The sisters were already dining with their teacher Pa-Kamsi when their father Uab-Tot entered the room, followed by a young aven. The girls greeted their parent stiffly, both working at the tilapia in their plates one-handed; the already thin smile on Uab-Tot’s lips faded. The man took place at the head of the table, between his daughters; the aven sat near the other end and helped himself to the fruit and bread at the center of the table as the servant prepared their portions of fish.

“What’s wrong, girls? What happened, that I have to see my sweet daughters so glum and broody?” Uab-Tot asked as he was served; the girls leveled an icy stare at each other, but neither spoke a word. “Pa-Kamsi, did they fight?”

The teacher wiped his lips before answering his master. “A childish squabble over toys, my lo-”

“Childish squabble?” The older sister interrupted, outraged. “Kertes almost bit my hand off!” She showed her father the bandaged hand she was hiding under the table.

“Astekhu wanted to steal my Empress!” Wailed little Kertes. “And she hurt me!”

“She’s not an Empress, stupid! She has no crown!” Astekhu shrieked back. “And she’s my doll!”

“The crown is insi-invisible, you poohead!”

Uab-Tot exchanged a meaningful glance with Pa-Kamsi, who cleared his throat. “Silence! You are embarrassing your lord father with this foolishness!” The sisters startled and fell silent; even Uab-Tot winced at the teacher’s shout. The aven kept eating as if nothing had happened.

“Pa-Kamsi should never have to raise his voice, girls. You know I don’t like screams, and I like the sight of you two fighting even less,” Uab-Tot said before addressing the teacher again. “Please, tell me what happened.”

“Astekhu was exercising her writing in the library, my lord, when Kertes entered and started playing with the doll. I told her the library is not a place for games, but she ignored me,” explained Pa-Kamsi, with the smallest trace of resentment in his voice, “then when Kertes passed near her desk Astekhu tried to take the doll from her. Before I could intervene, Kertes had bitten her sister’s hand and Astekhu was hitting Kertes on the head. I bandaged Astekhu’s hand myself; I do not think it is something serious, but I sent for doctor Nafi anyway. He should pass tomorrow morning to make sure everything is alright.”

“Thank you. Hearing this makes me sad, girls,” Uab-Tot said, shaking his head, “If now you fight each other, your own blood, how will you be able to live in peace with the other nobles? And you fought over a doll, a toy your mother and I bought for both of you.” The man sighed. “Kertes, you are to be the family’s head after me. Will biting help you making friends?” The little girl shook her head, staring at her plate. “Behave like a proper lady, and you will be treated as one,” concluded Uab-Tot.

“And what about you, Astekhu? You are thirteen, and your sister isn’t even five. When was the last time you played with that doll?” Astekhu opened her mouth to reply, but closed it again when she saw the disappointment in her father’s eyes. “To make it worse, you interrupted Pa-Kamsi and raised your voice in my presence. If you don’t mind your alignment here, Astekhu, how can I trust you not to make blunders with your betters outside this house?”

Kertes raised her gaze, and saw her older sister on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, Astekhu. I won’t hurt you again, I swear on my soul and on the Twins’ mercy.” She remembered the oath from one of the stories Pa-Kamsi told them before putting them to sleep.

"Very good, Kertes, very good,” the teacher commented. “Do you want to say something, Astekhu?”

“I’m sorry too, Kertes,” the girl muttered, “I swear not to hurt you again. Please forgive me.”

“That’s better,” Uab-Tot said with a wide smile. “All is forgiven as long as you are good to each other. Remember your oaths, girls, a lady’s name is only as good as her word.”

Uab-Tot had just finished his first morsel of food when he noticed the aven was sitting composedly before an emptied plate. “You never waste time, do you, Nezemab? You don’t have to wait for us, you can leave if you want to.”

“Thank you, my lord.” the aven stood up and put his chair back to its place. “Good night, my lord. My ladies. Pa-Kamsi. Amenei.” The aven nodded to each commensal in turn, and even to the servant, before leaving the room.

Uab-Tot was halfway through his meal when he noticed something else. “Why are you eating one-handed, Kertes? Does your hand hurt too?”

Kertes froze. She held her father’s gaze for a moment, then slowly raised her left hand, which was holding a worn white doll so tightly her knuckles were white. “Kertes has accepted her punishment, my lord, but refused to part with it,” explained Pa-Kamsi.

