Mylla spoke without looking up from her filing. “Are you sure anyone hired him? Maybe he acted alone. Just some Wise Man who went mad.”
“Everyone said that’s unlikely,” Tasia said.
“Who’s everyone?”
“Everyone,” Tasia said. “Father says he must have known my movements, and that indicated he had an accomplice inside the palace. Norix said he had to have been well-trained to resist truth serum, so that indicated he’d been planning the attempt with someone — ‘someone’ as in a well-educated Wise Man — for quite some time. And Cole said people who attempt to kill royals are almost always part of a larger coup.” Tasia rolled to the side, propping herself on one elbow to grin at Mylla. “Even my new guard had a theory. She spoke without invitation to my father.”
Mylla paused for a moment in her filing, looking up. “She didn’t.” Then she snorted. “But then again, the Terintans are barely civilized, so it’s not surprising they don’t know how to speak in the presence of an Emperor. What did her vacant nomad’s head come up with?”
“It’s rich,” Tasia said, sitting up and getting off the bed. “I should let her tell you herself.” She crossed to the door leading into the antechamber and opened it a few feet. “Joslyn? Come into my bedchamber, please.”
The guard entered a few moments later. She was out of her black guard uniform. A cream-colored linen shirt, simple and with no sleeves, hung loosely above a pair of plain brown trousers.
Tasia’s grin faded momentarily. She’d never seen arms like that on a woman before, arms where every muscle was defined so clearly. A strange, inexplicable urge to touch them appeared from nowhere.
She shook the feeling away, dispelling it as quickly as it had come like a pesky fly.
“Joslyn, tell Mylla what you told my father,” Tasia said, taking a more regal tone than what she’d used with her handmaid. “Tell her about the knife.”
The guard hesitated, glancing uncertainly between the two young women.
“Go on,” Mylla said. “If you’re insubordinate enough — or stupid enough — to speak out of turn to the Emperor about it, surely you can say it to me.”
Tasia started to giggle, then stopped herself. She resented the guard being foisted upon her, but it wasn’t Joslyn’s fault. And she’d been taught to treat those who waited upon her respectfully. One never knew what a commoner could be tempted into, so it was best to keep good relations with them. With her father naming her his heir, she was determined to start behaving with at least a little more decorum.
“The Princess showed her father and his Wise Men the black, iron knife that the traitor used in the attempt to kill her,” Joslyn said to Mylla. “In Terinto, it is well-known that such knives are the trademark item of the Cult of Culo.”
Mylla put down her nail file, stared wide-eyed at Joslyn. “The Cult of — ?” But she couldn’t finish the statement. She doubled over, bursting into laughter. It took her a moment to catch her breath long enough to speak again. “You’re saying the Cult of Culo tried to kill Tasia? You might as well say that goblins and faeries tried to kill her!”
Despite her attempt at regal behavior, Tasia couldn’t help but join in with Mylla’s laughter. Bringing up the Cult of Culo was rather outrageous, and mentioning it in the Emperor’s offices showed that Joslyn was both as superstitious as all other nomads and surprisingly dense for speaking out of turn in front of the Emperor.
Mylla continued to laugh uncontrollably, tears rolling down her cheeks as she occasionally exclaimed, “The Cult of Culo!” Joslyn stood stiffly by the door, not seeming to know if she should stay in the bedchamber or excuse herself into the antechamber.
Tasia’s own laughter died down, and at the nomad’s expression, she felt a pang of guilt. The guard had clearly only been trying to help when she’d brought up the old religious sect that the Wise Men had stamped out centuries ago; she probably hadn’t been prepared for the reaction she’d gotten — which was nearly as much laughter from General Remington, Commander Cole, Wise Man Norix, and the Emperor as she was getting from Mylla now. But the Emperor and his advisors had been somewhat more discreet with their amusement, disguising their laughs through snorts and coughs before quickly regaining their composure.
Then Commander Cole had censured her: “You are new at this post, Guard, but in the palace you should be seen but not heard.”
After that, Joslyn had simply nodded once and not brought it up again.
Mylla’s laughter finally died down. She addressed the nomad, looking her up and down before speaking. “You do realize, don’t you, that the Cult of Culo was destroyed by the Wise Men a good two hundred, three hundred years ago? The only people who bring them up are nursemaids and older brothers with a wish to scare small children.” She held her hands up and mimed horror, pitching her voice high. “The Cult of Culo! Oh, no! Oh, save us!” Then she broke into giggles again.
Joslyn faced the Princess. “Your Highness, do you require me any further tonight? Or shall I retire to my quarters?”
Her “quarters.” It was a rather complimentary way of describing the rice paper screens that separated her small corner of the antechamber from the rest of the room.
Tasia waved a hand. “You’re dismissed.”
Tasia waited for the door to the antechamber to close before giving Mylla a playful slap. “You’re terrible. You made her feel bad.”
Mylla wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “So? She’s a dumb nomad who was dumb enough to think she had been invited to be a part of the conversation about your would-be killer. And she brought up the Cult of Culo. You expected me not to laugh?”
“I just didn’t think you needed to embarrass her like that,” Tasia said.
Mylla rolled her eyes. “You laughed, too. And besidesI can’t believe I’m saying this, but sometimes I think you’re far too kind to your servants.”
Tasia grinned wickedly and slid a few feet up the bed, positioning herself beside Mylla. She tugged at the collar of the handmaid’s dress and kissed her neck. “Too kind? Like this?” She kissed Mylla’s ear, tugging on the girl’s earlobe with her teeth.
“You’d better not be this kind with all your servants,” Mylla said.
Tasia kissed the girl’s beautiful smile, leaned her back against the pillow.
But Mylla pushed her off. “I can’t right now, Tazy,” she said. “I think I forgot to tell you — my father’s in town. And he’s arranged for me to meet some nobleman’s son who’s interested in my hand tonight.”
Tasia sat up, alarmed. “Interested in your hand? But you’re not of age to marry yet!”
“No, but you know my father. I’ll be eighteen in less than six months. He’ll want me married and pregnant in six and a half months.”
Tasia flopped back on the bed. “Ugh,” she groaned, and in that moment she rather hated Lord Galen of House Harthing, Mylla’s father.
House Harthing was small — a minor house, really — but Lord Galen was ambitious. He’d managed to get Mylla named as Tasia’s handmaid a few years earlier, doubtless to draw House Harthing a step closer to House Dorsa; now it seemed he’d been quietly working on his eldest daughter’s marriage prospects. Actually, Tasia thought, he’d probably been working on them for years.