Update: Not only do I have a title for this book (it’s now Princess of Dorsa), I’m also very blessed to be working with the uber-talented Clarissa Yeo as my cover designer. Take a look at her work over at YoClaDesigns.com.
Do you like the featured image for this post? Who here remembers when the sexual tension between Gabrielle and Xena, Warrior Princess was about as close as you could get to a f/f relationship on television??
Get caught up on the story! Read the previous chapters before you start with this one.
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6
The Emperor’s antechamber was crowded. Emperor Andreth and the Wise Man Norix both sat in tall chairs behind the desk, Cole had taken his normal spot in the side chair, back to the bookshelf, and one of the younger Wise Men perched on the edge of the divan, his grey robes wrinkled and bunched in strange places, as if he had slept in them. When he glanced towards the Princess as she entered the room, she saw that his face was as haggard as his robes.
He didn’t sleep in his robes, Tasia decided. In all likelihood, he hasn’t slept at all.
The Wise Man Norix, on the other hand, looked serene as ever, white hair cut to a perfect, glossy ring around his head. The sight brought up a flash of Tasia’s previous night, when a messy ring of black hair framed furious eyes, and a knife prepared to plunge into her throat.
She pushed the image away with such forceful swiftness that Norix would have been proud of her, had he known what had just taken place in the private chambers of her own mind.
Everyone but her father rose when Tasia and Joslyn entered the room, gave brief bows before sitting again.
“Sit,” her father said to Tasia, gesturing at a high-backed chair adjacent to the divan. It wasn’t normally in the antechamber, which made Tasia suspect it had been brought in specifically for her.
What new inquisition was this?
She settled into the chair, reverting to a formal, ladylike posture — ankles lightly crossed, left hand atop right in her lap. Behind her, she could feel the hovering presence of her new guard.
“The Wise Man Evrart,” the Emperor said, indicating the unkempt Wise Man on the divan, “one of Norix’s assistants, has been questioning your would-be assassin continuously since the city guard brought him to the palace before dawn this morning. So far, the interrogation has offered almost nothing useful.”
The Wise Man Norix nodded beside Tasia’s father. “Whoever he is, he is well-trained. His Wise Man’s robes might be more than mere disguise, I’m sorry to say.”
“Have you given him the truth elixir?” Tasia asked.
The younger Wise Man glanced towards the desk, and Norix nodded.
Evrart cleared his throat. “We did, Princess. That is how we managed to discover that he is — well, most likely — Western. His accent slipped once he received the elixir. But it was the only thing that slipped, I’m afraid.”
“Your father and I are understandably rather concerned for your safety,” Norix said. “If you consider the evidence before us — ”
The Emperor raised his hand from his lap, silencing the Wise Man. “No. Let us hear Natasia work through the evidence herself.”
The men all turned expectantly towards Tasia. She fought back the blush of embarrassment with the reminder to herself that she was the Princess, after all, the superior of everyone in the room save her father.
“He was dressed as a Wise Man, and the fact that he resisted the truth elixir suggests he was also trained as a Wise Man — that, or trained by a Wise Man.”
“Which could — ” Norix started.
Again Emperor Andreth raised his hand. “Norix. I want her to do it.”
The elder Wise Man fell silent.
“Which could indicate… he was of noble birth, trained by one of the Wise Men serving his house,” Tasia stated, eyes flicking to Norix to see if her guess was right. He gave a subtle nod.
“What else?” the Emperor prompted.
“He… knew my movements,” Tasia said, and this time there was no stopping the blush, because it meant that everyone in the room, including her new guard, must know by now that she, the eldest child of the Emperor, the presumed future Empress, the Princess of the Four Realms, had been leaving the Ambassador Quarter in the pre-dawn hours — a time when any proper unmarried young woman would be safely and soundly asleep in her own bedchamber. She forged ahead. “And if he knew my movements, he has either been watching me, or has an ally who has been watching me.”
“Which is more likely?” the Emperor asked her.
A hint of anger flared inside Tasia. Was it really necessary that her father to do this to her? Give her an oral exam in front of a room full of people below her rank?
