Her brother rarely visits her. He finds her company rather cold and prefers the fiery fervor of worlds where he can move and breathe and work with equal passion. But every so often, he finds it necessary to remember the Lady and to pay her a visit, as he does now.
“Greetings, sister,” he hails her, and his voice carries across the colorless expanse of her kingdom to the center, where she sits upon her throne.
“Greetings, brother,” she replies. At a word from her, the world about her alters, reorienting its boundaries and bearings so that her brother is suddenly before her and she need not raise her voice. “Have you come to play our game?”
He raises his hand. In the palm are two dice. “Only one game this time,” he says.
“One is enough.”
“There is a boy.”
“Boy, girl. Man, woman. I care not which.”
“I want him for one of mine.”
“Roll the dice.”
He smiles. His smile is strangely hot in that land, and the heat of it sizzles the air before freezing into nothing. “You know, dear sister, they all must be mine in the end.” His teeth are blackened from the fire that burns inside him, and his skin is white as leprosy. He rattles the dice in his hand.
She does not return his smile. Beneath the ghostly white mantle of her hair, her face is as black and still as a petrified tree. “Roll the dice,” she repeats.
“It will avail you nothing,” he says as he continues to jangle the dice. “Eventually all of yours come to me.”
She speaks without moving her mouth. “And yet, you have not found the last child for which we played. The princess, Beloved of your Enemy.”
“I believe I have found her,” says he, though the smile turns to a snarl. “The child of Arpiar, hidden in the mountains, guarded by one of his knights . . . she must be the one. My Enemy may protect her from Arpiar, but he cannot keep her hidden from me. Besides, I won our game. I have my rights.”
“Then kiss her and be done.”
“Patience!” he replies, then licks a forked tongue across the jagged cage of his teeth. “These things take time. But give me the life of this boy, and I shall find it far easier to convince her that my kiss is her desire.”
Her eyes narrow, and they are cold eyes indeed. “Roll the dice.”
He casts the lot, and they watch them fly across the floor, his eyes empty blackness edged with fire, hers empty whiteness edged with more emptiness. Under their fervid gazes the twin dice roll, a light chipping clatter on the stone, and the mists swirl in their wake.
At last they are still.
He steps forward to inspect the result, and fire flicks across his eyes. The Lady reads what those eyes say. Now it is her turn to smile.
“The game is done. I’ve won.”
Her brother turns on her with a snarl, and for a moment the fire in his throat shines red before the airless chill dissolves its color and heat. “He’s yours, then, sister,” he says. “I’ll not touch him. Yet. But he will be mine. All of yours come to me in the end!”
The Lady makes no reply. But the smile remains fixed upon her face.
1
THE BARON OF MIDDLECRESCENT had only one child, a girl, which many would have considered an inconvenience as far as family inheritances went. But the Baron of Middlecrescent was a far-seeing man, and from the time his daughter was two years old he hatched what he fondly called The Plan.
For his daughter was already beginning to display certain talents.
She sported a mass of curly red hair and a pair of enormous blue eyes, unusual coloring in a country given to darker complexions. Young Daylily of Middlecrescent was, in fact, remarkably fetching.
She also possessed a willful nature that her nursemaids thought dreadful but which, the baron soon recognized, could be found charming when she came of age. So the baron took Daylily and her willfulness in hand and began the work of shaping her into the right sort of person to fulfill The Plan.
“You see, my dear,” he said to his wife, “we are just distant enough of relations.”
His wife, a simple woman with huge doe eyes, smiled at him. “Are we, husband?”
“We are.”
“In what respect?”
The baron had long since given up hope of his wife’s developing anything like a cunning mind. At one time this had bothered him. But as he aged he came around to appreciating her. In the scheming world where he moved and breathed, it was a relief to know that at least one person in his inner circle couldn’t begin to plot.
He took a patient tone with her. “We are one of the noblest families in the kingdom. Your pedigree is beyond reproach.”
“Oh, go on!” His wife giggled. “You flatterer!”
“Yes, dear. As I was saying, your pedigree is beyond reproach, and not a speck of foreign blood runs in my veins. Our estate is rich enough to support our title, thanks in large part to your dowry, my love.”
She giggled again.
“And our daughter is without peer among the daughters of any lord in the Eldest’s court.”