A peek into Tasia’s childhood (another Soldier of Dorsa Update)

I was going to give you a little sneak peek at Joslyn’s childhood, since that’s what I’ve been working on this blustery Sunday morning, but then I thought, Nah, the last two things I’ve shared (the Soldier of Dorsa Prologue and Chapter 1) have both had Joslyn at the center of them. Let’s give them a little bit of what’s happening with Tasia.

So here’s that…

As always, just a reminder that this is a rough BETA VERSION that may change and that may very well be rife with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes…

THEN

It was the night of the Midsummer Festival, and Tasia clung tightly to Nik’s hand as they followed Wise Man Norix and his young assistant Evrart through the Merchant Quarter.  They were surrounded by a contingent of the palace guard, and they would only go to the parts of the quarter that were the safest, but still.  Tasia wasn’t used to being outside the palace walls, especially not at night.  

At lessons that day, Evrart, who was still an apprentice who hadn’t quite earned his grey Wise Man’s robes yet, had told Tasia and Nik an old folktale, because that was to be Evrart’s specialty once he became a Wise Man — history and folktales and knowledge about the old gods that almost everyone these days knew were just stories, like Mother Moon.  The tale had been about a creature called a fenodyree, a hairy little creature related to the small men who only came out at night.  Unlike the small men, who only lived beneath the mountains and away from regular men, the fenodyrees often lived amongst regular people without them ever knowing.  They would come out, steal milk or bread or do something mischievous, like tie bells around a cat’s tail so that it would wake up everyone in the village, then they would disappear again into their hiding spots beneath houses, inside cold chimneys, or in root cellars as soon as the sun began to rise.

Tasia knew it was only a silly story, but she swore she saw something — or more than one something, actually — that looked just like Evrart’s description of a fenodyree disappearing into the shadows visible just beyond the knees of the palace guardsmen in front of her.

“Ow!” Nik exclaimed, yanking his hand from her grip.  “Not so hard!”

Wise Man Norix turned and gave them both a stern look without saying a word.  Hastily, Nik took Tasia’s hand back.

“Sorry,” Tasia mumbled.  She hesitated.  Then, in a low voice, she asked Nik, “The fenodyrees are only a story… right?”

“’Course they are,” Nik said.  His chest puffed out in imitation of their father, and he seemed to walk a little taller.  “Why?  You didn’t actually believe Evrart today, did you?”

Tasia scoffed.  “Obviously not.”

Evrart walked beside Wise Man Norix ahead of them, and at the sound of his name, he glanced back over his shoulder.  When Tasia caught his eye, he gave her a small smile.

She smiled back, but it was strained.

They walked on, and Tasia tried to focus on the knees of the guards around her, instead of what might be beyond them.

The Merchant Quarter had been well-decorated by all the commoners in anticipation of the Midsummer Festival.  Strings of paper lanterns in all different colors hung in long, swooping lines along the fronts of the multi-storied shops.  In some places, the lanterns hung over the street between rows of shops as well, their soft light glinting against the damp cobblestones below.

The crowds of commoners lining the streets thickened the closer they got to the main market square.  They cheered and clapped when the royal procession came into view, shouting things like “Long live the Emperor!” and “May the House of Dorsa protect us all!”

Two of the mounted guards at the back of the procession broke off to flank the walking guards, which Tasia supposed was necessary, but it irritated her nonetheless because the horses obstructed her view of the common people.  She had to crane her neck at odd angles to see them.  A girl about her own age, standing with who Tasia guessed were her parents, met her eye.  The girl lifted her hand in a timid wave, and Tasia waved back.  Wearing a plain brown dress that was probably the nicest thing she owned, the girl looked grubby to Tasia.  The young princess wondered, not for the first time, what life would have been like if she’d been born Natasia of Port Lorsin instead of Natasia of the House of Dorsa.  It seemed natural to be royal, yet at the same time, it probably felt natural to the girl to be common.  As different as their lives were, Tasia realized that they were both alike in that their fates had been determined early, by simple quirk of birth.

