Happy Birthday

Eepunda ekhusimanga nende liteke muumoni

(A donkey thanks you with a kick in the face)

- Sourced from Proverbs And Sayings of The 100 Realms by Shaera Mikhlin Aeduiain, Archmikhlin of Pharasandria (299 RE to date)

A snowstorm laden with icebricks raged outside. It was dry inside but deathly cold. The fire was too far. Falling blocks of ice beat a terrible rhythm against the terracotta-tiled roof. Allara's teeth clattered and her muscles trembled in tandem with that terrible rhythm. She was wearing all her clothes but shivered nonetheless.

Sylvia wasn't faring any better. Allara and her friend embraced harder and pulled the blankets tighter around themselves but it would be a long while before they both warmed up sufficiently. As she was wont to do, Allara reached into the recesses of her mind for memories of a distant land. An island a thousand miles away across land and sea. Salandria. Her home. A home she would never see again.

She harkened back to a decade-old winter. The winter her family unraveled, and her own role in the tragedy. This was the memory Allara liked to retrieve when she needed to torture herself. She had little choice in the matter. If she didn't relive the memory in her waking moments, it haunted her dreams. She preferred peaceful sleep. Sleep was the purest pleasure a slave could derive out of life.

The unraveling of the Vindeler family had started the day Keir Mekhbhurg died.

"Bloody fools! They've doomed us all!" Allara's father complained in the carriage on the way home.

"Not so loud, Stefan," Melilla hissed. "Someone will hear you."

Allara looked out of the carriage's curtained window as her parents conversed in inaudible whispers. She was shivering. It wasn't just shock from the things she had seen or fear of what was to come. It was real genuine cold and it was coming from outside.

Young Smandan had reorganized the calendar from 297 RE (Restorer's Era) to 1 LE (Liberation Era). He had also renamed the days of the lichum and the months of the year as part of his de-Rhexianization efforts but to Allara, it was still the 7th of Daenorum, 297 RE. It was the 10th month of the year and only the 7th day of winter. Yet it was uncharacteristically cold.

Salandria was so warm that the seasons meant nothing. Springs and summers were hot, autumns were warm, and winter was cool but never cold. At times it grew cold enough to necessitate a cloak outdoors but never so cold as to warrant a fire indoors.

Sometimes they got hailstones in winter instead of regular watery rain but that was about it. People in northern climes had to deal with snow and icebricks as big as cabbages come winter but there was no such thing in Salandria. Snow and icebricks were as alien to Allara as grass-fed lions.

Yet on the 7th of Daenorum, 297 RE, Salandport experienced an icefall. It started just as Allara peered out of that carriage window. It was so sudden that no one had any time to get out of the way. Blocks of ice bigger than balled fists fell from the sky.

Their carriage driver, Dasiuk, suffered a concussion when he slipped and hit his head on the pavement as he tried to scramble for shelter while the horses were still moving. The icebricks fell for an hour. They killed two children who were only found a day later, still frozen in the snow that had followed the icefall.

The Vindelers were stranded for that entire hour, shivering in their carriage with their comatose driver while icebricks pummeled the roof. Their horses were unusually calm, lying down until the icefall ceased. Without their skulls exposed to the sky, the animals were in no danger, unlike humans.

When they finally got home, a whole night beside the fire still couldn't expel the chill from Allara's bones. It was the first icefall Salandria had seen in 34 years. People started speculating about what it meant. They didn't have to speculate for long.

Three days after that icefall, on the 10th Daenorum, the first of the messenger pigeons Stefan Vindeler had left at the Pigeon Post Relay Station in Pharasandria returned to the dovecote in the Vindeler backyard just before noon.

Kuri was Allara's favorite pigeon. She envied the bird. Her father had taken it all over the known world while she had never left Salandria. No matter where Stefan Vindeler took it, Kuri always returned home. As always, it had a small leather letter canister strapped to its back. Little Bogdyr got to the bird before Allara, unstrapping the letter canister and rushing it to their father.

The letter was from one of Stefan Vindeler's friends in Pharasandria. It bore terrible tidings: Daegan XIII was weak and sickly but very much alive. After four years away from the public eye, Smandan Salandbhurg's rebellion prompted the Subaephyr to bestir himself.

The King of Kings had made an appearance at a chariot race in the capital where he denounced Smandan Salandbhurg, attainted him, and sentenced him to death. He'd also sworn to turn Salandria into ash and toss it in the sea. By sundown, the news was all over Salandport. There was another icefall that evening. This one lasted all night.

Come morning, Salandbhurg soldiers went around with sledgehammers smashing every dovecote in Salandport to pieces. King Smandan issued an edict criminalizing the private ownership of messenger pigeons and obliged every man to surrender his birds.

