Work-in-Progress Wednesday: Princess of Dorsa, Ch. 7

Hey you guys!

Sorry I missed last week.  I’ve been busy with my new job.  I’m back in the posting saddle again, though, so here’s chapter 7.  I’m probably going to past about five more chapters, then I’m stopping.  Don’t want to give away the WHOLE story, right??

Without further adieu…

(Pssst, catch up first:  Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6)

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7

Tasia grunted, her bare feet sliding in the sand as she struggled to lift the rock to the top of the heap.  When she at last managed to get it there, she bent forward, panting, placing both hands on her hips as she struggled to catch her breath.

Her hands ached, red and tender from the task of carrying one rock after another into the pile.  At least last week’s blisters had healed.

“You’re not finished, Princess,” said Joslyn from somewhere behind her.  “There are still three more to go.”

Mylla must’ve heard the guard from her spot on the blanket a few paces away.  Shading her eyes from the sun, she called out to Tasia, “Only three left?  You’re getting faster, thank the Gods.”

Tasia straightened, brushing her sandy hands on the back of the baggy trousers rolled up to her knees.  She looked longingly at Mylla, clean and dry in a new spring dress and sunhat, buttering fresh bread.

“Princess — ” Joslyn started.

“Yes, yes, I know.  Three more.”

Tasia turned away from Mylla, towards the pile of stones that seemed impossibly far away at the other end of the beach.  She took off for them at a jog, angling towards the wet sand closer to the surf so that she wouldn’t scorch her bare feet on the hot sand.  Joslyn seemed unaffected by the heat; she stood in the black leathers of the palace guard as always, arms crossed against her chest as the breeze from the ocean blew her neck-length hair sideways behind her.

Then again, she was from the desert.

Tasia wanted to shout at the woman as she passed, ask why the guard would just stand there when her Princess so obviously needed help, but Tasia didn’t have enough breath to waste it on words.  It was work enough to make it to the stones without collapsing.

Self-defense? she thought bitterly as she half-ran, half-stumbled through the sand.  How is moving a pile of stones from one end of the beach to the other teaching me self-defense?

She’d said as much to Joslyn on the first day that they did this drill, and the obstinate woman calmly explained that Tasia needed to build a basic level of strength and endurance first if anything else she taught the Princess was to have any value.

Three days after that, when the blisters were at their worst, Tasia had marched into her father’s chambers to complain, the guard trailing behind at her heels.

“Her idea of teaching me to defend myself is to have me run up and down the beach, carrying stones so heavy I can barely lift them!” Tasia had said, jabbing an accusatory finger at Joslyn.

The Emperor was silent for a moment, stroking his beard as he sat behind his heavy desk.  Then he smiled — not at Tasia, but at the guard.

“Good,” was all he said.

After that, Tasia didn’t try to argue Joslyn out of the drills.  Once the Emperor had made his opinion known, even her status as Princess held very little sway.

When she’d first been presented with the idea of studying and training like a prince two weeks ago, Tasia had felt hopeful.  Powerful.  Now, sunburnt and aching and gasping for breath as she ran down a beach under the gaze of the woman who was supposed to be her protector, she felt more trapped than ever.

She reached the three stones still left in the pile and bent to pick up the one on top.  It wouldn’t budge.  She tried again.

“It’s too heavy,” she said when she saw Tasia approaching out of the corner of her eye.  “I can’t do it.”

“You can do it.  Bend your knees.  Push up through your legs and hips instead of trying to lift it with your arms.  That’s where real strength comes from.”

“I said I can’t!  It’s too much.”

Joslyn said nothing, crossed her arms against her chest.

“I’m tired and I’m hungry.  I’m joining Mylla for my midday meal,” Tasia said, turning her back on the rock pile.

“You can eat when you’ve moved the final three stones,” said Joslyn.

Tasia whipped around, gave Joslyn an incredulous look.  “You forget your station.  You are my servant, not the other way around.”

“I am the servant of the Empire,” Joslyn said, and if Tasia’s barb bothered her, she didn’t reveal it.  “Are you the servant of the Empire?  Or only of yourself?”

“How dare you,” she hissed at the insolent guard.  “What do you know about serving the Empire?  You’re nothing but a nomad from Terinto who happened to get lucky enough in a battle to find yourself with the cushy job of being my sword-wielding wet nurse.”  She took a step closer to Joslyn.  Tasia was shorter by the guard by half a head and stood on her tiptoes so be at eye-level.  “I’ve known what it means to serve the Empire since before you knew what an Empire even was.  I’ve known it since before I knew my alphabet.  Since before I could dress myself.”

Joslyn’s eyes darted up the beach to where Mylla sat.  The handmaid squinted at the Princess and her guard with a slight frown, obviously trying but failing to hear their conversation.