Much to the surprise of both sisters, Uab-Tot laughed. “You’re your mother’s daughter, that’s for sure,” he said tousling Kertes’ hair. “Once you get your pretty paws on something you want, you never let go. Am I right, my little panther?”

“Wake up, Kertes, it’s time.”

Kertes purred as her sister petted her hair, then groaned when Astekhu stopped abruptly.

“Come on, sister, you need to get ready.”

Kertes grumbled as she sat up; her eyelids felt leaden, as they did whenever she was forced to wake up at dawn. Astekhu was sitting on the border of their bed, already clean, dressed and equipped with the usual loving smile that said how patient and good she was, to care for such a sleepy and sloppy sister; Kertes stared at her brown eyes as she tried to remember why she had to wake up so wretchedly early. Astekhu combed Kertes’ messy hair away from her eyes with delicate fingers; Kertes noticed the sadness in her smile. And then it clicked.

His funeral.

Kertes stood up and stretched, mentally preparing for the tasteless platitudes and insincere condolences the sisters would have to suffer before their “friends” turned back into the heartless crocodiles they were, and opened her armoire.

“Your bath is ready,” said Astekhu. “Remember, you said you’d do it,” she added, anticipating her objection.

“S’not like he’s going to smell my armpits,” Kertes drawled, but closed the armoire and left the room.

When she returned, Astekhu had prepared her clothes on the bed and the make up on the nightstand. Kertes eyed the new ceremonial robe morosely, a traditionally white garb with platinum and lapis details to bring out the color of her hair and eyes respectively; its purchase had been a significant hit for the dwindling family wealth, but she had outgrown all Astekhu’s clothes and attending their father’s funeral with a cheap or poorly fitting robe would be the final admission of weakness. Might as well roll over and forfeit her title, really.

So she wore the expensive robe and the somber black shawl to honor the dead, then sat near Astekhu so her older sister could tidy her hair and do her make up.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” Kertes blurted as her older sister tied her hair in a ponytail.

“Would you take the pleasure of dolling you up from your poor sister?” jested Astekhu. “You could learn to do it yourself, Kertes, I can teach you.”

“You know what I mean. For Mother’s funeral we both had a personal servant to help us prepare for the ceremony.” Much to Kertes’ chagrin, the things she remembered better of their famed mother Layla were related to her death.

“I don’t mind doing this, y’know,” said Astekhu.

“But maybe you’d like it more if you weren’t forced to do it.”

“Maybe I would,” admitted Astekhu with a melancholic smile, picking up a brush. “Now close your eyes.”

When Astekhu made an appreciative noise, Kertes knew she was ready. They walked the empty corridor to the mansion’s entrance, where they found their father’s stewards – their family’s stewards, Kertes corrected herself - waiting near the carriage; two guards were already seated in the driver’s box.

“Good morning, my ladies,” Nezemab said, bowing and inviting them to enter the carriage with a gesture; maybe it was just wishful thinking, but Kertes thought she could hear some grief in her tone. The other steward, a white towering ainok woman called Senet, nodded wordlessly.

The travel to the temple was slow and heavy with silence; Nezemab glanced at the sisters from time to time, but didn’t dare to speak without explicit leave, while Senet watched outside with a hand on the pommel of her sword.

The square before the temple was teeming with ornate carriages, a line of temple guards keeping a lowborn mob away from a crowd of lords, ladies and heirs; Kertes’ eyes couldn’t find a single unaligned person among them, and saw Astekhu tense as she noticed it too. The noble horde was waiting for the mourning family to open the consecrated gate: a great double door of lacquered wood, the left panel representing a starry sky dominated by a full silvery moon, the right one displaying a golden sun dawning over dark, fertile land. Once the sisters and the stewards had stepped off their carriage, Senet gestured for Kertes and Astekhu to follow her and led them toward the Cathedral’s entrance, shoving people aside with her massive hands. When they reached the door Senet stepped out of the way; Kertes and Astekhu looked in each other’s eyes, then each sister laid a hand on a door – Kertes’ pale hand shone against the deep blue sky, another star in the wooden night, while Astekhu’s dark skin was almost indistinguishable from the rich soil – and shoved them open.

