The Will of the Empress

Chapter Eighteen

The 27th day of Rose Moon-the 2nd day of Mead, 1043 K.F.

The Imperial Palace

Dancruan, Namorn

The next morning Ishabal Ladyhammer woke before dawn, as was her long habit. She rose and dressed, then went to see if anything important had come to her desk during the night. Entering the rooms where she did her work as the empire's chief mage, she was pleased to find that no one was there. Even Quen, who had been keeping long hours since Berenene had set him aside, was absent.

A rare gift, this silence, she thought, passing through the waiting room to her personal office. A chance to create a plan for the control of Trisana Chandler, before I see Berenene. A folded and sealed letter was on her desk. She picked it up: the seal was Quen's. She cracked it open and read.

Dearest Isha, when I got to my room last night, I found a letter from my mother. My father is ill and is asking for me. Please forgive me. Make my apologies to her imperial majesty. I hope to return within a couple of weeks. — Q

Ishabal folded the letter with a frown. It is unlike Quen to abandon Berenene without saying his own good-byes, she thought. And it is doubly so now. He has to have heard the rumours that Berenene is vexed with Shan. Even if his father's illness is real, Quen would want to take leave of Berenene himself, to impress her with his devotion to her and to his family.

She stared at a branch of candles without seeing it. Quen, dear boy, please do nothing you will regret.

*

Berenene was irritable as she ate breakfast that same morning. She had been irritable ever since Fin's attempted kidnapping revealed a severe flaw in her control over her courtiers. In the stack of notes beside her plate were a number of politely worded expressions of concern from the parents of many young women who feared for their daughters. The brave ones actually spoke to me, annoying leeches, she thought irritably. Vexing me. Doubting me.

She glanced at another stack of notes. These were more serious. They had come from Dancruan's mages, who wished to know why their leader had been arrested. It won't be long before the Mages' Societies throughout Namorn start writing to ask the same questions, she thought. They'll be harder to placate than parents who wish their daughters to make good marriages. No matter. These mages will learn better than to question my will. Ishabal has put quite a few tricks away against a time they might think they can defy me. If necessary, they'll all find themselves sharing cage space with Viynain Natalos, and they can rot with him as far as I'm concerned. They'll learn to respect the crown if I have to repopulate every Mage Society in the empire!

And I blame Sandrilene, unfair though that is. If the girl had simply done her duty, none of these annoyances would be on my plate now. She must be brought to an understanding of her place in my scheme of things. Thus far I've shown her the orchids, thought Berenene, throwing down her napkin. It's time she found the thorns.

She stood abruptly, startling her attendants. "Hunting will settle me," she announced. "Send for Shan. Tell the huntsmen I'll look for hares for supper."

She was half-dressed in riding gear when one of her ladies came in from the outer rooms. The girl had that timid look that Berenene loathed. I'll be so glad when Rizu feels she is her old cheerful self and can take up her tasks again, Berenene told herself mournfully. Rizu knows how to keep these silly girls from annoying me. If I could get her Daja back, I would have her company in the mornings again sooner, rather than later.

"Imperial Majesty," the young lady began, half-shrinking.

Berenene glared at her. "Stand up straight. I want ladies-in-waiting, not mice!" she snapped. "What is it?"

The lady shrank even more. "The, the huntsmen say Pershan fer Roth got word of a white stag seen in the Hobin Forest. He left this morning at dawn to confirm its existence before your Imperial Majesty went to the expense of a hunt for it. Huntsmaster Pershan left word that his assistant would take your orders."

Berenene gripped a handkerchief and twisted it. Shan didn't ask my permission, she thought angrily. If he thinks he may punish me for not welcoming him to my chamber lately, he will soon learn otherwise. But what if this report of a white stag is true? Perhaps Shan believes finding it is the way to return to my good graces.

A week ago, would he still have dared leave without permission?

Berenene flapped a hand at the shrinking lady. "Fetch the assistant to me, then, and stand up straight!"

*

The gates of Roth House, near the Landreg estates, were closing behind Shan and his companions when he saw Quen Shieldsman. Shan reined up next to his rival, certain this meeting was no accident. "What do you want?" he demanded, his fair skin flushed with rage. "If you're here to bring me back to heel, I have mages of my own." He signalled a man and a woman who rode with his men-at-arms. They came forward, watching Quen anxiously.

"And very effective, too, I'm sure," Quen said easily, leaning on his saddlehorn. "Vrohain's witness, Shan, you may as well put candles against those three young people. Did you think they wear medallions because they like the effect? No offense," he said to Shan's mages. "They got their medallions at thirteen."

"We may not be great mages, but that does not mean we will fail," the woman retorted. "We lesser mages often work under the sight of you powerful ones. The powerful mages do not know of their danger until mages like us trap them."

