10
~ FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO: JOSLYN ~
The scent of death pervaded the air about Port Lorsin for many weeks after the great battle that almost obliterated it, but at least on the beach, the salty tang of the ocean breeze masked the fetid smell of decay. That was the thought in the back of Joslyn’s mind as her three young charges moved through their warm-up exercises in the wet sand before her.
She cherished these early morning training sessions. For as long as she remained on the beach, she could forget, for a while at least, the grim situation that – quite literally – surrounded the palace walls.
As usual, Linna led the pack, having already transferred three-quarters of her stones from one end of the beach to the other. Princess Adela lagged several paces behind her, mouth set into a line of somber determination, and Milo lagged a pace or two behind the Princess. His limp, Joslyn noticed, was especially pronounced this morning; she suspected it had something to do with the late spring thunderstorms her own old injuries had prognosticated.
But Milo didn’t stop. That was the thing about the boy – he never stopped, no matter what. A slight smile of affection creased Joslyn’s face.
All three came back to Joslyn once they were finished, panting from their efforts, awaiting the next instruction.
“Today’s schedule is full, for all of us,” Joslyn told them. “We’ll only have time to go through each movement once, then we’ll head back to the palace and break our fast.”
Adela looked relieved. Linna looked disappointed.
Milo, as was often the case, kept his face neutral and unreadable. Despite the fact that today promised to be even hotter than the day before, with the morning sun already hinting at the potential brutality Father Eiren would bring as the day progressed, skinny Milo wore a long-sleeved tunic and leather riding gloves. The Brothers visited him almost every day with some new theory about how to sever his connection to the Shadowlands, but so far, each plan had failed. Hence the gloves. And the typically inscrutable face. He tried to hide it, but Joslyn could see how heavily the boy’s status as the gateway between the mortal realm and the Shadowlands weighed upon him. He carried his self-loathing with him everywhere, a millstone he could not set down .
“We could move through the whole dance twice,” Linna suggested. “Once without weapons, once with. It would only add a few minutes.”
Joslyn shook her head. “The Empress needs all of us bathed and dressed in our best by mid-morning. We can’t risk running late, today of all days.”
The children – and Joslyn and Tasia still referred to them as “children,” despite the fact that Linna and the Princess were both fourteen, almost fifteen summers – didn’t look like they wanted to think about the day that lay ahead. Milo shifted his eyes to the ocean, whose low tide waves were gentle and shallow; Adela’s gaze dropped to her feet; Linna’s brow furrowed.
Joslyn couldn’t blame them. The commoners treated executions as if they were festival days, but Joslyn had never been overly fond of watching men and women twitch at the end of a rope.
“To your movements, now,” she told them, gesturing for them to hurry.
The three spread out in the wet sand, just beyond the point where the sea foam crawled up towards the bluffs. They began with mountain and worked their way slowly through the other thirty-six movements, with Joslyn circling and giving feedback as they went.
“Slow your breathing,” she said, or, “The bend is at your knees, not your hips.”
Once they’d finished, Joslyn led them back up the staircase carved into the bluffs and into the flat-bottomed canal boat, pushing it, with Linna’s help, upstream towards the Canal Gate. Joslyn left the three with their bowls of porridge and fresh fruit at a servant’s table in the kitchens under the watchful eye of one of the cooks. Joslyn trusted this particular cook; the woman had been serving in the palace kitchens since she was Milo’s age. But even so, she paused on her way out, glancing over her shoulder and wondering if she should fetch a palace guardsman to post at the doorway. There’d been no sightings of Order of Targhan assassins in the Capital Lands, but that was the whole problem with the Order – they would not be seen until they wanted to be.
Linna caught Joslyn’s gaze and gave a serious nod. I’ll be on my guard, the nod said. And I will protect them.
It was endearing, the way Linna sought to imitate Joslyn, the way she was eager to change her status from ordinary servant to member of the palace guard. Joslyn trusted Linna without question, but the girl was still only fourteen. A fourteen that was older and more world-weary than the Princess, to be sure, but still just fourteen. And as innately skilled at the dance of the Seven Cities as Linna was proving to be, she was nevertheless a novice who’d not yet faced true combat.
But Joslyn returned Linna’s nod with one of her own anyway, not so much because she was entrusting Linna with two of the Empire’s most valuable assets – the Princess and the boy who could channel shadows through his fingertips – but because the children were about as safe in the palace kitchens as they could be anywhere.
