The palace was claustrophobic. Stifling, hot, crowded. It always had always been so, for as long as Jaymi could remember, and he supposed it always would.

He could walk the many corridors and halls for hours without meeting another soul bar the servants, yet he still felt as if he was constantly being watched or followed. And when he did meet someone, they would hastily avert their eyes, bowing or curtsying low and murmuring, ‘M’lord Jaymi,’ as he passed by. He hated it. He longed for adventure, to be out there exploring the vast wide world, experiencing life for what it should be. Instead, he was waited on hand and foot, servants dressing him and bringing him his meals, unable to go for a walk in the grounds without a squad of silent shadows stalking him, unable to meet a girl without someone whispering of political reasons and future heirs. Many dreamt of having the life Prince Jaymi Delwario had: money, respect, a life of luxury. He dreamt of the opposite. He wanted to travel beyond the walls of the city, live the life of a nomad or peddler, see the beauty and wonders he had mostly only ever read about. Sure, he’d travelled across Kaveren with his father from time to time. Sure, he’d been allowed to fight in a few minor skirmishes. But that had only been in recent years, since … Well, needless to say it didn’t help that, despite being the firstborn son of the king, he constantly felt like an outcast within his own family, a freak in one of those travelling shows about which he’d heard tell of. 

He knew he shouldn’t complain. He had been entrusted to act as High-Prince of Kaveren while his father was at war with Suatar, running the kingdom in his father’s stead, making choices he knew he would have to make once he was king himself. Yet he continually felt that something was missing in his life. Something beyond ruling the greatest kingdom on Dalenharn.

‘My Lord Jaymi,’ a voice said in a hoarse, whisper from behind him.

Jaymi turned to see Master Farinsworth shuffling up the corridor, donned in heavy grey robes that trailed behind him. The man was wizened, almost bent double, with wispy hair and thick bushy eyebrows as white as linen. Why Jaymi’s father kept him on as Master of Servants he would never understand. Let the old man retire and die in peace, rather than shuffling around these halls until he drops. 

‘My Lord Jaymi,’ the old man repeated as he drew level with the youth. ‘Your presence is needed in the Hall of Thrones.’ He panted the words, hands on wobbly knees. ‘Surely you have not forgotten again. They are waiting for you, Your Grace.’

Jaymi nodded with a heavy sigh. No, he hadn’t forgotten; he was simply dragging his feet, reluctant to have the nobles and commoners staring at him like an animal in a cage. He motioned for Master Farinsworth to be about his business and continued down to the Hall of Thrones a little quicker than he had been going. Best to show some courtesy, some enthusiasm for his duties. 

Two storeys down he met Captain Valquip, a middle-aged man with heavy-set grey eyes, a square jaw, and a long, beak-like nose. Valquip – one of the king’s most loyal friends – had risen quickly through the ranks and was a battle-seasoned general with a score of victories under his belt. He had personally taught all the Delwario children the spear and the sword and the shield, and had taken the elder siblings on several border skirmishes so they could get “first-hand experience.” Jaymi wondered again why the man hadn’t gone to war along with his father, instead choosing to remain in the castle, a glorified bodyguard to the High-Prince. 

‘Your Grace.’ The captain’s voice was as stiff as his posture. ‘Shouldn’t you be in the Hall of Thrones by now? The audience has already gathered.’

Jaymi nodded in acknowledgement of the captain’s bow but kept walking. It was an effort not to roll his eyes in exasperation. 

Finally, he stepped into the Hall of Thrones. A crowd of on-lookers stood in the wings of the vast chamber, muttering in hushed voices that nevertheless accumulated to a raucous noise. The hubbub died almost instantly as those gathered turned to look upon their High-Prince when he was announced by olive-haired Pitera – a young soldier and good friend to the prince. Jaymi walked unhurriedly down the few steps leading to the main floor where the majority of the audience stood. This area always reminded him of a long, shallow pool emptied of water, for it stood lower than the main floor and the raised wings running the length of the room on either side. Between the wings and the dropped floor there had been placed over two-dozen thrones, each different in shape, size, and design, reflecting the type of ruler who had sat in each heavy seat over the blood-stained years that represented Kaveren history. They were separated by tall marble pillars that held up the heavy mosaic roof and were surrounded by a length of thick red rope to stop anyone sitting upon the ancient seats.