The temple was covered by high mirrored fan vaults, supported by two rows of seven columns each; the shafts of the columns were made of white and black marble, alternated so that no white column was connected by an arch to another white one. In the highest point of each vault a circle of light shone so brightly that the whole vast temple seemed to be in open daylight during high noon. The magical light was even warm, but didn’t burn as real sunlight; Kertes was somewhat grateful for this, but still preferred the softer pseudo-moonlight that bathed the temple at night. The polished stone floor was an arabesque in white, blue, red and black; there were grey kneeling cushions laid out at regular intervals, and the walls displayed representations of the Twin Gods in their many aspects, each couple of figures separated from the others by a marble lesene.

As the sisters stepped into the temple with joined hands, the Bishop started the Call to Prayer; after the first invocation, a chorus joined him. There was a black-clad chanter standing near each column of the great temple, Kertes noticed as she led the noble procession along the central nave. Astekhu tried to hasten their stride, but Kertes tightened her grip on her sister’s hand and made her fall back into pace; she wanted to get it over with as much as Astekhu, but this ceremony wasn’t just a farewell to their father. Everyone worth something in the Empire was watching – in first person or through highborn informers – to know what the heir of the feared and respected Layla Meskhenet was made of; if Kertes met their expectations, she could hope to enter the greatest game board in the Empire as a player when she came of age, otherwise… she didn’t want to think about the alternative. She imagined to be the Empress herself walking down the nave, a woman wearing majesty as she were born with it.

The sisters eventually reached the honor cushion, the closest to the dais only clergy could access alive; at its center, the old Bishop and his appointed successor stood behind a wooden bookstand that carried the same split decorations of the temple’s great doors. Their cousin Renenet smiled sadly at them from the Bishop’s side, her eyes puffy from crying; Uab-Tot had been her uncle and they had been very close, but a priestess wasn’t allowed to shed tears during rites. Kertes forced herself to smile back, slightly comforted by their shared duty.

The shrouded body rested on an engraved onyx slab; close, but still beyond the untouchable steps. Kertes squinted, wondering if their father was smiling under the red cloth. She turned toward the procession, and heard Astekhu do the same after a long, uncomfortable moment. In front of them, the exponents of a good half of all noble houses living on the Katel river – maybe a third of the entire imperial peerage, Kertes realized – were lined up to offer them condolences. Kertes took a short step forward: the unaligned Astekhu was the official regent until she came of age, but they had all come to meet the rightful heir of the Meskhenet house, and Kertes wasn’t going to disappoint them.

“Here they go,” Kertes whispered to herself as the first approached.

“What’s a-line-ment, Father?” Kertes asked.

“It’s ‘alignment,’ cub. Didn’t your friends tell you, little panther?” Uab-Tot was focused on a big volume, Nezemab on his right side.

Kertes shook her head. “They say ‘I’m more… aligned than you’ and ‘if you don’t do this you’re… unaligned’,” explained Kertes, taking care to say the difficult words right, “but they never tell what it means and I don’t want to be called that.”

“Why didn’t you ask Pa-Kamsi?” Uab-Tot asked, his eyes still on the book.

“Because he doesn’t know,” Kertes answered, frowning.

“Sure he knows!” Uab-Tot laughed, lifting his head from the volume. “Why do you say he doesn’t?”

“He never uses that word, but you do!”

Uab-Tot sighed, still smiling, and pushed the book away. “Come here, cub,” he said, patting his legs. The little girl ran around the desk and let him pick her up. “What did Pa-Kamsi teach you about the Twins?”

“They are the true Gods! Lios and Kere,” Kertes begun, “Lios is the Sun God, Kere is the Moon Goddess, and together they choose the Empress and the Emperor and fight the evil demons.”

“Well said, my little panther,” Uab-Tot said, “but what do they look like?”

“Lios is small and black and… and has flaming eyes,” Kertes said thoughtfully, “Kere is big and white and her eyes are… ice?”

“Good girl!” Uab-Tot tousled Kertes’ hair and her daughter beamed at the compliment. “That’s where alignment comes from: if a man is aligned with the god Lios he’ll have skin, hair, fur, scales, feathers, eyes, everything in black, brown and red, the warm colors of the Sun God. Someone calls it ‘Suns’ touch’.”

“Like Father!” Kertes blurted.

“Yes, like your father,” Uab-Tot replied with a kind smile, “and Pa-Kamsi too, and Nezemab right here.” The black lithe aven nodded in acknowledgement, his dark red eyes resting on Kertes’ smiling face for a brief moment. “In the same way, a woman aligned with Kere will be all in cool colors: blue, white and silver.”

