Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

“What’s in this?” Linna asked, trying to channel the Commander’s stiff suspicion and mostly failing. Inside the packet, some kind of powder crunched between her thumb and forefinger.

If the Wise Man was put off by her question, or if he suspected Linna of suspecting him, he didn’t show it. “Willow bark, mostly,” he answered. “Along with a few other herbs. I’ve been tinkering with the formula for a decade or two; I think you’ll find it’s quite effective. But only a third at a time, mind you, exactly with the timing I described. More than that can interfere with our future heir.”

Our future heir.Linna wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of the baby that way before. She’d only thought him or her as Mace’s child, and if she’d had any thoughts about it at all, beyond how it was affecting her mistress’s moods, it had mainly been to wonder how the Commander must feel about it. But now that she heard Wise Man Jesker call the child heir, it was obvious to Linna how everyone else would view the babe the moment they knew the Empress was pregnant. It was probably how the Empress herself viewed the life growing inside her.

A future Emperor or Empress. Heavy responsibility for one not even born yet. Heavy for the Empress, too – to both win a war and grow the Empire’s next leader inside her at the same time. And with the Commander gone and Ammanta busy with the responsibility of organizing all the other guards, it was down to Linna to protect them both.

“What happens if the Empress’s fever doesn’t break?” Linna asked, lifting her chin in that way the Commander did when she challenged someone she didn’t quite believe.

Wise Man Jesker sighed as though he understood exactly why Linna was asking her questions. But when he answered, his tone was patient. “Any number of results,” he said. “Fever occurs when the body’s humors are trying to put themselves back into balance. Sometimes the body succeeds, sometimes in the very process of attempting to rebalance itself, the body sabotages itself. In an adult as young and healthy as the Empress, it wouldn’t normally be much cause for worry, but given the child inside her…” He shrugged. “There is a chance her body will right itself on its own. There is also a chance it will not, and the child will be affected. That’s why I personally consider it of utmost importance that you give her the contents of that packet in exactly the quantities and at the times that we discussed.”

He held Linna’s gaze, his eyes sure and steady, waiting for a response.

Linna glanced from the Empress, to the packet she still pinched between her fingers, to the bulging arc of the Empress’s belly, back to Wise Man Jesker. She had a decision to make.

“Alright,” Linna said, deciding at last that the odds were much higher that Wise Man Jesker was sincere in his wish to help the Empress and the babe than any other possibility. “A third now, a third at supper, a third at breakfast.”

“Precisely.” Wise Man Jesker smiled. “With your leave, L’Linna, I shall return to check on her in the morning, just after breakfast.”

Linna nodded, grateful both that the Wise Man was not condescending to her, but also that he seemed prepared to share the burden of protecting the Empress’s health and the secret of her pregnancy. It was good that the first Wise Man surgeon she’d found happened to be highborn. Nobles had an intuitive understanding of the delicate politics that forever surrounded the Empress. If he was who he said he was, and Linna’s gut told her that he was, he would be discreet about the Empress’s situation.

“Thank you, Wise Man,” Linna said, then added a belated, “Sir.”

He gave her a kind smile and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Our Empress is lucky to have you.”

Linna sought out the officer who’d offered the Empress a carriage on the first morning of their trek to Pellon next, informing him that the Empress had changed her mind and wanted a carriage outfitted for her in order to travel the last few days dry and in comfort. To Linna’s chagrin, the officer, who turned out to be one of Eagle Battalion’s horse masters, only rolled his eyes and told Linna gruffly the carriage would be ready by noontide. The Empress fought Linna weakly over the carriage, but once Linna got her inside, she promptly slumped sideways in the seat and fell dead asleep.

The Empress’s fever had cleared before Linna gave the third dose the next morning, but Linna added it to her tea anyway, just as Wise Man Jesker had instructed.

“I’m on the mend,” the Empress informed him when he dropped by that morning to check on his patient. “We only have two more days’ travel to Pellon, and Linna tells me the rain and sleet finally abated overnight. I understand why you insisted upon the carriage, but I assure you I’m ready to return to my mare now.”

“I assure you that you are not ready for any such thing,” the Wise Man responded crisply.

Linna was taken aback. She’d met very few people willing to speak to the Empress in that kind of tone.

Apparently, neither had the Empress. Her head snapped backwards. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said you are not ready to sit a mare,” he repeated, just as firmly as he had said the first time. “What you really need is about three days of bed rest. But since we are still traveling, the carriage will have to do.”

She argued with him, of course. The two of them debated the point for a full quarter hour, neither of them raising their voices and yet neither of them backing down. Linna had the feeling she was witnessing the perfect highborn argument – both remaining polite while holding their position unflinchingly. But much to Linna’s surprise the Empress finally relented.

“Very well,” she said. “I will ride in the bloody carriage.”

Wise Man Jesker dipped his chin, and the expression on his face said he’d always known he would win this argument. Linna wondered if he was accustomed to fighting with royals.

“When you and the child within you are not left with permanent damage,” he said, “you will be glad you made that choice.”

The Empress blanched. They hadn’t discussed her pregnancy up to that point. Jesker left gracefully before the Empress could stammer out a response. Not long after he left, she returned to the carriage.

The last two days of the journey to Pellon were comparatively dull. Linna spent the last bit of the ride staring at the hind end of the Empress’s mare, which had been tied to the back of her carriage. When the walls of Pellon finally appeared on the horizon, black pennants emblazoned with the double-eagle crest of the House of Dorsa snapping in the wind from each guard tower, Linna was so relieved that at first she was convinced she was hallucinating the city. It happened to travelers in the Great Desert all the time – they wandered too far from the Emperor’s Road, ran out of water, and had vivid visions of lush green hills and broad rivers that were nothing but a fever dream. Linna rubbed her eyes with the back of a wrist and looked again, but the city was still there. Pellon was a massive, imposing presence that loomed over the rolling Eastern plains. Its walls were so thick and tall that it was hard to imagine how mountain men had managed to conquer it in the first place. Scattered barns and farmhouses dotted the hills in all directions surrounding the city, dead fields between them looking like a dirty patchwork quilt. Closer to the walls, the buildings grew thicker, resolving into hamlets that in better times probably teemed with life. Spidery veins of tracks and trails converged and turned into roads once they reached the hamlets, and Linna couldn’t help but envision wagons laden with wheat and livestock trundling slowly towards the open gates of the city.

Now the gates were shut tight, the farmhouses abandoned, and the hamlets, as they grew closer, revealed themselves to be charred ruins. Linna couldn’t say exactly why, but the sight of the city, with the scorch marks on its walls and the abandoned hamlets stretching out from its foot, suddenly exhausted her.

Third Division halted all at once. Gery, a Westerner who’d been recruited by the Commander to become one of the Empress’s guards when they were still in Port Lorsin, pulled up alongside Linna.

“Welcome to Pellon,” he drawled sarcastically.

Linna glanced up at him, wondering why he’d said it that way. She knew the West was generally richer than the East, so maybe he was used to grander cities than this one, but she would think he would be glad – that everyone would be glad – to finally reach their destination.

The procession began to move again, and from the guard towers of Pellon, bugles echoed across the empty fields to announce their arrival.