Back of the Envelope

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

For this chapter I return to Randall's point of view. I had decided to tell of the confronation which began in the last chapter somewhat differently, starting at the end. I'd already laid out the fundamental idea that I was using back in Chapter 4, but this gave me a chance to draw on it. I hoped for a somewhat creepy effect, and I think I've achieved that.

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Chapter 11
Ghosts

If he hadn’t known that he was already too late, Randall would have run. Even knowing, he still hurried through the busy streets of Novaro with as much haste as a Dominus could show in public. For once, he appreciated the way people shied away from him, making it possible to speed through the city that kept most pedestrians to a crawl. Laws kept carts off the roads during the day, but nothing kept horsemen and beasts of burden out. Thus Randall found his way blocked most often by mules and horses who did not know that they should flee before a Dominus in a hurry. He dodged around them as well as he could, staying on the raised stepping stones which elevated pedestrians above the filth and manure which accumulated in the streets. Not all the manure was animal, either, as some people emptied their chamberpots without concern for their fellow citizens. Since upper stories tended to overhang the streets, there was always the risk of being hit, and nothing could ruin the dignity of a Dominus quicker than being drenched in human waste. For once, Randall didn’t keep an eye above as he maneuvered through the streets. Even the smell of sweat and refuse, which made any visit to Novaro unpleasant, faded from the mind as the odor of smoke became more and more pronounced.

He had hoped he would be quick enough to prevent this insane move by Kulsin, but he had discovered his failure the moment he left the Novaro tower. In a city of close-packed buildings, the rumor of fire spread faster than the fire itself. Even though no one would speak to a Dominus directly, he had heard of it long before he could see the smoke. Snatches of a dozen conversations placed the flames variously in the fullers’ district, in the Circus Aurelius, or in the Imperial palace itself. However, most of the rumors pointed toward the home of Marcus Julius Principius, the unnamed heir to the Emperor. Randall cursed Kulsin a hundred times over under his breath as he jogged toward the home he had never visited. The majority of the citizens had already fled by the time he came within a mile. No one in Novaro took fires lightly. A few nearby buildings had begun to burn, and the Fire Watch hastened to pull down structures lest they provide fuel for the burgeoning conflagration. They had used water from the fountains in the area to fight the flames, but the flow proved insufficient for the task. The fire had gutted the still blazing Principius home, and the Watch had abandoned their efforts to save the townhouse in order to focus on containing the fire. Randall wondered how many of the nearby rundown tenements they could have saved had they not spent so much effort trying to rescue the wealthy Senator’s home.

Despite the danger from smoke and heat, a sizable crowd had gathered near the Senator’s home. The Watch’s dark cloaks marked them a source of authority in the chaos as they worked feverishly to slow the fire, though a few mingled with the other group of people. The residents of the townhouse, Randall supposed. Some appeared to be slaves, but one woman, dressed too well to be a slave though not well enough to be the mistress, wailed aloud while a tall, red-haired girl in an undersized tunic tried to comfort her. For a moment, he thought he saw something odd about the girl, who had the look of a slave, but he was too busy trying to avoid notice to worry about her. Even in chaos such as this, maybe especially in this sort of chaos, a Dominus drew all eyes. The smoke helped obscure what people saw, however, and he wasted no time as he stepped into a side alley filled with smoke from the burning buildings. There he found a gaping hole which let him into the Principius villa.

He had wrapped himself in a protective Circuit that kept the flames at a foot’s distance as he stepped through the ruins. The shield’s ability to stop solid objects as well as fire kept a collapsing doorway from crushing his skull. Unfortunately, purifying the air proved more challenging, and even though he didn’t choke on the smoke, he found his eyes watering and his nose filled with the scent of burning wood. Simply walking through the house put out flames as they fell within the range of his dampening Circuit, but he followed that up with some more directed magic, snuffing out flame and fanning away smoke as he sought the cause of the fire.

It didn’t take long. In a small chamber which he supposed must have been a bedroom before the walls had burned away and the upper story spilled its contents inside, he found two badly-burned bodies lying among the broken crockery and shattered furniture. He could still recognize the black robe of a Dominus despite the fire’s markings. The charring surprised him more than the robe’s survival, as the cloth did not burn easily. Nothing but bones remained of the Dominus’s body, though he could easily tell that the other body had been a young girl. Hair and clothes had completely burned away, and the flames had consumed the flesh down to the bone in some places. Randall gagged as he dashed more wetness from his eyes. He had never met Lucia, and few identifying features remained in any case, but he didn’t know who else it could be. He fought to breathe past the tightness in his chest, spots flashing in front of his eyes. Only his fear of fainting in this burning house kept him on his feet. How could this have happened? Kulsin had wanted to bring Lucia to the City, probably hoping to frighten her into testifying against her uncle. After that, he’d have set her free as long as he didn’t really believe Aulus Principius had been training her. If he did believe that, Randall had no idea what he might have done, but surely not this. Even if Kulsin had decided to kill the girl, he wouldn’t have done it before she could testify. And all that aside, what had killed the Dominus?

Randall knew of one way to find out. Death memories tended to linger even when they did not create ghosts, and magic left its own trace. A death involving magic only a few hours old should still have a readable imprint, although the fire might have damaged it. Randall first brought the flames under control and cleared out the smoke, not a difficult task since the fire had pretty much burned itself out already. He then prepared his Circuit, carefully connecting filaments to the floor, the walls, the blackened brazier, anything that could hold a memory. The bodies themselves Randall ignored, as dead flesh never held anything a Dominus could read. He completed his Circuit with the Components necessary to turn magic into living memories. Carefully, in a small, steady trickle, Randall sent Essence, the very substance of magic, into the Circuit to bring the energized imprints to visible life.

A translucent image of a young girl appeared. She stood near where the bed had sat, only a few feet from the girl’s body on the floor. Her raven hair swung as she slowly shook her head, grey eyes wide as she screamed out words soundlessly at someone unseen. Randall wished he could hear what she was saying, but sound simply did not imprint well. She vanished suddenly, but a black-robed figure appeared almost immediately afterward, a Dominus standing near the door, forming a simple yet effective Circuit that should incapacitate its target.

Randall watched as Essence ran through convoluted channels. The reappearance of its target startled him, while the whirling vortex of Essence that surrounded her in response to the Circuit stunned him. Randall had never seen anything like it. The Domini disciplined themselves to use magic in strictly structured forms for specific, controlled purposes. A Dominus could only make very simple Circuits on the fly. Teams of Domini could join their abilities to make more complicated Circuits, but only at great effort over long time periods, carefully designing Circuits which they inlaid in physical objects that could hold them indefinitely. This swirling mass of magic differed from the structured magic of the Domini as much as a whirlpool differed from an aqueduct. The magical vortex twisted and tore at the Dominus’s Circuit, nearly wresting it from him as he struggled to maintain its function and focus. The girl tossed her head to and fro as she felt its diluted effects.

Suddenly another figure appeared, a red-haired girl at least a head taller than the other girl, and probably a few years older. A carving knife in hand, she rushed at the Dominus, coming from behind him where the doorway to the room had once stood. Her knife bounced off the shield protecting the Dominus, and his translucent image flickered as he shifted his attention from one girl to the other, the raven haired girl vanishing altogether from the tableau. The redhead tried to circle around the Dominus to get between him and younger woman, but he formed a simple and direct Circuit, a raw flow of magic which leapt from him to the girl, dropping her almost exactly where the body lay. She faded from sight as she died. The other girl popped back into existence, magic whirling around her once more as rage and fear twisted her face. A tendril of the whirlwind snapped out and latched onto the brazier still in the corner of the room. A gout of phantom fire leapt from it onto the Dominus. He tried to douse the small fire at the hem of his robes with magic, but more tendrils of the vortex encircled him, forming a less intense version of the whirlwind surrounding the girl. What had been a tiny, smoldering spark became an inferno in an instant, and he vanished within it, bursts of flame escaping to light the bed and other bits of cloth and wood. The magic remained a moment longer, encircling an upright corpse Randall could no longer see. The source of this storm remained quite still, watching with hollow eyes from inside her own whirlwind of Essence. Then magic and ghost faded together.

