The Jewel and Her Lapidary (2 page)

Traitor,
the gems hidden in Sima’s stolen cloak echoed her thought. They magnified the word so it almost enveloped her. The gems spoke louder now that she’d broken several vows of her own. Louder, too, because her father had broken all of his.

Sima knew she was not yet a traitor. She’d kept her most important vows—the platinum bands that wrapped the lobes of her ears and made no noise—hoping she might avoid her father’s fate.
A lapidary protects their Jewel,
said one.
A lapidary protects the gems in their care,
said the other. Those vows would not make noise as she fled. They would keep her safe and sane, she hoped.

When the last armband snapped and the words engraved upon it fell away, she wrapped the metal with torn, bloody cloth. She tucked the cloth in the pocket she’d hung from her belt.

The metal, together with the lesser gems of the valley already sewn into her cloak’s hem, weighed heavy but made no sound save for the gems’ whispers.

Sima tried to ignore those.

She ran for the far palace wall and prepared to leave her fallen kingdom and its last Jewel—the princess Lin—behind.

The army from the Western Mountains was already entering the valley. It would soon take the palace. Its soldiers would expect to find her father at the gates, welcoming them. But the King’s Lapidary had climbed the very steps Sima now climbed.

At the place where her father had jumped to his death, Sima threw a rope over the embrasure.

The valley was the most important thing now. She had to get herself and the gems away from the valley. It was what Lin wanted. If Sima stayed, and the army caught her, they would use both gems and lapidary against the people of the valley.

She wrapped her newly bare hands around the rough fiber, took a breath, and asked the gems for strength. Then she stepped over the palace wall, into choking smoke from the fires that already ringed the valley. Her cloak caught the hot wind and tugged her backward, causing her to clutch the rope, finally afraid.

The hidden gems—rough-cut emeralds; opals and topaz; lesser sapphires; one ruby, but not the biggest one—whispered muffled and useless things.
Survival.
Escape.
Betrayal.

“Quiet,” she whispered back. Her voice cracked. She looked over her shoulder to the dark ground below, then across the open field to the trees and the hidden caves by the river. If she could get there, she might fulfill one vow, even as another weakened close to breaking.

The gems did not listen to her. The whispers continued, until they were drowned beneath a new sound.

The beat of heavy drums echoed through the valley as the army of the Western Mountains advanced unchallenged. Sima heard cries rise sharp and high as ironclad soldiers woke the cottages. Artisans and miners begged for their lives and those of their families. Sima’s left foot slipped on the ash-slick wall, then found a place to brace. The weighted cloak pulled at her. The army closed on the palace gates and began to pound at them. When Sima moved again, her right foot slipped. Her shoes were meant for smooth palace floors, not rough walls. She forced herself to lean back against the rope, to press her feet firmly, and to move faster. She tried to forget how high she was and what a fall did to a body. Tried to forget the soldiers now assaulting the palace’s inner gates.

She marked her escape in the rough increments of rope and wall. In broken bands, broken vows, broken gems.

Not so long ago, the palace would have been hidden to its enemies, thanks to the Opaque Sapphire. The Death Astrion, the Steadfast Diamond, and the Star Cabochon would have held the borders and repelled the army. No longer.

A lapidary who betrays their Jewel will be shattered.
The second band she’d cut from her wrist. The one her father had soldered for the first time when she was three years old, on the day of the Jewel Lin’s birth. Sima sucked a breath at remembered pain and at the rope’s harsh burn, both. She’d been at Lin’s side every day since. Slept on a pallet by her bed, made her beautiful baubles. She’d been there when her father had drugged their tea, then thrown them bound and gagged into the silver-lined pit below the throne. She had failed to protect her Jewel.

No. She’d also been there to make Lin cover her ears as the rest of the court died. As the gems shattered.

Sima inched closer to the ground as the pounding continued. She heard the muffled sounds of inlaid doors crying out against the iron battering ram:
Strength.
Fortitude.

Those doors would hold until their last gem broke. When it did, the palace would fall with Lin inside, bound head to toe in platinum chains.

