She stood, her eyes watering in the sudden light. Once her vision cleared, she lunged for the open stairway door and nearly toppled. Briar held her as her legs cramped and her wounded feet refused to take her weight. He looked around for more linen to use as bandages. Not finding any, he took off his belt knife and swiftly cut off the surly guard’s coat. Raising his knife, he was about to remove the man’s shirt when it simply dropped off his body in pieces, the seams unraveling in the blink of an eye. Briar looked at Sandry, whose eyes blazed with fury.
“Thanks,” he said casually. He smiled pleasantly at the guard, who was now shirtless in the chilly room. “Hope you don’t catch cold.” He gathered up the pieces of shirt and began to tend to Sandry’s feet.
Tris was calmly undoing two thick braids. “I am not climbing those stairs back up. None of us are.”
Briar looked at her, astounded. “What did you think we’d do, Coppercurls, fly?”
She smiled evilly at him as the sea door blew open. “It’s a trick I learned in Tharios. And it’s much quicker than climbing.”
Sandry hugged herself. She was a tangled, rumpled mess, but now that she was in the light, she was ready to do battle. “What if I don’t want to go back to my room like a good little clehame?” she demanded, her voice shaking with her rage. “What if I would rather talk to my dear cousin Berenene about the behavior of one of her male subjects?”
Tris nodded. “I can take us to the imperial wing easily enough. It’s like standing on a moving platform, the way I shape the winds, only you can’t see the platform.”
“Do it.” Sandry stumbled out through the sea door.
Tris looked at Briar as Chime flew over to her shoulder. “You two have to hold on to me, and promise not to squeak.”
Briar shook his head. “The things I do for my sisters,” he said with a sigh. He waved at the two captives. “We’ll try and remember to send someone for you boys, don’t you worry!”
Berenene looked out at her court, deeply dissatisfied with this night. True, her lumpish cousin from Lairan had been suitably awed by her splendor, and would report to his king that Namorn was, as ever, glorious and overpowering in its generosity. He was disappointed not to meet Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, but understood that even the best healers in the empire could not erase the damage of a fever in an afternoon. Berenene had assured him that she would invite him to a private dinner: “just our family,” she had told him, “when Clehame Sandry is herself again.” It was beautifully done, with Isha to confirm the lie. No one but Ishabal, Fin, and the servants who had gone to find the girl knew the truth, that she had vanished. Fin had said, with a casualness that made Berenene want to slap his handsome face, that he assumed Sandry had gone to the ball with other friends.
“You are very casual about the fate of a woman who could make you rich and powerful,” she had accused. He had begged her pardon, with such polished innocence that she had half-wondered if he had not arranged to kidnap Sandry tonight. She immediately dismissed the idea. Fin was not fool enough to stage such a thing within the walls of the palace, which was sacrosanct. No one would risk that.
At least Sandry was not with Shan. Berenene had seen to that, and had kept him at her right hand all night. He’s spent too much time out of my view lately, and too much of it has been in Sandry’s company, she told herself now, eying his muscled body sidelong as he watched the dancers. I like a man with spirit, as long as it isn’t too much spirit. Quen never gave me so much trouble when he was my official lover.
She glanced at Quen, who had taken Isha’s place on her right. The older mage had insisted that Sandry would turn up—the ball was large enough that she might be in one of the other rooms, or in the gardens, being romanced. No real inquiry could be made until morning without causing the kind of gossip Her Imperial Majesty wanted to avoid, so Isha was going to bed. Many of the older, more staid courtiers were also making their farewells. The younger members of the court were known to dance until dawn, with the empress joining them.
Sipping a goblet of wine, Berenene inspected the crowd. If Daja knew Sandry was missing, she showed no sign of concern. She and Rizu were surrounded by Rizu’s friends. They made a lively group, and Daja and Rizu practically glowed as they smiled at each other. That worked out quite well, thought Berenene with satisfaction. My Rizu is happier than I have seen her in months, something I had not anticipated. And I shall have a strong smith mage to serve me by the time autumn closes the mountain passes to the south.