"That would sound better if you weren't sweating, Viymese," retorted Quen. "Shan, you mule, I've come to help. She doesn't know I'm here." There could be only one "she" when these two men spoke: the empress. "I found you in my scrying-glass."

"You're here to help me wed the richest marriage-prize in memory?" Shan asked, frowning. Then his face brightened. "I see it now. If I snag Sandry, I'll be in disgrace with her imperial majesty. Since she's still fond of you..."

"Exactly," replied Quen. "I hope you know side roads, if we are to get ahead of the clehame."

"I've left nothing to chance," Shan said grimly. "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. If Berenene hadn't put Sandry's back up —"

Quen interrupted with a raised hand. "Spare me the tale of woe," he said, reining his horse in next to Shan's. "I'm not interested."

"So sure in your magic," Shan said with a glare. "Whatever else, you'll never be poor like me. You'll never sleep with holes in your sheets...."

Quen sent out a spark that stung Shan's mount on the rump. She broke into a gallop. By the time Shan got the mare under control, he'd lost all interest in talk. He led them on, up through the hills and fields that paralleled the Southern Imperial Highway, where Sandry and her companions would ride. With less traffic on the side roads than on the main route, they made good time. Experienced at long rides, Shan was careful to see that they paced their horses and switched to their remounts, resting often. Rather than deal with inns, they bought space in farmers' barns on the way.

"The trick," Shan explained to Quen over their fourth night's supper, "is to catch her when she believes no one is going to give chase. She's looking for an ambush near Dancruan, or the border. She'll be ready. But in the middle of the journey, between the two? They'll figure they're safe enough. They'll be relaxed. That's when I'll take her. I have spelled charms to distract her, if you can hold Briar and Daja. My people can handle the servants and the men-at-arms."

"Of course," Quen replied, his face unreadable. The firelight made his face look like a mask. "I did come prepared."

"They may not even be that much of a problem." Shan cut pieces from a sausage and ate them from his knife. "Plant magic and metal magic — they're not much good in a fight, are they? And we are talking about child mages, pretty much. They're young to be wearing medallions." There was a wicked glint in his eyes. "That must scrape your paint, to know they got them before you did. Perhaps Sandry bought the medallions for them, so they'd feel accomplished."

Quen raised his eyebrows. "If you're looking for a fight with me, stop it. Worry about your own problems," he drawled. "Even once she's signed the contract and marked it with her blood, she may be hard to handle. You can't keep her bespelled all the time. What do you think will happen when you let the spells lapse? There's plenty a wife can do to a husband short of killing him, and mage wives are known to be inventive."

Shan leaned back on his elbows. "I'm not worried. You didn't see her with me, Quen. I had the girl. She would have said yes to my proposal, if some damned busybody hadn't told her I was Berenene's lover. I can win Sandry back. Once she's realized this really is what she wanted all along, I think she'll be very happy to make ours the second house in the empire. I'll ensure that she's happy. It's to my advantage, too, after all."

Quen raised his brows. "I had no idea you were so ambitious. Or so foolish. Her Imperial Majesty is not going to let you off easily, you know. You'll be in disgrace. Her memory is long —"

Shan smiled. "But her pockets are not. She can't afford to keep Sandry and me in disgrace for long — not if she means to keep squabbling with the emperor in Yanjing. I plan to spend my time in exile making alliances in the Noble Assembly and in the Mages' Society. Berenene helped me there, arresting Fin's uncle. Once we have enough of the people Her Imperial Majesty has vexed on our side, she will have to accept us. Me."

Quen rubbed his nose. "She is practical, it's true. Who knows? You may have the right of it. Now, where is this perfect plucking spot you told me you mean to use? You said it's just two more days' ride."

"It's perfect," Shan said, pulling a map from the saddlebag beside him. "Canyon Inn. The main inn on the highway, the Blendroad Inn, will be full to bursting. There's a horse fair in that village at this time every year. My nurse's cousin, who runs Blendroad, will be sure to tell Clehame Sandrilene that Canyon Inn is more suited to her gentle nature." He laid the map flat and indicated each location. "And the Canyon Inn is all set as a trap for my pretty bird and her little flock. With your spells, and those of my mage friends, to help me escape, I'll be long gone with Sandry by the time Daja and Briar can track us. My mother's prepared a place where I can keep Sandry till she's signed the contract and married me."

"You've thought of everything, it seems," murmured Quen.

"I've planned since I knew she liked me," replied Shan. "I'd have preferred her to accept when I proposed, but... women." He shrugged. "She'll come around."

*

Shan, Quen, and their companions arrived at the Canyon Inn well in advance of Sandry's party. A check of his scrying-glass told Quen it would take her another five days to reach them, moving at a slower place on the main highway. Armed with that news, Shan paid a visit to his allies at the Blendroad Inn, where preparations for the horse fair were underway, and finished his arrangements at the Canyon Inn.