Every place pigeons roosted was destroyed. The only dovecotes that were spared were those at the city's central relay station. Here, Young Smandan's men opened and read all incoming letters before delivering them to their intended recipients.

Young Smandan remained defiant even as his subjects trembled at the thought of royal retaliation. "The Degenerate is a sickly old man. We will not fear him," he declared. "Let him come to Salandria and die. I will build him a pyre from the timbers of his own ship."

Icefalls became a regular occurrence with the icebricks growing larger as the days progressed. Soldiers and civilians alike took to walking around with helmets at all times. Blacksmiths were inundated with more orders than they could fulfill. Carpenters took to carving wooden helmets for those who lacked coin for bronze and steel. Where helmets were unavailable, cooking pots and kettles sufficed.

While many spread tales of icebricks cracking skulls open, Allara's mother, who had grown up with regular icefalls in Rhexia, told her it was nonsense. The greater danger was getting hit by so many icebricks that you became concussed outdoors and then froze to death with no one to carry you to safety. Icebricks weren't solid enough to crack a skull. They were amorphous blobs of ice that shattered into a thousand little shards on impact. That didn't stop Allara from having nightmares of an icebrick cracking her skull open and scattering its contents in the snow, however.

With the winter, hundreds of people froze to their deaths in Salandport. Salandria had the best weather of any territory of the 100 Realms. It was warm year-round. Freezing winters were just not a thing anyone had dealt with in living memory or prepared for. When Salandria finally experienced one, death followed.

But the number of people who froze outdoors in the snow was minuscule compared to the hundreds who died in their own houses due to lack of heat. The culprit was a little thing called wood prices.

Wood had never been cheap in the cities of Salandria. Firewood was so expensive that funeral pyres had become a status symbol in Salandport. The city's poorer residents never built pyres for their dead as The Sitabh advised. Instead, they cremated the heart to release the soul and buried the rest of the body at sea. An armload of firewood for cooking was affordable enough but buying two whole cartloads for a pyre was the height of extravagance. But in the winter of 297 RE, even that armload of firewood became an extravagance. Wood prices quintupled, then doubled, and then doubled again.

The issue, as Stefan Vindeler explained to his daughter, was that Salandport's wood and charcoal came from the hill country of central Salandria, a region the coastal dwellers derisively called the Landlubber Kingdom. It was said that men of the Landlubber Kingdom could go their entire lives without setting eyes on the sea. When Young Smandan rebelled, the Landlubber Kingdom in a coalition with the cities of northern Salandria refused to join his cause, maintaining their loyalty to Daegan The Good.

They ceased all shipments of food and fuel to the rebellious cities and towns of southern Salandria but food wasn't a problem. Salandria had always been a bountiful land. The need to dispose of surplus farm produce had spurred Salandrian seafaring for centuries. As the largest city in Salandria, Salandport had grain stores expansive enough to outlast any embargo. The coalition of small southern farming towns Young Smandan had cobbled together also kept his capital well stocked.

But wood was another matter entirely. Between clearances for farmland, the fuel demands of a city of 70,000, and a millennium of house construction and shipbuilding, every tree within 20 miles of Salandport's walls had been cut down long before Allara was born. Young Smandan declared war on the Landlubber Kingdom and the "treacherous northerners" to solve the problem.

His heralds proclaimed their king's armies victorious in battles over central Salandria but wood prices didn't get any lower. Young Smandan resorted to price controls for wood and charcoal. Instead of the fuels becoming more affordable, wood and charcoal vanished off the streets entirely.

Sellers claimed to be out of stock and charged even higher prices for those lucky enough to be granted purchasing privileges. More poor people died in their houses. Many had food but couldn't afford to cook it and those who could still had trouble keeping themselves warm in the cold. Tales abounded of people in poor neighborhoods chopping down their neighbors' doors and using their own furniture for firewood.

Stefan Vindeler invited his employees and their families to move into his house. Allara's mother grumbled about her house getting overcrowded but her father pointed out that heating one room with a hundred people inside was cheaper than heating 10 separate rooms with ten people each. It was sound logic and while Melilla remained unconvinced, Allara and Little Bogdyr were ecstatic at their newly expanded pool of playmates.

The affluent citizens of Salandport prophesied that The Freezing of The Poors, as they called it, would doom Young Smandan's fledgling reign. Many of them were merchants and as a class, they neither liked war nor this new rebel king who had started one. It interfered with their operations and their profits. They were careful to keep their prophecies quiet, however. King Smandan had become a prolific tongue taker and head chopper in a scarily short time.

