Linna woke herself with a shuddering gasp that fell just short of a scream. She’d had the nightmare again, the one in which her mind replayed the moment in which she gutted the intruder in Tergos castle with strong spear. The soldier’s eyes had subtly changed in that last moment, shifting from cold and dead to painfully aware and alive. Shocked. Shocked, maybe, that with a single stroke, Linna had killed him. At that moment in her recurring dream, she always traded places with the soldier, and she looked out from his eyes at herself, except she wasn’t the Linna she normally saw herself as, but something else. One of the Shadowlands creatures from Milo’s frightening tales.
And the only emotion writ upon her own face was murder.
Linna threw back the layers of blankets from her bedroll, unsurprised that they were damp with sweat. It had been nearly half a year since she’d killed the young soldier, and she’d killed again since then.
So why did the dreams of him, in particular, still haunt her?
Sometimes the nightmares came every night, especially when messengers reported back to the Empress that fighting on the front lines had grown intense. Other times, the dreams took a break, spacing themselves out so that she had them only once or twice per week. Linna wondered when the dreams would stop altogether.
What if – she hated to think this way but what if – what if the dreams never went away?
Perhaps this was why Commander Joslyn sometimes looked so somber and sad when she believed no one else was watching. Linna wanted to ask the Commander if she ever had dreams like this. But she never asked. Sometimes, the Commander chastised Linna for prying. And asking about her mentor’s dreams would certainly count as prying.
Even if she wanted to ask the Commander, she couldn’t right now. The Commander was tens of miles away, having taken command of two brigades on the northern edge of the Empire’s line after the general was slain in battle.
Which meant that Linna was now the one responsible for the Empress’s safety.
That wasn’t technically true; the Commander had left Ammanta, one of the remaining Fesulians, in charge of the Empress’s personal guard during her absence, but Ammanta wasn’t the one who slept on the Empress’s floor each night. And Ammanta wasn’t the Commander’s apprentice. Most importantly, Ammanta, though loyal, was still a hired guard. She wasn’t family to the Empress the way the Commander and Linna were. So while Ammanta might be in charge of the Empress’s safety officially, unofficially, Linna considered the Empress to be her responsibility until the Commander returned.
I wonder if the Empress thinks of me as family,Linna thought. Princess Adela had called Linna a sister before, so maybe that was close enough.
Thoroughly awake now, Linna stretched like a cat and rose from the bedroll.
She glanced at the Empress’s cot behind her. Good. The muted half-scream that had woken Linna had not woken the Empress. The Empress had such a hard time falling asleep these days without the Commander beside her, and she also said that the babe growing in her belly, who had just begun to show itself, made a comfortable position increasingly difficult to find.
Soundlessly, Linna slipped on her boots, strapped on the belt that kept the rune-marked dagger at her right hip and her short sword at her left, and stepped outside the tent.
Two of the four night guards posted around the Empress’s tent, Western soldiers the Commander had hand-picked and personally trained, gave Linna tired nods as she walked out a few paces from the tent. She wouldn’t go far. Ammanta might technically be the Empress’s bodyguard now, but the Commander had been very specific that while she was away, Linna should never let the Empress out of her sight. Linna had promised that she wouldn’t. However, she did usually wake before the Empress and would go a few dozen yards from her tent to find tea and porridge for the Empress before she woke. Linna herself didn’t eat in the mornings. The Commander only had tea in the mornings, so Linna only had tea in the mornings. She missed coffee, but coffee was rarely available in the Empire outside Terinto, and it was definitely not available here, in the army’s temporary encampment two-thirds of the way to the city of Pellon.
To the east, the first few fingers of Mother Eirenna’s tentative light stretched out over distant hills. The sight gave Linna momentary peace. No matter where in this great land our journey takes us, Mistress Sunyen used to say, Father Mezzu will always watch over us from above, and Mother Eirenna will always greet us each new morning.
Linna certainly preferred her new life with the Empress and the Commander to her life as a slave, but she still missed the tinkers. She missed the sound of the jingling brass bells tied to the tinker’s cart; she missed the way the smell of horsetail mushroom tea filled the bliva when Mistress Sunyen told fortunes and read palms. Being this far east was part of what made Linna think of them now. The Empress’s military campaign was the first time she’d been in the East since she’d been their slave.
