The Saramyr people ever tended towards tanned skin and a smooth beauty, and Lucia’s paleness was striking by contrast. More so was her hair, for true blonde was rare among the Saramyr, and
her round face was framed by a flaxen cascade that fell down her back. She wore a dress of light green and simple jewellery; her tutors demanded that she learned to present herself elegantly, even when there was nobody to see her. She listened, as she always did, with a dreamy vacancy of expression, and they retreated in exasperation. She obeyed them, though. The look in her eyes was often mistaken for inattention, but it was not so.
She envied her tutors sometimes. They had a marvellous ability to focus their concentration on one thing to the exclusion of all others. It was inconvenient that they could not understand her situation in the way that she understood theirs; but Zaelis, at least, knew why she rarely seemed to be more than partially interested in any one thing. She had a lot more to think about than those with only five senses.
By the time she had learned to speak - at six months old - she already knew this to be a bad thing. She sensed it in the instinctive way of infants, in the sadness her mother’s eyes held when she looked down at her baby. Even before Lucia had begun outwardly to manifest her talent, her mother the Empress knew. She was hidden from the world and put inside this gilded cage deep in the dark, sprawling heart of the Imperial Keep. She had been a prisoner ever since.
The cat emerged from a cluster of trees nearby on to the path, with an insouciantly casual walk. It looked her over with an insulting lack of respect and then turned its attention to the squirrels that raced about above it, watching those who were heading dangerously near to ground level. A moment later, it sprang off after them. She felt the alarm of the squirrels as it blundered in, their fast animal thoughts blaring. It had been months since the cat had been in the gardens, having found its way from who knew where, yet the squirrels were as surprised by its presence now as they had been the first time. Squirrels never learned.
Her animals were her friends, for she had no others. Well, she supposed Zaelis was her friend, and her mother in a strange way. But them aside, she was alone. The solitude was all she knew. She was quite content with her own company; and yet when she dreamed, she dreamed of freedom.
Her mother Anais, Blood Empress of Saramyr and ruler of the land, visited her at least once a day, when she was not constrained by official business. As the author of her confinement, Lucia
sometimes considered hating her; but she hated nobody. She was too forgiving for that, too ready to empathise. There was not a person she had met yet who was so black-hearted that she could find no redeeming quality to them.
When she told Zaelis this, he reminded her that she hadn’t met many.
It was her mother who taught her to keep her talents secret, her mother who had seen to it that her tutors were kept silent about the true nature of the child they taught. It was her mother also who had confirmed what she already knew: that people would hate her, fear her, if they knew what she was. That was why she was hidden.
The Empress had begged her daughter’s forgiveness a hundred times for keeping her locked away from the world. She wanted nothing more than to let Lucia run free, but it was simply too dangerous. Anais’s sorrow was, she said, as great as Lucia’s own. Lucia loved her mother because she believed her.
But there were dark clouds massing beyond the horizon; this she knew. Her dreams of late had been plagued by an unseen menace.
Often, as she slept, she walked the corridors of the Imperial Keep, beyond the confines of her rooms. Sometimes she visited her mother, but her mother never saw her. Lucia would watch the Empress sew, or bathe, or gaze out of the windows of the Keep. Sometimes Lucia would listen to her consult with advisors about the affairs of the realm. Other times she would walk through the rooms of the servants as they gossiped and cooked and coupled. Occasionally someone would see her, and panic ensued; but most just looked straight through her.
Once she asked her mother about some things she had seen in her dreams, and her mother’s face grew a little sad, and she kissed her daughter on the forehead and said nothing. From this, Lucia knew not to mention them again; but she also knew that these were no ordinary dreams, and that what she was witnessing was real.
Through her dreams she learned about the world outside, without ever leaving her room. And yet still she was confounded by the perimeter of the Keep, unable to roam beyond it. The city of Axekami, that surrounded the Imperial Keep, was simply too far outside her experience. She could not dream it. She had only widened the walls of her pen.
It had been a little over a year since she had first begun dream-walking; and not long after that the dream lady had appeared. But a
fortnight ago, she had suddenly discovered that there was a new stranger who visited her in the dark. Now she woke sweating and shaking, her body taut with fear at the nameless presence that stalked her through the corridors of nightmare, prowling inexorably
behind.
She did not know what it was, but she knew what it meant. Something bad had found her; perhaps the very thing her mother had tried to hide her from. Change was coming. She did not know whether to feel joyous or afraid.
On the far side of the roof garden, something stirred. The gardeners had been working here of late, digging up the dying winter blooms to replace them with summer flowers. A wheelbarrow sat idle by the path, forks and spades laid askew within it. Beneath the thick screen of trees, newly turned earth lay moist and black and fertile in the sun, waiting for the seeds it could impart its life to.
The turf shuddered. First a small movement, and then a great disturbance as the man buried beneath it rose up, sloughing off dirt. A tall, thin man, nearing his fortieth harvest, with short, greying hair and stubbled cheeks. Silently, he pulled himself free and spat out the short, thick bamboo tube that had been his breathing apparatus. He dusted himself off as best he could and straightened.
Purloch tu Irisi had always been lucky, but this was ridiculous. Already he had evaded enough dangers to put off even the most determined intruder. He had slipped past sentries, rappelled down sheer walls, crept past observation posts. He had made a blind jump across a fifty-foot drop to a lightless wall, trusting only his instincts to find and grip the edge. Frankly, he believed he should have been caught or dead by now. He had always prided himself on being the most adept cat-burglar in the city, capable of getting into anywhere; but even he had been a whisker’s breadth from discovery three times since last night, and twice had edged by death with barely an inch to spare. The Heir-Empress was guarded more closely than the most precious jewel.
