The Will of the Empress

12

Supper that night seemed lonely without Rizu, Caidy, Jak, and Fin to tell stories and make jokes over the table. They had returned to Sablaliz with the empress, who had declared herself helpless without their companionship. Jak and Fin had seemed genuinely sad to leave Sandry. And Daja was definitely sad that they had lost Rizu and Caidy.

Over supper, Ambros announced, “Her Imperial Majesty has invited Ealaga and me to join you tomorrow. In addition, I’m detaching five men-at-arms to guard us. There’s no need to bring more. The presence of the empress in the district should discourage kidnappers. Besides”—he began. Sandry and Tris chorused with him, “There’s the plowing to be done.” It was why they had taken so few guards to Pofkim.

Ambros gave his crackling laugh. His wife and daughters fell victim to the giggles. Daja fixed it in mind to share with Rizu, who probably would have joined their chorus. They’d all had plenty of time to learn that Ambros’s first priority, apart from acquainting Sandry with her estates, was to make sure every acre that could grow a crop was plowed and sown. Despite Sandry’s visit, the yearly round of the castle continued.

“And I will stay here,” Zhegorz said firmly.

Sandry gave him her warmest smile. “You’ll stay here,” she reassured him. “No empresses for you.”

At dawn their small party left, along with their guards and two donkeys who carried picnic delicacies from the Landreg kitchens. The four mages rode silently, saving their conversational skills for the day ahead. When they reached Dragonstone, they were rewarded for their early ride. Berenene, as wide-awake as she had been the day before, took them on a tour of the fortress ruins.

Every inch of the crumbling great hall and the inner bailey had received attention by gardeners. In pockets between stones Briar found tiny, ground-hugging flowers with spiky white petals, rockroses, and pinks. Trickles of water ran over mossy stones, or formed small waterfalls that dropped into pools set in what must have been the dungeon level of the castle. Small willows and dwarf maple trees grew on the grounds, shading ponds and benches. Everything fit the ruins but did not obscure them.

It’s a pity Berenene loves orchids so, Briar thought, trailing loving fingers over the happiest jasmine vine he’d ever met. She could create the perfect shakkan garden.

“Do you like it?” Berenene asked, coming up next to him. “This was the garden I had as a girl—the only thing my father would let me tend. I lived in the gatekeeper’s lodge and studied with the Sisterhood of Qunoc in the temple on the shore, until my older brother died and I became the heir. I built on this place for years. Now I have gardeners to tend it, but any changes are done to my request.”

“I think you’re wasted as an empress,” Briar said without thinking. He winced, then grinned at her when her only reaction was laughter.

“Spoken like my gardeners,” she said. “I’m honored. And if you see anything that requires attention, please let me know. I’ll be in your debt.”

Briar, who knew what privilege she had just given him, bowed low. I’ll make her a shakkan garden for the palace, he thought. A miniature of this one. It will take work, but she’s worth it.

Looking at him from beneath lowered lashes, Berenene asked, “Could you do better, with your potions and spells?”

Briar gaped at her, genuinely shocked. He quickly recovered and asked, “Why would I want to tamper with perfection? All this is yours, with your shaping on it. I’d no more change it than I would change you.”

Berenene looked down. Finally she said softly, “A mage who does not think magic betters everything. I am not certain I can bear the shock.” She took his hand and ran a finger along the lines in his palm. “I could make you the greatest gardener in the world, you know. I could place the resources of the empire at your disposal.” She placed her finger against his lips. “Don’t say anything now. I don’t want an answer now. But think about it—think what being my chief gardener could mean. I will ask again this summer, I assure you.” She stepped away. “I’ll see you at midday, Briar.”

Dazed, Briar watched her as she made her way back to Sandry, who was taking a drink of water from a well. Today Berenene was dressed for spring in a leaf green undergown and a cream-colored overgown embroidered with gold flowers. She’s the most beautiful thing in this garden, he thought wistfully. But she’s not for the likes of me. I know what the girls think—that I’d bed her if I could. But she’s too grand. Too glorious. I would rather leave her be than get all disillusioned when I find out she’s human.

A sharp elbow caught him in the ribs. He turned. Caidy glared at him, her hazel eyes fiery. “I’m away one night and you forget all about me?” she asked dangerously, roses of temper blooming on her ivory cheeks. “You’re setting up to storm the palace when the castle was half-won.”

