She could still talk to them, of course, but it wasn't the same; they wouldn't dare say anything she didn't want to hear, or, rather, anything they thought that she might possibly not want to hear.
The remaining palace servants were actually better company now; they were accustomed to dealing with powerful people, and they weren't anywhere near as frightened of her as most of the others-but on the other hand, they didn't seem to have much to say. They were mostly concerned with clothes and meals and furniture, with how to keep the rugs clean, and what tunic went well with which skirt.
And they were all women. Tabaea didn't understand that. Surely, the overlord had had male servants; where had they all gone?
Wherever they were, she didn't see them. Perhaps they were still there, working down in the depths of the palace kitchens, or the stables, or any of the other places that the empress didn't go, but they certainly weren't bringing her her meals or waiting on her in her apartments.
They might be mixed in with the crowds in the corridors, of course.
And that was another source of her displeasure, she thought as she left her apartments and headed for the throne room. Here she had done everything she could to be an enlightened and benevolent ruler, and nobody seemed to appreciate it. She had freed all the slaves, had emptied the overlord's dungeons, had pardoned any number of criminals, had invited the entire population of the Wall Street Field to live in the palace, had in fact thrown the palace open to anyone who cared to enter-by her order, all the doors were kept open in good weather, and were always unlocked in any weather-and what had it gotten her? Had those people been grateful to her? Had they taken advantage of this chance to improve themselves? Had any of them tried to repay her by helping out, even such little things as cleaning up after themselves, as she had asked?
No. Of course not. All she had to do was glance about to see that. The palace corridors were littered with cast-off rags, with fruit rinds and chicken bones and other remnants of stolen meals, and they stank of urine and worse. Dead bodies were left unattended until they began to stink, if she or one of the servants didn't happen on them; out in the Wall Street Field someone would have informed the city guard and the body would have been removed, but here no one seemed to know who should be told.
What was worse, not all the deaths were from disease or age; not counting the assassination attempts, there had definitely been at least two murders in the palace since her ascension, both apparently the result of fights over unattended goods. There were reports of other fights that had not ended quite so badly, and stories of rapes and molestations.
It was just as bad as the Wall Street Field had been. Didn't these people appreciate the fact that they had a roof over their heads now, that they weren't outcasts anymore?
Obviously not. About the only comfort was that the population of the palace seemed to be declining; there were clearly fewer people in the corridors now. They might just be moving into the rooms and chambers, or down into the deeper areas where she didn't see them, but Tabaea liked to think that they were finding places for themselves outside, in the houses her people were taking back from the old overlord's tax collectors, or with their families, or somewhere.
She frowned. There had been that rumor that some were moving back to the Wall Street Field. She didn't like that.
And then there were all the complaints from the other people, the outsiders, the merchants and nobles and even sailors and craftsmen and the like, worried about the absence of the city guard, complaining about the loss of their slaves, claiming they had been robbed and the thieves had taken shelter in the palace, and any number of other things…
The pleasures of ruling, Tabaea thought as she neared the steps that would lead her up to the start of her working day, were overrated, and it didn't help at all that she had gone and limited what pleasures there were, in her idealistic drive to improve the lot of her subjects. She could think of interesting ways to pass the time with a handsome slave, now that she could afford one, could have had one for the asking-but she had abolished slavery. She sighed, straightened her skirt, and proceeded up the steps toward the throne room.
At least she had finally had the sense to give up on those silly gowns and gewgaws. She didn't need to look like some jewel-encrusted queen out of an old story to convince people that she was the empress; all she needed was to be herself, Tabaea the First.
As always, there was a crowd waiting for her; as always, she ignored them and marched straight toward the dais, expecting them to get out of her way.
Then, abruptly, she stopped. Something was wrong. She sniffed the air.
Someone in the crowd was terrified-not just nervous, but really scared, and at the same time she scented aggression. And it wasn't from someone lurking in a back corner, it was someone nearby. She saw movement, a hand raising. Another assassination attempt, obviously. Well, this time she didn't intend to be killed. Even if she always recovered almost instantly, it still hurt; in fact, it was downright agonizing, for a few seconds. It used up precious magic energy, and besides, it made a mess, getting blood all over everything.
This time she sensed warlockry, just a trace of it, a tiny bit of magic. That had happened before; warlocks had tried to stop her heart, had tried to throw knives at her, had tried to strangle her from afar, and every time, she had blocked the attempt easily. Warlockry didn't work on warlocks, and she, thanks to that silly Inza, was a warlock.
Usually, though, the warlock attacks had come when she was alone, not here in the throne room.
Well, those attacks hadn't worked, so a change in strategy was sensible enough. She wondered just what was intended this time.
All this ran through her mind almost instantly; she was reacting far faster than any ordinary human could, faster than any ordinary warlock.
The frightened warlock in the crowd was holding something in his upraised hand, something small and golden, and then he was releasing it, sending it flying toward her at incredible speed, supported and propelled by magic.
An ordinary woman probably wouldn't have seen it in time to react. An ordinary warlock probably couldn't have gathered the will to respond before the gold thimble reached her.
Tabaea had no trouble at all knocking the thing aside while it was still three or four feet away; the thimble dropped to the floor, rattling on the stone, and the single drop it held spattered out.
Immediately, a white vapor arose, hissing. Tabaea didn't concern herself with that; she had an assassin to stop. She leaped over the smoking thimble, reaching the warlock in a single bound; she grabbed the front of his tunic with her left hand, and her right snatched her dagger from its sheath. Then she stopped.
People were screaming and backing away, the white vapor was spreading, and Tabaea could smell it, a horrible, burning stench like nothing she had ever smelled before; the assassin, more frightened than ever, was struggling helplessly in her grip, trying to get free. Tabaea ignored all that. The knife in her hand felt wrong.
It was a fairly subtle thing, and she couldn't have described exactly what the difference was, but the instant her hand closed on the hilt, she knew, beyond any doubt, that this knife was not the Black Dagger. A person gets to know a tool when it's handled with any frequency, gets to know its feel, its shape. Without question, Tabaea knew the Black Dagger.
And without question, the knife in her hand was not the Black Dagger.
Furious, she rammed the blade into her would-be assassin's belly, partly to be certain that this was not just some inexplicable transformation that had left the magic intact, and partly because after all, even if she couldn't steal his life, this man had tried to kill her, and was therefore a traitor who deserved to die.
She felt no surge of energy, no tingle of magic, as the man screamed and clutched at her hand.