Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  The inclusion of Pellia as a province of Galitha had made for uncertainty among some Galatines at first, but I had noticed a change recently, accepting our Pellian immigrants to Galitha City with more generous attitudes than before the war. There would still be challenges; I was sure Hamish had skipped mentioning the small but vocal Galatine Nationalists who had sprung up from disaffected Royalists and Red Caps alike, their newfound political alliance formed on rejecting the inclusion of Pellia. They circulated pamphlets and ran, typically unsuccessfully, for office, but did not seem inclined to disrupt national peace to further their aims.

  Kristos took the podium. Sianh made a show of taking his pocket watch from his waistband, marking the time Kristos began to speak. I hid my grin at his joke behind my hand as Kristos unexpectedly hopped down from the podium and began to cross a corner of the square. The crowd parted for him as he strode toward a raised platform next to the new statue that had been placed in the square a week prior, carefully covered and wrapped in layers of tarps.

  Now the tarps were loosened, tied only with a large gray swath of linen around the middle. Kristos made a great show out of gesturing to the statue, but I couldn’t hear anything he said. Still, it must have been important, because the crowd was as still and silent as a service in the cathedral. He tugged at the linen swath, and by some impressive engineering, the tarps fell away from the new statue.

  It was Theodor. Rendered in deep gray granite, with one hand on a sheathed sword and the other resting on the trunk of a young sapling as though he had just watered it. My breath caught in my throat with a sharp, joyful, grief-spiked, “Oh.” Sianh looked to me quickly, assessing in an instant that I was not upset, only overwhelmed. Kristos met my eyes across all of the people between us in the square, and I nodded with a growing smile. Theodor was where he should be, overlooking the heart of the capital of the country he helped to build. The country he never gave up on.

  A cheer grew from one corner of the crowd and rippled across the square. I exhaled and a tear slipped down my cheek. The hole he had left in my life was no longer raw and painful at every glancing touch but had grown flexible and accommodated the joy of his memory as well as the loss. With the statue permanently fixed in the center of the city, a small part of what had felt undone by his murder was rectified—he would be here for the growth and change he should have helped to shepherd.

  Slowly, the crowd dissipated, meandering toward the riverbank or the newly christened city parks or the public gardens for picnics. Viola and Annette opened boxes of honey cakes and ham and biscuits and cucumber rolls filled with goat cheese, and Sianh poured out more lemonade. Through the bustle of passing plates and clinking glasses, Thea clambered over laps to reach mine.

  “Light?” She turned her big brown eyes up toward me expectantly. “Auntie?”

  “Of course, sweetness.” I drew a thread and let her twine it around her fingers. She giggled as I wound it around her hands, then nestled her dark curly head into the crook of my arm to reach for the strands of charm magic. As the conversation around us dipped into weather and horses, parties and politics, I watched the shadows play on the granite statue across the square and the light play across my lap. With a contented yawn, Thea fell asleep.

  Acknowledgments

  When I started writing a book about a seamstress, I wasn’t sure anyone but me would want to read it. And yet, here we are, three books later—I’m humbled and honored and blown away to have been able to share this story with you all. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to, however, without the support, expertise, and work of many talented and wonderful people.

  Jessica Sinsheimer, my incredible agent, thank you for your encouragement, guidance, and optimism.

  Everyone at Orbit, your talent and enthusiasm are an absolute joy to work with. My editors, Sarah Guan and Nivia Evans, each more brilliant than the other—thank you both. Ellen Wright, Laura Fitzgerald, Paolo Crespo, and all the publicity folks, thank you for your work. I thought I had the most beautiful covers before, but this one—damn. Lauren Panepinto, it’s utter genius, and Carrie Violet of Memorial Stitches, the embroidery is breathtaking. Tim Holman and Alex Lenicki, thanks as always for your support.

