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All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Prologue
“Tethina! Not so rough. You’re going to hurt him.”
A small girl in a grey homespun dress looked up at the sound of her mother’s voice and begrudgingly released her playmate’s head. “Sorry,” she called back, “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Dasen sat up next to her. His head looked like a disheveled nest, as much grass as hair. The same grass generously marked his simple woolen smock, stretching from his elbow past his shoulder onto his freckled face. A smile erupted through the streaks of green. “It’s okay, Mrs. Galbridge. We’re playing bandits and rangers. I’m the bandit.”
“Well, I think it’s time come in for dinner. And try to be nice for once.” Dasen’s mother spoke this time. Her voice remained firm even as she held back a smile.
“Can we get Papa?” Tethina asked with a longing look toward the log shack standing near the first trees of the surrounding forest.
“Not right now,” her mother called back. “After you wash up and set the table.” The clang of a hammer striking metal rose from the shack, nearly stole the words as defiance crossed Tethina’s face.
Her mother prepared her volume and tone for reprisal. Dasen saved her the need. “Last one there’s a sheep’s bottom.” He sprinted toward the house, taking advantage of Tethina’s indecision to get a few steps of a lead – it wouldn’t be enough.
Tethina pushed past him before he reached the first step of the two-story plank house that the Galbridge family called home. “Sheep’s bottom and what comes out of it,” she called as she pounded up the steps.
The women looked up from the pile of roughly woven shirts and canvas pants they had been mending. Tethina’s mother gasped – Dasen’s suppressed another laugh. “Tethina! Ladies do not talk like that! You apologize to our guests this instant!”
“Sorry,” Tethina mumbled.
“I was going to make an apple cake tonight,” her mother began. The children’s faces brightened. “But I don’t think dirty mouths like yours deserve treats like that.”
“But, Mama!” Tethina cried.
“Don’t but me, young lady. When you start acting like a lady, you can eat like a lady. If you are going to act like a Sylian savage, then that is how you will eat. Now, both of you, get in there and clean up.”
Dasen and Tethina moped for a second then recovered their enthusiasm and raced through the door, leaving it to crash behind them.
“And no roughhousing!” Tethina’s mother yelled after them. “I don’t know what we are going to do about that one. You’d think she’s a boy the way she acts.”
“Oh, Marin, you were the same way when you were her age, and you turned out alright.”
“I was not!” Marin gasped and threw down the leather vest she was sewing. “You were the troublemaker.”
“And you were right there with me.”
“Well, as long as we’re clear about who the instigator was.” They both laughed.
“I bet Burke will be upset that the kids cost him an apple cake,” Kira said as she pulled another sock from the pile she was darning in preparation for the coming winter.
“He wasn’t going to get a cake anyway. Not unless you’re hiding some sugar in that shop of yours.”
“Don’t I wish? Ipid will hardly let me use it when we do have some. ‘Can’t be eating the profits, you know.’ The old curmudgeon.”
“Well, maybe he’ll have some luck in the city this time.”
“With those silly saw blades? I’ll be happy if he just remembers to buy stock for the shop.” Kira tied off a stitch and bit the thread. “You know I don’t care that they spend their time on that nonsense, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for anyone to give them real money for any of it.”
“And the more time they’re out their building their contraptions, the less time they’re in mucking up the house.”
They both laughed again until a child’s voice interrupted. “Mama, what’s for dinner? Can Dasen stay?”
Marin did not respond. She turned to Kira. “Sounds like I should check on dinner. You and Dasen are staying, right?”
“If you don’t mind. And maybe I can find enough sugar floating around. . . .”
The women were gathering their sewing to go inside when a howl of wind slashed through the still evening air. The blast came out of nowhere and hit so hard that they were thrown against the house. Their hair and dresses flailed around them. Pebbles pelted their faces and arms. The piles of clothing billowed into a vortex then scattered across the grass before them.
“What in the name of the Order was that?” Kira exclaimed when the wind had passed. She worked to straighten her skirt and gather her scattered hair.
“I don’t . . . .” Marin’s words were cut short by the sound of the smithy shaking from the force of the mysterious wind. Shingles flew, boards rattled, and the faded sign swung violently on its metal rings. Finally, there was a crack like thunder followed by a hair-raising crash. Metal reverberated on metal far louder and more clamorous than the steady beat that normally provided the metronome for their days. Too stunned to move, Marin and Kira could only watch with racing hearts as the white streamer rising from the chimney was replaced by black clouds boiling from the sides. Finally, an anguished cry split the second of silence and shook the women from their daze.
Screaming in unison, they lifted their dresses and ran across the grass. Their voices resonated through the nearby village ensuring that someone would bring aid, but they did not wait for it. Kira arrived a step before her friend and threw open the door. She was greeted by acrid smoke and the furnace heat of a raging fire rising up the walls to the dry wooden shingles above. The smoke scalded her eyes, filling them with water, but they soon cleared enough for her to find Burke lying motionless beneath the girth of a beam that had been knocked loose by the wind.
Holding the hem of her dress to her mouth, she ran into the conflagration with Marin on her heels. As the door rattled shut behind them, the roof of the small structure shuddered. It collapsed a second later in a rain of fire that was the last thing either of them would ever see.
And across the grass, on the long wooden porch, stood a girl in a dress that did not quite reach her ankles. Her auburn hair was tied in braids that hung to her chest. She watched her mother rush into the fire, saw the roof collapse, and screamed. She screamed and screamed, unable to look away as the fire consumed everything she knew.