When Akella opened her eyes again, the little seagull was hovering just over her face.
“Preyla’s tit, girl,” Akella breathed. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a person in my condition.”
“I didn’t sneak up on you,” Linna said. “I came over here to wake you up. I’ve been shaking you and calling your name for the past five minutes.”
“Congratulations. I’m awake.”
“The Empress wants to see you.”
“Do I look like I’m in a state to meet with her High and Mightiness?” Akella asked, irritated.
“Not really.”
Linna glanced around, then flopped down onto the chair that Megs had occupied earlier. How much earlier? Two hours ago? Two days ago? Akella had no idea how much time had passed.
“I’ll wait until you’re ready to get up,” Linna said.
“You might be waiting a long time.”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
“Nowhere else? Not even emptying your mistress’s chamber pot?”
“No. She’s meeting with General Ambrose and Brother Rennus right now. After the attack, his troops came back to reinforce us and help us move.”
“Move?”
Linna nodded. “The mountain men weren’t supposed to know about this camp. The fact that they found it means it’s not safe to stay here anymore. So the camp is moving north and east, closer to General Alric’s position.”
Akella studied the little seagull. There was something petulant in the set of her mouth, the slump of her shoulders. Something was eating at her, and Akella doubted it was just the fact that the camp had to move.
“A sergeant came by before you,” Akella said. “She told me the camp took a pounding in the assault. Seventy dead, that number again injured.”
Linna nodded. “They never reached the center of the camp, though.”
“I know I was knocked in the head pretty hard, so maybe I’m not hearing things properly, but you sound disappointed by that fact. I would think you’d be glad your precious Empress was unscathed.”
“I am glad,” Linna said, though she didn’t sound it. Her eyes were fixed on the rushes that covered the ground. “But I’ve already killed two mountain men. That was the last time they raided us, before we set up this camp. Maybe if … if I’d killed one or two more in the raid a few days ago, maybe the Empress would start treating me like everybody else.”
“What do you mean, treated like everybody else? It’s pretty obvious she adores you. You don’t want to be adored?”
“I don’t want to be sent home.”
“Sent home?”
Linna finally looked up, meeting Akella’s eyes. “There was a chambermaid and a cook the Empress brought from Port Lorsin killed during the assault. The Empress has been really upset about it, so she’s sending everyone who came with her from the palace back to Port Lorsin. Including me.”
“Ah.” That explained the girl’s sour expression.
“I said I should stay here. Or she should go home with me – after all, the baby will be here in another few months.”
In the midst of everything else, Akella had nearly forgotten that the Empress was pregnant. She’d probably conceived the night of her wedding – Commander Concubine was probably all eaten up about that, which gave Akella a small sense of glee – and that meant she was … four months along by now? Five?
“Having a baby on a battlefield,” Akella mused. “Bold. And incredibly stupid.”
“The Commander wanted the Empress to go home the moment she realized she was pregnant,” Linna said. “But the Empress says the mountain men will be defeated by the time the baby comes.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “I think that’s why the Empress says we have to take Pellon before winter comes – because then she can have her baby in House Pellon’s castle, so it’ll be safer.”
“But Pellon is still almost a hundred miles east of us.”
Linna nodded and leaned forward, making the wooden chair creak in protest. Speaking even more softly than before, she confided, “The Empress was in the middle of an argument with Brother Rennus and General Ambrose when she sent me to fetch you. Originally, the plan was for General Ambrose, General Alric, and the Commander to converge on Pellon in about six weeks’ time, but the Empress wants them to speed up the timeline and take the city back in two weeks. General Ambrose says it’s impossible. He says six weeks allows the army to eliminate any potential reinforcements the mountain men in Pellon might call on. Plus six weeks means they can control all the routes in and out of the city and cut off Pellon’s supplies. But Brother Rennus agrees with the Empress. He says his beastwalker spies have already scouted the city and there are fewer tribesmen holding it than the regular spies estimated, so taking Pellon back in the next two weeks is feasible. General Ambrose refuses to believe him, called the Brotherhood spies about as trustworthy as the animals they transform into.”
“Can’t argue with him on that point,” Akella said. “The Brotherhood has its own agenda, doesn’t it?”
Linna kept talking, either not hearing Akella’s question or chose to ignore it. “The Empress told General Ambrose that Pellon is the keystone. Once it falls, the rest of the tribesmen in the East will fall with it. And once we take Pellon, controlling the routes in and out won’t be nearly as important.” Linna’s face puckered again. “But that’s why the Empress wants to send me back with the chambermaids, cooks, and some of the Wise Men – she says taking back Pellon will be a tough fight, and she wants us to be safely on our way home.”
