The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

friendship continues. They cannot join forces against me.
    I am next in line to the throne. I must be heir, me or my child. I know the babe I carry is male. If I return to Coronnan and my hideous husband before the birth, Coronnan will be reminded of the true heirs. The people will support me and a child they will come to know over the distant bastard who is rumored to have great magic. Danger lies in the journey so close to my time. If only I had the transport spell!
    Simeon has become useless to me. He is obsessed with the little lacemaker. Night and day he plots and schemes for her death, neglecting his royal duties and his place in the coven. If he is not careful, Queen Miranda will awaken from her coma and denounce him.
    I have not the time to puzzle over this.
     
    “You cannot forbid me my right to worship in the temple!” Katrina screamed at Owner Brunix. “Even slaves have the right to worship in the temple.”
    “ ’Tis not I who forbids, but King Simeon,” Brunix replied. “I have had this day a letter from him. If you leave the confines of this building for any reason, you will be arrested for treason.”
    “Treason? What am I supposed to have done? All day, every day, I am here, working.” She paced a circle around her pillow stand in the center of the owner’s private sitting room. Sunlight spilled through the real glass in the skylight. More precious light filtered into the room from the thin slices of mica that covered the windows. “From dawn to sunset, I sit here, making lace. I sit here until my back refuses to straighten and my eyes are full of sand. I work until my hands cramp from holding the bobbins hour after hour. I work here in silence without even a time-honored song to relieve the strain.”
    “I have not been privileged with the exact charges against you.” Brunix’s eyes strayed to the nearly finished shawl on Katrina’s pillow. “Perhaps your treason has something to do with this?” He lifted the free end of gossamer lace made from silk spun almost as fine as the best linen.
    “King Simeon rejected the original shawl as unworthy.” Katrina wandered to one of the windows, unconsciously putting distance between herself and the owner. Her owner.
    “Yet he offered to forgive your treason and eliminate the restrictions placed upon me in your articles of enslavement if I will give him the original shawl, the pattern, and any copies we have made. I have also had an anonymous offer to purchase the shawl for a vast amount of money.”
    “What?” Katrina’s mind whirled.
    The runes! Each symbol told an entire story. Tattia must have woven information into the design, information damaging to the king. She had to find out how to read the ancient language.
    How? She couldn’t even go to the temple anymore to seek out a priest who could read the strange symbols.
    “What is in the shawl, Katrina? I can tell by your eyes that you know something.” Brunix closed the distance between them. His tall frame loomed over her. An implied menace rested in his clenched fists.
    “I do not know.”
    “Do not lie to me, Katrina Kaantille.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her to the corner window. “Look down there, Katrina. Look at the palace guard who stands watch on my doorstep. His companion stands at the river entrance ready to arrest you on sight. What does Simeon fear from you and the shawl?”
    “I . . . do not know.” She shrank back from the window lest the guard see her.
    “You need not fear him yet. I have summoned a band of my relatives and warded the building with Rover symbols. Enemies know better than to violate tribal sanctuary.”
    “The three yellow feathers tied with black string!” She had noticed the strange adornment hanging over every door on the ground floor yesterday on her way to the temple.
    “Tell me what you do know before I summon those guards inside.”
    “You would lose your best lacemaker and all the designs that are still in my head.” She couldn’t trust Brunix. His ambitions and resentments ran too deep and complicated. Katrina had no idea if he would use the knowledge of a secret code woven into the original shawl—but not into her new pattern—to help or harm her.
    “But if I arrange your death, or turn you over to the king, the ghost of your mother will cease to haunt my factory. The ghost of a suicide always follows blood kin to their death. Without Tattia Kaantille floating through my workroom, I could hire better lacemakers and