“Have you found any sign of her?” he asked softly once Darien and Adela were out of earshot.
“No. Not so much as a whispered rumor.”
Almost to himself, Milo said, “She’s not with the Commander and the Empress. They’re … separated, somehow. I thought perhaps…” He turned back to Linna. “Are you sure you’ve looked everywhere?”
“She was an Adessian rizalt,” Linna said. “A notorious one at that, even by the standards of Adessians. If she’d returned to Port Lorsin, even for a brief visit, I would’ve heard about it by now. I don’t think she ever made it out of the East.”
“They’re alive, Linna. All three of them. I know they are.”
Linna studied Milo’s face for a long moment before replying. “You’ve told me that. You’ve told me that for a long time. Yet everyone says they fell during the battle. Including General Ollea, who said she saw the Empress’s standard fall beneath a crush of mountain men with her own eyes. The general has no reason to lie.”
“I know.”
“It’s been four years, Milo – four years.”
“I know, but…”
They reached the stairs, worn and crumbling limestone steps carved into the cliff face by some anonymous hand centuries earlier. The stairs were probably as old as Port Lorsin itself, and narrow enough that Linna and Milo could no longer walk side by side as they walked. Linna went first, chewing on what she needed to say.
“When I came back from the East, I wasn’t sixteen summers yet, and you weren’t even eleven,” Linna began, words echoing oddly against the limestone on either side of them. “And – and, well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, Milo. Maybe when I came back from the East, we were both so young that we needed to hang onto the hope that the Empress and the Commander were still alive out there. Maybe believing that they survived is how we survived. So you told me you knew they were still alive because you had to say it to comfort yourself – and I needed that comfort, too.” Behind her, Milo started to interject, but Linna spoke over him. “But we’re not children anymore. I’m a woman grown and you’re about to begin your apprenticeship. I should be focused on the Princess’s safety, not wandering around Shipper’s Quarter’s brothels looking for a pirate who’s probably four years dead. And you should be focused on becoming a Wise Man.” Linna fixed her eyes on the steps ahead of her. “It’s time we both give up the fantasies of children and accept that they are gone.”
“It’s not a fantasy.” Linna could hear Milo’s feet scuffing along the limestone steps behind her. He always got a little breathless on the climb, and the narrow steps were hard for him. Half-panting, he said, “I’ve been dreaming again lately. Mainly of the Commander. She’s in a palace. It’s like our palace, like someone tried to…make a copy of it, somehow. And for some reason, I feel like this palace, this false palace, it’s in Persopos.”
“Persopos,” Linna muttered to herself. It had been the Empress’s obsession in her last year of life, the whole reason she’d insisted on going to the East herself. The whole reason she’d died. If Linna never heard the name Persopos again, it would be too soon.
Milo either didn’t hear Linna’s utterance or ignored it. “I think that’s where they are, and I think – no, I know that the Commander is dreamwalking to reach out to me. She’s trying to tell me something, but she…I’m not sure, it’s like she can’t hold onto her q’isson long enough to say what she needs to say.”
“I dream of the Commander, too, sometimes.” Linna didn’t slow her climb, even though she knew Milo was starting to lag behind. “I dream of her, of the Empress. Every now and then, I even dream of the pirate. But they’re just dreams, Milo, and as much as I’d like them to be something else, or to mean something else, all they really mean is that I miss them.”
“Mine aren’t ‘just’ dreams,” Milo retorted. “Have you forgotten that the Commander is a dreamwalker?”
“The Commander was a dreamwalker,” Linna corrected. “If she was really dreamwalking into your head to tell you something, Milo, why did she wait four years to do it?”
“Because…” The sound of his feet against the limestone stopped for a moment, so Linna stopped, too. “I don’t know. Maybe she couldn’t before for some reason. Or… I don’t know, time works differently in the Shadowlands.”
“You said they were in the Kingdom of Persopos, not the Shadowlands.”