She calmed herself and focused her mind. “It is more likely that he has an ally, because…” She glanced at Cole. “I assume he is unknown by any in the palace guard?”
Cole nodded. “He is unknown to us, Princess.”
“And all the guards have been questioned by now — including the night shift?”
“Yes, Princess. Making his face known to the palace guard was our first task when the prisoner was brought in this morning. Before Evrart began his questioning.”
“Good,” Norix said, nodding his approval. “You have tested your assumptions rather than allow them to stand unexamined.”
Tasia’s anger flared a little hotter.
“If his face is unknown to the palace guard and to the palace Wise Men, then it is unlikely he has ever set foot inside our walls. Which points at an ally either inside or outside the palace — someone close enough to me to know my movements.”
“‘Near to you,’ probably, but not necessarily close to you,” Norix corrected. “Virtually anyone inside the palace, from the lowest servant to the highest born, might have been observing you without your knowledge.”
“But that’s hundreds of people,” Tasia said.
“Our concern exactly,” said the Emperor. He gestured in Tasia’s direction. “Which is why you now have Joslyn of Terinto standing at your back.”
“Your father’s wisdom in finding you a personal guard eliminates — or at least mitigates — immediate physical danger to you,” Norix said. “But unfortunately, it also means that — ”
“If the assassin had an ally — or allies — they will become even more cautious, move their activities even deeper underground, and most likely cease their plotting temporarily,” Tasia said. “Until another opportunity for attack arises.”
Norix nodded and smiled slightly, pleased with his pupil. “Exactly. Making them all the harder to catch.” He paused a moment, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “There is one more thing about your would-be assassin that you have not yet mentioned. What is it?”
Tasia searched her mind; as Norix had taught her to do, she turned her inner eye systematically towards each piece of evidence available. She could feel the attention of the room upon her, but stubbornly refused to be distracted by them.
“Sophistication,” she said at last. “The Wise Man’s robes — whether or not he is of the House of Wisdom — his ability to resist the truth elixir, the likely existence of at least one co-conspirator… all of it points to a sophisticated attack. He was not a simple hired rogue. And if he was hired at all, he came at a high cost.”
“And a sophisticated attack? What does that make you think?” Norix asked.
She thought a moment. “Coup,” she said, meeting her father’s eyes. “A sophisticated attempt on the life of the eldest child of the Emperor… this was planned, possibly over months. And it was executed to near perfection. If not for the assassin’s ill-luck of the guardsmen eating nearby, I would be dead. Which would leave the House of Dorsa with only one last living heir…”
“Your sister Adela,” Norix said.
Tasia nodded. “Who is young, and has a gentle temperament, making her easy to control.” She looked at her father for a long moment, and felt an understanding pass between them. “With Nik already dead and gone, with Mother gone, I represent the future of the House of Dorsa. Eliminate me, and then…”
“And make a potentially grief-stricken Emperor reckless and paranoid,” Cole put in.
“Making him more likely to make a mistake,” Tasia said, speaking quickly now as the pieces fell into place. “And a reckless Emperor overthrows himself. Or gets himself killed,” she concluded, quoting another one of Norix’s lessons. “And so ends the House of Dorsa.”
Her father nodded gravely, holding her eyes. “And so ends the House of Dorsa.”
“Tasia,” Norix said, leaning forward on the desk. “Is there anything at all you can think of from last night that you haven’t told us yet? Even the smallest or most inconsequential piece of evidence you might have forgotten to mention?”
“I already told father and Cole everything last night.”
“Tell us again,” her father commanded. “Replay it for us.”
Once again, Tasia turned her inner eye systematically towards the night before, fighting the discomfort of revealing to these men where she had been, what she had done, and why.
But too much was at stake to be held hostage by her shame. This was a matter of life or death — not only for herself, but for the House of Dorsa. And as the House of Dorsa was synonymous with the Empire, it meant life or death for the entire realm.
It was a heavy thought.
“I left the palace at nine-and-thirty of-the-clock to visit the Ambassador Quarter,” she began.
“Whom did you visit?” Norix asked.