  Thank you to my patient and understanding family—my husband and partner, Randy, and my two daughters, to whom this book is dedicated. You share me with imaginary people and made-up worlds and print on a page, and I know that isn’t always easy.

  Mom and Dad, thanks for your encouragement of young me and for your support now, including babysitting duty during editorial calls.

  For all the support from friends, community, fellow sewists and readers and history nerds—thank you. Especially my friends, too numerous to list, in the living history community, where a culture of enthusiastically seeking and sharing knowledge makes even the most obscure primary sources accessible—research for this book owes quite a bit to your efforts.

  So much gratitude to all the fellow creators giving me inspiration every day. I will miss many of you as I attempt any list at all, but in particular, Alexandra Rowland, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Tasha Suri, Melissa Caruso, Asha Brogan, Eileen O’Connor Ramsey, Cass Morris, Amy Carol Reeves, Evie Skelton, Lynn Graham, Mike Chen, Erica Huffman, and so many others sharing their gifts and joy with the world. Thanks for letting me nerd out with you.

  Finally, to you, readers, who picked up a book about a seamstress and followed her story to the end (or, really, to another beginning). I am grateful to each of you.

  Discover Your Next Great Read

  Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.

  Tap here to learn more.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Heidi Hauck

  ROWENNA MILLER grew up in a log cabin in Indiana and still lives in the Midwest with her husband and daughters, where she teaches English composition, trespasses while hiking, and spends too much time researching and re-creating historical textiles.

  Find out more about Rowenna Miller and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  if you enjoyed

  RULE

  look out for

  THE OBSIDIAN TOWER

  Rooks and Ruin: Book One

  by

  Melissa Caruso

  As the granddaughter of a Witch Lord of Vaskandar, Ryx was destined for power and prestige. But a childhood illness left her with broken magic that drains the life from anything she touches, and Vaskandar has no place for a mage with unusable powers. So Ryx has resigned herself to an isolated life as the warden of Gloamingard, her grandmother’s castle.

  At Gloamingard’s heart lies a black tower. Sealed by magic, it guards a dangerous secret that has been contained for thousands of years. Until one impetuous decision Ryx makes leaves her with blood on her hands—and unleashes a threat that could doom everything she loves to fall to darkness.

  ONE

  There are two kinds of magic.

  There is the kind that lifts you up and fills you with wonder, saving you when all is lost or opening doors to new worlds of possibility. And there is the kind that wrecks you, that shatters you, bitter in your mouth and jagged in your hand, breaking everything you touch.

  Mine was the second kind.

  My father’s magic could revive blighted fields, turning them lush and green again, and coax apples from barren boughs in the dead of winter. Grass withered beneath my footsteps. My cousins kept the flocks in their villages healthy and strong, and turned the wolves away to hunt elsewhere; I couldn’t enter the stables of my own castle without bringing mortal danger to the horses.

  I should have been like the others. Ours was a line of royal vivomancers; life magic flowed in our veins, ancient as the rain that washed down from the hills and nurtured the green valleys of Morgrain. My grandmother was the immortal Witch Lord of Morgrain, the Lady of Owls herself, whose magic coursed so deep through her domain that she could feel the step of
every rabbit and the fall of every leaf. And I was Exalted Ryxander, a royal atheling, inheritor of an echo of my grandmother’s profound connection to the land and her magical power. Except that I was also Ryx, the family embarrassment, with magic so twisted it was unusably dangerous.

  The rest of my family had their place in the cycle, weavers of a great pattern. I’d been born to snarl things up—or more like it, to break the loom and set the tapestry on fire, given my luck.

  So I’d made my own place.

  At the moment, that place was on the castle roof. One gloved hand clamped onto the delicate bone-carved railing of a nearby balcony for balance, to keep my boots from skidding on the sharply angled shale; the other held the wind-whipped tendrils of dark hair that had escaped my braid back from my face.

  “This is a disaster,” I muttered.

