Whatever had happened to the Order of Targhan within their compound appeared to have happened to them in the palace, too. Their squad of ten – Linna, Akella, and Megs, along with Dez and the handful of sailors still strong enough to wield a sword – encountered no resistance as they climbed the mountainside towards the palace’s southern gate. In some places, the climb was so steep that steps had been cut into the mountainside. It reminded Linna of the steps cut into the bluffs outside the southern gate of the palace in Port Lorsin, and that, in turn, made her think of Milo and Princess Adela.
I’m almost there,she thought to them, as though she was a dreamwalker who could send a message over great distances.
What had she missed in the six months that had passed since she left them? Adela had finally married Darien, she guessed. Milo was probably living in the House of Wisdom as an apprentice Wise Man. Then a thought occurred to her: Four and a half years had passed since the Empress and Commander had entered the Kingdom of Persopos, but they hadn’t experienced it as nearly so long. What if the passage of time had also slowed for Linna? Maybe she would return to her friends to find that years had passed instead of months. Adela would be a woman grown and Milo would be a full Wise Man, assigned to tutor the children of some lord in a distant land.
They would have forgotten about Linna, assumed she had died on the journey to rescue the Empress and Commander. Everything would be awkward and she would no longer fit into their lives.
Yet what did it matter? Linna would sacrifice anything, even the comfortable little “family” she had made in the palace if she could return with that family’s two matriarchs. No price was too high to pay if she finally returned with the Empress and the Commander in tow.
The unsettling thoughts of home were made all the more unsettling when they reached the palace’s southern gate. Linna held up a hand, halting the procession behind her while she stared uneasily at the huge door before her. It stood slightly ajar.
“Linna?” Megs said, coming up to stand just behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“That door,” Linna said. “It’s not supposed to be there. It’s supposed to be an open archway.”
“What do you mean?”
“She means … in Port Lorsin’s palace … that archway … is well inside the … palace,” Akella said, wheezing hard every few words.
Linna glanced back at her. She looked even worse than before, and more of her weight was supported by Megs than by her own two feet.
“The palace’s southern entrance is at a dock alongside the Royal Canal,” Linna explained. “The doors open right onto the docks, and then there’s a series of rooms, and then this door isn’t a door at all, but an archway that leads into a long corridor.”
“What’s at the end of the corridor?” Megs asked.
“The southern drawing room.” Linna cocked her head. It was disorienting; it was like she could see her palace superimposed over this one. Why would someone go to the trouble of recreating Port Lorsin’s palace and yet leave so many rooms out?
One of the sailors had come up on Linna’s flank, and he poked at something with the tip of his borrowed rapier.
“Look.” He used the sword to lift whatever he had poking. It was a long black cloak, and as the first rays of dawn peeked above the palace, it cast a dingy shadow across the ground. Dust fell from it as it hung from the point of the rapier. The sailor pointed with his chin to the other side of the door that shouldn’t be there. “And another on the other side.”
“Guards,” Megs said. “Dead guards.”
“Put it down,” Akella said.
The sailor dropped it immediately. It sent up a swirling cloud of dust as it crumpled again.
Nine sets of eyes turned to Linna, waiting.
Without another word, she pulled on the great iron ring of the partially opened door.