“It was as much to keep a leash on us as to say we could practice magic, Viymese,” Briar said casually. “We’re just kids still, at heart.”

“That would be frightening,” Ishabal replied, her voice and eyes calm. “A ‘kid’ such as you claim to be would not have been able to destroy the home of a noble Chammuran family in the course of a few hours’ time, and without wrecking the city around it.”

Briar shrugged. “I had help. And the place was old.”

“Are you all so modest?” inquired Berenene.

Daja had watched the empress as the others had spoken. Those large brown eyes were busy, checking each face for a reaction. I bet she doesn’t miss much, thought Daja. No more than I would, in her shoes.

To be a woman on the throne of the largest empire north of the Pebbled Sea and east of Yanjing was no easy task. Keeping control over famously hotheaded nobles seemed too much like work to Daja. Namornese nobles were notorious for their love of fighting—if not for the empire, then among themselves. Since taking the throne at the age of sixteen, Berenene had kept her nobles busy with wars and grand progresses of the empire that wrung out the purses of her subjects. Now that the empire was stalled at the Yanjing empire’s Sea of Grass in the east, and the Endless Sea in the west, Berenene was probably worried about how else to keep her people occupied.

Send them to the new lands, across the Endless, Daja thought with a mental shrug. That ought to keep them busy. Let them conquer the savages over there, if they can. The explorers who report to Winding Circle have said the native peoples in the new places have their own powerful magics, rooted in their soil. Let the Namornese try to beat them, if they need something to do.

While Daja had mused, Sandry had been explaining that the four of them weren’t modest, just aware of how little they actually knew. “Having a credential just means you realize how much you have yet to learn,” she explained gracefully. “Really, the Initiate Council at Winding Circle gave us the medallion as much to make sure we would have to answer to them as to acknowledge we had achieved a certain amount of control over our power.”

Daja’s attention was caught by movement at a side door. A woman in her early twenties entered the room, bearing a large, silk-wrapped package that shimmered with magical silver cobwebs. The woman’s green silk overdress and amber linen underdress were stitched to outline the ripe curves of her body. Her mouth was as richly full as her figure, her dark eyes large and long-lashed. She wore her curling brown hair loose around her shoulders, covering it with an amber gauze veil held in place with jeweled pins. When she saw that Daja was looking at her, she smiled. Her eyes were filled with so much merriment that Daja simply had to smile back. Who is she? the girl wondered. She has to be the most beautiful woman of the empress’s court.

“Ah, Rizuka,” said the empress, smiling brightly at the new arrival. “Is that the Yanjing emperor’s gift?”

The woman came over to the sofa and curtsied elegantly, despite the package in her arms. “Imperial Majesty, it is,” Rizuka answered. Her voice was light and musical. “Forgive me for taking so long to bring it, but I knew you would not need me earlier, and I had the mending to finish.”

The empress laughed. “You know me too well, my dear. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler, Viynain Briar Moss, allow me to present my Wardrobe Mistress, Bidisa Rizuka fa Dalach. Not only does Rizu ensure that my attendants and I do not go clothed in rags, but she oversees the liveries for all the palace staff.” Rizu curtsied as the four returned her greeting. Bidisa, thought Sandry. Baroness, in Emelan.

“Sandrilene, my dear, I asked Rizu to bring this for your inspection,” Berenene continued graciously. “I received this gift from the emperor of Yanjing, and I am simply at a loss. Of course I must send him a gift of like value, but, to be frank, none of us have seen cloth of this sort before. I would hope you might give us your expert opinion.”

“I’d be happy to, Cousin,” Sandry replied. “Though how unusual can it be, that you haven’t seen it before?”

Cradling the package on one arm, Rizu undid the silk tie that closed it and pushed the wrapper back. It revealed a bolt of cloth that reflected light in an array of colors, from red-violet to crimson. Daja, Tris, and Briar also drew closer to look.

They’re impressed, Sandry thought. So they should be. Those threads are one color of silk wrapped around another, leaving bits of the original color to peek through. And those threads are twined, two shades of violet so close together that you can’t call them by different names, but they still add two colors to the weave. While the embroideries—Mila bless me, but they look like they were done by ants, they’re so small.

She held out her hand to touch the cloth and stopped, her palm an inch away from it. Her instincts shrieked for her to keep the silk away from her skin.

“Hmm,” Sandry murmured.

Reaching through a side slit in her outer robe into one of her pockets, she found the dirty, mineral- and root-laced lump of crystal that was her night-light. Despite the materials trapped inside it, the crystal gave off a clear, steady light that made it easier to see the individual twists and turns of thread in the cloth.

Three layers, she thought, viewing the material closely. The bottom layer, crimson silk wrapped in bloodred silk. The outer layer is the two violet threads twined together. There’s a cloth-of-gold thread in the outer layer, too. It shapes half the embroideries. But the second layer, that’s the odd one. The smaller embroideries are tucked in there, out of sight, and the cloth doesn’t want me to look at them. As if I could be stopped!