“But she was there.” The Empress murmured something else, something too quiet for Linna to make out. “The question is how he got up here – this room is four stories off the ground.”
Linna went to the window, glad to have something to do. Glad to have an excuse to walk away from the dead soldier lying in a puddle of blood in the middle of the room. The soldier she had killed.
Linna leaned out the window. “There’s no rope. He had to have climbed.”
“How?” the Commander wondered aloud. “The wall is sheer granite.”
“Not that sheer,” Linna said. “The walls of Lord M’Tongliss’s estate were far smoother – with respect, Commander,” she added hastily.
The Commander squatted beside the dead boy and picked up one of his hands while the Empress lit a lamp.
“He definitely climbed,” the Commander said, dropping the hand. “His fingertips are bloodied and bruised.” She paused. “Sheer or not sheer, four stories up a vertical wall – without being seen – is a feat.”
Linna thought about the walls she used to climb at Lord M’Tongliss’s manor. She thought about how she used to sneak up to the roof without being seen when the Empress first arrived so that she could watch the Empress perform the dance of the Seven Cities at sunrise each morning. Linna had used vines, window ledges, and the subtlest of cracks to make her way to the top, and no one had ever seen her. By comparison, the wall outside seemed like it would have been easy to climb.
“I know it would have been easy for you, Linna,” the Commander added, as though reading Linna’s thoughts. “But most people are not you. Most fresh Imperial recruits are not you.”
Linna blushed.
The Empress brought the lamp over. With more light, Linna saw that the dead soldier was even younger than she’d originally thought. She’d taken him to be older than her – eighteen, maybe nineteen summers. But now that the lamplight shone over his boyish features and acne-ridden face, she realized he was more like sixteen summers, the minimum age required to join the Imperial Army. If anything, he looked like a boy of fourteen summers who’d lied about his age in order to join.
“He didn’t fight like a fourteen year-old,” Linna said quietly, more to herself than anyone else.
“What’s that?” the Empress asked.
Linna tore her eyes away from the dead boy’s face. “He’s so young. But I’ve seen the new recruits in their drills, Empress. They – they don’t have much experience wielding a sword, and all their movements are awkward.” Linna could feel her cheeks reddening even more as she spoke, because she realized what she was implying: at fifteen summers and female, she was already far more capable with a sword than young men who’d spent months in the army training for battle. It sounded arrogant, even to her own ears. She pressed on, rushing through her next words. “But this – this soldier, he didn’t fight like someone who’d never held a sword before. He fought like … like someone confident and experienced.”
“Maybe he was,” the Commander said. “You of all people should know what it’s like to be underestimated by an opponent.”
Linna opened her mouth, closed it again. She couldn’t argue with that. She wanted to tell the Commander and Empress that there was something wrong with the way the soldier had fought, something that didn’t fit, but she had no logical reason to use to explain that feeling.
Besides, maybe the Commander was right. Maybe the boy was more experienced than he looked, and it was just Linna’s shock at being woken by an intruder in the middle of the night, followed by her first kill in battle, that gave her the wrong feeling in her gut.
The Commander gently closed the boy’s unseeing eyes and stood back up, brushing her hand against her thigh.
The Empress sighed. “Why, though? Why would a soldier from within my own ranks do this? And was he acting alone, or do I have a mutiny brewing?” She glanced from the dead boy to the Commander. “We’ve been out visiting the troops every day. I’ve gathered no sense of discontent other than the usual soldiers’ complaints.”
The Commander seemed to think a moment, brow furrowed. “Neither have I. Not enough to lead to …” she gestured at the dead body, “this.”
“The insignia on his sheath says he’s a commoner private from one of the Western brigades,” the Empress said. “Simon warned me that there were rumblings in the West, talk of a second rebellion – but that was ages ago, when my father was still alive. Before I was engaged to Mace.” She looked up, catching the Commander’s eye. “You don’t think …?”
The Commander shook her head. “Right now, I don’t know. What I do know is that we need this body out of your bedchamber. And I think it would be better if no one knew he was an Imperial soldier. That would be poor for morale.”
“And it would tip off anyone working with him that we’re looking for them,” the Empress added.
The Commander glanced around. “Linna, pull the sheets from the cot I’m supposed to be sleeping in.” She knelt back down next to the corpse, unstrapping the boy’s sword belt. “We’ll hide his armor and weapons, wrap the body in a sheet, and tell the servants he was a mountain man. They won’t realize the truth until we’re in Birsid. Oh – and Linna, move your cot back to the place where it’s supposed to be.”
Linna nodded, happy to have a task that would take her mind off everything that had happened in the past fifteen minutes.
I killed someone,she thought as she tugged the sheets off the Commander’s unused cot. Mother Eirenna have mercy, I killed someone.
It was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? To be a true sword master like the Commander? And the Commander had told her long ago that the art of the sword master was death. Still, Linna hadn’t known it would feel like … this. Like killing a boy her own age who looked like he should still be at home with his mother.
She dropped the sheets she’d pulled off the bed, darted to the privy adjoining the Empress’s room, and vomited into the dark hole.