Sima’s feet touched the ground. She gathered the edges of her heavy cloak around her and turned toward the trees. Rough stones tore her soft shoes. Her feet sank deep into mud, but she kept running. If she could make the river, the boatman could smuggle her away and both gems and lapidary would pass out of reach. She would no longer endanger the valley.

The gems whispered, tried to tempt her with power and freedom. They’d done the same when she was a child, before she’d been bound. With every step farther from Lin, the gems grew louder.

The King’s Lapidary, broken by his treachery, had freed the oldest gem among them: the cabochon star ruby, called the Star Cabochon. Now the minor gems clamored for control from within her cloak. Coronation sapphires, topaz, Lin’s birth emeralds. Gems to ease pain, to give courage, if they were bound correctly. Without a proper setting, each could wreak havoc on the valley. For those who could hear them, more bindings were required as protection. Vows.

“A lapidary obeys her Jewel,” Sima whispered, her voice shaking. “A lapidary guards her gems.” She fought to hold her vows in her mind. The gems quieted for the moment. But every lapidary learned early that even the strongest among them had a breaking point.

And Sima knew she was not very strong. She’d been nowhere near as strong as her father. And he’d shattered.

She would not break her promises to Lin. She would keep going.

Lapidaries must know the number of gems in their possession, their settings,
their
powers.
The long vow made her wheeze to say it while she ran. That had been a spiral cuff, the easiest to remove.

Escape,
whispered the gems in the smoke and shadows.
Release.
Sima kept running. She had to hold out long enough to get in a boat. Iron hated deep water. The river was the only way out, though no gem protected the woods. Not anymore.

Oh, Lin,
Sima thought, and almost turned around. The lapidaries’ vows broken. The valley endangered once again by its gems. The legend had turned real. Now she was the last lapidary. Now she had become a thief. Now the last Jewel sat chained in her palace, her people betrayed.

The mud of the forest turned to sand and grit beneath Sima’s feet. She was close to the river now. She crouched low, kneeling in the shadows. She could see the water glint through the last trees. No soldiers patrolled the riverbank. She tried to catch her breath.

If she had been strong enough to destroy the minor gems herself, she’d still be at Lin’s side. But they had both spent years living with the gems. If the wrong gem broke, their minds would shatter, like Sima’s father’s. The Western Mountains’ army would claim the rest of the gems. And even a mad lapidary could cut stones, if properly bound.

Sima had to leave. She knew that. Even as it broke her.

“I’ll scatter them to every corner of the six kingdoms, Lin,” Sima whispered again. “I promise. I won’t return.”

A lapidary obeys her Jewel.
She would keep that vow. She stepped from the shadows and toward the river, pulling her hood up over her head. She bent her shoulders and prepared to run again.

A shout broke the night behind her. A thick iron gauntlet wrapped her arm. Spun her around.

A plumed iron helm loomed over Sima, dark against the night sky. The soldier cuffed her hard with his other hand, then tossed her over his shoulder. Her vision swam. Her ears rang. Gems whispered,
Weakness.
Failure.
The hem of the cloak dragged heavy through the valley’s ashes all the way back to the palace’s broken gates.

* * *

The only way to be comfortable beneath her veil of chains, Lin discovered, was to kneel on the moonstone floor with Sima’s blue cloak beneath her knees for padding.

She passed her final minutes of freedom thinking of her father’s profile, his ready smile. She pushed aside her last vision of him, his face purple, the choking noises deep in his throat. Replaced that with memories of him on the amber throne, greeting his subjects. She loved that he’d liked to meet their gaze. Said often that he could tell a true valleyman by the way they looked you in the eye.

Father.
In the waiting silence of the palace, Lin pressed her fists hard against floor and chain. Felt the pain that bloomed there.

Days earlier, Lin’s gauze betrothal veil had hung beneath her crown, making her father’s face, and those of her brothers and the court, soft in the light. Set in her eleventh year, when she’d been promised to a young prince of the Eastern Seas, the soft veil would not be lifted until she married. In private quarters, she’d peeked from beneath the cloth. She’d studied the way time sat heavy below her father’s eyes when he consulted his lapidary. When he thought she did not see him.

