“Sima,” Lin whispered. “What is he doing?”
Her lapidary whimpered. “He is breaking his vows, my Jewel. He has broken gems. Couldn’t you hear? The Opaque Sapphire. The Death Astrion. The Steadfast Diamond. He is about to break the Star Cabochon. We have to stop him.”
The Opaque Sapphire. The Jeweled Palace was visible to attackers without that gem. And she and Sima were trapped in the pit beside the throne. The astrion and the diamond. The borders were undefended.
All her life, Aba had made Lin recite the valley’s legends. How the first gems had enslaved those who found them; how they had maddened those who could hear them. How the first Jewel, the Deaf King, had set a cabochon-cut ruby with metal and wire. How he’d bound those who heard the stones as well and named them lapidaries. Made them serve him instead of the gems. How the gems had protected the valley better than any army.
She’d made Lin learn what could happen if a lapidary broke their vows.
The screaming had quieted above them. Sima knelt and cupped her hands so that Lin could stand on them. Lin pressed on the grate with both hands. The heavy door lifted an inch, but little more. Lin climbed to Sima’s shoulders.
“Here—” Sima handed Lin a long bone from the pit floor. They wedged the grate open and Lin pulled herself out. Looking around, she could not see the King’s Lapidary. But as Sima pulled herself up using a stretch of Lin’s robe, Lin saw her own father, lying on the ground. His eyes were clouded like ruined opals. His breath bubbled in the blood-flecked foam at his mouth. An amber goblet rolled on the floor near his fingers. The bodies of the rest of the court lay scattered. Sisters. Brothers. Aba. Lin bound her heart up with the words. Saw their lips too: blackened and covered with foam. Poison.
Sima crossed the hall, following a sound. A voice. In the courtyard beyond the throne, the King’s Lapidary stood on the high wall. He pointed at Lin, before Sima moved to stand between them. “The Western Mountains are coming—I’ve promised them a powerful gem and one very fine Jewel to marry!” He began to laugh and shout again. “They are strong! Our gems are fading. Soon their only power will be to catch the eye. The Jeweled Valley must be protected. He wouldn’t listen. I protected you!”
Lapidaries’ lathes were smashed across the courtyard. Shards of the Intaglio Amethyst that mapped the valley’s mines crunched under Sima’s feet as she walked toward her father.
“You cannot betray your vows, Father. You promised.”
Metal rained down on them as the gem-mad lapidary threw the chains and bracelets that had bound his arms and ears. “No longer!”
Sima sank to her knees in the courtyard and Lin fell beside her. They watched as the madman waited for his conquering army on the wall.
Then the King’s Lapidary fell quiet for the first time since Lin woke.
The two girls listened, shaking in the cold, for the mountain army’s drums. They wondered how long the palace’s doors could hold. But no drums came. Only silence. The King’s Lapidary climbed up on the lip of the palace wall. He turned to face the courtyard. His lips were pressed tight, his eyes rolled. He spread his arms wide. His hands clutched at the air.
Sima rose to her feet. Began to run toward the wall.
Without another word, the King’s Lapidary leapt from the wall, his blue robe flapping, the chains on his wrists and ankles ringing in the air.
And before Lin could scream, the King’s Lapidary crashed to the flagstones of the courtyard.
When Lin came to her senses, Sima was whispering to her sapphires and blue topaz, the ones that lined her veil. Calm, she whispered. Calm.
The valley’s gems. In a gem-speaker’s hands, Lin knew they amplified desire. When bezel-set and held by a trained lapidary, they had to obey: to protect, calm, compel. Only without their bezels, or in the presence of a wild gem-speaker or a gem-mad lapidary, could gems do worse things.
Sima’s gems did calm Lin. She remained aware of what was happening, but they were smooth facets made out of fact; her terror was trapped within. She was the only one left. An army was coming. The court of the Jeweled Valley—which had known peace for four hundred years, since the Deaf King set the Star Cabochon—had been betrayed. Lin felt a keen rising in her chest.
“Make me stronger,” she ordered Sima.
Sima tried her best. She whispered to the small topaz and diamonds at Lin’s wrists and ears. Lin could not hear the gems, but she felt them acting on her. Compelling her to be calm. To think clearly. She took a breath. Stood.
“We will collect all the gems we can find, Sima,” she said. “All the chain mail too.”
They searched the bodies of the court for gems. Lin sewed the gems herself into one of her old gray cloaks.
When she rolled her eldest brother’s body on its side to peel the ornamental chain mail from his chest, she wept, but it was a calm, slow weeping. The gems allowed her time to act. She would have to mourn later. She moved from one body to the next. Sima followed behind, tugging cloaks, searching pockets.
Sima removed the bands and chains from the fallen lapidaries, cutting the solder points with her father’s diamond saw.
They returned to Lin’s quarters in the heart of the palace and Lin wrapped herself in all of the chains she had collected. She pointed to the metal bands, the oaths meaningless now.
“You must do the rest,” she told her lapidary.
Sima, whispering her vows, shook her head. “I cannot do this work, my Jewel. It will harm you.”
The small betrayal made the lapidary wince.
“Sima, you must.” Lin spoke calmly, and Sima pulled the cache of tools from her sleeve. She lit her torch. Attached bands at Lin’s wrists and ankles. The metal grew hot. Lin felt her skin burn and thought of her sisters and brothers. Blisters rose where Sima’s torch came too close. Lin ached for her father.
“The mountains wish a bride and a throne,” Lin said. Her voice was flat. Her new veil hung heavy against her temples.
Sima added more chains to Lin’s veil. When Lin demanded it, she spoke the binding verses she’d learned at her own father’s side.
And then Sima backed out the door, latching it behind her. Lin listened to the lapidary’s metal vows clattering and chiming on her arms as she sped away. To the river, Sima. Run.
The noises faded. The palace of the Jeweled Court fell silent.
And Lin, for the first time in her life, was completely alone.
BLOOD GRAINS SPEAK THROUGH MEMORIES
JASON SANFORD
Jason Sanford is an award-winning author and an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Born and raised in the American South, he currently lives in the Midwestern United States with his wife and sons. His life’s adventures include work as an archaeologist and as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Jason has published more than a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which once devoted a special issue to his fiction. His fiction has also been published in Asimov’s Science Fictiondeer, until even the fairies which flew Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, the Mississippi Review Online, Diagram, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Pindeldyboz, and other places. Books containing his stories include multiple “year’s best” story collections, along with original anthologies such as Bless Your Mechanical Heart and Beyond the Sun.