Free The Black Queen (Book 6) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page A

don’t think things are going to be quiet any more.”

 
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
    BRIDGE FACED THE WINDOW, controlling his temper. The early spring sunlight, usually something that cheered him, now only irritated him. He spread his legs out and clasped his hands behind his back as he often did when contemplating the city below him: Nir, the capitol of Nye, where he had spent all but eighteen years of his miserable life.
    How often had he looked out this window at the street vendors hawking their wares, the stone buildings and the cobblestone streets, the brightly colored flags waving in the faint breeze? He hated the flags more than anything else. They still had a nationalistic air that he had tried to breed out of this wretched little country. Blue flags for stores which carried only Nyeian merchandise; yellow, green, red and purple for items made in other countries; and the new addition since Nye had become part of the Fey Empire 40 years ago: the black flag, for items that came from some unidentifiable part of the Fey Empire.
    When his grandfather Rugad had left to conquer Blue Isle—and to die there, the arrogant old bastard—Bridge had banned those flags. But the Nyeians found a way to impart the information anyway. Blue ribbon binding fabric or a bit of blue cloth in the front of a display window. The issue of the flags caused so much surreptitious behavior that Bridge actually worried it would lead to a rebellion. Eventually he brought back the flags as a gesture of good will. But he hated them. He saw them as a symbol of his failure as ruler.
    Behind him, a chair squeaked. So his daughter was growing restless. Good. Let her and that fop she had chosen for a husband stew for a moment. Bridge wanted to deal with them calmly, not in full temper as she had expected.
    He tightened the grip on his own wrist. Between her silly request and the strange feeling he had had all day, controlling that temper would be difficult. He made himself take a deep breath.
    Below him, Nyeians, in their thick, frilly clothing, went in and out of stores, stopping at the street vendors, and carrying large purses into the new Bank of Nye. The new Bank of Nye. He smiled, this time truly amused. The new Bank of Nye was 40 years old. It was the brick building across the street which looked prosperous and settled against the cobblestone. His palace was the old Bank of Nye, an ancient stone building shaped like a fortress. His grandfather had claimed it as Fey headquarters when the Fey conquered Nye, and the Black Family had lived here ever since.
    This branch of the Black Family anyway. The poor relations. The branch with lackluster Vision. What other epithet could he think of? Probably every one his grandfather had hurled at him in the years after Bridge’s sister Jewel died. Now the Empire was being ruled by Jewel’s daughter, a half-breed who had never been to Galinas, had never been out of her little Isle. And she had decreed that the years of Fey conquest were over, that the Empire was complete.
    His grandfather’s spirit had to be restless. The girl was changing everything the Fey stood for.
    No more conquests meant no more warriors. And the Fey had always been warriors. With increasing frequency, Bridge had to deal with loose bands of Foot Soldiers attacking random targets, trying to create trouble where there was none. He had heard stories like that throughout the Empire.
    This Arianna, so unlike her historical namesake, didn’t know the trouble she had brought with this long peace. Sometimes even he forgot what war felt like, and he had spent his first eighteen years in battle.
    A discreet cough sounded behind him, reminding him of the folly of his own children.
    “Daddy?”
    His daughter Lyndred had no patience. That was one of the reasons she sat behind him now. She thought she could control him by putting pressure on him. And, to her credit, she had once been able to do so, until he realized that she was just like his sister