New Project Preview: The Prequel Series

Don’t worry, I’m not going to dive into this before I finish Soldier of Dorsa, but I there’s a slim chance I might start the prequel series before I dive into Empress of Dorsa, primarily because I might need a break between novels.

Anyway, I’ve had this idea in my head to tell the story of the Empress Adela, who gets mentioned a few times in Princess of Dorsa as the only precedent within the Empire for a female sovereign. She predates the existing story by about 800 or so years.

About a week ago, I was struck with inspiration for how the shape of the story should unfold, so I sat down and banged out a potential first chapter. If you’re interested, here it is…

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Growing up in a whorehouse wasn’t really so bad as most people might imagine.  There were always new people to meet; there was always a drama of one sort or another in progress; and unlike other people’s families, fortunes and food on the table never changed due to drought or blight or politics.  In fact, whenever Cara was especially naughty, the worst thing Mother or Asher (Asher was the man who owned the whorehouse, though he preferred to call it a “brothel” or sometimes an “inn”) could threaten her with was to send her away to an orphanage.  

It wasn’t an idle threat, either.  Most children of the women who accidentally got pregnant at the whorehouse went to the orphanage.  She’d seen the matrons who ran the orphanage come to collect babies plenty of times.  They were severe-looking women — overfed with pinched mouths and hard judgment in their eyes.  A few times, Cara had even seen toddlers get sent off to the orphanage.  Once a boy of four had intentionally lit his mother’s favorite dress on fire, and that was it for him — he got a sound beating from her first, then went to the orphanage with a black eye.

Occasionally, Cara would see orphans that she recognized marching through the market square in straight lines behind the women who ran the orphanage.  The women who ran the orphanage would all hold their chins high; the orphans always kept their eyes low, glued to the cobblestones in front of them as if maybe they’d been warned they would be switched if they dared to look up.  They never looked like they were having any fun, and despite the size of the women who bossed them around, they never looked like they had enough to eat. 

By the time she reached seven, Cara figured she was probably too old to get sent to the orphanage, but by then she also had grown clever enough not to get caught by Mother or Asher whenever she and her friends risked doing anything extra naughty.

Not that Cara had many friends her own age to get into trouble in the first place.

There was Doran, a skinny, mean-spirited boy two years older than her with one blue eye and one brown eye that wouldn’t ever quite focus properly.   Cara played with him sometimes, until his pranks grew less funny and more dangerous, like the time he contaminated his mother’s food so that she spent the night throwing up instead of turning coin.  And there was also Mirabelle, a frail, pale girl who never seemed all that bright to Cara.  

By the time she reached nine, Cara more-or-less gave up on the other whorehouse children as companions.  Doran had started to turn coin of his own, disappearing with the men who visited the whorehouse into dark corners and coming out again wearing an expression on his face that was even more sour than usual.  Cara didn’t know precisely what Doran did with the men, but she’d grown up in the whorehouse, so she had a general idea.  Besides, Doran wasn’t the only boy at the whorehouse who turned coin.  There were a few other sons of whores who’d followed in the footsteps of their mothers and earned rooms of their own.

Cara couldn’t say why, but she had an affinity for these men — two of them in particular.  There was Michael, who was tall and handsome and had a biting humor and walked with a certain sashay, and there was also Xalan, who, when he was sixteen and Cara was ten, began to dress in his mother’s clothes, paint his face with his mother’s tinctures, and changed his name from Xalan to Xalanna.  

“My sweet Cara,” Xalanna said to her one day after he heard her talking about him, “stop referring to me as ‘him.’  Don’t you know I have more woman in me than you ever will?”

Cara didn’t exactly know how to answer that question, but she called Xalanna “she” and “her” ever after that.

By the time Xalanna was eighteen and Cara was twelve, most of the customers who came to the whorehouse couldn’t even tell Xalanna apart from the other women who turned coin there.  

Once a customer did, though.  There was a huge row that Asher had to get personally involved in, and by the time everything was over, Asher had to bandage his wrist so it wouldn’t move for a week, one of the strongmen who was paid to protect everyone who turned coin had a black eye, and Xalanna had a deep gash on her cheek that never healed properly and turned into a long, ropey scar.  

She hated the way that scar looked and always tried to hide it with face paint.  But she also told Cara, “Any scar we earn on the outside is a sign that we’ve become twice as strong on the inside, sweetheart.  You remember that.”

