Law of the Broken Earth

Book 3: The Griffin Mage Trilogy

by Rachel Neumeier

Genres: Epic Fantasy; General Fiction

Synopsis

In Feierabiand, in the wide green Delta, far from the burning heat of the griffin's desert, Mienthe's peaceful life has been shaken. Tan-clever, cynical, and an experienced spy-has brought a deadly secret out of the neighboring country of Linularinum.



Now, as three countries and two species rush toward destruction, Mienthe fears that even her powerful cousin Bertaud may be neither able nor even willing to find a safe path between the secret Linularinum would kill to preserve and the desperate ferocity of the griffins. But can Mienthe?



And, in the end, will Tan help her or do everything in his power to stand in her way?

Release date: January 1, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 464

Sample

Mienthe did not remember her mother, and she was afraid of her father—a cold, harsh-voiced man with a scathing turn of phrase
when his children displeased him. He favored his son, already almost a young man when Mienthe was born, and left Mienthe largely
to the care of a succession of nurses—a succession because servants rarely stayed long in that house. If Mienthe had had no
one but the nurses, her childhood might have been bleak indeed. But she had Tef.


Tef was the gardener and a man of general work. He had been a soldier for many years and lost a foot in a long-ago dispute
with Casmantium. Tef was no longer young and he walked with a crutch, but he was not afraid of Mienthe’s father. It never
crossed Mienthe’s mind that he might give notice.


Despite the lack of a foot, Tef carried Mienthe through the gardens on his shoulders. He also let her eat her lunches with
him in the kitchen, showed her how to cut flowers so they would stay fresh longer, and gave her a kitten that grew into an enormous slit-eyed gray cat. Tef could speak
to cats and so there were always cats about the garden and his cottage, but none of them were as huge or as dignified as the
gray cat he gave Mienthe.


When Mienthe was seven, one of her nurses started teaching her her letters. But that nurse had only barely shown her how to
form each letter and spell her own name before Mienthe’s father raged at her about Good paper left out in the weather and When are you going to teach that child to keep in mind what she is about? A sight more valuable than teaching a mere girl
how to spell, and the nurse gave him notice and Mienthe a tearful farewell. After that, Tef got out a tattered old gardener’s compendium
and taught Mienthe her letters himself. Mienthe could spell Tef’s name before her own, and she could spell bittersweet and catbrier and even quaking grass long before she could spell her father’s name. As her father did not notice she had learned to write at all, this did not
offend him.


Tef could not teach Mienthe embroidery or deportment, but he taught Mienthe to ride by putting her up on her brother’s outgrown
pony and letting her fall off until she learned to stay on, which, fortunately, her brother never discovered, and he taught
her to imitate the purring call of a contented gray jay and the rippling coo of a dove and the friendly little chirp of a
sparrow so well she could often coax one bird or another to take seeds or crumbs out of her hand.


“It’s good you can keep the cats from eating the birds,” Mienthe told Tef earnestly. “But do you mind?” People who could speak
to an animal, she knew, never liked constraining the natural desires of that animal.


“I don’t mind,” said Tef, smiling down at her. He was sitting perfectly still so he wouldn’t frighten the purple-shouldered
finch perched on Mienthe’s finger. “The cats can catch voles and rabbits. That’s much more useful than birds. I wonder if
you’ll find yourself speaking to some of the little birds one day? That would be pretty and charming.”


Mienthe gazed down at the finch on her finger and smiled. But she said, “It wouldn’t be very useful. Not like speaking to
cats is to you.”


Tef shrugged, smiling. “You’re Lord Beraod’s daughter. You don’t need to worry about being useful. Anyway, your father would
probably be better pleased with an animal that was pretty and charming than one that’s only useful.”


This was true. Mienthe wished she was pretty and charming herself, like a finch. Maybe her father… But she moved her hand
too suddenly then, and the bird flew away with a flash of buff and purple, and she forgot her half-recognized thought.


When Mienthe was nine, a terrible storm came pounding out of the sea into the Delta. The storm uprooted trees, tore the roofs
off houses, flooded fields, and drowned dozens of people who happened to be in the path of its greatest fury. Among those
who died were Mienthe’s brother and, trying to rescue him from the racing flood, her father.


