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When she came to, she was lying in a bed and someone was tending to her injuries. She later discovered only a few hours had passed, but Isla felt as though she had slept through the entire night. The arrowhead had been dislodged from her thigh. Now it lay in a bowl by her bedside. In a shallow pool of blood. Nothing compared to how her bloodings had been. Nothing compared to everything she had been through.

Had it all been a dream?

'You're awake.' This voice came from the foot of her bed. Isla craned her head in time to see Rajini Chei approaching. 'Thank you for coming so late, Master Mahogra. I will call for you come morning shall we require your further administrations.'

The therapeut bowed low and exited, leaving Isla in the rajini's sole company. Her recollection of the past few hours were a haze. Something about fire and smoke, and an endless tunnel ...

'How are you feeling?'

Confused? 'I ... where am I?'

'You are in my estate. My son's bedchamber, to be precise.'

'But ... why ... what have you done to Tam Mai?'

'I have done nothing. My servants, however, have bathed her, clothed her, fed her. They should now be preparing her for the journey you must soon undertake.'

'What are you talking about?' Isla rubbed her temples. Nothing made sense.

'I've arranged for you to be listed under my employment.'

Is she talking about the offer she's made to me? At a time like this? 'You're out of your mind.'

'Lilja Shapor has been tasked to seek a cure for an ailment that has rendered my maid mentally incapacitated,' continued the rajini. 'An endeavour I expect to last many turns. Years, even. That way, by the time you return to Surikhand – if you choose to do so – things here would have calmed.'

'Calmed?' Of course. Two rajinis have been killed.

'Already the dead man in your chamber rouses attention.' Rajini Chei tilted her head, her eyes turning an azure blue and glazing as though her mind had drifted elsewhere. 'Thus far your chambermate has convinced the palace guards you were attacked. They fear you have been carried off by another, and killed.'

'How are you –'

'More importantly is the attack on Amarin's estate,' Rajini Chei's eyes returned to their faded grey. She rose and drifted to the window, looking out at something Isla could not see. 'Of course it will be a while before they excavate the labyrinths and uncover any remains. But a missing girl and a missing rajini ... they will try to seek a connection.'

'You ... you're helping me escape?'

'And your sister.'

'But ... why?'

'It is the least I can do, after everything.'

'I don't understand.'

'Nor do I expect that of you.' Rajini Chei sighed. 'All this time. She had been kept here. Right under my nose.'

'Wait.' Isla forced herself to sit. 'I never said she was my sister.'

For a moment the rajini stood so still, Isla thought she would not answer. Then she pulled something from her wide sleeves and approached the bed. 'I prepared this just to answer your questions. As I said, I do not expect you to understand.'

It was a parchment, and it unfolded to an exact replica of the royal ancestry Isla had poured over in the athenaeum.

No, not exact. The names on this one had not been burnt off upon death. There was Maharaj Nor, just under Maharaj Kiaan's name, and even above still, Rajini Dhvani.

She wanted to ask, but a small part of Isla already suspected what it was for. Her stomach lurched as she traced Rajini Chei on the royal tree, and the son whose name was there entirely unburnt.

'He renounced his title and departed from Kathedra, but we found ways of corresponding.'

Isla barely heard the rajini. 'Alain is not an unusual name.'

'His children took his wife's name. That is unusual, and took many strings to accomplish. Of course, as all baseborn, his wife will never be written into the ancestry, and following his renunciation, neither were his children. I myself was only included by virtue of being the Maha Rama's consort.'

Her father was a maharaj. Renunciation or no – 'It can't be. That's impossible.'

'I recognised him when I saw you – when Huu saw you – up in the athenaeum that night. The only way a mother could recognise parts of her son. Of course, I was not certain. You played your charade.'

Perhaps a little too well.

'As such, I had Huu watch you. You were always careful. Alain would have been proud.'

Isla twisted in her seat, the parchment crumpling where she gripped it. 'My family left just so I wouldn't be brought in as a high-ranking theurgist when you could have just ... taken me under your house as you're doing now! You could've prevented any of this long before it ever began! My parents died trying to leave Surikhand!'

Rajini Chei lifted her chin in defiance, but Isla saw the wetness in her eyes. 'You think Alain fled merely to spite the conscription? It is not simply a matter of your high rank. Not even simply the fact you are an early-bloomer. You are the product of a royal- and baseborn union – two generations over, at that – and to have this much power ... to have theurgy at all ...'