She took a breath, her eyes unwillingly drawn to her father’s. It was true that she’d managed to avoid sharing this detail during their earlier meeting.
“Markas of House Boling,” she said.
“Son of the Ambassador?” said Norix.
“Yes.” She forced herself to focus on Norix’s inquisitive face, pretending that they were alone in the room and this was just another one of her lessons.
“And I take it you have visited him in his apartments before?” Norix said.
“Yes,” Tasia said, nodding. “Normally, I leave by eleven-of-the-clock, but last night, I must have fallen asleep by accident, after we…” Her gaze dropped to the floor. To her left, Evrart shifted uncomfortably.
“Is it normal for you to fall asleep?” Norix asked.
“No,” said Tasia. “It’s never happened before.”
Norix exchanged a subtle glance with the Emperor. “Tell me, Princess, did you have anything to eat or drink during your time with Markas? Or shortly before you left the palace?”
“Yes. When I visit him, I arrive dressed as a baker’s girl and carry pastries with me.”
“Pastries from the palace kitchens?”
“Yes.”
Norix faced the younger Wise Man. “Make note of that, Evrart. Everyone on the kitchen staff must be questioned immediately.”
Norix’s command sent a sudden shock through Tasia. Falling asleep after her time with Markas had indeed been unusual. Was it possible someone added something to one of the pastries? Some kind of sleeping draught? She mentally reviewed the faces of the kitchen staff — the matronly old cooks, women she’d known for her entire life, along with their children, whom she’d watched grow up from infancy. Was it possible that a member of the kitchen staff was an ally of her assassin? Did they know about her nighttime visits to see Markas?
Norix turned back to Tasia. “Continue, please, your Highness.”
“I woke up, and realized that it was quite late, so I hurried from the apartments, and… that was when he attacked me.”
“Where were you, precisely?”
“On the walkway beside the Royal Canal, just outside the Ambassador Quarter.”
Norix nodded thoughtfully. “And the attack itself? Was there anything that you saw or smelled or heard? Anything he might’ve said?”
Although it was unpleasant to do so, Tasia replayed the attack in her mind. “I tried to fight, and he said I would only make it hurt more. He called me ‘Princess,’ too.”
“Keep going,” Norix said. “Tell me every detail that stands out.”
“There’s nothing else… his hair was black, his teeth were yellow — but you know that already. And his knife… it was ugly and crude, with a black iron blade, but I’m sure you know that, too.”
Behind Tasia’s chair, Joslyn of Terinto cleared her throat. The sound startled Tasia; she’d nearly forgotten the guard was there.
All eyes turned in Joslyn’s direction.
“Permission to speak, your Majesty, your Lords?”
Another error, Tasia noted. Wise Men were not considered lords, even if highborn, and Cole, though the head of the palace guard, was nevertheless lowborn. Like the Wise Men, he would never carry the title of “Lord.”
The Emperor waved his hand. “Speak, Joslyn.”
“Your Majesty and your Lords may know this already,” she began haltingly, “but the devotees of the Cult of Culo carry black blades. And intentionally crude, according to their… beliefs.”
The room was silent for a long moment.
Norix was the first to speak. “The Cult of Culo was eliminated decades ago. Long before your birth, Guard.”
Joslyn seemed to hesitate a moment. Tasia could hear her feet shift behind the chair. “Not eliminated in Terinto, my Lord. They maintain a presence there, especially in the port cities… with respect, sir.”
Norix steepled his fingers again and appeared to think about Joslyn’s assertion. “If what you say is true, it’s the first I have heard of it.”
“It is true. My Lord,” Joslyn said.
Tasia couldn’t help but admire the woman’s boldness. Here she was in a room with the most powerful man in the entire Empire, along with a Princess and two of the Emperor’s most trusted advisors. And yet she, a lowborn desert nomad, a guard meant to be seen but not heard, had just challenged the knowledge of the highest Wise Man in the civilized world.
To Tasia’s right, Cole let out a low chuckle, possibly at Joslyn’s pert.
“I am no Lord,” Norix told Joslyn. If he was offended, he didn’t look it. “But please remind me — who are you, besides the new guard of the princess?”