The ever-cynical Stefan Vindeler disliked Salandria's self-proclaimed king more than most but he observed that The Freezing of The Poors was the best thing that ever happened to Smandan Salandbhurg. Allara couldn't see how people's deaths could be a good thing. Stefan Vindeler had been ready with an explanation as always.

Despite Young Smandan's rants, few in Salandria and the surrounding islands actually cared if they were ruled from Pharasandria or Salandport. The conquest may have been bloody but it had been 200 years ago. Few cared. Rhexian rule had been gentle and fair since then.

Salandrians weren't treated any worse than any other subject of the King of Kings. They paid the same taxes as anybody else in any corner of the 100 Realms and were subject to the same laws. Salandport's most influential class, the merchants, had especially prospered with the expanded market a much larger nation provided. Mainland Bhai Andium was 30 times the size of Salandria and all the islands of Chumbia combined.

Salandrian products like wine, olive oil, dyes, woven carpets, and exotic Maevite animals, naphtha, sweet salt, and spices sold by Salandrian merchants were also more competitive and profitable in the markets of the mainland because as subjects of The Purple Hat, Salandrian shippers paid half the tariffs paid by their biggest rivals, the Reendeni. Stefan Vindeler did three-quarters of his business in the mainland ports. If Salandria broke off, all that would be lost.

He also felt that Rhexbhurg rule was better than Salandbhurg rule. As he told Allara, "When the subrhex before Lord Keir became a little tyrant, we wrote to King Daegan. He dismissed the man and exiled him. Now Young Smandan does whatever he wants and none of us can do anything about it."

As a consequence of apathy and fear, recruitment had been soft. Young Smandan was backed by the Emperor of Maevi'i but his attempts to build an army of Salandrian natives hadn't gone as well as he had hoped.

2,000 Baenarites still held out against a Maevite army ten times their number in their citadel right in the middle of Salandport. Everybody knew that come spring, thousands more would descend on Salandria. No man wanted to fight them. Some of Young Smandan's loyalists began threatening conscription if they didn't get the men they wanted voluntarily. Allara's 16-year-old cousin, Big Bogdyr, put a perfectly good arm in a cast just in case.

But The Freezing of The Poors changed everything. For Salandport's poorer residents, potentially getting disemboweled by a Baenarite's sword became infinitely less terrifying than freezing to death in their hovels with nothing to eat.

With his army swelled every day by recruits, Smandan II issued a raft of temporary emergency proclamations to prepare for his coming death struggle with Daegan XIII. These proclamations increased taxes and confiscated any asset that was deemed to be of strategic importance to the war.

"A patriotic investment in your country," he called it. Stefan Vindeler, as one of the unwilling "investors" in Young Smandan's vision for Salandria, had a different name for this proclamation: The Brazen Winter Robbery of 297.

First, Allara's father lost his ships. Of the six Vindeler vessels, five were seized. The two ships in Salandport, one in the nearby southern Salandrian city of Red Grape Cove, and the two docked in ports on neighboring islands under Young Smandan's control were all taken.

Only Sweet Profit, wintering on Rogensia, an island that had declared for Daegan XIII, escaped the seizures. A "requisitioning," the king's men called it. When Stefan Vindeler demanded compensation for his ships, Young Smandan's agents told him it was his patriotic duty to aid his king. "He's no king of mine!" he yelled after they were gone. Much good it did him.

Then they came for the horses. They took them all except Lalii, an old draft horse blind in one eye. Stefan Vindeler sold Lalii to a butcher just in case they changed their minds and came back for it.

After the horses, it was Stefan Vindeler's grain stores. Young Smandan's agents helped themselves to thousands of sacks containing chickpeas, rice, lentils, wheat, millet, barley, and beans without paying a single coin.

They didn't even have the decency to cart the grain away. They just dismissed Stefan Vindeler's men from his warehouse and posted their own guards at the doors. They handed Allara's father twenty sacks of grain for his "personal consumption." Everything else they kept.

After the grain stores, they raided Stefan Vindeler's second warehouse, helping themselves to wine, wool, linen, olive oil, steel, salt, and everything else they decided they needed. "Since when do soldiers need Naesaenon's Nectar to wage war?" Allara's father raged when he discovered that they had taken all his finest wines but hadn't touched a single barrel of the cheap stuff. Allara wished she had an answer for him.

They came for the cheap wines the very next day. All they left him were his luxury goods but with the drumbeats of war beating as loudly as they were, nobody was interested in silk, spice, or pricey porcelain plates.