Mienthe was her father’s sole heir. Tef explained this to her. He explained why three uncles and five cousins—none of whom
Mienthe knew, but all with young sons—suddenly appeared and began to quarrel over which of them might best give her a home.
Mienthe tried to understand what Tef told her, but everything was suddenly so confusing. The quarrel had something to do with the
sons, and with her. “I’m… to go live with one of them? Somewhere else?” she asked anxiously. “Can’t you come, too?”


“No, Mie,” Tef said, stroking her hair with his big hand. “No, I can’t. Not one of your uncles or cousins would permit that.
But you’ll do well, do you see? I’m sure you’ll like living with your uncle Talenes.” Tef thought Uncle Talenes was going
to win the quarrel. “You’ll have his sons to play with and a nurse who will stay longer than a season and an aunt to be fond
of you.”


Tef was right about one thing: In the end, Uncle Talenes vanquished the rest of the uncles and cousins. Uncle Talenes finally
resorted to the simple expedient of using his thirty men-at-arms—no one else had brought so many—to appropriate Mienthe and
carry her away, leaving the rest to continue their suddenly pointless argument without her.


But Tef was wrong about everything else.

Uncle Talenes lived several days’ journey from Kames, where Mienthe’s father’s house was, in a large high-walled house outside
Tiefenauer. Uncle Talenes’s house had mosaic floors and colored glass in the windows and a beautiful fountain in the courtyard.
All around the fountain were flower beds, vivid blooms tumbling over their edges. Three great oaks in the courtyard held cages
of fluttering, sweet-voiced birds. Mienthe was not allowed to splash in the fountain no matter how hot the weather. She was
allowed to sit on the raked gravel under the trees as long as she was careful not to tear her clothing, but she could not
listen to the birds without being sorry for the cages.


Nor, aside from the courtyard, were there any gardens. The wild Delta marshes began almost directly outside the gate and ran
from the house all the way to the sea. The tough salt grasses would cut your fingers if you swung your hand through them,
and mosquitoes whined in the heavy shade.


“Stay out of the marsh,” Aunt Eren warned Mienthe. “There are snakes and poisonous frogs, and quicksand if you put a foot
wrong. Snakes, do you hear? Stay close to the house. Close to the house. Do you understand me?” That was how she usually spoke to Mienthe: as though Mienthe were too young and stupid to understand
anything unless it was very simple and emphatically repeated.


Aunt Eren was not fond of Mienthe. She was not fond of children generally, but her sons did not much regard their mother’s
temper. Mienthe did not know what she could safely disregard and what she must take care for. She wanted to please her aunt,
only she was too careless and not clever enough and could not seem to learn how.


Nor did Aunt Eren hire a nurse for Mienthe. She said Mienthe was too old to need a nurse and should have a proper maid instead,
but then she did not hire one. Two of Aunt Eren’s own maids took turns looking after Mienthe instead, but she could see they
did not like to. Mienthe tried to be quiet and give them no bother.


Mienthe’s half cousins had pursuits and friends of their own. They were not in the least interested in the little girl so
suddenly thrust into their family, but they left her alone. Uncle Talenes was worse than either Aunt Eren or the boys. He
had a sharp, whining voice that made her think of the mosquitoes, and he was dismayed, dismayed to find her awkward and inarticulate in front of him and in front of the guests to whom he wanted to show her off. Was Mienthe perhaps not very clever? Then it was certainly a shame
she was not prettier, wasn’t it? How fortunate for her that her future was safe in his hands…


Mienthe tried to be grateful to her uncle for giving her a home, but she missed Tef.

Then, late in the year after Mienthe turned twelve, her cousin Bertaud came back to the Delta from the royal court. For days
no one spoke of anything else. Mienthe knew that Bertaud was another cousin, much older than she was. He had grown up in the
Delta, but he had gone away and no one had thought he would come back. Only recently something had happened, some trouble
with Casmantium, or with griffins, or somehow with both, and now he seemed to have come back to stay. Mienthe wondered why
her cousin had left the Delta, but she wondered even more why he had returned. She thought that if she ever left the Delta, she never would come back.