  “I don’t see any reason it needs to be, Exalted Warden.” Odan, the castle steward—a compact and muscular old man with an extravagant mustache—stood with unruffled dignity on the balcony beside me. I’d clambered over its railing to make room for him, since I couldn’t safely share a space that small. “We still have time to prepare guest quarters and make room in the stables.”

  “That’s not the problem. No so-called diplomat arrives a full day early without warning unless they’re up to trouble.” I glared down at the puffs of dust rising from the northern trade road. Distance obscured the details, but I made out at least thirty riders accompanying the Alevaran envoy’s carriage. “And that’s too large an escort. They said they were bringing a dozen.”

  Odan’s bristly gray brows descended the broad dome of his forehead. “It’s true that I wouldn’t expect an ambassador to take so much trouble to be rude.”

  “They wouldn’t. Not if they were planning to negotiate in good faith.” And that was what made this a far more serious issue than the mere inconvenience of an early guest. “The Shrike Lord of Alevar is playing games.”

  Odan blew a breath through his mustache. “Reckless of him, given the fleet of imperial warships sitting off his coast.”

  “Rather.” I hunkered down close to the slate to get under the chill edge that had come into the wind in the past few days, heralding the end of summer. “I worked hard to set up these talks between Alevar and the Serene Empire. What in the Nine Hells is he trying to accomplish?”

  The line of riders drew closer along the gray strip of road that wound between bright green farms and swaths of dark forest, approaching the grassy sun-mottled hill that lifted Gloamingard Castle toward a banner-blue sky. The sun winked off the silver-tipped antlers of six proud stags drawing the carriage, a clear announcement that the coach’s occupant could bend wildlife to their will—displaying magic in the same way a dignitary of the Serene Empire of Raverra to the south might display wealth, as a sign of status and power.

  Another gleam caught my eye, however: the metallic flash of sabers and muskets.

  “Pox,” I swore. “Those are all soldiers.”

  Odan scowled down at them. “I’m no diplomat like you, Warden, but it does seem odd to bring an armed platoon to sign a peace treaty.”

  I almost retorted that I wasn’t a diplomat, either. But it was as good a word as any for the role I’d carved out for myself.

  Diplomacy wasn’t part of a Warden’s job. Wardens were mages; it was their duty to use their magic to nurture and sustain life in the area they protected. But my broken magic couldn’t nurture. It only destroyed. When my grandmother followed family tradition and named me the Warden of Gloamingard Castle—her own seat of power—on my sixteenth birthday, it had seemed like a cruel joke.

  I’d found other ways. If I couldn’t increase the bounty of the crops or the health of the flocks with life magic, I could use my Raverran mother’s connections to the Serene Empire to enrich our domain with favorable trade agreements. If I couldn’t protect Morgrain by rousing the land against bandits or invaders, I could cultivate good relations with Raverra, securing my domain a powerful ally. I’d spent the past five years building that relationship, despite muttering from traditionalists in the family about being too friendly with a nation we’d warred with countless times in centuries past.

  I’d done such a good job, in fact, that the Serene Empire had agreed to accept our mediation of an incident with Alevar that threatened to escalate into war.

  “I can’t let them sabotage these negotiations before they’ve even started.” It wasn’t simply a matter of pride; Morgrain lay directly between Alevar and the Serene Empire. If the Shrike Lord wanted to attack the Empire, he’d have to go through us.

  The disapproving gaze Odan dropped downhill at the Alevarans could have frozen a lake. “How should we greet them, Warden?”

  My gloved fingers dug against the unyielding slate beneath me. “Form an honor guard from some of our nastiest-looking battle chimeras to welcome them. If they’re going to make a show of force, we have to answer it.” That was Vaskandran politics, all display and spectacle—a stark contrast to the subtle, hidden machinations of Raverrans.

  Odan nodded. “Very good, Warden. Anything else?”

