Princes of the Realm had conflicting spheres of power in the land of Lucia. The borders of each of the realms that made up the Empire were not defined—and they were specifically kept that way by the Empress in order to sow discord among the Children. Perhaps one of his siblings had found a loophole in the conditioning of the Death Watchmen and exploited it, keeping the information from his siblings in an effort to gain power.
But it all came back to the single most important question: who would risk such a move? It was dangerous in the extreme for the Children to act openly against each other. The Prince hadn’t been alive long enough to act against or be acted against by one of the others, but he knew the histories. Not fifty years ago, Rikard, Prince of Lions, had moved openly against the third eldest Child, Dysuna, Prince of Wolves. The Empress herself had seen to Rikard’s punishment, and it was rumored that She had spared him not at all because he was Her First Son and Commander of the Imperial Armies. The punishment, of which the Prince of Ravens had only heard rumors, and vague ones at that, had been enough to discourage more acts of violence between the Children for fifty years. It was also rumored that the Empress was angrier that Rikard had failed and been found out than that he had committed the act in the first place. And besides, to Rikard fifty years must seem no more than a brief span of time. To Geofred, the second eldest at four and a half centuries, who spent all of his time in the mountain castle of Eyrie pouring over the deepest histories and prophecies of Lucia as was his duty, fifty years would be nothing, and the Prince’s own seventeen years no more than a blink.
The Inheritance… I was Summoned to receive mine on the day I was taken.
It was well known that the Empress, ever suspicious and calculating, tested the loyalty of Her subjects. In fact, the testing was often more intense the more important a person’s task was to be, the thought being that if the subjectsurvived the test, it would prove and ensure their loyalty, binding them closer to the Diamond Throne. When Symanta had delivered his Summons, his first thought had been that he was to receive his Inheritance. All the signs had pointed to it. Could it be that his Mother had engineered this after all?
Excitement thrilled through him as the pieces began to form a larger picture. Could this all be a test? A move to discern the Prince’s trustworthiness as a Child of the Empress? Perhaps the Death Watchmenhadbeen sent by his Mother, or even one of his siblings on Her orders, to be certain that he was ready.
Energy surged in him—of course! This was the answer, it had to be. He was being tested, and if he was intelligent enough to escape and return to Lucien to face his Mother, She would then give him his Inheritance to the final city and his mandate to sweep the Exiled from the Empire.
But was he ready? He had assumed his Inheritance would come years later, that at most he was going to be told to prepare himself. Could it all be happening this quickly?
He shook his head, dispelling the doubts in the blazing light of the revelation that his Mother had not abandoned him. If the Empress thought him ready, then he was ready. She was all knowing. But then what was to be his next move? He needed information, that much was certain, and he needed the two Exiles to drop their guard so that he could escape. But he didn’t even know where they were, or where they were headed.
Wait. Another thrill shot through him. He did know where they were. The girl had told him, had let it slip while she was berating him.
“…appear in the middle of the Elmist Mountains…”
The Elmist Mountains were a far distance south of Lucien, separating Tyne and Lerne from one another to the east and west, and they terminated in the south just north of the city of Banelyn. Tyne was the seat of his brother Rikard, and the Prince knew immediately that that wasn’t where the Exiles wereheaded, for the citizens who lived there, persuaded by the Lion Talisman, were fanatically loyal to Rikard, and such a place would be suicide for the Exiles. Lerne, the seat of Symanta, was equally treacherous, as it was the home province of the Seekers, who were just as dangerous in their own way as the Death Watchmen, if not more so. No, they must be heading directly south.
Banelyn.
That was the answer. That was where they were headed, and that was where he would make his escape. The city was large, but not modern enough to be the seat of any of the Children, and in fact was one of the cities that fell in the strange no man’s land between Realms of the Empire, with multiple Children often laying claim to it. It had long been suspected that the Exiled used hidden way stations there to spy on the movements of troops in the Empire—and that meant that there was bound to be a Seeker there, to spy upon the spies.