The money for all this, Quen discovered, came from one of Berenene's gifts to Shan. He really knows no shame, Quen thought, watching Shan spar with his guardsmen once he returned. I wish I could share the joke with Isha. Thinking of Shan's intentions with regard to the Noble Assembly and the Mages' Society, he wondered, Should I arrange for Shan to fail in his kidnapping? Sandry is a sweet girl, and I like her. No, I have to follow through. If Shan doesn't succeed, Berenene might forgive him in time. If he does, she will never forgive him, even though she wanted to keep Sandry in Namorn.

Briar and Daja should be easy to handle. Plant mages and smith mages are generally limited to their direct workings. Once I have them bound, the hard part will be over. All I have to do is hold them until the kidnapping party is safely gone. Sandry will be Shan's problem.

With his own battle plan worked out, Quen relaxed, ambling along the gorge that was meant to be Shan's escape route, cooling his feet in the small river outside the Canyon Inn, and gathering plants in the surrounding forest. He also made certain to regularly check his scrying-glass for signs of Lady Sandrilene's progress.

*

The spies' reports reached Berenene two days before Sandry and her companions reached the Blendroad crossing. The empress read the reports twice, the enraged flush on her cheeks deepening. Finally she slammed a haematite ring she never took off against the desk. It would bring Ishabal to her as quickly as the woman could run.

Berenene wasted no time on pleasantries when her chief mage arrived. Instead, she threw the reports at Isha's head. "Both of them!" she snapped, shoving her chair back from her desk. "Both of those arrogant young pups! Vrohain witness, they will pay for this! For defiance, and for thinking I would be so foolish — so besotted! — as to let them get away with it!"

Ishabal pretended to read the reports. Copies had already reached her that morning. "You like proud, hotheaded young men," she said carefully, watching the empress as she stood to pace. "Such men do as they wish, always thinking there is a way to make it right." Despite her apparent calm, she, too, was seething. Quen had lied to her. She did not like that. She waited until the empress looked her way, then shrugged. "They may well succeed. They are intelligent and talented. Lady Sandrilene's gold will stay in Namorn. They may even have been foolish enough to think you would be practical, as you always are. That you will settle for the solution to the more expensive problem — the loss of Sandrilene's income to Emelan."

"I will not be made a laughingstock," Berenene said. "Not by them, and not by that girl. The entire world will say the chit snagged my lover, and my former lover helped them! Enough. I have been too kind, this summer. You see where my generosity has got me. Send orders to my household and to my men-at-arms, to those we trust without reservation. You and I ride south, today. The word for my court is that I am bound for the Carakathy hunting lodge for relaxation. No one must know my true intent. I want all of them to feel my hand on them. If we must raise the magical border to stop them, I will keep all three of those young people in Namorn. Pershan and Quenaill will remember who is the ruler in this empire."

Isha curtsied. "Very well, Your Imperial Majesty."

"Put a guard on Trisana," Berenene snapped. "Have her watched. Place your best people on alert. She is not to leave Dancruan, should she be in any condition to try."

*

That same day, Tris got out of bed. She ached from head to toe and had to be helped into a bathtub, but she was on her feet. Grimly she made herself walk the circuit of her room twice that day, five times the next. The healers ordered her not to test the healing, ignoring her glare. On the third morning, as she stood on the landing and contemplated the stairs to the next story down, Ealaga came up to her.

"Are you supposed to do that?" the lady asked.

"I'm supposed to be with my family," Tris replied. She gripped the banister and took one step down. "It's a very nice bed, Ealaga, and you've been wonderful about sharing books, but I do them no good here. None of us believes Sandry will be allowed to dance out of Namorn."

Ambros's wife steadied Tris. "Dressed yourself, I see," she remarked, redoing the topmost button on Tris's gown. "Come to my room and tell my maid how to pin your braids."

"I'd appreciate that," Tris said. For once she did not thrust away the offer of help. I don't want to admit I can't walk down on my own, she thought. "I want to visit the palace tomorrow, but when I try to tuck up my braids, I get dizzy lifting my arms." Tris paused to catch her breath, thinking, Five more steps and then I'll sit down. I'm in splendid condition for a fight, I am!

"The palace?" Ealaga asked, puzzled. "You aren't fit to visit anywhere, let alone the palace. Who did you wish to call on? We can invite that person here."

"I'd rather have my chat with Viymese Ladyhammer somewhere else, if you don't mind," replied Tris, taking the next step with trembling legs. "It may not go well."

"That chat seems like a very bad idea to me." Ealaga was as full of practicality as her husband. "Surely your business with her is best left undone."

