The Will of the Empress Read online

  The older man smiled thinly. “Her Imperial Majesty does not invite me to intimate court occasions,” he explained. “She once informed my wife that I was as dry as a stick and not nearly so interesting.”

  “Then she doesn’t know you at all,” Sandry replied firmly. She dipped a polite curtsy. “Good night, Cousin.”

  Ambros put a hand on her shoulder. “Clehame—”

  “Sandry,” she told him. “Just Sandry. Lady Sandry, if we’re in public, I suppose. But Sandry the rest of the time.”

  “Sandry,” Ambros said, his eyes direct, “the empress can be quite determined.”

  Sandry smiled brightly at him. “She seems very reasonable. I’m certain that, when the time comes, I won’t have to insist.”

  5

  The 29th day of Goose Moon, 1043 K. F.

  The Hall of Roses, the imperial palace

  Dancruan, Namorn

  The next morning, Daja watched her friends as the four of them waited in an outer chamber to be announced to the empress. Sandry busied herself with a last inspection of their clothes, tugging a fold here, smoothing a pleat there—simply fussing, because the clothes adjusted themselves. When she reached for Briar’s round tunic collar, he thrust her hands away. “Enough,” he told Sandry firmly. “We look fine. Besides, she already saw us in our travel clothes. This fancy dress ought to be good enough.”

  “Things are different here,” replied Sandry. “Did you see the way that footman looked down his nose at us? We’re not at all fashionable here, and appearances matter more. I don’t want these popinjays sneering at us.”

  “Well, things may be different, but we’re the same,” retorted Briar, preening in front of a mirror set there for just that purpose. “We’re still mages, and the only folk that should concern us are mages.”

  Daja had to admit, he looked quite trim in his pale green tunic and trousers. Even the moving flower and vine tattoos on his hands seemed to want to match his clothes. Their leaves were the pale green of spring, the tiny blossoms white and yellow and pink, with only the occasional blue rose or black creeper. Still, he needed to remember that not everyone would agree with him. In Trader-talk she told Briar, “Don’t talk nonsense. These people matter to Sandry, so they should matter to you.”

  Briar glared at her. When Daja returned his gaze with her own calm one, he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “They’re only mattering to me for the summer, and then I’ll have nothing more to do with them,” he replied, also in Trader-talk. “I’ve had my fill of nobles.”

  “Unless they want to buy something from you,” murmured Tris in Trader-talk.

  Briar grinned like a wolf, showing all his teeth. “Unless they want to buy,” he said amiably. “Then they’re my new, temporary best friends.”

  The gilded doors to the Hall of Roses swept open, propelled by the footman who had guided them to the waiting room. He bowed low to Sandry, and indicated they could enter the room beyond.

  Sandry gave him her brightest smile and swept by him, a confection of airy pink and white clothes and silver embroidery. Briar followed Sandry. Tris, respectable in a sleeveless peacock blue gown over a white undergown with full sleeves and tight cuffs, pressed a coin into the footman’s hand as she passed him, accepting his murmured blessing with a nod. She had spent long hours on the road with Daja discussing the proper amounts for tips in Namorn. Daja, dressed in Trader-style in a coppery brown tunic and leggings, carrying her staff, accompanied Tris into the larger hall.

  “Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren,” announced a herald. “Viynain Briar Moss. Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler.”

  Daja, Briar, and Tris exchanged a quick grimace. Someone at court had decided to ignore the plainer titles of Ravvotki and Ravvikki they had used when they first met the empress and openly address them as mages. Reluctantly Daja reached inside her tunic and fished out the snake-like living metal string on which she kept her mage’s medallion. Briar took out his, dangling from a green silk cord, and Tris hers, hung on black silk. Quickly, as they approached the empress, they arranged the medallions properly on their chests. Daja knew that Sandry wouldn’t bother. Sandry understood that showing her medallion would not change how anyone saw her.

  Producing their medallions had an instant effect on Sandry’s companions, however. Daja felt her back straighten. She saw it happen with Briar and Tris, too. We are eighteen, after all. We’re allowed to wear the medallions in public, Daja realized. And maybe having them in the open is actually…helpful. We’re not Sandry’s lowborn foster family, or that’s not the most important thing about us. We are accredited mages from Winding Circle, which doesn’t grant the medallion to just anybody. We have reputations. We are people to be reckoned with.