Joslyn headed up the stone stairs towards the palace’s main level.
By the time she reached Tasia’s bedchamber, the Empress was already bathed, dressed, and seated at her vanity. The floral scent of perfumes and powders hung in the air. A flurry of activity buzzed around her, with two chambermaids making the bed, another cleaning up her breakfast and tidying the table, a third sweeping the hearth. Two handmaids, meanwhile, fussed with Tasia’s hair and face paint.
Tasia clapped twice when she spotted Joslyn standing in the threshold between the antechamber and the bedchamber. The women all stopped what they were doing and turned to her.
“Thank you, ladies,” Tasia said. “You’re all dismissed until the noontide meal.”
The women hastily finished up their tasks and scurried past Joslyn and out of Tasia’s chambers with a broken, mumbled chorus of Yes, Majesty or Thank you, Highness. But the handmaid who’d been working on Tasia’s jewelry – some teenage noblewoman who was a second or third cousin of Tasia’s from House Aventia or Andalth, Joslyn couldn’t remember which – hesitated, a necklace of freshwater pearls raised halfway to Tasia’s neck.
“But, Majesty, your jewelry – ?” said the girl.
Tasia held out her hand for the necklace. “It’s alright, Maranna,” she said. “I’m sure I can manage to put on my own necklace without help.”
“Yes, Majesty,” said Maranna. She gave a quick curtsy to Tasia and handed over the pearls.
Joslyn moved aside so the girl could pass. Once she left, Joslyn double-checked each chamber to make sure all the servants were truly gone and slid the antechamber’s bolt into place. When Joslyn reappeared at Tasia’s side a moment later, she still fiddled with the necklace clasp, both hands behind her neck.
Tasia grunted in frustration and thrust the necklace towards Joslyn. “Put those marvelously dexterous fingers of yours to work, will you? The clasp is too fine for me.”
Joslyn accepted the necklace and took a step behind Tasia, meeting her green eyes in the vanity mirror. A smile played at the corners of Joslyn’s lips.
“Why didn’t you put it on backwards,” Joslyn asked, “so that you could see the clasp in front of you, and then rotate it into place?” She reached the necklace around Tasia’s throat.
“Since when are you the expert on jewelry?” Tasia huffed and made a face at Joslyn in the mirror. “Besides, if I did that, I’d miss an opportunity for you to touch my neck.”
Joslyn offered a one-shouldered shrug, closing the clasp at the back of Tasia’s neck and centering it so that the large black pearl in the center hung right at the base of Tasia’s throat. The handmaids had pinned up and powdered Tasia’s strawberry-blonde hair for the morning’s serious business, decorating its sides with lace and small silk flowers. Joslyn didn’t care much about how the hair had been styled, but she did always appreciate it when the elegant line of Tasia’s neck was bare.
Joslyn let her fingers brush down the side of the neck and across Tasia’s throat, then leaned down to kiss her bare skin a few inches above the necklace. Tasia closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, sighing.
“Don’t start with that,” she told Joslyn’s reflection when her eyes opened again. “You know what today holds, and I can’t start it distracted and out of sorts.”
“You were the one who suddenly forgot how to put on a necklace,” Joslyn said, smirking. “And didn’t you say something about not wanting to miss an opportunity for me to touch your bare neck?”
Tasia arched an eyebrow. “You’ve gotten very pert ever since you gained the title of ‘Commander,’ you know that? You never used to talk back.”
Joslyn chuckled.
“Anyway.” Tasia stood abruptly. “Take my mind off things: tell me how training with the children went this morning.”
“It went well,” Joslyn said. “Linna’s progress continues to be extraordinary; if you’d told me she’d been born a member of a troupe of acrobats instead of a tinker’s slave, I would have believed you.”
“And the other two?”
“Your sister seems intent on proving herself. I believe she feels pressured to live up to a certain Empress who has already proven herself in battle.”
Tasia snorted. “I would hardly call myself a veteran warrior. I’m just someone who had a good teacher and has managed not to die yet.” She smoothed her gown and inspected herself in the mirror one last time.
“Nevertheless. Adela has had a hard year,” Joslyn said. “She approaches everything she does with a dogged determination these days. I think she’d like it if you noticed.”