Linna turned away from the glow of dawn on the horizon and memories of the tinkers to make her way down the hill towards one of the camp’s two mess tents. She felt the distance between herself and the Empress’s tent stretching taut, like a cord at the brink of snapping. But she would be swift – gather porridge and two teas, then be back up the hill and into the tent before the Empress ever knew she was gone.
A figure caught her attention halfway down the hill. It was the pirate, perched on a boulder. She faced south, eyes closed, left side of her face partially illuminated by the rising sun.
“Ho, Rizalt Akella,” Linna said when she was about a yard off. She didn’t want to startle the Adessian captain by coming up from behind without announcing herself first.
Akella half-turned, shading her eyes. She grinned when she saw it was Linna.
The pirate’s grins always unnerved Linna somewhat. Each one made her look as if she knew something that no one else did.
“Ho, there, little seagull,” said Akella.
That was what she usually called Linna – little seagull. Linna didn’t know what it meant, but she gathered that it was mildly insulting. Neither Adessians nor Imperial fisherfolk cared much for seagulls. They were nuisance creatures, always hanging around, trailing after ships and sailors in the hopes that they might steal a bit of someone else’s catch. They were the sea’s equivalent of begging alleyway mutts.
“You’re up early,” Linna remarked, deciding not to take the bait.
“As are you.”
“I’m always up early. I’m fetching tea and porridge for the Empress.”
Akella chuckled, turning her gaze southward again. “As a good little slave should.”
Linna gritted her teeth. The Commander was good at not reacting to the veiled (and not-so-veiled) barbs of others, and Linna wanted very much to be like her ku-sai. But the Commander was better at it than she was.
“I’m not a slave,” Linna said, irritated.
“No, no, of course not,” said Akella, but that unnerving, knowing grin was still there, revealing the gap between her two front teeth.
Linna decided to change the subject. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to smell the sea.”
“We’re a hundred miles from the sea. At least.”
“That’s why I said ‘trying,’ little seagull.” Akella was the one who sounded mildly irritated now.
Linna hesitated.
The Commander would already have walked away by now – the Commander probably wouldn’t have even stopped to talk. But her ku-sai’s teachings were not the only ones that lived inside Linna. Tinker customs were far different from those that ruled Port Lorsin’s palace. According to tinkers, the only proper way to respond to an insult was with even more kindness and generosity before.
Only the gentle heart lives without enemies.
That had been one of Master Rin’bo’s favorite proverbs, and Linna must have heard it a thousand times before her fourth birthing day.
“Would you like me to bring you anything from the mess tent to break your fast?” Linna finally asked. Part of her was kicking herself, because besides someone with a gentle heart, the only other kind of person who unerringly answered insults with kindness was a slave. “Tea?” Linna suggested. “Or I could look to see if there’s any smoked fish left.”
Akella looked back up, grin finally fading. “No, little seagull.” She paused. “But thank you for not treating me like a prisoner.”
“The Empress values and respects you, Captain Akella.” The words had come out before Linna could stop them. More undeserved kindness. “So do all the sailors and soldiers whose lives you saved during the hurricane.”
Akella seemed as though she might say something else, but she did not. She only nodded and turned south again, nostrils flaring as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Trying to smell the sea.
Linna unfurled her sense of smell like the Commander had taught her, concentrating her energy on extending its range beyond its normal boundaries. She sought a hint of salt, a hint of ocean, but all she could smell was soil and grass made damp by the recent rains.
If wet grass was all she could smell, with her senses unfurled like a true sword master of the Seven Cities, Akella couldn’t possibly smell the sea. For a brief moment, Linna wondered if the pirate captain felt trapped in a place like this – hamstrung, even.
Linna chastised herself. The Commander wouldn’t be thinking like this. Not even the Empress would. Yes, they were grateful to Captain Akella for saving the Balus during the storm, but there was also a reason why they treated her like a prisoner – she was a prisoner. At least for practical purposes she was. The once-mighty rizalt could call Linna a slave all she wanted, but at least Linna had come to the East of her own free will.
Did youreally come of your own free will? a voice inside taunted. The voice sounded uncomfortably like Captain Akella’s. Or did you come because a certain princess asked you to?
Setting her face into a mask of cold neutrality the way the Commander might, Linna walked on. And when she passed Akella again on the way back up the hill a few minutes later, neither spoke to the other.