Randall watched phantom flames lick vanished walls, noting that the flames had left a stronger imprint than normal fire would have. Its rapid spread did not concern him as much as the red-haired girl. How could he have seen her die when he had also seen her alive outside? He had recognized her immediately. Why did the flame-licked body look as if it did not quite fit the slave girl? What had become of the other girl, the one around whom the magic swirled?

Before Randall could reverse the magic and watch the scene again from the beginning, she reappeared, kneeling next to where the body lay, tears streaming down her face and lips quavering as she mouthed indiscernible words. She reached out and rolled some invisible object over, into the space occupied by the body. Suddenly, magic whirled around both her and the body, and they changed. The girl’s hair lengthened as its shade brightened to a fiery red, she grew taller and older before his eyes. The image of the dead girl reappeared as the magic embraced her, overlaid with the burned corpse still there. He watched as it shrank in age and height, its hair darkening to a raven black, its proportions exactly matching what remained of the body that lay there now. The ghost image of the corpse departed with the magic, but the live girl, now the twin of the one who had died, remained. Her now mature body did not fit well into the old tunic, which had not changed with her. She stared at herself, eyes wider than ever and face going very pale beneath the new freckles. Her eyes wandered the room wildly, until she finally noticed the fire. Lurching to her feet, she ran awkwardly from the room, nearly tripping over her own feet.

Randall watched her leave the reach of his Circuit. He had more questions than answers now. Who had died here? He thought that Lucia was young, probably twelve or thirteen, and dark hair made more sense for a Novar as well. The tall, red-haired girl looked like a Northerner, probably a slave. So had Lucia, the black-haired girl, survived, becoming the red-haired girl in the process? Or had the red-haired girl been masquerading as Lucia the whole time? Whoever she was, she had shapechanged. From everything he knew, only the misnamed demons had that ability. Even without the shapechanging, the Essence had behaved so differently for her than for the Domini. Was that what happened when a woman learned the magic? Randall doubted it, but the alternative scared him more. What if she really were a Malwer? Was her brother a shapechanger as well? If Randall couldn’t tell her identity for certain, he couldn’t know whether they shared the same blood at all. He had to find the red-haired girl before she changed into someone, or something, else.

First, though, he had to deal with this mess. A sharp surge in the flow of Essence brought the ghostly flames much closer to life. Randall could smell the smoke and feel the rush of heat, he could see the fire which filled the room gain the same substance as real flame. As suddenly as it had come, it vanished, the increased flow of magic washing away the imprint, rendering it blank to any other Domini who came by. Whatever else happened, he didn’t want Kulsin and his lackeys hunting Lucia down and destroying her, which they most certainly would do if they discovered the truth. It would be better for them to think her dead. He knew that such obstruction bordered on Forbidden; that its discovery could make him a Renegade. He also knew that Kulsin and his ilk would label her a murderer, an enemy of the Domini, unable to see a frightened young girl who had reacted in terror and anger, which is what he dearly hoped he had seen. Randall didn’t want Lucia harmed unless it became absolutely necessary. If it did, he’d do it himself. If he could.




Randall weaved through the convoluted streets of another city. It did not even occur to him to marvel that he had come hundreds of miles in less than an hour. Instead, the upcoming interview occupied his mind, except for that part which he dedicated to navigating the haphazard city. While the Domini had laid out the main thoroughfares in an orderly and sensible manner, the narrow streets and alleys which had sprung up around them obscured that order. The Inner City made Novaro look well-planned. Small streets crossed the thoroughfares from every direction, sometimes five or six coming together at a single point. These streets varied in size from just wide enough for a man to large enough for an army to march ten abreast. Their construction differed as well. While large granite blocks paved the main arteries, the smaller roads could be made of bricks or stones or gravel. It all came from letting the Domini build their own city, placing homes and their corresponding streets as needed rather than letting Philosopher planners lay the whole thing out from the start. The homes were as diverse as the roads, ranging from palatial to quaint, and a few that were both. Size and design did not always match, and a few Domini had tried to create grand structures without sufficient room, while others seemed content with sprawling simplicity. Architectures crossed the world, from Novar to Kairnin to Manuelite. Quite a few bore no resemblance to any culture’s architecture, while others borrowed elements from all of them.

The home of Lucia’s uncle had the simple lines of a Novar townhouse, tamed to a smaller size than the homes in which he must have grown up. Still, it held Aulus Principius and his jailers comfortably. Four or five of them stood at positions both inside and outside the home around the clock to make sure that the prisoner couldn’t go anywhere. Randall doubted that the guards held him in place as tightly as the oath he had given to the Senate. Aulus Principius kept his word.

Randall walked up to the door, receiving barely a glance from the Dominus on guard there. Kulsin had given no orders to prevent Aulus from receiving guests, and Randall had visited him often before the arrest, although he had not come since. He had meant to come, but his shame at the role he had played in the Senator’s house-arrest had encouraged him to put it off. The longer he went without talking to Aulus, the harder it became to face him and explain both his actions in the Senate and his lengthening absence. Only now, with the shock of what he’d just seen still muddling his thoughts, did urgent need force him to seek out Aulus Principius no matter how awful it felt.

Randall found the Senator in his reading room, reclining on a couch while he examined a yellowed scroll. Another Dominus sat on a stool nearby. Cubbyholes filled to overflowing with scrolls, tablets, and books seemed to interest Aulus’s keeper less than the blue and green rug on the floor. At the new arrival’s look, the guard left to give them some privacy. Randall had no illusions about the guard’s discretion or loyalty, so he formed a Circuit to keep their voices confined to the room.

Aulus put down his scroll, sat up, looked at his visitor carefully, then said without preamble, “Kulsin tells me you betrayed me.” His tone was too neutral for the words.

Randall’s paused halfway onto the vacated stool, his planned speech slipping from his mind. “That’s not... exactly true.”

“Not exactly true? Well, I’m relieved.” Randall had forgotten how sarcastic Aulus could be. He forced himself to sit down.

“I’m trying to do what’s right, Aulus.”

“And that includes betraying my trust?”

“I don’t know what it includes! I just know that neither you nor Kulsin are right.”

“And you are?”

“Maybe I am, maybe not...” Randall shook his head, deciding to deal with the issue by avoiding it. “That’s not why I came here. Kulsin sent Tian to try to take your niece.”

“I’ve been expecting this. If he harmed her... wait a moment. What do you mean by ‘try’?”

“Tian is dead.”

“Dead? Did she kill him?”

“You don’t seem particularly surprised.”

“I know something of what she’s capable of, but obviously not enough. Tell me what happened.”

“Not much remained by the time I arrived. There were two bodies. One belonged to Tian, the other looked like Lucia’s.”

“He killed her!” Aulus bolted to his feet, causing Randall to nearly overbalance on his stool. The older man’s hands clenched and unclenched, his face flushed with anger.

The younger Dominus hastened ahead. “No, no! Tian killed Lucia’s slave girl. The tall red-haired one.”

The fury drained out of Aulus, the harsh lines of his face softening. “Jaelin. Her name was Jaelin. What happened to Lucia?”

“I raised the ghosts to see what had happened. Tian tried to stun Lucia, but she resisted somehow. Essence whirled around her, and Tian’s Circuit couldn’t hold together. The slave girl--Jaelin, you said--attacked the Dominus. He killed her, and Lucia killed him. Aulus, I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t think Essence could behave that way--she just reached out to a brazier and threw the flames at Tian. Did you know about this?”