“Like me! I’m aligned!” Kertes shrieked, her cerulean eyes wide with joy.

“Yes, little panther, you are very much aligned,” Uab-Tot said, combing her platinum hair, “like Mother Layla was. Do you remember Mother, cub?”

Kertes hesitated; the last time she saw her mother was… before her last name day, she was sure. Kertes only remembered flowing silver hair, a broad back clad in lilac and a smell of spices and lavender, but Kertes thought her father would be sad if she said no, so the girl nodded. “And Astekhu? She is brown, and her eyes are black.”

“She was confused,” Uab-Tot explained. “Even if you didn’t know what alignment was, or Kere’s name, you have thought ‘I’m a girl, I should look like the Moon Goddess’, and you were born at midnight, aligned just like your mother. Astekhu must have forgotten, or maybe some tricky devil distracted her, so she was born at day, looking like Lios.”

Kertes frowned, thoughtful. “Is Astekhu a bad girl?”

“Astekhu is not a bad girl; unaligned people just tend to be…” Uab-Tot searched for the right word. “Fickle? She will take care of you until you come of age at sixteen, but you are the one who will inherit my title, Kertes. Unaligned are good and trustworthy when they are around aligned people who can guide them and show them how to be good. Will you help your sister, cub? Will you stay close to her?”

Kertes stuck her chest out and nodded seriously, then another thought came to her mind. “And Zet? He’s black, but his hair is blue.”

“Zet and the other slaves are ‘crepuscular’, cub. They couldn’t distinguish the Twins, as they can’t tell good from evil; they can speak like us, little panther, but other than that they are little more than animals. They need to be trained and controlled so they don’t do bad things. You know, it was a crepuscular who hurt your mother.”

Kertes remembered the word; they used it when they told her that her mother had been hurt, and needed to rest with the Twins for a long long time. She had never seen her since. “So aligned are good people?”

“Not everyone,” Uab-Tot said. “You remember the tale of Ahai the Pyromancer? Or Kurloz the Screamer? They were both aligned: we can be the best kind of people, my little panther, and some of us can be the worst.”

Kertes had just sighed in relief seeing there were no more than six families left, when she noticed Qagab’s thin sardonic smile.

“We are so sorry for your loss, poor sisters.” Then he stepped forward to whisper in Kertes’ ear; the young man was four year older than her, but an inch shorter than Kertes. “You are only fourteen, Keri, a lot of things can happen in two years,” he said, his hands brushing against her hips, “but if you entertain me enough I might take pity on you...”

Kertes glanced at her sister, wordlessly asking for help, but Astekhu averted her gaze, looking wretched. Kertes cursed herself. She shouldn’t have hoped in her sister’s aid: regent or not, in such a formal event an unaligned addressing a noble without being spoken to was a catastrophic breach of etiquette, and almost an outright crime. Kertes’ fists opened and closed in anger. “If you don’t stick your fingers back in your ass where they belong, Qagab, I might bite your throat open,” she hissed in Qagab’s ear, her voice dripping with contempt, then she snapped at his neck. Qagab jumped back, but she had to admit he recovered quickly.

“Not now, sweet Keri, this is hallowed ground after all,” he said, and stepped aside with maybe just a little more haste than the situation required.

“Did you see that? She’s demonspawn, I told you,” wizened Tes-Amen said to his son, loud enough for the front rows and all the remaining line to hear. Kertes saw some of them glance at the old hag funnily, but she waited the ainok’s turn politely accepting the condolences from the Mandisa and Adio houses.

“Good morning, honorable Tes-Amen. Are you sure you want to waste your most gracious words with vile demonspawn?” Kertes asked her with an innocent smile, as loud as Tes-Amen had been; she left fuming from rage, grumbling about “impropriety” and “feral insolent girls”, followed by her stone-faced son. Kertes heard someone snigger and saw the head of the Yafeu nodding in her direction: if that had been a test, she had just passed.

The last in line was Heri-Baset, head of the Rashidi, who glared at Tes-Amen until she left his sight; their father had spoken of him like a close friend, and his condolences seemed heartfelt. Kertes couldn’t say the same of his son Dhouti, who sounded more formal than sincere, but the boy was courteous enough. When all the nobles had taken place the sisters turned back to the Bishop, who started the ceremony with the Prayer for Mercy.