“I got discouraged,” he told her, trying to look penitent. “You defend your castle so well. Besides, aren’t you used to everyone being in love with her?”

“Everyone better not be thinking of kissing me, then,” she warned. “Because I’m fresh out of kisses. I’ll go see if Jak has any.”

She marched away, chin in the air.

Briar grinned. I do like a girl with some thorns to her.

Better still, a real girl, one I can kiss instead of worship. Worship’s all well and good, but it doesn’t keep a fellow warm when the night turns cold. I’ll have to think of something to make Caidy happy again.

Thinking about what he might create to draw a smile from her, he carefully descended the stairs that led through the long-vanished floors down to the water pools.

After the tour of the garden, the company broke up into various groups. To Daja’s surprise, Berenene went off to confer with secretaries at midmorning. It seemed that the empress’s secretaries followed her everywhere and conducted business from horseback, if necessary. Fortunately for them, she thought, they don’t have to work in the saddle while there’s a lodgekeeper’s house on the grounds.

Ambros, Ealaga, and some of the older nobles had gone off to sun themselves on a ruined terrace circled by lilacs and bitter orange bushes in full bloom. Up on the rim of the same terrace, Daja could see Tris and Ishabal in animated conversation.

Probably about something that comes only in words of ten syllables, Daja thought with amusement. It looks like that kind of talk.

Daja herself stood on the edge of a cropped grass circle. All around its rim lazed younger nobles on drop cloths. At the circle’s heart were Rizu and some other young ladies who played a ball-tossing game. Daja was happy just to watch, leaning on her Trader staff. She had brought it to make her way over uneven ground, to poke under stones to ensure that no early rising snakes lurked in wait, and to show to Rizu. When she had discovered that each marking on a Trader’s staff stood for part of the person’s life, Rizu had made Daja promise to tell some of the stories about her markings. Now Daja watched her catch the ball gracefully and toss it high, enjoying her new friend’s joy in the beauty of the day and the setting.

Movement drew her eye past the ring of laughing noblewomen. Three men had turned to listen to a fourth. Something about that fourth man’s excitement, the way he spoke with one hand raised to cover the movements of his mouth, and the slyly eager looks exchanged by his companions, told Daja there was trouble afoot. When they all ran off around the ruins of a wall, she was certain of it. As a Trader and as a mage she knew the look of overgrown boys up to wickedness.

As Berenene had led the tour, she had kept Briar at her side. Some of the courtiers—including three of the ones who had just left—had been displeased by the attention the empress gave Briar. Many of those courtiers had also grumbled when Berenene took Briar into her greenhouses, where they were forbidden to go. Traders were taught from the cradle to notice who complained and when: Often those were the people who led the attacks on Traders. Now the empress was occupied, and Briar was nowhere within view.

Briar? Daja called down the withered thread that remained of their old bond. She heard and felt nothing. You’d think you want people to know you were all right, she added tartly. There was still no reply.

Daja sent a pulse of magic along their connection to see where the bond led. Walking slowly, sending magic along the tie in waves, she followed it into the garden. She didn’t realize it, but she was twirling her staff in a circle, hand over hand, loosening her muscles in preparation for a fight.

She had to climb over four walls, apologizing to flowers as she stepped on them. I hope the empress doesn’t learn this was me, she thought as she fluffed a patch of moss she had crushed. I’ll have Briar fix these when I find him.

Down two sets of ruined stairs she went, then along an open inner gallery now used as a rose trellis. The thread led her up another set of stairs, or rather, it went through the stairs; Daja had to climb them and jump down from a six-foot wall. She walked among some trees into a clearing by a stream. Young noblemen stood there in a half circle. They watched Briar, who faced one of the men who so often watched the empress.

Olfeon fer ... something, Daja remembered. Master of the Armory. The one who gets the cream from Namorn’s armorers when it’s time to buy weapons for the imperial guards. Is he one of the empress’s ex-lovers, the jealous sort Rizu mentioned?

“—as I thought,” Olfeon said, contempt in his voice. “You mages are all cowards. If you have to take on a real man, you can only do it with your stinking magic.”

Briar’s six inches shorter than this kaq, thought Daja as she moved into a space in the half-circle. The men next to her were too interested in the brewing fight to do more than glance at her. But they’re muscled about the same, Daja thought as she continued to measure Briar against Olfeon. He may be a warrior sort—that scar on his cheek isn’t some lady’s kiss.

