Queen of Fire

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Orena liked to dance in the afternoons, moving among the barren palace gardens with a joyful grace, sometimes catching hold of Murel’s hands and pulling her into a whirl, laughing her girlish laugh. Today she wore winter-blooms in her hair, pale petals shining like stars in the dark mass as she spun and spun.

 

“Sit with me,” Lyrna said as her dance finally came to a halt, Orena’s skirts blossoming as she whirled to the ground with an exhausted but happy giggle. “I have cakes.”

 

They were in the remnants of her former hidden garden, Lyrna arranging cakes alongside a porcelain tea-set on the bench next to her. Orena was very fond of cakes but continually lacking in manners, cramming one into her mouth the moment she sat down, fingers sticky with icing and cream. “Yum,” she said, one of the few words she consented to speak these days, although it transpired this new Orena had little need of speech. Lyrna’s head momentarily flooded with the sensation of enjoyment, the texture of the cake on her tongue, the softness of the cream. She had to concentrate to clear the images, a skill learned from Aspect Caenis, who advised repeating a numerical sequence as the best means of blocking Orena’s wayward thoughts.

 

“Brother Innis tells me you have not been attentive at lessons recently,” Lyrna told her.

 

Orena’s thoughts took on a bored weariness, swallowing the last of the cake and rolling her eyes.

 

“Learning is important,” Lyrna persisted. “Don’t you want to read again?”

 

Orena shrugged and her thoughts shifted: joy and sunshine, the whirl of the dance.

 

“You can’t dance forever, my lady.” Lyrna reached out to take her hand. “I have to tell you something.”

 

A sudden wariness at the gravity in her voice, a swelling fear.

 

“I have to go away for a time.”

 

The fear surged and Orena’s gaze went to Murel, standing nearby, hands clasped tight and forcing a comforting smile. She found being in Orena’s company a painful trial, the weight of her unconstrained gift hard to bear, especially when it chose to share memories dreadfully reminiscent of those Murel fought to suppress.

 

“Yes,” Lyrna said. “Murel too. And Iltis and Benten.”

 

More fear, bordering on terror, a jarring sense of abandonment. Orena’s hands clutched at Lyrna’s, a desperate plea filling her gaze.

 

“No.” Lyrna forced a note of command into her tone. “No, you cannot come with us.”

 

Anger mingled with churlish reproach as Orena snatched her hands away, averting her gaze, her face a mirror of her thoughts.

 

“It is my hope,” Lyrna said, voice soft as she traced her fingers through Orena’s dark curls, “to return with a man who I think can heal you. I was selfish to let him go, but when he looked at me, looked at this face, I knew he saw that his gift had failed. I am beyond healing, but I think you are not, for your soul is so bright.”

 

Orena’s features softened, her face suddenly losing all vestige of the woman-sized child she appeared to be. She met Lyrna’s gaze, brow furrowing . . . and the memories flooded forth.

 

Lyrna tried to summon a calculation to suppress the inrush of image and sensation, but the torrent was too great, overwhelming the trickle of numbers with an ease that told her Orena had been exercising much more control over her gift than they knew. The smell came first, brine, sweat and excrement. Then the sounds, the clink of chains, the muffled sobs of despairing souls. Vision and pain arrived together, the shackles chafing wrist and ankle, the dim outline of huddled captives. She was back in the hold, a slave once more. Her panic flared then receded as she saw the view differed from her own memory, the steps leading to the upper deck now seen from a less acute angle, and chained next to them a young woman in a blue dress, her face shadowed but the play of light on her hairless scalp revealing dreadful burns. Nevertheless, she knew this profile, she had seen it outlined against a campfire on a distant mountainside a few months before. Exhilaration mixed with malicious satisfaction in her breast . . . along with heady anticipation of the Ally’s reward.

 

The memory blurred, fracturing and reforming into a scene of terror, the hull splintered by the shark’s ramming, screaming desperation on all sides. She saw the burnt woman standing next to the steps, key dangling from her grasp. The moment of hesitation was brief, barely noticeable but these eyes had centuries of practice in discerning weakness and she knew in a rush of grim understanding that this newly risen queen was about to abandon her subjects to their fate.

 

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