But her cousin Bertaud even took up his inheritance as Lord of the Delta. This seemed to shock and offend Uncle Talenes, though
Mienthe was not sure why, if it was his rightful inheritance. He took over the great house in Tiefenauer, sending Mienthe’s
uncle Bodoranes back to his personal estate, and he dismissed all the staff. His dismissal of the staff seemed to shock and
offend Aunt Eren as much as his mere return had Uncle Talenes. Both agreed that Bertaud must be high-handed and arrogant and
vicious. Yes, it was vicious, uprooting poor Bodoranes like that after all his years and years of service, while Bertaud had lived high in the court and ignored the Delta. And flinging out all those people into the cold!
But, well, yes, he was by blood Lord of the Delta, and perhaps there were ways to make the best of it… One might even have to note that Bodoranes
had been regrettably obstinate in some respects…


Since the weather in the Delta was warm even this late in the fall, Mienthe wondered what her aunt could mean about flinging
people into the cold. And how exactly did Uncle Talenes mean to “make the best” of the new lord’s arrival?


“We need to see him, see what he’s like,” Uncle Talenes explained to his elder son, now seventeen and very interested in girls,
as long as they weren’t Mienthe. “He’s Lord of the Delta, for good or ill, and we need to get an idea of him. And we need
to be polite. Very, very polite. If he’s clever, he’ll see how much to everyone’s advantage raising the tariffs on Linularinan
glass would be”—Uncle Talenes was heavily invested in Delta glass and ceramics—“and if he’s less clever, then maybe he could
use someone cleverer to point out these things.”


Karre nodded, puffed up with importance because his father was explaining this to him. Mienthe, tucked forgotten in a chair
in the corner, understood finally that her uncle meant to bully or bribe the new Lord of the Delta if he could. She thought
he probably could. Uncle Talenes almost always got his own way.


And Uncle Talenes seemed likely to get his own way this time, too. Not many days after he’d returned to the Delta, Lord Bertaud
wrote accepting Talenes’s invitation to dine and expressing a hope that two days hence would be convenient, if he were to
call.


Aunt Eren stood over the servants while they scrubbed the mosaic floors and put flowers in every room and raked the gravel smooth in the drive. Uncle Talenes made sure his sons and Mienthe were well turned out, and that Aunt Eren was
wearing her most expensive jewelry, and he explained several times to the whole household, in ever more vivid terms, how important
it was to impress Lord Bertaud.


And precisely at noon on the day arranged, Lord Bertaud arrived.

The family resemblance was clear. He was dark, as all Mienthe’s uncles and cousins were dark; he was tall, as they all were
tall; and he had the heavy bones that made him look sturdy rather than handsome. He did not speak quickly and laugh often,
as Uncle Talenes did; indeed, his manner was so restrained he seemed severe. Mienthe thought he looked both edgy and stern,
and she thought there was an odd kind of depth to his eyes, a depth that somehow seemed familiar, although she could not put
a name to it.


Lord Bertaud accepted Uncle Talenes’s effusive congratulations on his return with an abstracted nod, and nodded again as Uncle
Talenes introduced his wife and sons. He did not seem to be paying very close attention, but he frowned when Uncle Talenes
introduced Mienthe.


“Beraod’s daughter?” he asked. “Why is she here with you?”

Smiling down at Mienthe possessively, Talenes explained about the storm and how he had offered poor Mienthe a home. He brought
her forward to greet her lord cousin, but Lord Bertaud’s sternness frightened her, so after she whispered her proper greeting
she could not think of anything to say to him.


“Manners, Mienthe,” Aunt Eren sighed reproachfully, and Uncle Talenes confided to Lord Bertaud that Mienthe was not, perhaps, very clever. Terre and Karre rolled their eyes and
nudged each other. Mienthe longed to flee out to the courtyard. She flushed and looked fixedly at the mosaics underfoot.


Lord Bertaud frowned.

The meal was awful. The food was good, but Aunt Eren snapped at the maids and sent one dish back to the kitchens because it
was too spicy and she was sure, as she repeated several times, that Lord Bertaud must have lost his taste for spicy food away
in the north. Uncle Talenes worked smooth comments into the conversation about the brilliance with which Bertaud had handled
the recent problems with Casmantium. And with the griffins, so there had been something to do with griffins. Mienthe gathered that Feierabiand had been at war with the griffins, or maybe with Casmantium,
or maybe with both at the same time, or else one right after the other. And then maybe there had been something about griffins
again, and a wall.