It suddenly dawned upon Isla. 'I should not exist ...'

'On the contrary. You have not been the only one.'

'Impossible. The Fourth Law of Saegyr–'

'Of course it is rare. Extremely so. It may be the others before you were not half as strong, it may be they were. We will never know.'

'You know.'

'I know rumours.' The rajini corrected. 'And then only because I'd been looking. Dinar's mother suspected him of having a hiccup. The next week, both were dead. That was eleven years ago. Two years ago, Lalita was found floating in the river behind their home. Their stableboy said he had seen her conjuring fire nights before ... he went missing not long since.'

Isla did not recognise the names but quickly found them in the royal pedigree. Both were descendants of the Maha Rama through his eldest daughter: the first a great-grandson, and the other yet another generation down. Both having an unnamed, baseborn parent.

'And Nor, only a few turns of the month past,' said Rajini Chei. 'I've not heard any rumours of his budding theurgy, but I would not be surprised if they existed. There are others before them, others to come, and others whom surely I have missed.'

'And you never thought to share your suspicions?'

'To whom?' Rajini Chei challenged. 'The murders are investigated often enough. Sometimes a perpetrator is even brought to justice. But it is never the head of the serpent caught; merely its tail. I did not know who was behind it all. It could may as well have been Judhistir himself.'

It could still be the Maha Rama himself. Rajini Amarin was dead now, but who was to say she had not also been merely a tail?

Isla folded the parchment and placed it on the bed. She grew sick simply looking at it. At the lie her parents had kept from them. 'So what now?'

'What you must do now is continue living your life as Lilja Shapor.'

'What an absurd idea –'

'You've said it yourself. Your very existence undermines Saegyr's Law. If people knew about you, they would begin to question. If the Laws were wrong about the importance of purity; if it was wrong about royal- and baseborn unions; what else could it be wrong about?'

Isla started to argue, but stopped herself. She could see it now, the way Rajini Amarin must have seen it. It was not simply a matter of keeping the royal bloodline pure. It was also a matter of keeping the royal bloodline at the seat of power.

Ever since the Age of Abandon, kings and queens have ruled the realms – their line deemed the only powerful enough to lead. It is canon. Just as a barren generation was supposed to be canon.

Rajini Chei tried to appease her. 'Your father knew how crucial it was. I'd always shared with him my suspicions. It was the reason he renounced his title and tried to keep your royal heritage hidden.'

'Not well enough, apparently.'

'We did what we could. When your theurgy continued to grow, your father knew it was only a matter of time before you would be taken to Kathedra. He knew they would then find you out. He arranged the papers for you to leave – it was inexplicably ill luck you were waylaid on your journey.'

Isla was quiet. 'What happened to them?'

'It is in the past.'

'I need to know.'

'They were found. In the woods of Arikit.' For all her composure, the rajini's lips trembled when she spoke. 'Chani in her carriage, Alain ... my son ... a distance in the trees.'

Isla's eyes burned with heat. Whatever remorse, whatever shame she felt after what she had done to Nagendra and his men was gone.

'All their belongings gone, even their papers. That is why it was a while before I ...'

Nagendra had their papers. He had known who they were.

'By the time I heard, Tam Mai was long gone.'

He would've been able to sell her for a fortune; the daughter of a renounced maharaj. 'Was that how Amarin caught wind of my existence?'

'For that, I have no answers.'

No. Isla twisted her sheets in frustration. Only Tamma has the answers to that. 'The lengths she went through ...' That reminded her. Thunder jolted through her body when her feet met the floor. 'Kiet! The maharaj, I mean. He was poisoned. His mother's own doing – but he isn't dead. She used a plant of some sort, which she grows in her menagerie. He needs the antidote.'

'I'm sure Amarin would have prepared –'

'She's dead, and Kiet will be, too, unless it's administered soon.'

Rajini Chei's lips stretched thin as a line of string. 'His mother attempted to kill you.'

'He is not his mother. Kiet had no hand in any of this.' If anything, the poison proved it.

'Very well. I will ensure the late rajini's house is made aware of this antidote. But you will tell me of anyone whom you came upon whilst you infiltrated Amarin's estate.'

'No one alive to tell the tale. No – there is one – a servant, who showed me to the menagerie.'

'How did she look?'

Isla stared at the rajini. She knew what would be done to the girl if she told. But she's seen my face. She had known my power. 'Like everyone else.' She resigned. 'Brown eyes, dark hair. Tall, though. Much more than me. Had more than one snaggle in her teeth. Madja was her name.'

