The Will of the Empress

Tris, crimson-cheeked, shot a glare at Sandry and continued to read. Ambros finally drifted over to Sandry’s side. “I’d get sick to my stomach doing that,” he told Sandry in a murmur. “I can’t read in carriages or ships, for that matter.”

“I think if Tris got sick she wouldn’t even notice,” Sandry replied. “Look at Chime.” The glass dragon flew in and out of Tris’s magical shield as if it were no barrier at all, sprinkling rain droplets all over the members of their small group. “She’s having fun,” Sandry added with a grin. She looked at Ambros. His blue eyes followed the little dragon. Chime gleamed rainbow colors in the morning’s subdued light. She spun and twirled as if she were a giddy child at play. There was a smile on Ambros’s lips and a glow in his eyes.

He’s not such a dry stick after all, thought Sandry, startled. You just have to catch him being human.

Suddenly she felt better about this man who so often reminded her of her obligations. She had been seeing him as a taskmaster. Maybe if I tried treating him as family, he might warm up to me, she thought. She fiddled with an amber eardrop, then asked him, “Did you know my mother’s father at all?”

He was willing to talk of their relatives, and proved himself to be a good storyteller. Sandry was laughing as they rode over one last ridge and down into the valley that cushioned the village of Pofkim. Startled by what lay before her, she reined up. Now she understood why flooding had hurt the place so badly. It was all bunched in the smallest of hollows, huddled on either side of a narrow, brisk river that churned in its channel in the ground. “Were they mad, to build it here?” she asked her cousin.

Ambros shook his head. “You can’t see them, but the clay pits are in the hills on the far side of the river. They need to be close to the water to transport the clay. They can’t get enough of it out by horseback to make it worth the expense, but people in Dancruan are eager to line up at the wharves to bid on loads. They make very good pottery with it in the city. And goats and mules find plenty to graze here, but the footing’s too steep for cows and the growth too scanty for sheep.”

Sandry looked the village over. Now she saw the flood marks on the lone bridge over the river and on the walls of the buildings. Here and there were houses that had collapsed in on themselves. The outside walls of several homes were braced with wooden poles.

“If the wells are bad here, how can they put down new ones that won’t be bad, either?” she asked.

“The one well they’ve been able to sink is higher up. They built a makeshift aqueduct to carry the water to the village, but a good wind knocks it over. With money they can sink new wells up where the water is good, and build stone channels to bring it to the village.” Ambros sighed. “I’d wanted to do that this year, but…”

Sandry scowled. Was there no end to the repairs her family’s lands required? “Sell the emeralds my mother left to me, if we haven’t the cash,” she said briskly. “They aren’t bound to the inheritance. I can sell them, if I like. If you can’t get more than enough money for them to fix all this, you aren’t the bargainer I take you for, Cousin.”

“Are you sure?” he asked as they entered the outskirts of the village. “Won’t you want them to wear, or to pass on?”

“The need is here. And I’m not much of a one for jewelry,” Sandry replied as people came out of their homes.

“Oh, splendid,” she heard Tris murmur. “The bowing and scraping begins.”

Sandry sighed windily and glared at the other girl. “Let loose a lightning bolt or two,” she snapped. “That should put a stop to it, if you dislike it that much.”

“Instead, they’ll fall on their faces in the mud,” Ambros said drily. “Somehow that doesn’t seem like an improvement.”

Sandry shook her head—Ambros has been listening to my brother and sisters too much! she thought, half-amused—and dismounted from her mare. One of her guards also dismounted and took her mount’s reins. Once that was taken care of, Sandry looked at a small boy. He was doing his best to bow, though the result seemed shaky. “How do you do?” she greeted him. “Are you the Speaker for this village?” The Namornese called the chiefs of their villages Speakers.

The boy sneaked a grin at her, then shook his head. A little girl standing behind him said, “You aren’t stuck-up. They said you would be.”

“Maghen!” cried her mother. She swept the little girl behind her and curtsied low. The curls that escaped her headcloth trembled. “Clehame, forgive her, she’s always speaking her mind, even when it will earn her a spanking…” She gave an extra tug to the child’s arm.

Sandry lifted the mother up. “I’m glad there’s someone who will speak to me directly, Ravvi,” she replied softly. “Maghen? Is that you back there, or some very wiggly skirts?”

The girl poked her head out from behind her mother. “It’s me,” she said frankly.

“Do I seem stuck-up to you?” Sandry wanted to know. “Ravvi, please, I’m not offended. Let her come say hello.”

“She has a way with people,” Sandry heard Ambros murmur to Tris. “I wish I did.”

“You show them you care about them by looking after their welfare,” she heard Tris reply. “Do you believe her when she says put whatever funds you need into help for your tenants? Because she means it. She won’t ask you later what you’ve done with her emeralds. When she gives her word, you may trust it.”