Stefan Vindeler wasn't alone in his predicament. Merchants and traders of all kinds were raided and any supplies deemed essential for the war were confiscated. All these men received in return were promissory notes for the seized goods. From humble shopkeepers to shipping magnates, no one was spared. Farmers from the surrounding countryside had their granaries emptied by soldiers as well. Young Smandan even seized fishing boats and made fishermen re-lease their own vessels from him, charging them a third of their catch as a leasing fee.

Once all this supply-gathering was done, Young Smandan rounded up all the prosperous craftsmen, aristocrats, and merchants in Salandport then forced them to "loan" him vast sums of gold, scaling the amount according to each man's perceived wealth. Allara's father pleaded poverty but that very brilliant excuse crossed the mind of each one of the hundreds of men present at that meeting as well.

While Stefan Vindeler was stuck in The Mermaid's Palace, Salandbhurg soldiers raided his house. They interrogated the servants about all the places he hid his coin. They turned up nothing even after a litany of threats and two beatings.

These treasure seekers didn't leave empty-handed, however. They ransacked the whole house and took all of Melilla's jewelry. "Wars are expensive," they explained. "The king will reward you richly for your contribution after we win." What would happen if the "king" lost remained unsaid.

The Vindelers wouldn't have been too angry if the treasure hunters had stopped at jewelry theft but they took all the silverware from the kitchen too. Then they took every fixture from the house that had even a hint of silver or gold in it. That's how Allara lost her mirror and the handles of her bedside drawers.

Stefan Vindeler returned home later that evening, angrier than ever before but blessedly unharmed. Many of his compatriots had claimed to be destitute only for disgruntled servants to reveal hoards of gold and silver when questioned. Young Smandan had their noses slit for "treason."

After being deprived of 38 ships, 120 fishing boats, 200 horses, unquantifiable quantities of trade goods, a reported 150 pounds of gold, twenty times as much silver, and finally his nose, Salandport's richest man, Hanebert Sifyrnus Fischer, hanged himself that very night.

Young Smandan returned some of Hanebert The Handsome's seized assets to the man's heirs but that did little to lighten the black mood. Melilla threatened to slit Stefan Vindeler's throat when he speculated about killing himself to get some of his stuff back. Allara didn't see how killing a suicidal man could be a punishment but her mother threatened to cut her father's throat at least twice a month. Sometimes, she almost sounded serious.

Young Smandan didn't constrain himself to property seizures. Salandria's new king was nothing if not industrious. He minted new coins with his image on them and outlawed the ones bearing King Daegan's image. Then he mandated compulsory coin exchanges at a one-to-one ratio. Many of his subjects complied. Stefan Vindler was among the reluctant few.

"Garbage money," Allara's father called the new coins. He sawed one coin in half to prove it. It was merely a copper coin with a thin coating of silver. King Daegan's coins, on the other hand, were pure silver.

People soon wisened up to this scam and stopped trading in their coins. Grocers and shopkeepers would sooner accept 100 copper pennies and even barter their goods than take a single silver coin bearing Young Smandan's portrait. When they did, they charged a hundred times as much. This new system was cheekily named the Daegan Price Standard and the Smandan Price Standard.

Besides the monetary shenanigans were the religious ones. Hundreds of people died rioting against Young Smandan's criminalization of Aeduianism. He arrested priests, restarted old Salandrian cults, and promoted Maevite gods. He turned temples into garrisons for his soldiers and executed anyone who protested.

Salandrians soon learned to keep their mouths shut and go along with the dictates of their king. Like many of the city's residents, the Vindelers took to praying in secret.

In this gloomiest winter of her life, Allara always had Fluffy. The world was about to end and here was Fluffy always urging Allara to play. She couldn't resist. Fluffy's eyes were just so… You couldn't turn her down. Even Little Bogdyr, who had initially said "Men don't play with girl dogs" was won over.

In the gloomy streets of her mercantile enclave, Allara and Fluffy ran. The dog fetched sticks and jumped and rolled in the snow to appease its mistress. Fluffy loved snow. Had to be all that fur.

When Allara swept, Fluffy grabbed a broom with her mouth and imitated her. The dog couldn't sweep very well but she tried. Doom may have been gathering around her but Fluffy made Allara forget that. Melilla even relaxed her restrictions and let the dog in the house.

As winter wore on, the icefalls and the snow stopped and Salandport warmed up again. People usually looked up to spring and the new year with hope and excitement but there was no such optimism in late 297 RE.

Even before winter was properly over, news came that King Daegan's brother, Prince Caedmyr The Navigator, had abandoned his war in Khwhefia and sailed south with a massive armada. He'd already taken the northernmost and easternmost islands of the archipelago. Many of these had never joined Young Smandan's rebellion in the first place, being as close to the mainland as they were.