“I know I did. But in my dreams, Persopos and the Shadowlands are… linked, somehow. As if one is a mirror of the other. I don’t understand it, but it – it feels true.”
“You’re probably dreaming of them as linked because Evrart said they were once,” Linna said. “When he still used to speak of the Shadowlands.”
She’d been speaking to Milo with her back to him, but now she finally turned around to face him. He stood five steps below her. Although he’d hit a growth spurt in the past two years and finally surpassed Linna in height, she loomed over him at the moment, as if he was still the skinny little boy who’d only just been freed from a cage by the Commander.
“After I killed the soldier Rennus skinwalked into to assassinate the Empress,” Linna began carefully, “I dreamed about it for months. Over and over again. Especially the way his eyes changed the moment before he died. From blankness to terror. Sometimes I dream about it even now, usually if I’m anxious or –”
“Your dreams are ordinary, mine aren’t. I’m telling you, the Commander –”
“Let me finish,” Linna said tightly. “I dream about killing that man every time I’m anxious about something. And you’ve been anxious about your entrance exams for months, exactly the same time all these dreams started up again. You claim your dreams aren’t ordinary, that the Commander is dreamwalking? What if you’ve simply been anxious? Or what – what if some part of you is letting go of what was in order to move towards what will be?”
“Stop condescending to me,” Milo said, each word a sharp bite. “I’m not a child, and I know more about the Shadowlands than you will ever know or ever want to know.” He pinned Linna in place with his gaze, grey eyes shining with intensity. “The Commander is a dreamwalker, Linna. A dreamwalker. Destroying the undatai may have destroyed its claim on her, but it never destroyed her connection to the Shadowlands. And she’s using those abilities now to reach out to me.”
“I want the Commander and the Empress to be alive as much as you do. But they’re gone, Milo.” Linna turned back around and resumed her climb. “They’re gone, and wishful thinking won’t change that.”
“Gods, why must you be so stubborn?”
“Because the Commander and the Empress have been dead for four years, Milo! Four years! If the Commander was alive in some strange palace in the Kingdom of Persopos and she could still dreamwalk, she would have done it long ago!”
“No,” Milo said, but Linna could feel his confidence wavering. “No, you’re wrong. I told you already – time works differently in the Shadowlands.”
Linna blew out a frustrated breath and threw up her arms, scraping her left hand painfully against the bluff walls. She rubbed it, and the throbbing pain reminded her of the Commander’s words. A true warrior controls her emotions at all times. Linna had never been particularly good at that lesson.
“We should catch up with Darien and the Princess,” she said. “If you only have a week in the palace before you leave, we shouldn’t spend it fighting.”
Behind her, Milo grunted, but Linna heard his footsteps against the stone once more as he resumed his climb.
#
The dream began as it often did for Linna, with the would-be assassin practically landing on top of her as he climbed through the window. Fortunately, she’d adopted the Commander’s habit of sleeping with her sword within arm’s reach, so it was unsheathed and in her hand before the soldier had the time to strike his first blow. As often happened in these dreams, the man’s face morphed from the soldier’s into Brother Rennus’s, his face a rictus of hate. As also often happened, Linna’s movements became painfully slow, each blow more ineffectual than the last.
But now the dream took an unfamiliar turn.
Before Rennus could finish her, the Commander leapt from the bed. She placed herself between the traitor Brother and Linna, steel flicking out even faster than it had in real life.
Linna stared at Brother Rennus in surprise, then at the Commander.
“Ku-sai?”
“Linna. How I have missed your face,” the Commander said in Terintan. She glanced around. “Is this your dream? Tell me you made it out of the East and back to Port Lorsin safely.”
Linna wiped the blood from her blade, then slid it into its scabbard. “Yes, Commander,” she answered in the common tongue. Her Terintan had grown rusty from disuse, and her mother tongue felt awkward in her mouth.