“Kertes, I’m sorry for…” Astekhu whispered. Kertes felt her heart ache hearing the utter misery in her voice.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Kertes whispered back, “Qagab is an obnoxious bastard, and in another occasion I’d have wiped the floor with his stupid hair. Was just surprised he dared, that’s all.” She took Astekhu’s hand, and her sister managed a weak smile. Kertes promised herself to make Qagab’s existence a living hell.

Kertes kneeled, bowed and stood up when the ceremony required it, but she never raised her voice in chorus like her sister; from time to time she looked at the Bishop, but the man didn’t seem to notice. She had prayed a few times in her life: the first time when she was very little, to ask the Twins to heal their mother and bring her back to her family, the last time less than a fortnight ago, a last hope to save their father. They never answered, They never helped. Kertes didn’t hope for Their mercy anymore.

Then the Bishop began the Sending, and all the nobles knelt on the cushions. A fiery circle appeared on the slab; Kertes squeezed Astekhu’s hand, bracing for the heatwave. The slab ignited in a smokeless pyre, engulfing the red shroud. The Bishop walked around the magical flames, and stepped down the dais, less than three paces from the sisters.

“Uab-Tot was a pious man, a fiery believer and an example for us all; his death was a sudden and unexpected tragedy…” the Bishop’s eulogy droned on, but Kertes tuned him out. Unexpected my glorious ass, she thought. Nobody had predicted a servant would have found him lying senselessly drunk in the inner garden’s pool, that much she could agree with; but his daughters had seen him die from grief for ten years. During the brief days their father had spent bed-ridden by pneumonia, the sisters had realized he had been waiting to join his wife for a long time, more than he wanted them to know. But inane as they were, the Bishop’s words filled Astekhu’s eyes with tears. The priest climbed the two steps of the dais, inviting others to take his place and spend some words for the dead. When Astekhu made to stand up, Kertes put her free hand on her sister’s shoulder and kept her on her knees. When her older sister stared at her, with a face twisted by sadness and misery, Kertes shook her head.

“They didn’t know him, sister,” Kertes whispered sadly, “they wouldn’t understand anyway. They don’t want to hear about how he was. They don’t deserve our words. They don’t deserve your words. Share them with me, sister, me alone.” Kertes was feeling her own tears starting to well up; seeing Astekhu like that was torture. “Please,” she begged; Astekhu nodded after a moment’s hesitation. In front of them, someone started to talk, maybe Heri-Baset. Kertes didn’t care.

“Father was… precious,” Astekhu began tentatively, leaning against Kertes. “He always was there for me, for us, to-to tell us when we screwed up, to help us do good, to coddle us to sleep when we were afraid, to rejoice of our successes. He was… he was so proud when I started to do your make up, Kertes, to sing your lullabies. He… yes, he shone like a warm sun, even… even after Mother’s death, he was there…” Astekhu stopped fighting back tears, and sobbed softly. “Goodbye, Father, I… I didn’t deserve you…”

Kertes felt something break inside her; she hugged her sister, hiding her face in Astekhu’s cloud of curly hair, and started crying. And if they don’t like this, Kertes thought, may the Twins smite them all. “You deserved him, sister, we both deserved him. We all deserved to be together, with Father and Mother, until they turned old and wrinkly and they’d die peacefully in their sleep.” Kertes felt Astekhu’s shoulders shake pitifully. “But they won’t be forgotten, Astekhu. I will keep their names high. I promise I will uphold their legacy, and bring our house to glory again. Whatever it takes, sister. Whatever it takes.”

Kertes opened a ledger.

It wasn’t the first time she worked on the accounting books; but today, her sixteenth name day, for the first time she was sitting on the master’s chair instead of looking over Nezemab’s shoulder. She looked at the new line of numbers.

“You’ve already updated it,” she observed.

“I used to update all the ledgers at dawn for your late lord father, my lady. I thought you would find it helpful,” the aven replied.

“Good idea, Nezemab, thank you,” Kertes said; zealous as he was, she found the steward a bit unnerving. “Anything I need to know beside the numbers?”

“The captain of the Shining Star threatens to turn to the Mandisa and demands a raise. Your new cave near the Iron Ring seems rich in high-quality marble. The Adio treasury demands the interests of their loan.”

“What kind of raise? Has he discussed figures?”

Nezemab told her. Kertes looked at the aven in disbelief.