As 297 RE turned into 298, news arrived that The Navigator was in Rogensia, only 120 miles northwest of Salandria. "He could be here in one day with a good wind," the sailors kept reminding everyone. The panic in the air was so thick, sometimes Allara felt she could touch it.

"There is nothing to worry about," Young Smandan's heralds proclaimed. "Salandria is larger and has more people than all their little rocks put together."

This was partly true. Salandria was the largest island of the Chumbian chain's 116 inhabited islands and was home to half the archipelago's entire population.

But Salandria wasn't as united as the other islands which were smaller and more homogenous. Salandria had three distinct regions which correlated with the traditional three kingdoms of old: Shamana in the north, Kimola in the South, and Matara, called the Landlubber Kingdom, between them.

These three regions all used to be distinct kingdoms with their own culture and languages. Those had been largely merged after Anti Neni The Unifier unified the whole island and its neighbors under his rule.

After the fall of the Antinens, two centuries of Rhexian rule had seen more uniformity across Salandria, albeit towards a shared Rhexian culture and religion than the Kimolese one championed by The Unifier and his successors. Nevertheless, regionalism was far from dead. Northerners had turned against the Antinens and fought for The Beheader during his conquest of Salandria and the enmity had been solidified.

The regions weren't equally powerful, however. The south had the most fertile lands, the two largest cities, and the most people but the north and the largely rural Landlubber Kingdom could match its manpower when they joined forces.

Young Smandan subdued central Salandria in brutal winter fighting with horrendous casualties on both sides but the north remained stubborn. The region's large population of Rhexian settlers didn't bode well for Young Smandan's hope of a united Salandria.

Allara herself didn't know exactly where she belonged with Young Smandan's mantra of "Salandria for Salandrians."

While her father was a native of southern Salandria, her mother came from Rhexian settler stock. Rhexian settlers either assimilated or didn't. It varied from man to man, but even when they did, they still considered themselves Rhexian first and Salandrians second.

Allara's maternal grandfather was one of those that refused to assimilate even in the slightest. Despite living in Salandria for over 20 years, Grandpa Bogdyr refused to speak Kimolese. He always had a handy response whenever one of his children urged him to learn the language of the natives, "We didn't conquer the world so I can speak some uncivilized tongue. The savages can speak Rhexi to me or jump in the sea." It was an attitude shared by many Rhexian settlers of his generation.

With The Navigator only 120 miles away, even Young Smandan's most rabid supporters in Salandport were starting to waver. If The Navigator reinforced the northerners, the war would take on a terrible turn for the already struggling Salandbhurg-Maevite army.

Even Young Smandan's detractors started worrying. They may not have initially supported his rebellion but if he lost, they would be dead all the same. As Stefan Vindeler told Allara, Young Smandan didn't just take their gold and goods out of greed. He wanted them complicit.

Salandport's merchants and aristocrats would be ruined if their new king got crushed. Young Smandan's property seizures and their accompanying promissory notes were a twisted way of guaranteeing the loyalty of his wealthiest subjects. By hitching their fortunes to his future, their best choice became backing him to the bitter end. The alternative was losing everything. Stefan Vindeler chose to lose everything.

As Salandport consumed itself in panic, Melilla managed to get a message to her brother Gydyrn Melwright, Big Bogdyr's father and Sweet Profit's captain. Sweet Profit was the only one of Stefan Vindeler's ships to escape seizure. With Uncle Gydyrn waiting in hiding at a cove on Ilumi, an uninhabited islet 20 miles off the western coast of Salandria, the Vindelers sneaked out of Salandport in the wee hours of dawn.

It was the 9th Caedmyrum. The ninth day of spring, the ninth day of the year, and Allara's ninth birthday, but no one seemed to care about that except Allara herself. The Vindelers didn't take much with them. All they had was a single change of clothes, a bag of coin, and their household slaves: Hiram, Mia, Shania, and Dasiuk.

Stefan Vindeler had dismissed the rest of his employees, slaves and free men alike, in the waning days of winter. With all his ships, warehouses, and goods seized and a war raging, he had nothing for them to do anyway. But he was more attached to his household slaves, rejecting Mellila's suggestion to leave them behind.

Allara was glad for the company. Hiram and Mia had known her since she was born. Her father had inherited them from his father. They were more of a second pair of parents than servants. Their daughter Shania was her best friend barring her cousins.

Dasiuk was the newest slave in the Vindeler household. Stefan Vindeler had brought him back from a voyage to Maevi'i four years before. He wore many hats. Pigeon keeper and trainer, Stefan Vindler's clerk, bookkeeper, and Allara's tutor. He was her brother's tutor too but unlike Allara and Shania, Little Bogdyr would rather tease the poor man than listen to anything he said.

