The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

the name then closed to mere slits. “No man, or woman, is my superior, madam. And I am the owner of this establishment. You do not have an appointment.”
    The door slammed in their faces.
    “Hmf!” M’ma sniffed her disgust. “I’ll have your father track down the true owner of this factory. That ungrateful peasant will be fired for his insolence to us. Everyone knows you can’t trust dark-eyes. They are born stupid and dishonest.”
    “You shouldn’t have insulted him, M’ma,” Katrina whispered.
    “I don’t want to do business with anyone who hires outland half-breeds.” M’ma marched back up the alley. “No wonder the country is falling to pieces. First the queen marries a foreigner, and now inferiors are allowed positions of authority.”
    A few more twists and turns in the back streets brought them to another grim factory. This time the green door wasn’t newly painted and the brass fittings needed a good polish.
    The man inside the office was small, wiry, and as filthy as M’ma thought the outlander had been. He bought the design, but only after M’ma had sworn that no one else in the city had it.
    “We will try the next two factories. That should give us enough money to last the month.” M’ma smiled brightly as she secreted the coins inside her embroidered vest.
    “But, M’ma, you just swore that no one else in the city had the design!” Katrina protested almost as loudly as her empty stomach.
    “And no one else does. Yet,” M’ma replied.
    “Isn’t that illegal?”
    “This is a matter of survival, Katey.”
    “Oh, M’ma, this seems so wrong so . . . so dirty. Please, don’t make me come back here.”
     
    “Lord Jonnias?” Rejiia whispered into her father’s glass. “You could depose Darville and rule all of Coronnan if you destroyed the Commune. You know where the Commune hides.” That piece of information had come to her with the cost of many spells and the lives of several informers—none of them Jaylor’s spy here in the capital. Now she revealed the secret to Jonnias.
    The image of the sleeping lord squirmed within the candle flame behind Rejiia’s glass. The basic summons spell worked better than a compulsion with mundanes, if she spoke to them in their dreams. When they awoke, her words seemed her victim’s own ideas and they didn’t build up resistance to the spell as Rossemikka had to Janataea.
    “Take a witch-sniffer, Jonnias. Take him to the ancient monastery in the foothills of the southern mountains.” She waited a moment for that idea to settle in the lord’s mind. “You will need the troops of Marnak the Elder and the Younger plus your own. The wife of the Younger will provide you with a copy of the king’s personal banner to grant you authority. She will demand to go with you. Accede to her wishes.”
    The image of Jonnias smiled in his sleep. Pompous and arrogant he might be. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew that Darville and Jaylor had been friends most of their lives.
    “Jaylor will blame Darville for the attack when he sees the banner. If he survives the attack, their friendship will be broken. Then they will both be vulnerable.
    “You have followers within the new cult. They will make you king if you destroy the Commune.”
    “Yes,” Jonnias whispered in his sleep. “Yes.”
    Rejiia extinguished the flame, breaking her contact with the odious lord. She allowed herself a moment’s rest before she repeated the summons to Lord Marnak the Elder. The two were easy to manipulate. Their inflated sense of self-importance made them vulnerable to her plans. When their conspiracy failed because they overstepped their abilities to lead, she would abandon them. Until then, they served a purpose.
    A chuckle tickled the back of her throat. She wondered which one of them would be first to order a new crown made. The Coraurlia contained the taint of magic. They wouldn’t be able to justify using it if they used the Gnuls to achieve their goals.
    But the Coraurlia was the crown Rejiia sought. Its magical protection Sang to her in her dreams.
    She caressed the tin statue that sat beside her chair. “Soon, P’pa. Soon I will be queen. Then I will be able to set you free. By then I will have learned more magic and you must recognize me as your equal. I will not submit to you demeaning me in public again. Until then, I must send you by fishing boat and other secret ways to a place of safety.”
     
    (You are late.) A deep voice bellowed the words from