Joslyn hesitated, one hand on the door to the antechamber. “Reporting an incident in which your life was in danger is my duty. It is why your father pays me.”
“So that’s all I am to you?” Tears threatened, but Tasia had cried enough for one day, and she swallowed them back. “After all the time we’ve spent together, I’m still just a spoiled princess you have to watch. Just a duty. I suppose that’s fair. All I’ve done is make your life difficult. Even when you’ve been trying to help me.”
Joslyn looked at her for a long moment, like she was trying to come to a decision. “I said it’s my duty to report what happened,” she said at last. “I didn’t say I would.”
Tasia sighed with relief. And not just relief that her father wouldn’t find out about the night’s mishap. Relief that Joslyn cared enough about her that she wouldn’t say anything. She wanted Joslyn to care about her, wanted the guard to think of her as more than just an assignment.
“How is your cut?” Tasia asked. “I can send for Wise Man Evrart to tend to it for you. He has a gentle hand — and steadier than Norix’s.”
“I don’t require the Wise Man’s help. I can mend it myself.”
“Alright.” She paused, trying to form an acceptable apology in her head. “I’m so sorry you got hurt. Truly. I shouldn’t have… I should’ve listened to you, Joslyn. I shouldn’t have attracted such a crowd.”
Joslyn opened the door to the antechamber. Tasia moved to go inside, but was stopped by a hand on her shoulder.
“Wait, Tasia.”
She turned, observing some sort of emotion playing across Joslyn’s face. The Princess felt hope rise in her chest, although hope for what, she couldn’t say. “What?”
The emotion disappeared. “I need to inspect your chambers first.”
“Oh.”
Tasia waited by the antechamber door while Joslyn went through her regular inspection.
“Is Mylla back yet?” Tasia said when Joslyn returned.
Joslyn shook her head.
“I see.” She bent to unbuckle her boots, hoping to hide the disappointment on her face.
“Tasia…?” Joslyn said haltingly.
“Yes?”
“I am sorry that the handmaid will be… leaving you so soon.”
Tasia’s eyes welled with tears, but she still refused to let them fall. “Thank you, but of course it will be fine. I always knew she would leave sooner or later.”
Joslyn nodded. “Sleep well.”
“I will try,” Tasia said. “You, too.”
But her bed felt cold and empty without Mylla there to warm it. Why had she fought with the girl earlier?
Maybe Mylla was right. Maybe Tasia was inexcusably selfish, only ever thinking of her own feelings, her own wishes, her own laments. Hadn’t she proven so tonight? First fighting with Mylla, then nearly getting herself and Joslyn killed at the Speckled Dog just because she’d wanted booze and entertainment.
She always had to be the center of attention, didn’t she? No matter what it cost others.
She sighed, rolling over in the too-large bed. She ran her hand down the spot that Mylla usually occupied. But no. No more feeling sorry for herself over the Lady Mylla of House Harthing. She was to be the Empress soon. How silly for an Empress to cry over a girl who had always been destined to leave her anyway.
What would Nik say, if he were here to see her now?
“You never wanted the crown,” she whispered into the dark, to a Nik who was not there. “But what made you think I wanted it?”
Tasia rolled to her other side. She missed them so much, her brother and mother. Losing one of them would have been hard, but bearable. But to lose both of them? Nik had been her anchor in the world, her counterpoint. He’d balanced her. Now that he was gone… and Mylla was leaving…
Lamplight flickered in an uneven pattern beneath the closed door to the antechamber. It had to be Joslyn still moving about, as the light was too strong to be coming from the lamp near the outer door.
Tasia watched the light for a minute, eyelids growing heavy. But a soft, muffled moan coming from the other side of the door startled her back into alertness again.
Cautiously, gently, worried that she was intruding despite the fact that the room technically belonged to her and not the guard, Tasia climbed out of bed and pushed open the door that led into the antechamber.
A dim lamp burned low at the far end of the room in its normal place beside the door. A brighter lamp burned to Tasia’s left, illuminating from within the rice paper screens that cordoned off Joslyn’s corner from the rest of the antechamber.
Another quiet sound came from the other side of the rice paper screens, this one more a grunt than a moan. Tasia could see the guard’s misshapen shadow against the screen.
“Joslyn?” Tasia said.
“Yes?” The guard’s voice sounded strained.
“Are you alright?”
“I will be.”
Tasia hesitated, taking a step closer to the screen. It hardly constituted a wall; if she wanted to, she could use the tip of her finger to puncture any of the squares of paper before her.
“May I come around the screen?” Tasia asked.
There was no answer for a moment. Then: “If you wish.”
Tasia slipped through the gap between the screen and the wall and into Joslyn’s private space.
The guard sat sideways on her cot, bare from waist up except for rough-looking cloth bindings wrapped tightly over her breasts. The gash Tasia had seen earlier looked red and angry in the lamplight. It was much longer than Tasia had realized, running horizontally across Joslyn’s ribcage, then taking a sharp upward turn and terminating just below the breast bindings.
And this vertical part of the cut beneath her right arm seemed to be the source of the moaning, as it still seeped blood from the top. A candle burned in the center of a small table before Joslyn; the rest of its surface was littered with blood-soaked rags. The guard held a needle over the candle flame.
“Mother Moon,” Tasia said. “You sewed it up yourself?”
No wonder the guard had been moaning. Tasia took a half-step forward, bending closer to examine the wound. Messy stitches had already closed the horizontal part. The vertical segment, though… how was Joslyn going to reach it?
Black eyes flickered over to the Princess before returning to the candle flame. Joslyn pushed hair behind her ear, the movement making her wince.
“Usually only Wise Men are permitted to treat a wound like this one,” Tasia said.
“Most of the soldiers in the Imperial Army eventually learn how to sew closed their own wounds. Wise Men are… not always available on a battlefield.”
The Princess sat down on a stool beside the cot. “You’re not going to be able to reach the last part.”
Joslyn didn’t reply.
“I will go fetch one of the Wise Men,” Tasia said, rising to leave.
“No,” Joslyn said quickly. “I would prefer you didn’t.”
Tasia frowned. “Why?”
“I would rather handle it myself,” the guard said, her eyes still on the needle above the flame.
“But you can’t,” Tasia said, flustered. “You won’t be able to reach it.”