"It is not," the redhead answered. "I've had plenty of time to pick apart that whiff of magic I smelled before I decided to do bad tumbling tricks on the stair. It was her work. I don't know what I did to Ishabal to deserve that, and I don't care. I just want to express my unhappiness in the clearest possible way." They had reached the second floor. Tris leaned against the banister, her face beaded with sweat from exhaustion as much as pain.

Ealaga helped Tris into her own dressing room. "Well, then, if you're foolish enough to want to quarrel with a great mage, I can't be sorry to tell you that your luck is out. Viymese Ladyhammer is not at the palace. She and her imperial majesty left some days ago, to do some hunting." She guided Tris onto a chair and rang the bell for the maid.

Tris watched Ealaga's face in the looking-glass. "Do you know where?"

Ealaga met her gaze with sober eyes. "She has a residence in the Carakathy Hills, near Lake Glaise and the Olart border."

"Where the Imperial Highway crosses the Olart border," Tris said.

"Yes." Ealaga beckoned to her maid. "The empress often goes there, Tris. It doesn't mean anything."





Tris shifted in the chair so she could meet Ealaga's eyes. "You don't believe that."

Ealaga sighed and took a seat of her own. "It's said she was in a rage when she left, and Pershan fer Roth was missing. The gossips believe he may have gone to try to persuade Sandry to marry him after all."

Tris took a moment to explain to the maid how each braid was tucked and the mass of braids coiled before the silk net Tris offered her was pinned in place over them. As the woman got to work, Tris bit her lip, her brain racing. Shan is the empress's toy, thought the redhead. Her lover. If he went after Sandry — if he was fool enough to do it! — Her Imperial Majesty would feel he'd shown her disrespect. If there's one thing rulers hate, it's disrespect. That and the possibility that people might think they're weak if it looks like someone has defied their will. So now the empress is angry. She's worried people might say Shan, Sandry, Daja, and Briar are getting away with saying no to her. She'll want to stop them from leaving, to prove they aren't defying her.

Tris had spent much of the last three years entering and leaving countries. One thing most had in common was magical walls at the borders, walls that could be relied on to slow an invader and stop an individual. They could not remain up all of the time. It was too costly to do so: such walls demanded immense amounts of magical power. They were shaped to be raised on command. The mage who did the raising had to be a great one, a mage with the power to raise a shield that held other mages back.

Berenene has lost patience, thought Tris. She means to keep all four of us as a lesson to others. Ishabal has gone with the empress to raise the border against my sisters and brother. Namorn means to hold us like caged birds.

Tris didn't notice when Ealaga left her alone. When the maid finished, Tris thanked her and tipped her a coin for her labor. Then she left the room and began her slow, weary, aching climb back up the stair.

It took her the rest of the day to pack, including stops to rest and to nap. She worked steadily with shaking hands. She had to make sure that she carried all she would need. Chime looked on. She had been in and out during Tris's recovery, and she did not care for the way Tris was acting.

At sunset, Tris opened her window and turned her face into the cool wind that blew south off the Syth. She gathered its strength and put it behind her call to her friends: I think they mean to raise the borders against you. Can you find a way around? The empress and Ishabal will be there, I think. Maybe Quenaill, too. Can you hear me? Can you take strength from me?

There was no reply. It could be a few things, Tris thought, lurching back to the hated bed. It could be they've gone too far, and there's too much ambient magic between us that blocks my voice. More likely, I'm worn out. If they knew I was calling and reached back, I could speak easily then, but they don't know. They're walking into the empress's arms with no one to warn them except Zhegorz.

She lay down and slept, rising in the pale grey hour before dawn. Once dressed, she freed a wind to take her saddlebags out through her window and down to the ground. That was all she dared to take with her if she wanted to move fast. It cost her a pang to turn her back on the wardrobe Sandry had made her for court, but perhaps Ambros and Ealaga would ship the trunks to Emelan. She placed her letter to them on her bed, gathered Chime up in her arms, and slowly made her way down the stairs and out of the house. While she had enough control over her magic and her winds to lower saddlebags, she didn't feel confident enough to lower herself. She would need all of her strength to get through the day.

Once outside, her wind met and followed her to the stable, where it left her saddlebags. Tris thanked it and set it free.

The stables were dark. Tris didn't care: She could see perfectly well. Her mare, an easygoing creature that was accustomed to Tris's peculiarities, stood quietly as another wind from that same braid lifted blanket, saddle, and saddlebags to her back. Slowly Tris did up buckles and settled bits of tack, checking it all twice. Finally she placed Chime on the saddlebags and dragged a stool over to the mare. When she tried to pull herself into the saddle, her strength failed her partway. She lay there, half-on and half-off, wondering if this would be how she departed Landreg House.

