Michael Sullivan - The emerald storm

"Your Grace," Amilia replied, respectfully.

"Sit down, my dear," Saldur said.

Amilia found a chair and mechanically sat. Every muscle in her body was tense. Amilia wished Modina had not spoken to her that morning-at least then she could honestly plead innocence. Amilia was no good at lying, and had no idea how she should respond to Saldur's interrogation in order to bring the least amount of punishment to her and the empress. She was still debating what she might say when Saldur spoke.

"I have some news for you," he said, folding his hands on the surface of the desk and leaning forward. "It will not be public for several weeks, but you need to know now so you can begin preparations. I want you to keep this to yourself until I announce it, do you understand?"

Amilia nodded as if she understood.

"In almost four months, during the Wintertide celebrations, Modina will marry Regent Ethelred. I don't think I need to impress upon you the importance of this. The Patriarch himself is personally coming to perform the ceremony. All eyes will be on this palace…and on the empress."

Amilia said nothing and barely managed another shallow nod.

"It is your charge to ensure that nothing embarrassing occurs. I have been very pleased with your work to date, and as a result, I am giving you an opportunity to excel further. I am putting you in charge of arranging the ceremony. It will be your responsibility to develop a guest list and prepare invitations. Go to the lord chamberlain for help with that. You will also need to coordinate with the palace cooks for meals. I understand you have a good relationship with the head cook?"

Once more she nodded.

"Wonderful. There should be decorations, entertainment-music certainly, and perhaps a magician or an acrobat. The ceremony will take place here, in the Great Hall. That should make things a bit easier for you. You will also need to have a wedding dress made-one worthy of the empress." Seeing the tension on her face Saldur added, "Relax, Amilia, at least this time you only need to train her to say two words… 'I do.' "

The Emerald Storm As the ship lurched once more Hadrian stumbled and nearly hit his head on the overhead beam. It would have been his third time that day. The lower decks of the Emerald Storm provided meager headroom and precious little light. An obstacle course of sea chests, ditty bags, crude wooden benches, tables that swung from ropes, and close to one hundred and thirty men all crammed into the berth deck. Hadrian staggered his way aft dodging the majority of the starboard watch, most of whom were asleep, swaying in hammocks strung from the same thick wooden crossbeams that Hadrian had nearly cracked his skull on. It was not merely the clutter or the shifting of the ship that made Hadrian stagger. He had been feeling nauseated since sunset.

The Emerald Storm had been at sea for nearly fifteen hours and the enigma of life aboard ship was slowly revealing itself. Hadrian had spent many years in the company of professional soldiers and recognized that each branch of the military held its own jargon, traditions, and idiosyncrasies, but he had never set foot on a ship. He knew he could be certain of only two things. He had a lot of learning to do and little time to do it.

He had already picked up several important facts, such as where you relieved yourself which, to his surprise, was at the head of the ship. A precarious experience as he had to hang out over the sea at the base of the bowsprit. This might be second nature to sailors, and easy for Royce, but it gave Hadrian pause.

Another highly useful bit of information was at least a cursory understanding about the chain of command. It was easy to see that there were officers amp;mdashnoblemen mostly-and skilled tradesmen, who held a higher rank than the general seamen, but Hadrian could also tell there was a sub-stratum within these broad classes. There were different ranks of officers and even more subtle levels of seniority, influence, and jurisdiction. He could not expect to penetrate such a complex hierarchy on his first day. All he managed to determine with any clarity was that the boatswain and his mates where the ones charged with making sure the seamen did their jobs. They were quite persuasive with their short rope whips and kept a keen eye on the crew at all times. As such, they were the ones he watched carefully.

The ship's crew divided into two watches, and while one worked the ship, the other rested, slept, or ate. Lieutenant Bishop placed Royce on the starboard watch assigned to the maintop. His job was to work the rigging on the main or center mast. This put him under boatswain Bristol Bennet and his three mates. Hadrian had seen their like before. Drunks, vagrants, and thugs, they would never have amounted to much on land, but aboard ship they held power and status. This chance to repay others for their mistreatment made them cruel and quick to punish. Hadrian still waited to discover his watch assignment, but he hoped it would be the same as Royce.

He had been lucky so far. This being the first day out, meals had been little more than placing out fresh foods from the recent stay at port. Fruit, fresh bread, and unsalted cooked meats were merely handed out with no actual cooking required. Consequently, Hadrian's talents remained untested, but time was running out. He knew how to cook, of course. He had prepared meals for years using little more than a campfire, but that had mainly been for himself and Royce. He didn't know how to cook for an entire ship's crew. Needing to find out exactly what they expected drove him to wander in hopes of finding Wyatt.

"The Princess of Melengar rules there now," Hadrian heard a young lad say.

He didn't look to be much more than sixteen. A waif of a boy with thin whiskers, freckles darkened by days in the sun, and curly hair cut in a bowl-like fashion except for a short ponytail he tied with a black chord. He sat with Wyatt, Grady, and a few other men around a swaying table illuminated by a candle melted to the center of a copper plate. They were playing cards and the giant shadows they cast only made Hadrian's approach more disorienting.

"She doesn't rule Ratibor, she's the mayor," Wyatt corrected the boy as he laid a card on the pile before him.

"What's the difference?"

"She was appointed, lad."

"What's that mean?" the boy asked, as he tried to decide which card to play, holding his hand so tight to his chest he could barely see them himself.

"It means she didn't just take over, the people of the city asked her to run things."

"But she can still execute people, right?"

"I suppose."

"Sounds like a ruler to me." The boy laid a card with a wide grin indicating that at least he thought it was a surprisingly good play.

"Sounds like them people of Ratibor are dumb as dirt," Grady said, gruffly. His expression betrayed his irritation at the boy's discard. "They finally get the yoke off their backs and right away they ask for a new one."

"Grady!" said a man with a white kerchief on his head. "I'm from Ratibor, you oaf!"

"Exactly! Thanks for proving me point, Bernie," Grady replied, slamming his play on the table so hard several surrounding seamen groaned in their hammocks. Grady laughed at his own joke and the rest at the table chuckled good-naturedly, except Bernie from Ratibor.

"Hadrian!" Wyatt greeted him warmly as the new cook staggered up to them like a drunk. "We were just talking about land affairs. Most of these poor sods haven't been ashore in over a year and we were filling them in on the news about the war."

"Which has beenbloody cracking, seeing as how we didn't even know there was one," Grady said, feigning indignation.

"We were just in dock though," Hadrian said. "I would have thought-"