Witchshadow by Susan Dennard

Author:Susan Dennard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Fourteen Days After the Earth Well Healed

Safi watches the dancers. Rich gemstone colors stream and streak, thin silks and satins intended only for dancing. Worn once, never worn again. A waste that Merik Nihar would have scowled at.

But Safi cannot scowl—not when so many might see. She sits on this new throne and watches, a tiny smile to grace her lips. A genuine smile for she has a secret, and tonight that secret will come thundering outward.

Her newly sewn pocket scratches against her right breast, where the square-cut bodice dips low. Poorly added, but sufficient.

“You look disgusted,” Henrick says. He shifts in his throne, the wood protesting.

And Safi realizes that perhaps her expression isn’t as poised as she thinks, but she has always been good at quickly conjured lies. She is the right hand after all, always there to distract. To display.

“There is a war on,” she replies, dipping her head toward the dancers. “Yet to look at them, you wouldn’t know that Azmir burns or raiders come this way.”

Henrick grunts, and several seconds drum past with only strings and footsteps to fill them. “You must understand, my Empress, that there is no war here. To these people, it is a distant thing fought by others—and I work hard to keep it that way.”

“So you lie to them?”

“No.” His forehead pinches, the skin reddened by the tightness of his crown. “The nobility are not stupid, and the common folk even less so. But as you will quickly learn, people take emotional cues from their leaders. If we are calm, then they are too.”

It seems too simple, and yet … Safi understands. Vaness’s iron demeanor keeps Marstok unified for years, even when not everyone loves or agrees with her. Meanwhile, tenants and farmers on the Hasstrel estate look to Eron for guidance and find only a broken man who drank too much.

It was all Safi had ever found in him as well … or so she’d thought until two months ago.

“You understand,” Henrick says, and Safi nods.

She also understands that she has severely underestimated the Emperor. His eyes, fixed on her face, are not the vacant eyes of a toad. They are sharp and fathomless, and were Safi to meet him across a taro table, she would not agree to play.

True, true, true.

Suddenly, her new pocket feels aflame. Suddenly, sweat prickles out along her spine. “There are many raiders at the border?” asks, grasping any topic she can to deflect focus off herself.

“Many. And they are not just in the east, but have fortified in Poznin. I will show you on the maps tomorrow.”

Safi bows her head as a thank-you, but when she lifts it again, Henrick still stares.

He knows, she thinks. He knows and he will act. She offers a smile even as her toes curl in her slippers and muscles tense beneath her gown. She will not go down without a fight.

Then his gaze finally breaks, dropping to her Threadstone, visible at her collar alongside the steel chain Vaness made her wear.

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