FRAN WILDE
Fran Wilde’s work includes the Andre Norton and Compton Crook Award–winning and Nebula-nominated novel Updraft and its sequels Cloud-bound and Horizon. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and more. The Jewel and Her Lapidary has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards.
Fran’s interview series Cooking the Books—about the intersection between food and fiction—has appeared at Strange Horizons, Tor.com, iTunes, and on her blog, franwilde.wordpress.com.
She writes for publications including the Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, io9, and GeekMom. You can find her on Twitter @fran_wilde and Facebook @franwildewrites.
Visitors to the Jeweled Valley should expect rustic accommodations and varying degrees of adventure, as the area is both remote and not under protection of any State or Commonwealth.
There are two inns of varying reputation (p. 34) and attractive scenery, including walks to the Ruins (p. 30), the Variegated Riverbank (p. 29), and the stone formation colloquially known as the Jewel and Her Lapidary (p. 32).
The best place to find a guide is at the Deaf King, a tavern by the river (p. 33).
Local guides can become verbose on matters of history and legend. Indeed, some cannot discern between the two. Many locals will gladly inform you their forebears served at the Jeweled Court long ago. More than a few will declare their ancestors were Jewels—royalty who wore the region’s ancient gems—or their assistants. This is likely untrue, as the last Jewels were murdered in a palace coup after six generations of peaceful rule.
…from A Guide to the Remote River Valleys, by M. Lankin, East Quadril
Strips of soft cloth bound the Jewel Lin’s hands behind her back, knotted as if they’d been tied in a hurry. When her head cleared enough for her to think of it, Lin slid her hands back and forth until the bindings loosened and she was able to bend her wrists and tug at the ties.
Her mouth felt dry as a stone. Her legs and feet tingled, as if she’d been sitting on them for hours at a strange angle. Sima, she thought. Where is Sima? Lin could not see anything. What happened? Sima would know. Or Aba.
An elbow pressed Lin’s side in the darkness. Lin heard her lapidary grunt and wriggle, trying to release herself. Sima’s kicking dislodged something heavy and dry that rattled like bones across the floor.
When Lin had freed her hands, she touched the cloth that covered her eyes and ears, then pulled at that knot too. The blindfold fell into her hands. It was strips from the veil Lin had worn since she was eleven.
On the rough ground nearby, the ancient bone Sima had kicked stared at them: a skull turned to opal, eye sockets stuffed with raw yellow topaz.
Lin knew where they were now. Far from her private quarters, where they’d drunk their evening tea and gone to sleep. They were below the moonstone hall, in the pit beside the throne. Where Aba had always threatened to put her as a child when she misbehaved.
Lin bit down on her fist, stifling a scream. She looked around the pit, expecting to see the rest of the Jeweled Court similarly bound. Light flickered through the grate above her head. Sima still wriggled beside her in the dark. But beyond Sima, she saw nothing but darkness and more ancient bones.
She reached for her lapidary’s hands. She felt the cloth that bound them and discovered that it had been looped around the metal cuffs and chains that marked Sima not just as a gem-speaker but as a lapidary—Lin’s own lapidary: the bound courtier to a royal Jewel. Sima had been blindfolded too, with cloth ripped from her blue lapidary’s cloak. She’d been gagged as well.
Lin worked at the knots. We have been betrayed. The court. The valley.
No one else sat in the pit with them. Above, the muffled sounds grew louder. Lin heard running feet. Shouting. Someone howled.
Lin wanted to stuff her hand back in her mouth. She wanted to go back to her room and see her father in the morning. To tell him about her nightmare. Lights flickered through the grate over her head.
“No,” Sima whimpered, panic edging her voice. “A lapidary must not—” She was looking up, through the grate. She had not addressed her words to Lin.
Must not do what? thought Lin. Which lapidary? Her thoughts were slow and muddled. The tea must have been drugged. What had happened to her family? They had ordered wine in the hall while they discussed matters of state, and she’d been told to retire.
Above them, a voice shouted, “Shattered! We are shattered. You should have listened to me!”
The voice was barely recognizable as belonging to the King’s Lapidary. Sima’s father.
“Stop,” Sima begged, climbing to her feet. Tears ran down her cheeks, turning diamond in the moonlight. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Let us out, let us help you. Father.” Her last word was a wail.
The screams continued above their heads, wave after crashing wave of them.
Father. Lin called out, “Help us!” She shouted for the king while Sima called to the lapidary. Two daughters below. Two fathers above.
Sima looked at Lin with wide eyes. “He is gem-mad.”
The King’s Lapidary howled in answer. His words came faster and faster, tumbling through the grate. Their meaning was nearly drowned by his laughter. Lin caught her name. She heard “bargain” and “promise.” The lapidary’s voice rose to a high pitch and cracked.
Sharp metal struck stone. Sima grabbed her ears, holding tight to the metal bands that wrapped her earlobes. Through clenched teeth, she whispered, “A lapidary must obey their Jewel.” The first vow a new lapidary took. Sima repeated the vow like a chant as a shriek pierced the room above them. Her face was white, but she pushed Lin away from the grate, whispering, “He’s going to break the diamond; he’ll break it and death will come. Cover your ears!”
When the stone shattered it made a noise like a mineshaft collapsing, and a scream, and a fire all at once. Sima’s eyes rolled back and Lin scrambled to keep her courtier’s head from hitting the hard pit walls. “It’s all right,” she whispered. Nothing was right. Where was her father? Where were her sisters and brothers? And their lapidaries?
The pit and its metal walls seemed to protect them from the gems, and from Sima’s father. Above, a cry of pain reverberated through the hall. Then something like rain. Then weeping. She heard the clatter as the palace guard dropped their weapons en masse and tried to flee, feet pounding, across the great hall’s moonstone tiles. She heard them fall, one by one.
Metal struck again. Sima threw up at Lin’s feet.
“Father!” Lin shouted, hoping her voice would pass up through the grate. “What is happening?”
Instead of the king, the lapidary returned to kneel on the grate. His hands gripped the bars, charred black. His eyes looked bloodred in the moonlight. “Awake,” he muttered. “Awake too soon. The commander has not yet come and you must cover your ears. You will be no good to me mad.” His voice singsonged as he stood and laughed, then lurched away.