The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

huddled together in the upstairs workroom for warmth and light.
    A picture of Tattia bent over her design board flashed before Katrina’s eyes. “She didn’t use a straight edge! She drew pictures. Pictures of flowers connected by a variety of entwined braids and nets.”
    Inspired by this insight, Katrina perched over the board again, removing all of the one thousand and more pins she had used as markers. Carefully she placed each of the precious pins into a magnetized box. A new piece of paper beneath the lace and she started over.
    Pins in the top corners and along the fanned edge across the lace. Then several more along the side edges to hold the thing in place. With a new vision of how the design flowed she traced the outside of each flower with pins at logical points. The center of each motif received appropriate pins, too.
    Tediously she traced each flower, following the lines of thread rather than any predetermined geometric pattern. The outside edges came easily. The inside motifs didn’t seem to conform.
    Again Katrina jumped up and paced the office, studying the lace from several new angles. The floral centers appeared too angular, too regular to match the rest of the design. They were almost like the ancient runes carved into the walls of the temple. Runes that represented the language before the Stargods brought the modern alphabet. The ancient writing was the foundation of the pictorial ledger language all women were taught to keep their household accounts. A forgotten language deemed too unimportant for those few men who needed to read.
    The rune in the lower right-hand corner suggested something illegal. The one in the upper right-hand corner showed ashes. She knew the symbol as part of the recipe for making soap—ashes and lye. But it was different somehow. A mood of menace lingered in the runes.
    How strange of Tattia to put such symbols in a gift for the queen!
    The sun shifted. A shadow fell across the lace obscuring her insight.
    ‘S’murgh it!” she cursed. “I need better light.”
    “You may not take the board to the workroom upstairs. I will not have the other lacemakers peering over your shoulder at the lace and gossiping about my newest venture.” Owner Brunix placed a long hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, affectionately.
    “Oh, you startled me.” Katrina jumped away from him. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up in instinctive fear of his touch. She had been so lost in her work she hadn’t noticed the sounds of doors opening and closing or footsteps.
    Brunix frowned at the distance she put between them. He didn’t say anything further until he sat behind his desk, in a position of unopposable authority. “You may carry your work to my apartment.” The top floor windows of thinnest mica and a skylight of real glass—coarse and mottled but genuine enough to bring the sunshine inside—offered the best visibility in the district. How many fortunes had he spent on that luxury?
    Katrina hesitated, reluctant to agree with him. He was right about the lighting. But she hoped she had escaped the necessity of ever returning to the intimacy of his private rooms. She looked at her board and the waning shaft of sunlight that now spread across his desk.
    “I’ll not press you to share my bed until the piece is finished. You may work in silent peace.” He scowled.
    His eyes were on an accounting ledger rather than on her, so she couldn’t tell whether she or the figures displeased him. She peeked at the ledger, upside down. Unlike her father and other merchants, Brunix used the feminine runic language to keep his books. Where had he learned it? Not from any normal teacher.
    Without a word she gathered her supplies under her arm. “You could thank me,” Brunix reminded her, still not looking up.
    “For what?”
    “For saving your eyes from strain. For delivering you from King Simeon, twice.”
    Katrina remained silent.
    “His Majesty thought the humiliation of being owned by a half-breed outlander would be greater than suffering through his perverted rituals.” Brunix peered at her speculatively. “The Simeon thought you would choose him over me. He made the mistake of underestimating you. I will not make the same mistake. I find great satisfaction in owning you. Me, a dark-eyed half-breed owning a true-blood woman. I own a Kaantille, one of the greatest lacemakers in the world, and all of your work belongs to me. All of it!”
    “You own my work,