His confidence had been badly shaken by the events of the night before. He could hardly credit the luck that had brought him this far, but he doubted it would take him much further. He was living on borrowed time. All he wanted to do was to have this business over and done with and get out in one piece.
The person who had come to him with the offer was an obvious
middleman, a hireling sent to protect the identity of the real brain behind the plan. Purloch had met enough to know. And the offer was so intriguing, especially to a man who prided himself on his work as Purloch did. To get to the Heir-Empress’s chambers… such a thing was close to impossible!
But the middleman was remarkably well informed, with detailed plans of the castle to hand and information about sentry movements and blind spots; and the price he offered was enough for Purloch to retire on and live wealthy for the rest of his days. Think of it! To end his illustrious career on such a dizzying high! He would be left a legend among the underworld, and his days of risk-taking would be done.
It was a potent lure, but the mission was too dangerous to be taken on faith. So he shadowed the middleman back to his home, and observed as he met another man later that day, and that man met another the next night, and through him Purloch finally traced the offer to its source. It had taken all his skill just to keep up with them, even though they had been unaware he was following. They were undoubtedly good. He was assuredly better.
The source, then: Barak Sonmaga, head of Blood Amacha. They were powerful among the high families, and old antagonists to Blood Erinima, to which the Empress and her daughter belonged. Purloch could divine nothing of Blood Amacha’s plans, but he could surmise that he was being made part of something huge, a pawn in the game between two of the empire’s greatest families.
It was a terrible risk, now that he knew the stakes. But he could not turn it down, though he had to admit he was puzzled by the nature of his task. He had taken every precaution he could -including what retribution he could muster against his employer if he should be double-crossed in some way - but in the end, the money and glory were too great to ignore.
Now he was wishing he had listened to sense, and turned down the offer.
He had spent days posing as a servant, observing the forms and rhythms of the castle before he moved. Getting into the Keep had been the easy part; there were forgotten ways, paths that history had lost but which he had unearthed again. But it was the slow process of planning a way to penetrate the defences at its core that was the true art. Even with the detailed information his employer had given him, it was abominably hard to conceive of how he might
get to the Heir-Empress. Only a select few had ever seen her at all -the most trusted guards, the most honoured tutors - and the circle of people surrounding her was so small that infiltration by disguise or deception was not even remotely viable.
But Purloch was patient, and clever. He talked with the right people, asked the right questions, without ever drawing suspicion to himself. And soon his opportunity came.
He had made a special point of befriending some of the gardeners, a guileless, honest group whose loyalty to their liege was beyond question, inspired by the almost religious awe that the peasantry felt towards their masters and mistresses. They were forbidden on pain of death to talk about the Heir-Empress, even though they had never seen her, for the gardening was done only in those hours of the day when Lucia was not outside; but they were still informative enough, in their way. It was clear they were honoured to be gardeners to the future ruler of Saramyr, and they talked about the minutiae of their jobs endlessly. The day before yesterday, Purloch had learned they were soon to be digging new beds to plant a fresh batch of summer flowers that would not wilt in the heat. It had given him the idea he needed. And so the plan had formed.
He had infiltrated the garden at night, for it would certainly have been impossible during the day. There were too many guards, too many rifles, even for him; it would be simply suicide. But with the cover of darkness, and the moons all but hidden beneath the horizon, he had made it. Barely.
Once inside, he had searched for his place to hide. A light poison in the drinks of the gardeners had seen to it that they were forced to spend the next day in bed - he wouldn’t like to find his guts pierced by a fork as he lay under the turf. He buried himself expertly before the dawn came, and then waited in his earthen cocoon for daybreak.
His contact had informed him that guards searched the garden in the morning, before the Heir-Empress was allowed up. They were just as aware as Purloch was that the concealing shadows of night might afford an intruder a slim chance of getting past the sentries, and even that slim chance was too much. The information was good. Purloch heard the clatter of pikes as they passed him by. But they had searched the garden a thousand times before and never found a thing, so their search was only cursory. They never
suspected. The newly turned soil of the flower bed showed no sign of the disturbance Purloch had created while digging himself into it.
Now the guards were gone, and the child was here alone. Time to do what had to be done. Slipping silently along, he undid the clasp of the dagger at his belt.
He found the girl in a small paved oval hemmed in by trees. A cat was chasing its tail, while the Heir-Empress watched it with a strangely detached look on her face. The cat was absorbed in its own capering, so much so that it did not hear his approach. Lucia did, however, though he had made not a sound. She slowly looked into the foliage, right at him, and said: ‘Who are you?’
The man slid out from behind a tumisi tree, and the cat bolted. Lucia regarded the newcomer with an unfathomable gaze.
‘My name is of no consequence,’ Purloch replied. He was clearly nervous, glancing about, eager to be gone.
Lucia watched him placidly.
‘My lady, I must take something from you,’ he said, drawing his dagger from its sheath.
The air around them exploded in a frenzy of movement, a thrashing of black wings that beat at the senses and caused Purloch to cry out and fall to his knees, his arm across his face to shield it from the tumult.
As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Purloch lowered his arm, and his breath caught in his throat.
The child was cloaked in ravens. They buried her, perching on her shoulders and arms: a mantle of dark feathers. They surrounded her, too, a thick carpet of the creatures. Dozens more perched in the branches nearby. Now and then one of them stirred, preening under a wing or shuffling position; but all of them watched him with their dreadful black, beady eyes.
Purloch was dumbstruck with terror.
‘What did you want to take?’ Lucia asked softly. Her expression and tone reflected none of the malevolence the ravens projected.
Purloch swallowed. He was aware of nothing more than the ravens. The birds were
protecting
her. And he knew, with a fearful certainly, that they would tear him to bloody rags at a thought from the child.