Rise Of Empire (65 page)

F
or Empress Modina, everything had changed a month ago, after she had stood on the balcony and addressed the citizens of the New Empire. Due to Amilia’s constant chipping away at the regents’ resolve, the empress now enjoyed an unprecedented degree of freedom within the palace, and she wandered freely, dressed in fresh new clothing.

She never went anywhere in particular, and oftentimes after returning she could not recall where she had been. Although she longed to feel grass beneath her feet, her permitted boundary did not extend past the palace walls. She was certain no guard would stop her if she tried to leave, but she feared Amilia would suffer the regents’ wrath if she did, so she remained inside the keep.

Now Modina walked gracefully in her new dress, silent and pensive, the way an empress should. As she descended the curved stair, she felt the hem of her gown drag along the stone steps. The new dresses had also been Amilia’s doing. Her secretary had personally supervised the imperial seamstress in their construction and curtailed any attempts the woman had tried to make to embellish them with lace or embroidery. Each was brilliant white and patterned after a simple, yet eloquent,
design. Amilia had told the seamstress that the main goal was to create clothing that would make Modina feel as comfortable as possible, so the dressmaker focused on constructing plain but well-fitted garments and dispensed with utilizing stiff collars, tight bodices, or stays.

While the freedom and new dresses had been welcome changes, the most dramatic difference had been the way people reacted when seeing the empress. Since leaving her bedroom, Modina had passed two young women carrying a pile of linens and a page with an armful of assorted boots. He had dropped one the moment he spotted her, and the two girls chatted excitedly to each other. She had seen in their faces the same look that everyone wore: the belief that she was the Chosen One of Maribor.

When she had first come to the palace, everyone had avoided her the way one evades a dog known to bite. After her speech, those few members of the palace staff she chanced upon had looked at her with affectionate admiration and an unspoken understanding, as if acknowledging that they finally comprehended her previous behavior. The new gowns had the unintended effect of turning admiration into adoration, as the white purity and modest simplicity gave Modina an angelic aura. She had transformed from the mad empress to the saintly—although troubled—high priestess.

Everyone attributed Modina’s recovery to Amilia’s healing powers. What she had said on the balcony was the truth. Amilia had saved her, if
saved
was the right word. Modina did not feel saved.

Ever since Dahlgren, she had been drowning in overwhelming terrors that she could not face. Amilia had pulled her to shore, but no one could call her existence living. There had been a time, long, long ago, when she would have said that life carried hope for a better tomorrow, but for her, hope was a
dream that had blown away on a midsummer’s night. The horrors were all that remained, calling to her, threatening to pull her under again. It would be easy to give in, to close her eyes and sink to the bottom once more, but if pretending to live could help Amilia, then she would. Amilia had become a tiny point of light in a sea of darkness, the singular star Modina steered by, and it did not matter where that light led.

Like most afternoons, Modina wandered the sequestered halls and chambers like a ghost searching for something long forgotten. She heard that people with missing limbs felt an itching in a phantom leg or arm. Perhaps it was the same for her, as she struggled to scratch at her missing life.

The smell of food indicated she was near the kitchen. Modina did not recall the last time she had eaten, but she was not hungry. Ghosts did not get hungry, at least not for food. She had come to the bottom of the stairs. To the right, cupboards lined a narrow room holding plates, goblets, candles, and utensils. To the left, folded linens were stacked on shelves. Filled with laboring servants and steam, the place was hot and noisy.

Modina spotted the big elkhound sleeping in the corner of the kitchen and immediately recalled that his name was Red. She had not been down this way in a long time, not since Saldur had caught her feeding the dog. That was the first day since her father had died that she could remember clearly. Before that—nothing—nothing but …
rotten eggs.

She smelled the rancid stench as she stood at the bottom of the steps. Modina glanced around with greater interest. That awful smell triggered a memory. There was a place, a small room that was cold, dark, and lacked any windows. She could almost taste it.

Modina approached a small wooden door. With a shaking hand, she pulled it open. Inside was a small pantry filled with
sacks of flour and grain. This was not the room, but the smell was stronger there.

There was another place—small like this—small, dark, and evil. The thought came at her with the force of a forgotten nightmare. Black, earthy, and cold, a splashing and a ratcheting that echoed ominously, the wails of lost souls crying for mercy and finding none. She had been one of them. She had cried aloud in the dark until she could cry no more, and always the smell of dirt penetrated her nostrils and the dampness of the dirt floor soaked into her skin. A sudden realization jolted her.

I’m remembering my grave! I am dead. I am a ghost.

She looked at her hands—this was not life. The darkness closed in all around her, growing deeper, swallowing her, smothering her.

“Are you all right, Your Eminence?”

“Ya think she’s sick again?”

“Don’t be daft. She’s just upset. You can see that well enough, can’t ya?”

“Poor thing, she’s so fragile.”

