Free Fox's Bride by A.E. Marling Page B

be punished for me.
    Noble guests milled about the palace's blue-tinted interior, much as they had the previous day. The carpets of flowers had been replaced with petals of blues and reds. The nobility parted before the tromp of the royal guards, who shoved Chandur to his knees before the most powerful man in the empire.
    T he vizier wore a simple skirt below a plain robe that lay open at the chest, both garments screaming humility. A false beard of blue porcelain pointed down to the writing table a scribe held before him. Leather tied about the vizier’s ears held the glazed goatee to his chin. Ink speckled his right hand while his left held the one concession to his high office, his opal and gilt staff.
    Hiresha pushed her way to stand between him and the spellsword. “Vizier Ankhset, I did attempt to leave the city with Spellsword Chandur, yet we had nothing to do with whatever happened to the fennec.”
    The vizier did not look up from his writing. He said, “The city would never imply that the god of fortune would be mistaken in his choice of bride. No such immunity extends to your spellsword. This is the writ for his execution by venom, to be performed in three days’ time.”
    The spellsword did not flinch. Hiresha clawed her gloved fingers at the jewels stitched into their silk palms. She glared at the vizier, though he never bothered to notice. “I can vouch for Chandur,” she said. “Do not issue that order.”
    The vizier ignored her and rolled a patterned cylinder over clay at the bottom of the scroll. His seal affixed, he passed it to a scribe who handled it with more care than a relic.
    Hiresha stepped toward the scribe, knowing through her haze of weariness only that she had to destroy that edict before it killed Chandur. Two royal guards blocked her with the shafts of their polearms.
    “The city,” the vizier said, “is willing to countermand the spellsword's sentence. If four conditions are satisfied.”
    Her relief for Chandur came with a twisting sense of doom. “Four conditions?”
    “Enchantress Hiresha will bequeath her Morimound estate and the entirety of her movable assets to the city.” The vizier handed another scroll to a scribe.
    “Your sign here.” The scribe pressed a quill into her grasp.
    “A family is living in that manor.” Hiresha's hand trembled as she thought of forcing the widow and her children out. She also assumed the empire would take Hiresha’s stores of jewels in the Academy, which amounted to most of what little she had accumulated in her life.
    The vizier began writing again. “The monies are necessary restitution to the captains whose ships were destroyed today.”
    “You can't blame me for that faulty pursuit.”
    The vizier matched Hiresha's shout with a whisper. “Neither would I blame the priests their rashness in trying to recover the divine fennec, considering the city stands to lose an estimated fifty-seven hundred thousand ounces of silver per day the god is missing.”
    One glance at Chandur firmed her resolve. She beckoned to Maid Janny, who gave the enchantress an ebony stick. Hiresha pricked her tongue with one end to prime its enchantment. Touching the other end to the scroll caused ink to flow outward into the circular design of a diamond uniquely faceted.
    Hiresha flung the signing stick onto the glass floor. I'll earn new gems, she promised herself, and live long enough to craft them.
    “The Golden Scoundrel must be retrieved,” the vizier said, “before his scheduled procession tomorrow afternoon.”
    “By tomorrow?” Her mind contorted around the idea of finding a fox that tiny in a city this large.
    The vizier did not even look at his scribe when he handed the next papyrus. “An individual must be executed for absconding with the god. The masses will demand it. It is up to you to provide an alternative.”
    Hiresha dared to hope she would find the fennec with whoever had stolen him. That is three conditions. She feared she already knew