The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Wilde Fran

Author:Wilde, Fran [Wilde, Fran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2016-05-02T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

When she woke, Lin lay still, so Sima would think she still dreamed. Her lapidary could not protect her from dreams, she knew. She shrugged off the dark gauze of her nightmare: her brothers and sisters, kissing her on her wedding day and then turning to ash.

A Jewel must put kingdom first and self second. This is what Aba should have told her. Instead Aba whispered about beautiful children and fine palaces. About duty and grace. About love. Lin, for her part, had dreamed of seeing the Eastern Seas. She’d looked forward to knowing the world beyond the valley. She had hoped she would grow to love her betrothed and his people.

The gaze of her own valley people had terrified her when she first went through the streets with her father. Behind her veil, she felt their eyes desperate for a glimpse of more than her profile. Their hopes for her sat heavy on her brow. She’d recoiled, and her father had noticed.

A people’s love is not an easy thing. You must return it in kind or it will devour you.

A lapidary’s love too. For there was Sima, always watching her. Finding new ways to protect her, to soothe her.

Lin thought how her fingers might feel unencumbered by baubles. Her brow unmarred by a crown. How she might pass through the streets unrecognized, without her lapidary by her side.

If she could have laughed now, without rousing Sima, she would have.

From the corner of her slitted eyes Lin saw her father’s feet covered in a purple robe. Sima thought her too delicate to tend her own father.

Well. Weren’t most Jewels too delicate? Relying on gems for their influence. Making gems that kept the valley from danger instead of confronting it. Her father had allowed the royal lapidary almost every duty, from assigning courtiers to the design and purpose of new gems. Even the selection of diplomats and traders to negotiate prices on valley goods had been left to lapidaries. Father was interested in the well-being of the people, nothing more. He loved them. And the people loved him for it.

But when Lin peeked through a part in the royal hall’s tapestries, she could see the royal lapidary looking at her father as if he were a prize gem, shaped and bound.

What had Aba said about the lapidaries? That they’d once sat on the amber throne, in the days when the gems ruled the valley. Lin didn’t want to believe that. She saw how they bound themselves in their vows to keep the gems’ voices at bay. How they stood between the Jewels and their gems, controlling them and controlled by them, so that the Jewels could rule without damaging their own minds.

So much sacrifice. For what?

She felt Sima’s arm press against her side as the lapidary dreamed.

When she’d asked Aba, What would set the lapidaries free? Aba had distracted her with a lesson on gem properties. Then she’d gone to have a talk with the king.

Lin had formed a theory.

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