13
The morning meeting was long and tedious, and Tasia, no doubt sleep deprived from the coronation ball and possibly still hungover, stifled yawns several times. It didn’t help that the day would be hot yet again, and the office, crammed as it was with four Wise Men, two Brothers, and Mace, in addition to Joslyn and Tasia, was almost unbearably stuffy. Joslyn found herself wondering idly who was hotter – her wearing her heavy palace blacks, or the Wise Men in their thick grey robes. At least she was used to the heat, since she had the advantage of spending most of her childhood in Terinto. One of the Wise Men was so red in the face that he looked as though he might pass out.
Joslyn stood in her customary place against the bookcase perpendicular to Tasia’s desk – the same place Commander Cole of Easthook used to post himself when he and Andreth were still alive. Cole, however, always sat. Joslyn preferred to stand. It helped her stay alert, especially on a morning like this one.
The meeting was at last wrapping up when the guards at the door brought in an errand boy with a scroll for Tasia.
“Brothers, Wise Men,” Tasia said after reading its contents, “I appreciate your time and your service to the Empire, as always. We will adjourn for today, but we can put the conversation about city restoration at the top of the agenda for tomorrow morning. I trust you all have plenty to address between now and then; I have other business I must attend to.”
She pushed the high back chair away from the desk and came to her feet, triggering the men in the room to hastily do the same. Joslyn gave the room a polite nod and followed Tasia out the door. Mace hesitated, looking as though he wasn’t sure if he should follow Tasia or stay in the room. Joslyn gave him the most imperceptible shake of her head before she exited.
There. That should keep him away for an hour or two.
“Darien is arriving?” Joslyn guessed once she and Tasia passed the guards posted at the office and headed down the corridor towards the atrium.
“Yes. He’ll be at the mouth of the canal shortly.” Tasia sighed heavily.
“You still haven’t told Adela that he is to be her betrothed,” Joslyn guessed.
“I told her that a young man from House Paratheen only two years older than she is will be arriving soon, and that I wanted her to do her utmost to make him feel welcome within the palace,” Tasia said. She glanced up at Joslyn, green eyes pained. “I thought maybe, if she had a chance to get to know him free from pressure, perhaps marriage will feel less like something she has no choice in. Perhaps she will choose it on her own. Or at least be amenable to it when the time comes.”
“So you are not going to tell her?”
“That I used her future as a bargaining chip?” Tasia asked. “Exactly as my father did to me? Exactly as two traitors to the crown did to her once already? No.” She sighed again. “But she is a princess, not a fool. She knows a political marriage is what is expected of her. She will guess why he’s here sooner or later. But for now, she’s fourteen summers. Fourteen summers, Joslyn. I want her to enjoy her youth for a few more years before she must turn her mind to marriage. That is a gift, at least, that no one ever gave to me at fourteen summers.”
Fourteen summers.Fourteen was the age that Joslyn murdered her master, fled Paratheen, and found ku-sai. No one ever attempted to protect her youth.
“If I were Adela, I might want to know that a –” Joslyn started.
“Well, you’re not Adela,” Tasia snapped. “Nor have you ever known the burden of carrying the weight of the name ‘House of Dorsa.’ Which means you can’t presume to know what she would or would not want.”
They lapsed into fraught silence as they entered the southern drawing room, which had been the throne room once, centuries earlier. After the palace expanded and the throne room was replaced by a council room, it became the place where emperors and empresses entertained their most favored guests. Eventually, renovations made the western and northern drawing rooms more fashionable, and the southern drawing room was just one more gargantuan, ornate palace room that tended to sit empty and unused.
Tasia paused as they walked through, beckoning a woman with a feather duster near. The woman glanced both right and left before scurrying over, perhaps wondering if the Mother of the Four Realms might actually be gesturing to some other, unseen person in the room.
She curtsied. “Y-yes, your Highness?”
“There should be servants setting up for tea in the western drawing room,” Tasia said. “Run and tell them that I’ve changed my mind and will be entertaining my guest here, in the southern drawing room. They will need to bring everything they were setting up into this room, and they will need to do it with a determined quickness.”
The servant nodded several times. “Yes, Your Majesty, right away,” she said, and quite literally sprinted from the room.
Once the woman had left, Tasia turned to Joslyn. “I’m sorry, my love. I sniped at you out of my own guilt, not because you said anything wrong.”
Joslyn wasn’t sure how to respond, so she didn’t. The sharp comment still stung, yet she was also aware of the tremendous pressure bearing down on Tasia, a relentless weight that had no conceivable end in sight.
Tasia reached up, hesitated, then lightly stroked Joslyn’s face. “Say that you forgive me?”
Joslyn double-checked to make sure that they were alone in the cavernous drawing room, then pressed Tasia’s fingertips to her lips. “I forgive you.”