Briar raised his eyebrows. “Of course, if you think so, how could I possibly disagree?” he asked politely. He’d shifted his weight so he was balanced properly. “Look, are you trying to challenge me to a duel or something? Because if you are, could you get it over with? And if you aren’t, would you go away? There’s blight in that patch of speedwell over there, and I’d like to get rid of it before Her Imperial Majesty sees it and gets upset.”

“Duel?” snapped Olfeon. “With you, guttersnipe?”

Stinking kaq, thought Daja in disgust.

Olfeon continued: “I’d no more duel with a peasant like you than I’d duel with dog dung on my boot. Duels are for noblemen. I’ll just have my lackeys whip you. And if you go whining to Her Imperial Majesty about it, you won’t live to make it to the border.”

The men who watched laughed. Daja wrinkled her nose in disgust. Civilized Namornese my eye, she thought with disdain. They treat their women like property and outsiders like idiots. They deserve a lesson or two. She leaned on her staff with a smile and waited.

Briar looked over at her. “I can handle this myself,” he said, eyes glittering in anger. “I don’t need imperial protection—or yours.”

Even a former street rat has his pride, Daja told herself. To Briar, she said, “I’m just here to take wagers, if he’ll actually deign to trade blows with you.” She looked at the other noblemen. “I’ll bet gold that my friend hurts this kaq if it comes to a fistfight.”

“You’ll lose your money. We don’t wager with Trader mage spawn,” said one of the nobles.

The two closest to her kept their mouths shut as the others laughed. My neighbors fear my magic, not my staff, but it’s still rather sweet of them to be scared, Daja thought. Aloud she said, “Oh—too bad, because I’m giving five-to-one odds on a fistfight between my friend and yours. You know Traders don’t wager money they don’t have.” She looked at Olfeon and sighed. “I forgot. You won’t fight a commoner, even bare-handed.”

“You both need a lesson!” snapped Olfeon. He glared at the other men. “Bet, rot your eyes!” To Briar, he said, “When I leave you as jelly, get your friend here to pack you in a basket and send you home. Have we a bargain?”

Briar spat on his palm and offered it with an evil grin. It was a way for street rats to conclude a deal.

It was not the way Namornese noblemen sealed their oaths. Olfeon produced a handkerchief and let one end of it hang. “You may grab that,” he said impatiently. “Wipe your hand, while you’re at it.” He pointed to Daja. “No magic from you, either. These two?” He pointed to two men. “They see that nonsense. The fight will be forfeit in my favor if they catch either of you trying it.”

“Don’t think much of mages, do they?” Briar asked. He gave the handkerchief a sharp yank, then retreated to take off his boots and stockings.

“Apparently not. Let me know if you want me to ignore the rules. For you I’ll bash a couple of heads,” Daja offered. Olfeon sat on a rock to take off his own boots and stockings.

“You were always the most commonsensical of my sisters,” Briar said with a grunt as he worked a boot free. “If they kill me, just break their knees. They’re not worth a death sentence.” His second boot was off. Next he began to remove his knives, starting with the two he reached through the pockets of his breeches, and ending with the flat one that lay just below the nape of his neck under his shirt. There were eight in the pile when he finished, not including the pair he’d left in his boots. The nobles stared at the blades in shock. Briar continued, “Though, if you smack ’em on the head, the skull will cave in because there’s nothing to hold it up, and then you can sell ’em to Her Imperial Majesty as planters.”

Daja eyed the noblemen, who looked as if they would be glad to leap on Briar at this very moment. “Wagers, gentlemen?” she asked coolly.

She carried a small tablet and a stick of charcoal in a holder in an inner pocket of her tunic, in case she got the urge to design something. She used them now to record wagers, making sure each man wrote his name down clearly.

They were almost ready when she heard a familiar voice snap, “What is going on here?”

She looked up. It was that fellow Shan, the one who was the empress’s current lover.

Olfeon, who had stripped off his coat and was rolling up his sleeves, glared at the newcomer. “Not your affair, fer Roth.”

“Do you think she’ll be gratified if you kill her pet gardener?” Shan demanded. “She’ll be livid.”

“For all I know, she’ll be vexed with me if I dent one of her playtoys,” Briar said.

“Silence, clodhopper!” snapped Olfeon.

Briar looked at Daja and sniffed. “He’s so mean,” he said plaintively.

