The Jewel and Her Lapidary (6 page)

Lin did not answer. She did not look up. Days ago, she would have cried in fear or looked to her brothers for help. She had already learned more than a youngest Jewel should ever know.
An opaque diplomacy,
Sima thought.
While I have gained little skill with the Star Cabochon.

Remir turned to Sima, his voice clear and high. “You made these chains. You can undo it. Set her free.”

A lapidary who betrays their Jewel is shattered.

Sima’s fingers flexed. She willed them still. That was not Lin’s command. Sima would be no better than her father if she betrayed her Jewel.

The doors to the royal hall—now reinforced with iron—creaked open. Across the hall, ten guards pushed an enormous rock crystal vase. Mountain ranges and a river valley had been carved into the vase’s sides. Metal wheels rattled over the moonstone tiles, groaning under the weight of the vase. When the guards stopped before the amber throne, the wheels squeaked and the crystal resonated with a high-pitched tone.

“Your wedding gift, Jewel Lin,” Nal said. She held out a hand to her son, who looked at the vase, then back to Lin, his eyes wide. Nal’s dark gaze took in the assembled court. “Do you not see the Western Mountains’ wealth and strength?”

The vase towered over Lin and Sima. Its value was beyond measure.

Lin, in a clear voice, said, “The valley’s strength is its people, Commander. Not in gems or armor.”

Nal tutted. “Surely you’ve learned from your father’s example, Jewel Lin?”

Sima shivered at the memory of the bodies in the pit and the night spent watching over their broken bones.

The commander drew a deep breath. “We need the valley, its artisans and miners, its mail. The armies of the east threaten us even now.” Her eyes hardened to two dark stones. She pressed her lips together. “There is one way through. We have brought with us more aqua fortis for refining gems and metal. We have muriatic from our iron and salt mines.”

Nal turned to Sima. “Do you know what happens when you combine muriatic and aqua fortis, lapidary?”

“Aqua regia.”
Water of kings.
The words escaped Sima’s mouth before she could seal her lips. She’d used the combination once under her father’s instruction to dissolve a gold setting from around a stone. Later she’d poured off the gold and recaptured it. But not before she’d burned skin from her arm with the acid. She swallowed, remembering. Lin’s veil made a shifting sound, but the Jewel did not speak.

Remir paled. “You wouldn’t. Can’t you hear them?”

His mother ignored him.
She should be careful,
Sima thought.

But then Nal ordered Sima, “You will cut her out of this and in no way damage the Star Cabochon. What happens to the Jewel is of waning interest to me.”

Her son opened his mouth to argue, but Nal stopped him with her hand. “We will not be held hostage by our conquests and their archaic rules,” she said. “We have our own people to protect.”

She waved forward a guard, bearing the bulky tools of a Mountain mine. The guard pressed a cold iron saw into Sima’s hand.

The vase loomed before Sima, hard and clear. The court of her ancestors stood silent. She remembered the burn of aqua regia on her arm and weighed her vows to Lin.
Betrayal,
whispered a topaz in Lin’s veil.

She startled when Lin’s fingers grazed her free hand. Then a sharp point poked her right index finger. The culet of a gem, pressed from Lin’s fingers to hers: a blue topaz. The gem whispered
Courage
.

Sima took a deep breath and in her steadiest voice spoke the words that Lin demanded of her. “Commander, I cannot.”

At their commander’s gesture, three guards brought a wooden ladder and half-hauled, half-lifted Lin into the vase. Then Sima. The iron tools they took away.

When they were finished, Nal stood and pointed to the vase. “Tomorrow, we will fill that vase with aqua regia. The gems and platinum she wears will be ours, and we will have no need of a burial. Your people will have nothing left to love.” Nal pushed her son from the room, calling over her shoulder, “I suggest you remember a way to free her first.”

The court grew noisy with shouts as the soldiers cleared the room. “The Jewel of the people,” someone cried before an ironclad guard struck him down and dragged him away.

The moonstone tiles rang with metal striking metal as the remaining guards threw newly wrought iron bolts across the court’s doors.

* * *

Lin leaned against Sima inside the echoing vase. She had no words to describe the sadness she felt. Aba hadn’t taught her anything near enough to face this. The hall reverberated with her kingdom’s losses.