  As they walked toward Berenene, Daja saw that the sight of medallions on the chests of Sandry’s companions also had an effect on some of the other mages who were present. They were obviously not happy to see young people wearing that credential. Even Quenaill, the great mage who stood close to the empress, smiled crookedly as he bowed in greeting.

  We earned it fairly and properly, thought Daja with a smile that gave away nothing of what went on behind her eyes. And if you don’t play nicely with us, we’ll even show you how.

  To make herself forget jealous mages, she surveyed the room as if she would have to describe it in an exercise for one of her former teachers. Roses figured on wall hangings, damask chair cushions, and on the silk drapes framing long glass windows that also served as doors to the outside. Large Yanjing enameled vases filled with fresh-cut blossoms stood everywhere, so the room was filled with their scent. Like exotic flowers themselves the elegant courtiers sat or stood in small groups, talking quietly as they watched the newcomers. Daja couldn’t help but notice that a number of them were attractive men in their twenties and thirties. While the women also were attractive, they fit more of a range of ages, from some in their twenties to one in her sixties who stood just behind the empress herself. The guards along the wall were also good-looking young men, with the hard look of professional soldiers. The Traders had said gossip claimed the guard was the source of those of the empress’s lovers who were not noblemen.

  Daja also saw that everyone, however intense their private conversations, kept one eye on Berenene. The empress had made herself the focus of the room. She draped herself elegantly, supporting her upper body so that it curved like a swan’s neck, drawing the eye from her shoulders to her tiny waist. Today she wore a dusty-rose-colored open robe over a cream undergown. A veil of sheer, cream-tinted silk caressed her coiled and pinned hair. Dangling locks hung down around her face, hinting that she may have just come from bed.

  The air is saturated with longing here, thought Daja, watching the glances of the men, the empress’s smiles, and the movement of the noblewomen’s hands. It’s not just the men—the women want to be her, or have her power over men. It’s all for Berenene, and she wills it to be that way.

  They came to a halt before the sofa. Sandry sank into a full curtsy. Tris, with a few wobbles, followed suit. Briar and Daja bowed as deeply as they had when they first met Berenene, in respect for her power and her position.

  “Oh, please, let’s have none of that formal business here!” said the empress gaily. “Sandrilene, you look simply lovely. May I steal your seamstress?”

  Offered the empress’s hand, Sandry took it with an impish smile. “I am my own seamstress, Imperial Majesty,” she said, her blue eyes dancing. “Otherwise I just fuss over other people’s work and redo their seams. So much better doing it myself and having it done right.”

  Daja heard the quiet murmur behind them. Sandry heard it as well, because she went on to say, her voice slightly raised, “I am a stitch witch, after all.”

  “The reports of your skills hardly describe a humble stitch witch.” The sixty-year-old woman who stood behind the empress wore a medallion of her own. Daja and the others didn’t need it to mark the woman out as a mage: Power blazed from her in their magi
cal vision, power as great as that shown by any of their main teachers at Winding Circle. Despite her power as a mage and her obvious position of trust, she was dressed simply in a white undergown and a black sleeveless overgown. Apart from jet earrings and her medallion, her only ornaments were the black embroideries on the white linen of her gown.

  “Viymese Ishabal, forgive me,” said Berenene, though her eyes were on the four, watching their reactions. “Cousin, Viymeses, Viynain, may I present to you the chief of my court mages, Viymese Ishabal Ladyhammer. Ishabal, my dear, my cousin Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren and her foster family, Viymese Daja Kisubo of Kugiskan fame—” Daja looked down, embarrassed. She had done a few very noisy, messy things in Kugisko. Berenene’s chief mage would surely know exactly what they had been, and how foolishly Daja had behaved for things to get so messy. Berenene continued: “Viymese Trisana Chandler.” Tris bobbed another curtsy without taking her eyes from Ishabal. The empress smiled and added, “And Viynain Briar Moss.” Her eyes caressed Briar as he bowed.

