“If you teach them to trust you,” Father said, “then they will trust all humans, including Burke. You feed them your kitchen scraps; sooner or later they will start trusting his kitchen scraps, even if they reek of poison.”
“But they know we’re not Burke,” Tasia objected.
“Do they?”
Neither the Prince nor the Princess responded.
“You think you have created friends of those rabbits, but all you’ve done is create victims.” Father gazed across the pond, studying the bushes where the rabbits had run for cover, and frowned. “Rabbits are not unlike commoners, children. They need to know their place, and they need to know that they should fear us, at least a little. Otherwise, order breaks down, highborn and commoner alike becomes unsafe, and chaos rules all.”
He delivered the whole speech still gazing across the pond, his dark eyes both stormy and distant.
Tasia glanced at Nik. Was Father still talking about rabbits? Or something else?
“Now go inside and prepare for bed,” Father said.
“Yes, Father,” Nik said.
“Yes, Father,” Tasia said half a moment later.
She glanced over her shoulder as they neared the entrance to the palace. Father still stood there, gazing across the pond, even though all the rabbits were gone.
~ NOW ~
“No, ma’am,” the girl said patiently. “It goes like this.”
Rather than attempt to demonstrate again, the girl reached over and wrapped the trouser’s top around Tasia herself.
It turned out that the slave girl who had been spying on her in the mornings, the same girl who ran meals and messages for Halia, spoke the common tongue. Not just common tongue, either, but common tongue with an accent so light that it was barely detectable. She must be one of the only slaves in Lord M’Tongliss’s house to speak the Empire’s primary language fluently.
Tasia studied the girl while she wrapped what looked almost like a cummerbund around Tasia’s waist, holding up the loose, Terintan-style trousers. Men and women alike in Terinto wore trousers. In fact, long skirts were more a sign of rank amongst men than they were amongst women. But Tasia had been wearing the Empire-style gowns provided to her by Lord M’Tongliss. This was her first time trying to figure out how to put on Terintan trousers.
“What’s your name?” Tasia asked the slave girl.
The girl looked up from her work like a startled bird, black eyes wary.
Mother Moon. She could be the baby sister of Joslyn, the way she looks, Tasia thought, and at the remembrance of her dead guard and lover, Tasia felt a familiar stab of grief. Most days, she kept busy enough to avoid the grief, but every now and then, something would remind her of Joslyn — like the girl’s expressive black eyes — and unbidden memories would flood in on Tasia, lingering within her heart until she could find something else to occupy her mind again.
The girl’s resemblance to Joslyn didn’t end with her eyes. Her hair was also midnight-black, her cheekbones high and broad, her skin the color of tea after milk had been stirred in.
“L’Linna,” the girl said, who Tasia guessed was about thirteen or fourteen summers. “Most call me Linna.”
“I am pleased to finally know what to call you, Linna,” Tasia said. “My name is Natasia.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Linna said, standing back to inspect her work on Tasia’s trousers. “I know. You are the Empress Natasia of House Dorsa.”
“Or you can just call me Tasia.”
The wary bird eyes darted up to Tasia’s face again, but when she saw Tasia’s smile, she offered up a shy grin of her own.
Voices echoed from outside Tasia’s bedchamber, and Linna snatched the headscarf still lying on Tasia’s canopy bed.
“Put this on, ma’am,” she whispered urgently. “Make sure it covers all your hair. And don’t look up. If they see your hair or your green eyes, they will know you right off.”
Linna inspected the headscarf swiftly, ensuring that not a single strand of red-blonde hair had escaped it.
“We are straightening the bed chamber,” Linna whispered urgently to Tasia. “And don’t make eye contact with them, no matter what.” And with the deft speed and nimble agility of a rabbit running for cover, Linna vaulted over the mattress and yanked down the covers just as the door opened.
Tasia bowed her head and fussed with her now unmade bed as the morning sunlight filtered through the high windows and turned the room’s newest members into long shadows.
“What room is this, then?” asked a man behind Tasia in a gruff voice, his accent unmistakably Western.
“This is a guest chamber, my Lord Magistrate,” Halia answered.
“The House of Wisdom has no lords,” said a second man. “Call us ‘Wise Man’ or ‘Magistrate,’ nothing more.”
“Of course, Magistrate.” Halia said.
Footsteps behind Tasia. She dared to look up long enough to meet Linna’s eyes on the other side of the bed. Linna’s gaze flicked down to the cotton blanket, then back up again.
Ah, right. They were making the bed. Tasia took the cue, and together they pulled up the sheet.
“Awfully fine guest chamber,” said the first magistrate, his heavy footsteps pacing across the tile floor. “Who’s been using it?”
“No one at the moment,” Halia said. “But one of my husband’s brothers, his wife, and their children were here with us only recently. They used this room for about a week.”
“And when did they leave?” asked the second magistrate.
“Yesterday.” Halia cleared her throat, then coughed.
Tasia tensed, wondering if the cough was some sort of signal she was supposed to remember or interpret. They hadn’t discussed a cough meaning anything special, had they?
Fabric tugged loose from her fingers, and she glanced across the bed again. Linna shot her a stern look. Behind her, Halia coughed again.
“Tell your girls to come here,” said the magistrate from the West. “I want to take a look at them.”
“Alright,” Halia said. She directed a string of unintelligible Terintan towards Linna and Tasia. Still looking down at the cotton blanket, Tasia glimpsed Linna moving around from the far side of the bed at Halia’s command.
“Say it in the common tongue,” growled the Western magistrate. “I want to know what you’re saying.”
“I beg your pardon, Magistrate, but only two of our household slaves know any of the common tongue,” Halia said. “They are almost all from the desert tribes. These two only speak Terintan.”
Linna stood beside Tasia now, her head bowed like Tasia’s. Subtly, she nudged Tasia to turn around and face the men.
Tasia turned slowly, keeping her gaze fixed firmly to the floor. All she could see was the bottom of two grey Wise Men robes and two pairs of feet wearing Terintan-style sandals. Inside the sandals, one pair of feet was plump and hairy; the other pair was long, bony, and tanned. Out of the corner of her eye, Tasia could also see Halia’s dainty, manicured feet resting in two jeweled leather sandals.
Panic seized her then: Tasia was still wearing Halia’s sandals. They were an older pair that she only wore in the mornings to traipse up to the rooftop courtyard for her training and then down to the kitchen for breakfast, but they were still far finer than the sandals of a common slave.