“How much snow is there outside?” Akella asked.
Linna looked confused. “Snow?”
“Yes. Snow.”
“I don’t know,” Linna said. “A foot. Three or four where the wind blows it into drifts.”
“I heard some Wise Men predicting that this winter will be the hardest the East has seen in at least a decade,” said Akella. “Then I met someone – an Easterner – who said the storm outside now would arrive sooner and hit harder than what the Wise Men said. She turned out to be right.”
“What does any of that have to do with Pellon? Or with me going back to Port Lorsin?”
“What it has to do with Pellon,” Akella said, pausing a moment until the pounding in her head receded, “is that as much as I hate the Brotherhood, your smarmy Brother Rennus is right. “The storm outside is a mere taste of what winter in the East is like. I haven’t been this far inland on this side of your Empire before, but even I know that. Taking Pellon the safe way, the way Ambrose wants to take it, means a siege. And sieges take time. Probably more than six weeks, I’d wager. What happens if there’s another blizzard – a much worse blizzard than this one, because this one is just a preview of winter in the East – while the Imperial Army is in the middle of that siege? Half of them will freeze to death while the other half starves to death. Anyone still alive will probably get pneumonia. Meanwhile, the tribesmen will just laugh while they sit inside Castle Pellon with their feet up beside their nice, cozy hearth fires. So the Empress is right. For once. The sooner she can take Pellon, the better.”
Linna just stared at her.
“What?”
“You didn’t say anything at all about me going back to Port Lorsin.”
“Oh, was I supposed to?”
Linna threw herself backward in the chair and crossed her arms against her chest. “You think I’m just a child, like the Empress does. You think I’m not ready for the battle that’s coming.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but it’s what you think,” Linna said stubbornly.
Akella sighed. “Little seagull –”
“Will you please stop calling me that?”
“Fine. Linna.” Akella drew in a long breath. “If you went toe-to-toe with any of the soldiers in this camp, you would defeat ninety percent of them. That being said –”
“Then tell the Empress not to send me away,” Linna interrupted. “Tell her I belong in the palace guard. She listens to you. Mother Moon only knows why, but she listens to you.”
“That being said,” Akella continued, “being able to defeat another fighter one-on-one, in a controlled or at least somewhat controlled environment, is totally different from fighting for your life in the middle of a battle.”
“I know. I’ve been through a battle before. I killed two mountain men, remember?”
“I remember,” Akella said. “But that was small – a raiding party of less than fifty tribesmen on a veritable suicide mission because they thought they could get close to the Empress. Taking Pellon … where the majority of the tribesmen’s forces are based … that kind of battle is not the same. At all.”
“Just because it’s not the same doesn’t mean I can’t handle it.”
“I’m not saying you can’t handle it.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Akella closed her puffy eyes. She remembered being Linna’s age, lying about how old she was so that she could get off Perrintot and take her first assignment on a ship. She was so cocksure, so eager to prove herself. And the only reason she survived her first raid on an Imperial merchant ship was either by dumb luck or the infinite grace of Preyla’s mercy.
Before that raid, there wasn’t a thing anyone could have said that would have convinced Akella’s fifteen-year-old self that she was too young to join a seaborne gang of smugglers, thieves, and killers. After the raid, she wondered if she had made a huge mistake. But by then, it was too late.
“I’m saying,” Akella said at last, opening her eyes back up, “that you need to think through whatever decision you make very carefully.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know you’re thinking about defying the Empress and staying here when she sends the others back to Port Lorsin.”
Linna blinked at her, momentarily speechless. “I didn’t say I was thinking of defying her.”
“You didn’t have to say it out loud. You already defied her order to stay in Port Lorsin once, when you stowed away aboard the Rooster’s Comb.”
It took almost a minute for Linna to speak again. “When I was a slave, anyone free had the right to tell me what to do, even children. I thought everything would be different after the Empress freed me. But it turns out I’m still expected to obey without question.” She stood up. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re not dead.”
Akella let out a half-laugh. Megs had used almost exactly the same words.
“Why’s that funny?” Linna asked.
“Oh, nothing. I was laughing at myself, not you.” Akella paused. “Little sea– Linna, someone wise told me once to do what I knew in my heart was right. And if what was right happened to be the same thing someone was trying to force me to do, then so be it, I would do it. Not because I was yielding, but for my own reasons.”
Linna narrowed her eyes. “Is that supposed to apply to me?”
Oh, to be fifteen summers again.
“Only if you want it to.”
“I need to go,” Linna said, and the girl stormed off without a backward glance.
Well. Akella had done what she could. Now she might as well go back to sleep. She closed her eyes, listening to the wind whistle outside.