31
~ LINNA ~
Linna was no stranger to hot summer nights. She was from Terinto, after all, and Lord M’Tongliss’s manor home at Paratheen’s northern edge was too far from the Adessian Sea to enjoy any of its cooling breezes. It was why the lord, his wives, and their children often slept on the many rooftop courtyards of their sprawling home. Port Lorsin could get hot during the summer, too, but mostly the weather was temperate – never unbearably hot during the summer and never unbearably cold during the winter.
But the heat of Tergos was something entirely different, and Linna had never experienced anything quite like it. Tergos was much further south than Paratheen or Port Lorsin, located on a long peninsula – “the leg of the East,” they called it – that extended so far south into the Adessian Sea that the peninsula’s tip was two-thirds of the way to the Adessian Islands. The heat of Tergos was therefore a saturated one, heavy and thick and dripping with sweat. Humid was what the Empress called it, a common tongue word Linna wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before.
There was an old greenhouse in the palace’s northern gardens where Adela sometimes liked to take Linna and Milo, a place where it was always humid inside, no matter the weather outside. Being in Tergos felt like being trapped inside a giant greenhouse after a rainstorm.
“Commander,” Linna had said softly in the afternoon of their sixth day in Tergos. “Do you think I could take off my armor, just for a minute or two?”
The Commander and Linna were walking a few feet behind the Empress while she made yet another round through the army’s encampment. The Empress was busy shaking hands and greeting soldiers. The Commander and Linna were supposed to be scanning for any potential threats, but all Linna could think about was the sweat rolling down her backside.
The Commander eyed her in that unnerving way she had, the kind of gaze that always made Linna want to flinch or apologize.
“And if our assassin chooses that moment to launch an arrow towards our Empress? Or one of her poison darts?” the Commander asked. “What will you stop the dart with – your bare skin?”
Linna didn’t bring it up again.
Now that it was night, Linna was finally free of the suffocating armor. But it barely helped. Even after the relentless Father Eiren had set, the heat and humidity of Tergos still lingered, smothering everything like a waterlogged blanket.
The layout of the Empress’s room made it worse. In some ways, it was just like her primary chamber at the palace – a large bed, a table near the window, a vanity for dressing, and a basin for washing up. But the room was smaller, the ceiling plain and low, and, most importantly, the window faced west, away from the sea. What little breeze that entered seemed to die by the time it reached Linna’s small and dusty cot near the door.
They’d all gone to bed hours ago. The Empress and Commander slumbered soundly in the large bed, and Linna gazed enviously at them. She wondered how they’d fallen asleep so easily, then realized they were much closer to the window than she was.
Three sleepless and sweat-sticky hours turned into four. At one point, Linna half-convinced herself the heat was preventing her from breathing properly, and she would die of asphyxiation before dawn ever came. She imagined the Empress crying over her still corpse, the Commander comforting her.
When the night was closer to sunrise than to sunset, Linna made a decision. As quietly as she could, she dragged her cot around the foot of the Empress’s bed and placed it beneath the window. She glanced at the Empress and Commander. The Commander rolled over in her sleep, but did not wake.
Then Linna retrieved everything else from where her cot had been – armor, sword, rune-marked dagger – and moved it to her new place beside the window. She shoved the armor under the cot, but laid out her short sword and dagger neatly right beside the bed. The Commander slept with her blades within arm’s reach, so Linna did, too.
For twenty minutes, she tried once more to get comfortable, worried that even the window wasn’t going to be enough to let her sleep. After all, the air outside was still a hot soup.
Linna couldn’t say at what point sleep finally came, only that it did. Her dreams wandered to hurricanes, Adessian pirates, and an ancient king, grinning at her like a skull from a lavish throne.
She was woken by a sudden pressure on her bicep. Linna jerked her arm back, only for a crushing weight to topple onto her. She struggled beneath it, aware that she was no longer dreaming yet not awake enough to comprehend what was happening. She hooked one arm around the edge of the bed, trying to pull herself out from underneath it, but it was too heavy. Then the weight was gone as quickly as it had come.
Something metallic glinted in the moonlight. Later, Linna would thank Mother Eirenna that she had been blessed with preternaturally quick reflexes, because she rolled away from the shadowy figure beside her bed just as it stabbed a short sword into the mattress. She landed in a crouch on the balls of her feet, a swirl of goose down feathers fluttering like snowflakes between her and the attacker. Fortunately, she’d landed right next to her short sword.
