Daughter of Jindazhen

Summary: Genevieve Yang, the daughter of a Jindazhen fisherwoman and a Tusaine man who departed shortly after her birth, has led a sheltered, if not extravagant, life in her Jindazhen seaside fishing village. One night, however, she discovers that many of her lifelong neighbors were in truth some of the pirates that raided the Yamani Isles when one of the victims' family members comes to avenge his murdered daughter. Left orphaned and questioning the integrity of her people as well as her own sense of right and wrong, she is brought to a convent in Maren where she discovers the Gift of magic, the gift that would come to change her life..

Chapter I

She could feel the flames dancing around her, towering above her one moment and crouched low the next, wraithlike ghosts that glowed crimson against the discord. Their heat pressed against her, choking her and forcing her down more effectively than any tangible weight could, as the hazy curtain of smoke obscured her view. Flames continued to roar in her ears as sparks flitted dangerously close to her face, rendering her deaf as well as blind. They howled, but it sounded almost like laughter to her dazed mind. A bar of steel came down near her ear; a smoldering log plummeted to her feet. Any minute now she would give way- the smoke or the heat or the jeering of the flames would force her to her knees. Desperately, her lungs in agony with the effort, she opened her mouth to scream, knowing fully well that no one would hear her…

"Ahh!"

A frantic, pleading scream tore the calm of midnight into chaos. A delicate, robed figure writhed on its cot, tossing midnight black tresses into upheaval as the cry continued to shake the screamer's body. A gentle hand steadied the twisting form, and the screaming petered out, letting the silence claim the night once more.

"How are you feeling, Gen?" the owner of the gentling hand, a matronly woman in the black habit of the priestesses of the Goddess, inquired. Her voice was barely a whisper; she did not want to frighten the girl or trigger memories of whatever had caused so uncharacteristic an outburst. "Gen?"

The girl stared back at her, her expression haunted. Unlike the pale-skinned, green-eyed Daughter of the Goddess, she was not an easterner but daughter of Jindazhen. Her dark hair, golden skin, and the slant of her sloe-black, almond eyes gave evidence of her western heritage, but the arch of her thinly-bladed nose as well as her name- Genevieve- was the legacy of a Tusaine father who had left shortly after her birth. Her face, narrow and elegant, was a combination of both east and west, but her willowy frame moved with the liquid grace of her mother's people- quite fitting for a fisherwoman's daughter. Her slim fingers, as graceful as those of any Tusaine noblewoman, plucked nervously at the bit of twine at her throat, tracing the lump of metal she wore at its end.

"Gen?" the priestess whispered again, jolting the girl out of her reverie. She blinked at her companion and a look of mild surprise flickered across her face, but her eyes had lost that haunted quality.

"Oh.. I'm sorry, Daughter," she whispered, the gentle, almost oceanic, rolling quality of Jindazhen still present in her velvety voice. "I dreamed about... home.... again."

For a brief moment, the convent daughter saw the fires of destruction blaze in Genevieve's eyes, but they faded too quickly to have been more than a flight of fancy. "All right, then," she shook her head, wondering where home was to the dark-haired girl, then rose to her feet and stepping out of the room. "Goodnight, Gen," she whispered, closing the wooden door behind her.

The girl nodded absentmindedly and turned to stare out of the window, feeling the last memories of her home coursing through her mind once more...

"Mama! Mama, what's happening?" she ran forward and tugged on her mother's gray linen sleeve, trying to mask the fear in her voice. Her lips quivered and sweat drops trickled down her brow- she could feel that something was not right here.

Her dark haired mother paid her no mind, sweeping frantically from cabinet to cabinet in their tiny fisherman's cabin, her black eyes framed by laugh lines flitting desperately back and forth. The woman's mouth was open with terror, a detail that served only to pull her daughter further down into the abyss of fear.

"Mama, please!" she begged, "Tell me what's wrong!"

The fisherwoman stopped her desperate search and gave her daughter a brief hug. "Oh, Gen," she whispered, and her daughter could feel the tears against her cheek, falling from her prominent eyes in crystalline trails. "Gen, they're coming… They want vengeance on us for raiding their villages and murdering their young…" She pulled away abruptly to press a something cold and hard into her daughter's palm- a silver locket on a bit of twine.

"Take this, Gen, and run!" she pushed her daughter away and thrust her gently toward the door. "Run!"

"But Mama, what are you talking about?" Gen demanded, as terrified as her mother now, without fully knowing why. "Who's coming? Who did we murder? Mama!" Her mother only shook her head and pointed to the door, her eyes pleading.

Gen nodded, a sense of foreboding growing within her, but what could she do? She twisted the doorknob and stepped into the night, convinced she would be able to ask her mother questions later.

The seaside fishing village, the place she had called home for all of her thirteen years, greeted her, comforting her with its familiarity. But something foreign, something that didn't belong in her quiet life, bobbed along the coast. A Yamani vessel.

A thud sounded in Gen's ear, and a tall, muscular man disembarked from the boat and walked down the earthen path to her church. Instinctively, the Jindazhen girl ducked behind the nearest building, one of the many fishers' stalls that lined the village.

The man turned, inadvertently providing Gen with a clear view of himself. He was dark-haired and almond-eyes like her, but the expression he wore, the expression that twisted his face with sorrow and rage, was like nothing she had ever seen. Gen noticed now that he carried a lit torch in one gloved hand and had an eastern blade strapped to his belt.

"Filthy pirates!" he growled, in the tongue of Yaman, but it was close enough to Jindazhi for Gen to understand him. The stranger approached the wooden temple, the torch held aloft like a weapon in one hand. "Cowardly raiders! This is for murdering my daughter!"

And in that moment, Gen realized with a detached horror that the torch was a weapon, a weapon he would use to eliminate the people of his family's murderer, even if they were in truth blameless. He would kill, kill children just like his daughter, just like Gen herself, to avenge her death.

The first rays of morning blooming through the sky jolted the Jindazhen girl out of her remembrance, but she could already feel the familiar tears trickling from her eyes.