“You still don’t dress yourself, Princess,” said the guard.

Tasia slapped Joslyn hard across the face, leaving a red imprint of her hand against the tawny skin.

But the guard only blinked.

“I’m reporting you to my father.”

“And what do you think he will say when I tell him you gave up your training to indulge your stomach?”

Tasia narrowed her eyes.  “My father wants me to study rudimentary self-defense.  Not whatever…”  She waved her arm at the pile of stones.  “…this is.”

“What your father wants is for you to become the true ruler of the realms after his time is over,” Joslyn said.  “He wants you to order soldiers into battle, soldiers who will bleed and starve and die in your name.  He wants you to master the art of negotiating treaties and political alliances, upon which the lives of hundreds of thousands depend.  And yet you are ready to surrender to an enemy no greater than a pile of stones and sore hands.  How will you be master of others when you cannot even master yourself?”

Tasia stared at Joslyn in stunned silence.  She’d never heard the woman utter so many words at one time.  And on top of that, no one, other than the Emperor himself, had ever spoken to her this way — not even Wise Man Norix when she’d been most stubborn about shirking her lessons.

“Finish moving the stones before your midday meal, Princess,” Joslyn concluded.

Tasia shook a finger in front of the guard’s face.  “I will tell my father what you just said.  How you spoke to me.  I will make sure you pay for this.”

“Perhaps.  But I will pay nothing until the stones have been moved.”

Tasia shoved Joslyn’s chest as she turned back down the beach, but the guard merely swayed a few inches.

The Princess sighed, and jogged towards the three remaining rocks.

#

Tasia finally collapsed on the blanket next to Mylla half an hour later.

The handmaid glanced at Joslyn, who stood a few yards off, back to the young women.  “I thought you were never going to finish,” she said quietly.

“I thought I wasn’t, either.  Tell me you were a good girl and saved some food for me?”

Mylla pursed her lips and lifted the lid of the basket.  Inside was a fine porcelain plate with a cut of roast upon it; the cold gravy had congealed and grown spongy around it.  A bowl held a few grapes, but they were wrinkled and wilted from the heat of the beach.

Tasia, too hungry to care, reached for the grapes anyway, managing to knock sand all over the cold roast.

“Oh pig shite,” she grumbled.  She stuffed three grapes into her mouth at once, and they tasted as bad as they had looked.

“Three grapes at a time?” said Mylla.  “A rare display of coarseness from  our well-mannered Princess.  What would the Empress have said?”

Tasia stopped chewing long enough to give the handmaid a withering glare.

Mylla tittered.  “Someone is in a foul mood.”

“You know I don’t like it when you bring up my mother.  Especially not like that.”

Tasia swallowed her mouthful of desiccated grapes, coughing when they caught in her throat.  She gestured for the canteen, and closed her eyes in relief when the cool water crossed into her parched mouth.

“I was only trying to make you smile.  I didn’t realize you were going to insist upon acting the grouch.”

“You would be in a foul mood, too, if you’d been made to carry stones all morning.  After an unexpected, two hour, early morning session with Wise Man Norix on the early political history of the Empire.”

Mylla grinned and recapped the canteen.  “Oh, the difficulties of being a princess.”

Tasia flicked some of the sand that had dried on her palm onto the handmaid.

Mylla squealed.  “This is a brand new dress!”

Tasia leaned over her, brushed even more sand onto the light blue silk.

Mylla swatted at Tasia’s arm.  “Stop, you brat!  You’ll stain it!”

Her handmaid’s annoyance finally broke the spell of gloom that had settled over Tasia.  The Princess laughed, hunger forgotten for a moment as she rolled towards Mylla, pinning the girl on her back.  Tasia’s boy-style rough tunic and trousers were still covered with sand, and she wriggled on top of Mylla, delighting in the girl’s high-pitched protests as she tried to get away.

Something snagged beneath Tasia’s knee, and both girls stilled when they heard the sound of ripping fabric.

“See that, Tasia?” Mylla said, genuinely irritated.  “You’ve torn it.  Now it truly is ruined.”

Tasia rolled halfway off the handmaid, propping herself up on one elbow, her other arm draped across Mylla’s torso.  “I’ll have it mended.  Or buy you a better one.”

“That’s not the point.  You shouldn’t have torn it in the first place,” Mylla huffed.

“Oh, Mylla,” Tasia said.  “Don’t be cross with me.”  She glanced over her shoulder, saw that Joslyn was still positioned a few yards away, her back facing them.  Tasia leaned forward, kissed the handmaid gently.  Mylla’s posture softened beneath her; the girl reached up, curled a hand around Tasia’s bare neck, arched up towards the princess.  Tasia allowed herself to get lost in the feeling of Mylla’s lips for a moment, eyes drifting closed.

