30
“Should I … find a place within the camp?” Linna asked Joslyn once they’d aided the chambermaids in carrying Tasia’s belongings into an unoccupied apartment in Castle Tergos.
“No,” Tasia replied before Joslyn could answer. “I’m not sending a girl of fifteen summers to find stay amongst five thousand men.”
“Not all soldiers are men,” Linna said, but the objection was tentative at best.
Tasia turned to one of the chambermaids. “Go find one more cot for the Commander’s apprentice, will you?”
“Yes, Majesty,” the chambermaid said, and hurried from the room.
As she left, someone knocked on Tasia’s open door.
“Alric!” Tasia exclaimed, running to the door and throwing her arms around him. “Let me take a look at you,” she said, taking a step back. “Uninjured? Whole? They told me your ship was not far behind ours.”
“Aye, Majesty,” Alric said, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. “Had a good bump on me head, but the good Brother here saw to it.” He made a vague gesture behind him.
“Concussion.” Brother Rennus stepped into the doorway beside Alric. “Udolf and I happened to be unloading our things when the general’s ship docked. The general wasn’t the only one who’d been injured in the storm. I’ve got Brother healers looking after them, though.”
“Good,” Tasia said. “The Brotherhood is already proving itself to be invaluable. Remind me again why the House of Wisdom banished the Brotherhood from its ranks all those hundreds of years ago?”
Brother Rennus smiled and spread his hands. “Fear of the unknown, your Majesty. I’m afraid it explains too many of the prejudices and atrocities committed in the realm of men.”
“Too true,” Tasia said. “Come in, gentlemen. Tell me more of the state of our fleet and army.”
The three of them sat and shared a pot of tea, while Joslyn remained in the background helping Linna and the chambermaids to finish cleaning and arranging Tasia’s quarters. Joslyn listened while she worked, learning from Alric that of the sixty-two ships that survived the storm, thirty had safely arrived in Tergos while the other thirty-two had made port or would soon make port in Negusto and Birsid.
“How many men did we lose?” Tasia asked when he finished.
“Including sailors and soldiers? Something like eight thousand, Majesty,” Alric said, eyes on his teacup.
“And the Brotherhood’s dreamwalkers tell me there are at least a dozen Brothers amongst that number,” Rennus said.
Tasia put her elbow on the table and placed a hand over her eyes. “Nearly a quarter of the force we raised. Lost even before the first battle.”
“Aye,” Alric said. “And the Imperial Navy … it’ll take years to rebuild, Majesty.”
Tasia said nothing for a long minute.
Joslyn had a feeling she knew what Tasia was thinking. First, the Empire’s lords would be furious when they heard of the loss. It had been Tasia’s idea to travel by sea instead of via the Emperor’s Road. Traveling by sea would cut the time spent on the journey to the East by at least half. And since an ocean voyage was the only way to reach the Kingdom of Persopos, better to have the majority of the Imperial Navy’s forces already in the East, ready for the second stage of the war.
And second, Tasia was probably wondering if they could even still succeed at taking back the Eastern territories that had been ceded with only three-quarters of their original numbers. Even if they finally, definitively defeated the mountain men, how many soldiers would be left to defeat Persopos?
Tasia finally looked up. “When we do rebuild the navy, remind me to recruit heavily from the Adessian Islands.”
Alric chuckled. “Aye, Majesty. Yer ship weren’t the only one with an Adessian on board. Our sailing master was raised in the Islands, too.”
Tasia shook her head. “The House of Dorsa has ruled this continent for more than a thousand years. How is it we have such a pitiful navy?”
“I think you already said the keyword, your Majesty,” Brother Rennus said to Tasia’s rhetorical question. “Continent. The Empire has always been a continental power. A land power.”
“A land power with thousands of miles of coastline,” Tasia said.
“Yet the Empire has never had a credible threat from the sea,” Rennus said with a shrug. “Our closest seafaring neighbors have always been the Adessians, but they are so wrapped up in their own conflicts that they’ve never posed much danger to the Empire. And so we’ve never needed much of a navy, have we?”
