The question on Linna’s face transformed into a scowl, and she opened her mouth to speak, probably to remind the Lady that this was her Empress she was speaking to, and she was in no position to turn her away.
Joslyn put her hand on Linna’s shoulder. The girl closed her mouth, but the scowl remained.
Lady Beryea winced. She must have seen the entire silent exchange. “Please forgive me, your Majesty. It’s not that I do not want to invite you in. It’s just … my apartments are … since I received word of my husband, I haven’t really made it out of my room and … well, the chambermaids do try to keep things tidy, but I will be rather embarrassed for my sovereign to see what a state my rooms are in.”
“Nonsense,” Tasia said. “I am acquainted with the darkness of grief myself, my Lady. I promise I will not think any less of you, regardless of the state of your rooms.”
The noblewoman hesitated one moment longer, then threw her door open for Tasia, stepping aside to let her enter. Joslyn and Linna moved to follow, but Tasia held out a hand.
“I think I shall be safe enough with the Lady of House Tergos by myself, Commander,” Tasia said. “If you please: wait outside.”
Linna looked up. “I don’t think that woman is in her right mind.”
“She’s not,” Joslyn agreed.
“Do you think we should … ?”
“I want you to go back to the Empress’s quarters,” Joslyn said. “Search them again, and secure them until the Empress and I return. Do you remember your lessons on extending your senses – sending out your ears and your nose beyond their normal range?”
Linna nodded.
Joslyn looked past the girl, unfurling her own senses down each side of the curving corridor. She heard nothing, smelled nothing out of the ordinary.
“Just … remain especially vigilant, Linna,” Joslyn said at last. “This castle is not the palace in Port Lorsin. We are not acquainted with its inhabitants; we do not know its secrets. And the lady of the house …” Joslyn trailed off with a shake of her head. “Remain vigilant.”
Linna made her face somber in a fair imitation of Joslyn’s own expression. “Yes, Commander. I will not let my guard down.”
She hurried off down the curving corridor towards Tasia’s guest chambers, one hand on the pommel of her short sword.
Joslyn sighed to herself. Linna was determined to shape herself into Joslyn’s successor, but she had no idea what taking the life of another with her own blade would do to her soul, what the chaos of a battlefield would do to her mind. And nevertheless she rushed headlong towards her supposed “destiny” of being a warrior as if she could not wait to become a skilled killer.
Just as Joslyn had herself at that age.
At least Joslyn finally understood why Ku-sai had always seemed on the brink of irritation with her, why he had all but begged her not to join the Imperial Army.
Joslyn put Linna out of her mind and focused on her own advice: remain vigilant. But there was nothing to hear or see; the castle of the House of Tergos was silent as a tomb. The unnatural stillness only made the back of Joslyn’s neck itch all the more.
When Tasia finally emerged from Lady Beryea’s room an hour later, her expression was troubled. Joslyn lifted a questioning eyebrow, but Tasia only shook her head.
“Let’s go back to our rooms,” she said. “I’m ready for that rest you keep pestering me about.”
Tasia did not speak again until they were halfway down the corridor, well away from Lady Beryea’s quarters.
“Everyone thinks the Lady is mad with grief,” Tasia said quietly. “And she is, in a manner of speaking. But it’s more than that.” She paused, glancing about them before lowering her voice further. “I think she is being tormented by a dreamwalker.”
“A dreamwalker? Are you sure?”
“She has been having a recurring nightmare of a hooded, faceless figure who comes to her each night,” Tasia said. “The figure told her that her husband was shadow-infected before anyone in the Imperial Army had made it back to Tergos to deliver the news – she knew Micah’s fate a week before the message arrived. Then the hooded figure returned, telling her that her husband would be safe so long as she did what they required of her.”
“And what did this figure require of her?” Joslyn asked.
“Nothing,” said Tasia. “At least, not at first. For a while, she had relief from the dreams and was starting to feel her old self. Then a few days ago, the dreams began again. The shadowy figure – the dreamwalker, I think – told her to expect our ships. And to expect, well, me.”
Joslyn didn’t like the way this sounded. Despite her own aptitude for dreamwalking, and her ku-sai’s, dreamwalkers were not particularly common. The Brotherhood had their share of dreamwalkers, certainly, but from what Brother Rennus had told her and Tasia, only a handful of Brothers studied that art. The vast majority of Brothers were healers and illusionists.
So who haunted Lady Beryea’s dreams, then?
Or what haunted them?
“The reason Beryea didn’t want to meet me for dinner,” Tasia continued a few seconds later, “is that the hooded figure wants her to assassinate me – and suggested that poisoning my food would be easiest. Beryea feared that if we dined together, her hand might somehow be forced. She feared she would poison me against her will.”
Joslyn processed this silently for a few moments before responding. “The same way your father and Commander Cole were assassinated.”
“Exactly,” Tasia agreed. “Which makes me wonder if there are still conspirators alive who plotted to overthrow my father. Conspirators Norix never named.”
“That’s possible,” Joslyn said. “But it is also possible that whoever this dreamwalker is simply wishes to make it look as if there are still conspirators alive.”
They had reached Tasia’s guest chambers by then. Tasia paused before entering, placing a hand on Joslyn’s forearm.
“I think we should keep this between us,” she said, voice low. “I believe Lady Beryea is telling the truth, and I do not want her treated like an enemy.”
Joslyn nodded.
The days passed. In ones and twos and threes, crows arrived to report the safe arrival of ships and the number of their survivors. Meanwhile, Tasia continued to make her rounds through the camp outside the city each day, visiting the injured, raising spirits where she could. But already the soldiers whispered amongst themselves that the campaign to finally end the War in the East had been cursed, that shadows and sorcerers had already doomed them all.
Joslyn, for her part, fought the virus of doubt spreading through Tasia’s personal guard the best way she knew how: she established a training regimen for them immediately. Beginning their first morning in Tergos, she rose at dawn, training Linna in the dance for an hour in a private castle courtyard before meeting the guards who were not on duty and drilling them until the morning sun was high in the sky. It was harder for soldiers to whisper of curses and conspiracies, Joslyn found, when they were exhausted from training.
Lady Beryea did not come out of her chambers the second day of their stay in Tergos, nor the third day, nor the fourth. Joslyn and Linna caught sight of her briefly at dawn on the fifth day on a fourth-floor balcony as they returned from an early morning training session, looking more wretched than ever. Tasia visited her again that same day, reporting back to Joslyn that Beryea hadn’t been sleeping in an attempt to keep the nightmares at bay; on the sixth day, a chambermaid reported that her mistress had fallen into a fever and had grown delirious.
The assassin arrived in the middle of the night as the sixth day turned into the seventh.