As Wenoura sliced the ham, a footman opened a rear door, letting in a disheveled man. Briar moved back into the shadows for a quiet look as the footman helped the new arrival to remove his gloves and mud-splashed hat. He had already removed his boots and outer coat in the mud room. Fellow must have ridden here in a hurry, to get mud on his hat, Briar realized.
“They’re to see the empress in the morning, Saghad,” the first footman said.
“That’s to be expected,” replied the new man in a quiet, precise voice. “Though you’d think she’d be allowed a week or so to rest before the court nonsense begins.”
The cook, now slicing bread, looked at Briar in the shadows, then shrugged. She wasn’t about to say there was a stranger present.
The newcomer worked kinks out of his neck. He wore a blue indoor coat and tan pants, crushed from time in the saddle. Broad-shouldered and wiry, he was about three inches taller than Briar. Like Tris, he wore brass-rimmed spectacles, and his eyes were bright blue behind them. His heavy gold hair was cropped just below his ears. It framed a fair-skinned face mildly scarred from some childhood pox, with a long, straight mouth and a long, straight nose. He had Sandry’s eyes and determined chin. “Wenoura, you’re a lifesaver,” he told the cook as she set food on the long kitchen table. “I didn’t stop for supper.”
“I’ll heat a soup if you like, Saghad Ambros,” she replied, glancing again at Briar.
Briar took the hint. “Saghad Ambros, hello,” he said, stepping out into the light to greet Sandry’s cousin. “I’m Briar Moss. I think Clehame Sandrilene told you she would bring friends.” As the older man struggled to rise, Briar grinned. “Please don’t stand. I’m not the kind of person people get up for. And I’d never put myself between a man and his supper.”
Ambros looked quizzically at Briar. “I hear you’ve caused people to stand quite precipitously, Viynain Moss,” Ambros said dryly. “But I appreciate the permission. My legs still feel as if I’m in the saddle.”
“You’ve heard of me?” Briar asked, settling on the bench across the table from Ambros. “I’m sure it was most of it lies. I’m a reformed character these days.”
Ambros chewed and swallowed his mouthful before he said, “My cousin only wrote me that you are a very fine plant mage and her foster-brother,” he replied quietly. “Are you a reformed plant mage or a reformed foster-brother?”
Briar was about to straighten him out when he glimpsed the wry glint in Ambros’s eyes. Well, well—a Bag with a sense of humor, he thought, using his old street slang term for a rich person. “Reformed from everything,” he said, as straight-faced as Ambros.
The cook snorted.
“I am,” insisted Briar in his most earnest tone of voice. “My approach to the ladies is strictly worshipful. I celebrate our mutual devotion to Qunoc. It’s a great deal of work, but I don’t begrudge it in the least.”
“Well, if you fertilize any of the fields you till, I hope you will fertilize the mothers’ purses as well,” Ambros said. “A man should take responsibility for what he sows.”
“Responsibility is my middle name,” Briar told him, earnestly. “Droughtwort is my other middle name.” The droughtwort herb rendered any man who ate it sterile for days. Briar was determined not to sire any children who might be left parentless if something happened to their mothers.
Ambros raised pale brows at Briar. “So thoughtful,” he remarked. “How old are you?”
“We think eighteen,” Sandry announced from the doorway. “Even Briar isn’t sure. Cousin, I didn’t expect you to come tonight, or I would have stayed up to greet you.” She came forward with her hands outstretched, her robe and nightdress billowing around her slender form.
Ambros almost toppled his bench as he scrambled to his feet. “Clehame Sandrilene,” he said as he took her hands in his. Bowing, he touched her fingertips to his forehead.
“Don’t be silly, Cousin,” Sandry said, kissing both of his cheeks as he straightened. “With all you have done for me over the years, it’s I who should be touching your fingertips.”
“The honor is mine,” Ambros said, kissing her cheeks in return. “I have the correct frame of mind for the work, and your people are not shirkers.”
Briar filched a slice of bread and began to eat it in bits, watching as Sandry coaxed her formal cousin back to his place and his meal. How did she know he’d come here? wondered Briar. Her rooms are on the other side of the house. She was yawning when she went to bed.
He rubbed his eyes as if he were sleepy, when in fact he was adjusting his mind for the trick of seeing finer magics. He could not avoid seeing plain workings, like the kitchen spells to preserve foods and spices and discourage fire. Those were common to any house that could afford them. It took discipline, practice, and skill to view the more subtle handling of magic that he and his sisters had learned in recent years. Once he thought he had the trick of it, he looked at Sandry.
For a moment, he saw it: a spider-thin web of silver that spread around her body, vanishing into the walls, ceiling, and floor all around her. A blink, and the web vision was gone. Briar arched his eyebrows.
You’ve been lazy, he scolded himself, taking some cheese. Time was you could do that and have it last. You’d better practice, my lad. Maybe you’ve been chasing girls and letting your skills go, but with an empress and her great mages to watch, you’d best brush up fast.
It was funny, but the teacher-voice in his head always managed to sound like Rosethorn.
Briar leaned back, eating his cheese. Sandry’s not snoozing at the reins, he thought, listening as Sandry and Ambros went through the polite dance of a first noble meeting, as if they weren’t wearing bedclothes and rumpled garments. She’s thrown a web throughout the house, with her at the middle. If anyone who touches it doesn’t belong, she’ll know.
Without interrupting Ambros and Sandry, Briar got to his feet and returned to his room. How long had it been since he’d meditated? He was going to start tonight.
Sandry noticed that Ambros’s eyes followed Briar when he left. When Ambros looked at her again, she said, “I saw you’d introduced yourselves.”
“He’s very handsome,” Ambros replied, his eyes guarded.
Sandry giggled. “I’m sorry, Cousin, but if you knew how ridiculous that is,” she explained. “You’re not alone, of course. People have said it about Briar and all of us girls at one time or another. But believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. It really would be like courting a brother or a sister.”
Ambros smiled crookedly. “Forgive me for falling into common error, then,” he apologized. “But you should brace yourself, because you will certainly hear it enough at court.”
Sandry shrugged. “The court may gossip as it likes,” she said, propping her chin on her hands. “It’s of no consequence to me. If I meant to stay, I would take an interest, but I don’t.”
That made her cousin sit back and frown at her. “You don’t mean to stay?”
“I told you in my last letter that I would be going home in the fall,” replied Sandry. “You did get my letter?”
Ambros rested his knife and fork on his now-empty plate and sipped his glass of tea. “Yes, but ...”
Sandry waited. He seemed just like his letters: dry and fussy, methodical and precise. She knew he never made overblown promises about the wealth from a harvest or a new mine. If anything, he would tell her to expect less than the funds that usually arrived. If something concerned him, she was prepared to pay attention.