Chapter 21


    Megan awoke with the midmorning sun in her eyes, and a warm breeze playing in her hair. Neither of these was what woke her, she had slept well into many afternoons on the lounge by Alizia’s window. Instead, it was a knock at the door that roused her from her dreams. In that brief moment before she fully woke Megan thought she was back in the capitol.


    Adelin Aldrimar pushed open the door and Clair followed her in. The older girl made her way to the wardrobe, and began to pick out Alizia’s outfit, while the younger girl huffed and puffed her way to her sister’s bed and threw back the blankets. “Wake up, lazy. You missed Samael.”


    Alizia bolted up with a gasp, long blonde hair a tangled nest on the side of her head. Adelin laughed at that. Clair held up a light blue and white dress from the wardrobe for Megan''s approval.


    “You don’t mean it!” Alizia said. Then she turned on Clair. “I can’t believe you let me sleep through it!”


    The governess was holding up a laughed. "I never let you sleep through anything. Lady Alizia wakes when she wishes to and not a moment before. Now get up, come see what I''ve picked out for you."


    "Besides," Adelin chimed in. "We all missed him. Uncle Sam left early this morning, before anyone was awake."


    Alizia let out a big sigh in relief. "Lords Above, don''t do that to me. I suppose that''s just like uncle Sam."


    It was. In all her time at Zaksburg Megan might not have heard a hundred words from Samael Aldrimar. He''d never looked more uncomfortable than being the center of attention at last year''s feast celebrating his admittance to the Unarium.


    "We all wish your uncle had been blessed with more social graces," said Clair. "And if it makes you feel any better, your brother slept through it too."


    "Did he?" Alizia laughed as she shed her bedsheets. "If he''s not careful they''ll be calling him Lord Lazy before long. Oh my."


    Alizia stopped, nodding when she saw the outfit Clair had picked out for her. The white and blue dress had no sleeves, leaving most of the shoulders exposed. The body of the dress was blue, with bands of pristine white at the seams, and the skirts would come down to just below her knees. There was also a perfectly crimson sash with the roaring white lion of Aldrimar to wrap around her waist.


    But the Lady Alizia sighed when she looked over herself in the silvered glass mirror.


    “What’s wrong?” asked Megan as she tried to tease out the knot in Alizia’s hair.


    “Nothing, it’s wonderful. I just wish there was some prince around to see me wear it. Ow!”


    “If you didn’t want it to hurt you shouldn’t roll so much in your sleep,” Megan scolded. They both laughed.


    Just then came a knock at the door. Adelin hopped up from the lounge where Megan had slept and pulled the door open. "You look nice today," said the voice on the other side.


    “Come on in uncle,” Adelin said, stepping back to let Zak in.


    He, dressed as if he were going riding, looked around the room. The briefest smile flashed on his face when he noticed Clair, but he quickly averted his gaze. “Have any of you seen Henric?” he asked. “He wasn’t in his room.”


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    “These two just woke up,” said Adelin, bobbing her head towards the wardrobe. “They haven’t seen anything.”


    “Well how about you then?” Zak asked, crouching to look his niece in the eye. “Do you know where your brother is?”


    Adelin shrugged and turned away from him. “Nope.” She plopped herself down on the bed, wrinkling the skirts of the nice dress Clair had somehow wrangled her into. “Not if he’s not in his rooms. That’s where I thought he was.”


    "Shit," Zak swore. "I haven''t been able to find him anywhere in the castle." He locked eyes with Clair for a long moment. "Keep an eye on them."


    Clair waved him away. "Of course. You worry too much."


    Half a grin snuck in around the edges of his mouth, bristling his short growth of beard. "I''ll leave you ladies to it then. If you see Henric, let me know?"


    He closed the door behind him, and for a moment the room was silent.


    "So girls, what do you wish to do today?" Asked Clair.


    "I want to go to the gardens," said Alizia. Megan smiled and Clair nodded at the suggestion.


    "A wonderful idea!" Said Clair.


    But Adelin groaned. "I hate the gardens..."


    It was well into the afternoon before they finally to a streamside lawn in the city’s gardens. The whole ordeal - between Adelin’s protest, Alizia’s constant need to stop and look at everything that caught her eye, and the guardsmens’ insistence on securing every place they wanted to go before the girls went there - made Megan wish for the days at the capitol where she had been nobody and could move about as she wished.


    “I wish your mother hadn’t sent us so many guards along with us,” said Megan. “We would have made much better time without them.”


    Alizia made a noncommittal shrug as they walked. “I don’t mind them, and they make mother feel better. I can hardly blame her for insisting.”


    “I can,” said Adelin. She shot a look at her sister. “But the guards weren’t slowing us down half as much as Zia was.”


    Megan laughed, but Alizia took a swipe at the younger girl.


    “Stop that,” said Clair sternly. The older girl almost had to shout to be heard from where she sat under a nearby tree, then turned back to her conversation with the sergeant of their guard who was sitting beside her.


    The five of them were alone on the large lawn, thanks to their guards blocking all the ways past the garden’s large hedges.


    “So what are we going to do now that we’re all the way out here?” complained Adelin. “We didn’t bring any games or horses.”


    “That’s true,” said Alizia. “But I brought this.” She began digging around in her satchel, and produced a book.


    “A book?” Megan said. “We came all the way out here to read?”


    But when Alizia pulled her hands away she revealed the very book that the Aldimar girls had tried to recruit Megan to steal from their brother. It had the same symbol on its cover that Henric had on the back of his hand, and the pages inside were old and yellowing. The letters on every page looked almost childish, and were clearly not written by a scribe. In fact, it was a journal.


    The three of them lost most of the afternoon reading stories of Zakaran, the first Aldrimar and his adventures with Willam the bastard, and of the conquest of Calais. Megan had always believed the stories of Zakaran were fiction. Nearly every noble family west of the Heart Sea claimed they were descended from some ogre-slayer or dragon-hunter or demi-god. She’d never had any reason to think the Aldrimars were any different.


    Adelin turned the page on Zakaran’s rather dry account of the building of the first fort at Zaksburg to a page titled “To my Sons.”


    I am afraid my curses shall not die with me, and so to my sons I wish to prepare you for what may come for you. I leave for you here the words the Boatsman told me that cursed day long ago, should I ever need to return to that forsaken place. They haven’t failed me yet.


    “Muzum ala thebeth” are old words, to be spoken when one can feel the current tugging at his feet. In our language they mean ‘I go now into Death’.


    The girls, each in turn, looked up at the others when they’d read that line.


    “Do you think Henric really believes this? Did Father believe this?” Alizia asked.


    “We should try it,” said Adelin.


    “We can’t” said Alizia. “Clair would never let us get in the water, we might ruin our dresses.”


    “Forget that,” said Adelin. “We do what we want.”


    “And Clair does what Mother wants. I, for one, don’t want to spend another month stuck in my chambers.”


    “Um,” said Megan. “I have an idea.”