But the kiss couldn’t last.  Tasia was mindful that Joslyn had positioned herself within hearing distance and was apt to turn around to check on her charges at any moment.  Reluctantly, Tasia broke the kiss, lowered Mylla back down to the blanket.

“I want you,” she whispered to the handmaid.

Mylla dabbed at her lips.  “You got sand on my face,” she whispered back, but her tone was no longer petulant.  “And even if you weren’t such an insufferable brat, you still couldn’t have me.”  Her gaze shifted past Tasia.  “Not with her around all the time.”

“I know,” Tasia said.  She flopped onto her back, shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare with a sandy forearm.  She heard Mylla brush the dress clean, then rustle through the picnic basket behind her.

A light touch ran down her forearm.  “You’re so burnt, Princess.  You look like a ripe tomato.”

“I feel like a ripe tomato.”

“Oh, my sweet Tasia.  Are you still hungry?”

“Starved.”

“Do you want some of the roast?”

Tasia sighed.  “I suppose.  It might be disgusting, served cold.  I should’ve eaten it hours ago.  But I’m sure it’s better than nothing.”

“Says the girl who’s never had anything but the first cut of each meat, when subjects in her own capital go without,” Mylla chided.

“Don’t.  You sound like Joslyn.”  Tasia took her arm off her face and sat up,  leaning back on the blanket on sore hands.  “You’ll never believe how she spoke to me,” she told Mylla in a low tone, then briefly recounted the charged conversation she’d had with the guard thirty minutes earlier.

Mylla gasped.  “I can’t believe her.  Anyone else would face the lash for saying something like that.  I mean, I would speak to you that way,” she said with a sly grin.  “But only in jest.  Never seriously.”  She took a forkful of roast, swirled it around in the cold gravy.  “Here.  Eat,” she said, bringing the meat to Tasia’s burnt lips.

Tasia took the bite gratefully, and despite the fact that it was cold, her stomach rumbled and demanded more.

Mylla clucked at the sound of Tasia’s rumbling stomach.  “My poor princess.” She prepared another forkful.  “Sunburnt like a common field hand.  Dressed in boys’ trousers.  Covered head-to-foot with sand.  And put in her place by a guard.”  She lowered her voice.  “That nomad is a problem, Tazy.”

Tasia nodded and accepted another bite of roast.  She thought back wistfully to the last night she’d had with Mylla, some two weeks earlier, before Joslyn had appeared.  Someone had attempted to take her life that night, and it had been terrifying, but then Mylla had presented her with the odd leather dildo.  Tasia considered the trade-off nearly even.

How she longed for another night like that with Mylla.  A night when they could trade places, and Mylla would be the one wearing the contraption.

She shivered, then took a third bite of cold roast, letting her full lips drag along the silver tines of the fork.

“What are you thinking about?” Mylla asked, studying Tasia curiously.

“You,” Tasia said simply.  “Or us, rather.  Of how much I miss you warming my bed.”

Mylla wrinkled her nose.  “Of how much I miss your much more comfortable bed, compared to my lumpy one.  I’ve had to sleep in it every night since the nomad arrived.”

That was what Mylla usually referred to Joslyn as — “the nomad.”  It was always “the nomad,” “the guard,” or “that woman.”  She seemed to have no use for Joslyn’s actual name.

“I’m sorry.”  Tasia sighed.  “I’ll ask the head chambermaid to replace it for you before the day’s end.  Truly.”

“It’s alright,” Mylla said, putting another forkful of meat into Tasia’s mouth.  “I miss your bed for more reasons than its softness.”  She leaned forward slightly, ensuring her words would not be overheard.  “But truly, we must do something about that woman.  I’m tired of seeing her skulk around with her perpetual frown, ordering you around, making everything so impossible.  For all you know, she’s not a guard at all, but a spy who reports back on your every move to Cole.”

Tasia considered this.  Mylla certainly had a point — after all, at evening meals, didn’t her guard sit with Cole and the other close servants of the royal family?  Was it possible she used the hour to report back to Cole on Tasia’s movements, and that Cole in turn reported them to the Emperor?

“The problem,” Tasia said, thinking out loud, “is that she is here by order of the Emperor.  Which means there’s little I can do about her as long as my father approves of her actions.”

Mylla fed Tasia another bite of roast.  “You’re the Princess and your father’s heir.  Put all these new classes you’re taking to use — find a way to make him disapprove of her.  Create a way, if you have to.”

“Perhaps you’re right, dear heart.”  Tasia grinned.  “You’re awfully conniving, for being a handmaid.”

Mylla mirrored Tasia’s mischievous expression.  “Oh, Princess.  Don’t forget that I am also a Lady of the West.  “Cunning is infused with our mothers’ milk.”