Wings of Sky

Chapter Three

"Usual time, usual place" meant the queen's dressing room, the stroke of midnight. I made my way down the narrow, pitch-black underground passageway that led from my rooms in the northwest corner of the inner palace to the queen's dressing room. There was no need for light or a clock. I had walked this passage often enough to wear a path in its floor, and my timing was impeccable as usual.

I paused at the door to hear the queen dismiss her maids. I turned the knob, the click loud in the silence, and pulled the door open. I slipped into the light and closed the door behind me, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the glow of candles in the dressing room.

The queen sat at her vanity, steadily brushing her long sand-gold hair until it gleamed in the light. I stood at the door. It blended invisibly into the panels and wainscot of the walls, and could only be opened by turning the third petal of a particular flower amongst the embossed floral pattern.

When Queen Sadera finally turned to me, she looked alarmingly tired. It wasn't unexpected of the woman responsible for the well being of the ten million souls and as many qaraks residing on the Skylands. Not only had she to contend with the threat of the dragon-hoarding Yun people of the massive Jade Empire underneath, but she also had to bend to her will the many power-hungry nobles running her five islands.

My aunt would not allowed herself to appear so wan in public, the lines at the corners of her reddened eyes visible, her shoulders slouched. She stood, pulling her thick sleeping coat tightly around her.

"Come. Sit," she said as she went to the couches arranged beneath a shuttered window.

The couches were meant for her to rest while her maids readied her toilette. I sat across from her, hands clasped on my lap. She reached over to open one half of the window, allowing moonlight to join candlelight in the room.

"I was thinking about how it might have been if my sister was alive," Queen Sadera said, eyes on the distant curve of the crescent moon.

I stiffened. The queen gave me a half-wondering look.

"You hate hearing about her," she said. "Would you rather you look more like her than unlike her? The comparisons are inescapable in any case, I'm afraid."

"I would not want to look like any other than Chironen Esaling," I replied curtly.

She gave me a pitying look. "Yes, but Chironen Esaling is as much a result of Chironen Kadera's mistake as she is of my guardianship."

The truth in her words stung. My mother, Chironen Kadera, had been Queen Sadera's older sister, but she had lost her right to the throne years before she had me on account of her father's belief that she would not be a good ruler. In an unusual move, the old king had his second daughter Sadera raised to be queen.

Growing up, the old servants would tell me many stories of Princess Kadera, a woman made out to be flighty and prone to whimsy. They had told me of her insane mission to create a cross-breed between fire and earth qaraks, of her sudden desire to paint the entire palace an eye-watering orange, of the numerous hearts she had left broken in her wake. They would have continued to tell me until I had found my voice and told them to shove these stories down the faecal chute.

After all, no scandal my mother had wrought could be worse than returning from a half-year sojourn in the Jade Empire heavily pregnant. It was said that she had exasperated the old king so much it had quickened him to the grave. Chironen Kadera did not live for long after her father's passing. Four years after my birth, she had gone to the grave with the knowledge of my father's identity.

But one needed only to look at me to know that my father must have been a Yun man. My skin was a lighter brown than the other Skylanders, my hair a mousy colour between blonde and brown, and my eyes a vivid green no Skylander could properly possess. I was also smaller than most Skylander females my age – more the size of a typical Downlander, people would whisper, even those who had yet to visit the Jade Empire.