34
“Don’t you get bored? I would get bored.”
Linna was carrying the Empress’s empty tray back to the mess hall following her noontide meal, and the Adessian pirate was back on her boulder again, still facing south, still planted there like a brown-skinned gargoyle that never moved.
Linna slowed. “Bored with what?” But because she already knew what Captain Akella meant, she added, “I’m not the one who sits on a rock all day trying to smell a sea that’s a hundred miles away.”
Akella chuckled. “Oh-ho, little seagull. For your information, I have not been here all day. I ate my noontide meal here, but for the rest of the day, I’ve been all throughout this camp.” She turned to Linna and winked. “As well as outside it.”
Linna’s face soured. “The guards have been instructed not to let you outside.”
“True,” said Akella airily. “But I’ve been a smuggler, amongst other things, since I was your age. Getting into places I’m not supposed to be in, and out of places I’m supposed to stay in, is one of my specialties.”
Linna huffed. She longed to say something else to the pirate, something quick-witted and sharp-tongued that would put Akella in her place – a threat to turn her in to the Empress or Ammanta, perhaps? – but suspected that anything she said would just make the woman laugh again.
“I need to take these to the mess hall,” Linna said instead.
“Of course you do.” Akella cocked her head. “But what do you do the rest of the time? Your Empress hasn’t left her tent all day today. Making schemes on how to further waste the lives of her soldiers, no doubt. At least when the Commander was here, you still got to train each morning.”
“The Empress doesn’t ‘waste’ the lives of her soldiers. She cares about each of them, and every death guts her.”
Linna shivered involuntarily at her own choice of words. Gutted soldiers. Just like the boy she killed.
“No need to get so prickly, little seagull,” Akella said, not seeming to notice Linna’s small shudder. “Do you know what I think? I think you should train with me each morning. It will keep both of our skills sharp. And stop both of us from being so bored.”
“Train with you?” Linna couldn’t help herself; she laughed aloud.
“Why is that so funny? You think I have nothing to teach you?”
“Commander Joslyn is my teacher,” Linna said. She lifted her chin. “In Terinto, she’s called a Mizana, a sword master. Most people say she’s the last living sword master of the dance of the Seven Cities. And she’s passing the dance on to me, her apprentice.”
“So?”
“So … if I train with you, I’ll learn bad habits.”
The pirate captain threw her head back and laughed. It wasn’t a single chuckle or snort, either. She laughed and laughed as if Linna had told her the funniest joke in the world. She laughed so long and so loudly that other people in the camp – passing soldiers and Brothers, mostly – turned to look at what was happening.
“What?” Linna demanded. “Why is that so funny?”
“Oh, little seagull,” Akella said, stopping to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes, “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at that Commander of yours. I’ve never met someone who takes themselves so seriously in all my life. I pictured her face …” A ripple of giggles interrupted her before she could go on. “I pictured her face, so stony and serious, when she told you not to train with anyone else because you’d learn bad habits, and it just – I don’t know, it just set me to laughing. And then I couldn’t stop. Preyla must have decided I needed the laugh.”
Linna remembered how Deputy Commander Brick had reacted when she’d told him that the Commander wouldn’t allow her to train with him anymore because she would learn bad habits. He hadn’t laughed, but he had snorted and rolled his eyes.
But that was different. Deputy Commander Brick loved and respected the Commander. This Adessian pirate clearly did not.
“I need to get to the mess hall,” Linna said stiffly. She resumed her walk.
Akella hopped off the boulder and jogged after her. “Don’t be like that, little seagull. I may not like your Commander, but I’ve seen her fight. I’ll grant you that she is truly a Mizana. I don’t know if I believe she’s the only Mizana left in all Terinto, but she is, and it pains me to say it, quite good.”
Linna slowed down but didn’t stop or turn around.
Akella sighed. “Look, all I’m saying is that I’m bored. I’m bored and a daily training session would be good for me. It will keep me out of trouble. And you can believe me when I say it or not, but I think you can learn some things from me. You’re what – fourteen summers?”
“Fifteen.”
“Ah, fifteen summers,” Akella corrected, a hint of amusement in her tone. “I was the sailing master of my first crew at fifteen summers. Which means I’ve been besting men twice my size in battle since I was your age.”
Linna paused at the entrance to the mess hall, stepping aside for a soldier heading in the opposite direction. She faced Akella.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Aye, Linna. Alright.” Linna had expected Akella to argue, to keep trying to convince her, but instead the pirate walked backwards up the hill. Back towards her boulder. “Think about it. I’ll find myself a sword in the meantime. Just in case.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to carry a sword?”