Kertes laid her left hand on the desk and started drumming. She needed to start the extraction of the marble to make real money and have some breathing room after the last meager flood, but with she couldn’t rely on her best ship because the captain had chosen the worst possible moment to be a big greedy baby. She couldn’t ignore the Adio either, not if the rumor that they were connected with the River Raiders was even partially based on truth.

“What about the three ships I commissioned?” Kertes asked.

“They’re being built, my lady. The carpenter says he can’t work faster without additional working arms.”

And more money, Kertes added mentally. “The whole Imperial Carpenter deal?”

“Nothing official, but last night Rashidi envoys have been received at the royal palace.”

“Twinsforsaken bastard!” Kertes’ left hand closed into a fist. “Is there an end to this rotten luck?”

“I don’t know, my lady. I’m sorry.”

“Ah well. Let me know if you suddenly develop divination magic, will you?” Kertes blurted.

“At once, my lady.”

Kertes sometimes wondered if Nezemab didn’t get sarcasm or derived some kind of satisfaction from ignoring it; her reflections were interrupted by someone knocking on the door. She looked at the aven, and he went to the door. Nezemab exchanged a few words with the person behind the door, then swiftly left the room and Senet came in.

“What did you say to Nezemab to make him leave like that? He didn’t even ask for my leave, for Twins’ sake,” Kertes asked. Senet grinned predatorily; something easy to do with a jackal’s snout, Kertes thought.

The ainok woman was at least seven feet tall, with a scarred white fur that turned to grey at the end of her limbs and her snout and a broad and powerful build; the former was the testament of sixty years of turbulent life, while the latter seemingly defied age. Her speed was nothing to scoff at either: Senet had trained Kertes to fight since Uab-Tot hadn’t been around to forbid her to, and the human sometimes had the impression her trainer could read her mind.

“I told him it was nocturnal work,” Senet said, “Do you know what a night steward is, my lady?”

“Sun for gold, moon for iron,” Kertes replied; she didn’t know the details – Nezemab, the day steward, had been uncharacteristically evasive on the matter – but religion and nobility were obsessed with duality, so she had repeated a usefully cryptic saying: Nezemab helped with business and was aligned with Lios, Senet was the captain of the guards and was moontouched.

“Something like that. In this case, Nezemab left because while the night steward may not care about the details of daily work, it may be best for the day steward not to know much of what happens during the night,” Senet explained with the same grin. “You may have noticed that the Meskhenet house has… lost some ground after your mother’s death, my lady.”

“Nice euphemism,” commented Kertes. “You seem to imply that the house has lost money because my father didn’t employ your whole array of services, but I’m not blinded by grief; I loved him, cried at the funeral and all, but the man was a disaster at business. A year and a half, and I’ve earned more than he did in three.”

“Maybe you have done a few good things, Kertes,” Senet replied condescendingly, “but they’re pulling their punches.”

“Who is pulling punches? Heri-Baset is snatching an imperial contract under my nose, and he was Father’s best friend!” She snarled, standing up and leaning on her desk with both hands. “And where’s the ‘my lady’ gone, Senet?” Kertes was becoming increasingly aware that righteous anger and a downtrodden title were the only things between her and a woman who could kill her with both hands tied behind her back.

“First thing first, I want to be paid in respect as much as gold,” Senet stepped forward, a confident smile on her snout, “I leave the task of licking your tasty arse to the bird, I will speak freely as long as I am night steward: knives shine as crowns in the darkness, girl. If you don’t want me to be your steward, say it now and I’ll return to your precious courtesies.”

Kertes held his gaze for a moment, then she sat back and pondered the offer; free speech was cheap enough, compared to the tragic losses the family wealth had suffered in the last decade. She could look for another night steward, sure, but Senet hadn’t betrayed their family in its darkest times… “Fair enough, as long as you don’t disrespect me in public and this informality doesn’t lead you to… untoward behavior.” Senet’s choice of words had been too specific to be accidental.

Senet stepped back, defusing the unspoken part of the threat, and chuckled. “Don’t worry, girl, I’ll keep my tongue to myself unless explicitly asked.”

“So…” Kertes shifted uncomfortably on her chair. “Why do you say the other houses are going easy on me?”

“The short of it is, crushing you now will be more entertaining by far,” Senet explained, his tone matter-of-factly, “you put up the right show at the funeral: hard enough to seem a potentially good opponent, soft enough to elicit a couple of years of mercy. As long as you didn’t use nasty tricks, they wouldn’t either; that’s the closest thing to friendship you can hope for in this playground.”

