But she supposed she should be glad for Lord Galen’s ambitions. If he didn’t have any, Tasia probably never would have met and fallen in love with Mylla.
“When do you have to leave to meet your father?” Tasia asked.
“Seven of the clock,” the girl said. “Which gives me less than an hour. You’ll help me pick out a dress, won’t you?”
Tasia did her best to put on a happy face. “Of course,” she said.
Three quarters of an hour later, she walked the handmaid from the bedchamber, through the anteroom, and into the main corridor. Since they were in public, the goodbye kiss Tasia gave to Mylla was cordial, nothing more than the polite peck on the cheek any girl might give to a friend.
“Behave,” she told Mylla. “Don’t embarrass your father.”
“Now that’s amusing advice, coming from you.”
Tasia glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then goosed the girl’s bottom. Mylla let out a short, high-pitched noise of protest.
“That is exactly what I was referring to,” Mylla said, shaking a finger at Tasia. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Alright,” Tasia said, knowing that it would probably be much longer than that. She smiled at Mylla, hoping that she was hiding the fact that she felt abandoned and really didn’t want to be alone. After all, in the past twenty-four hours, someone had attempted to kill her, she had been named heir to her father’s throne, been assigned a new bodyguard, and the man who tried to kill her had managed to poison himself.
She sighed and went back into her antechamber. She needed to find a distraction from her troubles, or else she probably wouldn’t sleep that night.
Lamplight flickered behind the rice paper screen that cordoned off Joslyn’s corner of the room from the rest. Tasia stopped before the screen, hesitating.
“Guard?” she said quietly.
A shadow moved behind the screen. Joslyn pushed a panel open, gave Tasia a look that bordered on suspicion. Tasia supposed she didn’t blame her; the last time they’d spoken it was so Tasia could humiliate Joslyn in front of Mylla over her “Cult of Culo” theory.
“I’m sorry,” the Princess said suddenly. “I shouldn’t have — I know you were only trying to help when you brought up the Cult of Culo. I wish Mylla hadn’t laughed at you the way she did. And me,” she added. “I shouldn’t have laughed, either.”
The apology had come spontaneously, surprising Tasia and probably surprising her new guard, too.
But Joslyn’s face softened and she gave Tasia a slight smile. “You shouldn’t apologize to a common soldier, Princess.”
There was an edge of sarcastic humor in the guard’s voice, just subtle enough to be denied if Tasia called it inappropriate. Tasia opened her mouth to do just that, but then she changed her mind. If she was unkind, Joslyn might deny the request the Princess had in mind for her.
“Do you… do you play Castles and Knights?” she asked the guard.
Joslyn cocked her head to the side, black eyebrows drawing together until a small V appeared at the bridge of her nose. Tasia realized she hadn’t noticed how smooth Joslyn’s tan skin was until that furrow appeared. Part of her wanted to reach out, wipe the V away with her thumb.
“Castles and Knights?” Joslyn repeated.
Tasia nodded. “It’s a game. It’s popular here. Well, maybe it’s only popular inside the palace. It’s not popular amongst soldiers?”
“Soldiers play cards,” the guard said.
“Follow me,” Tasia said, turning towards her bedchamber. “I’ll teach you a much better game than cards.”
9
The Princess unfolded her Castles and Knights board, which was a giant map of the Empire, divided into a grid. Then she opened her box of pieces, pulling out the delicately carved figurines and placing the white ones in front of Joslyn.
“You can be white,” Tasia said. “I’ll be red. Red always goes first, but white starts with a stronger position on the board.” She held up a square piece carved to represent a stone tower. “Place your fortifications wherever you want, but keep in mind that you resupply troops from the fortifications, so if your front line gets too far from one, your soldiers get weaker. Oh, and once all your fortifications fall, you lose the game. Mountain fortifications are hardest to conquer, but the mountains also tend to be a fair distance from the front lines.”
“What’s this piece?” the guard asked. She held up a figurine of a soldier, his standard-issue Imperial Army short sword drawn.
Tasia grinned. “That’s you. Those are your foot soldiers.” She reached across the board and picked up a carved figure of a man on horseback. “These are cavalry pieces.” She put it down and picked up the next one. “And these are your trebuchets. Trebuchets are slow to move, but powerful to attack. Your foot soldiers have the weakest attack, but you also have more of them than any other piece.” Tasia tapped the cavalry piece. “And the cavalry pieces are the fastest. They’re stronger than the foot soldiers but not as strong as the trebuchets.”
The guard listened carefully while the Princess explained the rest of the rules of the game, showing Joslyn how to set up the board, how to move each piece, how fortifications could be attacked, how the game could be one without destroying all the opponent’s fortifications by capturing Port Lorsin.
“And these,” she said, pulling out a stack of cards from the box, “are the cards of fortune. You draw one at the beginning of each turn. Some have good fortune, some have ill fortune.” Tasia turned one of the cards over to show Joslyn. “See this one?” She read it out-loud. “‘Your troops grow sick from eating spoiled food. Two foot soldier pieces are immobilized this turn.’”
Joslyn frowned.
“What?” Tasia asked.
“I can’t… I’m afraid I don’t know how to read,” said the guard.
“Oh,” Tasia said. She supposed she wasn’t that surprised, now that she thought about it. The Emperor before her father — her father’s father — had wanted the Empire to be the most educated land in the world, and he started an initiative with a much younger Norix to have Wise Men teach the children of commoners to read. Tasia’s grandfather had believed that a literate Empire would be a prosperous Empire. But the region of Terinto hadn’t been conquered at that time, so the initiative probably hadn’t reached Joslyn’s parents. Still, in the years since Terinto became part of the Empire, the House of Wisdom had made special effort to train Wise Men and send them into the region. Some of the Wise Men even traveled with the nomadic tribes, educating the poor herders as they moved their apa-apas from one grazing area to the next.
Tasia voiced that thought to Joslyn. “Were there no Wise Men traveling with your tribe?”
Joslyn shrugged. “Perhaps. But I wouldn’t know. My father sold my older sister and I when I was five. I remember very little about my tribe or my parents.”
“Your father sold you?” Tasia repeated, incredulous.
“It’s not uncommon amongst the tribes,” Joslyn said, turning a castle piece over in her hand without meeting Tasia’s gaze. “Children are hard to feed in the desert. Girl children in particular are sometimes worth more to poor families as slaves than as extra hands.”