Their parents punished him for such indiscretions but the little brat just switched from outright torture to sneaky pranks, often with the help of his friends. Allara didn't like Dasiuk as much as she liked kindly Hiram and motherly Mia but she didn't dislike him either. He was strict but fair.

They sneaked out of the city through a postern gate. The guards had been bribed in advance and waved them through without a second glance. They piled into a newly and illegally purchased fishing boat on an isolated jetty north of the city walls. Melilla, holding Baby Julia, went in first. Allara, Shania, and Mia went next, then Little Bogdyr, Big Bogdyr, and Dasiuk. Stefan Vindeler and Hiram, as the oldest men, boarded the boat last.

"Fluffy? Where is Fluffy?" Allara asked.

"Do I look like a dog?" Melilla spat back.

"Forget the dog. I'll buy you another one," Stefan Vindeler said.

"I want Fluffy!" Allara insisted.

"Why didn't you bring it?" Big Bogdyr asked.

Allara turned to Dasiuk. "You said to hurry along. You said you will bring her. Where is she?"

"I'm sorry, Alla. I forgot. I left the dog in the house," the slave said.

"Now is not the time for this," Stefan Vindeler said firmly. "Forget the dog. The sun will be coming up soon and we need to get as far away from this cursed city as we can." He took an oar and motioned for the rest of the men to start rowing.

Allara jumped out of the boat and took off back the way they had come. She wasn't going anywhere without her beloved Fluffy. She heard cursing and the crash of footsteps behind her but ignored them, running as fast as her little feet could carry her.

Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and lifted her bodily off the ground. The grip hurt. She kicked and screamed to no avail. The hands turned her around and she came face to face with her father's stormy face. She had seen Stefan Vindeler angry before but never like this and certainly never at her. Little Bogdyr was the most frequent subject of their father's wrath, not Allara.

"You stupid child!" he roared. "Do you have any idea how much danger you're putting us in?"

"I want Fluffy," Allara whimpered.

Stefan Vindeler carried her to the boat and dumped her face up at the bottom of it. He planted one foot firmly on her stomach, pressing it down hard enough to keep her from jumping out but not hard enough to hurt. Yet Allara still hurt. It wasn't physical pain. It went far deeper. She wanted Fluffy. Allara started sobbing. "I want Fluffy."

"Shut up!" her father roared.

"If I hear so much as a peep, Allara, I will whip the living daylights out of you," Melilla threatened. Then Baby Julia woke up and started screaming. From the stench in the air, Allara knew that her infant sister had soiled herself. "Hand me the bag of nappies," Melilla instructed Dasiuk.

"Um… uh…" the slave stuttered. "I might have forgotten it, my lady."

"Forgotten it? How?" Melilla asked. "I specifically gave it to you to carry."

"I must have forgotten it when I was locking the door, madam."

"What is wrong with you today?" Melilla screamed all the while trying to soothe the wailing Julia. "What are you waiting for? We're gonna be in this boat for hours. You want my baby to stew in her filth all that time?"

"No, madam," Dasiuk said.

"Then go fetch her nappies before I take the shirt off your back and use it to change her!" Melilla yelled at him.

"Won't the guards trouble him, master?" Hiram asked with an eye at Dasiuk's retreating back.

"He's the one who paid them off for us," Stefan Vindeler said. "Negotiated a better price than I could have."

Stefan Vindeler took his foot off Allara's chest and motioned for her to sit up. This reprieve came with a warning look and a wagging finger. Everybody else on the boat favored her with hostile glances. Only Little Bogdyr was smiling. It was a triumphant smile. It was usually him getting into trouble, not her. He had enjoyed every bit of her fall from grace.

Nobody talked much as they waited for Dasiuk. They were all tense. The night was waning as evidenced by the moon shriveling to a crescent on the western horizon. The sun would be emerging from the east in two hours at most. Then anybody passing by would see that they were no fishermen. They had a fishing boat and they had nets but had no idea how to use them. Girls Allara and Shania's age didn't belong on fishing boats. Not to mention the infant Julia.

As they waited for Dasiuk, Allara thought of the journey ahead. Her father planned to abandon the archipelago entirely until the war ended. He was going to Pharasandria where he planned to set himself up with his remaining ship. Allara was going to be living in the greatest city in the world and now that Fluffy was going to be with her, she could barely contain her excitement.

She would be living in a city 15 times the size of Salandport. One with streets of marble, more people than any other city in existence, temples the size of small towns, and visitors from all corners of the known world. The city of Pharas The Builder and Aesandria The Cunning wasn't just the greatest city in the world. It was located in the literal center of the known world.