“What nasty tricks are we talking about?” Kertes needed to know what weapons she had just added to her arsenal.

“For starters, I’ll have you know that I’m the blood sister of one of the River Raider’s captains; they’ll not spare your ships once they get in their reach – after all, thrill is the true reward of piracy - but for the right price we could get information about what parts of the delta our ships should avoid; sometimes they’ll even accept the schedule of our rivals’ shipments as payment, they’re courteous like that.”

“You were eavesdropping.”

“No reason to deny it, I’ve got two fine ears,” Senet admitted innocently. “About our dear captain, I’ll just say he’s a doting father. Can’t do much for the imperial functionaries, unfortunately.”

Kertes shrugged; messing with the Emperors’ chosen people was far too risky for her taste. “For now I’m interested in the exact terms of this ‘blood sibling’ of yours. Don’t do anything about the captain yet; I want to know whether I can afford to give him a small raise. To gild the noose, so to speak."

“Layla couldn’t say it better.” Senet nodded appreciatively. “That reminds me: your mother told me to give you something today.”

“What is it?” Kertes was wary of sudden windfalls.

“A sentence, to be said near in the stairwell to her bedchambers.”

And Senet told her the words.

“I am my mother’s daughter,” she intoned.

Nothing happened. Senet didn’t seem the prankster type, though.

The steps themselves seemed unchanged, as the walls Kertes could see. But the under-stair armoire was detached from the wall, leaving a space just large enough for her to squeeze through.

Kertes made sure no one was watching her, then sneaked behind the armoire – suppressing a healthy amount of swearing as the wood and the stone scratched her dress - and there it was: a shining handprint on the shadowy wall under the stairs, slowly fading. She memorized its position in relation to the steps above her, then laid her hand on it, her wrist twisting painfully for the awkward position. It fit almost perfectly.

Kertes fell through stone.

She blinked, nonplussed. She was an all fours in a dimly lit space, her feet invisible through the wall. She closed her eyes, and listened carefully. The silence was almost absolute. She stood up, and looked around.

All the surfaces she could see were made of rough stone. She was standing on a small square landing; the wall before her seemed solid enough, on her left a series of steps led into utter darkness. On the wall on her right there was a cavity containing an unlit torch and a fire striker. Just above the cavity, another handprint in dry black paint. The wall behind her looked solid, but after a brief examination Kertes noticed a round section that let light – and matter - through.

Kertes lit the torch, and noticed the flames behaved differently when near true walls or illusory ones. She pressed her hand against the black paint, and slowly waved the flame near the border of the true wall; after a few seconds the hole started closing, and in less than a minute the wall was whole and solid again. Just to be sure, she pressed her hand on the print again and the hole opened instantly. She closed it again, and started her descent with a lump in her throat.

The stairs ended soon in a wide room with four bronze braziers and a stone altar. She walked close to the wall, the torch near the stone to notice any secret passage, but the walls of the room were unmarred except for a teak double door opposite to the entrance. She lit a brazier, lodged the torch on a ring near the end of the stairs and moved the brazier near the door. It had two simple handles, no lock, no notable feature; she listened, but the only sounds she could hear were her excited heartbeats. She held her breath, and opened the door.

Kertes had expected a second room, but it was just a cabinet carved in the rock. The first two shelves hosted a number of various items: a simple copper knife, an engraved miniature anchor, a platinum bracelet with five gemstones set at regular intervals, a sheep skull crowned with a thorny circlet… some were hidden under simple squares of colored cloth. Kertes looked back at the altar. Demonspawn, Tes-Amen echoed in her mind. Demonspawn.

On the third shelf there was a single scroll with Kertes’ name written on the outside; the shelves below that were packed full of scrolls and books of various size and age. She took the scroll with shaking hands, almost expecting her mother to suddenly appear behind her, but nothing happened. Kertes opened the scroll, and stepped toward the brazier. The handwriting was certainly Layla’s: Kertes had studied her annotations on the ledgers as they were a holy writ in the last two years.

Kertes traced her mother’s signature with her fingers, and held the scroll to her chest. She felt the tension in her stomach dissolve, as if she had been forgiven for a crime she couldn’t remember.

“Whatever it takes, Mother,” she repeated in the dark room. “Whatever it takes.”