The pirate shrugged and gave Linna that annoying grin of hers. “Here’s my first lesson for you: Everything in life is always up for negotiation. Always.”
With that, she turned around at last, heading up the hill with a new spring in her step.
“So she does know my name,” Linna said to herself. The woman was so irritating.
“Who knows your name?” a voice behind her asked.
Linna jumped and barely suppressed a yelp of surprise. Udolf, Brother Rennus’s apprentice, had come up right next to her without her noticing. How had he done that?
“Brother Udolf,” Linna said evenly.
“Sorry for startling you,” he said. Udolf carried an empty tray in his hands, just like she did. Probably Brother Rennus’s finished noontide meal. “Master Brother Rennus has been wanting me to work on my illusions.” He nodded at the opening to the mess tent, and Linna realized she was still standing in front of it, blocking it. “After you.”
Linna stepped inside, skirting long plank tables, benches, and soldiers to make her way to the back of the tent where the dishes were washed. One soldier let out a wolf whistle that she assumed was for her, and all the men around him burst into laughter.
Linna gritted her teeth.
“Do they do that every time you walk into the mess hall?” Udolf asked quietly at her shoulder.
“Every time I walk into the mess hall, every time I walk by a patrol … essentially anytime they see me, and the Empress isn’t around to hear, they find a way to taunt me,” Linna answered.
“I would think they would show more respect,” Udolf said. “After all, you’re the Empress’s personal guard.”
Linna glanced behind her, looking for a sign he was being sarcastic – a smirk, a glint of mischief in his blue eyes – but there was none.
“No,” Linna corrected. “I’m the apprentice to the Empress’s personal guard. And there aren’t many in the Imperial Army who like seeing nomads in palace blacks.”
“People are fools,” Udolf said sympathetically. “Jealous of what they can’t have, fearful of what they don’t understand.”
Linna nodded. This was already the longest conversation she’d had with Udolf, and she was already finding she liked him more than she thought she did. They reached the rear of the tent, and both scraped clean their respective master’s and mistress’s trays into the barrel of food scraps.
“That’s what Master Brother Rennus always says,” Udolf continued. “He says it’s why the House of Wisdom will never accept the Brotherhood back into its ranks.”
Linna gave a slight frown. As far as she knew, the House of Wisdom already had accepted the Brotherhood back into its ranks – grudgingly, to be sure, but after the Battle of Port Lorsin, the Wise Men had almost no choice but to embrace the help of the Brothers. But she decided not to ask Udolf about that.
“Why do you always call him ‘Master Brother’?” she asked instead.
“Oh,” Udolf said, as though he’d forgotten that what was obvious to him wouldn’t be obvious to everyone else. “Just as the House of Wisdom has a hierarchy, so does the Brotherhood. Master Brother Rennus is at the top of that hierarchy.” He grinned. “I’m probably not supposed to say that – the Brotherhood does like its secrets.”
Linna cocked her head. “So why tell me?”
He shrugged. “Because the Brotherhood is overly cautious. There’s no need to hide everything in the shadows anymore. I mean, look around.” He swept out a hand. “There are, what? Fifty Brothers in this camp alone? Sixty? And more serving along the front lines. The Empress herself has a Brother as a senior counselor. Which means that if anything ever happened to the Empress and the Emperor – let’s hope nothing does, but if it did – the next Regent would be a Brother. So the way I see it, the Brotherhood will be as respected as the House of Wisdom is soon, even if the House of Wisdom fights it. And that means everyone will know Master Brother Rennus’s name. No more need for secrets.”
Linna wasn’t so sure he was right. The Brotherhood still had its share of enemies, both within the House of Wisdom and within the general population of the Empire. The name “Cult of Culo” had been the collective boogeyman of the Empire for far too long for everyone to simply put down their prejudices and embrace their open existence. In that way, she supposed they weren’t that different from Terintans.
Which made her feel an odd kind of kinship with Udolf. He was like a Terintan who didn’t know he was a Terintan. But he was also an apprentice scraping his master’s plates, just like she was.
“You know,” Udolf said carefully, “Brother Rennus was right when he said you would be the best person to sneak into Bawold and poison the tribesmen’s elixir.”
Linna didn’t know how to respond. She appreciated the compliment – and she agreed, too. But the Empress had already made it clear that Brother Rennus was to find someone else. Not to mention the Commander had insisted that Linna not leave the Empress’s side until she returned.