Raivorn Delwario’s throne would one day be added to the collection and Jaymi’s own throne would sit atop a narrow podium at the far end of the hall on a dais accessible by climbing nine steep steps. For now, however, Jaymi used his father’s throne. It was an impressive design, to match the man who sat upon it, carved from the ancient varsouth tree imported from the Isles of Always Summer at the beginning of Raivorn’s reign. The Delwario emblem – a long spear surrounded by seven stars – had been etched with gilt onto its tall back, two spiralling pillars flanking the triangular tip of the backrest, each topped with large knobs of polished glass. A third sphere had been placed into a hole within the triangle, so it sat directly above the king’s head when he held court or passed judgement. Cloth of yellow, black, and white – the Delwario colours – had been draped across the wide armrests and hard seat.

‘My Lord Jaymi,’ said Peretor Greymar, a man with thick locks of dark hair and eyes of a deep green. He bowed as Jaymi reached the throne and settled himself into it. ‘There are five issues that demand your attention this day. Are you ready to see them through, in the name of your father, His Royal Majesty, King Raivorn Delwa––’

‘I am r-r-r … I am r-ready, P-P-P-Peretor. Send the first one in.’ Jaymi grimaced at the profoundness of his stutter. Damn you, Father. Why force me into this knowing my words don’t come out well? He asked himself this same thing each time he came to this Hall.

The Master of Court bowed formally and turned to address the assembled Kavereni. ‘Present the first who wishes a boon from the High-Prince Jaymi, who rules in place of his father – King Raivorn of House Delwario – while His Majesty protects this great kingdom and its people from those who would do us harm.’

Jaymi adjusted his position, sitting straight-backed and feigning confidence as the first of those who wished for aid stepped out of the crowd and approached the throne. 

It wasn’t until the final of the issues came to light that Jaymi felt truly tested. The previous issues had been minor spats between farmers, or guards from outlying towns requesting aid against bandits and highwaymen who were becoming more prevalent due to the majority of the soldiers going east to fight in the war. This last, however, was different.

‘My Lord Jaymi,’ Master Greymar said as a squad of disgruntled guards escorted a man perhaps five years Jaymi’s elder – give or take – into the hall. ‘This man is Mielethi, found a few miles south of your father’s war camp. He was attempting to cross the Perrindale Plains when he was captured by your father’s army. His Majesty has sent him here to receive your judgement. This letter arrived for you at the same time as the mielethi.’ Peretor handed Jaymi a small envelope with Raivorn’s sigil pressed into the red wax. ‘The prisoner has not spoken of why he is far from his homeland and in your father’s kingdom. Spying, no doubt.’

Jaymi read the short message quickly, ignoring the anger that he was only now receiving the letter; it should have been brought to him before court began. There was no greeting or words of comfort, just a few quick lines and his father’s signature. 

He sighed heavily and looked down at the prisoner. Mielethi? Fascinating. Jaymi knew of these strange people, of course, but had never known of one travelling so far from their homeland before. The man’s skin was bronze, his face narrow. He had sleek black hair that fell to his waist, feathers and beads tied into the many braids. Despite being shackled at wrist and ankle the man stood tall and with head held high. His eyes, large and turned up at the outer edges, were lime-green, calm and composed. He wore baggy trousers that were tattered and stained, and a loose-fitting shirt that was well worn and open to mid-chest. Both shirt and trousers also had feathers or beaded strings or tassels hanging off them, and had complex, tribal designs across the torso and down the side of the leg. 

Possibilities flooded Jaymi’s mind as he reread the letter. The stories told of how the Mielethi were one of the few surviving races that studied and practised Lunarmancy – the act of performing magic using special cuts of gem. If he could send one of those people back to his father, perhaps they could bring about a turning point in the war. And then Father can come home and retake his place on this bloody throne!

‘Is there anyone …anyone here who c-can speak M-Mielethic?’ Jaymi enquired of those gathered after several failed attempts to ask the man questions, which resulted only in a confused expression in response. He had even tried speaking Sarkoran – the native language of the Empire and what was regarded as the “common-tongue,” for the Empire covered all of Sarkoran and even some of Dalenharn, too. He wasn’t fluent in the tongue, of course – he could barely speak his own Kaverenin after all – yet he had an adequate understanding of the other language thanks to his tutoring. 

When nobody spoke, Greymar leaned in once more. ‘I believe Mistress Tuey can speak this savage’s native language, Your Grace.’

‘Savage?’ spluttered Jaymi. ‘M-Master G-Greymar, this man could … this man could t-t-teach us m-much, sir!’

‘Of course, Your Grace. Shall I send for Mistress Tuey? She should not be too hard to locate.’

