Free The Law of Isolation by Angela Holder

quickly bowed his head in deference, raising the window-glass higher in offering.
    Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of motion as the Matriarch gestured. Her steward rose from beside her and took the window-glass from Gevan’s hands. Gevan raised his head and watched the man pass the long metal tube to the Matriarch.
    She slid the two pieces apart and together. Gevan had polished and oiled them so the motion would be smooth and easily controlled. She tilted the device one way and then the other, surveying the large lens at one end and the smaller lens opposite. At length she looked down at Gevan. Her voice was low, curt in the way of one accustomed to having every word obeyed as absolute law. “Show me how the device works.”
    “Yes, your majesty.” Gevan rose. The Matriarch’s guards permitted him to step onto the dais and come to her side. He bowed low before her. She beckoned him close and handed the window-glass back to him.
    He pushed the halves together, to the position he knew from much experimentation was close to where the lenses would focus for people with average vision. “Hold the smaller end up to your eye, your majesty, like this.” He demonstrated. “Point the larger end at what you wish to see. Might I suggest the musician’s gallery?” He gestured far down the long hall, to a balcony holding a small group of string and wind players. “Look through it and adjust the length until the image becomes clear.”
    He handed the window-glass back to the Matriarch. She raised it to her eye, careful not to let the lens touch her skin and smudge the paint. She was quick to grasp the mechanism of adjustment. Many of Gevan’s colleagues had fumbled and fussed and demanded he set the focus for them, but the Matriarch slid the pieces in and out for only a moment before she found the correct place.
    Her reddened lips parted a tiny slit, and her flagpole-straight spine straightened a further degree. She looked long and hard through the window-glass. She shifted it a bit to the left, then to the right, taking long pauses to absorb what she saw.
    Abruptly she rose. Her attendants scrambled to attention. She strode across the dais and down the steps to the main floor of the hall. Gevan trailed behind her, heart pounding, unsure what she intended to do.
    The Matriarch headed for one of the high arched windows piercing the long walls of the chamber. Courtiers bustled aside to open a path. She gave an imperious wave of her free hand. “Open this so I can look out.”
    Her steward hastened to unfasten the catches and swing the tall panes of leaded glass outward. As soon as he backed out of the way, the Matriarch stepped closer to the window, heedless of the way her wide formal skirts pressed against the stone wall. She raised the window-glass to her eye and swept it across the panoramic view of the city spreading down from the palace hill.
    For a long time everyone in the hall waited, hushed, as the Matriarch continued her trial of the device. Finally, she lowered it and turned to Gevan. “Professor Navorre, I congratulate you. You have indeed discovered the secret of the ancient wizards’ windows. It is in all respects just as you have claimed.”
    A broad grin spread across Gevan’s face. He struggled to prevent it becoming as wide and silly as feared it might. Instead, he bowed again. “My thanks, your majesty. Please accept it as a gift, to you and to Ramunna.”
    “On behalf of Ramunna, I accept.” The Matriarch swept back to her throne and seated herself. Gevan followed, along with her attendants. She held the window-glass in her lap and turned it around and around, hands caressing every contour of the metal. “Does the device—has it a name?—duplicate all the functions of the ancients’ windows?”
    “I call it a window-glass, your majesty.” Gevan must tread carefully. He dared not risk making claims his invention couldn’t fulfill, but he didn’t want to dampen the Matriarch’s