Cara didn’t have any scars on the outside, but for some reason, she felt like she must have them on the inside, hidden away in places no one could see but her.  She knew she probably shouldn’t feel that way.  After all, she didn’t turn coin the way some of the other daughters of the whorehouse did who were her same age, and no one had tried to force her to do so; neither her mother nor Asher had ever given her a beating bad enough to make her bleed or bruise; and she had interesting friends like Michael and Xalanna to talk to when she needed advice or entertainment.  And besides Michael and Xalanna, she got along with most of the other whorehouse residents, like Lief the bartender, and all the minstrels who turned coin of their own by singing raucous, dirty songs in the dining room.  

Cara even learned her letters and her numbers from one of the Wise Man regulars who came to see her mother at least once every week.  While her mother filled a pipe with her concoction of white cactus and whatever else was in it that gave the smoke that bitter, acrid scent, Wise Man Walter would invite Cara to sit next to him on the edge of the rumpled bed while he pulled books, quills, ink, and paper from the bag he always carried with him.  Cara was suspicious at first; if Walter had moved to put his hands on her thighs or around her narrow waist, she was prepared to scream loudly and run.  It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d had to do that with one of her mother’s customers.  But Wise Man Walter never tried anything strange.  He simply sat next to her with his books and quills, teaching Cara to read and write while Mother smoked.  The length of the lessons depended upon how much Mother smoked; sometimes, when she smoked so much that she fell unconscious beside the window, sleeping so deeply she looked almost dead, Cara’s lesson with Walter would last hours, the two of them talking and learning until there wasn’t enough light to read by. 

By the time Xalan became Xalanna, Cara was as literate as any highborn girl.  She even pilfered books and scrolls from unsuspecting Wise Men sometimes, once they’d had enough to drink that they wouldn’t notice a petite girl behind their chair, rummaging through the bags they always carried with them.

So all in all, Cara’s life in the whorehouse was good.  She couldn’t explain to anyone why she felt so restless there, why she felt the urge to run away more and more the older and older she got.  Cara only knew that she needed to leave somehow, as soon as she was able to get away.

She tried to talk to Mother about how she felt, but Mother’s dependence on the white cactus potion she smoked grew over the years, and as time went on, she was rarely lucid enough to have a serious conversation.  On the occasions when she was lucid, she too grouchy to do anything but complain about Cara’s apparent lack of initiative.

“You’re old enough now that you should be on your back, too,” Mother told Cara shortly before she hit thirteen summers.  “Mirabelle’s working already, and she’s younger than you by at least a year.”

Two years, Cara thought, but she didn’t say that to Mother.  Instead, she said, “I don’t want to turn coin.  I want to do… something else.”

Cara didn’t think Mother capable of speed anymore — all of the woman’s movements had grown terribly slow as the smoking took its toll on her — but her hand snaked out before Cara could see it coming, and she slapped her daughter across the face.

“Think you’re better than me?  Than us?” Mother demanded.

“N-no,” Cara stammered, her cheek stinging from the slap.  She put a hand to her cheek, rubbing what she imagined was her mother’s red hand print growing there.  “It’s just — I… It’s just…”

“‘It’s just’ that you think the daughter of a whore can shame her mother by being anything else.”  Mother groped between the cushions of her upholstered chair, searching for her pipe.  “You need to earn coin.  I’m tired of paying Asher for me and you, just because you’re too lazy — or too ‘good’ — to work like the rest of us.”

If you didn’t smoke all your coin, you’d have plenty for both of us, Cara thought bitterly, but with her cheek still throbbing, she held her tongue.

When Cara trudged down the stairs, she found Xalanna lounging on the divan adjacent to the fireplace, flirting good-naturedly with one of the minstrels.  Xalanna caught Cara’s eye and beckoned her over, patting a spot next to her on the divan.

Cara sat heavily.

“Good morn, Cara,” said Phillip, the mandolier who’d been talking with Xalanna.

“Good morn,” Cara said.  “What are you still doing here?”

Phillip chuckled, cleaning his instrument with a black cloth that looked like it might’ve once been white.  “Played a drinking game with a Wise Man last night.  Lost.  Shoulda known better.”

“I found him snoring on the floor when I came down,” Xalanna said.  “He’s lucky he didn’t roll over on top of his mandolin.”