The empress looked for Tris, but the redhead was nowhere in view. I hadn’t expected to see her, Berenene reminded herself. I will leave Tris to Ishabal. Oh, my. It looks as if Briar and Caidy have had a tiff. He is nowhere to be seen, and Caidy is flirting with every personable young man at court.
Berenene was about to ask Shan to fetch her a glass of wine when she saw that Ishabal had returned. The mage still wore her ball gown, and she carried a folded document in her hand. What business is so urgent that it could not wait until morning? the empress wondered.
Quen and Shan stepped aside as Ishabal approached the dais. The mage took his spot, offered the document to Berenene and whispered, “They wait in your personal audience chamber.”
Berenene raised an eyebrow and opened the note. It read:
I beg the favor of an immediate audience with Your Imperial Majesty. I have been insulted tonight in the most vile fashion and wish to inform you immediately of what was done to me under your roof.
The signature was that of her missing guest: Sandrilene, Clehame fa Landreg, Saghad fa Toren.
Berenene looked up. Something had gone amiss, it seemed. “Isha, I think I will need both you and Quen. You should be prepared for any…mishaps. Who is with her?”
“Briar and Tris,” replied Ishabal softly. “Majesty, Sandry looks battered. Her hands and feet are bandaged, her clothing torn. Trisana is throwing off sparks.”
The empress bit her lip. This could be even worse than the note had implied. “Then I suggest you and Quen arm yourselves with defensive magics before we enter that room.” Berenene beckoned to the captain of the guard as Isha whispered to Quen. When her guard approached and knelt beside her chair, she bent down to murmur, “Get one of your mages and a couple of guards to watch over Viymese Kisubo, subtly. Do not let her go anywhere but to her own rooms or to Rizu’s.”
The man nodded. Berenene got to her feet. As the dancers stopped and the conversation came to a halt, she smiled. “Amuse yourselves, friends. Imperial business calls me away, but there is no reason for you to interrupt your evening.” She left by the rear entrance rather than have her departure slowed by farewells. “Did you read this?” she asked Ishabal as she strode along, the older woman at her side and Quen rushing to keep up.
“I would not presume,” Ishabal replied stiffly.
Berenene slowed down and handed over Sandry’s note. Ishabal read it, twice, closed her eyes briefly as if in prayer, then passed it to Quen. “Who would be fool enough to assault a noblewoman in the imperial palace?” Quen wanted to know. “And how would such an idiot think he could do it and escape?”
“We’ll learn soon enough,” retorted Berenene, stopping to collect herself. “After which I shall decide what to do with that fool, and with anyone idiot enough to assist him. But first, I would like the two of you to be ready. I would hate to learn the hard way that their teachers had underestimated our guests’ control over themselves when they granted them their medallions so young.”
Taking a breath, Berenene smoothed her gold skirts. Then, as leisurely as if she walked in her gardens, she led her mages to her private audience chamber.
A guardsman stood outside. Years of service kept his face blank, though confusion showed in his eyes: Most visitors to the private audience chamber arrived during the day. When the empress stopped in front of him, he bowed and held the door open for her and her companions.
The three young mages seated there got to their feet as Berenene came in. All three, including
Sandry, wore their medallions outside their clothes. Tris looked disheveled, two fat, kinked hanks of hair hanging loose from her usual netted bundle. Her face was pale and glistening with sweat, but her gray eyes were ice cold. The glass dragon sat on her shoulder with one paw in her hair, like a guardian statue.
Briar, too, was sweating. His face was unreadable as he looked at the empress.
Ishabal’s description of Sandrilene’s looks was about right. Sandry’s hair was a tumbled mess, tangled and knotted. Her clothes at least were unrumpled, a testament to her power over thread, but her hands and feet were masses of rag bandages. Her face was dust-streaked and bruised. The look in her cornflower blue eyes was pure steel.
“My dearest Sandrilene,” the empress said, striding toward her with her hands out. “Whatever happened to you?”
