The Will of the Empress

Everything went dark. Suddenly Briar was crawling over heaps of loose and wet bodies, feeling his way, shuddering. He knew he was crawling on the bodies of the dead. He reached out and felt a dying flare of green magic, plant magic. Screaming, he clutched the dying Rosethorn to his chest.

“…know it’s a bad idea to wake a dreamer, but it didn’t sound like you’re enjoying yourself and if I can’t get you to wake I’ll have to get one of the Viymeses, though perhaps—”

Briar grabbed Zhegorz’s skinny arm and sat up, glaring into the older man’s eyes. He could see them clearly: Zhegorz had managed to light a candle. “Don’t you dare,” Briar ordered softly. “They’re not to know you caught me bleatin’ like a kid, you got me, daftie? Elsewise I’ll plant a bit of green on your lip that will grow your teeth shut, you got me?”

Zhegorz blinked at him, his odd blue-gray eyes bright. “I don’t think that’s possible,” he replied. “I don’t believe it would cling.”

“It’s got stickers on it, and they sink in the cracks.” Realizing the man had no intention of telling on him, Briar released Zhegorz’s arm. “It’s only a dream.”

Zhegorz sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “So you’ll give me drops for my dreams, but not yours?”

Briar rubbed his aching head. “Just what I need—a daftie that makes sense,” he grumbled. “Besides, your dreams is bleating, and mine is real. Except for some bits. And those might have been real.”

“But Viymese Tris thinks some of mine are real, too,” Zhegorz pointed out in a reasonable tone.

“Viymese Tris thinks too much, and she yatters about it too much,” Briar grumbled. “You’d best learn that right off.”

“If I learn it, will you take the drops?” asked Zhegorz.

Briar stared at him, baffled and confused, then began to chuckle. “Crazy you may be, but when you get an idea in your head, you stick to it,” he said when Zhegorz raised an eyebrow. “How about I just make us both some sleepy tea instead? We’ll be all right with a cup of that in our bellies.”

The tea sent Zhegorz back to bed, at least. Briar had known it would have no other effect on him than to calm him down. Instead he pulled his chair up to his work desk and put his hands around the base of his shakkan, letting the tree’s centuries of calm banish the last shivers from the dreams that had made him so reluctant to sleep alone anymore. Looking at it, he realized that while he’d been occupied with preparing for court, the shakkan had slyly put out a handful of new buds.

“Nice,” he said with a grim smile. “But you still don’t get to keep them.”

When the maid came to wake them before dawn, she found Briar asleep with his head on his desk, one arm around his shakkan. Tiny clippings from the tree lay next to its tray from its late night trimming.

8

The 30th day of Goose Moon, 1043 K. F.

Landreg House, Dancruan, to

Clehamat Landreg (Landreg Estate), Namorn

Rizu, Jak, Fin, and Caidlene arrived with the dawn, just as the hostlers were bringing out horses for Sandry and her escorts. They all greeted one another sleepily. No one was inclined to conversation at that hour. Zhegorz, who had shown a tendency to talk rapidly in bursts the night before, huddled silently in the patched coat they had found for him. He rolled his eyes at the sleepy-eyed cob who had been saddled for his use, but once he was on the sturdy gelding’s back, he seemed to do well enough.

Ambros, pulling on his riding gloves, frowned as he looked at their scarecrow. “How shall we explain him?” Sandry’s cousin wanted to know. “You can’t just go around adding strangers to your entourage without questions being asked, Cousin, particularly not when you came to us without a single guardsman or maid.”

Sandry looked crisp in her blossom pink riding tunic and wide-legged breeches, but her brain had yet to catch up. “Ambros, how can you even think of such a thing at this hour?” she demanded, and yawned.

He gazed up at her as she sat on her mare, his blue eyes frosty. “Because there are going to be at least two spies outside the gates, and more on the way,” he added. “Young women in Namorn do not enjoy the license they appear to do in the south, Cousin. There are good reasons for that.”

Jak leaned drowsily on his saddle horn. “Can’t we just let the spies guess and decide when we’re awake?” he asked.

Ambros glared at him, his mouth tight.

“I think we’re probably supposed to be spies, too,” said Caidlene, who had been lively enough the afternoon before. “Which is silly, because we’d have to be awake to be spies.” She sipped from a flask that steamed in the chilly spring air. “Tea, anyone?”

“He’s my secretary, all right?” demanded Sandry, out of patience with it all. “I didn’t realize what a complicated social life I should be leading in Namorn, so I had to hire a Namornese secretary, Cousin—will that satisfy you? May we get on with our lives?”

Ambros snorted and mounted his gelding. Zhegorz looked around at his traveling companions and their guards. “Secretary? I don’t even have pens, or ink, or—”

Briar leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll set you up in style,” he reassured Zhegorz. “You’ll be a king of secretaries.”

As a pair of guards opened the gates, their company formed up in pairs to ride through. Leading the way with Ambros, Sandry heard Zhegorz complain, “I’m not sure I even know how to write.”