It was all very confusing. Mienthe knew nothing about griffins and couldn’t imagine what a wall had to do with anything, but
she wondered why her uncle, usually so clever, did not see that Lord Bertaud did not want to talk about the recent problems,
whatever they had exactly involved. Lord Bertaud grew more and more remote. Mienthe fixed her eyes on her plate and moved
food around so it might seem she had eaten part of it.


Lord Bertaud said little himself. Uncle Talenes gave complicated, assured explanations of why the tariffs between the Delta
and Linularinum should be raised. Aunt Eren told him at great length about the shortcomings of the Tiefenauer markets and assured him that the Desamion markets on the other side of the river were no better. When Uncle
Talenes and Aunt Eren left pauses in the flow of words, Lord Bertaud asked Terre about hunting in the marshes and Karre about
the best places in Tiefenauer to buy bows and horses, and listened to their enthusiastic answers with as much attention as
he’d given to their parents’ discourse.


And he told Mienthe he was sorry to hear about her loss and asked whether she liked living in Tiefenauer with Uncle Talenes.

The question froze Mienthe in her seat. She could not answer truthfully, but she had not expected her lord cousin to speak
to her at all and was too confused to lie. The silence that stretched out was horribly uncomfortable.


Then Uncle Talenes sharply assured Lord Bertaud that of course Mienthe was perfectly happy, didn’t he provide everything she
needed? She was great friends with his son Terre; the two would assuredly wed in two years, as soon as Mienthe was old enough.
Terre glanced sidelong at his father’s face, swallowed, and tried to sound enthusiastic as he agreed. Karre leaned his elbow
on the table and grinned at his brother. Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe for her discourtesy in failing to answer her lord cousin’s
question.


“I am happy,” Mienthe whispered dutifully, but something made her add, risking a quick glance up at her lord cousin, “Only
sometimes I miss Tef.”


“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked her gently.

Mienthe flinched under Aunt Eren’s cold glare and opened her mouth, but she did not know how to answer this question and in
the end only looked helplessly at Lord Bertaud. Tef was Tef; it seemed impossible to explain him.


“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked Uncle Talenes.

Uncle Talenes shook his head, baffled. “A childhood friend?” he guessed.

Mienthe stared down at her plate and wished passionately that she was free to run out to the courtyard and hide under the
great oaks. Then Uncle Talenes began to talk about tariffs and trade again, and the discomfort was covered over. But to Mienthe
the rest of the meal seemed to last for hours and hours, even though in fact her lord cousin departed the house long before
dusk.


Once he was gone, Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe again for clumsiness and discourtesy—Any well-bred girl should be able to respond
gracefully to a simple question, and why ever had Mienthe thought Lord Bertaud would want to hear about some little friend
from years past? Anyone would have thought Mienthe had no sense of gratitude for anything Talenes had done for her, and no one liked an ungrateful child. Look up, Mienthe, and say, “Yes, Aunt Eren,” properly. She was much too old to sulk like a spoiled toddler, and Aunt Eren wouldn’t have it.


Mienthe said Yes, Aunt Eren, and No, Aunt Eren, and looked up when she was bidden to, and down when she could, and at last her aunt allowed her to escape to the courtyard.
Mienthe tucked herself up next to the largest of the oaks and wished desperately for Tef. Speaking his name to her cousin
had made her remember him too clearly.


Six days after Lord Bertaud’s visit, not long after dawn, a four-horse coach with the king’s badge in gold scrollwork on one door and the Delta’s in silver on the other arrived at the house unannounced. It swished around the drive and pulled
up by the front entrance. The driver, a grim-looking older man with the king’s badge on his shoulder, set the brake, leaped
down from his high seat, opened the coach door, and placed a step so his passenger could step down.


The man who descended from the coach, Mienthe saw, did not fit the image implied by its elegance. He looked to be a soldier
or a guardsman, not a nobleman. By his bearing, he was well enough bred, but no one extraordinary. But he wore the king’s
badge on one shoulder and the Delta’s on the other. Mienthe did not move from the window seat of her room. She was curious
about the visitor, but not enough to put herself in her uncle’s way.