  For a moment Daja considered sending the thought Now he’s going to be insufferable for weeks to the other two girls, but she stopped herself. If I start, they’ll want to stay in contact all the time, until they stop wanting to, and they shut me out, she told herself. No contact is better.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Viymese Ladyhammer,” replied Sandry with courtesy. “Your fame extends well beyond Emelan. I remember Mother talking about you.”

  “I told her not to go snooping in my workroom,” the mage said graciously. “Your mother was always one to learn the hard way.” Ishabal Ladyhammer was silver-haired, with deep-set dark eyes and a straight nose. Her mouth was elegantly curved and unpainted: In fact, she wore no makeup at all, unlike other women at court. “Your fame, too, has come to us,” she said, looking at each of the four. “It will be interesting to speak with you. I know of no other mages who received their credential so young.”

  “It was as much to keep a leash on us as to say we could practice magic, Viymese,” Briar said casually. “We’re just kids still, at heart.”

  “That would be frightening,” Ishabal replied, her voice and eyes calm. “A ‘kid’ such as you claim to be would not have been able to destroy the home of a noble Chammuran family in the course of a few hours’ time, and without wrecking the city around it.”

  Briar shrugged. “I had help. And the place was old.”

  “Are you all so modest?” inquired Berenene.

  Daja had watched the empress as the others had spoken. Those large brown eyes were busy, checking each face for a reaction. I bet she doesn’t miss much, thought Daja. No more than I would, in her shoes.

  To be a woman on the throne of the largest empire north of the Pebbled Sea and east of Yanjing was no easy task. Keeping control over famously hotheaded nobles seemed too much like work to Daja. Namornese nobles were notorious for their love of fighting—if not for the empire, then among themselves. Since taking the throne at the age of sixteen, Berenene had kept her nobles busy with wars and grand progresses of the empire that wrung out the purses of her subjects. Now that the empire was stalled at the Yanjing empire’s Sea of Grass in the east, and the Endless Sea in the west, Berenene was probably worried about how else to keep her people occupied.

  Send them to the new lands, across the Endless, Daja thought with a mental shrug. That ought to keep them busy. Let them conquer the savages over there, if they can. The explorers who report to Winding Circle have said the native peoples in the new places have their own powerful magics, rooted in their soil. Let the Namornese try to beat them, if they need something to do.

  While Daja had mused, Sandry had been explaining that the four of them weren’t modest, just aware of how little they actually knew. “Having a credential just means you realize how much you have yet to learn,” she explained gracefully. “Really, the Initiate Council at Winding Circle gave us the medallion as much to make sure we would have to answer to them as to acknowledge we had achieved a certain amount of control over our power.”

  Daja’s attention was caught by movement at a side door. A woman in her early twenties entered the room, bearing a large, silk-wrapped package that shimmered with magical silver cobwebs. The woman’s green silk overdress and amber linen underdress were stitched to outline the ripe curves of her body. Her mouth was as richly full as her figure, her dark eyes large and long-lashed. She wore her curling brown hair loose around her shoulders, covering it with an amber gauze veil held in place with jeweled pins. When she saw that Daja was looking at her, she smiled. Her eyes were filled with so much merriment that Daja simply had to smile back. Who is she? the girl wondered. She has to be the most beautiful woman of the empress’s court.

  “Ah, Rizuka,” said the empress, smiling brightly at the new arrival. “Is that the Yanjing emperor’s gift?”

  The woman came over to the sofa and curtsied elegantly, despite the package in her arms. “Imperial Majesty, it is,” Rizuka answered. Her voice was light and musical. “Forgive me for taking so long to bring it, but I knew you would not need me earlier, and I had the mending to finish.”

  The empress laughed. “You know me too well, my dear. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler, Viynain Briar Moss, allow me to present my Wardrobe Mistress, Bidisa Rizuka fa Dalach. Not only does Rizu ensure that my attendants and I do not go clothed in rags, but she oversees the liveries for all the palace staff.” Rizu curtsied as the four returned her greeting. Bidisa, thought Sandry. Baroness, in Emelan.

  “Sandrilene, my dear, I asked Rizu to bring this for your inspection,” Berenene continued graciously. “I received this gift from the emperor of Yanjing, and I am simply at a loss. Of course I must send him a gift of like value, but, to be frank, none of us have seen cloth of this sort before. I would hope you might give us your expert opinion.”

