“Isn’t that just like a bully,” Sandry replied shortly. “You think you have a sword, so you don’t have any vulnerabilities. Out of my way!” she ordered the guards.
They hesitated long enough to infuriate Sandry. Before she could shout at them, Tris said, “Do as she says, please.”
The guards flinched at the sound of her voice. When they looked at Sandry and met her glare, they reluctantly kneed their horses to either side to open a passage for her. Ambros lunged forward to grab Sandry’s rein and missed. “Are you Emelanese mad?” he demanded coldly, his cheeks flushed.
“No, we aren’t,” Tris told him quietly. “We know precisely what we’re doing.”
Sandry rode forward until her mount stood between those of two guards.
“I’m not going with these people,” Sandry replied, her blue eyes fixed on her would-be kidnappers. “I can’t abide men who don’t dress properly.”
Tris saw the billow of silver fire that passed from Sandry to strike the three nobles in front of them. It spread to their followers, jumping from man to man, until it formed a ring that passed through them all. For a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened. The only sound was the wind over the grasslands around them.
Then a man yelped. He wore a leather and metal plate jerkin over his heavy tunic. Now the tunic collapsed into pieces, squirmed out from under the leather, and fell to the ground. Another man in Tris’s view grunted as his breeches fell apart at the seams and wriggled off. The tunic under the youngest noble’s breastplate also went to pieces and crawled away, while the cloak tied around his neck disintegrated into a heap of threads. Yeskoy hitched his chin, as if trying to adjust the shirt under his armor. Instead, a cloud of threads trickled from his sleeves and the hem of his armor, like milkweed down.
“Maybe if you had women you didn’t treat as slaves, your clothes would hold up better,” Sandry continued, her hands white-knuckled on the reins. “Oh, but look. Your leather workers don’t do very well, either.”
Now the stitches on the leather tunics gave way, as did the stitching that secured each metal scale to the leather beneath it. Leather breeches came apart at the seams; boots fell to the ground in pieces.
“I doubt their saddlers like them, either, Clehame,” remarked one of the guards.
All the stitchery in the saddles, tack, and saddle blankets was unraveling. Men slid to the ground, reins in their hands, stumbling as they landed in piles of leather and cloth. Their belts gave way as Sandry’s thread magic called to the stitches that held the buckles in place. Leather-wrapped weapon hilts came apart in their owners’ fists. By the time Sandry was done, twenty naked men surrounded them. Only a few still held the better-made swords. Even the binding that secured the double-headed ax to its haft came apart, leaving Dymytur to scrabble for the sheathed sword that lay among his belongings. The horses fled, unnerved by the feel of things coming apart on their sensitive backs.
“I’d surrender if I were you,” yet another of Sandry’s guards advised. “She’s been nice. She hasn’t asked the redhead to look after you. The redhead isn’t at all nice.”
“I’ve been working on it,” complained Tris.
Ambros looked at the ring of naked men. “Do you know, I would have thought that, for a mission to kidnap a young girl, you’d all be better ... equipped.”
“That’s why we needed her, curse you!” snarled Yeskoy. “A plumply dowered heiress—do you think one of the imperial pretty boys will serve you any better, Viymese Clehame?” Although he was covering his private parts, he still managed to look fierce. “You’d best get it into your head, magic or no, you’ll be married soon enough. You won’t hold your nose so high when you’ve a belly full of brats and you’re locked up in someone’s country castle while he prances for the empress!”
Tris looked at Sandry. “What do you say? There’s hail coming in the next storm. I could hasten it along, bring the hail down here. By the time I’m done, they’ll look like they’ve been kicked by elephants.”
Sandry leaned forward. “I will never marry in Namorn, willing or no,” she said, her voice low and ferocious. “Never, never, never. Get out of my sight, before I tell my friend to send for that hail.”
Dymytur hesitated, his eyes still on Sandry. His uncle snarled wordlessly and dragged him back, away from Sandry’s group.
“The empress has mages, too!” Dymytur shouted, enraged. “Great mages who will tie up your power in a wee bow, so you’ll marry whoever she pleases as she commands, Then you’ll see about your never-never-never!”
He turned and ran for the nearby woods, his kin and his warriors following at a stumbling trot. Sandry spat on the ground in disgust, and kneed her mare forward down the road. After a moment’s hesitation, Ambros and their guards followed. Tris remained behind for a moment, undoing one of her wind braids. She drew out a fistful of its power, held it on her palm while she gave it a quick stir with a finger, then turned it loose. It circled the area in a powerful blast, strewing leather and cloth all over the wide fields around the road. Only then did she follow the others.
Sandry fumed in silence all the way back to the castle. How dare these people? she asked herself silently, over and over. How dare they? What gives them the right to assume they may tell me how I am to live? They don’t know me. They don’t even care to know me. They look at me and all they see is a womb and moneybags.
“Do people do this with your daughters?” she demanded sharply of Ambros after they had ridden several miles.
Her cousin cleared his throat. “Only a fraction of women are at risk. If a woman is already bound by marriage contract, like most of the young ladies at court, she is considered untouchable. There are women and girls who are related to families or individuals considered too powerful to offend, like Daja’s friends in Kugisko, the Bancanors and the Voskajos. The rest of us keep our daughters close to home in their maiden years.”
“And it’s considered safe to offend my family?” Sandry asked, her voice cutting.
“The head of your family is the empress,” Ambros murmured. “And the empress wants you to remain here.”
Sandry suggested what the empress could do about it in words she had learned from Briar.
Ambrose flinched and shook his head. “It was folly of me to let us come out with less than two squads of men, but we needed every free hand for the plowing. I thought we would be safe enough inside our borders. Holm and Haugh must be desperate, to strike at you here.” He frowned. “And someone from Pofkim must have been in their pay, to let them know of our visit.”
“Or someone at the castle got the word out when you announced this jaunt last night,” Tris said, matter-of-factly.
Sandry glared at her.
“What?” demanded Tris. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t venture outside your precious walls. It isn’t as if we didn’t handle the whole mess with no bloodshed. Though I don’t see why you didn’t arrest the nobles, at least,” she told Ambros. “It was highway robbery, in a manner of speaking.”
“I wanted to get Sandry home,” Ambros said. “We’d have had our work cut out for us, to round them up and hold them, even without their weapons. And, well, there is the matter of the unspoken law.”
“What unspoken law?” Sandry wanted to know.
Ambros sighed and scratched his head. If he hadn’t been such a dignified man, Sandry would have described his look as sheepish. “The one of runaway marriages,” he said reluctantly at last. “No magistrate will penalize a man who kidnaps an unmarried woman for the purposes of marriage. Or if they do, it’s a fine, and one so tiny that it’s insulting. The only exception is if someone is killed during the kidnapping. Then the man must die.”