The Will of the Empress - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,120

keep a stitch witch's power weak and confined. They cast no light. They did nothing to dispel the darkness.

The dark. She was trapped in pitch darkness with no light and no crystal lamp.

With complete understanding came real, uncontrolled panic. She gasped, unable to breathe. Suddenly she was ten years old and trapped below a palace, the dead strewn through the building above her. The only person who knew where Sandry was, who had locked her in this cellar, had been murdered within earshot.

Now Sandry was alone again, and she had no light.

Sandry screamed. She shoved all of her magic outside her skin, fighting to call light to the very fabric of her clothes, only to have her power dissolve. She screamed again, begging for someone to let her out, to light a lamp, to find her. Shrieking till her voice cracked, she hammered at the wooden trap her with feet and fists, ripping her delicate dancing slippers, bruising her hands, banging the back of her head against the unforgiving wood. Again and again, ignoring the pain that shot through her muscles and veins, she dragged at her power, trying to thrust it through her pores. Silk, silk had worked before, it had held light for her before, she was wearing all kinds of silk, but the magic would not come. She finally stopped screaming and wept, shuddering in terror.

She had not been silent for long when someone outside said, "My bride-to-be awakes."

I know that voice, she thought slowly. I know it... Fin. Remembering his name started a slow flare of rage in her chest. Finlach fer Hurich. My escort. That "special entrance" he guided me to.

"Come, Lady Sandry," he said, his voice very close to her prison. "You were lively enough a moment ago."

He had heard her crying — screaming, like a child lost in the dark. "Tell me —" She stopped. Her voice had been a low croak. She cleared her torn and scraped throat and tried again. "Does my cousin know about this?"

"Why would I trouble her with details?" he asked. "Your imperial cousin appreciates deeds, not promises. Once you've signed a marriage contract — with all the constraints required of a mage wife, of course, to ensure you never turn your power on me — I will accept Her Imperial Majesty's congratulations and praise for my boldness."

His smug reply set not the frightened child, but Vedris of Emelan's favourite niece, to blazing. "Maggot-riddled festering dung-footed imp-blest mammering pavao!" she growled, scrambling again for her power and feeling it trickle away. "Bat-fouling dung-sucking baseborn churlish milk-livered kaq! Naliz! Amdain!"

"Endearments," he replied. "You'll find better ones when we're married. Once you've put your signature to the contract, and your kiss, too, marked in blood for surety, I will even let my uncle give you control of your magic again. Not until then, of course. Not until you know that if you ever defy me, I will turn the marriage spells on you until you crawl to beg for my forgiveness. The men of Namorn know how to handle mage wives."

"If you think my cousin will congratulate you for kidnapping me in her own palace, you don't know her," Sandry retorted. "She'll free me of your precious contract and your precious uncle!"

"Not if she wants your moneybags to stay in Namorn, which she does," Fin reminded Sandry. "And my uncle is head of the Mages' Society for all Namorn. I think even Her Imperial Majesty will have to swallow any vexation with me, once I have the mages' backing and your wealth at my command. What?" He was answering a question from someone outside Sandry's trap. "No, she will be well enough. I must show myself at the ball, so no one believes I had anything to do with her disappearance." The sound of his voice came closer to her prison. "Don't fret, my dear," he told her. "Later you may write to your friends from our honeymoon nest. Oh — if you're hoping for rescue? You're belowground. No wind will carry word of you to that redheaded terror. You're in a room without plants, so the green lad can't find you. And if you're waiting on the handsome and clever Pershan, even if he could find you, he wouldn't dare. Her Imperial Majesty knows her lover's attention has been straying."

Despite her fear, Sandry gulped. Shan and Berenene? She could be his mother!

Fin continued: "She's watching him. He hasn't been allowed to leave her side for two days without her