“There are a lot of people out here,” Nik said in Tasia’s ear as he waved to a cluster of men and women who had called his name.

Tasia pulled her attention away from the girl and back towards her brother.  “Yes.  There are always lots of people who come out for the Midsummer Festival,” she said, using a tone that was almost condescending, as if she couldn’t understand why Nik sounded so surprised — or so nervous — to see the thousands of commoners who crowded the streets, all of them jockeying for position to get a better view of the prince and the princess.  

But despite her haughty response, the crowds of commoners made Tasia a little nervous, too.  She and Nik had gone into Port Lorsin for Midsummer Festivals in previous years, but on those occasions, they’d always been with their father or mother.  This year, Father was at a party in one of the mansions in the Ambassador Quarter, and Mother, her belly heavy with a new little prince or princess, had been ordered by Wise Man Norix to stay in bed until the baby came.  

Which left only Nik and Tasia to spread the royal boon amongst the commoners.

“Stand straight.  Remember your royal bearing,” Norix said, addressing his two young charges over his shoulder.  “And don’t make eye contact with the commoners.  It only encourages them.”

Encourages them to do what, exactly? Tasia wanted to ask, but she didn’t.  She knew better than to question Wise Man Norix.

She smelled the bonfire in the market square before she saw it.  The woodsmoke was unmistakable, but in particular, she could smell the rich scents of cedar and pine.  According to Evrart, commoners burned those woods in particular at midsummer because they believed the gods had made the trees evergreen to reward mankind for their service.  Mankind, in turn, was supposed to give some of the trees back to the gods each summer in thanks.

Besides the smell of cedar, Tasia caught a whiff of the Midsummer Feast — pork, mutton, beef, foul, together with ale and mead, bread and sweet cake, roasted corn and fried potatoes.  She’d already had her own Midsummer meal, but the blended smells of the commoners’ food were almost enough to make her hungry all over again.

A cheer went up from the market square when they saw the royal procession approach.  This was the moment they’d been waiting for all evening — a chance to see the children of the House of Dorsa and the chance to receive the annual boon.

She and Nik raised their hands and waved at the crowds when they entered the square as they had been instructed to by Wise Man Norix earlier.  The cheering grew louder, the voices reverberating off the walls of the shops around them, and Tasia resisted the urge to wince and cover her hands with her ears.  The commoners’ faces glowed red from drink and firelight all around them, and Tasia again couldn’t help but think of the folktales of demons as told to her by Evrart.

The royal procession stopped near the center of the square, with one of the horses nickering nervously, its hooves drumming out an uneven, staccato rhythm on the cobblestones.  And as if that was their cue, the commoners burst into song — also drunkenly uneven at first, but gradually gathering in confidence, volume, and unity as they went:

Hail summer, hail Mother Moon,

Hail sun and warm breezes, ease and repose

Hail the full harvest, the feast, and the boon!

There were more verses, but Tasia stopped listening.  Two palace guards approached her and Nik, each holding open sacks of silver pennies.  

“Ye ready, your Majesties?” one of the guards said.

Tasia waited for Nik to respond first, as was proper.  He nodded, then Tasia nodded, and then they both stuck their hands into the sacks, grabbing as many of the silver pennies as they could.  Nik glanced at Tasia, a question in his eyes, and she only lifted an eyebrow.  Her lifted eyebrow said to him, You are the future Emperor, not me.  You are the one who needs to be decisive, to act without seeking approval.   

He might be the heir to the crown, but he was still her little brother.

Nik set his jaw and stepped through the gap the protective circle of guards had left for him.  With all his might, he flung one handful of coins towards the crowd, then the other.  Tasia stepped forward next to him, and did the same.