“Of course I notice. I told her at dinner last night that I was proud of her progress, didn’t I?”
The two headed from Tasia’s apartments and into the royal wing’s main corridor. Joslyn used the master key she always carried at her belt to lock the antechamber door behind them. She nodded at the guards posted at the mouth of the royal wing as they passed, noting that the day shift hadn’t relieved the night shift yet.
“And how’s our Milo?” Tasia asked.
“Spending over a year in an underground cage did little for his health,” answered Joslyn. “But he’s like the Princess; he is determined to improve.”
“I worry for that boy,” Tasia said. “Children should be joyful. Milo is always so … dour.”
“Give him time,” said Joslyn. “All three of them have been through much. And Milo’s trials have been the harshest of all.”
“Too true,” Tasia agreed as they descended the short steps and entered the grand atrium that marked the center of the palace. Tasia paused a moment once they were hidden by the atrium’s greenery, bending to admire a flower bud. “I wish I could spare them from – how would you put it? The destiny Father Mezzu has written for them?”
“The religious and the superstitious might say that. I don’t know that I would.”
Tasia appeared to ponder Joslyn’s reply, running her thumb along the petals of the closed bud. “I don’t know what I believe anymore – that our destinies are pre-ordained and inevitable or that we create them ourselves through the choices we make. It seems to me that circumstances often align themselves in such a way that a choice is not really a choice at all.” She chewed her bottom lip. When she looked up again, her expression said she didn’t want to tell Joslyn whatever she was about to say. “Speaking of my sister and destiny and impossible choices, did I remember to tell you Darien of House Paratheen is due to arrive tomorrow?”
“You did. I have arranged for a proper number of guards to be present.”
Tasia gave a tight nod. They resumed their walk, leaving the atrium behind, moving through the Great Hall, exiting the palace proper into the gardens beyond a minute or two later. The gardens were bright, rife with butterflies and songbirds. It seemed to Joslyn that it wasn’t right for the morning to be so cheerful when the smell of death still lingered in the city. And they would add yet more death before the morning was through.
“It’s not too late to tell M’Tongliss you changed your mind,” Joslyn said. “You’re the Empress. You have the power to turn Darien’s ship around without him ever even disembarking, send him back to Paratheen.”
“It is too late,” Tasia said. They passed the stone bench where Joslyn had once stood by and watched while Tasia sat with Mace of House Gifford, warning him that any crown of House Dorsa he wore would be for show only. “It became too late the moment I left Paratheen with five hundred Fesulian soldiers in tow and the promise of a thousand desert riders.”
Joslyn didn’t argue. She thought of her own impossible choices, of killing a would-be assassin above M’Tongliss’s dining hall, then walking away from Tasia without ever revealing her presence. Both of them were all too familiar with placing cold necessity above what their hearts truly desired.
For Tasia to break the agreement of marrying her little sister to Lord M’Tongliss’s son was to risk turning Lord M’Tongliss from ally to enemy. That, in turn, meant losing the support of at least half of Terinto, and losing the support of at least half of Terinto meant further endangering the already precarious overland routes between the East and the Capital Lands. Grain shortages in the city were bad enough already; if the trade routes were lost, famine would begin well before winter.
And it wouldn’t be just the safe routes through the Great Desert they would lose if they lost M’Tongliss. There was no overland route for the Imperial Army to take into the East that did not pass through Terinto; there was no route by sea that did not pass by Paratheen and Negusto. Besides that, there were still desert riders in Terinto whom M’Tongliss might be able to coax into fighting for Tasia. But he wouldn’t do any coaxing if the Empress reneged on her pledge of marrying Adela to his son. The Imperial Army would need every available fighter they could find if Tasia’s plan to retake the lost Eastern territories was to succeed.
The ambitious silk merchant-turned-lord craved a way to legitimize his noble status, and what better way was there than joining House Paratheen to House Dorsa through a political marriage?
And M’Tongliss wasn’t the only lord looking at the daughters of the House of Dorsa as political opportunities. Just outside Port Lorsin’s city walls, some ten thousand troops from the West were still encamped. They were supposedly a promise of support, ensuring that Tasia’s coronation occurred without further violence or intrigue, but everyone knew the troops, led by House Gifford, were as much a threat as they were a promise. They were the West’s way of reminding Tasia that she had another promise to fulfill: put a crown on a son of the West or face the consequences.