Ealaga sighed. “You haven’t seen Pofkim yet. It’s on the northwest border, in the foothills. Flooding two years ago ruined some of the houses and made others unstable. It also changed the water. They could only sink one new well when they need three. They’re all right ... We help as we can, but ...”
“He felt he had to make the payments to me, and the empress raised taxes to get me here. I don’t understand that,” Sandry complained. “How would that get me to come?”
“The landholder may appeal to the imperial courts for tax relief,” Ealaga replied steadily. “Only the landholder. The Namornese crown has a long and proud history of trying to keep its nobles on a short leash.”
“So Sandry asks for relief, and then she can go home to Emelan,” suggested Tris.
“They can only ask for relief from a specific tax,” Ealaga replied. “Once Sandry is gone, Her Imperial Majesty will simply impose new ones.”
Sandry stared at her, her mouth agape. “But ... I could never go home,” she whispered. “She’d keep me here, even knowing I hated it.” She scowled suddenly, a white-hot fire burning inside her chest. I hate bullies, she thought furiously, and Berenene is a bully of the first degree. So she’s going to make me stay here? I think not! Even if I have to beggar myself to cover her stupid taxes, I will. She will not punish my people ever again, and she will not make me obey!
She took a deep breath and let it out. If Tris had gotten that angry in my shoes, every thread in this room would have knotted right up, Sandry thought with pride. But I have control over my temper. “I would like to ride to Pofkim tomorrow and review its situation for myself,” she told Ealaga loftily, holding her chin high. “Will you make the proper arrangements, please?”
Ealaga curtsied. If there was a mild reproof in her eyes, Sandry ignored it. I answer to no one but Uncle, she thought stubbornly. It’s time all these Namornese learned that. To Tris, she said, “I believe I will join you and the others on the watchtower.”
Tris propped her fists on her hips. “Not if you’re going to act the countess with them,” she said flatly. “I’ve just got Zhegorz calm enough to go out among people at all, and the way Gudruny’s been telling her kids about your generosity, and how splendid you’ve been, they’ll bolt and run the minute they see your nose in the air.”
Ealaga quietly left the room as Sandry lowered her nose to glare at Tris. “I am not acting the countess!” she said tartly. “And you should talk!”
“I mean it,” retorted Tris. “Act like a decent person or you can’t come.”
Sandry met her friend’s stormy glare and quickly realized how ridiculous she was making herself. “I am a decent person,” she said mildly. “Tris, you don’t understand. I’m going mad with all these games people play to get me to do what they want. ‘Fit only to be waited on and to be married,’ remember? It’s what that woman said to me all those years ago? Well, all these curst Namornese think I’m fit for is to be sold off to the highest bidder, like some prize ... mule.”
“I suppose I’m supposed to be sympathetic now,” replied Tris at her most unsympathetic.
Sandry had to laugh. “No,” she said, linking her arm through one of Tris’s. “You’re supposed to take your sister and fellow mage student to say hello to your friends.”
“Good,” Tris said, towing Sandry toward the door. “Because I’m not in a sympathetic mood.”
Sandry made a face when Gudruny opened the shutters the next morning to reveal a gray and drizzly dawn. After her request at supper the night before, Ambros had sent word to Pofkim that their clehame was coming for a visit in the morning.
It seemed she would be visiting with a smaller group than usual. Even early morning riders like Rizu and Daja chose to return to bed when they saw the dripping skies. “Yes, Tris can keep us dry,” Daja told Sandry with a yawn, “but there will be mud, and inspecting, and people bowing and curtsying, and the only time that’s bearable is when it’s a nice day. Have fun.” She twiddled her fingers at Sandry and Tris in farewell.
The guardsmen who had been assigned that morning to accompany the girls and Ambros had never been treated to one of Tris’s rain protections before. For some time they rode under her invisible shield in silence, with frequent glances overhead at the rain that streamed away from three feet above.
“It’s quite safe,” Sandry told them, trying to make them feel better. “She can do it over an entire Trader caravan and still read without losing control over it.”
Tris, crimson-cheeked, shot a glare at Sandry and continued to read. Ambros finally drifted over to Sandry’s side. “I’d get sick to my stomach doing that,” he told Sandry in a murmur. “I can’t read in carriages or ships, for that matter.”
“I think if Tris got sick she wouldn’t even notice,” Sandry replied. “Look at Chime.” The glass dragon flew in and out of Tris’s magical shield as if it were no barrier at all, sprinkling rain droplets all over the members of their small group. “She’s having fun,” Sandry added with a grin. She looked at Ambros. His blue eyes followed the little dragon. Chime gleamed rainbow colors in the morning’s subdued light. She spun and twirled as if she were a giddy child at play. There was a smile on Ambros’s lips and a glow in his eyes.
He’s not such a dry stick after all, thought Sandry, startled. You just have to catch him being human.
Suddenly she felt better about this man who so often reminded her of her obligations. She had been seeing him as a taskmaster. Maybe if I tried treating him as family, he might warm up to me, she thought. She fiddled with an amber eardrop, then asked him, “Did you know my mother’s father at all?”
He was willing to talk of their relatives, and proved himself to be a good storyteller. Sandry was laughing as they rode over one last ridge and down into the valley that cushioned the village of Pofkim. Startled by what lay before her, she reined up. Now she understood why flooding had hurt the place so badly. It was all bunched in the smallest of hollows, huddled on either side of a narrow, brisk river that churned in its channel in the ground. “Were they mad, to build it here?” she asked her cousin.
Ambros shook his head. “You can’t see them, but the clay pits are in the hills on the far side of the river. They need to be close to the water to transport the clay. They can’t get enough of it out by horseback to make it worth the expense, but people in Dancruan are eager to line up at the wharves to bid on loads. They make very good pottery with it in the city. And goats and mules find plenty to graze here, but the footing’s too steep for cows and the growth too scanty for sheep.”
Sandry looked the village over. Now she saw the flood marks on the lone bridge over the river and on the walls of the buildings. Here and there were houses that had collapsed in on themselves. The outside walls of several homes were braced with wooden poles.
“If the wells are bad here, how can they put down new ones that won’t be bad, either?” she asked.
“The one well they’ve been able to sink is higher up. They built a makeshift aqueduct to carry the water to the village, but a good wind knocks it over. With money they can sink new wells up where the water is good, and build stone channels to bring it to the village.” Ambros sighed. “I’d wanted to do that this year, but ...”