“I’ve seen her do things before, but nothing like that. I can believe it though. What happened to Lucia?”

“When Tian was dead, she went to Jaelin, and they both changed. She became the slave girl, and Jaelin’s body became hers.”

“Are you saying she changed shape?” Aulus looked at Randall hard. “Are you sure you didn’t misread the ghosts?”

“I’m perfectly sure. I had seen the red-haired girl outside, before I went into the house. She was gone when I came back out, though. You didn’t know about the shapechanging, did you?”

“No I didn’t. Did anyone else see this?”

“No, and I wiped it before I left. Kulsin claims you’ve taught her in defiance of our laws. This would convince him beyond all doubt.”

“Taught her? I’ve spent months trying to figure out how she’s doing these things. How could I have taught them to her?”

“I’m not saying that you have, I’m telling you that Kulsin believes you have. What have you learned about her? Do you know what she is?”

“She’s a frightened young girl, one we have to find.”

“How? If she can change shape, she could be anyone by now.”

“I don’t think so. She barely understands what she’s doing. I watched her for months, remember, and it’s obvious she has no real control over it. She may not even be able to change back.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. To do that sort of thing would require precise control. I can’t imagine the complexity of the Circuit. You can’t do anything at all by accident.”

“Randall, you’re assuming that her magic works like ours. I can’t tell you how it works, but I know she doesn’t see Essence and manipulate it directly. I don’t think she sees it at all.”

“But how--”

Aulus began to pace, his quick strides taking him the length of the small room almost as soon as he turned. “We know that Essence reacts to the mind, that it’s influenced in some way by a person’s consciousness. If we thoroughly understood that interaction, it’s feasible we could read a person’s mind by observing the ebb and flow of Essence. What if it works the other way as well and Essence can affect a person’s mind? What if that person were sensitive enough to its subtlety that she began to understand what its influence meant, that this sensation meant that someone nearby were angry, say? Like the way we hear sounds, identify them as words, and understand the concepts, all the while not even recognizing them as vibrations in the air--to us, they’re just words.”

“So you’re saying that Lucia’s so sensitive to Essence that she knows what it means without even being aware of it? I don’t see how this explains her ability to do things with it.”

“Well, she’s more sensitive to it, but it’s also more sensitive to her. Essence responds to everyone. We can speculate about mind-reading because it is affected by a person’s thoughts. You and I were born with the ability to approach it in a different way than normal people. What if, in Lucia’s case, Essence responds to her just like it responds to everyone else, but more strongly? She doesn’t manipulate it by teaching her mind to focus on it in a new way--it’s as natural as speaking is for us. If she can understand the vibrations in the air, how much of a leap is it for her to make her own vibrations. It may be harder, but she’s already past the hardest part, understanding what they mean.”

“Do you really think that’s how it works for her? It’s... incredible. I can’t imagine how it could be true.”

Aulus stopped his pacing to look Randall in the eyes. “It’s as much speculation as anything else. I’ll tell you this, though, in all the time I watched her, she never seemed to notice Essence itself. She always seemed to focus on what, or who, she was manipulating.”

“If this is so, shouldn’t you be able to tell? If Essence is so sensitive to her, Lucia should be broadcasting her thoughts. Even if we can’t read what particular thoughts she’s thinking, but we should see the ripples.”

“You couldn’t tell from the ghosts, but sometimes you can see how Essence responds to just her thoughts, even when she’s not changing anything. Randall, imagine what she could teach us. We spend years experimenting in order to figure out the Circuits to do simple tasks. We could discover as much in a few moments just by watching how she does those things.”

“You might think it’s wonderful; others will find it terrifying. Kulsin, for example. If he knew about this, he’d want her dead.”

“We’ll have to keep him away from her, then.” Aulus fixed Randall with a look that demanded, although the words came out as a plea, “Will you help her? Whatever you think of me, you can’t let Kulsin kill her just because he doesn’t understand her power.”

“I’ll do what I can, but you have other problems right now, Aulus. Kulsin intends to Expel you.”

“That’s what he intended to do, but what evidence does he have now? You said he’ll think Lucia is dead, so he doesn’t have anything left to work with.”

“He’ll have your nephew testify.”

The older Senator smiled grimly. “If he does that, he’ll be the one defying our laws. He can’t have an Initiate testify.” Even Aulus agreed with that law. Redleaf made the students too susceptible to persuasion for them to make reliable witnesses. Besides, no student should know about the internal politics of the Domini that early.

“Kulsin plans to promote the boy to Acolyte.”

“Victor’s too young for that; he hasn’t even been here a year yet. Kulsin can’t possibly think he’s ready to advance.”

“There’s precedent. I skipped a year, so did you.”

“We had superior educations, making some of the mundane training unnecessary, but even then it took two years. If he’s like us, Victor still needs that long to develop a firm grasp on magic before he can be made an Acolyte.”

“His grasp on magic is better than you think. It almost seems like he has an intuition for it.”

Aulus waved that away. “This is too transparent, Randall. Promoting Victor to Acolyte before he’s ready might kill him. My allies will see through this charade of Kulsin’s and keep Victor where he is.”

“No they won’t, Aulus. If--and I do mean if--they have the boy’s best interests at heart, they know that whatever risk promoting him now incurs, it’s better than the alternative.”

“What alternative?”

“He’s learning too fast, Aulus! Don’t you realize what that means? No one learns this quickly. It takes us years to do even simple things, but he does it like he’s known how all his life. Some of the conservatives think that Kulsin’s playing politics when Victor should be dealt with more directly. It frightens them, and they’re not the only ones. Seeing him work is unnerving. All of his instructors are worried, even me.”

“What are you saying? You don’t believe the old myths, do you? That he’s some sort of doppleganger?”

“Kulsin thinks it’s simpler than that, fortunately. He thinks you taught him. If he thought it was the other... The old records warn that it’s possible--”

“That’s a myth, a legend with no substance. No one really believes in them anymore,” Aulus scoffed.

“That, Aulus, is what brought you to this point. You truly believe, deep down, that everyone thinks like you do. Anyone who disagrees is either stupid or lying.”

“And what do you think? Do you really believe he’s a doppleganger out of some fairy tale?”

“No, I don’t. But some Senators think it’s possible.”

“Ridiculous!”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Then you do believe in dopplegangers?”

“I don’t believe that your nephew is one. I also don’t believe that the existence of them is as ludicrous as you think. I saw what your niece did, remember? I want to believe you’re right about her abilities and she somehow does it all by accident. Note, it’s less farfetched to believe that some thing has taken her place. It’s not a leap of logic to think that something like it has taken Victor’s place as well. So don’t tell me it’s impossible.” Randall came to a halt, his argument spent. He waited for Aulus to respond, but that didn’t happen, so he filled the silence himself. “At the least, you can be certain that some of the Senators believe. If Kulsin wanted to pursue that particular course, it’d be messy. No one’s spoken the word yet, but you can hear the threat in Kulsin’s diatribes. Your supporters will go along with what he wants rather than risk him making the accusation. The thing is, the boy scares them as well. Some of them are more comfortable with the idea that you taught him.”

“And what do you think?”

“I don’t know. Did you teach Victor?”

“Will you believe me if I say no?”

“You’ve never lied to me, Aulus. You’ll dance around the truth if you want to hide something, but if you tell me straight out I’ll trust you.”

“Then, no, I did not teach my nephew. What will Kulsin do when he discovers that?”

“He probably won’t accept it. You know him--he never lets facts get in the way of his beliefs.”

Aulus’s laugh was short and bitter. “You’re right, of course. He also never lets his beliefs get in the way of politics. If Victor denies that I taught him, he has no grounds to attack me. What will Kulsin do then?”

