The Will of the Empress

Ishabal sighed. “All of our work in recent years has gone to the barriers in the southeast and the east, where our greatest enemies are. We have had neither the funds nor the mages to reinforce everything. I know that, given time and preparation, Quen and I could walk through the protection wall at Olart. We must ask ourselves if these three young people might now manage it as well. Majesty, Quen could not break out of the cage Briar and Daja made without a mage’s help.” Isha watched nervously as Berenene took a chair and sat in it. Calmly she continued: “You are angry because you fear you’ll be seen as weak, Majesty, but it need not be so. All we need do is announce that your cousin and her friends are returning home. It is earlier than planned, to be sure, but stories can be spread that our court is far too sophisticated for them! There are still ways to make it seem as if they fled with their tails between their legs.” She took a deep breath. “But if you raise the border against them, and they break through, that will be far worse than stories that say they fled our men. All of your neighbors will know you tried to keep them, and failed. You will have exposed a weakness.”

“I do not believe the border will fail,” Berenene said flatly, her mouth a hard, tight line.

Isha shrugged. “Nor do I, but I must examine possibilities and damage if you will not. The chance of failure must be considered. I beg you, let them go.”

“I will not be defied.” The refusal was a quick one, but she had not ordered Isha out of her sight. There was an opening in the empress’s thinking.

Isha rushed through it. “Then let me go, alone, to do it,” she said. “You remain here. If they fail to pass the wall, I shall bring them here to you. If I fail to hold the wall against them, you can say I am weary from travel and the wall needs work. It has gone neglected and now it will be seen to. No one will know this was in any way a matter in which you were involved. They will speculate, no doubt, but they will not prove.”

Berenene looked down in thought at her perfectly cared for hands.

Isha pressed. “You have always said it is far better to appear innocent while others take the blame.”

Berenene rubbed her temples. “You ask me to surrender my pride.”

Isha bowed her head. “Only when it is a liability, Imperial Majesty.”

“You are willing to take the blame if the border fails.”

“If this traditionally safe border fails,” corrected Isha. “If this seldom renewed border fails. If older, weary me fails against three powerful young things who just tied my best assistant in a knot.”

Isha knew that remote look on Berenene’s face as the empress smoothed her fingers over her sleeve. She was always glad to see it, because it meant that her mistress was turning a thousand thoughts over in her mind, seeing a multitude of outcomes and weighing them all. Few people glimpsed this cold calculation on the empress’s beautiful features. She didn’t want them to. It suited her that people thought of her as a passionate creature delighting in love and money. Few realized that Berenene cooled off far sooner than she let on, and that she did nothing that would not enhance her standing in the eyes of her people and the world.

Finally Berenene shook out her cuffs and got to her feet. “Very well, Isha. Do what you must. And I’m going to change. I’ve a mind to ride along the lake today.”

Sandry refused to stay a second night in the Canyon Inn. I don’t trust them, she told Daja and Briar. If Shan had their help, I don’t want to punish them. I know how hard it is to refuse a noble. But I don’t want to stay here, either.

I have potions. I could find out, offered Briar.

They’ve had enough magic, said Daja, who had watched the staff skitter around the caged Quen. Let’s just go. If you’re feeling so energetic, grovel to Zhegorz some more.

Briar winced. All three of them were doing some serious apologizing to Zhegorz. Sandry even invited him to ride beside her as they left the Canyon Inn. Strangely, the whole mess seemed to have calmed Zhegorz down. Even when they passed the next imperial fort, he kept warnings about palace matters to himself. He was learning to sift images and his words more.

Since they were only two riders, Ambros and Tris had an easier time on the road in some ways, despite Tris’s weakness. When Tris felt she could stay in the saddle not another moment, she wove ropes of wind to bind her to it and her mare, and trapped two more pads of air to keep her upright. If she grew vexed at traffic, she sent winds ahead to drive those in the road to its sides until she and Ambros passed by. When those attending the horse fair did not respond to wind, she reddened and began to play with balls of lightning. The people scattered. She, Ambros, and Chime passed through the meeting of the highway and Deepdene Road far more quickly than had Sandry and her companions.

By then, Tris was able to sense Briar and Daja. Her strength returned with each day she rode, though her hips ached fiercely when she dismounted for the night. She said nothing about it. She also said nothing when Ambros paid for a private room for each of them at the inns when they halted. By the time they passed the fort beyond the Blendroad Inn, Tris had begun to ride part of the time at the trot. Briar, Daja, and Sandry were telling her that Zhegorz was in a bad state, babbling about walls of glass. Tris knew what he meant, just as her brother and sisters knew: There were magical walls ahead. Tris fidgeted when they rested the horses, and she slept badly, always wanting to get on the road at dawn. It was one thing to talk to her friends, another to shift power to them. She needed to be closer.