“I will tell my sister the reason behind Darien’s visit – I will. But not yet. She just got her life back. Nik’s room is practically still warm from Theo’s occupation of it.”
“I understand,” Joslyn said.
Tasia squeezed Joslyn’s arm. “You’re wonderful, you know. Irreplaceable.”
Joslyn smiled, but her mind had filled with marriages – Adela and Darien. Tasia and Mace. “We should hurry,” she told Tasia. “We don’t want the canal boat to beat us to the dock.”
#
The dock on the other side of the Canal Gate was not nearly so crowded as it normally was when a lord arrived by sea. Of course, that likely had something to do with the fact that Darien was no lord yet, and also to do with the fact that the rest of the Empire’s nobility still barely recognized the three noble houses of Terinto as highborn at all.
Both of which explained why the Canal Gate dock held more of Joslyn’s palace guardsmen than it did dignitaries. Perhaps if more people realized Tasia was here, they would have taken notice of the new arrival. As it was, most of the palace denizens were unaware of the flat-bottomed canal boat filled with Terintan slaves, servants, and one Terintan lordling, making its way up the canal.
Wise Man Fraden, who presided over the palace’s household staff and was also the master of ceremonies for events such as coronations and balls and weddings – a very busy Wise Man, as of late – was the only other significant member of Tasia’s staff who was present. But “the children” were all present, as Tasia had requested: Milo stood solemnly with his gloved hands clasped behind his back; Adela looked breathless and rosy-cheeked, more like a girl who’d been frolicking in the palace gardens a moment earlier (she probably had been) than a girl who’d come down to the docks to meet her future husband; and Linna stood behind them both – armed with a dagger at her hip, Joslyn noted with some disapproval. She’d have to remind Linna not to carry weapons outside their training sessions. She wasn’t a palace guard yet, even if she had grown the habit of mimicking Joslyn’s solemn stance, stoic and still, just behind the princess.
Wise Man Fraden and the acne-ridden apprentice Wise Man he’d brought with him both bowed deeply when Tasia and Joslyn came into view; the surprised palace guards all dropped to a knee.
“As you were, as you were,” Tasia said impatiently. She addressed the children, who had also turned and bowed in acknowledgment of their Empress’s appearance. “And what have we been doing this morning? You all look like you came straight from training with the Commander.” Tasia reached out and used a thumb to wipe a dark smudge from Adela’s forehead.
“We did – kind of,” Adela told her sister. “We were breaking our fast in the kitchen after the Commander said goodbye, and then Linna and I were arguing over viper striking, and she claimed she saw fault with my form, so we went to the garden to settle it, and … well, I must admit we all rather lost track of time.”
Tasia tut-tutted at her sister, but her smile gave her away. “I would have liked for you to be a bit more presentable before meeting our new guest.”
“Why?” Adela said. “He’s just some little lordling from Terinto. I don’t know why I even have to be here, honestly.”
“Because, as I told you already, he is nearly the same age as you and Linna and so I’m making it your responsibility to help him feel at home here.” Tasia’s tone suggested the sisters had already had this conversation at least once before. “There are not many members of the House of Dorsa left, sister. It’s time you do your part when it comes to diplomatic duties. I don’t want you as uneducated about such matters as I was at your age. I want you prepared to lead, should it come to that.”
Should it come to that.Tasia waved her hand at the approaching canal boat as if trying to dismiss the words that had just implied she could die at any moment, leaving Adela with the crown and the burden of rulership.
“And preparing to lead,” Tasia concluded, “starts with moments like this one.”
“Alright,” Adela said. She sounded reluctant but accepting; she did not have the kind of rebellious spirit that her older sister had at the same age. “Though it seems an odd time for a Terintan lordling to come to court, given all that’s been happening.”
Tasia gave a nonchalant shrug. “If he waited for a calmer time to pay us a visit, he might be waiting until his beard is shot through with white.”
Adela giggled, then shaded her eyes with one hand as she squinted towards the boat. “I don’t think he has a beard.”
“Most boys of sixteen summers don’t,” Tasia said.
“I think he might have a small mustache, though.” Adela turned to Tasia. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lordling my age with a mustache.”
“Lords in the Capital Lands generally associate beards with the lowborn,” Joslyn said. “But beards are important to Terintan men. A boy enters manhood when he grows his beard. And since they’re considered a sign of his virility, his parents will not allow him to marry until his beard is full.”
Tasia arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s good to know.”
Wise Man Fraden’s staff scurried to the canal boat and secured it to the dock the moment it came within reach.
Six people rode in the canal boat besides Darien himself. The two standing at the back with canal poles looked to Joslyn to be slaves; two more were Fesulian men-at-arms; the fifth was a proud-looking Terintan Wise Man; and the sixth was –
Joslyn’s breath caught in her throat.