The walls of the vase showed the valley in reverse, the mountains and clouds clear cuts in the crystal, while the sky was opaque. The cold of the crystal made her chains freeze. The Star Cabochon felt heavy on Lin’s brow. She tried to think.

Nal’s goal was legitimacy. A kingdom of her own. Lin wondered what Nal’s doubts were. What could make her loose her grasp on the valley long enough for the people to rebel? She’d seen something when she’d said “no” to Nal. Not only strength. Fear too.

Nal had expected to find a lapidary she could control. She’d planned treachery, not a battle of wills. With either of them.

Lin turned to look at Sima. Her lapidary’s face was more familiar than her own. Always by her side. Sima’s golden skin and dark eyes were faded with exhaustion and hunger. She suffered. Lin wished she could ease Sima’s pain. But she could neither speak the gems nor hear them. She was glad for that. Gems could be stolen or broken. They could be turned against you. To rely on them was to become weak. That had been her father’s mistake. And it was about to be Nal’s.

But Sima’s loyalty had proven stronger than both gems and fear. Lin felt her friend’s strength shore up her own reserves. She needed the lapidary as much as her father had needed the gems.

To face down Nal and deny her commands, Lin needed all of her strength. With a start, Lin realized that Sima was prepared to remain with her, no matter what happened. She would die at Lin’s side.

“
No
,” Lin whispered. There had to be another way. She would not ask the lapidary to die for her. If that weakened her as a Jewel, so be it.

But would Sima risk escape again, if she ordered her to? What would distract the guards? If she could escape, would Sima be strong enough to take Lin’s message to the valley people? That the mines must be destroyed? The supports pulled from the caverns and holes dug to let in river and rain until the shafts collapsed? If Sima could find enough alum and aqua fortis—and here Lin felt a slightly hysterical laugh rise in her chest like a
bubble
—
the valley’s farmers could combine that with guano and fertilizer to blow up the mines too.

So many things she wanted to tell her people. Lin hoped Sima would be able to make them listen. She hoped her own sacrifice would be enough of a message to them.

Sima’s eyes were dark as bloodstone as she searched Lin’s visage. For once, Lin was glad of the veil. She kept silent and watched her friend, holding her face in her memory. Feeling the kiss on her cheek again.

Sima opened her mouth to speak, but Lin pressed a finger against her lips. She’d made her choice. Sima could not protect her from what she would do.

* * *

Lapidaries must never be without their tools.

Sima stared at Lin through the chains. Lin’s finger rested for a long time on her lips, and Sima did not brush it away. When the moon rose and light streamed through the high windows set in the palace walls, the moonstone tiles and white-jade columns glowed.

She counted the guards. Wished she could speak a gem to make them lean on their weapons and sleep. No. She could only make Lin sleep. Worse than worthless here.

“I am sorry,” Lin said. “I would release you from your vows.” Her chains screeched against the rock crystal.

The gems fell silent. Sima’s jaw worked.
Freedom.
Escape.
Betrayal.

Finally she spoke. “You are protecting our people.” Sima was embarrassed that her voice broke. She still lacked strength. “You are my Jewel. I will not leave you.”

The last Jewel,
Sima thought.
My Lin.
A lapidary must protect their Jewel. A lapidary must obey
their
Jewel.
The two vows, still wrapping her earlobes, fought each other in Sima’s mind. No one in the Jeweled Valley Court could have predicted that. So many vows had been broken already. The gems sensed her struggle. They reached for her weaknesses, hoping to amplify them. Sima pressed her hands to her ears at their whispers. Breaking more vows would destroy her and Lin too. Not breaking them would have the same effect. She had to choose.

Sima reached inside her sleeve for her tools.
Bravery,
sang the blue topaz Lin had given her, tucked into Sima’s left vow.
Calm,
said the opals at Lin’s ears. Sima looked at the chains, where she’d made the solders and joins.

In the silence of the evening, she heard another sound, from the left of the throne. The guards’ door opening. Footsteps.

“Step outside,” a young voice ordered. Iron armor screeched and a man laughed. The guards stayed where they were. “I would speak to my betrothed alone,” the voice said again. “Commander Nal said I should try to reason with her.”

At this, the guards grumbled but agreed to step outside the great doors. The hall rumbled with their movements, then stilled.

A face pressed against the side of the vase. Remir. Lin’s intended. Sima nudged Lin and pointed.

