38
~ LINNA ~
The Empress must have forced General Ambrose into submission during the time it took to pay a visit to the annoying pirate captain, because he was taciturn and sullen when Linna returned.
The General, Brother Rennus, and the Empress hovered over the maps spread out upon the table; Ammanta stood guard in the far corner of the room. The Fesulian’s eyes flicked towards Linna when she walked into the tent. Ammanta gave Linna a curt nod and exited, wordlessly passing the responsibility of guarding their sovereign to Linna.
At least Ammanta didn’t treat her like a child. Too bad she was the only one who didn’t constantly condescend to Linna.
Linna had really hoped she’d have an ally in Akella. After all, she’d bested the cocky pirate in their training session, something that had clearly been a surprise. But no. Akella had treated her just like the Empress and Commander did lately – like a fragile plaything that needed to be wrapped in gauze and packed away for its own protection.
Linna had asked to go with the Commander when she left for the northern front. Because Linna was supposed to be the Commander’s apprentice, wasn’t she? So what better place to learn the art of planning and executing battle strategy than an actual battle? But the Commander told her she was needed here, with the Empress.
Uncle Q’Util’s dirty beard she was needed here. That had just been an excuse, as usual, to keep Linna out of danger.
Here, the Empress had Ammanta, had her guardsmen – hell, the Empress had an entire camp of five hundred soldiers, assorted Brothers, and Wise Men, all of them safely tucked away inside this temporary hill fortress miles upon miles from the front. And now the Empress was going to send her away, back to Port Lorsin. Like the fragile toy she was.
Linna had never been so angry at the two women she considered mentors. No, they were more than mentors, if she was honest. They were surrogate mothers. But just as her birth mother had not wanted her and had sold her into slavery, probably because she was slavik, half-blood, her surrogate mothers didn’t want her, either.
No one really wanted her, when she thought about it. Her birth mother had gotten rid of her, the tinkers had sold her, Lord M’Tongliss had gifted her to the Empress like she was nothing more than a shiny bauble, the Princess and Darien had sent her from Port Lorsin, and now the Empress and Commander would send her back.
Lord M’Tongliss’s children used to play a game with a small leather ball, where the object was to keep it in the air as long as possible. They would spend countless hours playing with it in the courtyard, bouncing it from one child to the next, without catching it but without letting it fall, laughing all the while.
That was Linna. She was the ball.
A lump formed in her throat.
Stop thinking about it,she told herself sternly. What if someone were to attack the Empress right this second? You’d fail to protect her because you’re so distracted, wallowing in self-pity.
The Commander had taught her breathing techniques to concentrate her mind. Linna tried one now, gathering all her resentment and hurt into her breath, then breathing it out in one long, extended exhalation. She squeezed out every last bit of air from her lungs, and her irritation, heartache, and loneliness along with it.
The Empress must have heard her, because she glanced up from the maps, caught Linna’s eye, and smiled. Linna smiled back, and despite herself, a twinge of that old infatuation with the Empress returned for the briefest of moments.
But Linna had transferred her crush on the Empress to Princess Adela long ago. It was how Linna had gotten into this mess in the first place. The Princess – Del – had been devastated to hear her sister would personally lead the military campaign to the East.
She’s always safer when you’re around,Del had said to Linna, tears swimming in her big hazel eyes. Go with her. Please go with her.
I can’t,Linna had answered. The Commander wants me here. With you.
Please, Linna.
Del…But Linna hadn’t known what to say.
Darien had put a hand on her shoulder. Your princess is asking you to watch after her sister – the last blood family she has in all the world. Will you truly tell her no?
Linna was sure that Darien had his own reasons for wanting her to leave Port Lorsin, and they probably had very little to do with protecting the Empress. Linna guessed that the lordling probably didn’t like the idea of his betrothed’s best friend being a former half-blood slave of his father’s. In Terinto, the kind of friendship Linna had with Del would never be permitted.
Back in the Empress’s tent, Linna tried to soothe herself with the knowledge that going back to Port Lorsin at least meant she’d be with Del again.
But it was hard to let go of the East. Even though she hadn’t initially wanted to go, once Linna had been discovered aboard the Rooster’s Comb, she’d realized that proving herself in battle might be the best way to climb from the rank of simple servant to a full-fledged, official member of the palace guard. She’d already killed a would-be assassin and two mountain men. If she could stay around until the campaign’s end, and return to Port Lorsin as a true battle veteran, no one could deny her a place in the palace guard. And then she could become Del’s official personal guard. Stupid lordling Darien would find it much harder to justify getting rid of her then, even once he became Prince Darien of House Dorsa.
But being sent home like this? Sent home for her own protection, alongside chambermaids and doddering old Wise Men? Linna would return to Port Lorsin stuck at the level of servant, just like always. Darien would probably laugh behind her back, all while he married Linna’s best friend and then fathered her children.