Now her father was gone, and Lin had replaced the soft veil with one made of platinum chain.

If she’d been a proper Jewel, one trained to command powerful lapidaries, to rule a kingdom, she felt she might have come up with a better plan than this. But the commander of the Western Mountains demanded her as bride, sought to gain her throne as well as the valley’s major gems. Lin was determined to slow their plans at least, in her father’s memory. If Lin could get away, perhaps help would come—perhaps from the Eastern Seas—given time.

The door to the great hall and the royal quarters shouted and cracked. Another stone shattered.

A Jewel does not cry. She does not frown.
Lin’s Aba said this long ago while pinching her arm.
Your kingdom is your setting, you are its light.

Though her Aba would never instruct anyone again, Lin wished now for her guidance, even the kind that pinched her to be quiet, the kind that ignored her questions. She had such doubts, such fears.

What was a Jewel without a lapidary? Without a court? Without a kingdom? Lin traced a finger down the fine mail chains. How did one lead a kingdom? She’d never thought to ask before.

Lin knew her eyes were dry and clear, her face still. These were the facets of herself she had been taught to control.

The part of her that was still afraid listened to the palace doors resist the mountain army. That part jumped with each slam of iron against wood and gold and gem. That part had seen her father dying, breath bubbling foam, lips black with poison.

The doors shattered with a great cry, the gems—a rosette of rubies and diamonds cut in steadfast patterns—falling broken from their settings. She could not often hear gemstones, but this cry was so loud, every member of the palace left alive could hear.

Which meant Lin was the only one who heard:
Despair. Surrender.

Running feet in heavy armor crossed the palace’s moonstone tiles. Yells echoed down hallways, punctuated by the sound of more breaking doors. Then Lin’s door smashed open. Two soldiers entered, bragging loudly about mysterious gems and riches, about honor.

When they saw Lin kneeling beneath her veil, they fell silent. They stared.

What do you see?
Lin wondered as she rose.
A Jewel?
A girl?
She planted her feet shoulder width apart, as far as the chains would allow. Sima had left her a few ways to defend herself, if they got close enough.

One soldier advanced, his armor creaking. “Don’t cause us any trouble. Commander Nal wants you well.”

Lin waited and the soldier stepped forward again. He reached a hand out to her, keeping his other hand on his sword, well back from her reach.

She spoke then. “You will let me walk on my own. I am a Jewel of the valley.”

The two men laughed. “You
were
a Jewel. Where are your gems?”

The first soldier caught hold of Lin’s left wrist. She snapped a chain hard between his gauntlet and his arm guard. Dragged hard on it with all her weight, until the man cried out. “Little witch!”

He disentangled himself, but not before she looped another chain around his sword hilt, dangling from his left hand, and had it almost immobilized. She reached for it with her right hand, fingertips straining, but her own chains held her back. The soldier snapped her around, chain mail ringing, into the wall.

“I told you to behave.”

Her head banged against chains and stone. Her ears rang with impact, but she stayed on her feet. She’d never been struck so hard before. Sima had practiced fighting with her, as had her brothers until she’d been betrothed, but none ever hit her like this.

Lin felt the lack of her gems then more than ever. For her pain, Sima would have whispered peace to the opals. The gems in their settings would have magnified the feeling, eased her pain. Sapphires, spoken properly, would have radiated calm.

Instead, Lin had nothing to cushion the blow but despair and loss.

She let go of the sword’s hilt. Stopped trying to tangle the clumsy soldiers in her chains. Beneath her veil, sweat ran into her eyes and made them sting. Her hair caught in the chains and tangled painfully when she turned her head. She tasted iron in her mouth.

The soldier waited until she knelt. Then he secured her hands behind her.

A Jewel holds her head up,
Aba might have said.
She leads by example.

Except that Aba had never spoken to her of leadership. No one had. Her father, brothers, and sisters had kept much from her. Because she was so young.
Our one perfect Jewel,
they’d said, and shooed her from the room when the lapidaries conferred and the diplomats debated. She and Sima too.