“The gem said I should come,” Remir stuttered. His words came muffled through the glass. His face was a blur, but first one hand, then the other pressed against the glass. “Earlier. But I couldn’t get away.”

Which gem?
Sima wondered. “Can you hear them now?”
How could he hear them, when Lin
could not?

Remir’s hands slid down the vase. “Only sometimes. Faint. Not now. I can get you out. I have a rope.”

“What does he mean, Sima?” Lin whispered low enough that Remir didn’t hear her.

Sima chewed her lip. Another gem-speaker? Untrained. And old enough that he might be dangerous. “Why risk your mother’s anger just because you think you heard something?”

Remir stepped back. “I did hear it. And now I want to help you. My mother is going about this the wrong way.”

“She didn’t send you here tonight,” Lin said.

“No.”

Sima’s thoughts raced. Perhaps they did not need to escape. Perhaps the valley’s legacy was not lost. If Lin and Remir married and Sima trained Remir, the valley might someday regain power within the Mountain kingdom. She pictured herself wrapping Remir’s arms with metal bands. She wondered if he was too old to learn the vows. If he would one day break, like the King’s Lapidary.

She wondered what the boy would choose, if he could: gems or people.

His face once again pressed against the glass, as close to Lin and the gems as he could get.

“Would you support me against Nal, Remir? Would you choose me over the gems?” Lin asked. She had the same questions as Sima. Her voice filled with hope.

The blur of Remir’s head nodded. “I would.”

But Sima noticed his hesitation. The crack in his voice. A flaw? Perhaps. Or a lie.

“We could slip away tonight,” Remir continued. “The guards would chase us, but we could use the gem against them. It told me so.”

He would use a gem against his own people. The cabochon.
It told me so.
More than a flaw. Sima reached for Lin’s hand. She thought of Lin’s vision: the valley safe from conquerors and cabochon. Sima thought quickly. The gems. The topaz and opals she knew she could command.
Calm.
Forget.
If Remir heard the cabochon through the wall of the vase, perhaps the others could reach him too.

For a moment, the cabochon’s star glowed unbidden at Lin’s forehead, then faded.

“I won’t allow the Star Cabochon to survive,” Lin said. “If I cannot break it, I will bury it.”

“I understand,” Remir said. “I will help you.” His voice was oddly flat.

Sima realized she was shaking her head slowly from side to side. This felt wrong. Remir was too willing to agree. “Prove it,” she said. “Tomorrow. Argue Lin’s case before the court. Before Nal. Protect the Jewel.”

“Is that your wish, Lin?” The boy’s voice was calm, though the vase made it echo strangely. He waited. Sima began to whisper.

“It is,” Lin said.

“Remir, listen,” Sima said.
Sleep,
she whispered to the opals.
Walk away,
to the topaz.

Remir yawned. His hands pulled away from the crystal wall of the vase. Lin and Sima listened to his footsteps recede. The guards’ door opened, then closed.

“Perhaps we have a chance,” Lin whispered, uncertain. She yawned too.

Sima was not so sure. “The boy,” she said, “can hear the gems. The Star Cabochon.”

Lin’s grip on Sima’s hand tightened, but Sima was staring at the gem on her brow. When she spoke its name, it had glowed. It had heard her. It hadn’t answered, but that was a start. A better chance.

Sima slowly turned, scraping an arm against the rough crystal. Her eyes searched for Lin’s through the veil of chains. The room had darkened with moonset. The thought of what the dawn would bring, of the aqua regia’s acrid smell filling the room, the orange gas bubbling, and the screams, made Sima speak quickly. “The gem controls him, as his mother does. He is untrained. You would not survive long here. You must escape.”
Escape.

“You could fix it, Sima,” Lin said. “You spoke the gem just now. The look on your face gave you away.”

“Perhaps,” Sima answered. She imagined compelling Nal to return to the Western Mountains, teaching Remir the ways of a lapidary. She wondered if she could.

A lapidary must—

Sima thought of all the vows her father had broken; how he betrayed the valley and his Jewel. How the Mountain Court had bent his oaths.

Sima smoothed her hand across Lin’s chains and whispered to the lesser gems. Lin leaned against the vase’s side and touched Sima’s cheek with her free hand. Sima looked at the Star Cabochon in its clutch setting. She might use it to control a future king.