Free The Fire Mages' Daughter by Pauline M. Ross Page B

against our wills. I determined to find the answer, although I wasn’t sure how.
    ~~~~~~
    Millan and Tisha still lived in the mages’ house. They’d only planned to stay for a few months, but when the new baby arrived, they’d decided to stay on in Kingswell. To be honest, I think they’d found Zendronia too dull for words, and they were glad to escape from it.
    It was such a small town, so confined and limiting it was hard to breathe, sometimes. Yet for me it was the centre of my universe, the sun around which I revolved, because it contained my mother. Some nights I woke in terror that I would never see her again, and then I would prowl around my room restlessly until the early bells sounded.
    But I had a plan again, and perhaps this time it would work.
    I liked going to see Millan and Tisha. They were a little bubble of normality in the refined air of the Drashona’s court. For a short time I could step away from the receptions and ceremonies, the feasts and formality. I would sit on the floor and play with the baby and pretend I was just a regular Bennamorian again, with no possibility of ever becoming Drashona.
    “There’s another grand ball coming up, I hear,” Tisha said to me, not long after I’d come back from the visit to the Blood Clans. “Who is it for this time? Another noble wedding?”
    “No, it’s the Speaker from the Port Holdings. There’s a new trade agreement, so she’s bringing quite a big group with her this time. Did you see them last time they were here? They’re quite civilised, although they dress oddly. It’s all elaborate hair for the women and strangely shaped beards for the men.”
    “No, I’d just had Asharla. But you saw them, Lathran, didn’t you? You went to see the procession, if I remember rightly. And Millan was on duty for one or two of the events.”
    Lathran still lived in the mages’ house with his parents, but he had grown up better than anyone had expected. Certainly better than I had expected, at any rate. When he’d turned thirteen and become an adult, he’d gone for training in the guards. Not the mage guards, either. It was his ambition to join the Elite guards who attended the Drashona and the senior nobles, and defended Kingswell itself.
    The guards had been good for him, absorbing all that energy that had so irritated me when he was a boy, teaching him how to mix in society and filling out the scrawny child’s body with manly muscles. He wasn’t exactly handsome, and he would never be terribly bright, but he would do for my purposes.
    His chief advantage was that, rather sweetly, he had fallen spectacularly in love with me. This had seemed like nothing more than an embarrassment, especially the poetry-reciting stage, but now it was very convenient.
    “I went down to the western gate to watch them arrive,” Lathran said with a shrug, his cheeks reddening. He always blushed when he had to talk to me. “Couldn’t see a thing. I’d have seen more by looking out of the window here.”
    “Would you like to see them a bit more closely this time?” I said. “I can take a friend along to the ceremonies.”
    His eyes goggled at me, and he flushed as red as a blood apple. “Oh… I… That would be… Which ceremony?”
    “Which would you like to go to?”
    “Oh, the grand ball. I have a formal uniform for that type of thing. It’s quite splendid. I should like to be able to wear it.”
    “The grand ball it is, then.”
    Tisha threw me a surprised look. “Thank you, Drina. You’re very kind. It’ll be so good for him to see all the nobles in their finery, and how they behave. You make sure you watch and learn, Lathran.”
    He was terrified, of course. Even when we sat to eat or to watch the entertainments, his back was spear-straight. When we wandered through the crowds greeting this one or that, he stood precisely one pace behind, giving me due precedence. It was quite amusing to watch him staring, wide-eyed, at the milling crowds in their silks