Alric cast Rennus a sidelong glance, likely thinking the same thing Joslyn was – that now was not the time for giving lessons in geopolitics.
#
“Rest,” Joslyn told Tasia once the men left.
“Soon,” Tasia replied, checking her reflection in a full-length mirror. She was still dressed in the blue silk dress she’d put on earlier, and she fiddled with a few hairs that had come loose from the bun. “But after what they’ve been through … Those soldiers need to see their Empress. They need to know we will not be cowed by storms.”
She spent the next two hours making the rounds in the camp that had been erected just outside the city, Joslyn and Linna trailing just behind her. Beneath a blistering midday sun, she spoke to the soldiers, smiled, shook their hands, and listened. Only as the sun began to sink did she return to Castle Tergos.
“Nowwill you rest?” Joslyn implored quietly as they crossed beneath the castle’s gate.
“Almost,” Tasia said. “I have one more round to make.” She turned to a chambermaid with a basket of sheets in her arms. “Excuse me,” Tasia said politely, “could you tell me how to find Lady Beryea’s apartments?”
The woman frowned. “Lady Beryea ain’t seeing visitors.”
“I think she would see her Empress, don’t you?”
The chambermaid’s eyes suddenly widened, jaw dropping open at the same time the laundry basket tumbled from her grasp. The poor woman fell to a knee, not seeming to know if she should clean up the spilled sheets she’d dropped or bow to Tasia. “My La– your Highness, forgive me, I didn’t – I heard you were here somewhere but I thought … I should’ve … that crown –”
Tasia smiled graciously and bent to help the woman with her laundry. “It’s fine. If you could just direct us to Lady Beryea?”
“Of course, your Highness,” said the flustered chambermaid, cramming sheets back into the basket as her cheeks burned bright red. “I’ll take you me’self, it’s just that … Lady Beryea ain’t been well since we heard about Lord Micah a fortnight ago.”
“So I’ve heard,” Tasia said, standing back up. “Perhaps I can give her some hope.”
The chambermaid left her laundry basket in the castle’s entrance hall and led Tasia, Joslyn, and Linna into the heart of the castle. They climbed two sets of stairs, the woman panting while she described how Lady Beryea had fallen ill nearly the moment she’d heard her husband was suspected to be shadow-infected and hadn’t left her apartments in over a week.
When they finally reached a set of double doors that led into the castle’s master bedroom, the chambermaid gave one last stuttering apology, curtsied, and scampered away.
Tasia knocked on the Lady’s door softly, waited, and knocked again.
“Yes?” came a thin, female voice from within.
“Lady Beryea, it is Empress Natasia of the House of Dorsa,” Tasia said to the closed door.
“The Empress?” Beryea replied doubtfully.
“Yes,” Tasia said.
Linna turned a questioning glance towards Joslyn. Surely the castle’s servants had told the lady of the house that the Empress herself had arrived in Tergos? Was the woman really so ill that she would not open the door to her Empress?
Rustling came from inside.
Finally the door opened, but only about a foot. Stale air wafted out, carrying with it the musty, claustrophobic scent of a room whose windows had been closed for far too long. Lady Beryea’s rooms smelled more like a cellar than a noblewoman’s bedchamber.
Beryea herself appeared in the half-open doorway, pale, drawn, and disheveled. Bruise-like bags of purple hung beneath red-rimmed brown eyes. Joslyn took the bloodshot appearance to mean she had been crying, not sleeping, or both.
“Empress,” said Lady Beryea, eyes widening with surprise. “They told me … But I thought they were only having me on, trying to coax me from my quarters.” Too late, she seemed to realize she ought to kneel or at least bow before Tasia. She started to bend towards the floor.
But Tasia reached out and took her by the arm, hoisting her back up. “No, no, my Lady. None of that,” she said, tone gentle. “May I come in?”
Lady Beryea hesitated.