“Aye,” Phillip said.  “Mother Moon must’ve been watching over me last night, but she charged me the hefty price of a monstrous headache for her services.”  He grimaced and wagged a finger at Cara.  “Be careful what you ask from Mother Moon.”

Xalanna clicked her tongue.  “More like Mother Reina.”

Phillip said nothing, just grinned and pinked slightly.  Reina was one of the oldest women still turning coin, fat enough that she’d earned the nickname Round Reina, fierce enough that no one dared call her that to her face.

Cara raised an eyebrow, mildly interested by the implication, yet not caring so much that she asked.  Romances at the whorehouse were always coming and going; it seemed that nearly every woman who turned coin had a dream that some regular customer of hers would fall in love, propose a marriage, and take her away to a better life.  It didn’t happen much — a good third of the men who visited the brothel were already married (or, in the case of the Wise Men, weren’t allowed to marry at all), but the fantasy became a reality just often enough to keep the dream alive for many of the women.  Not Round Reina, though.  She was too old for such fantasies.  Which meant that her romance with Phillip, if indeed there was one, was something other than a fantasy.  Something… could Cara use the word “pure”?

But Cara didn’t really care that much one way or another.  What did it matter to her what Phillip and Reina were to each other?

What did anything matter anymore?  She scowled at the fireplace.

“And what has you so long in the face on this fine morning, kitten?” Xalanna asked, watching her.

“I don’t know,” Cara said, high-pitched and frustrated, because she really didn’t know what was wrong.

Xalanna reached out, took Cara’s chin in her long fingers, and turned her face slightly.  She tut-tutted as she traced the place where Mother had slapped Cara.  

“Your mother isn’t in a very good mood this morning, is she?”

Cara shook her head.  “Mother wants me to start turning coin.”

Phillip stopped cleaning his mandolin and looked up.  Xalanna’s face changed into something that might have been cross.

“I take it you told her no?” Xalanna asked.

Cara nodded.  “Yes.  I mean — no.  I mean, ‘Yes, I told her no.’”

Xalanna studied Cara, uncharacteristically quiet.

“You’re too young to turn coin,” Phillip said gruffly.  “Your mother would know that if she wasn’t in a silk stupor all the time.”

Silk was what people called the stuff that Mother smoked.  It was named that for the feeling it gave a person — smoothing everything inside them like a gentle lover’s touch.  Of course, once the smoothness wore off, smokers generally passed out, sleeping for at least an hour or two before waking up with a headache that rivaled the worst of hangovers.  The quickest way to make the headache go away was to smoke more of it as soon as possible, which explained why Mother seemed to smoke more by the day.

“Cara’s not too young by Asher’s standards,” Xalanna said softly, mostly to herself.  “But bedding men isn’t something that will work for our girl.”

Cara didn’t understand exactly that second comment, but she knew she agreed with it.  Bedding a man — or doing anything with a man, really, as Asher sometimes waited with the younger girls before letting a customer “eat the whole cake” with them, as he called it — sounded like the absolute last thing she wanted to do.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m too young or not,” Cara told her friends sulkily.  “What matters is that Mother wants me to start helping her with Asher’s fees.”  

She added a healthy dose of sarcasm to the words “Asher’s fees,” as they all knew that it wasn’t Asher Mother needed more coin for.  Cara wasn’t the type of girl to hate very often, but in that moment, she hated the Adessian smuggler who visited Mother whenever his ship docked, the one who brought the silk.  He’d been Mother’s customer at first.  Until Mother became his customer.  The silk came for free at the beginning — a “bonus” to thank Mother for satisfying his urges.  But then Mother demanded to be paid in silk, and gradually her appetite for it grew so large that the Adessian started to charge.  The price went up over time, and Mother complained bitterly, but by then, she would pay whatever he asked for it.  She tried paying him on her back, and that worked for a time, but the Adessian seemed to get bored with Mother after a while and made her pay only in coin.

Cara clenched her fists and her jaw.  Maybe she could wait until the Adessian fell asleep — most men fell asleep, after — and cut his throat while he slumbered.  But she knew it wouldn’t solve the problem.  Where there was one Adessian smuggler, there was always another.  Mother would find a way to get her silk.

“Oh, kitten,” Xalanna said, still watching Cara.  She sat up, wrapped an arm around Cara’s shoulders, and gave the girl a squeeze.  She rubbed little circles on Cara’s back as she spoke.  “I may have a solution for you.  Give me a few days to work on it, will you?”

