No Front, No Back
"He's out touring the territory with the steward. He's only just taken office — there must be a hundred things that need looking into."
The nanny answered absently as she laid the food out on the table.
"Come now, stop changing the subject and sit down. You need to eat quickly too, my lady, and get ready to leave."
Thalia swallowed a heavy sigh and pulled out a chair at the table. She still had no appetite, but the nanny looked happier than she had in a long while, and Thalia had no desire to pick a fight over it.
"I'll only eat a little."
"Of course you will."
Beaming, the nanny cut the food into manageable pieces and portioned them onto a plate.
Thalia took a scrap of bread no larger than a fingernail and broke it down still further, checking for anything foreign mixed in. Once she was certain it was safe, she forced the pulverized bread down her throat with a sticky smear of jam. She meant to leave it at that, but the nanny pressed more food on her — meat cooked in some dubious brown sauce, and a steamed egg.
She could not bring herself to touch the rank-smelling flesh. She managed the single egg and rose from her seat. Just then, another presence made itself known outside the tent.
"Your Highness. I've come to check on your condition."
It was the healer Senebier had assigned to her. Thalia answered in a listless voice.
"Come in."
At the permission, a middle-aged woman of neat features stepped inside. She asked gently,
"How is the pain today?"
"Not so bad."
Thalia perched on the edge of the bed and answered curtly. The woman bent over her as a matter of course and began unwinding the bandages around her leg. When the mottled, livid scars came into view, the nanny immediately turned her head away.
Thalia pretended not to notice and looked down at her own leg with indifferent eyes. The healer smeared a sticky, cream-like ointment thickly over the scars, then rewound the bandages.
"I'll wrap them a little looser today, so the skin doesn't break down."
"I'm fine. Wrap them tight. So they can't come undone."
"Do you mean to make the scarring worse?"
The healer rebuked her in a stern tone. Thalia glared at her with sharp eyes, then bit her lip and shook her head. A faint smile touched the woman's mouth as she bound the bandages loosely and added, as if soothing a child,
"I've tied the knots firmly so they won't come loose. Don't worry."
Instead of answering, Thalia felt along the bandages with her fingers. Unless someone deliberately tore them free by hand, they did not seem likely to unravel. She let out a small breath of relief — and the woman drew a little censer from the bag at her side.
"I'll burn some herbs for you before you set out. It should make the carriage journey easier to bear."
She packed a twist of dried medicinal herbs into a porcelain jar. Thalia caught her hand and stopped her.
"Don't."
The healer's eyes widened in surprise.
"Are you certain? The pain will grow worse once you're inside a jolting carriage."
"I'll endure it anyway. Barcas…"
She had been about to say that Barcas disliked the burning of herbs, and closed her mouth. She did not want anyone to discover that she was thinking of him. Even though there was no one left now who would mock or ridicule her for it.
Thalia snapped, covering the slip with temper.
"I said don't. That should be enough."
After a moment of worried looking, the healer slid the censer back into her bag.
Thalia rose, washed her face lightly, and changed her clothes with the nanny's help.
When she finished dressing and stepped outside, the view filled with uneven rows of tawny tents and people hurrying back and forth between them.
Thalia drew her shoulders in at the unfamiliar landscape. Children running barefoot through the grass, women crouched before great hearths baking bread and roasting meat, men riding half-stripped to the waist — everything was utterly strange to her.
"Finally awake."
She was staring blankly around when a familiar voice reached her from somewhere nearby.
Turning her head, Thalia found a slender boy with gold-brown eyes and scowled. Barcas's peculiar younger brother was perched atop a large crate, glaring at her.
"Are all royals as lazy as you? Everyone's been waiting with their necks stretched out for you to finish getting ready."
Thalia arched an eyebrow. A flicker of intimidation crossed the face of the boy who had been so full of himself.
"I mean — the sun's already high and you still hadn't shown your face…"
"What about honorifics?"
Thalia shot back coldly. The boy shrugged with shameless ease.
"I don't even use them with my own father."
"Proud of being a little bastard, are you?"
The boy's eyes screwed up tight.
"Who's a bastard! I'm just a little free-spirited, that's all!"
Thalia decided he was not worth the trouble and turned away. He scrambled after her at once.
"Are you always this foul-tempered? No — how did you even end up like this?"
"…"
"The rumors say you thrash the maids and drive them out over nothing, and that you even put poison in the First Princess's cup. Is all of that true?"
Thalia, who had been walking at a slow pace, stopped dead. The boy took a step back, as if afraid of being struck.
She stared at him in silence, then slowly lifted the corner of her mouth.
"Yes. All of it is true."
The boy's amber-brown eyes went round. Meeting that gaze squarely, Thalia went on in a quiet, measured voice.
"When I was bored, I beat the maids. And once I put something in my half-sister's cup."
His pupils shook violently. He could not tell whether she was in earnest or bluffing. Thalia closed the distance and thrust her face toward him in open threat.
"And that isn't even all of it. I used to sharpen a knife every night, planning to carve that pretty face of hers to shreds."
She could see the fine hairs standing up along his smooth, glossy cheek. Leaning close to an earlobe flushed red with racing blood, Thalia whispered darkly,
"So you'd do well to be careful too. I have no front and no back."
When she straightened, she found a face steeped in horror. Thalia gave a pointed little snort of laughter and limped away toward the carriage.
After spending a night on the pastureland near Laedgo Castle, they moved east to tour a village of considerable size, then turned their steps northward.
As they traveled the dirt roads linking one settlement to the next, encampments large and small appeared at intervals along the way. A great many of the Khan Tribe still seemed to hold to a nomadic life. To raise herds of hundreds of livestock, moving from pasture to pasture with the seasons would have been unavoidable.
The settled folk who lived in the villages, by contrast, led lives not unlike those of imperial subjects. They dwelt in houses of stone and earth, worked their fields, and some kept workshops for handicrafts or traded foodstuffs in the marketplaces.
The wool markets, in particular, thrived on a grand scale. Fine textiles and felt made from sheep's wool appeared to be one of the East's principal sources of revenue.
In the major towns, vast markets opened, and hundreds of merchants poured in from every corner of the empire to purchase costly cloth. Naturally, enormous sums of gold coin flowed through the trading exchanges. Barcas's chief duty was to grasp the actual state of those exchanges' operations.
"The markets grow larger every year. Not only textiles of every kind, but trade in foodstuffs and craftwork is flourishing as well."
The administrator standing at Barcas's side continued his explanation in a calm tone.
"The entries recorded here are the tax ledgers collected this season. I've also set down, without omission, the rental income, the tolls, and the current profits of the horse market that the Grand Ducal House operates directly."
Barcas skimmed rapidly through the thick ledger. Thalia watched him blankly for a time, then, unable to bear the tedium, turned her gaze to the window. The view of a city filled with well-kept roads and tightly packed stone buildings filled her sight.
The East was a truly strange place. Those who pitched their tents on the open steppe and lived beneath the sky, and those who led imperial-style lives inside high walls… It was as if two different worlds had been flung together in a tangled heap.
"This may take a little while. Would you care to step out and look around the trading floor?"
Thalia, who had been staring vacantly out the window, started and turned her head.