Jaymi nodded then sat back. He watched the mielethi carefully as he waited, contemplating his options. They had a foreigner as a prisoner. What if the Mielethi demanded his release? What if war broke out because this man was a dignitary of the mielethi people? Could Raivorn fight both Suatar and the Mielethi at the same time? And what if the latter did have Lunarmancy on their side? Did the man before him? 

Mistress Tuey came hurrying in, her face eager. She was a pudgy woman with wiry juniper hair and large eyes. She stopped at the bottom of the steps leading to the throne and curtsied, spreading her billowing sky-blue skirts wide. ‘Your Grace,’ she intoned at the lowest point of her curtsy. ‘How may I serve?’ Even as she spoke her eyes shifted from Jaymi to the mielethi.

Jaymi gave his instructions, and listened and watched as the middle-aged woman translated his questions to the foreigner, speaking rapidly in a garbled tongue that Jaymi could not understand in the slightest. To Jaymi’s surprise, the mielethi responded openly, and he learned the man was called Kaitosvaeridian and that he had been on Dalenharn for a little over three months. He was a simple traveller, or so Mistress Tuey translated, out to see the wide world with his friend. Jaymi listened closely, watching the mielethi carefully. After living all his life with a stutter, Jaymi often relied on body language to get his meaning across and, as such, had become proficient at reading non-verbal cues. The tanned man betrayed nothing. He stood between his guards, hands clasped at his waist, relaxed in stance. He alternated between watching Mistress Tuey and looking up at Jaymi, his tone never changing. Indeed, the only time he gave any outward sign of emotion was when questioned about his friend, at which point the mielethi’s eyes became a deep red and his shoulders stiffened. Jaymi’s own eyes widened. He knew from his studies that Mielethi eyes changed depending upon their mood, yet to actually see it happen was something else. 

Finally, Jaymi held up a hand. ‘I shall c-consider his future at a later d-d-date. This is not a simple c-case. I must … I must … must d-deliberate on this m-matter.’ He rose to signify court was at an end.

To Jaymi’s surprise the prisoner gave no outward reaction as the guards turned him around and marched him from the hall. Instead, he shuffled away, looking over his shoulder one last time at Jaymi, eyes blending from violet to pale orange. 

What a strange fellow, Jaymi thought as he walked back through the palace lost in his plans and dreaming of what the future would hold. How different his life would be if he could escape the confines of the palace walls and travel like the mielethi claimed he had been doing. Would he be able to cope? Despite the occasional ventures beyond the city walls he had spent all his life being pampered and wanting for nothing. Could he really survive on his own, especially when impeded by his stutter? Everything he’d learned about the wide world came from books – Jaymi was an avid reader; it was his only escape from the monotony of palace life – but would theory alone be enough?

He stopped halfway down the marble staircase. Was he really contemplating running away? What would that do? He would leave Kaveren leaderless and, like a ship without anyone at the wheel, the kingdom would run aground and founder. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. He was a Delwario of Kaveren, the future of the kingdom. And being a Delwario came with a set of rules and responsibilities, the first and foremost of which was that his people came before his own wishes. 

But still … maybe he could talk to the mielethi alone somehow. Not necessarily to use the prisoner to escape, but to gain insight into another race. Firsthand knowledge rather than something from a book written Alabar knew how long ago. If he could learn more about the Mielethi perhaps he could help his father’s cause, whether to conquer potential enemies, or to send out a boon of friendship and create allies elsewhere in the world. The Empire was reaching, after all, digging its vile claws into Dalenharn’s soil. How much longer could Kaveren delay the inevitable alone? 

Jaymi went to find his younger brother. Tristain would have some ideas; the boy absorbed history and knowledge the way a desert soaked up moisture. 

⁜⁜⁜

Jaymi awoke with a gasp, sweat running down his face and matting his hair. The room was sweltering, the roaring fire beneath a large black marble mantle filling the enclosed room with heat. Autumn nights on Dalenharn did grow cold, especially this far north, but was such a fire really needed? He wondered if the servants had seen him thrashing as they had laid the fire.

He threw the bedcovers off and sat up on the edge of the bed. He ran his hands through his thick blonde locks, palms coming away slick. His hair was another reason he did not belong upon the Kavereni throne. Kavereni were dark-haired – black or brown predominantly, but occasionally in hues of midnight-blue like Jaymi’s sister, or olive-green like Pitera. Jaymi, on the other hand, came into the world with a head full of golden straw, and when Raivorn Delwario had laid eyes upon his firstborn son he had been furious, believing Jaymi to be a bastard child, born of his wife’s affair. 