The answer was so obvious it appalled Randall that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. “He’ll have to go after Victor. The possibility of doppleganger won’t go away now that the Senators are thinking of it. With no alternative explanation, the proceedings for Inquisition will take place, whether Kulsin really wants them to or not. Since Inquisitions always find what they’re looking for, Victor will die. Do you think Kulsin realizes that? He’s perfectly convinced that you taught him, so maybe he hasn’t considered the possibility that he can’t prove it. I don’t think he wants the boy dead.”

“Oh, Kulsin’s considered it, all right, and he knows that I’ll consider it as well. It’s very clever. The only way my nephew will survive is if Kulsin can prove that I taught him. I can only defend myself if I’m willing to sacrifice my nephew.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to get a message to Victor. Will you deliver it? You owe me this much.”

Randall sighed, knowing that he could not argue against that. “Okay, I’ll help you as long as it means helping Victor.”

“Good. Come back tomorrow, I should be ready then.”

Somewhat annoyed at the dismissal, Randall departed. The guard, who had been standing at the door, went in the moment he left.

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This is a 5,166 word chapter of a 90,110 word novel.

I'm hardly the first person to suggest that ghosts are not so much souls as memories, impressions of someone's life remaining where they had passed. I'm not really sure I believe in ghosts at all, but the idea appealed to me, so I inserted it into my fantasy novel. I also liked the idea that memories of strong emotion and magic last longer, which is what caused the players in this scene to fade in and out, hopefully adding to its overall creepiness. If this book is ever published, and if I get any say in its cover art (which is seldom the case, I understand), this is the scene I want on its cover.

I've just recently finished reading two books, George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows, and Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams. I've noticed that Martin is absolutely brutal to his characters, killing and crippling them without much concern, while Jordan preserves even the smallest character until he absolutely has to give them up. I don't think either path works that well. Killing off important and semi-important characters increases the sense of risk and makes the story more powerful, but go too far and it's hard to get attached to anyone. I always read books for the characters, and I'd like my readers to get attached to mine, enough so that they worry whenever their lives seem at risk. I killed off a few characters in Fire. Jaelin wasn't the first--that honor belongs to Victrinus, I believe--but I'll admit I've become kind of attached to her. She was a rather minor character in the book so far, but in later chapters certain things come out that make her far more interesting. I began to regret her death, which is how I knew it was the right thing to do. A death that means nothing is cheap, and I don't like cheap deaths in fiction.

The following was my entry in Faith in Fiction's conversion story contest. With the instruction to write a conversion story, I had to wonder how to do that. I had been considering that question already, as I figured Ryan of Eyes in the Shadow would become a Christian sooner or later. At the time, I had figured that would happen later rather than sooner, but with the urgnecy of a contest coming up that I wanted to enter, I saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The main problem, of course, was that Ryan and Emily are established characters who have a history, in my mind at least, but I needed to present them in a 3,000 word short story which could be read independently. I'll discuss that a bit more afterwards.

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Unwanted Grace
by Donald S. Crankshaw

With nothing to do except wait for the end of his world, the one thing Ryan didn’t have to worry about was a shortage of waiting rooms. The one for the Recovery Room was his third. He’d already been in the waiting rooms for the Emergency Room and the Operating Room, and he’d probably be in one for the ICU soon. This late at night, the drab space was brightly lit but nearly empty. Aside from the staff, doctors and nurses who would hurry through the room while avoiding eye contact lest they be asked questions they couldn’t answer, there was a Hispanic family across the room from him, lost in their own misery. The mother was crying, as she’d been doing since before Ryan had arrived, tears and sobs that were hoarse when not silent. Her husband, who had his arm around her, looked frightened and angry. At least the little girl was asleep. Ryan didn’t know whom they were here for; he didn’t have the courage to ask. Besides, he had his own problems, and their grief and worry was making him even tenser. And, he reluctantly admitted to himself, they made him envious. At least they weren’t alone. He’d give anything to be able to put his arm around someone, to take comfort even as he gave it, but the person he wanted was the one lying in the Recovery Room.

Ryan closed his eyes, shutting out the worried little family, the framed posters of soothing waterfalls and mountains, the out-of-date magazines stacked on the end tables. He leaned his head back until it bumped against the wall. Why hadn’t he seen headlights or heard squealing tires? What was the car even doing on Winter Street? The street was closed to all but emergency and delivery vehicles, leaving pedestrians free to wander the middle of the road as they browsed the shops in the area. At the late hour when Ryan and his fiancée were there, the road had been completely empty until the hit-and-run.

Ryan still had no idea how he was unharmed, while Emily… He remembered vicious and sudden pain exploding in his back as everything spun around him, uneven bricks tearing at his face, and agony lancing up his arm as it was crushed to jelly. Then Emily was beside him. She had been hurt too, and she grew worse even as she tried to help him, her breathing growing difficult and labored. Soon she was gasping for breath as she tried to murmur prayers and words of comfort at the same time, and Ryan wanted to soothe her but he could barely move his lips. He had been scared but calm until he saw her lips turning blue and heard a wet, sickening paflup in time with her ragged breathing. That was when he started to panic, but the rush of adrenaline failed to revive him, and instead the world grew foggy and dim. The last memory he had was of her cell phone, falling from her twitching fingers to crack as it hit the pavement.

The next thing he remembered was being checked over by the paramedics in the ambulance. He had been strapped down, telling them that no, it didn’t hurt when they pressed on his ribs. Wondering why that was so. The pain had vanished, as had any trace of his injury aside from his bloody shirt. The paramedics hadn’t found any problems with him. The doctors had likewise pronounced him fine, once they had given him a similar inspection at the hospital.

Ryan didn’t feel fine. He didn’t understand how he could vividly remember such intense pain and now be fine. Emily would have called it a miracle, but he wasn’t sure he believed in them. To call him a skeptic would have been an understatement. But if Emily was the one with the faith, why was she in there while he was out here trying not to go crazy?

His eyes snapped open and he sat up. With a glance at the miserable family on the other side of the room, he got to his feet and walked out the door before he could stop to think about it. He didn’t want to think, he wanted to do something.

For the moment, he settled for roving the hospital’s halls, dodging nurses and doctors on their way to save lives and comfort the sick. He had had a lot of respect for them just a couple of hours ago, but it had been eroded away by his frustrations. No one had been able to give him a straight answer about what was wrong with Emily and whether she’d be okay. Those who’d give him anything at all only said that they were doing all they could and that they’d have to wait and see. Ryan had had enough waiting, although there didn’t seem to be much else for him to do aside from trying to outrun his dark thoughts.

It took him only a few minutes to lose himself in the confusing maze of corridors. Outpacing his thoughts would take longer than he had, so he was wondering whether he should just go back when he came across a chapel hidden in the space between two minor hallways. He almost walked right past it and headed for the waiting room again, but he didn’t really want to go back yet. That place reeked of worry and fear. Instead, he approached the peaked arch of the entryway. The standard rectangular doors, which opened outward, were topped by a window which filled the rest of the arch. On its frame was written the words “Whoever will may enter here.” Ryan poked his head into the chapel.

A single carpeted aisle on the otherwise bare wooden floor led to the front. To the left, a table and some chairs occupied an alcove set off by stone arches. To the right were rows of wooden seats, padded in light blue. Electric candles and track lighting on the peaked ceiling lit every corner, but there was no one inside. Ryan’s eyes were drawn to the stained glass windows, whose blue and green panes were unnaturally bright for this hour. Given the chapel’s location deep inside the hospital, those windows couldn’t possibly lead to the outside. There were no overt religious symbols, but despite its attempted neutrality, the chapel was obviously designed to bring comfort to those who recognized stained glass windows, an altar, and even an organ, as the proper accoutrements of a place of worship.

