“A tinker’s family,” Tasia mused. Joslyn had been a slave for a tinker family. But she’d never spoken much to Tasia about her years as a slave, and now with this girl who reminded Tasia so much of what she imagined a younger Joslyn might have been like seated directly across from her, Tasia found herself hungry for the details of Linna’s life. “What was it like, living with the tinkers?”
The girl shrugged. “We traveled a lot. I saw many places. Learned to fix things and cook things. The tinker’s family was kind to me, and I was their only slave.”
“Were you with them a long time?”
Linna’s gaze went back to the frayed spot on her sandal. “Yes. From the time I was a baby until I was eleven summers.”
“From the time you were a baby?” Tasia said, surprised. “What use is an infant slave?”
Linna didn’t look up. “Tinkers aren’t always honest people, ma’am. While the tinker and his sons mended tools and pots, the tinker’s wife would take me to a street corner and beg for coin. She would say her husband had been an Imperial soldier who had been killed in the East, and she needed money to feed her baby.”
“And the tinkers were never caught at this deception?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Linna said. She glanced up for a moment, a shy smile flashing across her face. “They used to say I earned a lot of coin. More than the tinker’s sons ever did when she tried the same game with them.”
“I knew a woman from Terinto who was once a slave in a tinker family,” said Tasia.
The girl stopped fiddling with her sandal and looked up. She wanted to ask more, Tasia guessed, but had been too well-trained to pry for details.
“She wasn’t a slave when I met her,” Tasia said. “She was my personal guard — a sword master. A very good sword master.”
Linna stared at Tasia. “The tinkers freed her?”
“No,” Tasia said. “The tinkers sold her to someone else. And she… ran away,” Tasia concluded, deciding at the last moment to leave out the fact that Joslyn had murdered her master.
The girl’s expression changed. At first, Tasia thought it was anger, but then she realized it was skepticism. She looked back down at her sandal. “Running away is punishable by death,” she said. “Such a person could never be guard to a royal.”
“A person could,” Tasia countered, “if a person joined the Imperial Army and never revealed they’d been a runaway. Especially if the same person was very adept at the dance of the Seven Cities.”
Linna looked like she might say more, but returned her attention to her sandal instead, pulling at the frayed thread ferociously. Tasia wondered what the battered shoe had done to offend the girl.
Tasia heard footsteps coming up the far set of stairs and she tensed, hand flying to her dagger. How strange it was that she, a royal, the heir to her father’s crown, would find instinct drawing her hand to her weapon so naturally.
Joslyn would have been proud.
Linna tensed, too, but it was only Halia.
“The magistrates are gone,” she said.
“You’re sure?” Tasia said, her hand still on her dagger. The suspicious part of her — and a much larger part of her had grown to be suspicious over the past few months — wondered if Halia had been sent to the rooftop as a mere trick, as bait to draw her back down to the main floors of the mansion, where she would be captured.
Or killed. Tasia would rather die fighting than die beneath an executioner’s axe.
“I’m sure,” Halia said. “I had Lucos follow them discreetly most of the way back to their offices near the harbor.”
Beside her, Linna stood up and brushed her hands off upon her trousers. She stood quietly, head bowed and hands folded in front of her, waiting for Halia to give further instructions.
“How’s your cough?” Tasia asked Halia.
Halia grinned. “It’s not contagious, if that’s what concerns you, Empress.”
“Didn’t you hear the Wise Man, my Lady?” said Tasia, returning the grin. “There is no such thing as a contagious cough. That is a superstitious rumor.”
“So I have heard, your Majesty.” But then all traces of mirth disappeared from Halia’s face. “Although the magistrates did share news that is no rumor, I’m afraid.”
“What?” Tasia asked.
“I think it is best if I let my husband explain what the magistrates said, over our evening meal,” Halia said.
#
As always, all of Lord M’Tongliss’s house waited ceremoniously for her at their places in the long, open-aired dining hall when the evening meal finally arrived. Tasia had hoped to catch up with Evrart before the meal, to finish the conversation they had begun before the magistrates’ unexpected arrival had ended it so abruptly, but he had been missing all afternoon — gone to visit his Brothers was all the information that Halia seemed to have.
The whole household stood behind their chairs in their evening finery. On one side of the table was Lord M’Tongliss and Renyl, his first wife, and five of the children; on the other side of the table, Tasia’s side, stood Halia and the other four children. The chair in the middle of the table, the most important chair, had been reserved for Tasia.
She walked past the marble columns and potted cypress trees that marked the boundaries of the dining hall, catching the faint scent of citrus in the evening air. Above the long table, lanterns hung every few feet from the grid of wooden beams that supported a canopy of long, swooping swaths of silk. The silk undulated in the breeze like gentle ocean waves. Their presence was fitting, Tasia thought, since Lord M’Tongliss had made much of his fortune as a silk merchant long before he bore the title of “lord.”
Smooth as the cloth that had built him this opulent miniature empire, Lord M’Tongliss smiled and bowed deeply when he saw Tasia. “You look more stunning than ever, Empress. The dresses Halia chose flatters you.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” Tasia said. “You were very gracious to have them made.”
He spread his hands in a gesture that was half shrug, half benediction. “We wanted you to be comfortable during your stay, Empress. And we knew you were not able to bring much with you when you fled the palace.”
Tasia had to admit that finding an array of Empire-style dresses waiting for her in Terinto had been a pleasant surprise. Not that her wardrobe had been at the forefront of her mind lately.
She nodded her thanks to the slave who pulled the chair out for her, then settled into her seat. With the scraping of chairs against brick, the rest of the household sat down after her.
The table had been set with olives and flat bread, and since Tasia knew that none of them would eat until she had, she picked up an olive and took a small bite.
“Mmm,” she said. “It’s quite good.”
“Are you sure it is to your liking?” Lord M’Tongliss said. “I can have the cooks bring you something else if you like.”
“No, don’t dream of it,” Tasia replied. “It is already superb, and it is not even the first course.”
M’Tongliss gave a satisfied nod.
This was all part of the Terintan ritual, Tasia had learned. The host’s job was to feign concern that the guest may not actually enjoy the food; the guest’s job was to insist that he or she loved the food, and that each course of the meal would be better than the last. Only when this ritual had been completed could the actual meal begin.