Daja interrupted him again. “I forbid you to talk crazy,” she told him sternly. “Not here. Here you will talk like a normal human being or say nothing, one or the other.”
“What’s normal?” the man asked. He rubbed his long, bumpy nose. His thin lips trembled.
Daja frowned at him. “I don’t know. You’re older than me—you think of something. But don’t frighten the servants, all right? I’m going to put you in the bathhouse to wash up, and I’m going to see about fresh clothes. You stay in the bathhouse until I come for you, understand?”
“Do I shave?” Zhegorz asked. He was hollow-cheeked and stubbly. Daja shuddered to think of him with a sharp blade. Someone had shaved him recently enough that his salt-and-pepper beard was only stubble now. “Some other time,” she said, grateful not to deal with that on top of everything else. She led him into the bathhouse and waited as he undressed behind a screen, wrapped a towel around his waist, then climbed into a tub full of steaming water. The servants kept the baths ready at this time of day for anyone who might come in.
“Stay,” she ordered as he leaned back against the side of the tub. He nodded, thin lips tightly closed. It seemed he had chosen silence of the alternatives she had given him. Daja could accept that. Off she went in search of clothes and something more for him to eat.
Shan left Sandry and the rest of her party at the town house gate with a bow, a smile, and a cheerful good-bye. Briar and Tris nodded, but otherwise said nothing as they surrendered their mounts to the stable hands and followed Sandry into the house.
“I believe Daja will be bringing a, a guest of some sort,” Sandry told the head footman. “See that they have whatever they need, and please tell Daja she will find me in the book room.” I can’t wait to hear what that was about! she thought.
She then found the ground floor book room. She wanted nothing more than to sit and put her feet up on a hassock—attendance on an empress involved a great deal of standing, even when one was privileged enough to be allowed to sit in her presence now and then. She was just relaxing when she realized that Briar and Tris, instead of going to their rooms, had come in behind her and shut the door. They both stood there, Briar with his arms crossed over his chest, Tris with her fists propped on her hips.
“What?” demanded Sandry as they glared at her. “What did I do?”
“Did it occur to you that perhaps we might like to be consulted on yet another long ride?” demanded Tris.
Briar added, his voice mockingly proper, “Thanks ever so for asking, Clehame Sandry. Our lives are yours to arrange like you arrange embroidery silks. We have no minds—or rumps—of our own to help us decide if we want a daylong journey so soon.”
“I asked you, didn’t I?” demanded Sandry, startled. “I was sure I asked you. I told Cousin Ambros.”
“You did not,” snapped Tris. “You told us, like you’d tell ‘Cousin Ambros.’ In front of the empress and her court, so it’s not like we could discuss it with you.”
“Well, you could have said something before now,” replied Sandry with a shrug. “My lands are the main reason I came.”
“Tell you in front of the court, or the servants, or the empress?” Briar demanded. “Is all this royalness making you soft in the head?”
Sandry tightened her lips. “No one would have known if you’d spoken to me the way we used to talk to each other,” she said mulishly. “Silently. Remember? No one to eavesdrop, ever. Now stop complaining. If you want to stay here, I’ll go on to my estates with Ambros by myself.”
“And have the imperial friends who’re coming along report back that we gave them the cold shoulder?” asked Briar. “Maybe you don’t have to worry about them getting us in trouble, but we aren’t highborn. We’re vulnerable.”
“You’re just being disagreeable,” Sandry told them both. “I’ll say you both got sick, will that silence you?”
“You treating us like equals instead of servants—that will silence us,” Tris replied. “You didn’t act like this back at Winding Circle. Either we’re your household or your family. Make up your mind.”
Sandry’s mouth quivered. I’m homesick, she realized, distressed. I’m homesick, and I don’t want them to scold me anymore. “Oh, leave me alone!” she cried, wanting them out of the room before she actually began to cry. “I didn’t ask for you to come! It was Uncle’s idea—I just wanted to make him easy in his mind! How was I to know you two had gotten all, all prideful and arrogant?” She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.
“We’re prideful and arrogant?” demanded Briar, shocked. “Who’s issuing orders around here, Clehame?”
“Oh, splendid. Tears. That solves ever so much,” snarled Tris. She flung the door open and stamped out of the room.
Briar followed her out after he allowed himself one parting shot, “See you at dawn, my fine lady.”
Sandry managed to wait for the door to close behind them before her eyes overflowed. I didn’t feel so blue on the road, she thought, tears spilling over her cheeks. There was too much to do, and we had the Traders with us. But this court, with its standing and sitting and curtsying and sitting and bowing and standing and walking and gossiping and curtsying…Uncle never makes anyone carry on like that! We bow or curtsy when we see him, and that’s that for the day. And I never, ever felt like I was surrounded by envious people in Emelan, not like I do here. Everyone wants what I have, and I just want to go home!