“I don’t know how long I can hold this connection,” the Commander said. “It’s easier with Milo, because we both …” She shook her head briskly, as though changing her mind about what she’d been about to say. “He told me several years have passed.”
“They have. Four years. And we’ve missed you – I’ve missed you.” Emotion surged in Linna. She knew it was a dream, just a dream, probably caused by her earlier conversation with Milo. But for the moment, that didn’t matter. For the moment, it was just nice to see the Commander’s face again. “There’s so much to tell you, so much that’s changed in the palace. The Emperor married a noblewoman from the West, and they have two little boys, and Evrart –”
“There’s no time, Linna,” she said, tone urgent. “I need to get back to the Empress. She and I are trapped in the Kingdom of Persopos, inside the palace there, but also in some sort of … perpetual dream state. A prison within the Shadowlands, constructed from our own desires and memories.” She paused, face troubled. “Sometimes I remember who I am, I remember how we came to be there. But other times I … forget. And I thought I would break free completely by now, confront the king and defeat him. Yet I grew weaker before I grew stronger.”
Just a dream. Just a dream concocted by her own imaginings and Milo’s words on the beach today.
“I wish you still lived,” Linna said, tears stinging her eyes. “The Empress, too.”
The Commander placed her hands on Linna’s shoulders. “We do live, Linna. Both of us. I’ve dreamwalked here to find you, to ask for your help. The Empress is safe – for now, but I cannot hide us from –”
Something materialized behind the Commander. The thing wore the shape of a man’s body, but it was insubstantial, like a form made of fog. Whatever it was, it screamed in fury – a scream that reached all the way through Linna, that made the very air shimmer. In the next moment, everything in the dream became as foggy and translucent as the man-shape. Dizziness overcame Linna, as though she might suddenly fall from a great height.
The man-shape clawed at the Commander, but the Commander’s blade was faster. The parry sent a tremendous vibration through the air, ringing in Linna’s ears like a hammer blow against an anvil. The creature spun towards Linna, clawing at her the way it had clawed at the Commander. Instinct sent Linna leaping backwards with reverse frog, but she hadn’t been as fast as her mentor. Her cheek stung, a single drop of blood warming her skin like a teardrop.
The thing lunged at Linna again, but the Commander leapt between them.
“The king. He knows I’ve slipped his noose. I can hold him off, but only for moments. He has the power to kill you, even in a dream. Wake, Linna, wake!”
And she did.
Linna fell, striking her narrow mattress so hard that she bounced. Both her hands grabbed fistfuls of sheets on either side of her as if she might fall again. She lay still for a moment, panting.
She touched her fingers gingerly to her cheek. They came back wet with blood.
But could that really mean – ?
Shakily, Linna swung her feet onto the floor. Cold stone greeted her bare feet, grounding her. The dizziness that had started in the dream and followed her into her bedchamber passed. Hastily, she dressed, putting her palace blacks on over her loose tunic. She strapped on her short sword and threw open the door into the Princess’s main bedchamber – the same bedchamber that had once belonged to the Empress.
“Wake up, Del,” Linna said, shaking the Princess roughly by her shoulder. A shadow in the bed moved, and Linna was unsurprised to find Darien lying beside Adela. “Come on, wake up.”
“Linna? What in the name of Father Mezzu are you doing in your mistress’s bedchamber at this hour?” Darien demanded, voice both groggy and grouchy.
But Linna knew Darien wasn’t as angry as he sounded. He was merely covering up his embarrassment at being discovered somewhere he ought not to be. So Linna ignored him and directed her words to the Princess.
“Something’s happened. Milo tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen – we should wake Milo, too, actually. Then we need to talk to the Emperor. All of us.”
Adela’s eyes, green like her sister’s, were a haze of confusion and sleep. “W-what…?” was all the Princess could manage.
“They’re alive, Del. Your sister and the Commander – they’re both still alive.”