Sandry’s eyes caught and held hers. “Finlach fer Hurich happened to me,” she said, her voice an alien croak. “Fin, and that disgusting kidnap custom you let thrive in this country.” She began to cough, wincing as she did. Tears of pain streamed down her face. She dashed them away angrily.
Berenene halted and blinked at the girl. “What?” she asked, baffled. “Fin—Finlach—is in the ballroom at this moment.” Her brain worked swiftly, as it always did in a crisis. As she had trained it to. “What happened to your voice?”
“Screaming does that to a person,” Briar said coldly. “May I go to my quarters to get something for her throat?”
“Quen, see to it, please,” Berenene ordered.
As Quenaill walked over to Sandry, the girl backed away. Briar went to stand next to him. “Be very careful with what you do,” Briar said quietly. “Our patience is just about gone.”
“Understood,” Quen replied. “It’s just a mild healing spell, Clehame.” He leaned forward to place one broad palm on Sandry’s grimy throat. She flinched, then closed her eyes. After a moment, Quen drew away from her.
Am I to understand Finlach did this in my own palace? Berenene wondered, ice closing around her heart. How? Not alone, surely. And how did he think he might escape?
She selected a chair, rather than the throne, and settled onto it. “I think I will understand your meaning so much better if you explain, Sandrilene,” she said coolly. “Sit, everyone, please. If you have a grievance, I am certain it can be resolved.”
“As I am certain,” repeated Sandry, taking a chair. Her voice was rough, but understandable. “Tris, please, sit before you fall down.”
“I’m not some dainty flower, worn out by my own magic,” retorted Tris. “I could lower us to the foot of the cliffs again right now, if you like. Though speaking of the cliffs…” She took a chair and drew a long braid from its place in the coil.
Berenene saw that Ishabal’s attention was locked on the redhead. From a belt pouch the older woman drew a rope of silk twined with an assortment of powerful charms, each keyed to different protective spells. Her fingers were twined around one charm that the empress knew would throw a magical prison around Tris.
That’s good, Berenene thought. Someone needs to watch Viymese Chandler. “Won’t you sit, Viynain Moss?” Berenene asked with a smile.
His expression didn’t change. “I’ll stand, thank you, Your Imperial Majesty,” he replied politely. He stayed where he was, legs planted, hands clasped before him, his eyes somber. For a moment Berenene feared that she had lost this young man’s regard, or even worse, his friendship. She brushed the idea aside. Of far more importance was learning who had possessed the effrontery to attempt to kidnap her kinswoman in her palace.
“Finlach fer Hurich came to escort me to the ball,” Sandry told the three Namornese, her voice cold and steady. “Instead, he led me down a back passage, claiming I was to stand beside Your Imperial Majesty as you entered the room from the rear.”
“Did anyone see you with Fin?” asked Quenaill.
Berenene shot him a glare for interrupting, but Sandry was shaking her head. “Not after we turned away from the main corridors. I didn’t see anyone else. When we turned a corner back there, someone placed a cloth over my face. It was soaked in a potion that made me unconscious. I woke up in a box.” Her voice trembled slightly. She got it under control. “The inside was filled with spells to cripple a thread mage. Fin was outside. He said his uncle had helped him. He said he was taking me out to a house with the same spells on it. And he said I would leave only when I signed the marriage contract and put my lip print on it in blood, so a mage could use it against me if I tried to break it. He seemed to think you would let him get away with it, Cousin, since you admire bold young men so. Everyone knows you want me to stay in Namorn. And you expect women to escape like you did. Of course, I doubt that you were put in a box.” The huskiness in her voice thickened. “I doubt that the head of the Namornese Mages’ Society put spells on you and guaranteed to keep them there until you signed the contract. It would have been harder to escape under those circumstances, don’t you think?”
“Then how did you escape?” Berenene asked coolly. The beginnings of a headache pounded in her temples.
“I found her,” Briar said flatly.