  “I’d be happy to, Cousin,” Sandry replied. “Though how unusual can it be, that you haven’t seen it before?”

  Cradling the package on one arm, Rizu undid the silk tie that closed it and pushed the wrapper back. It revealed a bolt of cloth that reflected light in an array of colors, from red-violet to crimson. Daja, Tris, and Briar also drew closer to look.

  They’re impressed, Sandry thought. So they should be. Those threads are one color of silk wrapped around another, leaving bits of the original color to peek through. And those threads are twined, two shades of violet so close together that you can’t call them by different names, but they still add two colors to the weave. While the embroideries—Mila bless me, but they look like they were done by ants, they’re so small.

  She held out her hand to touch the cloth and stopped, her palm an inch away from it. Her instincts shrieked for her to keep the silk away from her skin.

  “Hmm,” Sandry murmured.

  Reaching through a side slit in her outer robe into one of her pockets, she found the dirty, mineral- and root-laced lump of crystal that was her night-light. Despite the materials trapped inside it, the crystal gave off a clear, steady light that made it easier to see the individual twists and turns of thread in the cloth.

  Three layers, she thought, viewing the material closely. The bottom layer, crimson silk wrapped in bloodred silk. The outer layer is the two violet threads twined together. There’s a cloth-of-gold thread in the outer layer, too. It shapes half the embroideries. But the second layer, that’s the odd one. The smaller embroideries are tucked in there, out of sight, and the cloth doesn’t want me to look at them. As if I could be stopped!

  Sandry pulled a thread of her power from her inner magical core and used it to draw a circle with the index finger of her free hand just over the cloth’s surface. Then she smoothed the fire until it was a round disk. She released that into the cloth.

  Invisible tiny pincers, like beetle claws, sank into her magic.

  Immediately she yanked free and retrieved her power. That’s so shocking! she thought, distressed and angry, seeing the full shape of what had be
en done in this cloth. All that careful stitchery done on this, embedding the signs and making them inert. They won’t even start to work until the person who wears this cloth scratches or cuts herself. Then the signs come alive to release a speck of rot here and there, until her blood’s poisoned. It must have taken his mages months to do it, not to mention the time spent on just the right threads and embroideries to hold the spell. I hear there’s been famine in Yanjing, and he’s got his people wasting time and money on this? What kind of an emperor lets his people suffer while he sends something like this to Dancruan?!

  She looked up and met her cousin’s brown eyes. They flickered with mirth.

  Ah, thought Sandry, returning her crystal to its pocket as she straightened. My cousin Berenene knows it’s dangerous, and she’s testing me. Probably Viymese Ladyhammer already told her about the magic on the cloth. That’s why Berenene’s Lady Rizu left the wrapping on it, and why she doesn’t let the silk touch her anywhere.

  “What do you think, Cousin?” the empress wanted to know. “It’s so lovely, I don’t want to fritter it away. I should use it for something special, but I can’t think of what.”

  Two tests, Sandry told herself. The first to see if I would find the magic. The second to see how clever I am politically. If I tell her to send it back, she knows I’m silly enough not to know, or care, that I’d be insulting the emperor of Yanjing, who’s her most powerful neighbor and sometimes enemy. The same thing is true if I tell her to destroy it, or lock it away. Besides, some poor servant might want to look at the pretty thing, and end up dying for mere curiosity. What does she think I do for Uncle, write up his party invitations?

  Sandry thought fast as she tied the wrapping closed around the deadly cloth once more. “Imperial Majesty, this is too splendid a gift to waste on anyone who can’t appreciate the craft that went into it,” she said at last. She smiled at Rizu before she looked at Berenene again. “We westerners lack the subtlety to appreciate the artistry in this. But do you know, I am virtually certain the Yanjing ambassador is someone of culture and wit. And he—it’s a he?” Rizu and Ishabal both nodded. “I’ll bet the ambassador misses Yanjing,” Sandry continued. “A noble from their realm…well, he’s probably the best person in Namorn to appreciate this cloth. I am certain he would be deeply grateful if Your Imperial Majesty would grant him this piece of his homeland as a sign of affection.” Sandry didn’t have her old connection to her friends, but she didn’t need it to feel them relax around her. They, too, had sensed that something about the cloth was very wrong.