Wrists and feet bound by heavy iron chains, the sixth occupant of the boat was a pale, thin woman with stringy dark hair, dirty clothes, and a look of sneering, cold contempt in her eyes.
She was an Order of Targhan assassin if Joslyn had ever seen one.
What in the name of Father Mezzu was Lord M’Tongliss thinking, sending an assassin to Tasia’s doorstep?
The Terintan Wise Man disembarked first with the help of one of the palace servants, then he turned and offered a hand up to Darien. The bony, lanky boy must have favored his mother, because his features were not that of his father’s at all. He did indeed have a thin, feathery mustache growing on his upper lip, along with a few wiry strands of black growing in on his chin.
The Wise Man and Darien both dropped to one knee and bowed their heads.
“Wise Man Jalid presenting Darien of House Paratheen, your Majesties,” the Wise Man boomed in a rich baritone, without even a trace of a Terintan accent. He must have trained himself out of his accent when he studied at the House of Wisdom.
Tasia extended her hand, letting Wise Man and lordling kiss the emblem of the House of Dorsa on the ring she always wore on her second finger. “Rise, please. You are welcome in our home.”
The two men got to their feet as Tasia introduced first Adela, then Wise Man Fraden, then Linna and Milo.
Joslyn barely heard Tasia’s words; her eyes were glued to the shackled woman still seated placidly in the canal boat. The woman had bowed her head as if asleep or penitent, but it didn’t escape Joslyn’s notice that the men-at-arms on either side of her kept a tight grip on the chains connected to her shackles. One of the guards had wrapped the chains around both fists, as though the woman was a beast about to be released into a Fesulian fighting pit and not the pale, half-starved creature she appeared to be.
“And this is Commander Joslyn of Terinto, head of my palace guard as well as my personal guard,” Tasia concluded. “She is the one who keeps us all safe during these troubling times.”
Joslyn gave a slight bow. “We are honored to have you with us, my Lord.”
The boy nodded to Joslyn. “I thank you for the safety you provide, Commander.” Darien, too, spoke without any Terintan accent. His eyes slid briefly to Linna. “I am glad to see that you and I are not the only Terintans in her Majesty’s palace.”
“Yes, and I’ve already informed L’Linna that she is to be at your service,” Tasia told him. “She is my personal servant, but since she was gifted to me by your father, I thought it only appropriate that she should be available to you as well during your stay. I trust you remember her?”
“Of course I do,” Darien said. “It is hard to forget a slave who impresses an Empress.”
Joslyn glanced at Linna, but the girl’s face was neutral.
“Should you have any questions, need any assistance, or require any help with the common tongue,” Tasia continued, “Linna will be ready to help you.”
“I assure you that Darien has no need of a translator,” Wise Man Jalid said, politely but unmistakably offended that his pupil might struggle with the common tongue. “Since the time he could utter a complete sentence, he has been capable of forming it both in Terintan and the Imperial common.”
Darien only smiled pleasantly, first at Tasia, then at Linna. “Nonetheless, it will be nice to occasionally speak my mother tongue during my visit.”
So the boy had a sense of diplomacy. That was good. Joslyn supposed it shouldn’t be surprising; Darien’s father had superb political instincts. He would not have managed to outwit the other Paratheenian oligarchs and get himself named a lord after the Terintan War of Independence if he had not, and doubtless he had seen to it that his son was a student of Imperial politics as well.
“Empress, if I may, my father sent me with several gifts for you and your household.” Darien snapped his fingers twice, and one of the slaves lifted an ornately carved chest from the boat and stepped onto the dock. Wise Man Fraden took the box and set it at Tasia’s feet, kneeling again to open it. Bright folded silks were inside. “My father remembered how stunning you looked wearing traditional Terintan silks, so he had both Imperial-style and Terintan-style dresses made for you.” He turned his smile to Adela, making it radiant for her. “And for Princess Adela.”
The slave handed a second box to Wise Man Jalid, which the Wise Man set down and opened next to the first.
“In honor of our countrywoman, Commander Joslyn, pushing back the shadows from the Capital Lands – including Terinto – my father offers the finest apa-apa wool brizats, hoping they will be both utilitarian and also remind you of home,” Darien said, nodding as Jalid opened a third box at Joslyn’s feet. “It is a cedar box, so it will also function to keep out pests. Oh – and at the bottom, you will find a small jar of pistachios. We would have brought kuzyn with us as well, but feared it would spoil on the voyage.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” Joslyn said stiffly, but her gaze had gone back to the Fesulian guards and the Order of Targhan assassin chained between them. The guards had shifted their weight at Darien’s mention of several gifts, and Joslyn had a feeling she already knew what the grand and final gift would be.