She was surprised when Karre put his head through her door a moment later and said, “Father wants you. In his study. Hurry
up, can’t you?”


Mienthe stared after Karre when he had vanished. Her heart sank, for whatever Uncle Talenes wanted, she already knew she would
not be able to do it, or at least would not be able to do it properly, or would not want to do it. Probably he wanted to show
her off to the visitor. Mienthe knew she would look stiff and slow and that Uncle Talenes would regretfully tell his visitor
that she was not very clever. But Karre called impatiently from out in the hall, so she reluctantly got to her feet.


She was not surprised to find the visitor with Uncle Talenes when she came into the study, but she was surprised at Uncle Talenes’s expression and manner. Her uncle liked to show her to his friends and talk about what he would
do with her father’s estate when she married Terre, but this time he did not look like he had brought her in to show her off. He looked angry, but stifled, as though he
was afraid to show his anger too clearly.


In contrast, the visitor looked… not quite oblivious of Uncle Talenes’s anger, Mienthe thought. No, he looked like he knew
Uncle Talenes was angry, but also like he did not mind his anger in the least. Mienthe admired him at once: She never felt anything but afraid and ashamed when Uncle Talenes was angry with her.


“Mienthe? Daughter of Beraod?” asked the visitor, but not as though he had any doubt as to who she was. He regarded Mienthe
with lively interest. He was not smiling, but his wide expressive mouth looked like it would smile easily. She nodded uncertainly.


“Mienthe—” began Uncle Talenes.

The visitor held up a hand, and he stopped.

Mienthe gazed at this oddly powerful stranger with nervous amazement, waiting to hear what he wanted with her. She felt suspended
in the moment, as in the eye of a soundless storm; she felt that her whole life had narrowed to this one point and that in
a moment, when the man spoke, the storm would break. But she could not have said whether she was terrified of the storm or
longed for it to come.


“I am Enned son of Lakas, king’s man and servant of the Lord of the Delta,” declared the young man. “Your cousin Bertaud son
of Boudan, Lord of the Delta by right of blood and let of His Majesty Iaor Safiad, bids me bring you to him. He has decided
that henceforward you will live with him in his house. You are to make ready at once and come back with me this very day.”
Looking at Uncle Talenes, he added warningly, “And you are not to fail of this command, on pain of Lord Bertaud’s great displeasure.”


“This is outrageous—” Uncle Talenes began.

The young man held up a hand again. “I merely do as I’m bid,” he said, so sternly that Uncle Talenes stopped midprotest. “If
you wish to contend with this order, Lord Talenes, you must carry your protest to the Lord of the Delta.”


Mienthe looked at the stranger—Enned son of Lakas—for a long moment, trying to understand what he had said. She faltered at
last, “I am to go with you?”


“Yes,” said Enned, and he did smile then.

“I am not to come back?”

“No,” agreed the young man. He looked at Uncle Talenes. “It will not take long to gather Mienthe’s things,” he said. The way
he said it, it was not a question but a command.


“I—” said Uncle Talenes. “My wife—”

“The lord’s house is not so far away that you will not be able to visit, if it pleases you to do so,” Enned said. He did not
say that Mienthe would visit Uncle Talenes’s house.


“But—” said Uncle Talenes.

“I am to return before noon. We will need to depart in less than an hour,” said the young man inflexibly. “I am quite certain
it will not take long to gather Mienthe’s things.”


Uncle Talenes stared at the young man, then at Mienthe. He said to Mienthe, within his voice a note of conciliation she had
never before heard, “Mienthe, this is outrageous—it is insupportable! You must tell the esteemed, ah, the esteemed Enned son
of Lakas, you will certainly stay here, among people who know you and have your best interests close at heart—”


Mienthe gazed into her uncle’s face for a moment. Then she lowered her gaze and stared fixedly at the floor.

Uncle Talenes flung up his hands and went out. Mienthe heard him shouting for Aunt Eren and for the servants. She lifted her
head, giving the esteemed Enned son of Lakas a cautious glance out of the corner of her eye.


