Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

Linna started her search for Akella in the corridor she’d seen the pirate captain head down. The hall was narrow, with low ceilings that made Linna feel as though the levels above pressed down upon her head. She opened one door and found what had to have been a servant’s room, now stacked with lumber and equipment. A second door opened to a dormitory filled with soldiers in various states of undress. She closed the door quickly before they could see her, blushing furiously nonetheless.

Linna spent the better part of an hour roaming through the castle’s various corridors and courtyards, wishing she was as good a tracker as the Commander. Tracking skills wouldn’t really help her find Akella – a person couldn’t leave footprints on stone – but maybe if Linna had more hunter inside her than slave girl, she would be able to scent the pirate somehow, or deduce where she’d gone off to.

If she had more hunter in her than slave, maybe the Commander would’ve taken Linna north with her, instead of sending her back to Port Lorsin.

Linna imagined returning to the palace, arriving with an assortment of chambermaids, cooks, and Wise Men. Arriving like that would make it clear: Linna might wear black leather, but she was no member of the palace guard. She was just a girl, just another servant. She imagined the expression Adela would wear at seeing her – confusion and disappointment, her face falling. Del had hoped Linna would protect her sister in the East, that Linna would prove herself once more to be the Empress’s good luck charm. But Linna was nothing. She was the equivalent of a glorified chambermaid. A trusted servant, true, but trusted primarily to carry the Empress’s chamberpot to the privy.

Linna roamed the castle’s corridors and courtyards for what had to be at least an hour, lost in her own misery. She’d forgotten that she was looking for Akella until she caught a glimpse of her again. This time, the pirate crouched at the back of the blacksmith’s stall. Linna watched from a safe distance as Akella slowly reached up, snatched something off a workbench, and secreted the item inside a coat that looked too big for her. After a quick glance left and right, Akella stood up and strolled casually away.

Just out for an aimless evening walk, her posture said.

But Linna knew her better than that.

Akella’s “aimless” walk took her to the castle’s southwest corner, next to a set of stairs that led up to the battlements above. Soldiers came and went – the watch shift was changing – and Akella waved to a few of them as they passed. With the sun low on the horizon beyond the wall, a series of jagged shadows crawled up Akella’s form. A few minutes later, Akella and everything around her was deep in shadow.

That had been part of her plan, Linna realized. Whatever she was about to do, she’d picked a spot where, once the sun started to fall, she’d be covered by relative darkness.

Linna also knew it was exactly what she would have done.

Once the soldiers stopped coming and going, Akella dropped down and pulled something from the big coat. She reached for the space between her feet. Linna couldn’t tell what Akella was doing until, only a minute later, the pirate lifted up a metal grate.

Of course. Castle Pellon received more rain and snow than the palace in Port Lorsin did, which was why the outer ground level had drainage shafts scattered everywhere, especially in the corners. If all that water wasn’t taken away from the walls, it would gradually erode the earth around them and weaken them. Akella had thought of that, so she’d found her own way to come and go from the castle without being seen.

Akella stood up all at once, which in turn sent a surge of adrenaline through Linna – the pirate had caught her spying. But no, Akella’s eyes weren’t on the stack of barrels that served as Linna’s hiding place. She was facing the other direction, giving someone a grin and a jaunty salute. A soldier came into view, probably late for his shift on the battlements above, and hurried up the stairs beside Akella. Once he’d gone, Akella bent back down. A few seconds later, she vanished into the ground. The metal grate seemed to move as if by an invisible force, sliding back into its place.

Linna forced herself to count slowly to one hundred before following.

Iron rungs provided slippery handholds down the shaft that must have led at least fifteen feet into the ground, maybe twenty. The steady dripping of water echoed all around, eventually drowning out the muffled sounds from the castle above.

It was like entering another world, Linna thought. Perhaps this was what it felt like when the Empress and the Commander had entered the Shadowlands.

Just as she wondered how much deeper the shaft would go, Linna’s foot splashed into a puddle of water and struck something solid. She glanced up. Far above her head, a dim square of gray light marked the iron grate she’d climbed through.

Even as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the space around her was so shrouded in black that she might as well be inside a lightless cave. Linna placed one hand on the rough, wet brick wall of the shaft and held out her other hand in front of her, like a blind insect waving a single antenna in front of it to search for danger. She followed the curve of the shaft around until her antenna hand detected a draft of cool air ahead of her. She broadened the arc of her waving hand until she felt the edge of an opening. A tunnel led away from the shaft, big enough for a person to fit inside it, but small enough that even someone of Linna’s stature would have to crouch.

The draft coming from inside the tunnel stank – a mixture of mildew, rotten vegetation, and a hint of human waste.

“Akella?” she called tentatively into the tunnel. Linna unfurled her sense of hearing the way the Commander had taught her, but the only thing she detected was the echo of her own voice and the steady, susurrant movement of water.

Downhill, she guessed. The castle was built at the tallest point of Pellon, and the sewage tunnels must flow downhill, using gravity to carry water and waste away from the castle. Linna bet that this tunnel, or a larger sewage tunnel that it eventually joined, would probably take a person all the way to the river beyond Pellon’s walls and the hamlets surrounding the city.

She considered following the tunnel. It would be pitch black inside, but she could probably feel her way through it, and sooner or later she’d have to come to a shaft that matched the one behind her, another drainage point that would have iron rungs leading back up to the surface. But as she contemplated navigating the darkness, she remembered Akella crouched at the iron gate, her hands working back and forth before she opened it. The pirate had pulled something from her overcoat. A tool, Linna realized. Pliers or a wrench or a clawed hammer – some item that would have allowed her to unfasten whatever held the iron grate in place. Linna had no such tool, which meant she’d have to rely upon either catching up to Akella or guessing correctly which shaft up to the surface the pirate would take. And she would have to rely upon Akella not bolting the grate back in place behind her once she exited to the surface.

Linna hesitated, but then she turned back around, heading back to the iron rungs. She’d come back here another time with the same things Akella had – a tool to unfasten the iron grates, a lantern or a torch, and her short sword. Foolishly, Linna had let emotion cloud her mind after she’d heard the conversation between the Commander and the Empress, and in her haste to get as far away from them as she could, she’d left her sword behind. A true warrior wouldn’t just forget her weapon like that, and Linna chastised herself for being more like the child everyone saw her as than a true member of the palace guard.

As she climbed back up the rungs, Linna questioned if she should give up trying to be a warrior, a mizana. Maybe the best she could hope for out of life was to be a valued servant of the Empress. Emotion swirled inside her chest once more, and once more, she wanted to cry. They were sending her away, sending her away because they didn’t think she could handle what might come. She’d worked so hard to prove herself, but apparently she just hadn’t proven to be enough.

As she had before, Linna pushed the tears away. It was time to bring the Empress her evening tea, and Linna wouldn’t let the Empress see her cry.