"If I had any sense, I would leave you there," Ambros said, pushing open the stable door to admit the early morning light. "You're in no condition to attempt anything like this."

"I have to get closer to them," Tris mumbled. "Close enough at least to warn them. The healers said I was mended."

"If they had known you meant to attempt a three-hundred-mile ride when you'd been out of bed less than a week, they would have revised their diagnosis," replied Ambros at his driest. "They might even have determined that you took a harder blow to the head than they had originally thought."

Tris considered telling him "You can't stop me," but it was hard to do while hanging crosswise over a horse's back. "I'm going," she said, gripping the saddle horn. She shoved from the foot that was in the stirrup.

A firm pair of hands gripped her ankle and pushed, helping her slide the rest of her weight onto her horse. Ambros went around to tug the free leg down and place that foot in its stirrup. Then he went to saddle his own horse.

Tris watched him as Chime climbed up the back of her gown and onto her shoulder. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked Ambros.

"Since I have an idea I'll face lightning or something worse if I try to keep you, I had best go along," he replied calmly. "That way, when you fall off sometime around noon, I will have the very great pleasure of saying, 'I told you so'. Should you remain in the saddle, you will need me to pay innkeepers." He hesitated as he checked the placement of his bridle, then asked quietly, "Do you honestly believe the four of you can overcome border protections raised and held by a great mage? Perhaps more great mages, if Ishabal sends for them?"

Tris leaned down to rest her forehead against her mare's mane. "I don't know," she said honestly. "If I tell them they aren't going to be allowed to leave, they'll be angry enough to try. It may be we have a few tricks to us that no one knows of yet."

They were riding out the house gate when Ambros drew up. "I had forgotten we were being watched," he admitted.

Tris squinted to see what he meant. Across the street, two mages stood on either side of a smaller town house. They were coming forward now, the silver fire of their power flickering around their hands. Chime darted forward, uttering her nails-on-glass screech, forcing them to watch her as she flashed close to their faces.

Tris took advantage of their distraction to undo a quarter of another fat wind braid gleaned from a tornado. As the watchdog mages tried to strike at Chime with their power, Tris released her wind. It blasted down the street, whipping up dust, making the manes and tails of the horses stream. It yanked the female mage's veil off her hair. Chime instantly flew upward, out of the wind's reach.

Tris called the gale-force wind back to circle the watchdogs. It grabbed them, scrabbling in their clothes with greedy fingers. Tris did up the braid again, then gave the small gale another spin. It picked up speed, whirling around the watchdogs like a cyclone. Inside it they were blind and captive, unable to move or see. Tris gave the wind a last, hard spin, then freed it into the open air over Dancruan. It fled, leaving the pair behind. Briefly they wavered, then fell.

It took Ambros a moment to shake off what he had just seen. "You killed them," he said nervously as Chime dropped down to land on Tris's saddle horn.

"Nonsense." Tris glared at Ambros. "I knocked them out. They'll come around. I don't go around killing people, you know. Not unless I have to."

Ambros dismounted and checked for himself. He had to yank at the watchdogs' dishevelled clothing to uncover their faces and find if they were still breathing. They were. Ambros shook his head, covered their faces again, and mounted his gelding. "Let's go, before they wake up," he said, still shaking his head.

"I told you I don't go around killing people," Tris said fiercely. "It's not exactly something I'd want to lie about."

*

Normally Gudruny's children were patient travellers, helping with chores and gleefully striking up conversations with passersby. But the closer their company came to the Blendroad crossing and its horse fair, the unhappier the children got. Sandry could understand their basic disgust at the slowness of their travel, the dust, the lack of consideration from others on the road, and the noise, but more than once she considered cocooning the children to silence them.

Zhegorz did not help. He still insisted on riding beside Sandry, his bony nose in the wind, whatever its direction. His declarations — "I hear the palace" — got to be maddening. The problem was that the empire maintained fortresses along the highway to preserve the peace. Could his palace sounds simply be the conversation of servants of the empire? He couldn't say. From time to time he would go silent, but he always started up again. The only rest Sandry got from his declarations was if she chose to ride at the back of their group, when she got dust in her teeth. By the time they finally crawled into the overstuffed courtyard of the Blendroad Inn, Zhegorz was shouting his news, drawing stares from everyone who heard them, and Sandry had a headache.

"Zhegorz, will you please be quiet!" cried Gudruny as Sandry rode forward to talk to the innkeeper. "The children are bad enough" — she glared at her crying youngsters in the cart — "and I mean to paddle them if they do not stop it, right now! I will paddle you as well if you cannot act like an adult!"

Briar, too, was covered with dust and headachy with sun, but Gudruny made him smile. "Here I thought she was a mouse," he remarked to Daja as Sandry passed them. "Seemingly she's not."