The young man smiled at her. “We shall leave them to it. Where shall we wait where we will be out of the way?”

Mienthe led the way to the courtyard.

Enned son of Lakas admired the huge oaks and trailed his hand in the fountain. Mienthe stood uncertainly, looking at him,
and he turned his head and smiled at her again.


His smile lit his eyes and made Mienthe want to smile back, though she did not, in case he might find it impudent. But the
smile gave her the courage to ask again, “I am not to come back?”


“That’s as my lord wills,” Enned said seriously. “But I think it most unlikely.”

Mienthe thought about this. Then she turned and, going from one of the great oaks to the next, she stood on her toes, reached
up as high as she could, and opened the doors to all the cages one after another.


The birds swirled out and swept around the courtyard in a flurry of sky blue and delicate green, soft primrose yellow and
pure white. The palest blue one landed for a moment on Mienthe’s upraised hand, and then all the birds darted up and over
the walls and out into the broad sky.


Mienthe lowered her hand slowly once all of the birds were gone. When she nervously looked at Enned, she found that although
he was looking at her intently and no longer smiling, his expression was only resigned rather than angry.


“Well,” he said, “I suppose I can pay for those, if Lord Talenes asks.”

Uncle Talenes did not ask. He was too busy trying to persuade Mienthe that she really wanted to stay with his family. Aunt
Eren tried, too, though not very hard. Mienthe looked steadfastly at the floor of Uncle Talenes’s study, and then at the mosaic
floor of the entry hall, and then at the gravel of the drive. When Enned asked her if everything was packed that should be,
she nodded without even glancing up.


“Well, you can send back if anything is missing,” Enned told her, and to Uncle Talenes, “Thank you, Lord Talenes, and my lord
sends his thanks as well.” Then he handed Mienthe formally into the coach and signaled the driver, and the horses tossed up
their heads and trotted smartly around the sweep of the drive and out onto the raised road that led through the deep marshlands
into Tiefenauer.


Mienthe settled herself on the cushioned bench and fixed her gaze out the window. A bird called in the marshes—not the little
brightly colored ones from the cages, but something that sounded larger and much wilder.


“You will like the great house,” Enned said to her, but not quite confidently.

“Yes,” Mienthe answered obediently, dropping her eyes to her folded hands in her lap.

“You cannot have been happy living with your uncle, surely?” Enned asked, but he sounded uncertain. “Now we are away, will you not speak plainly to me? My lord did not mean to
take you away from a house where you were happy. He will send you back if you ask him.”


Mienthe turned her head and stared at the man. “But you said he would not send me back?” Then, as Enned began to answer, she
declared passionately, “I will never go back—I will run into the marshes first, even if there are snakes and poisonous frogs!”


“Good for you!” answered Enned, smiling again. “But I think that will not be necessary.”

He sounded cheerful once more. Mienthe looked at her hands and did not reply.

The great house was not what she had expected, though she had not realized she expected anything until she found herself surprised.
It was not neatly self-contained, but rather long and rambling. It occupied all the top of a long, low hill near the center
of town. It had one wing sweeping out this way and another angled back this way and a third spilling down the hill that way, as though whoever had built it had never paused to think what the whole would look like when he had designed the parts.
It was made of red brick and gray stone and pale cypress wood, and it was surrounded by sweeping gardens—not formal gardens
such as at her father’s house, but wild-looking shrubberies with walks winding away into them.


The house was huge, but nearly all the windows were tight-shuttered, and there was nothing of the crowded clamor that should
have occupied so great a dwelling. Mienthe remembered that her lord cousin was supposed to have dismissed all the staff. She
would have liked to ask Enned about this, but she did not quite dare. The coach swept around the wide drive and drew to a halt, and the driver jumped down to put the step in place. Enned descended
and turned to offer Mienthe his hand.


Lord Bertaud came out of the house before they quite reached it. He looked tired and distracted. Behind the tiredness and
distraction was that other, darker depth that Mienthe could not quite recognize. But his expression lightened when he saw
her, and he came down the steps and took Mienthe’s hands in his.


“Cousin!” he said. “Welcome!” He smiled down at her with every evidence of pleased satisfaction. The darkness in his eyes,
if it had been there at all, was hidden by his smi