Ryan slipped into one of the chairs in the back row. He didn’t usually take solace in the church, but he was glad to have found some place quiet and empty. It did little to soothe his nerves, though, and his queasy stomach refused to settle. Emily might be dying and all he could do was wait. He wanted to walk straight back to the Recovery Room and demand answers, but he was afraid that he would get none. He was even more afraid that he would get answers he didn’t want.

It would have been easier to just rest here for a moment if he had found it as comforting as it was meant to be. It should, for reasons ranging from the windows looking at nothing but lights to the plastic candles with flame-shaped bulbs, feel as fake as it looked, but he couldn’t shake the eerie sense that this place was… sacred. It was the only word that fit. The chapel demanded silence. Even Ryan’s breathing had slowed in response, as if the empty room were, in truth, occupied by Someone he didn’t dare disturb. Ryan snorted. He was too much of a skeptic to be an atheist—he doubted atheism too—but it was hard for him to imagine a God who would stoop to occupying any human building, much less such a lame imitation of a house of worship. On the other hand, he’d learned a little bit about the God Emily believed in. That God relished interacting with His creation. Ryan could imagine Him in this room now, waiting for His presence to be acknowledged.

Once that disturbing thought had taken hold, it wouldn’t go away. After a few minutes, Ryan gave up on trying. “Okay, so you’ve got my attention,” he said aloud. “What do you want?” A terrible idea occurred to him. “Is that why this happened? Is that why I’m unhurt while she’s…”

Ryan gripped the wooden back of the chair in front of him and stared at the central stained glass window, a circular pane with others sprouting from it like petals from a flower. The silence rushed in his ears like the breath of an unseen Presence. “What do you want from me? We’ve been through this before: I don’t have anything for you. Just my doubts and my questions which you don’t see fit to answer. I did what Emily wanted. I went to church, I read the Bible, I even prayed. But I never got any answers, you never showed yourself.” He searched for some hint of God in the flecks of gold and red which marred the blue and green pattern of the window, but he saw only glass.

“I can believe in a Supreme Being, a distant Creator who abandoned us long ago. But a God who cares? Would a God like that let this happen?”

Emily had tried to teach him a lifetime of Sunday School lessons in the months they’d been together, including all the correct answers to the difficult theological questions. Ryan considered the stock answers mere word games compared to the four terse biographies of one man. “I’ve read the gospels, and I believe that Jesus was good. Not meek and mild, as I’d always thought, but bold and honest, moved by righteous anger as well as deep love. Are you like that? How can you be? How could a good and all-powerful God let Jesus suffer and die like that, especially if he’s His own Son?

“Emily thinks you did it for us, but why would you care so much about this world? Why should you bother helping me at all? You didn’t really heal me, did you?” Ryan had been banged up and in shock, and in his confusion he must have believed himself worse off than he was. He glanced down at his now uninjured arm and for the first time noticed the black imprint of tire treads on the beige sleeve of his jacket. For once, his stunned mind could manage no rationalization. Ryan felt as if his chest was being squeezed, and he struggled to find breath. “Okay, maybe… maybe something did happen. But why would you heal me? Emily’s the one who believes. Heal her!”

This wasn’t his first one-way argument with God. He’d never gotten any answers before and he didn’t expect them now, but he wouldn’t be damned for lack of trying. He opened his mouth to continue, but all that came out was a groan. The hard wood of the chair in front of him seemed to give way to his clutching fingers.

“Do you want me to believe too? You’ve convinced me that you exist. Isn’t that good enough? No… you want worship, love, surrender, and I can’t! If I knew for certain that you were the God Emily believes in, then… maybe. I want to see you the way she does, but how can I, when things like this happen? Just, show me that you’re good, then I’ll believe. If you save Emily, I’ll believe.”
Nothing, just silence, but Ryan knew the answer to his bargaining. He had known even before he asked.

“I’m a rotten liar, aren’t I? Of course I wouldn’t believe, not when I could rationalize and make excuses. Why should you accept promises even I don’t trust?”

Ryan swallowed, trying to get his emotions under control. Tears trickled down his cheek, but he didn’t release his death grip on the chair to wipe them away. “If... if I give you the faith you want, will you save her?” He sighed. “You won’t make promises, will you? And I can’t make this conditional. I just have to trust that you’re good, and hope that means you won’t let her die.”

Ryan laid his forehead on his hands, which were cramping up from their grip on the wooden chair. “I give up. How can I fight you when you’re the only hope I have? I don’t know whether you’re as good as Emily says you are, just that there’s nowhere else to go. I need you. I need hope. And if… if I lose her… I need to believe that there’s hope beyond that, for both of us.” He paused to force a couple of deep breaths into his constricted chest. “I’d give up my life for that sort of hope. Take it.”

The tightness in his chest finally eased. The tension of facing a difficult decision, of doing what he had to do even when he didn’t want to, flowed out of Ryan. The simple relief that came with finally making a difficult decision grew into a sense of peace, a certainty that he’d done the right thing. His flesh tingled with goose bumps as Ryan felt the stirrings of awe, drowning his instinctive skepticism.

“Thank you. I… Just, thank you,” he said as he wiped the tears from his eyes. Ryan exhaled a shuddering sigh and realized that he was trembling all over, his teeth literally chattering in the aftermath of the experience. He clamped them shut and lifted his head to look around. He was alone in the tiny chapel. No one had seen his spiritual struggle, or heard the loud parts. It was between him, God, and the glowing stained glass windows. He was exhausted, and would have gladly closed his eyes to rest, but the peace and certainty were already fading, replaced by a rising edginess. Emily…

Ryan leveraged himself to his feet with his cramped hands. He needed to go and find out what had happened to her. He could hope that, since he’d given God what He wanted, He’d let Emily be okay. Only… that didn’t sound like the God Emily--and now Ryan--believed in. Would He hold a loved one hostage get what He wanted? But how could He still let her die? Ryan didn’t have the answers, but maybe he could find them. His trembling limbs carried him out the door and into the corridor.



Emily lay on a sterile, railed bed in the ICU. An IV drip was attached to her arm, a mask over her face forced air into her lungs, and a heart monitor beeped a regular but slow rhythm. Ryan took a seat in the chair next to her. In the glow of the bright fluorescents, Emily’s face was pale beneath the freckles, and her blond hair lay in limp curls around her head. Even asleep, her face was scrunched up as if in pain. Ryan reached out a hand, but pulled it back, afraid to touch her fragile body.

“I wanted to tell you, Emily. I wanted you to know that… that I’ve decided to trust God.” He hesitated, wondering if he really did. “I want to believe like you do, but it’s hard when I see you here like this.” Ryan fell silent, still staring at her unmoving form. “I can’t complain that I’ve never seen a miracle. I was crushed, and now… Something happened there, and I think it happened because you asked for it. I remember hearing your prayers. What I don’t understand is why He would just leave you like this. He can’t, can He?”

The doctor’s news had not been good. She was suffering from something called tension pneumothorax, an influx of air into her chest cavity which had collapsed her lung and put pressure on her other organs. Because of the resulting lack of oxygen, she had slipped into a coma, and it was possible that she would never wake up. He looked away from the painful sight, turning his eyes towards the ceiling instead. “Can you? Why won’t you do something about this? I didn’t deserve the miracle you’ve already given me, so I don’t dare ask for another one. But I didn’t ask for that one! I don’t want it. Take it back, and give it to Emily. Heal her instead.”

Ryan waited, listening to Emily’s regulated breathing and the steady pulse of her heartbeat monitor. His own breathing was still. Idiot! Did you really think her eyes would open and she’d smile and it would all be better? A wracking pain suddenly twisted his middle and he tried to reach for it, but his left arm flashed with agony when he moved it. He let that arm dangle from his shoulder and instead touched his side with his right hand. The thin shirt the hospital had given him felt warm and damp, and when he brought his fingers back, they were sticky with blood. What the--?

“Ryan?” a muffled voice croaked in front of him, and he looked to see Emily watching him. Her eyes were open and clear, but filled with confusion and fear.

