Interlude II:
The Children Dream
~ SIX MONTHS AGO: LINNA ~
Darien and Adela sat shoulder-to-shoulder, their bare feet stretched out in front of them just out of reach of the waves. Linna watched them out of the corner of her eye, noting the way Adela tilted her chin towards Darien’s and smiled in response to some quiet comment he had made.
Linna couldn’t say for sure when the two had become lovers, but the fact that they were was absolutely obvious to anyone with two eyes and half a brain. She supposed it had probably happened, or started to happen, after she’d followed the Empress to the East all those years ago. It was probably why Darien had so eagerly supported Adela’s plan to send Linna with the Empress.
If Linna was being fair, she would be happy for Adela. If Adela and Darien were anyone else, Linna might have even found their young love – or at least mutual infatuation – endearing.
But they weren’t anyone else. She’d spent her childhood cleaning up after Darien when she’d been his father’s slave; she’d spent the early years of her adolescence secretly pining after the unattainable Adela, her best friend. Which made watching her best friend bat her eyelids at her former master somehow one step too far for Linna to accept, one final cosmic joke played on Linna by whichever god or goddess was truly writing the destinies of mankind.
At least they were not married yet. That was a small mercy, Linna supposed. Adela’s sister may have promised Darien’s father a royal marriage all those years ago, but for a Princess of the House of Dorsa to marry a Terintan lordling was still a scandalous act that would raise eyebrows and set tongues to wagging. Emperor Mace would find a way to make it happen nonetheless. Besides honoring the late Empress’s wishes, marrying Darien was what the Emperor’s former sister-in-law wanted more than anything in the world, and the Emperor was nothing if not kind. Even if the marriage would hurt him politically, he would see it done.
Whether or not Linna was hurt by the marriage was, of course, utterly irrelevant to absolutely everyone involved, including Adela.
Linna flicked another shell fragment into the waves and looked away.
Don’t be a fool,she told herself. It was a mantra she repeated to herself often enough these days. Not that repeating it ever worked.
The fact that a Terintan ex-slave had become lover to a Princess of the House of Dorsa had been extraordinary enough the first time; to think it would happen twice in a generation and a half was a fantasy that went too far. Linna should be satisfied with the other ways in which she had followed in her ku-sai’s footsteps – escaping slavery, serving in the Imperial Army, and rising to the rank of personal guard to a member of the House of Dorsa. Not many ex-slaves could claim such upward mobility. Wanting more was greedy.
“You’ve been so dour lately, Linna,” Adela commented, turning her face towards her guard but not her shoulders.
Linna brushed the sand from her hand and forced a smile. “Have I been?”
“Yes, you have, salvikkit,” Darien said, using the diminutive form of the Terintan word salvik, or “half-breed.” He’d convinced Adela that it was a term of endearment, no different than calling someone “sweetie” in the common tongue.
But he and Linna both knew what he meant.
Adela studied her, concerned. “Is there something wrong? Have you felt unwell?”
Linna looked away, tossing another shell fragment into the waves. “There’ve been more Eastern refugees arriving in Port Lorsin of late,” she said, inventing a plausible excuse for her moodiness. “I guess they just get me thinking too much of your sister and the Commander.”
Adela’s face morphed into an expression somewhere between grief and empathy, and she nodded.
Over the top of the Princess’s head, Darien glowered at Linna. Why must you ruin a perfectly good day by reminding her of what she has lost? his dark eyes demanded.
For once, Linna agreed with Darien. She stared at her feet, embarrassed.
“Do you know of their arrival because you’ve heard word of it,” asked Adela, “or have you been haunting the Shipper’s Quarter again?”
Adela’s tone was a teasing admonishment. It wasn’t that Adela particularly minded Linna disappearing into the city for hours at a time – if anything, Linna’s absence gave the Princess more alone time with Darien. And although officially Linna was Adela’s personal guard, Commander Quinn (whom Linna still called Brick) did not complain about Linna’s frequent absences, either. But the Shipper’s Quarter wasn’t the safest place in Port Lorsin, and Adela worried for her.
Skulking about places filled with sailors and smugglers,she always told Linna. You’re apt to get yourself knifed by some drunken Adessian who just lost at cards one of these nights.
Linna didn’t worry about getting knifed. Compared to the palace, where a Terintan woman stood out like a sore thumb, the Shipper’s Quarter provided a blissful anonymity. From down-on-their-luck Fesulians coming straight from the gladiator pits to horsemen from the Steppes who barely spoke the common tongue, the seediest of Shipper’s Quarter taverns made a better fit for Linna than the palace.
Besides that, a drunken Adessian was exactly what Linna was looking for. One drunken Adessian in particular.
The Princess interpreted Linna’s silence as an answer to her question. “Oh, Linna. Don’t you know how I worry when you hang about in the Shipper’s Quarter? What would I do if something happened to my dearest friend?”
Dearest friend.The words twisted the rusty knife already lodged in Linna’s heart.
Don’t be a fool,she told herself again.
“You don’t need to worry, Del,” Linna said, but she couldn’t look Adela in the eyes. “No one even notices me, most of the time.”
