The Jewel and Her Lapidary

by Wilde, Fran

  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.

  A lapidary must not—

  Sima couldn’t breathe in the vase’s confines. She gestured for Lin to move closer to her, and the exhausted Jewel obeyed. The two pressed together while Sima whispered the stones she knew well, the ones that would answer her when she kept her vows: the opals, the topaz. Rest.

  “Sima, no,” Lin murmured, but in a few minutes she slept, leaning heavily against Sima’s shoulder.

  Sima ran her fingers along the platinum chains and found the few rings she knew to be weakest: rings not tied to the cabochon bezel’s tension setting. These she chiseled with her file. She braced Lin’s forehead against her shoulder. Lin slept on.

  They could both run, without Remir. The guards had not returned from their post outside the doors. She’d heard loud snoring from beyond the vase.

  They could leave the chains and help each other out of the vase. They could scale the palace walls and run for the river. But the cabochon would shatter.

  Lapidaries must preserve their Jewels. Lapidaries must protect the gems in their care.

  Too many vows had been broken already. The loosed gems would tear Sima’s mind to shreds.

  Meanwhile, Nal’s army would pursue Lin. Remir might learn to invoke the gems without rules or bindings. He might make more. This would drive him mad, but the destruction he might cause in the meantime made Sima work even faster. His connection to the gems would outweigh any feeling he had for the people.

  Sima slid an arm into the veil, fingers spread wide to brace the chains near the bezel. She hummed to quiet the shatter charms and steadied the most important links with her files, bracing them against solder points and knots. She pushed her foot behind Lin’s, then slipped three small gems from their settings. Even the Jewel didn’t know about these. Lin’s cuffs loosened.

  Gems began to whisper as their settings were disturbed. Revenge. Peace. Power. Sorrow. Escape. Sima knew what they offered her. She moved faster to finish what she’d begun.

  Gingerly, Sima pulled Lin, still sleeping, from the veil with one hand, while her other arm shook with the effort of bracing the headdress. Her elbow banged the vase’s wall. Her head pulsed with the gems’ demands. Then Sima stepped beneath the veil and lowered the headdress onto her own forehead. The chain mail and the heavy cabochon masked her face. Dear Valley, the weight.

  A lapidary must work through pain.

  Lin woke when the veil’s burden lifted from her skin. Still groggy, she reached to pull Sima from the garment.

  “We’ll take the veil to the caves and hide,” she said. “We will find a way.”

  “You must leave the cabochon here, and me with it, Lin,” Sima said. “They will think the lapidary ran away again, not the Jewel. They do not know your face. They will not seek you out.”

  “I will no longer be a Jewel.” Lin’s mouth curved into a frown. The gems were silent. The white-jade columns tinted pink with the sunrise.

  Sima encouraged her. “You will strengthen your people. You will lead them.”

  Lin looked at Sima and began to object. Sima interrupted. “This is my choice. Let me make it.”

  Lin nodded, her eyes soft. “To be a lapidary is a greater honor.”

  The gems stayed silent.

  Sima gave Lin the soft blue dress she’d worn for days. It smelled rank, even from a distance. She removed the torch and the solder wire from the sleeve and began to close the chains in the mail, to tighten the cuffs around her arms. She passed Lin her files and the blue topaz. Courage.

  Lin pushed it back. “This gem is yours.”

  Sima swallowed and tightened her fingers around the topaz, then pressed it into a loop of mail near her ear. She passed Lin her cloak and soldered the final loops in the veil. She invoked the gems she’d tucked in Lin’s pocket: the rose topaz for peace, a king’s battle opal for vengeance. Through the chains, Sima glimpsed Lin’s face shining with tears.

  Lin adjusted the veil so the bezel rested comfortably against Sima’s forehead. She tucked Sima’s tools into a sleeve.

  “Go,” Sima ordered her. She cupped her hands and Lin placed one foot in them. Sima lifted Lin high enough to grip the vase’s edge. She listened as Lin’s footsteps receded toward the guards’ door, hoping that Remir had left it unbolted.

  Forget, she’d whispered to him through the gems.

  * * *

  Local Walks: The Jewel and Her Lapidary. A walk to be taken in conjunction with the Variegated Riverbank (p. 29). A half-mile downriver from the Deaf King, near the entrance to the area’s largest cave, stands a limestone and cobalt formation resembling two joined figures. No more than a meter in height, the formation is said to bring luck and goo
d fortune. According to local guides, a lapidary assigned to each member of the royal family from birth acted as advisor, servant, and jeweler. This is likely a conflation of multiple roles. Other nearby formations include the Iron Gauntlet and the Bezel.

  . . . from A Guide to the Remote River Valleys, by M. Lankin, East Quadril

  * * *

  Beyond the wall, the valley slept. A white wisp of smoke rose from a riverman’s cottage in the predawn. Lin crept between the forest’s shadows through the night. The snores of the Mountain guards told her no one saw her passage.

  She felt the jewels impelling her onward, to escape, to regain the kingdom. She wondered at what they were saying to cause her so much confidence.

  And she felt something else too. Her feet through Sima’s soft shoes, stepping rough across the forest floor and its pointed leaves and nettles. Her heart, urging her into the unknown. Out of the formal setting where Lin had spent her life. She did not know how she would be received anywhere. Or if. She might be caught as a thief or a rogue. Without her robes and finery, she looked like any other young woman. She looked like Sima.

  Lin clutched her fist around the gems hidden in the sleeve of her—Sima’s—robe. Her eyes burned and her stomach clenched. Sima.

  What had Aba told her? What had her sisters said? To be a Jewel is a sacrifice of the heart. You must become hardened to the losses.

  She didn’t want to become hard. But the valley needed a leader who understood the dangers. There was still danger, from the mountain army and from the valley’s gems—the unmined stones still called from the caverns to some, they caused too much trouble when freed for those who didn’t understand how to control them. Lin would have to devise ways to close the mines, to keep them hidden from the army.

  Lin stumbled toward the cottage. She wrapped herself in her cloak and knelt by the small rabbit hutch, until the riverman’s wife nearly tripped over her.

  “Who is this?” the riverman’s wife said.

  * * *

  Sunlight poured in the high windows, making the hall and the assembled court sparkle. Commander Nal addressed the valley’s sole Jewel. “See how your people betray you. They do not love you after all. You will die alone. Your gems will fall into our hands, unencumbered.”