But first Dasiuk had to return. Then they would row to Ilumi where Uncle Gydyrn was waiting with Sweet Profit. From Ilumi it would be a four to five day-voyage towards Pharasandria with favorable winds. Even without a good wind, the Vindelers would be in Pharasandria in 10 days or so. The Navigator's navy wasn't bothering merchant vessels as long as they were sailing away from Salandria. All that was delaying them was Dasiuk.

Dasiuk returned just as everyone was growing jittery from all the waiting. His appearance pushed them over the edge.

"Row!" Stefan Vindeler roared, cutting the tow rope, plunging his own oar into the water, and pushing off the jetty. Hiram and Big Bogdyr on the other side started rowing immediately. Melilla dumped the still-crying Julia in Allara's arms and picked up an oar, joining her husband. Mia took up an oar as well. Only the children: Allara, Shania, and Little Bogdyr, were oarless. Little Bogdyr took the last remaining oar and did his best but it left something to be desired.

They rowed hard. Allara could see the adults sweating and panting from the exertion. She kept one of her eyes trained on the shore where Dasiuk stood with Salandbhurg soldiers. They kept rowing and the shore vanished from sight.

They almost made their escape until a second, larger boat manned by more rowers came out of nowhere and rammed their starboard side. The fishing boat cracked open and spilled them all into the sea. Allara opened her mouth to scream but it filled with salt water. She couldn't find Baby Julia. She couldn't see or hear anything. Her eyes stung. Then the world went black.

When Allara came to, she was on the sandy beach. She vomited water. Big Bogdyr was pumping her stomach. Melilla was wailing, "My baby! Julia! My baby!" She tried running back to the water but Salandbhurg soldiers restrained her.

Allara's entire family was on the beach, wet and shivering but alive. All but Julia. 11-month-old Julia who had just started to walk had drowned. Allara had lost her. Melilla was inconsolable.

Stefan Vindeler sat on the sand in sullen silence, soldiers standing over him. He glared at the traitorous Dasiuk who avoided his gaze. Mia and Shania were huddled together, sobbing softly. Hiram sat with them, stoic but troubled. Dasiuk walked over to them, leering at Mia. "Hello Mia," he said with an oily smile. "You're my property now." Mia just sobbed some more.

Dasiuk motioned at one of the soldiers. The man gave Dasiuk his sword and he beheaded Hiram right there on the beach. Mia and Shania screamed but Dasiuk yelled at them to be quiet. He kicked Hiram's head into the sea like it was some ball then dragged Mia and Shania away.

The soldiers frogmarched the Vindelers back into the city. Stefan Vindeler and Big Bogdyr shuffled forward with downcast and defeated looks. Melilla refused to move and had to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way to The Mermaid's Palace. Allara shuffled along in a trance. She put one foot in front of the other but didn't feel like she was moving. Nothing seemed real. The world had to have come to an end. This was wrong. So wrong. Even Little Bogdyr lacked his customary cheerfulness.

They arrived at the Mermaid's palace before they knew it. Normally, Allara would pose to admire its slender white towers, exquisite masonry, and lush gardens but she kept her head trained on the ground and put one foot in front of the other. This had to be a dream. She would wake up and find everything was alright.

The Vindelers were thrown into one cell and left in complete darkness. When the sunrise gong rang, they were dragged out. A dais and gallows were set up outside the castle's gates. A small crowd was gathering, eyeing them like contortionists at a fair as they were marched in.

The Salandburg soldiers took them to Masden Salandbhurg who looked them up and down. "Plum boy," he told Big Bogdyr, "you can go. Take the children." Big Bogdyr took their hands and led them into the crowd as Stefan and Melilla Vindeler were marched onto the dais and forced to kneel below the gallows. Melilla kept sobbing but Stefan Vindeler betrayed no emotion.

They joined the crowd. The people nearby took a step back from them. Nobody wanted to be too close. Their pariah status was alleviated by the arrival of Young Smandan, his deep purple cloak flapping in the wind.

Allara could almost taste the salt in the breeze. The air was warm but not hot, and the breeze cool but not cold. It would have been another perfect day in Salandport if her parents weren't kneeling on the dais in front of the crowd. Nooses dangled just above their heads.

Allara's eyes were fixed on Young Smandan. King Smandan, the voice in her head corrected. Smandan II walked onto the platform, accompanied by seven guardsmen in emerald green cloaks that flapped in concert with his purple cloak. The Merman's Guard, he called them.

Young Smandan gestured, and a Merman's Guardsman dragged Allara's mother away. The king stopped in front of her father. Stefan Vindeler still held up his head in quiet dignity even on his knees. "Stefan Vadimus, my old friend," the rebel lord greeted her father in the most cloying of tones.