"I don't think mothers are supposed to be mice," murmured Daja. "Maybe that's what Zhegorz needs — a mother."

"I hear the palace," Zhegorz called back to Gudruny. "Plots and betrayal and intrigue."

"Hear them quietly," Gudruny insisted. She gave her children one last glare. They at least had heard the tone of their mother at the end of her rope, and fallen silent.

"Clehame, I'm sorry, but we have not a single room. You see how it is — every house in Blendroad is full up for the horse fair," the innkeeper stammered. He had to talk between two of Sandry's guards. They would not let him get any closer to her horse. "All who travel the highway this time of year know of the fair. I will turn folk out of their rooms, being as you're a clehame, but it will cost me guests I depend on every year."

Sandry rubbed her temples. "No, please don't do that on my account," she told him, hating herself for caring about such things when she just wanted a bath. Why can't I be like other nobles, and demand he look after me and mine right now? she asked herself petulantly. I can't see Berenene caring if he loses customers or not, as long as she gets a bath.

"Just like a man, to not to offer a solution!" scolded a woman — obviously the innkeeper's wife — as she thrust her way through the crowd. Reaching Sandry's fence of guards, she curtsied. "Clehame, forgive my silly clunch of a husband. He's forgot the Canyon Inn. It's just ten miles down Deepdene Road." She pointed to a road that led west. "Truly, it's far better for a refined young lady and her household. 'Tis small, quiet, not well-known, but well-kept. My sister-in-law owns it. They've some guests now, but not enough to fill the house. My sister-in-law is not so good a cook as I am, but no one grumbles about her fare."

Daja leaned on her staff and looked the woman over. "If this place is such a gem, why isn't it full?"

"It's ten miles off, for one," said the innkeeper, clearly relieved his wife had stepped in. "And it's more to the noble style and hunters' style. They're full when hunt season begins, sure enough, and with the fur traders in the winter, but less so this time of year."

Sandry had borne enough. Her head was killing her. "Let's go," she ordered her companions. "The sooner I lie down, the better."

One of the guards flipped coins to the innkeeper and his wife. Briar and half the guards followed Sandry, while Daja muttered for Zhegorz to be silent. He obeyed only briefly. Sandry was barely a mile down the smaller road when he cried, "Silks, brocades, swords — I see them on the wind!"

"Because Sandry and her guards are upwind of you, Zhegorz," Daja told him. "Are you going to behave, or will I have to make you take your drops?"

"I said I'd watch over you," Zhegorz informed her with dignity. "You should listen when I'm watching over you."

Daja looked at Gudruny. "Is this what having children is like?"

The maid sighed. "Very like."

"Hush, or take drops," Daja ordered Zhegorz. "I don't care which."

Zhegorz hushed, falling back to the rear where he could ride with the more sympathetic Briar.

When they reached the Canyon Inn, Daja was relieved to find a very different situation from the last inn. The only other guests were four soldiers on leave from the army, which meant there were rooms for everyone but Sandry's guards in the main house. Her guards were happy to make camp outside, on the nearby riverbank. The innkeeper immediately took their party over, escorting Sandry to a cool room, clean sheets, water to wash herself with, and quiet. As the others relaxed, Daja lingered in the common room to talk to their fellow guests.

"It's not as expensive as it is later in the year," one of the men explained. "And honestly, Ravvikki, my friends and I are glad for the quiet."

One of the others nodded. "We're here to fish, explore the river, and forget there ever was a place called the Sea of Grass. That was our last posting. We're on leave, thank the gods."

"You've come a long way, then," Daja remarked.

"Thousands of miles, as fast as possible," one man said reverently, to the rueful laughter of his companions. "And now we're done. That Yanjingyi emperor is a cruel, hard fellow. We're hoping our next post is a safe little soldier box in maybe Dancruan."

"Talk to my brother Briar when he comes down from his nap," Daja suggested as she got to her feet. "You can trade curses on the emperor's name. He just got back from Gyongxe this spring."

The men traded looks. "Saw some fighting there, did he?" the first one to speak asked.

"He's a busy fellow, that emperor. But we may not be around this afternoon." He coughed into his fist. "We were thinking of riding off to the horse fair this evening for a spot of entertainment."

"It's odd," Daja told Briar later, when he came downstairs. By then, the men were long gone. "They didn't seem like they were going much of anywhere." She stretched. "I'm going to practice my staff. Care to swap a few blows?"

Briar grimaced. "When there's a river and greenery practically on our doorstep, and the little ones sound asleep, so they won't trail me everywhere? Thanks, no. Go see if one of our guards wants to get his fingers cracked."

Briar's wish for solitude was meant to go unfulfilled. He was inspecting a small patch of ferns, wondering if he could get them home if he used one of the small pots in his packs, when Zhegorz found him. The older man knelt abruptly, missing the ferns by an inch.