“But how?” insisted Berenene. What she really wanted to know was, Did you use that magical connection my spies told me was closed? She could not ask that, of course. They trusted her little as it was. Adults understood that people spied on one another, but these young people were idealists, not realists. She doubted that they would understand that everyone spied on everyone who might be important.
“I…forget,” Briar said coldly. “I have a terrible memory when it comes to secrets I don’t wish to tell.”
Berenene glanced at Tris. The redhead had undone a third of the braid she had pulled from her hairstyle. Now Tris ran her fingers through the loose hairs over and over, her attention locked on them.
“She’s working magic,” Ishabal said. “I cannot tell what kind, but she is cloaked in power.”
“Then stop her,” ordered Berenene.
Tris looked up, gray eyes glinting through her loose tresses. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Tris, you’ll never be a success as a diplomat,” announced Briar. “You may as well put that right out of your mind.” He turned his own bright green eyes on Ishabal and Berenene. “We all swear on our medallions, this isn’t something that would affect Your Imperial Majesty in any way,” he said, his voice as bland as cream. “In fact, Tris here is actually doing you and your devoted servants a favor.”
“And if they stop me now, I can’t promise the cliff under the palace wall won’t drop into the Syth,” muttered Tris.
“Pay her no mind,” Briar continued as Sandry glared at Tris. “It’s not a threat she’s making, just a warning. You know how it is with mages and interruptions. Anyway, I suppose you didn’t know it, or you’d have seen for yourself, but your palace has rats. Big ones. Doesn’t it, Clehame fa Landreg?”
“Big ones,” Sandry replied. “I don’t know how she missed them, but anything is possible.”
“She’s an empress,” Briar told her, his tone pure conciliation. “You can’t expect her to know every rathole that opens up.” To the empress and her mages, he explained: “This one is a real beauty. It opens in a northeast wing of the palace—I don’t think anyone’s dusted in there in months. And it tunnels all the way down through the cliff. Through solid stone, even under the curtain wall, can you believe it? Down at the bottom, it opens onto a cove of the Syth.”
Berenene’s veins filled with ice. The Julih Tunnel, she realized, horrified. How in Vrohain’s name did Fin—his uncle. Notalos dung-grubbing fer Hurich. The Mages’ Society is said to have the plans of the palace from its first construction—and I shall have his skin.
Briar continued, “Energetic little nalizes, rats, aren’t they? To dig all that way. We stumbled on their hole purely by chance. Well, Sandry didn’t stumble entirely by chance. So Tris here got all alarmed, because she hates rats, so she’s stopping up that hole at the foot of the cliff. She’s gett
ing the lake to help. Some of the stones she’s using are pretty big.”
Tris looked up, her face relaxed and at ease. “It really is in your interest, Your Imperial Majesty. Who could sleep, knowing rats could get in at will? With that rathole closed, Your Imperial Majesty may sleep easily.”
Berenene clenched her hands against her skirts. If the wench is doing what she claimed to do, she is trying to close the secret exit that saved my life in that assassination attempt years ago. Of course, it’s no good to me now if Viynain fer Hurich has decided he need not obey his vow to keep those plans secret. “Can she do it?” she asked Ishabal. There were magical wards on the tunnel.
Ishabal watched Tris for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. “She is doing it.” She asked Tris, “What if anyone is in the chamber at the base of the cliff?”
“I won’t weep a tear if they drown,” Sandry snapped, her voice rough. “But they could always climb. Tris is just stopping up the exit. You ought to put maids with brooms at the other end of the hole, to beat the rats when they come out.”
The skin at the back of Berenene’s neck crawled. She sighed lightly, as if she’d asked for a glass of wine only to be told there was no more. One of the hardest parts of being imperial was learning when to back off from a fight. “Quen, be a dear and send a message to the captain of my guard. Harm no one who comes out, please. I wish to have anyone who appears questioned.” Quen bowed and went to give the message to the guard at the door. As he did so, the empress said, “Please continue, Trisana. Ishabal will watch all that you do.” Berenene looked at Sandry once more. “So. Briar found you in a way he does not remember.”