Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

26

~ JOSLYN ~

Over the next three and a half weeks, a certain electricity hung in the air above Port Lorsin, almost the way the sky held its breath in the moments before a thunderstorm. Except the tension wasn’t above, within the thin summer haze that sometimes rolled in from the ocean, but on the ground below, within the people. That tension could be felt in the way that those who could afford it were buying up as many dry goods as they could, almost as if it was late autumn instead of summer, and they foresaw a long and hungry winter ahead of them. It could be felt in the way that a number of Terintan tinkers had arrived in Port Lorsin almost simultaneously, setting up their blivas outside the city walls and their carts in the market squares, their sudden appearance uncannily well-timed to match the influx of freshly recruited soldiers pouring into the city. Meanwhile, hammers rung day and night, the Imperial Army’s blacksmiths conscripted by the Brotherhood to help produce the rune-marked daggers en masse. It was good the tinkers had arrived. With the blacksmiths busy with their new task, the common soldiers made lines ten-deep before the tinkers’ carts for last-minute repairs to swords and boot knives, bucklers and breastplates.

Within the harbor, more Imperial Navy ships appeared every day, each of them flying the House of Dorsa’s double-eagle and crescent moon upon a field of black. One by one, the ships found places at the crowded docks, each vessel an anthill of activity as dock workers rolled barrels of fresh water, wine, hardtack biscuits, and brined beef into the cargo holds. Farmers herded pigs and even a few cows onto the bigger galleons, and the animals, probably understanding their fate all too well as thousands of hungry soldiers came aboard after them, voiced their protests loudly and slicked the ramps onto the ships with their fear. Sailors everywhere clung to hulls and ship sides like barnacles, cleaning and coating gaps in the wood with tar, while those sailors still on board could be seen patching sails and triple-checking life rafts.

Joslyn watched these preparations for war from behind the palace walls, which gave her the uneasy feeling of being as much a prisoner in the palace as Akella. Since Joslyn wasn’t in the barracks outside the city this time, training daily with a battalion of soldiers as she once had, she gave herself the task of increasing her personal training time in preparation for the coming campaign.

She rose while the sky was still black each morning, creeping quietly out of Tasia’s bedchamber and roaming the palace corridors until she found Brick, who was finishing the last few hours of his night shift. The two of them then grabbed lanterns and made their way into a courtyard or the North Gardens, sparring until the sky showed the first hint of the sun. Brick would then leave to manage the changing of the guard; Joslyn would go back to the royal wing to wake the children.

After the first few naval ships appeared, she’d stopped taking the children to the beach at the mouth of the canal, because it had grown crowded with off-duty sailors and soldiers. Instead, at Tasia’s recommendation, Joslyn led them up to the roof of an unmanned tower near the center of the palace. Centuries ago, the tower had been part of the palace’s primary outer fortifications. As the palace expanded, the tower had gone from being on the palace’s outer wall to its center, rendering it obsolete. But it had been built for two full squads of soldiers to occupy, so there was more than enough room for Joslyn and her pupils to move through the dance of the Seven Cities.

“Commander?” Adela asked one morning once they had finished their training. “How long do you anticipate being gone?”

“I do not know, Princess,” Joslyn said.

The answering look Adela gave was fragile. She looked so much like her sister at times, but Joslyn couldn’t remember that kind of tender fragility ever crossing Tasia’s face.

Her heart ached for the girl. Adela had never known her mother; her elder brother had died young; her father had been murdered; and most recently, she’d been manipulated into believing the only remaining member of her immediate family was a villain. Now Adela finally had her sister back, her one living blood relative, villain no longer – and she was about to lose her again to a war whose endpoint was anything but certain.

Darien put a hand on Adela’s shoulder. “We shall keep you company, Princess,” he said, forcing a smile. He glanced at Milo and Linna. “Won’t we?”

The other two both nodded, but Joslyn felt a dark cloud settling into place over the four young people.

“If I had to guess,” Joslyn said, “I would say that the campaign to the East will take six to eight months. The Empress is sailing with overwhelming numbers, hoping to end the war once and for all.”

“Six to eight months in the East. But who knows how long in the Kingdom of Persopos,” Milo said grimly. He didn’t look up but focused on his rune-marked dagger – Tasia had made sure each of the children had one – which he was cleaning with a rag. “We found some old maps in one of the libraries. They show the Kingdom as far from the Sunrise Mountains as the East is from Port Lorsin. With a sea in between. And no one knows what the Kingdom will be like or how it will be defended.”

“We don’t completely know,” Joslyn agreed. “But we do know we will have the element of surprise. And quite likely superior numbers.”

“But how can you be sure, Commander?” Adela asked, careful to keep her tone polite. “We’ve heard the nobles talking. Nobody really knows what’s in the Kingdom of Persopos.”

Joslyn hesitated a moment, then came to a decision. She shouldn’t trust Imperial intelligence to a group of teens and pre-teens, but who would they tell? And sharing it would be worth it if it provided them with peace of mind.

“I would like to share something with you four, but if I do, what I say must not leave this rooftop. Do you understand?”