"You almost killed a plant, Zhegorz. Lakik's teeth, you got to use your eyes for something other than visions," Briar said patiently, making sure the moss under Zhegorz's bony knees was not damaged. "If you won't watch where you're stepping or kneeling or whatever, you can't be following me around."

"I promised Tris I would look after everyone, but no one will listen," Zhegorz muttered. "How can I make you listen when the air is full of plots and the wind hung with sights of plotters?"

"Because you keep saying the same thing, and you say it about everyone, old man," Briar told him. Dealing with Zhegorz required the same kind of patience that dealing with acorns on the ground demanded. All of them clamoured to sprout and put down roots, and they didn't understand that not all of them could. It always took time to get through to them. "You've got to concentrate harder and give us more details. And you've got to learn to tell what's a real danger from what's always there. Imperial soldiers are always there — the empire's lousy with them, like the fellows Daja was talking to."

"They don't talk imperial," Zhegorz mumbled.

"Belbun dung," Briar said, half-listening. "Green Man bless us, you're a long way from home." The tree beside the one that sheltered the ferns was stocky for a tree, with leaves marked by distinctively silvery undersides. "Zhegorz, have a look. This is a Gyongxe sorbus. Someone had to plant this here. It's not natural to Namorn, though I suppose it would do all right. Soil's a little rich for you, though, girl."

"They don't talk imperial," Zhegorz insisted.

"They're trees, they don't talk at all," Briar replied. "Well, not so you'd hear...."

"Those men. They talked about 'my lord,' and rabbits in traps, and 'beats catching a flogging for tarnished brass'."

"They're imperial soldiers on leave, and their troops are commanded by nobles," Briar insisted, sending his power into the sorbus to fortify it against any hazards that might plague a foreigner in Namorn. "And they're here to hunt. I wouldn't talk imperial, either, if I was on leave after fighting Yanjing. Stop fussing."

"They talked about weddings" Zhegorz insisted.

"Men on leave get married. If you don't have anything more serious, go soak your head in the river," Briar snapped. "I mean it, Zhegorz. Tris just told you to come with us so you wouldn't lurk about Landreg House giving her the fidgets. Once they've fixed you up at Winding Circle, you'll be able to manage better. Now scat! And put your spectacles and both ear beads back on!"

Without a word, Zhegorz got to his feet and returned to the inn. Watching him go, Briar felt a rare twinge of conscience. He kicked that out, too. I'll make it up to him later, he promised himself. But truthfully, sometimes a fellow needs time alone with green things. They won't talk me half to death.

Tired of people, he returned to the inn for his shakkan. With it in his hands, he went out onto the riverbank and settled between the roots of an immense willow. There he spent the afternoon, the shakkan at his side, soaking in the feel of all that green life around him.

While Briar relaxed, Daja offered to take Gudruny's children off her hands for a while. Gudruny accepted with gratitude. Once they were awake, Daja took them on a hike along the canyon that opened to the rear of the inn, where she could sense some metal veins in the rock walls. Sandry and Gudruny dozed and read. Zhegorz sulked in the stable, then paced outside the inn, restless under the threat of his calming drops from Sandry.

Everyone ate a quiet supper. Briar's impulse to apologize to Zhegorz died under the older man's glare during supper. He was happy to watch Zhegorz climb the stairs to go to bed early. Briar wasn't sure he could keep his temper if Zhegorz continued to stare at him as if Briar had just murdered his firstborn. Instead, Briar listened to Sandry tell Gudruny's children a bedtime story. Once they had gone upstairs, he helped Sandry straighten her embroidery silks. Despite the naps nearly everyone had taken, all of them were yawning not long after twilight had faded. They soon went to bed. Even the staff vanished. When Briar got up to close the front door, he saw that the guards were asleep around their fire. He had planned to set his shakkan back with the packs before he turned in, but something made him change his mind. After trying to think, and nearly splitting his jaws as he yawned, Briar had simply carried the old pine upstairs.

Zhegorz was already sound asleep in the other bed, a mild buzz of a snore issuing from his lips. Grateful not to have to have to talk to him, Briar set the shakkan on the floor and took off his clothes. Clad only in his loincloth, he crawled under the covers.

Given all the yawning he had done, he had thought he would be asleep the moment he put his head down. Instead, he felt imprisoned by his clean cotton sheets. His brain felt as if it were weighed down by clouds; his nose was stuffy. The feeling was one he knew, one his tired brain associated with blood and weapons in the night. Briar half-heard the roar of Yanjingyi rockets overhead and the shriek of dying people all around. He fought the clouds, turning his fingers to brambles to claw his way out of them. The clouds thickened. Desperate, he made his fingers into hooked thorns and slashed through layers of heavy mist.