Cara smoothed back her hair.  She usually wore the wavy, dark brown hair in a short pony tail, but errant strands were forever coming free and hovering about her face.

“What kind of solution?” she asked Xalanna.

“Well… do you know the Wise Man who’s been coming to see me every week’s end?” Xalanna said.

Cara made a face.  “Wise Man Rewan?  He’s such a crank.”  

Of all the Wise Men who came to the whorehouse, Cara disliked Rewan the most.  He never smiled, he snapped whenever he spoke, he once yanked on Mirabelle’s arm so hard that one of the strongmen had to pop her shoulder back into its socket.  He seemed to hate the whorehouse and everyone in it, yet he came back week after week, always asking — only asking — for Xalanna.

“That he is, my sweet,” Xalanna said.  Her voice was wry.  “Although you should see his member when I — ”

Phillip clapped both his hands over his ears.  “No,” he said.  “None of that.  Me body might not be innocent, but me ears are virginal, m’boy.  Virginal.”

Xalanna shot Phillip a dirty look.  She hated it whenever anyone used a word like boy to remind her of what was really between her legs.  She accepted such insults from customers, because, well, she had to, but she didn’t put up with it from anyone else.  She opened her mouth, probably to sass Phillip, but he spoke before she could.

“Sorry ’bout that,” was all Phillip said, dropping his hands and his gaze.

“You’d better be, Phillip of Torrick Dam.”

Cara didn’t know why Xalanna said “Torrick Dam” like it was an insult, but for whatever reason, it kept Phillip mute.

Xalanna turned back to Cara.  “Anyway.  Before our son-of-a-whore minstrel interrupted so rudely, I was going to ask you if you knew where Wise Man Rewan currently plies his trade.”

Cara wasn’t sure she knew what Wise Men really even did, let alone where they did it.  She had a vague idea.  They spent their time… being wise, she supposed.  Cara hesitated for a moment, deciding not to ask how Wise Men spent their time, for fear it would make her look ignorant, then shook her head.

Xalanna looked exceptionally pleased with herself.  She squeezed Cara’s shoulders again and gave her a little shake.

“In the palace,” she told Phillip and Cara.

“The palace?” Cara repeated stupidly, as if there might be a second palace somewhere in Port Lorsin she didn’t know about.

“Yes, the palace,” said Xalanna with a little snort of impatience.  “And if my sweet Rewan is to be believed — and I suspect he is too arrogant to lie effectively, I might add — when that ancient pea-prick Wise Man Gregory finally keels over, Rewan is set to become the King’s senior counsel.  Do you know what that means, kitten?”

Cara thought for a moment.  She was pretty sure she knew what “counsel” meant; some of her stolen books included that word.  It seemed to refer to those Wise Men who dispensed advice to lords.  But she wasn’t sure what a senior counsel was, so she shook her head.

“What it means,” said Xalanna, “is that if you give me a little time to work my shadow arts, I might be able to get you a job in the palace.  A real job, not the sorry kind that passes for a job around here — sorry, Phillip.”

Phillip shrugged.  “No offense taken, Xala.  I like me job.”

Cara was so stunned she didn’t know what to say.  She’d always known she didn’t want to grow up to be one of the women who turned coin, but it had never really occurred to her to think that her future might hold any other profession, either.  She didn’t really know what other professions there were — well, she had vague ideas from books and talk about seamstresses and farmers’ wives and bakers’ girls, but she’d never been able to imagine herself as one of them.

Xalanna peered at Cara as if assessing her.  “How are your cooking skills, sweetheart?”

And just like that, the bubble of hope and happiness that had been growing inside her burst.  

Her face dropped.  “Not good.”

But Xalanna didn’t look discouraged.  “Hmm.  A chambermaid, then.  You empty your mother’s chamberpot, don’t you?”

Cara hesitated, nodded.

“Right.  And you make her bed and tidy her room before the afternoon customers come in, don’t you?”

Cara nodded again.

Xalanna beamed and tucked another errant strand of Cara’s hair behind one ear.  “Darling, we’re going to make you the best little chambermaid that palace has ever seen.”

The bubble of hope in Cara’s chest began to expand again.  

Me, a chambermaid.  Me! she thought.

In the two hundred-year history of the Kingdom of Dorsa, rarely had a girl ever been more excited about the prospect of becoming a chambermaid as Cara of the Port Lorsin Shipper’s Quarter.