Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

“Not to me,” Linna said. “Well, at least not at first. She came to one of my friends. A boy who lived in the palace. Milo.”

Megs’s heart skipped a beat. “Milo,” she repeated flatly, and the name threw her back in time, as it always did. She lay belly-down in a wheat field, watching her little brother infect her entire village with shadows, one by one. Starting with their own mother.

Megs loved Milo. But she hated him.

Linna didn’t notice the shift in Megs’s tone. She merely nodded. “Yes, Milo. The Commander appeared to Milo, told him she and the Empress were trapped in the Kingdom of –”

“What’s the place name of this Milo?”

The question caught Linna off-guard. “Out here, somewhere.” She shrugged. “Milo of … the East. I can’t remember exactly. He was being held captive by mountain men and members of the Order of Targhan here in the mountains when the Commander rescued him. Anyway, Milo told the Commander –”

“Can this Milo …” Megs wasn’t sure how to word her question. Or rather, she did know how to word it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. “Can Milo infect others with shadows?”

“Actually … yes.” Linna’s dark brows drew together and she studied Megs carefully. “How did you know?”

A chill traveled down Megs’s spine. Her hands trembled. They wanted something to hold onto, perhaps because it felt as though the whole world was about to capsize.

She loved Milo. She hated him.

“My baby brother’s name was Milo,” Megs said. She kept her voice neutral. “I watched him infect my entire village with shadows.”

Linna’s eyes widened. “That’s him! That’s the same Milo. The Commander told me about what happened at his village. He’s your brother? Megs, this is incredible, this is –”

Megs curled her hands into fists, fingernails biting hard into her palms. “Milo betrayed our parents. He betrayed our whole family – our village.”

“No, that’s not …” Linna shook her head forcefully. “You don’t understand. Milo didn’t betray anyone. The Order of Targhan did something to him, turned his body into a … they called him the ‘gateway,’ turned his body itself is a portal between the mortal world and the Shadowlands. The Wise Men have been trying to fix him for years, but they …” She shook her head again, then dropped her voice. “Milo has never forgiven himself for what happened. But it wasn’t his fault. Surely you know he didn’t want to do that?”

Megs had watched Milo cry while he did it, while he touched each member of the village and sent the tell-tale smoke from his own body into theirs. Yet Milo wouldn’t have hurt his family or his village by choice … would he? He’d been a happy, good-natured little boy, always trying to tag along with Megs and Milton, always eager to help out Pa and Mama. Not a bad bone in his whole body. Part of Megs knew that Milo wouldn’t have intentionally hurt their family or their village.

But another part of her had been angry at him for the past five years.

“I … don’t know what to believe about anything right now,” Megs said. “Where is Milo?”

“Well, when I left to find the Commander and the Empress, he was still living at the palace in Port Lorsin,” Linna said. “But he was preparing to leave. He was headed to the House of Wisdom; he wants to become a Wise Man.”

“When was that?”

“Three months ago. Maybe four.”

Under different circumstances, Megs’s heart might have soared with pride to hear that her little brother was about to become a novice Wise Man. To her knowledge, no one from Druet Village had ever become a Wise Man. And Milo was the right age, she suddenly realized with a little shock. At ten years younger than Megs, he would be turning fourteen summers this year. The perfect age to begin an apprenticeship.

But Megs couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.

It might not be fair to Milo, but whenever she thought of him, she could no longer remember the little boy who tagged along behind her and Milton. The only Milo she could see in her mind’s eye was the boy with his hands on their mother, smoke flowing into her while she screamed.

“Does Milo still … can he still infect … ?”

“Yes, he’s still a gateway.” Linna’s face turned solemn. “I think that’s why he wants to be a Wise Man. I think he wants to figure out how to undo whatever the Order did to him. And since no one has been able to undo it …”

Megs stared at Linna for a long time without speaking. She had so many questions that she didn’t know which one to start with.

“What’s this ‘Order’ you keep mentioning?” she asked at last, deciding to go with the question that seemed to carry the least emotional charge.

Linna looked away, staring into the fire for a long moment. The question that was most neutral for Megs seemed to be the most loaded for the girl.

“Have you ever been in a battle with mountain men, and suddenly your people start going down one after another, poisoned darts in their necks appearing from nowhere?” Linna asked softly.

The question triggered a memory of a battlefield littered with fallen friends. “Yes. Women in black cloaks with blowguns, sometimes with swords. We called them the widow-makers. The mountain men’s deadliest weapon besides shadows.”

Linna nodded. “Those are the ones. But your widow-makers … they fight with the tribesmen, but they’re not of the mountain tribes. They are the Order of Targhan. And they’re the ones who did that to your brother, who turned him into a gate.”

A wave of vertigo struck Megs without warning, followed by a crushing pressure against her chest. She leaned forward, resting forearms on knees and taking several slow, steadying breaths.

“Are you alright?” Linna asked.

“Yes.” Megs took another deep breath. “Sometimes I get these …” She spun her finger in a circle. “I don’t know how to put it. I just have to breathe for a few seconds.”

Linna reached out, placed a hand on Megs’s knee. “I understand. Take your time.”

“Everything you’re telling me is … It’s just a lot to take in,” Megs said when the vertigo finally passed. Inside her, a maelstrom of emotions warred, some of which she could name, some of which she couldn’t. The anger she recognized – it was a familiar old friend, a nourishing food that had kept her moving, fighting, surviving. She recognized the grief, too, just as familiar as anger but not nearly so welcome. Grief was a tidal wave of blackness always threatening to sweep her out to sea, a different type of shadow-infection she usually managed to stay just one step ahead of.

But within that maelstrom was also an emotion she could barely name, something that came upon hearing that Milo was alive. Safe.

Was that feeling joy? Relief? Some mixture of both? It had been so long since she’d felt them that she wasn’t sure.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat like that, her head bowed forward, Linna’s hand upon her knee, gaze fixed on the bloody tree marten between her feet. Megs thought about how the tree marten had been scampering through fir trees the day before, blissfully unaware of its impending doom. Now it lay dead and half-skinned, nothing more than a meager meal for someone else.

Did the other tree martens miss it? Did they wonder what had happened to it?

Would they search for it?

Finally Megs picked it back up, along with her dagger. “I want to bury my dead tomorrow. Whatever’s left of them.”

“Yes, I know,” Linna said, taking her hand from Megs’s knee. “We can go at first light.”

Megs shook her head. “I know I said earlier that I needed help, but … I need to do this by myself.”

“Megs, you don’t have to –”

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I do. But I want to do this on my own.”

Megs could feel Linna’s eyes on her, studying. Evaluating. At last the girl said simply, “Alright.”

And blessedly, there was no more talk of dead Empresses or dead war heroes or vanished brothers.