The Will of the Empress - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,164

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.

*

Ten days after they'd left Quen and Shan, Sandry, Briar, Daja, Gudruny, her children, and Zhegorz topped a rise in the Imperial Highway. Before them lay a great green plain dotted with villages, and a massive blue lake. The border fortress was on the far side of the gleaming water. To the east lay the smoky foothills of the Carakathy Mountains, where the empress was said to have a hunting lodge. According to Tris, Berenene and Ishabal Ladyhammer were there now.

"Out in the open," muttered Zhegorz, staring at that broad emerald expanse. "No place to hide from watchers, no place to hide from the wind."

"As long as my imperial cousin and her pawns do nothing but watch," retorted Sandry. "As long as they keep out of the way." She urged their company forward, down the slope to the plain.

It took them two days to cross it and skirt the lake. On the third day, Briar woke to find Zhegorz gone from his bed and his saddlebags missing. He was also missing from breakfast. "Now that's a worry," Briar told Sandry. "Zhegorz has lived hungry too long to miss any meals."

Gudruny's children searched the inn and its outbuildings, but there was no sign of their crazy man. They did find his saddlebags in the stable with his horse, but there was no trace of the man himself.

Sandry paced in the courtyard, working steadily more intricate cats' cradles in her fingers. "I don't want to leave him, and I don't like not knowing where he is," she complained. She had yet to give the order to saddle the horses or to hitch up Gudruny's cart. "I didn't know I'd need to put a leash on him. Who can scry among us?"

"Tris," chorused Briar and Daja. They looked at each other and grinned. That was when knowledge struck Briar like one of Tris's own lightning bolts.

"That's what she's been dancing around," he told his sisters. "That's why she took old Zhegorz aside. It's not just sounds she's hearing on the winds. She knows how to scry on them, too. She learned somehow."

"She didn't want you to know for silly reasons," Zhegorz said reasonably. He had walked in the gate to the inn's courtyard, his lean face glowing