The attacker was fast; Linna was faster. He – the shadowy figure was definitely a he – leaped over the narrow cot with sword in hand, ready to cut her down. Linna raised her own sword to meet him just in time. The clang of steel on steel rang like a struck bell inside the Empress’s bedchamber. Out of the corner of her eye, Linna saw the Commander stir from sleep. But there was no time to call for help or retreat to the safety of the Commander. Linna’s opponent lunged, and she saw it immediately: He had overextended on his right foot, apparently so convinced he would defeat her that he didn’t care that he’d left himself imbalanced. Linna knew what to do. Sidestepping the lunge, she ducked inside his range and executed a perfect strong spear. Her sword punched through a layer of leather armor, then into the softer material of skin and flesh, straight into his gut.
The moon provided only dim light inside the room, but Linna saw the man’s expression change. Where his face had been flat before, eyes as dead as a marble statue’s, now shock and pain suddenly registered. And in the second it took Linna to withdraw her bloody sword and the attacker to crumple to the ground, she thought she saw something else in his eyes, too.
Fear? No, not exactly fear.
He looked… confused.
He opened his mouth, maybe to speak, but instead of words coming out, blood bubbled at his lips.
“Cut his throat,” the Commander said.
Linna glanced behind her, only to find the Commander, still in her nightclothes but with sword in hand, standing at her shoulder. Linna hadn’t realized the Commander was there.
“The artery below his jaw,” the Commander clarified. “Do not permit him to suffer a moment longer, Linna. A gut wound is a horrible way to die.”
Linna turned back to the man on the floor. When horses panicked, their eyes were all whites, no irises, and that was how the dying man’s eyes looked now. Terrified. Confused. Agonized. He was young, Linna saw – not that much older than she was. And now that she wasn’t fighting for her life and actually had a chance to study him properly, she realized that he was dressed as a soldier. As an Imperial soldier.
Why would one of the Empress’s own men sneak through her window with death on his mind?
His lips moved and he reached a blood-drenched hand towards Linna, beseeching.
“Finish what you started,” the Commander said. “Now.”
Her tone was firm and urgent but not harsh.
Linna gritted her teeth and slit the man’s throat, fighting back a wave of nausea when the steel of her sword connected with flesh. Blood sprayed, some of it onto her face. But it had the intended effect. The young man wilted, outstretched hand falling back to the stone floor. He seemed to heave a long sigh, and the agony fled from his eyes.
Everything fled from his eyes. They went glassy, then lifeless. Back to how they’d been when he’d first climbed through the window.
“A … soldier?” the Empress said from somewhere behind Linna. “Mother Moon. But he was just a boy.”
The words triggered something in Linna. All at once, she felt as though she might cry, faint, or throw up – or perhaps do all three at once. She’d killed someone.
A warm hand landed upon her shoulder. “You did well, kuna-shi. You did well.”
The short sword tumbled from Linna’s suddenly numb fingers, and she turned into the Commander’s side, burying her face against her mentor’s sternum. For half a moment, the Commander’s body was stiff and unyielding, but then she softened and Linna felt arms wrap around her, one hand rubbing her back. The Empress stepped closer and embraced Linna from the other side, making gentle shushing noises. Linna felt foolish, childish, sandwiched between them – the Commander in front of her, the Empress behind – but she made no move to break free. She was content just to feel their warmth and mingled, familiar smells.
“Alright,” the Commander said several seconds later. “Alright. Clean your sword. Then get dressed.”
Linna stepped back, hastily wiping her eyes with the back of one hand, even though she wasn’t sure she’d shed any tears. “H-he landed right on top of me. I got hot, so I – I moved my cot to the window, and … and he landed right on top of me when he climbed through.”
“You did well,” the Commander said. She glanced at the Empress. “I believe you may have saved your Empress’s life.”
There was a hint of anger in the Commander’s tone. Just a hint. At first, Linna thought the anger was meant for her – maybe because she’d moved her bed to the window without permission? But then the Empress took one of the Commander’s hands in both of her own and squeezed it, and Linna realized the Commander was angry with herself.
The Commander hadn’t woken when the would-be assassin had climbed through the window. Usually she woke if the wind so much as shifted in the night. But the long days, the suffocating heat … the Commander must have been as exhausted as Linna, she just hadn’t been showing it.
“Joslyn,” the Empress said softly. “We’re alright. All of us are alright.”
“If Linna hadn’t been there … if she hadn’t …” The Commander sighed, extricating her hand from the Empress’s and rubbing her forehead.
Linna looked away from them, feeling as if she was intruding on a private moment.