“Just remember to behave,” he cautioned her. “I’ll bet there are mages keeping watch all over this place for magic they don’t like.” But would they recognize our magic? he wondered. Would they even know it was there?
The eunuch led them around other tables placed under the great oaks. Each table was under an awning, and each setting was more ornate than the last, commanding its own group of servants. At last they stood on an elaborate strip of carpet that led to the longest table. There the eunuch dropped to his knees. Briar bowed to the emperor, who sat with Rosethorn on his right and last night’s general, Hengkai, on his left. Like all of the Yanjingyi people, Evvy went to her knees and touched her forehead to the carpet.
“Evumeimei, rise,” the emperor ordered. She obeyed, checking to make sure that she hadn’t wrinkled her skirt. “How do you find our gardens?” Weishu asked.
“There are no rocks in them, Your Imperial Majesty,” she informed him. “Well, there are rocks here, but not in the flower gardens. Rocks don’t hurt flowers,” she said as the courtiers hid their smiles behind their sleeves.
“Parahan shall escort you to our rock gardens tomorrow. Would you like that?”
“Yes, please, Your Imperial Majesty!” Evvy said respectfully. “We saw a few rock gardens on our way to Gyongxe, but I was told that you have beautiful ones at your palaces. It would be a very great honor to see them.”
“Then see them you shall,” Weishu replied with a smile. “May I ask a small favor in return?”
Careful, Briar thought at Evvy, wishing she could hear him in her head as his sisters did.
Whether or not she heard him, she said, “If I can, Your Imperial Majesty. I’m only a twelve-year-old student.”
“We have seen the power of Dedicate Initiate Rosethorn, and in future I hope to see Nanshur Briar display his skill,” the emperor explained. “But first I have a little test for you. Mage General Hengkai, will you let Evumeimei hold your neck beads?”
The mage general stared at Weishu, startled. “But — Shining One —” he began to protest.
Weishu raised his brows. “Mage General? Neither your power nor your necklaces helped you to win your last battle in Qayan. Given this is the case, you should have no objection to letting a girl hold your beads. Hand them to her.”
Hengkai took in a breath, then slowly let it out. Carefully he unwound three loops of beads from around his bull neck. Clutching them in one knotted hand, he held them out over the table.
Rosethorn leaned forward. Briar, too, was ready in case anything went wrong. The beads had to be protected for people to wear them on a daily basis, or for this general to wear them in battle. Still, Briar felt better when he saw Jia Jui walk into the space behind Weishu and Hengkai. She should prevent anything from going amiss.
Evvy stepped up and took the necklace. “Thank you, Mage General,” she said, and gave him a deep bow.
Smart, Briar thought. Just because the emperor can speak to this Hengkai with disrespect doesn’t mean that we can.
Evvy backed away until she stood next to Briar, running the long strands of beads through her fingers. They clicked musically, like the conversation beads used by merchants back home on the Pebbled Sea.
“Evumeimei, tell me what they are made of,” the emperor said quietly.
The general jumped to his feet. “Imperial Majesty, Crown of Yanjing, only I may use my power on them!” he cried. Instantly two guards who had been standing behind the emperor’s table lunged forward. They swung their halberds down, crossing them before Hengkai so they formed a barrier in front of the angry mage general. Then they pulled back on the crossed blades, pressing the man down into his seat. Once he was there, they moved in closer until he was pinned by the weapons. Hengkai could not even raise his arms.
Jia Jui shifted into the space behind Weishu and Rosethorn.
“So long as you remain where you are without moving, Mage General, you will stay unharmed,” Weishu said, his voice as smooth as butter. “Evumeimei, proceed.”
Evvy gulped. “It’s all right,” Briar whispered in Chammuri, his lips barely moving. “I don’t think this lesson’s for you.”
She ran the complete string of beads though her fingers twice. The third time, she singled out a section of the most common ones. “These are bone,” she told the emperor, forgetting titles in her absorption with her task. “Old bone, really old, that’s half gone to stone, but it’s bone all the same. I know it by the way it feels, but it isn’t in my magic.” She squinted at the lettering on some of the beads. “This is some kind of scribe work, but I don’t recognize it.”
“Those are the ideographs our nanshurs learn,” Weishu replied. “Another bead, if you will.”
Evvy chose a cylindrical bead, blue on white. “Porcelain,” she said scornfully. Of another, more intricately detailed blue-on-white bead, she also said, “Porcelain.” Two more: “Brown glass with white rubbed over the raised marks. General, did you make these?” The general spat on the plate in front of him. “Oh,” Evvy said. Briar could tell she was thinking aloud. “You don’t make things. You have mages that make your beads for you. But you can use the spells that are put into all this writing?”
“Yes,” Jia Jui said. “That is how our magic is taught. Is this not the essence of your magic?”
“Our academic mages write spells on paper, or in books. It’s the speaking of them, sometimes with scents, herbs, inks, and other aids, that helps them to complete the working,” Rosethorn explained quietly.
Evvy wasn’t listening. She was passing the string of beads through her fingers. “Wood. Briar, what wood is this?”
Briar reached over her shoulder and sent out a tendril of his own power. “Willow.”
Evvy wrinkled her nose. “Wood’s no fun for me, either,” she explained to the emperor and the mage general. She seemed to have forgotten that Hengkai was angry. Briar knew that she was sunk into her power, letting her own stone magic spread around her hands. Her fingers sped over more beads. She had missed a big one, but Briar did not call her attention to it. Either it was the detested porcelain, or Evvy would return to it.
“Maybe you asked the wrong student for this test — oh!” Evvy stopped. “Wait a moment….”
She worked her fingers back past flat rectangles of willow etched with circles centered on holes, past bone cylinders dense with ancient Yanjingyi letters, and past three brown glass cylinders. When her hand found a round grayish-white bead studded with small red spots, she stopped.
“Interesting,” she said, turning the bead over. “There’s spells in each of the red beads stuck in this marble globe. Even though they’re glass I can tell because the magic soaks into the stone.” She looked up at the emperor. “The main bead is marble. It changes magic. That’s how I can tell what’s in the glass beads.”
“Nonsense.” One of the other mages from the previous night walked up to stand before the table near Hengkai. It was the older one, the man with silver hair and mustaches. “All know that marble houses magic and protects it.”
Evvy ignored him. “Whatever’s in these beads is nasty, and each one is different. There’s illness — smallpox in one and cholera in another. Fire in three, one very hot, two more normal. Choking smoke in two, and icy wind in one. The gold rings around each red bead keep the magic from leaking onto the top of the marble, so only the general knows he carries these. He’s got …” Evvy hauled up the loops of the necklace, her black eyes scanning it for the pale orbs. She looked at the emperor. “Twenty of them.” She scowled at the general. “And you wear another necklace and bracelets like this wrapped around your arms, all loaded with bad magic.”