Daja tucked her tablet and the charcoal holder away. “I noticed that. You should be very offended and hit him first.”

As they had meant it to—it was how they’d have played it in the old days, when they were bonded—this exchange brought Olfeon hurtling at Briar, hands outstretched. Briar let him get almost close enough to touch, then twisted to the side and smashed his knee into Olfeon’s belly.

Daja watched with interest as the fight continued. He learned a lot while he was away, she thought as Briar used new throws and twists to slam Olfeon to the ground time after time.

He knew better than to let the bigger man get both hands on him. Then Olfeon would use his superior weight and height to drag Briar down. Instead, Briar aimed for nerve points he had studied for medicine, added to his old street fighter’s arsenal of tricks. At the end of the fight, Briar’s foot rested on Olfeon’s neck, pressing the right side of his face into the grass as Olfeon flailed wildly. When he tried to grab Briar’s leg, Briar pressed harder. The Namornese collapsed at last, starved for air. Daja made the final tally. Briar had a black eye, several cuts, a split lip, ripped clothes, bruises, and perhaps a sprained knee. Olfeon had facial cuts, a sprained wrist, a broken nose, ripped clothes, and his own collection of bruises.

“Pay me by the end of today,” Daja called to the losing bettors. “I won’t take signatures in place of real coin, and I’m cross when people think to cheat me.” She looked around, about to call for Sandry to fix the clothes, when she saw her sister being handed down the stairs by Shan. Quenaill followed Sandry, a scowl on his long face.

As they approached, Shan said to Briar and Olfeon, “Did you think I’d leave you both to face Her Imperial Majesty in this condition? Clehame Sandry will see to your clothes, Quen to your wounds.”

You just did it for an excuse to have Sandry hold you by the arm, Daja thought cynically. I bet you couldn’t care less for Briar or the other fellow.

Sandry glared at the two battered young men. “What was this about?”

Briar glared back. “Namornese sheep,” he retorted. “He claimed Namorn breeds sheep that think for themselves.”

“We fought over his right to wear that medallion,” said Olfeon. “Right, lads?”

The young men nodded. Through their magical connection Daja told Sandry, It was over the empress. I suppose she would be vexed with Olfeon if she knew.

Sandry shook her head. As if I would believe they would have a fistfight over Briar’s right to wear the mage medallion. They must think I drink stupid potion for my morning pick-me-up.

She walked briskly over to Briar. “I didn’t make those clothes for brawls,” she told him irritably. “I didn’t think even you could find a fight at the court of Namorn.” She set her hand on the ripped seam that had once joined sleeve to shirt. A rough tear over Briar’s knee was already starting to weave itself back together as grass and dirt stains trickled off his clothes.

“Well, you’re forever underestimating me,” Briar told her. “If there’s a fight about, it’s nearly guaranteed I’ll be in it.”

Sandry looked over at Olfeon. “You were lucky,” she said sharply. “He could have ripped you to pieces with thorns if he wanted.”

“No, no,” protested Briar, his eyes warning Sandry to be silent. “Blood’s horrible for grass, and there’s always some thorns left after. Don’t mind her,” he told Olfeon. “Girls have no appreciation for the rules of combat.”

Olfeon spat on the ground in disgust, then winced as Quenaill set to work healing his wounds. “Hold still and be silent,” Quenaill said, frowning. “The quicker this is done the better, unless you want to spend the winter in a log cabin on the Sea of Grass.”

“She says if we have that much spirit we can use it to fight the Yanjing emperor,” Shan explained to Sandry. No one doubted that “she” was the empress. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked Briar.

“Everywhere,” Briar replied, grinning at the tall huntsman. “And isn’t it a good thing for me?”

A tap on the back made Daja turn. Some of the men who had bet against her waited to pay their wagers.

They spent the rest of that week riding between Sablaliz and Landreg, attending social occasions with the imperial court. Finally, one night after a late supper at Landreg, Sandry looked at Ambros and Ealaga, then at her exhausted companions and guards, who wearily picked through their meals. “I’m sorry,” she told her cousin and his wife. “But she’s going to kill us at this rate, or our horses, at the very least. The court is returning to the palace in Dancruan. We must go with them, I think. Her Imperial Majesty has invited us to stay at the palace. I don’t believe I can refuse politely.”

“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,” Ambrose 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 small, 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 sharp-pointed 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.