The clouds parted slightly. Briar thrust a vine of power out through the opening, groping blindly for help with the weight that made it hard for him to breathe or move. He fumbled and reached — and touched his shakkan. White fire blazed, burning the clouds away in a heartbeat. Briar took deep breaths of clean air and woke up.

For a moment he thought he lay in a Gyongxe temple. The scent of sandalwood and patchouli was heavy in his nose; the ghosts of warning gongs thudded in his ears. When he put his feet on the floor, however, they met thin carpet, not stone. The smells faded in his nose; straining, he heard no war gongs. He wasn't in Gyongxe. He was in a Namornese room. The two had only one thing in common: someone very powerful was trying to keep him asleep.

He used the water pitcher to fill his washbasin — tricky work when his hands shook so badly. Then he ducked his face in the basin and splashed water on the back of his head, cleaning off some of the nightmare sweat. They're powerful, whoever they are, but they ain't the Yanjingyi emperor's mages, he thought grimly. He checked the bond that linked him with Sandry. She was missing.

Not again! he thought angrily. Don't these clod-headed bleaters ever give up?

He looked over at Zhegorz. Normally their scarecrow, less of a scarecrow after some weeks of decent meals, would have been up after the noise Briar had made. He slept very lightly, but not tonight. Briar shook him with no result.

Sorry, old man, he silently told the sleeping mage. You were right all along.

Briar grabbed his mage kit, yanked open the door, and raced down the hall to Sandry's room. Gudruny and the children were sound asleep on pallets on the floor. Sandry was not in the empty bed. Instead, he saw a complex sign, written in pure magic, on his friend's mattress. Briar had never seen anything like it. He tried to inspect the curls and twists inside the thing, only to find he was swaying on his feet, sleep already blurring his mind.

This sign felt different, more powerful, from the fog of sleep that had wrapped him around beginning in the common room. Briar dug in his kit until he produced the slender vial whose contents he had labeled wake the dead. Once he removed the cork, he quickly stuck the vial under his nose and took a breath. For a moment his nose and brain felt as if they might well be on fire. He yanked the bottle away and recorked it, then wiped his streaming eyes and took a second look at the design. It tugged at him, urging sleep, so he hung on to the bottle of scent. Bending down to risk a closer look, he saw the design was done in oil. Moreover, it bled along the threads of the sheet, uncontained.

Done like that, it wouldn't last very long, he realized. Which means I'm not looking at the original spell. He stripped away the sheets to reveal the mattress. There, too, the design had bled up and through. Briar shoved the mattress aside. On the slats that kept it up he found the original spell. It was done on parchment in oils, and kept within the bounds of the parchment by a circle drawn in ink. Briar turned the parchment over: The mage who had made it had glued spelled silk onto the back and had written signs to enclose on that, to keep the spell from leaking down.

Musta been under the mattress for hours, to bleed up through everything, Briar decided. The energy in the oils had to move somewhere. The only way the mage that made the spell left it to go was up.

He couldn't say how he knew the mage was a man, but he did. Moreover, the fiery brightness of the original spell and its complexity, even if he didn't know how it was made, told him that they faced a very powerful mage, even a great mage. It was as bright as any work done by the four's teachers.

To keep her asleep longer and deeper than the spell on us, I bet, thought Briar, recognizing some of the signs written into the original spell. To keep her out for days, not a day. And it woulda seeped into her power slow, so she'd never feel it coming over her. She'd be halfway across Namorn before she'd wake.

As soon as we get the rest of the household up and on her trail, we'll destroy this and wake her up. Won't that be a fine surprise for whoever's got her? He smiled thinly and placed the parchment on the frame of the bed. Mage kit in hand, he went to Daja's room. She slept as soundly as the others. Once more, Briar uncorked his wake-up potion and put the vial under her nose. She gasped, choked, and opened her eyes. Coughing, she swung a fist out to clip Briar's head. Expecting it — the potion had that effect on many people — he dodged the blow.

"Kill me later," Briar told her as she scrambled to get at him. "Some belbun nicked Sandry, and he's got a serious mage in his pocket. If he isn't the mage himself."

Daja rubbed her eyes. "What's in that poison?"

"Just the biggest wake-up weeds I know, spelled to crunch through any sleep spell. That's how they got us in Gyongxe, sleep spells."

Daja pulled a sack out of her mage kit and began to put items in it. She wore only her medallion, a breast band secured with a tie looped around her neck, and a loincloth. Her lack of clothing didn't seem to concern her. "One of these days you're going to have to tell me about what happened in Gyongxe," she said, turning a spool of fine wire over in her hand before she stuffed it into the bag. "And not that 'It was just a war' pavao." She straightened. "Let's go smelt this down and see what floats."

* * *