her hand.

  “Rosethorn would say pride will trip you on the stairs,” Briar said with a yawn. “Come on, Zhegorz. We’ll give those things a real trial in the morning.”

  Daja got to her feet, wincing as her back complained after hours bent over her work. She was stretching when Zhegorz patted her shoulder. “I’ll tell you what they do in the morning. I’m sorry I ever said no one could see through metal spectacles.” He scuttled out of the room as Daja shook her head over him.

  Tris caught her by surprise, swooping in to press a rare kiss on Daja’s cheek. “I know they’ll work,” she said. “Thank you, for him.”

  “He’s my crazy man, too,” Daja said as Tris hurried from the room.

  13

  The 6th – 8th days of Rose Moon, 1043 K. F.

  Clehamat Landreg to

  Dancruan, Namorn

  They traveled the next day with Ambros, his family and personal servants, their own servants, and ten men-at-arms for company, plowing or no. Even in the short time they had stayed at Landreg, Sandry noticed plenty of changes. The fields now flourished with assorted grain crops, made heartier and more immune to blight by Briar. He had done the same work in the orchards. Workers labored on the restoration of the bridge on the road to Dancruan. “By the time we return, it will be fixed,” Ambros said as Sandry waved to yet another knot of farmers who bowed to her from the fields.

  It’s good to see all this progress being made, Sandry thought as they passed two wagonloads of mortar and slates destined for the repairs at Pofkim. Back at the castle, jewels that had belonged to her mother alone and were not part of the Landreg estate now lay in a locked box in Ambros’s study. In that same box were three copies of Sandry’s handwritten orders to her cousin. He was to sell the gems for any future work required to keep the estate thriving.

  As they passed through the estate’s boundary walls, Tris scowled at her sister.

  “What?” Sandry demanded, flushing slightly.

  Tris drew even with her. “Will you just leave things like that?” she asked quietly. “The estate paying out to you and vulnerable to the empress’s taxes? They’re still in danger from those.”

  “I’m going to see an advocate in Dancruan,” Sandry replied, keeping her voice soft. Ambros didn’t know her plans. “I’ll get a letter drawn up reducing my share and allowing Ambros to default on it entirely if taxes and estate work are high that year.” When Tris’s frown deepened, Sandry felt her temper start to boil. She stuck out her chin. “They’re my lands, left to me by my mother,” she whispered hotly. “I’m in the direct line of descent. As long as I have breath in my body, I will preserve that line of descent and inheritance, all fourteen generations of it! Those lands are mine—no one else’s! Don’t you dare lecture me about it, Tris. You don’t know the least thing about being nobleborn. About our ties to our lands and our names. My younger children will have Landreg to ensure their place in the world and the continuance of the Landreg name and bloodlines.”

  Tris clenched and unclenched her hands on the reins. Heat bloomed under her breastbone as her face turned red in fury over the rebuke. She did not see the guards on her far side or the people who rode behind her check and move away as sparks raced over her coiled braids. Sandry got even angrier. Now they know we’re quarreling! she thought. Why can’t Tris ever keep her feelings to herself? Why does the world always have to know when she’s vexed?

  Chime wasn’t afraid of lightning. It was the blood through which her magic flowed. She glided up to Tris from her seat on Daja’s saddle and landed on Tris’s head. Slowly, gently, the glass dragon sank her claws into Tris’s scalp.

  “Ow!” Tris winced: Her concentration broke, and the lightning began to die. With no more new sparks being spawned, Chime began to lick up those that remained.

  “No, I’m not noble,” Tris finally told Sandry in a voice that trembled. “And given that you’re turning into one just like the rest of those at court, I’m glad I’m not.” She turned her mount and rode back to Zhegorz, Gudruny, and her children, who rode in a luggage cart behind the others.

  “Is something wrong?” Ealaga asked Sandry after Tris rode out of earshot.

  Sandry shook her head, keeping it down so no one could see the tears of anger that sparkled in her eyes. Tris doesn’t know what being a noble means! Sandry thought. You can’t go about ignoring your family’s long history or the things all your ancestors did to build your name and your lands. It’s like telling them they never counted, if I lose my holdings as a Landreg, or worse, if I give them up. If I let Berenene take them for some reason. I owe my parents—my ancestors—the continuation of our line, and our name. Mama didn’t surrender the title when she married Papa. What excuse do I have?

  Once they started to pass other people on the highway, Briar kept an eye on Zhegorz. It took some effort to do it without laughing, at least at first. Zhegorz was a sight, perched atop one of Sandry’s traveling trunks, a well-dressed scarecrow in a good clerk’s sensible gray coat and breeches, wearing what looked like shiny amber spectacles on his eyes. Sandry had even tied his hair back in a horsetail with a ribbon that was the same color as his spectacles. At first passersby got no chance to appreciate his new eyewear. As they came within view, Zhegorz pulled his broad-brimmed hat low over his face and bent down, tryin
g to hide in plain sight. Later, he got more bold as parties overtook and passed them, or parties rode by. He flinched less and watched more.

  Finally Briar could no longer bear the suspense. He rode over to the cart. “Zhegorz! The ear things, and the spectacles. Are they working?”

  Zhegorz beamed. “I hear only our people’s talk, and only from close by. I see only what is in front of my nose. No flying pictures, no conversations popping into my ears! It’s wonderful—I’m cured! I don’t need the lessons anymore. I’m sane, sane as a bird, sane as a sheep, sane as a—ow!”

  While he had been babbling, Tris had ridden up on his other side. She had leaned over and flicked him on the ear with her finger, producing his cry of pain. When he turned to glare at her, Tris asked drily, “And if you lose the spectacles?”

  “Or if the ear beads fall out?” Briar wanted to know. “The magic’s still there, old man.” To Gudruny’s children, who had listened to this exchange with open mouths, he explained, “The magic’s always still there.”

  “The lessons continue,” said Tris. “Take out one of the beads, and practice managing what you hear in just one ear.”

  Zhegorz sighed; his shoulders drooped. He looked at Gudruny and shrugged. “It was lovely to dream about, anyway.”

  “Dream all you like,” Briar suggested cheerfully. “Just keep practicing.”

  The roads were drier than they had been the first time the four mages had come that way. With better footing they made better time, reaching the Landreg town house by midafternoon. That night was spent settling Ambros and his family in for the palace social season, and introducing Gudruny’s children and Zhegorz to Wenoura.

  They woke the next morning to learn that the imperial party had arrived at the same time they did and was still settling in. Sandry declared that they couldn’t interrupt the court while it unpacked. Instead, she went out to confer with an advocate and to shop with Gudruny. Briar, too, went shopping, for shakkans and potting soil, placing an order for a very large pottery dish made specifically for several shakkans. It was part of the gift he had planned for the empress. Tris remained to work with Zhegorz on meditation and on limiting the number of things he heard and saw. Daja thought to shop as well. When she realized that the only things she wished to buy were expensive gifts for Rizu, who was not related to her in any way, she returned home to do whatever metalwork was in the house.