The Seekers of Light were feared by everyone in the Empire, Commons and High alike. Even the Most High were known to speak softly and carefully when in the presence of the elusive Eyes and Ears of the Empress. But the Seekers were sworn to the Children, just as they were sworn to the Empress, and so he had nothing to fear from them. If he could slip away from the Exiles in the press of such a large city, perhaps even just on the outskirts… chances were that he would be able to make his way to the Seeker, and once there he’d be safe from the Exiles and able to make his way back to Lucien.
The Prince peered out from under his hood at the backs of the Exiles and felt a strange pang deep in his chest. They had saved his life, even if it had been for their own gain. It didn’t change anything, not really. But the girl could have run, and instead she’d brought back the giant in order to face the final Death Watchman, to save the Prince at great personal risk.
But they were Exiles, and a single virtuous act did not cancel out a lifetime of wrongdoing, of that he was certain. However… he realized that he couldn’t turn them in. He owed them a debt now, one he had to repay. In fact, he owed the giant two debts, if he truly had nursed the Prince back to health after he’d been left for dead.
I’ll leave them in the mountains outside of Banelyn, he decided. If the maps of Lucia he’d seen in the Fortress Libraries were accurate, the city was nestled at the southern foot of the mountain range. He’d leave them there and make his own way into the city. He’d craft some story for the Seeker, how he had slipped away from them days earlier and had no knowledge of where they’d gone. It was the best he could do to repay them.
They’re Exiled Kindred. They should be happy I’m willing to do that much.
But still his conscience panged him, something that he tried to smother as a sign of weakness. But nothing he told himself stamped it out completely, and as the day wore on, he became once more lost in a mire of his thoughts.
Chapter Six: Trust
The Prince began to plan. He was not naturally gifted at deception of performance, like his brother Tiffenal, who could convince twelve different political factions he was doing twelve different things and then end up doing a thirteenth; nor was he well suited to pure imaginative strategy like his brother Geofred, who was infamous for knowing the outcome of everything from a battle to a chess game within the first few seconds of action.
But detail… he was very good at detail.
He wasn’t exactly sure when it had come about, but ever since early childhood he’d had an uncanny ability to memorize, recite, and compile lists. By the age of ten everything from trade ledgers to obscure farming laws were brought to him simply because he could read them, understand them, repeat them, and, most importantly, explain them.
Privately, he had always assumed it was part of the Raven Talisman, or more specifically because of what happened when he took a life. He had been made to kill his first man at the age of five, as all the Children were, and when the man had died, all the memories of a forty-year life had come flooding into the Prince’s child’s mind. He had been forced to expand in order to hold it all—all of that sensory detail, all of the memories, all of the thoughts and dreams and regrets accumulated over forty years of life.
The details were what made the memories important. It was the moment he’d learned about murder, and starvation, and the life of a thief. It was the moment he’d learned about what men and women did in closed rooms. But it wasn’t like he had learned it in a pleasantly illustrated book. No, he had learned it through the smells, the sights, the sounds, the caresses. It was as if he had been there—as if he had livedit.
The experience had left him in a semi-coma for the better part of a week, unable to speak, unable to relate to anyone around him, horrified by what life contained. Geofred liked to joke that he’d grown up that day, the oldest five-year-old the world had ever seen.
Later that same year he executed a rapist as part of his duties as a Prince, and was forced to relive the crime through the eyes and skin of the man who’d committed it, all the while feeling like it was he who had done it, he who had....
He shivered violently as the memories came back to him. He’d been sick for weeks afterward, but thank the Empress the memories all faded eventually.
Even the most brutal ones.
He could still feel bits of the memories of the Death Watch soldier he’d killed floating in the back of his mind, though in truth these were his memories of those memories. Always an hour or so after a kill took place, the memories, the strength and speed, all of the person’s life, faded away and went to wherever such things go. What was left was his impression of them, nothing more.