This got their attention. Even Milo stopped polishing his rune-marked dagger and looked up. Despite Tasia’s chiding, Milo had allowed his brown hair to grow long and shaggy. It hung over his eyebrows now, nearly covering his eyes. Joslyn suppressed a wish to reach out and brush it back.

“You must not repeat it to anyone.” Joslyn’s eyes landed on Darien. “It must not be written in a letter, either. Not in any language.”

He nodded seriously. “I understand, Commander.”

“We will keep whatever you say amongst ourselves,” Linna said.

“We have procured a guide,” Joslyn told them. She proceeded to describe the pirate Akella to them, telling the children how General Alric’s spies had found out how she’d traveled to the Kingdom of Persopos two years earlier – the only living person anyone knew with certainty to have gone to the Kingdom and returned from it again. “The Empress, General Alric, and I have been meeting with the Captain every day, laying out plans for a proper offensive against it. The Empress will not go in blind. We will be as well-prepared as it is possible to be.”

The children asked a few more questions; Joslyn answered as honestly as she could. By the time they left the rooftop and headed down to the kitchens so that the children could break their fast, Adela was smiling again, laughing at Darien’s jokes. Linna, too, seemed relaxed, but she was like Joslyn that way – she always seemed more relaxed after a training session.

Milo, however, remained glum. He trailed behind the other three, scuffing his boots along the stones as they traversed the palace hallways towards the kitchens.

“How are you feeling, Milo?” Joslyn asked quietly, coming up beside him.

The boy shrugged. “Alright, I guess.”

“Are you sure? You seem more …” Joslyn stopped herself, searching for the right words. “You are especially quiet today.”

He shrugged again, not answering.

Joslyn stayed silent beside him, waiting. She and Milo were cut from the same cloth: pushing him wouldn’t work; he would speak when he was ready and not a moment sooner.

“Brother Rennus met with me yesterday,” he said after a full minute of silence.

Ahead of them, Darien opened the door for the Princess with a charming smile; Adela returned his smile and gave a nod of thanks.

Linna followed the two through the door, then turned to hold it for Milo and Joslyn. Darien and Adela were already halfway down the stairs to the kitchens, heads bent close together in conversation. Milo stopped at the head of the stairway, and Joslyn gave Linna a subtle wave to follow them.

“He and Udolf tried some kind of new spell on me,” Milo said once Linna was out of earshot. “It took almost three hours. But it didn’t work. I’m still the gate between the realms.” He tugged at the gloves covering his hands self-consciously. “I’m always going to be like this, I think. An abomination.”

Joslyn put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and gave him a sideways embrace. He’d grown tremendously since being in the palace, but he was still small for his eleven summers. “You are no abomination to us.”

“I dream about the Kingdom of Persopos,” he confided softly, dipping his chin so that his hair fell back over his eyes again. “Or – I think that’s what it is. It’s not so much a place that I see but a person. A king. A very, very old king, like what the assassin looked like once the shadow came out of her. He’s in a place that looks like the palace, except everything is old like him. And dusty. The strange ladies, the kind who made me like this, they surround him all the time.”

Joslyn frowned, reminded of her own dream from several weeks earlier. “You’ve had this dream more than once?”

“A few times per week ever since we arrived in Port Lorsin,” Milo said. He lowered his voice. “I don’t think the king knows I’m there.”

“Milo,” Joslyn said, trying to keep her voice even, “are you dreamwalking?”

“Not on purpose.” He blushed, looking away. “It just … keeps happening. It’s like the part of me that’s the gate between worlds is drawn to him.”

Joslyn said nothing, her mind on her own dream. Whatever taint of the Shadowlands that remained within her had also been drawn to the king.

When Milo spoke again, his voice was nearly a whisper. “I’m scared of him, Commander. The king is … he reminds me of the monster we fought in the Shadowlands.”

A cold chill ran down Joslyn’s spine. She’d thought the same thing in her own dream. “Tell Brother Rennus about these dreams next time he visits you,” Joslyn instructed. “He might be able to give you something to drink or eat before bed that will stop them.”

“Alright.”

In the kitchen below, Darien, Adela, and Linna had already taken their normal places at one of the servant tables. Darien and Adela hadn’t noticed that Joslyn and Milo were still at the top of the stairs, still too involved in their own conversation. But Linna had. She studied them carefully, concern etched across her face.

Joslyn nodded at the table. “Go sit with your friends.”

“Yes, Commander,” Milo said, moving towards the table.

“Milo?” Joslyn called when he was a few steps away.

He turned back.

Joslyn didn’t know how to express what she wanted to say. Joslyn was not the boy’s mother, not even an aunt or an older sister; she was the Commander of the Palace Guard and he was a lost little boy she’d found in a cage inside the bowels of a burial chamber.

She could not say, I love you; he was not hers to love. She could not say, Everything will be fine; that was clearly a false gesture of comfort he would immediately discard.

“Don’t forget to tell Brother Rennus,” Joslyn said at last.

The boy nodded, then went to join the others. Linna gave him a comforting pat on the back when he sat down, and handed him a bowl of porridge.

Joslyn offered a quick wave to Alric and Brick, who sat at another table in the corner, but turned back to the stairs rather than walking over to them. Tasia would be waiting; there was one last meeting with her advisors to go to before they set sail for the East.