Movement flickered in Linna’s peripheral vision, and she automatically extended her senses and reached for the sword beside her as she turned. But then she relaxed. It was only Milo, ambling towards them in his awkward gait from the steps cut into the bluff behind them.
“Ah,” Darien said, and Linna couldn’t help but notice the way his mannerisms seemed more and more like his father’s every day. He’d taken to shaving his face in the custom of Capital Lands nobility, but if he ever grew his beard out, he’d be the spitting image of Lord M’Tongliss. “The boy must’ve finished his entrance exam.”
Despite the late-summer heat, Milo wore the same black breeches and black gloves he did every day. Before the coup, the Brothers had been trying to figure out how to cure Milo’s “condition;” after the coup, every known member of the Brotherhood had been either imprisoned or executed. It had taken the better part of three years, but Emperor Mace had finally managed to get Wise Man Evrart released, so long as he renounced any association to the Brotherhood and promised never to practice the shadow arts again. The other Brothers who still lived continued to languish in the dark cells beneath the palace.
For Milo, forcing the shadow arts back into the shadows meant that he’d lived with his condition for years without relief. The Wise Men, surprisingly skilled at denial, liked to pretend that nothing strange at all happened when Milo touched others with his bare hands, as though ignoring the fact that his touch infected others with shadows would somehow make it untrue. So Milo was stuck wearing the black gloves every moment of every day, even when he slept, even on hot days like today.
“I passed,” Milo said as soon as he got close enough for the others to hear. His smile reached his eyes for once, and this alone was enough to draw Linna out of her sour mood at last.
She got to her feet and pulled him into an embrace, not loosening her grip even when he tried to cringe away. “I knew you’d pass. Didn’t we all say you would?”
Adela hugged him next, holding on for even longer than Linna had, and even Darien offered Milo a Well done and manly pat on the shoulder.
Milo avoided all their gazes, chewing the inside of his cheek to hide his grin.
“Sit with us. Tell us of the exam,” Darien said, sweeping his arm towards the beach as though inviting a guest into his dining hall. For someone not yet a prince, he certainly had mastered acting like one. “It would be a welcome change of topic, given that the last topic included Linna’s propensity to seek out recreation in the Shipper’s Quarter.”
Darien and Adela settled back down into their places on the sand, not noticing the way Milo glanced sharply at Linna, his smile faltering. Something unspoken passed between them, but Linna tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed. She pointed at the indentation in the sand beside Adela, the place she’d occupied moments earlier. Milo hesitated but sat down without a word, and Linna squatted on his other side.
“So?” Adela prompted. “Does this mean we’re looking at the newest apprentice Wise Man?”
Milo blushed and stared at the sand between his booted feet. “Yes, I suppose.”
“You suppose?” Darien said. “Speak plainly. Are you going to the House of Wisdom or not?”
“I am. I leave next week.”
“So soon!” Adela exclaimed. “We will all miss you terribly.”
The four friends chatted for another half hour, with Milo eventually admitting that he’d not only passed his entrance exam, but had received the highest marks of any new apprentice in the past decade. After that, the group began to talk of summer’s end. Darien shared that Lord M’Tongliss had written to request his son’s presence in Paratheen for the upcoming Feast of Eirenna, an annual celebration of the end of Terinto’s driest and deadliest season, but that topic of conversation set Adela’s mouth into a pretty little puckered pout.
“It is bad enough that I lose my little brother to the House of Wisdom in a week, but I have to lose you to the House of Paratheen at the same time?”
Darien only smiled, squeezing her shoulders as he kissed her cheek.
“I’ll be on the first ship back to Port Lorsin the moment the feast ends. And I’ve requested an audience with the Emperor before I leave,” he added. “Father says Emperor Mace can’t put us off forever, even if he is preoccupied with those two toddling princes clinging to his knees all the time. Father is sure the Emperor will honor your sister’s promise for us to be married; he’s just been waiting for the right time. You just passed your nineteenth birthday. The Emperor really can’t wait much longer.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Adela said thoughtfully. Then she turned that magical, lovely smile of hers onto her lover. “But are you sure you’re ready to be a prince of the House of Dorsa?”
Linna managed to hide her eye roll.
“When I go home for next year’s feast,” Darien said, “you will come with me as my wife, and I will show you all that Paratheen has to offer. It isn’t as big as Port Lorsin, but it is certainly more colorful, I promise you that. Wouldn’t you agree, slavikkit?”
“Yes,” Linna said woodenly. “Colorful.”
“Linna, you’d come with me to Paratheen if I visited, wouldn’t you?” Adela asked. “Be my translator as well as my guard?”
“Of course I would.”
“You wouldn’t have need of a translator, my sweet,” Darien said. “I certainly speak the common tongue with more fluency – and less accent – than my former slave. And where in the Empire is it safer than at my side?” He put his arm around the princess and squeezed her close.
Adela tittered out a giggle while Linna ground her teeth.
Eventually, the sun began to dip in the west, sending rays of orange and gold glinting across the water. The party dusted sand off and headed back for the stairs in the bluffs. Linna let Darien and the Princess walk ahead, hand-in-hand, so that she could wait for Milo, who was a slower walker than the others due to his legs having never fully healed after imprisonment by the Order of Targhan.