“She is Joslyn of Terinto,” Cole said before the guard could reply. “A war hero, though I’m sure she’s too modest to say so herself. And according to General Galter of House Keltior, she’s the finest swordsman — man or woman — in the entire Imperial Army.”
Norix studied Joslyn. As the guard was positioned behind Tasia, the Princess could only wonder how the guard reacted.
Impassively, most likely, she thought.
“There are ten thousand full-time soldiers and twenty-thousand in reserve in the Emperor’s army,” Norix said, keeping his eyes on Joslyn. “Calling any one of them the ‘finest’ is quite a boast. A boast with a low probability at that.”
“Do you know General Galter?” Cole asked.
“I do,” Norix said. “The second son of Lord Byron of House Keltior. Galter used to spend his summers here in the palace, when Tasia was still small.”
“Then you know he is not a man to mindlessly boast,” Cole said.
There it was again — that bland and unapologetic frankness of Cole’s that kept Tasia from ever being able to truly dislike the man.
Norix nodded, turned his attention back towards Joslyn. “And how is it that you know the Cult of Culo remains active in Terinto? Have you met cult members?”
“I have, my L… Wise Man. When I was a girl.”
“When you were a girl,” Norix repeated, and because Tasia knew the way the old man’s mind worked, she knew he was still prepared to dismiss the suggestion that her attacker was a part of the ancient, presumably extinct, cult… but not quite. Norix was a cautious man, and in his own words, Cautious men humor all possibilities until they are definitively disproven.
“Evrart,” Norix said. “Include that in your next line of questioning — the Cult of Culo. See if that opens any new doors with the prisoner.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In fact, Evrart, I think it’s best that you get back to work immediately.”
The younger Wise Man nodded and hauled himself to his feet. He bowed to the Emperor, bowed to the Princess, and shuffled from the room.
Once Evrart left, Norix addressed Tasia. “We still know too little about your attacker to consider you safe, Princess.”
“I have a guard now,” Tasia said.
“Yes, and that’s certainly an improvement, but it doesn’t solve our larger problems. We have to assume that whoever else was involved in the assassination attempt by now knows that it failed, and we further have to assume that they will try again.” He paused. “That has led the Emperor and I to discuss a variety of short-term and long-term solutions.”
Norix glanced at the Emperor, then at the Princess. When neither spoke, he continued.
“Short-term, we will disrupt both your normal schedule and the Emperor’s, with the aim of making it difficult for anyone bearing either of you ill-will to predict where and when you will be at any given location. For your own safety, even you will not always be aware of your schedule changes. But you should only trust changes presented to you by the people here in this room.”
Norix glanced over Tasia’s shoulder, wondering, Tasia guessed, if he should’ve included Joslyn in that proclamation.
Cole grunted. The head of the palace guard must have interpreted the look Norix cast at Tasia’s guard the same way, because he said: “I personally vouch for Joslyn of Terinto’s trustworthiness. She would not serve the Princess if I did not have complete confidence in her loyalty.”
“Very well,” Norix said. “And speaking of Guard Joslyn, Tasia, your father and I have discussed it and decided that your new guard will give you lessons in basic self-defense. It is unlikely that you’ll ever have need of these skills, but since you have a willful and childish tendency to slip out from under the watchful eye of those who would keep you from harm, we have deemed it a necessity.”
Willful and childish. He said it casually and factually, as if remarking on the fact that the sun rose in the east and fell in the west.
Tasia reeled from both the off-handed nature of the insult and the simultaneous declaration that she would be taught to fight.
Taught to fight?
She couldn’t think of any highborn woman in living memory who possessed fighting skills. It wasn’t completely unprecedented; there were queens and empresses in the ancestral lineage of the House of Dorsa who were renowned as warriors, but the last of these women had died aeons ago, when the Empire was still young, small, and fragile, little more than a small island of civilization in a vast wilderness of untamed savages. Tasia wasn’t sure whether she should be excited by the prospect of learning to fight or frightened by it, because surely if both Norix and her father agreed it was necessary, they believed the threat to her life to be very serious.