Ryan smiled as he slumped forward, reaching out to take Emily’s hand in his bloody one. His cheek came to rest on the cold metal bar on the side of her bed. He coughed, and spots of red flecked the silvery surface. “Thank God…,” he whispered. “Thank God you’re all right.” Fear was quickly overtaking his joy at her recovery. “But I think you should call a doctor, ’cause I’m not.” As brightly lit as the room was, it was growing dark.

---

This is a 2,967 word short story.

It is a Ryan and Emily story, but I'm not sure it's the same Ryan and Emily as in Eyes in the Shadow. As it needed to be a stand-alone story, I had to avoid mentioning their history, and treat them as if those things hadn't happened--or at least, had not really affected them in any way worth mentioning. And as it needed to be short, less than three thousand words, I had to quickly introduce the characters--well, introduce Ryan and tell a little bit about Emily second-hand--and bring him to a crisis of faith and a resolution in time for the denouement. In retrospect, it reads a lot like a compressed version of Eyes. The argument it centers around is very similar to Chapter 9 of Eyes, and the ending of the story has a lot in common with the climax of Eyes in Chapter 15, although in this case it's a cliff-hanger, since I didn't have time to explain what had happened. A lot of people I showed this story to were confused about that, and wouldn't believe me when I told them that a straightforward reading was the most accurate. The similarity of the story without invoking the history hurts this story a lot for someone who's read Eyes. Eyes in the Shadow is due a rewrite in any case, and I think once that is done, I'll turn my attention to reworking this story into something that better fits the lives of Ryan and Emily.

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

Unlike Eyes in the Shadow, which I made up as I went along without even the vaguest of ideas of where things would end up, I had a pretty good idea what would be happening in Fire. On second thought, that's not completely true. It had already deviated off-course due to Chapter 2, which gave me time to revisit Lucia and discover some interesting things about her in Chapter 3. Then I checked in with the Domini in Chapter 4 and was surprised by the plot which Kulsin had in motion. And I had to follow up on the war I'd started in Chapter 2 with Chapter 5 and figure out how things would play out. So, okay, I didn't really know where things were going until after I'd written those first five chapters. After that, however, the basic plot of the rest of Fire became clear to me, and I began to see how the two main plotlines, the plotting among the Domini and the war started by the Orcs, would play out. So while I didn't know the details of what would happen, or which Point-of-View I'd want to tell it from, I knew what had to happen. I had the events in this chapter in mind shortly after I'd written Chapter 4. Of course, back then, I was writing at such a slow pace, maybe a Chapter every few months, that I had plenty of time to think about Fire when I wasn't writing it, so I had plenty of opportunity to sort the plot out. The sequel does not have quite the same stately pace, as I spent four months last year writing away at a devilish pace, barely pausing long enough to breathe, let alone think through what was going to happen before I wrote. The latter part of it is more thought out. Anyway, here's the next chapter of Fire.

---

Chapter 10
Family Life
Lucia reclined on one elbow and tried to ignore the pain around her. Marcus Principius and Avla Principia lay at opposite ends of the table, as far from each other as they could get in the small, private dining room, their eyes carefully avoiding one another. Though they both wore a civil facade, they fooled neither Lucia nor Aulus. Hurt and anger seeped from her mother, her father exuded stubbornness and pride. Her brother watched them both, tense and curious. Lucia knew some of why they acted this way. Avla had never recovered from Victor’s loss, nor had she forgiven her husband’s acceptance, and although time had blunted her grief, it had only sharpened her bitterness. Marcus Principius believed he had done the right thing, for the Empire and for his family, and he would continue to do so no matter how much it hurt him. Aulus’s familial concern warred with his insatiable hunger to know more, but Lucia knew that he would never settle for ignorance. If he could root out all the secrets without hurting his family, he would. If it turned out that he couldn’t, he would not stop digging.

Lucia couldn’t tell how much of what she knew came from an unnatural source, and how much came from simply knowing her family. Sometimes she could not tell the two apart. Aulus watched her now, that familiar tension running through him, reminding Lucia that she did not know how much he had discovered about her. He guarded his thoughts and feelings as much as his words around her, and sometimes her sense of him just disappeared. He had always been good at fading into the background, and now his mind could go as quiet as his body.

“I’ll be leaving for Artura by the end of the month,” Aulus said, breaking the uncomfortable silence with even more uncomfortable words.

“I thought you had decided to stay here another year,” Avla said.

“Things change,” Marcus Principius replied before Aulus could. The gaze he fixed on his son looked more distant than stern. “I once thought he would...” He stopped before his words became hurtful, suppressing disappointment and regret as he reached for his wine.

Avla did not let those words slip by, however. “Let the boy live his own life, will you? At least he’s still here to live it.”

“I’m not a boy,” Aulus said mildly. He had spoken the expected words while making no real effort to distract their bickering.

“Do you know what Marjori taught about today?” Lucia said quickly. She rolled onto her stomach, still propped up on her elbow, and folded her legs above her with her ankles crossed. Marcus Principius gladly let his daughter change the subject, and Avla said nothing although her challenge went unanswered. Aulus, although annoyed to see a very interesting exchange dry up, also kept his mouth closed.

With the sudden quiet came the pressure to fill the silence. Fortunately, Lucia was rarely at a loss for words, even if she now wished she had paid better attention to her tutor. “Marjori was telling me about the wars with the Orcs. I didn’t think she even believed in Orcs, but she said she had read reliable records dating back to that time. I think she only believes them because Philosophers wrote them.”

“Philosophers are as liable to bias as anyone else,” Aulus said, picking at his roast pheasant. Soon the slaves would come to clear away the food, doing their best to pretend they didn’t hear the arguing. “I’ve read a few of their records. It’s amazing how much they simply choose not to believe because it doesn’t fit into their view of things.”

“I hope Marjori isn’t teaching that sort of prejudice to Lucia,” Avla said.

“Marjori is an excellent tutor,” Marcus Principius said. “While I may not agree with her Philosophy, I think a bit of skepticism is healthy.”

“You won’t hear me argue against skepticism, Father,” Aulus replied. “I’m the last one to believe something just because somebody tells me.” Indeed, the more people who told Aulus something, the less he believed it. “What bothers me is that they decide that some things cannot be true before they even look into them. Like the gods, or magic. I’d expect people to be hesitant to trust in such things, but how could you know that they don’t exist? How do you prove something like that?”

“Is Marjori really teaching you that there are no gods, Lucia?” Avla asked.

“Dear, Marjori taught all four of our sons before Lucia,” Marcus said. “Do you think she’s teaching her anything she didn’t teach them? Why are you concerned now?”

“Are you saying I didn’t care about our sons’ education? Of course I cared, but it was your responsibility to raise them properly.” Lucia didn’t need the sudden flood of emotion to know that more than education filled her mother’s thoughts. “Your responsibility,” Avla whispered, closing her eyes. The words were not quite low enough to be missed by Marcus Principius. The anger and guilt Lucia could sense in him should have made him flinch, but instead he managed to pretend he didn’t hear. “Lucia is mine,” she finished more loudly.

“Marjori didn’t say anything about the gods, Mom,” Lucia said. She glared at Aulus, who shrugged. “She talked about Orcs. She said they looked a lot like humans, but with green skin and long ears. They’re stronger than us, but not as smart. And they hate us more than anything in the world.”

“I wouldn’t worry about the Orcs, Lucia,” Avla said. “No one has seen them in over two hundred years. That’s a very long time--why would they come back now?”

“Two hundred years is not that long,” said Lucia’s father. “Don’t just assume they’re gone because they haven’t been seen in a while.”

“How long ago that was depends on whom you ask,” Aulus said, swirling his wine cup in one hand. “Philosophers take a longer view of things than we do, but we take a much longer view than... the Kairnin, for example. To them, even a single generation is...” He trailed off as if the rest were self-evident.