Linna gritted her teeth.
You’re wallowing again,she warned herself.
With effort, Linna turned her attention to the conversation between the Empress and her two advisors. The Commander never missed a single word the Empress had with her advisors, so neither should Linna.
“…send beastwalkers or dreamwalkers as messengers to Commander Joslyn to our north and General Alric to our east to tell them about the change in plans,” Brother Rennus was saying. “Then there will be no chance of the tribesmen intercepting the message.”
But General Ambrose was shaking his head before the Brother even finished speaking. “Empress, I understand the urgency to take back Pellon – believe me, I do. Pellon has been my family’s seat for generations. But rushing our plans is simply not worth the risks. Better that we stay with our original plan of a long, slow strangle of the tribesmen.”
“The winter will come too quickly for a slow strangle,” the Empress replied. “The Wise Men have looked at the signs and forecast an especially harsh winter. You said yourself you agree with them, and you are a lifelong Easterner.”
“Then withdraw. Pull back to Birsid for the winter and try again once the spring thaw comes,” said the General.
“And in the months in between, General?” Brother Rennus asked. “While an ordinary enemy might be as hampered by the weather as we are, the enemies we face are far from ordinary. They are fanatical, willing to die to the last man, woman, and child to take back what they consider to be their rightful homeland. Willing to freeze to death, even. They will certainly not rest during the winter. They will not wait for the snow to pass – in fact, they will use every snowstorm to their advantage. Did we not see that just a few days ago, and with devastating consequences?”
General Ambrose’s mustache twitched, but he said nothing.
“Furthermore, if we wait until the spring, who knows what the Kingdom of Persopos will do to reinforce their allies,” Brother Rennus went on. “The undatai was temporarily disabled in the Shadowlands by the Empress and her Commander, but for how long? The Brotherhood knows it will take years for it to regain full strength, but even at partial strength, an undatai is formidable. And with every passing day, it regains its strength. The moment it has the power to expand its control over the shadow-infected once more, it will exercise that power. Be assured of that.”
“You speak of monsters from children’s tales,” the general grumbled. “I don’t even know how much of it I believe.”
“How much of it you believe?” the Empress repeated, incredulous. “Your Empress traveled to the Shadowlands herself and slew that ‘monster from children’s tales.’ Are you accusing your Empress of lying, General Ambrose?”
The general looked taken aback. “No, Empress, I am certainly not questioning your –”
“Every word Brother Rennus speaks is the truth,” the Empress said sharply, cutting him off. “The monsters of our childhood are real. What the Wise Men told us were mere myths about our ancestors turned out to be the truth. And the Brotherhood – it is time that you put your prejudices aside, because the Brotherhood and the House of Dorsa have the same mission, and that is to protect the people of this Empire from being swallowed whole by the Shadowlands. I need to know right now if you share that mission, General Ambrose. Or is your mission simply to regain your family’s territory and don the title of Lord of Pellon?”
If the general looked taken aback before, now he looked positively cowed and humiliated. His round cheeks turned apple-red, and his mustache and jowls quivered as he searched for the words that might absolve him.
The Empress spoke again before he found his voice. “We will use your dreamwalkers to reach Commander Joslyn and General Alric, Brother Rennus. It will be faster than using beastwalkers, and safer for the Brothers.”
“Very well, Empress,” said Brother Rennus. “Though I only have two dreamwalkers with me, and neither are as skilled as the Commander, I’m afraid. It may take a few nights to reach the General and the Commander.”
“Alright,” the Empress said. “Then send a beast walker to Alric, because he’s closer to our position, and have the dreamwalkers concentrate on reaching Joslyn. As soon as you can confirm that they’ve received the message, we move on Pellon.”
“Begging your pardon, Empress,” said the general, his tone distinctly meeker than before, “but what about Bawold? We still haven’t cleared the mountain men out of the town, and I fear that if we leave them there, we’ll open ourselves up to four, five hundred nipping at our heels the whole way north to Pellon.”
“Yes, Bawold.” Something in the way the Empress said it made the general shrink away even further. “The bane of our existence, Bawold. The town you told me it would take two weeks to clear, and yet here we still are, two months later, talking about Bawold. Tell me, general, why is it that there are still several clans of tribesmen holding such a small town? How have your troops not managed to dislodge them yet, despite the advantage of numbers? I seem to remember you telling me when we first set up this camp that mountain men were notoriously bad at siege warfare and that ridding the town of their presence would be a simple matter. But I suppose I must have misheard you.”
Brother Rennus broke in before the general could attempt to defend himself. “Empress, if I may be so bold as to speak on the general’s behalf in this matter?”
The Empress cocked her head in surprise. “Very well, Brother Rennus. Speak.”