Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback Read Free Page A

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    Before nightfall, the old empress’s bier was placed upon a funeral
    boat painted red to guide her sunward. One priest cut the boat loose while the empress’s guard set it ablaze with fire arrows.
    Tern’s oldest advisor, a sage who had visited many foreign shrines
    in his youth, turned to her and said over the crackling flames and the lapping water, “You must rest well tonight, my liege. Tomorrow you
    will hold court before the Twenty-Seven Great Families. They must
    see in you your mother’s commanding presence, for all your tender
    years.”
    Tern knew perfectly well, as did he, that no matter how steely her
    composure, the Great Families would see her as an easy mark. But
    she merely nodded and retired to the meditation chamber.
    She did not sleep that night, although no one would have blamed
    her if she had. Instead, she thought long and hard about the problem before her. At times, as she inhaled the sweet incense, she wanted
    desperately to call her mother back from the funeral ship and ask her advice. But the advice her mother had already passed down to her
    during the years of her life would have to suffice.
    Two hours before dawn, she rang a silver bell to summon her
    servants. “Wake up the chancellor of the exchequer,” she said to
    them. “I need his advice.”
    The chancellor was not pleased to be roused from his sleep,
    and even less pleased when Tern explained her intent. “Buy off the
    Families?” he said. “It’s a bad precedent.”
    “We’re not buying them off,” Tern said severely. “We are displaying
    a bounty they cannot hope to equal. They will ask themselves, if the imperial house can afford to give away such treasures, what greater
    might is it concealing?”
    The chancellor grumbled and muttered, but accompanied Tern
    to the first treasury. The treasury’s walls were hung with silk scrolls painted with exquisite landscapes and piled high with illuminated
    books. The shapes of cranes and playful cats were stamped onto
    the books’ covers in gold leaf. Tiny ivory figurines no larger than a thumbnail were arrayed like vigilant armies, if not for the curious
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    fact that each one had the head of an extinct bird. Swords rested
    on polished stands, cabochons of opal and aquamarine gleaming
    from their gold-washed scabbards, their pale tassels decorated with
    knots sacred to the compass winds. There were crowns of braided
    wire cradling fossils inscribed with fractured prophecies, some still tangled with the hair of long-dead sovereigns, and twisted ropes of
    pearls perfectly graduated in size and color, from shimmering white
    to violet-gray to lustrous black.
    “None of these will do,” Tern said. “These are quotidian treasures,
    fit for rewarding captains, but not for impressing the Twenty-Seven
    Great Families.”
    The chancellor blanched. “Surely you don’t mean—”
    But the young empress had swept past him and was heading
    toward the second treasury. She drew out her heaviest key and
    opened the doors, which swung with deceptive ease on their hinges.
    The guards at the door eyed her nervously.
    The smell of salt water and kelp was suddenly strong. A dragon’s
    single, heavy-lidded eye opened in the darkness beyond the doors.
    “Who desires to drown?” asked the dragon spirit in a low, resonant
    voice. It sounded hopeful. Most people knew better than to disturb
    the guardian spirit.
    “I am Weave-the-Storm’s daughter,” Tern said. “They call me
    Early-Tern-Journeying.”
    The eye slitted. “So you are,” the dragon said, less threateningly.
    “I’ve never understood your dynasty’s need to change names at
    random intervals. It’s dreadfully confusing.”
    “Does the tradition trouble you?” Tern asked. “It would be difficult to change, but—”
    The light from the hallway glinted on the dragon’s long teeth.
    “Don’t trouble yourself on my account,” it said. Musingly, it added,
    “It’s remarkable how you resemble