“And what of the Orcs?” Lucia asked. “What sort of view do they take?” It bothered her that she couldn’t tell what Aulus was thinking, but she would make use of his involvement if she thought one of his lectures might distract her parents.

“I don’t know,” Aulus said, perversely refusing to play along. “I suspect it’s on the short side.”

“As I was saying, Lucia,” her mother continued with a challenging look at her husband. “That was a very long time ago. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

Throughout the entire exchange, emotions simmered just beneath the surface. Lucia had done her best to ignore them, but she found it impossible to shut them out entirely. Anger and grief overwhelmed love and familiarity. Bitterness pushed away any thought of reconciliation. The hurt was clearly visible on her parents’ faces even without her peculiar sensitivity. With it, the emotional pain became almost physical. She picked at her food, trying to come up with a safer topic than her newly controversial education. “After my lessons, I went to visit Livia,” Lucia said. “She wanted to go shopping, to see if she could find some of that cloth from the Sovereign Cities. What’s it called again?”

“Are you thinking of the aufin cloth?” Avla asked.

“Yes, aufin. It’s really neat. It feels a lot like silk, but it changes color depending on the light. Livia wants to make a dress out of it.”

“Sounds gaudy,” Aulus murmured, but Lucia didn’t let him interrupt her now that she had found safe ground. The cloth interested her mother, while her father just enjoyed listening to her chat. Aulus was thoroughly bored, but that was safest anyway.



“You should have heard him. Always finding something for them to fight about in every topic,” Lucia fumed as her slave girl brushed out her hair. Jaelin bore most of this in silence, although Lucia could sense a tickle of irritation every time she said Aulus’s name.

“Lucia, he is your brother,” Jaelin said. It was odd to hear the tall girl defend Aulus, since Lucia felt certain that Jaelin did not like her brother. The feeling appeared mutual, as they went out of their way to avoid one another. She was just trying to calm Lucia down. “Why do you always think his motives are bad?”

“I don’t assume anything. I know.”

“Do you? I thought you said that you never know what Aulus is thinking.”

Lucia groaned. “Why do you always remember what I tell you? Couldn’t you just forget every once in a while?”

Jaelin smiled at Lucia in the expensive mirror which stood atop the small table in front of which she sat. Lucia didn’t understand what made the mirror so expensive, only that it was glass backed by some metal rather than the simple mirrors of polished metal most used. It reflected her perfectly, without any distortion, which was what Lucia cared about.

Still smiling, Jaelin answered Lucia’s question, “I’m just trying to keep you honest. It’s bad enough that you can read minds. If you start lying to yourself about what people are thinking, you’ll drive yourself mad.”

Lucia had finally confided in someone about her abilities. She trusted her slave girl more than any of her Novar friends. Considering all the time they spent together--even though Jaelin had a tendency to disappear some evenings--if she hadn’t told Jaelin, the girl would have found out on her own sooner or later. Jaelin had been intensely curious and more than a little frightened. Thankfully, Lucia’s abilities didn’t frighten her as much as what would happen if the Domini found out.

The brazier warming the room, made necessary by the unusually cool summer night, drew Lucia’s eyes for some reason. The bits of flame dancing among the red hot coals looked more alive than any fire she could remember. They seemed to fill her vision at the moment, but she answered Jaelin anyway. It didn’t take much concentration to talk to Jaelin, not in comparison to what it took to talk to Aulus or any of the other people around whom she had to be careful. “I told you that I can’t read minds. I just know what people feel, not what they think. Right now you’re amused by my dishonesty, and bored, and irritated, probably about brushing my hair. Now you’re starting to feel uncomfortable, and a bit surprised in spite of yourself.”

“I can’t hide anything from you, can I?” Jaelin said lightly, but she was trying to suppress real worry. Lucia started to wonder what secrets the red-haired girl hid, then squashed her curiosity. Everyone had secrets and no one liked people prying into their feelings. Lucia’s ability was starting to make her as suspicious as Aulus, even when the conflicting emotions she sensed held no malice. No one was so simple as to have simple emotions. She let her eyes and thoughts focus once again on the brazier.

“Sit still,” Jaelin said. “Well, if you’re leaving, I guess we’re done for the night.”

Not until the words registered did Lucia realize she had left her chair to move closer to the brazier. She knelt in front of the shallow bronze bowl on its small tripod, watching the occasional flame emerge from the coals. She could almost understand the fire. Marjori had once told her that flame was the embodiment of change, of one thing becoming something else. Right now, she could see that, make out the process in a complexity that Marjori could never understand. The substance of the charcoal broke and then merged to become other things, giving off heat and light as mere waste. But there was more. The flame had a life of its own as it danced. Not shapeless, but shapechanging. Not mindless, but single-minded, so pure in its purpose that nothing else mattered. It was nothing, just a visible sign of an invisible act, but it contained everything. The flame could draw the whole world into that dance. She reached out her hand.

“Lucia, what are you doing?” said a frightened, distant voice.

Her hand caught the flame, joined the flame. Became the flame. A living dance of light and heat, breaking and merging, now stood in the place of her hand. Change, to use Marjori’s wholly inadequate word. Yet no other word could sum it up.

“Lucia!” the voice was sharp and terrified, and the fear drove through Lucia’s sense of the flame. She blinked, and realized that her hand was on fire. She snatched it away from the fire, and though the hand didn’t feel any pain, she cried out anyway, a fearful whimper rather than a scream. Jaelin had pulled the blanket from Lucia’s bed and was wrapping it around her arm to smother the flame. Smoke curled from the rough wool blanket.

“Lucia, what were you-- Why did-- Are you all right?” Anger, fear, and bewilderment made Jaelin’s mind as much a confusion as her words.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Lucia said. The words came without thinking, surprising her with their truth.

“No, you’re not! How could you be after...?” Jaelin couldn’t finish. Her eyes shining, she unwrapped Lucia’s hand to take a look. The blanket fell from the slave girl’s fingers, her fear surging even stronger as she saw Lucia’s hand whole and undamaged. “I don’t... I don’t understand. Lucia, what did you do?”

“I don’t understand either,” Lucia said, flexing her hand. It did not hurt at all, but it did feel different, as if it were not quite the hand she remembered.

Jaelin gave her a suffocating hug. “Don’t you ever do something like that again!” The tall slave girl was fighting back tears. She was worry, happiness, and awe, all compressed into one tall young woman. “Did you know you could do that?”

“No,” said Lucia, pushing Jaelin away. She knew that she should be frightened too, but somehow that didn’t seem to register.

“If the Domini found out about it, they’d kill you. You know that, don’t you?”

Maybe the fear was starting to register now. “Yeah, I suppose they would. Do you think they can do stuff like what I did with the fire?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Wow, what did I do?”

“I don’t know,” Jaelin said. “And who knows what the Domini capable of? I think sometimes that they don’t show off their abilities because they don’t want us to know their limits.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Aulus.”

Jaelin laughed a little, even as her unshed tears caused her to sniffle. Lucia could not make out any distinct emotion from that whirl of feelings other than a small hint of fondness. “Maybe I am. He’s right to be suspicious of them. You should be careful yourself. Don’t ever do something like that where one of them could see. Don’t do it if you think a Dominus is within a mile of you. It would be best if you never did anything like this again.”

“I try to avoid them,” Lucia said. “But they aren’t avoiding me.” One of them still visited her father’s morning audience every day. It was a different one, and he didn’t hide his thoughts from her. His suspicion and revulsion were even worse than the blank wall she had encountered in the first Dominus.

“That’s why it’s so important that you be careful,” Jaelin said, wiping her eyes. She was calm and thinking clearly now, which meant she was now using her older sister voice. “You’re being watched.”

“But why? If they know something, what are they waiting for?”