As it transpired, Jaymi had simply taken after his mother instead, a foreign girl brought to Kaveren a slave until freed by Jaymi’s father out of love for the exotic and beautiful creature. It did happen on rare occasions, Master Farinsworth had told a young Jaymi after years of receiving the cold shoulder from his father – taking on his mother’s looks instead of his father’s. Yet Raivorn Delwario had not been able to accept that. ‘My children are not foreign bastards,’ he had roared one night when Valoria had wept for her husband to accept and love the eldest of their then three children. ‘They are Delwario through and through else they are not my kin!’

It hadn’t been until Jaymi was six that his father had finally come to accept his eldest child was in fact of his own seed and not born of some sordid affair. When Tristain had been born it had been, again with hair as yellow as the sun and eyes the same shade as his mother’s. 

Jaymi stood with a heavy sigh and paced his chambers as the memories of his childhood played out. He stopped only briefly to pour a cup of spiced blue wine which was cool and refreshing, and to open one of the windows. While he and his father now saw eye to eye (On most things at least, Jaymi mused) their relationship was far from strong. His twin siblings – Yarra and Yerron – had been the favourites until Tristain’s birth, when the king had finally accepted the truth he had long denied. Yerron had been heir to the Delwario line until that fateful day when Jaymi had finally been accepted by his father and reinstated as the firstborn, trueborn son.

That’s not important any more, Jaymi told himself firmly as he refilled the goblet. Father chose me to rule in his stead, put me in my rightful place as heir. Even with my stutter he chose me. So why did these memories still plague him? Why were they still such sore subjects that kept him up at night? He turned and threw the golden chalice across the room, screaming as it flew. It crashed into the fire, its contents hissing as it splashed into the flames. Jaymi collapsed onto the edge of his bed, head in his hands. 

‘Is everything alright, M’Lord?’ 

Jaymi groaned internally and looked up at the guard peeking through the door between bed chamber and sitting room. ‘Everything is f-f-fine, th-thank you.’ An idea suddenly came to him. ‘Wait without. I must d-d-dress.’ 

‘Now, M’Lord?’ 

Jaymi gave the guard a hard look instead of trying to speak. He’d learned long ago that within the palace his facial expressions and body language worked just as well as actually speaking. 

‘Of course, M’lord.’

Jaymi dressed himself quickly before Tindar, his personal servant, could be summoned to dress him instead. As if Jaymi didn’t know how to do it after eighteen years. 

The journey to the crypts was done in silence. The guards that escorted Jaymi waited at the top of the stone steps, becoming statues to match those that flanked the crypt’s entrance, while Jaymi entered the royal mausoleum alone. He walked past long-dead kings and queens and their deceased children, their royal likenesses carved in beautiful stonework over which Jaymi still marvelled even now; the stonemasons had surely been blessed by Dalos to have created such lifelike works of art. At the far end stood the most recent addition: Valoria Delwario, formerly Valoria Ta’avania of Reshva. In Jaymi’s fourteenth year she had died giving birth to her fifth and final child. The baby had been taken away in the middle of the night before Jaymi or his siblings could meet it, for Raivorn couldn’t bear to look upon that child’s face knowing it had been the one to kill his wife and queen. Where the child was now, Jaymi had no idea. He didn’t even know if it had been a boy or a girl, a brother or a sister; Raivorn refused to acknowledge the child’s existence.

He sat at his mother’s feet for almost an hour, talking to her as he always had, asking her for guidance and support. Please, he prayed. Give me the strength to make the right choice, Mother. Show me the path I must take. He missed her more than ever now that his father had left for war. Apart from Tristain, his mother had been the only family member he had loved. Growing up he had hated the twins almost as much as his estranged father, for they got the love he had never had, and even now the tension remained between the three of them. Yerron hated Jaymi for supposedly stealing the throne from him, and Yarra, of course, supported her twin. 

‘M’Lord, I beg forgiveness for interrupting, but dawn draws near, M’Lord. Should we be returning to the palace?’

Jaymi rose, suppressing a heavy sigh. He stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on the stony face of his mother offering one final prayer to Syold to watch after her. Then, he turned and followed the guard back to the land of the living, wiping a tear from his cheek and squaring his shoulders. Dawn was approaching far to the east. I have one more place to visit tonight, he thought as he reached the top of the steps, and for that I must be strong. 

He told the guards the first part of his thought and commanded them to escort him there. They obeyed at once, but not before Jaymi saw them exchange quizzical looks.