The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce Page B

light and musical. “Forgive me for taking so long to bring it, but I knew you would not need me earlier, and I had the mending to finish.”
    The empress laughed. “You know me too well, my dear. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler, Viynain Briar Moss, allow me to present my Wardrobe Mistress, Bidisa Rizuka fa Dalach. Not only does Rizu ensure that my attendants and I do not go clothed in rags, but she oversees the liveries for all the palace staff.” Rizu curtsied as the four returned her greeting. Bidisa , thought Sandry. Baroness, in Emelan.
    “Sandrilene, my dear, I asked Rizu to bring this for your inspection,” Berenene continued graciously. “I received this gift from the emperor of Yanjing, and I am simply at a loss. Of course I must send him a gift of like value, but, to be frank, none of us have seen cloth of this sort before. I would hope you might give us your expert opinion.”
    “I’d be happy to, Cousin,” Sandry replied. “Though how unusual can it be, that you haven’t seen it before?”
    Cradling the package on one arm, Rizu undid the silk tie that closed it and pushed the wrapper back. It revealed a bolt of cloth that reflected light in an array of colors, from red-violet to crimson. Daja, Tris, and Briar also drew closer to look.
    They’re impressed, Sandry thought. So they should be. Those threads are one color of silk wrapped around another,leaving bits of the original color to peek through. And those threads are twined, two shades of violet so close together that you can’t call them by different names, but they still add two colors to the weave. While the embroideries—Mila bless me, but they look like they were done by ants, they’re so small.
    She held out her hand to touch the cloth and stopped, her palm an inch away from it. Her instincts shrieked for her to keep the silk away from her skin.
    “Hmm,” Sandry murmured.
    Reaching through a side slit in her outer robe into one of her pockets, she found the dirty, mineral- and root-laced lump of crystal that was her night-light. Despite the materials trapped inside it, the crystal gave off a clear, steady light that made it easier to see the individual twists and turns of thread in the cloth.
    Three layers, she thought, viewing the material closely. The bottom layer, crimson silk wrapped in bloodred silk. The outer layer is the two violet threads twined together. There’s a cloth-of-gold thread in the outer layer, too. It shapes half the embroideries. But the second layer, that’s the odd one. The smaller embroideries are tucked in there, out of sight, and the cloth doesn’t want me to look at them. As if I could be stopped!
    Sandry pulled a thread of her power from her inner magical core and used it to draw a circle with the index fingerof her free hand just over the cloth’s surface. Then she smoothed the fire until it was a round disk. She released that into the cloth.
    Invisible tiny pincers, like beetle claws, sank into her magic.
    Immediately she yanked free and retrieved her power. That’s so shocking! she thought, distressed and angry, seeing the full shape of what had been done in this cloth. All that careful stitchery done on this, embedding the signs and making them inert. They won’t even start to work until the person who wears this cloth scratches or cuts herself. Then the signs come alive to release a speck of rot here and there, until her blood’s poisoned. It must have taken his mages months to do it, not to mention the time spent on just the right threads and embroideries to hold the spell. I hear there’s been famine in Yanjing, and he’s got his people wasting time and money on this ? What kind of an emperor lets his people suffer while he sends something like this to Dancruan?!
    She looked up and met her cousin’s brown eyes. They flickered with mirth.
    Ah, thought Sandry, returning her crystal to its pocket as she straightened. My cousin Berenene knows it’s dangerous,