Free Children of the Elementi by Ceri Clark Page B

day. The Council had been advisers to the throne for decades. One adviser she believed had even served under the first Aras - her fiancé’s grandfather.
    From her vantage point in the corner, Shenella had an uninhibited view of the entire room. No one paid any attention to her sitting by the doorway. It was as if she didn’t exist to them. If they thought about her at all, it was probably like the throne that Aras sat on each and every day she mused. There, important because he needed something to sit on but in itself not worth thinking about. Part of her of course was grateful. She wasn’t stupid. People disappeared or died regularly in the court for being noticed. She had no discernible power as the Magi recognized it, so she was not considered a threat. There were benefits to being invisible but it did irk her sometimes!
    Ecu moved away from Marta and began to work his way around the different factions in the room. She began to notice it yesterday. First, he spoke to the head of the merchants’ union, the lowlanders. The islanders were next and now he was talking to the Ambassador to the Merpeople.
    Although it was not recognized or even visible by the Magi she did have some of the old power. And now , she thought, this was the time to use it. Shenella sidled up to the table nearest Ecu. The combination of her status as being the future consort to the Emperor and her power to stop people noticing her was a potent one. She imagined a shield protecting her from people’s minds. Either one makes me invisible, she thought with a wry smile. Maybe next year when we are actually married I will be someone. She shivered at the thought. Yes, but at what price?
    She was close enough now to study the Ambassador’s features. She had never seen this man before. One of the servants had told her earlier this was his first time in Naven. He looked just like anyone else in the room but Shenella knew better. The only visible difference to the casual observer was his hair. It had a strange greeny-blue tinge to it. His face was ordinary, grey eyes, aquiline nose and a balanced jaw.
    The way he held himself though showed her he was younger than most of the other ambassadors. He seemed confident but there was an undertone of nervousness about him. In his twenties she guessed. Merpeople were rarely seen outside their own domain. They coexisted peacefully with the islanders, spending most of their time in their underwater cities before having to go back to land.
    All the other Ambassadors were probably in their second to third life cycle. One of the perks of being or helping the Magi was mind transference to another’s body when the original reached old age. It was the reason they were all so good-looking she supposed. There was no reason why they would choose ugly people to take over.
    I wonder what happens to the people they were, she wondered. Are they still in there? Or was their consciousness pushed out to be eaten by the Gods? She shivered. At least she would never suffer that fate. Without warning the Ambassador looked her way. He stared straight into her eyes and gave her a small smile. He winked.
    Startled, she averted her eyes. He could see her. Mechanically she picked up a sweet cake from one of the silver platters beside her. One of the first warnings she had heard when she arrived a few years before had been that it was unwise to eat the food laid out in the Great Hall. The funny thing was they all thought it was poisoned. Stupid, each person thought that one of the others had poisoned the food so no one bothered to do it. Besides she had seen one of the castle’s tame crows eating one of the cakes earlier and it would have been dead by now if it was tainted. She took a bite. Ugh, it tasted like sawdust. The cooks obviously didn’t bother to make their sweets tasty for the same reason.
    She tuned back into their conversation.
    “Sori, you have to understand. The Elementi are nearly all dead. Soon the entire civilized world