'She will be found.'

Isla snatched a glass of water by her bedside and drowned her guilt.

'Understand,' continued the rajini. 'You are my servant only by title. What you do with your freedom is your own choice to make. You will find your valuables under the bed. There are false papers there for your sister. I've appointed two amongst my most trusted of men to accompany you to Biripor. From there you are to take the first voyage out. You have travel permits that will allow you anywhere throughout the four continents.'

Anywhere. Home. She could see Noi once more.

A gentle tap interrupted from the window, and Rajini Chei slid open the glass pane. Huu flew in to rest atop a longcase clock, its eyes wide and forlorn.

'Is it truly your bondmate, then?' asked Isla.

'He is.' The rajini smiled as she moved to pet the owl. 'Only another testimony as to how people reject what they are not accustomed to. The idea that an unblooded, at my age no less, could hold a bond as strong as ours ... it's easier for them to believe wicked tales. I'm sure you've heard some that has been said of me.'

It reminded Isla of something, and the smile melted off her face. 'Where's Pepper?'

'If you mean your salamander, it has been irrepressible since we've arrived.'

'Where is he?'

'My daemolog is taking care of it. It's for the best.'

'Where –'

'In the adjacent chamber. You cannot walk, let alone –'

But Isla was already running – or trying to – out the chamber and into the next. She was met with the scent of burning candles and dhupa, with which the room was entirely decked. The windows were shut, curtains draped over them, and if any furniture once belonged in the chamber, they had all been removed in favour of a small, silver cage that now stood in its heart.

'Pepper!' Isla ignored her rupturing wound and limped on to meet her salamander.

A man stopped her before she came too close. But for his red and black cloak, he was not what Isla imagined a daemolog would look. He was old with whitened hair and a travelling cane to aid his bent back, and when he spoke, Isla decided he belonged more in a library. 'Not another step further, or I will have to recast the runes.'

'You've locked him up!'

'Hardly matters – your lizard will be in the epps in five minutes or so.'

'For the last time.' Isla grabbed him by the shoulders. 'Salamanders – are not – fucking – lizards!'

The old man yelped as she cast him aside, stopping only when Rajini Chei entered. 'My Honourable Consort,' he grovelled. 'Please, you must tell her to allow me do my work.'

'I only want to say goodbye!' Isla snapped at him. She wrenched the cage open and, having scooped the salamander into her hands, kicked it aside. 'And there is no need for confinements! Pepper is well-trained.'

The salamander chirped and scuttled in Isla's hands. It was burning – not a normal temperature, even for a fire element. Isla tried to calm it, stroking it gently with a finger. She had never seen it so frightened before.

'He's spent countless years here – in the mortal realm.'

'It will be fine,' said the daemolog, suddenly behind her. 'No matter how long you've been away, when home summons, you answer its call.'

'But what will become of him there? He will never survive the epps!'

'The epperstrom is not like our world. It's only unsafe to those who don't belong.'

'Isn't there a way we could just fix him?'

The daemolog seemed to waver at her plea. 'This isn't a disease. It cannot be cured. Your daemon has aged too long in our mortal world. It needs to rest.'

Isla turned at the rajini's hand on her shoulder, and took the handkerchief that was offered.

'We will give you some time, but it cannot be long,' said Rajini Chei. She nodded at the daemolog, and they both left Isla to say her farewells.

She dabbed her eyes and bade the salamander a last goodbye. It seemed with every passing second, its temperature only rose. But she lifted Pepper to her lips, embraced its heat for a final time, and placed the element gently down where the cage once sat.

When she once again lifted it to wipe her eyes, the handkerchief was singed from Pepper's touch.

The damn old man's right. Kiet was right. Pep needs to go. Isla steeled herself as the rajini and her daemolog returned. 'Don't forget me.'

Pepper scuttled in its circle, waiting quietly, large eyes blinking as the old man etched his runes. Smoke pooled from the dhupa, emerging with the daemolog's rising incantation. Soon the entire chamber was covered in its ascending fog. But unlike the dhupa Kiet had burnt those many months ago, these filled the air with a soothing aroma. The warm pull of a hearth and tea brewing beside. The heavy weight of sleep, kissing Isla's eyes ...

Darkness clouded Pepper's circle like a night of long rest. For a fleeting second Isla saw the slightest spark of fire, and in it, a pair of dark eyes.

But the second passed, and Pepper blinked away.

     
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