The Will of the Empress

Briar took a step forward to glare down into her face. I also forgot how gods-curst aggravating she can be, always poking at a fellow’s sore spots! he thought. “Why does it always have to be so witless personal with you?” he demanded.

Sandry braced her fists on her hips and rose up on the balls of her feet to lessen the five inches of difference in their heights. “Personal? Personal is what I’ve had while my brother and sisters raced all over the world, in case you’ve forgotten, Master Big Britches!”

Briar gaped at her, astonished. “You said you didn’t mind!”

Sandry glared up into his eyes. “I had to say that, idiot. You were going if I liked it or no. All I could do was salvage my pride!”

Now Briar’s temper came to a boil. “That bleating noble’s pride, so much more meaningful than the kind us ground-grubbers get—”

Sandry retorted, “Better than your stiff-rumped streetboy fecklessness that makes fun of anything serious!” She thrust out one hand and shoved him on the chest. Briar rocked back on his heels and grabbed her wrist.

“Well.” Daja stood in the door, arms crossed over her chest. “I can see this will be a splendid trip.”

Embarrassed, Briar turned back to his plants. Sandry shoved out of the room past Daja.

After a long silence, Daja asked, “Does this mean you’re not going?”

Briar, who could feel a hot blush swamp his face from the tip of his nose to the backs of his ears, shook his head. When he heard no sounds that meant Daja had left his workroom, he mumbled, “Girls. Always getting their skirts in an uproar over a lump in the mattress.”

“But you feel better for yelling at her,” Daja suggested, her voice very dry.

Briar shrugged. He kept his back to Daja so she wouldn’t see the slow smile that spread across his lips. It was good to see that Sandry still had some spice in her.

After a long moment, he heard the sounds of Daja’s retreat from his workroom. “Tell her I’m not wearing fussy embroidery or pointed shoes!” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Tell him I’m putting hoods with the faces sewn shut on all his tunics!” Sandry yelled from somewhere inside the house.

“Tell each other yourselves!” called Daja from somewhere between them.

Briar grinned. For a moment it felt like it had in the old days, back at Discipline cottage. Daja’s house had felt like home.

The 17th day of Seed Moon, 1043 K. F.

The Erynwhit River

Southwestern Gansar

Briar was smugly pleased to find that, unlike most non-Traders who rode under the protection of Trader caravans, the four were not kept to a separate camp, guarded by the Traders but shut out of Trader conversations and Trader campfires. He tried not to smirk at the non-Traders when he passed their lonely fires. The four would have been forced to join them if not for Daja. Though she had once been a Trader outcast, the same powerful act of magic that had left her with living metal on one hand had also redeemed her name with all Traders, and made her and her friends known and respected by her people. Now Daja carried an ebony staff, its brass cap engraved and inlaid with the symbols of her life’s story, like any Trader’s staff. Now she could do business with Traders, eat with them, talk with them, and travel with them, as could her brother and sisters.

“Those fires look awful lonesome,” Briar confided to Tris their first night on the road.

She was not fooled. “Stop gloating,” she replied.

The people of Third Caravan Saralan soon found there was much of interest about Briar and the girls. The children and quite a few adults were entranced by Chime. They took every free moment to feed the glass dragon and collect the flame- or puddle-shaped bits of glass that Chime produced afterward. The yellow-clad and veiled mimanders—mages—were drawn to the depth and power of the magic that filled the 152-year-old miniature pine shakkan that was Briar’s companion. They consulted Briar about the magic that could be worked with shakkans, while the Trader negotiators began the slow process of bargaining for a long-term contract to buy the trees Briar was prepared to sell. The Traders even negotiated an exchange with Sandry: her embroidery on their own clothes in trade for a chance to examine weaving and embroidery done only within the rare Trader cities. This was the work of very old and very young Traders, who were exempt from the custom that forbade their people from making things. Sandry jumped at the chance: Rarely did a non-Trader so much as glimpse the work, let alone get the time for a close look at it.

Briar, Sandry, and Daja soon found something they could agree on in that first week: Tris had grown very odd. She seemed to flinch each time a fresh breeze blew through the camps and the caravans. Briar thought she would drive him mad, changing the location of her bedroll several times each night. He slept lightly, trying to avoid dreams of fire and blood. Tris woke him when she moved. While Tris didn’t drive others to growl “pesky, jagging, maukie girl” as Briar did, it was almost as if by trying to be quiet and disturb no one, Tris disturbed everyone.

“I left Winding Circle so I could sleep!” he cried their fourth night on the road. “Not so’s I could be jumping every other minute thinking we’re under attack when it’s just you missing your feather bed!”

“That’s why we ride with the caravan, so their guards watch in case of attack,” she replied with heavy and weary sarcasm. “Anyway, since when are you such a cursed light sleeper? The time was that we had to dump buckets of water on you to get you to crack an eyelid.”