She hoped Joslyn was as good a swordswoman as Cole claimed she was.
“Those are the short-term measures we’re taking,” Norix said. “As for the long-term… there are two.” He frowned, taking a breath. “Regardless of who made the attempt on your life, it is highly likely that they wish to either destabilize or depose completely the House of Dorsa. Which means that in order to protect the royal line — ”
“Marriage,” Tasia said sullenly. “And heirs. As soon as possible.”
“Yes,” Norix said. “Apparently you understand the urgency. Yet up to this point, you’ve rejected every suitor your father has presented to you so far, which by our custom you are entitled to do.”
Tasia nodded, glad that at least Norix acknowledged this.
“However, even you must understand that you cannot reject suitors indefinitely. Especially not now, with the future of the House of Dorsa and therefore the stability of the Empire at stake,” he said. “Therefore, I’m working with your father on several options we think will be… more to your liking.”
No one will be to my liking, Tasia thought miserably. No one is Mylla.
“One possibility,” Norix began, but the Emperor silenced him with a small gesture of his hand.
“I have made a mistake, Tasia,” her father said. “And I believe that is partially why you have refused every suitor with such pigheadedness.”
Tasia’s brow furrowed. The Emperor had just admitted a mistake? In front of two close advisors and a relative stranger? Where was he headed with this?
“Up until now, I have spoken to you about the future as if your only service to the Empire will be to marry and bear children,” he said. “It is true that all royal women carry this necessary burden, but to speak as if that is all you will do… it would be a future better suited for your sister, not for you.”
“Adela is stronger than you think,” Tasia said, defending her sister as an automatic reflex.
“Perhaps,” said the Emperor. “And perhaps out of loyalty you give her more credit than she has earned. At any rate, your misadventures last night provided me with time to think, given that I couldn’t sleep after you left. My conclusion is this: I want you to know that whomever you marry, you are the true heir of the House of Dorsa. It’s been a long time since an Empress has been the true ruler, stronger than the Emperor seated beside her. But it doesn’t mean those days can’t come again. It doesn’t mean you can’t be that kind of Empress.”
He fell silent and held her gaze, willing her to understand.
And Tasia did understand, but the shock of it was so great that she was frozen in place. He wanted her to rule? He wanted her, his daughter, to be his true heir? He had never before expressed such a sentiment to her before; he had only vocalized his grief over the early loss of his son — who, though considered weak, had at least been male. And he had always lamented Tasia’s incessant resistance to his control.
“I have treated a racehorse like a pack mule,” he said, using a commoner’s expression for failing to see the value in someone or something. “And I intend to correct that. Starting now.” He looked at Norix.
“We’re changing your educational curriculum. This is the other long-term change we are making,” said the Wise Man. “Your music skills are honed enough; we’ll be dropping further instruction in favor of political theory and negotiation. And although I know you’ve enjoyed painting more than singing, we will need those hours to train you in leadership philosophy.”
“You’ll also join me from now on during meetings with the ambassadors,” the Emperor said. “As we train you to rule, we will train them to accept you as my true successor.”
Tasia nodded but said nothing. Studying self-defense and political theory. Joining the Emperor’s daily meetings with representatives from across the Four Realms. Learning about the actual, practical, day-to-day management of the Empire.
All her life, Tasia had wanted the same opportunities and the same choices her brother would’ve been afforded. All her life, she’d simply wished to be seen as something more than a potential bearer of future emperors. But now that it was being handed to her…
Was she truly a racehorse? Or had they all made a mistake — a mistake that would jeopardize the safety of the Empire?
“We’ll start tomorrow,” Norix said. He gave her a smile that was, for Norix at least, warm. “For today, rest.”
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4 Comments
Linda · March 3, 2018 at 3:19 am
Have enjoyed the first 6 chapters and am looking forward to reading the completed book
The Real Person!
Thanks, Linda! 🙂
Kim Dyke · March 13, 2018 at 7:09 pm
I’m enjoying your WIP. Thanks for sharing your chapters with us!
The Real Person!
Thanks, Kim. 😀