  The Raverran envoy would arrive tomorrow with a double handful of clerks and advisers, prepared to sit down at a table and speak in a genteel fashion about peace, to find my castle already overrun with a bristling military presence of Alevaran soldiers. That would create a terrible first impression—especially since Alevar and Morgrain were both domains of the great nation of Vaskandar, the Empire’s historical enemy. I bit my lip a moment, thinking.

  “Quarter no more than a dozen of their escort in the castle,” I said at last. “Put the rest in outbuildings or in the town. If the envoy raises a fuss, tell them it’s because they arrived so early and increased their party size without warning.”

  A smile twitched the corners of Odan’s mustache. “I like it. And what will you do, Exalted Warden?”

  I rose, dusting roof grit from my fine embroidered vestcoat, and tugged my thin leather gloves into place. “I’ll prepare to meet this envoy. I want to see if they’re deliberately making trouble, or if they’re just bad at their job.”

  Gloamingard was really several castles caught in the act of devouring each other. Build the castle high and strong, the Gloaming Lore said, and each successive ruler had taken that as license to impose their own architectural fancies upon the place. The Black Tower reared up stark and ominous at the center, more ancient than the country of Vaskandar itself; an old stone keep surrounded it, buried in fantastical additions woven of living trees and vines. The stark curving ribs of the Bone Palace clawed at the sky on one side, and the perpetual scent of woodsmoke bathed the sharp-peaked roofs of the Great Lodge on the other; my grandmother’s predecessor had attempted to build a comfortable wood-paneled manor house smack in the front and center. Each new Witch Lord had run roughshod over the building plans of those who came before them, and the whole place was a glorious mess of hidden doors and dead-end staircases and windows opening onto blank walls.

  This made the castle a confusing maze for visitors, but for me, it was perfect. I could navigate through the odd, leftover spaces and closed-off areas, keeping away from the main halls with their deadly risk of bumping into a sprinting page or distracted servant. I haunted my own castle like a ghost.

  As I headed toward the Birch Gate to meet the Alevaran envoy, I opened a door in the back of a storage cabinet beneath a little-used stairway, hurried through a dim and dusty space between walls, and came out in a forgotten gallery under a latticework of artistically woven tree roots and stained glass. At the far end, a string of grinning animal faces adorned an arch of twisted wood; an unrolling scroll carved beneath them warned me to Give No Cunning Voices Heed. It was a bit of the Gloaming Lore, the old family wisdom passed down through the centuries in verse. Generations of mages had scribed pieces of it into every odd corner of Gloamingard.

  I climbed through a window into the dusty old stone keep, which was half fallen to ruin. My grandmother had sealed th
e main door with thick thorny vines when she became the Witch Lord a hundred and forty years ago; sunbeams fell through holes in the roof onto damp, mossy walls. It still made for a good alternate route across the castle. I hurried down a dim, dust-choked hallway, taking advantage of the lack of people to move a little faster than I normally dared.

  Yet I couldn’t help slowing almost to a stop when I came to the Door.

  It loomed all the way to the ceiling of its deep-set alcove, a flat shining rectangle of polished obsidian. Carved deep into its surface in smooth, precise lines was a circular seal, complex with runes and geometric patterns.

  The air around it hung thick with power. The pressure of it made my pulse sound in my ears, a surging dull roar. A thrill of dread trickled down my spine, never mind that I’d passed it countless times.

  It was the monster of my childhood stories, the haunt of my nightmares, the ominous crux of all the Gloaming Lore. Carved through the castle again and again, above windows and under crests, set into floors and wound about pillars, the same words appeared over and over. It was the chorus of the rhyme we learned in the cradle, recited at our adulthood ceremonies, and whispered on our deathbeds: Nothing must unseal the Door.

  No one knew what lay in the Black Tower, but this was its sole entrance. And every time I walked past it, despite the unsettling aura of power that hung about it like a long bass note too low to hear, despite the warnings drilled into me since birth and scribed all over Gloamingard, curiosity prickled awake in my mind.