“Remember who you’re speaking of. That lass slew Rufus’s Bane!”

“You
remember who
you’re
speaking of,
that lass
indeed! By Maribor’s beard, she’s the empress!”

“Out of my way,” Amilia growled as she shooed the crowd like a yard full of chickens.

She was in no mood to be polite. Fear made her voice harsh, and it lacked the familiar tone of a fellow kitchen worker—it was the voice of an angry noblewoman. The servants scattered. Modina sat on the floor with her back against the wall. She was weeping softly with her hands covering her face.

“What did you do to her?” Amilia snapped accusingly while glaring at the lot of them.

“Nothing!” Leif said, defending them.

Leif, the butcher and assistant cook, was a scrawny little man with thick dark hair covering his arms and chest but absent from his balding head. Amilia had never cared for him, and the thought that he, or any of them, might have hurt Modina made her blood boil.

“No one was even near her. I swear!”

“That’s right,” Cora confirmed. The dairymaid was a sweet, simple girl who churned the butter each morning and always added too much salt. “She just sat and started crying.”

Amilia knew better than to listen to Leif, but Cora was trustworthy. “All right,” she told them. “Leave her be. Back to work, all of you.”

They were slow to respond until Amilia gave them a threatening glare.

“Are you all right? What’s wrong?” she asked, kneeling beside Modina.

The empress looked up and threw her arms around Amilia’s neck as she continued to sob uncontrollably. Amilia held her, stroking her hair. She had no idea what was wrong, but needed to get the empress to her room. If word reached Saldur, or worse, if he wandered in—She tried not to think of it.

“It’s okay, it’s all right. I’ve got you. Try to calm down.”

“Am I alive?” Modina asked with pleading eyes.

For the briefest of moments, Amilia thought she might be joking, but there were two things wrong with that. First, there was the look in Modina’s eyes, and second, the empress
never
joked.

“Of course you are,” she reassured her. “Now come. Let’s get you to bed.”

Amilia helped her up. Modina stood like a newborn fawn,
weak and unsure. As they left, excited whispering rose.
I’ll have to deal with that right away
, she thought.

She guided Modina upstairs. Gerald, the empress’s personal guard, gave them a concerned look as he opened the chamber door.

“Is she all right?” Gerald asked.

“She’s tired,” Amilia said, closing the door on him.

The empress sat on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. This was not her familiar blank stare. Amilia could see her thinking hard about something.

“Were you sleepwalking? Did you have a nightmare?”

Modina thought a moment, then shook her head. “I remembered something.” Her voice was faint and airy. “It was something bad.”

“Was it about the battle?” This was the first time Amilia had brought up the subject. Details of Modina’s legendary combat with the beast that had destroyed Dahlgren were always vague or clouded by so much dogma and propaganda that it was impossible to tell truth from fiction. Like any imperial citizen, Amilia was curious. The stories claimed Modina had slain a powerful dragon with a broken sword. Just looking at the empress, she knew that could not be true, but Amilia was certain something terrible had happened.

“No,” Modina said softly. “It was afterward. I woke up in a hole, a terrible place. I think it was my grave. I don’t like remembering. It’s better for both of us if I don’t try.”

Amilia nodded. Since Modina had begun speaking, most of their conversations had centered on Amilia’s life in Tarin Vale. On the few occasions when she asked Modina about her own past, the empress’s expression darkened and the light in her eyes faded. She would not speak any more after that, sometimes for days. The skeletons in Modina’s closet were legion.

“Well, don’t think about it, then,” Amilia told her in a soothing voice. She sat next to Modina on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through the empress’s hair. “Whatever it was, it’s over. You’re here with me now. It’s getting late. Do you think you can sleep?”

The empress nodded, but her eyes remained troubled.

Once she was certain the empress was resting peacefully, Amilia crept out of her room. Ignoring Gerald’s questioning looks, she trotted downstairs to the kitchen. If left to themselves, the scullions would start a wave of rumors certain to engulf the entire palace, and she could not afford to have this getting back to Saldur.

Amilia had not visited the kitchens for quite some time. The moist steamy cloud that smelled of onions and grease, once so familiar, was now oppressive. Eight people worked the evening shift. There were several new faces, mostly young boys fresh off the street and girls still smelling of farm manure. All of them worked perfunctorily, as they were engrossed in the conversation that rose above the sound of the boiling kettles and the clatter of pans. That all stopped when she entered.

“Amilia!” Ibis Thinly boomed the moment he saw her. The old sea cook was a huge barrel-chested man with bright blue eyes and a beard that wreathed his chin. Blood and grease stained his apron. He held a towel in one hand and a spoon in the other. Leaving a large pot on the stove, he strode over to her, grinning. “Yer a fine sight for weathering eyes, lass! How’s life treating you, and why don’t you visit more often?”

She rushed to him. Ignoring his filthy garment and all courtly protocol, she hugged the big man tight.