Lucia accepted this, in her dreamy-eyed, preoccupied kind of way. She knew there was more, deeper down; but those answers would come in time.
It was while she was with Zaelis one balmy afternoon that the Blood Empress Anais brought the Emperor.
She was sitting on a mat by the long, triangular windows in her study room, with the sunlight cut into great dazzling teeth and cast on to the sandy tiles of the floor before her. Zaelis was teaching her the catechisms of the birth of the stars, recounting the questions and answers in his throaty, molten bass tones. She knew the story well enough: how Abinaxis, the One Star, burst and scattered the universe, and from that chaos came the first generation of the gods. Sitting neatly and with her usual appearance of inattentiveness, Lucia was listening and remembering, while in the back of her head she heard the whispers of the spirits of the west wind, hissing nonsense to each other as they flowed across the city.
Zaelis paused as a gust ruffled through the room, and Lucia looked quickly upwards, as if someone had spoken by her shoulder.
'What are they saying, Lucia?' he asked.
Lucia looked back at Zaelis. He alone treated her abilities as if they were something precious, and not something to be hidden. All the tutors, nannies and staff were sworn to secrecy on pain of death with regards to her talents; they looked away if they caught her playing with ravens, and shushed her if she spoke of what the old tree in the garden was saying that day. But Zaelis encouraged her, believed her. In fact, his fervour worried her a little at times.
'I don't know,' she said. 'I can't understand them.'
'One day maybe you will,' said Zaelis.
'Probably,' Lucia replied offhandedly.
She sensed Durun's arrival a moment before she heard him. He frightened her with his intensity of passion. He was a knot of fire, always burning in anger or pride or hate or lust. In the absence of anything that heated his blood, he lapsed into boredom. He had no finer emotions, no intellectual interests or stirrings of mild introspection. His flame roared blindingly or not at all.
The Emperor strode into the room and halted before them, his black cloak settling reluctantly around his broad shoulders. Anais was with him. Zaelis stood and made proper obeisance; Lucia did so as well.
'So this is she,' Durun said, ignoring Zaelis completely.
'It is the same she as you saw previously, on every occasion you bothered yourself to visit her,' Anais replied. It was clear by their manner that they had just argued. Anais's face was flushed.
'Then I had no idea that I was harbouring a viper,' Durun answered coldly. He looked Lucia over. She returned his gaze with a placid calm. 'If it weren't for the distance in those eyes,' he mused, 'I would think her a normal child.'
'She is a normal child,' Anais snapped. 'You are as bad as Vyrrch. He breathes down my neck, eager for the chance to-' She stopped herself, glanced at Lucia. 'Must you do this in front of her?'
'You've told her, I suppose? About how the city is rising against her?'
Zaelis opened his mouth and shut it again. He knew better than to interfere on behalf of the child. If the Emperor would not listen to his wife, he certainly would not listen to a scholar.
'You'll bring this land to ruin with your ambition, Anais,' Durun accused. 'Your arrogance in making this abomination the heir to the throne will tear Saramyr apart. Every life lost will be on your head!'
'So be it,' she hissed. 'Wars have been fought for less important causes. Look at her, Durun! She is a beautiful child… your child! She is all you could hope for in a daughter, in an heir! Don't be blinded by a hatred wrapped up in tradition and lore. You listen too much to the Weavers, and think too little for yourself.'
'So did you,' he replied. 'Before you spawned that.' He flung out a finger at Lucia, who had been watching the exchange impassively. 'Now you use arguments that you would have scorned in days gone by. She's an Aberrant, and she's no child of mine!'
With that, he turned with a melodramatic sweep of his cloak and stalked away. Anais's face was tight with rage, but one look at her daughter and it softened. She knelt down next to Lucia, so that their faces were level, and hugged her.
'Don't listen, my child,' she murmured. 'Your father doesn't understand. He's angry, but he'll learn. They all will.'
Lucia didn't reply; but then, she seldom did.
Seven
Six sun-washed days had passed in the temple of Enyu on the banks of the Kerryn, and Tane felt further from inner peace with every dawn.
He had wandered far today, after his morning duties were performed. As an acolyte, the priests gave him leisure to do so. The way to Enyu was not made up of rituals and chores, but of community with nature. Everyone had their own way to calm their spirit. Tane was still looking for his.
The world was tipping over the heady brink between spring and summer, and the days were hot and busy with midges. Tane laboured through the pathways of the forest with his shirt tied around his waist and his torso bare, but for the strap of the rifle that was slung across his back. His lean, tanned body trickled with sweat in the humid confines of the trees. The sun was westering; soon he would have to head back, or risk being caught in the forest after dark. Ill things came with the night, more so now than ever.
All around was discontent. The forest seemed melancholy, even in the sunlight. The priests muttered about the corruption in the land, how the very soil was turning sour. The goddess Enyu was becoming weak, ailing under the influence of some unknown, sourceless evil. Tane felt his frustration grow at the thought. What good were they as priests of nature, if they could only sit by and lament the sickness in the earth as it overtook them? What use were their invocations and sacrifices and blessings if they could not stand up to defend the goddess they professed to love? They talked and talked, and nobody was doing anything. A war was being fought beyond the veil of human sight, and Tane's side was plainly losing.
But such questions were not the only things that preyed on his mind and ruined his attempts at attaining tranquillity. Though he worked hard to distract himself, he found he was unable to forget the young woman he had found buried in leaves at the base of a kindly tree. Pictures, sounds and scents, frozen in memory, refused to fade as others did. He remembered the expression of surprise, the whip of her hair, as she whirled to find him standing unexpectedly behind her; the sound of her laugh from another room, her joy at something unseen; the smell of her tears as he watched over her during her grief. He knew the shape of her face, peaceful in sleep, better than his own. He cursed himself for mooning over her like a child; and yet still he thought on her, and the memories renewed themselves with each visit.
He found his feet taking him to a spring, where cold water cascaded down a jagged rock wall into a basin before draining back into the stone. He had been here a few times before, on the hotter days of summer; now it seemed a wonderful idea to cool himself off before returning home. A short clamber up a muddy trail brought him to the basin, hidden among the crowding trees. He stripped and plunged into the icy pool, relishing the delicious shock of the impact. Sluicing the salty sweat off his body with his palm, he dived and surfaced several times before the temperature of the pool began to become uncomfortable, and he swam to the edge to climb out.
There was a woman in the trees, leaning on a rifle and watching him.
He stopped still, his eyes flickering to his own rifle, laid across the bundle of clothes near the edge of the pool. He might be able to grab it before she could raise her own weapon, but he would have no chance of priming and firing before she shot him. If indeed that was her intention. She appeared, in fact, to be faintly amused.