Her father looked up and returned the greeting with a small dip of his head. "Young Smandan."

"Young Smandan?" Smandan Salandbhurg exploded. He smacked her father hard across the face. "I'm your king! You insolent piss peddler!"

"Forgive me, Exalted One. I forgot myself," Stefan Vindeler apologized in the same tone he used when giving customers who haggled too hard a tiny discount.

King Smandan collected himself. "All is well, my good Stefan Vadimus. All is well," he said with his patented half-smile as he patted her father on the head. "Why don't you try this on?" Smandan Salandbhurg proffered the noose with two hands like it was a plate of delicate sweetmeats.

To his credit, Stefan Vadimus Vindeler didn't cry or beg for his life. He accepted his fate with all the stoicism expected of an Aeduiana. His lips moved in quiet prayer as he slowly slid the noose over his own head and then down his neck. He was determined to die well. Cravens got reborn as worms.

"Stefan Vadimus here is a good man, or so we thought," Young Smandan addressed the crowd. "Honest merchant, hardworking, inspiring. A son of a nobody who made something of himself. A leading citizen of this city. And yet earlier this morning Stefan Vadimus and his Rhexian wife were caught sneaking out of Thuden's Gate like thieves. They were going to hand themselves over to the Rhexians and bribed guards to betray their own city, their own country, and their own king. If Stefan Vadimus would rather be a Rhexian than a Salandrian, we will show him what we do to Rhexians here." Then Young Smandan turned to Stefan Vindeler, "Any last words?"

Allara's father looked in her direction. His face was inscrutable. His eyes met hers and Allara looked away in shame. "Happy birthday," he said.

"Today's not my birthday. My birthday is on the 25th of Aevardum," Young Smandan said. "I mean Sifunanum," he quickly self-corrected when he realized he had used a Rhexian month name that he himself had outlawed.

"I wasn't talking to you!" Stefan Vindeler snapped.

Young Smandan narrowed his eyes but said nothing. He gestured and a member of his Merman's Guard bound Stefan Vindeler's hands behind his back. A second guardsman pulled a lever on the winch and the loose noose tightened. The rope stiffened and stretched, rising and taking Allara's father with it. Soon, Stefan Vindeler's feet left the dais and his entire body followed, dangling in the air and twitching in unending death throes.

"That's the price of treason!" Smandan Salandbhurg thundered as he turned to address the crowd. The rebel king continued with his speech while Stefan Vindeler slowly strangled behind him. He extolled the virtues of his rebellion. He spoke of a glorious past and painted a portrait of a brilliant future. Allara could have listened if she wasn't watching her father die.

Her eyes were fixed on Stefan Vindeler, his eyes bulging and tongue lolling while he futilely struggled for breath. The rope around his neck only tightened while his eyes bulged some more. His mouth opened impossibly wider but none of the air he tried to gulp in ever made it past his throat.

To the side of the square, Allara's mother kicked and screamed as she was dragged away by a Maevite slaver. Allara turned back to her father. His eyes met hers. She saw the pain and the despair in them.

Allara had tears in her eyes but didn't dare blink. She prayed for a miracle but none happened. First, she prayed to Aephyr, the God of Gods.

Then she prayed to Aephyr's four children, starting with her favorite, Aeduia, Mother Of All Men and Font of Mercy. Stefan Vindler continued twitching and spasming.

Then she prayed to Aembaur, Lord of The Sky and Guarantor of Justice. If anyone knew her father didn't deserve to die it was Aembaur. Nothing happened. Stefan Vindeler groaned as he swung from side to side, the rope squeezing his neck.

Allara next prayed to Aemeia, the Mistress Of The Waters. She had kept her father safe so many times before on his voyages. Surely she wouldn't abandon him now. Aemeia didn't answer. Stefan Vindeler strangled some more.

Finally, Allara prayed to the one god she rarely, if ever, prayed to. She prayed to Aemlilon. God of Fire. God of The Sun. God of War. Aemlilon The Avenger wasn't a deity you went to for mercy. He had none to spare. Allara took a long pause before uttering the words. Finally, she did.

Stefan Vindeler's body went limp. The stillness of her father's body elicited a sigh of relief from Allara. She had watched his twitches, spasms, and suppressed groans with growing horror. The bulging eyes and lolling tongue hadn't helped.

She had covered Little Bogdyr's eyes with her hands but never applied such mercy to herself. She watched her father's suffering in its entirety. It was her penance. She might have turned away if she knew it would never end but nine-year-old Allara Stefanus Vindeler wasn't blessed with such foresight. The tears finally came, pouring out of her eyes like water from a broken dam.