“Maybe they only suspect. If you’re careful, they might leave you alone.”

“I’ll try,” Lucia said.



Lucia pretended she was still sleeping as Jaelin badgered her to get up. Unfortunately, her thin blankets provided little protection once her slave girl started poking. With a groan, and a few grumbled words about slaves who offended their mistress’s dignity, she rolled out of her narrow, wool-filled mattress. Once up, there was nowhere to hide in her tiny room while Jaelin hurried her through dressing. After cleaning her mouth, she dabbed on a bit of perfume while her slave girl passed her a small jar of powder. Unlike most Novar women, she followed her mother’s example and did not wear much make-up--only as much as Avla let her get away with. It took time and Jaelin’s help to satisfy herself with enough make-up to look presentable, but not so much as to upset her mother. Once finished, she took as much time as she dared brushing her hair out in front of her mirror, then hurried to the atrium while Jaelin went to get breakfast. Stifling her envy along with a yawn, Lucia admitted to herself that she would have had time for breakfast if she had gotten up just a little bit earlier.

Her father and Aulus waited for her in the atrium. Aulus didn’t receive visitors himself yet, but later in the day he would attend the morning audience of his mentor, Meniar. Since Marcus Principius wielded more power than Aulus’s mentor could ever hope for, he received his more important visitors while Meniar was an important visitor to someone else.

Lucia settled into her seat, simply nodding to her father and Aulus, who were in quiet conversation. It had died down as soon as she had come into the room. She could feel the concern and subterfuge rippling through them, as if she couldn’t have told just by looking at them. It had the feel of a secret that they thought would worry her, but Lucia could guess no more than that. For all her life her family had kept secrets from her, why should it bother her now? Just because she now had the ability to find out more didn’t mean that she should. She hadn’t had much luck uncovering secrets anyway. What had they been talking about?

With some reluctance, she waited for the audience to begin. Every day it seemed less of a privilege and more of a burden. The drudgery of it was a minor nuisance next to the real danger the Dominus represented. She had vaguely known that there might be some danger before, but since revealing her secret to Jaelin, she had heard all sorts of stories from her slave girl. Jaelin freely admitted she didn’t know the truth of any of the stories, and might not have shared them at all if Lucia hadn’t insisted. In the end, Lucia had no more idea of what the Domini could do than before. Changing shape and talking to animals sounded at least as plausible as destroying whole cities and raising the dead. Rumors of their purpose gave her even more to worry about. Lucia had already heard the old stories about hiding some great secret or serving some dark god. Ridding the world of any magic but their own had surprised Lucia, but she had to agree with Jaelin that it made the most sense. It explained why the Domini appeared wherever there were rumors of magical beasts, and why the beasts disappeared soon afterwards. It might even explain why they had taken Victor and other boys like him. Lucia didn’t know whether her brother had possessed any magic, but if she did, then he might have also. The thought further whittled away any hope that her brother still lived, so she stayed away from it. Jaelin neither believed the rumors nor disbelieved them, thinking all of them possible, and most of them unlikely. To her, they all came down to one thing: Lucia needed to be careful. If the Domini had come for Victor, they might come for her next. Everyone knew that the Domini only took boys, but they wouldn’t simply let girls whom they knew possessed magic go free. Lucia may have once thought that a little danger would be exciting, but she didn’t find anything exhilarating about fear. It made her throat dry and her hands sweaty. She swallowed her fear, forced herself to show none of it even as the Dominus entered the atrium.

The new Dominus frightened her worse than the old one had. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the stories had given her more reason to fear the Domini, or perhaps it was that she could sense his cold hunger and suspicion. Today a new emotion suffused him, weaving through everything else, heightening and focusing his emotions. He waited with barely contained eagerness, and the anticipation made her breath catch.

Lucia barely noticed the rest of the audience; her eyes kept wandering back to the Dominus. Throughout the long parade of petitioners, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, only the Dominus held her attention. Even the lecherous young poet distracted her for only a moment. He read a portion of his poem, a lengthy ode to her father’s greatness. He had devoted quite a few lines to the Principius family, briefly mentioning Marcus Principius’s “warrior sons” and the political acuity of the “young Aulus Principius.” An embarrassingly ample section sang the beauty of Lucia Principia, “a rose with midnight hair.” The object of the poem’s profuseness cringed at the horrid combination of colors conjured up by those words. Marcus Principius showed no sign of either amusement or offense as he allowed the poet to finish, then sent him off with a few choice suggestions. Lucia might have looked very much like a rose with midnight hair after that, but she couldn’t seem to think clearly enough to care. The young man’s hungry brown eyes were weak and innocent compared to the ravenous hunger rolling from the black-robed monster.

Lucia would not have known when Aulus left except that he came behind her chair and gripped her shoulder on his way out. She would have jumped if he hadn’t held her down. Leaning forward, he whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, he won’t try anything before nightfall.” With that, and a kiss to the top of her head, he left, walking within inches of the Dominus without acknowledging his presence. If Aulus meant to be reassuring, Lucia hoped that her brother never had reason to frighten her. It did not surprise her that Aulus had noticed her fear of the Dominus, and it should have encouraged her that he also suspected something, and likely had some plan in mind. Knowing Aulus, that plan would prove needlessly complicated and ultimately unworkable. Worse, she knew that her brother was wrong. As usual, he didn’t know as much as he thought he did, and he couldn’t feel the emotions seething within the Dominus. That man had no intention of waiting for tonight.

Sitting through the rest of the audience was torture. She fidgeted, played with her skirts, traced patterns on her chair. Fortunately, her father was too occupied with a couple of farmers arguing over property lines to notice her lack of decorum. Every time she tried to keep still, she found her eyes drifting back to the Dominus, her whole body going cold as her hands began to tremble. As soon as Marcus Principius called an end to the audience, Lucia bolted from her chair towards her bedroom, leaving her father and the Dominus staring at one another in the atrium.

She found Jaelin waiting for her outside her bedroom. Another of the festivals Marjori found so exasperating had given them both the day off, and they had planned to go out. Lucia spoke quickly, “Get some bags, anything that can carry clothes. We’re going.”

“Going? Where?” Jaelin asked.

“I don’t know, but we have to leave. The Dominus... Just get the bags! And don’t talk to anyone.”

Jaelin might as well have been reading Lucia’s mind. She understood, certainly, and the fear and worry that accompanied that understanding did not overwhelm her judgement as she hurried off to do what Lucia wanted. Lucia hurried into her bedroom, thankful for Jaelin’s loyalty and determination, but most of all for her good sense. Jaelin’s mistress knelt in front of the small chest containing her clothes and frantically began to pile up all that she thought she might need. For what? She still had no idea where she would go. Where could she go? Lucia couldn’t think past getting away from this place. It wasn’t safe here. The only person who could possibly protect her here was her father, and Marcus Principius had not protected Victor.

Stripping off her dress with the thought of changing into something less conspicuous, Lucia noticed the untidy pile of clothes on the floor. Red, yellow, and blue dresses lay in a heap. This wouldn’t do. How could she know what to pack if she didn’t know where she was going? She didn’t know where to go or how to get there, and she was crouching on the floor in an undertunic, and the Dominus was coming for her, and now she’d have to refold her clothes, and she just didn’t have time--

The door to her room opened, and she turned her head, relieved that her slave girl had arrived. Jaelin could plan ahead much better than she, maybe she had some idea about where to run--

Lucia would have cried out if she could have made a sound through her suddenly tight throat. The Dominus took in the scene with a glance, annoyed and amused at her obvious preparations for departure. A villain in some story would have filled the silence with some sarcastic comment like “Going somewhere?” The Dominus just raised his hand, and Lucia forgot all about screaming once the ringing started in her ears.

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This chapter is a 4,323 word long excerpt of a 90,110 word novel.