The commoners, already drunk on ale and festivities, went insane.  They scrambled in every direction to grab as many coins as they could.  Grown men shoved old women out of the way; children elbowed and kicked one another; women scratched and pulled hair.  The merry song they had sung earlier was replaced with the chaotic din of a riotous crowd.  Nik and Tasia, meanwhile, grabbed more coins from the sack and chose a new direction to throw them in.  They threw again; anarchy engulfed the crowd again.  An actual fight broke out in one pocket of commoners, where two men wrestled for possession of a single silver penny.

For a single penny? Tasia thought to herself.  So much effort exerted for a single silver penny.  Silver pennies were nothing.  They were what Father gave her when Wise Man Norix said she had done well on a lesson, or what Mother gave her to clean her plate of vegetables.  But she also knew from Evrart that one silver penny was more than a palace guard earned in a month.

She looked into the face of the nearest guard after throwing her third handful of coins, wondering what he thought about seeing her and Nik throw away what must have seen a fortune to him.  He looked… not placid, exactly, but… what was the new word she had learned earlier that day during her lessons?

Resigned.  That was it.  The guard looked resigned.

Nik, at least, seemed to be enjoying himself.  He giggled as he threw coins in different directions, at different angles.  Some he threw straight up into the air, and they rained down in a shower of bright silver.  Others he would pretend to throw in one direction, but then throw them in the opposite direction at the last moment.  One he threw into the fire, apparently just to see if a commoner would dive in to get it.

“Don’t do that, Nik,” Tasia admonished in a low voice.

His giggling faded as he glanced over and saw the look in her eyes.  He nodded solemnly, and went back to being a good prince.

The coins were almost gone by the time Tasia got to her tenth handful.  She tossed them as far as she could, trying to throw them in a way that they would scatter instead of all land in a single clump.  She saw a child dart forward from the crowd to pick one up, and realized it was the same girl whose eyes she’d met before, on the way into the square.  She was glad that the girl, who seemed almost the commoner version of herself, had managed to grab a penny.

But just when the girl thought she’d managed a miracle, an older boy came and pushed her hard.  She stumbled and toppled to the ground, striking her head on the cobblestones.  The boy grabbed her wrist and forced her fingers open, then snatched the silver penny from her with a triumphant shout.

Tasia felt sick.

She put her hand on Nik’s shoulder.  “Let’s go home,” she said.

“We aren’t done,” he objected.

“Please, Nik?  Let’s go.”

“Alright, but let me finish giving the boon first.”

She could not argue.  She was his elder, but he was the prince, the heir to the throne.

“In nature,” her father had told her and Nik once, “the fox eats the hare.  The wolf eats the fox, the lion eats the wolf, and man eats the lion.  We in the House of Dorsa are like the men who eat the lions.  Other houses may be great and powerful, but no matter how rich or well-loved they are, none of them can ever best the House of Dorsa.”

 Tasia watched her brother toss out the last of the pennies with great joy; she watched the girl sit cross-legged on the cobblestones, holding her bloodied elbow.  She watched the crowd fight for worthless pennies, and she thought of hares and foxes and wolves and lions and fought against the sick rising in her stomach.

NOW

Tasia stood to the side of the window, pressing her face against the wall so that, if anyone happened to look up, they wouldn’t see her face looking out into the city.  She pushed the light woolen curtains back a few inches, just enough to peer out.

“There’s some sort of fire burning.  A bonfire, maybe,” she said.  She frowned.  “Is there a festival?  The Midsummer Festival, maybe?”  

“Not that I know of, Empress,” Evrart said.  “Besides, they don’t celebrate midsummer here.  Midsummer can be a deadly time of year in Terinto.”

“Hmm,” Tasia said thoughtfully.  “Well, it looks like it’s coming from the market square.”

She noted that there were no shouts of alarm accompanying the flames, so she doubted the fire was an accidental one.  The fire smelled faintly of…

She turned suddenly.

“Evrart, I think the fire is a funeral pyre.”