Disclaimer: The actual writing is mine, but the character Liam, and anything else you realize as being Tamora Peirce's is hers. So don't sue! Cause I don't got any money anyway…Also, I'm only writing this disclaimer, so now you've seen it so there!
Chapter One: Darkness Shown
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The one's who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. You can quote them. Disagree with the. Glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy one's, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the one's who do.
In the past years the country had suffered many grievances. The reigning nobility and its surrounding nobles had all been killed. The savages had taken over the country and its new rulers had shaky power over the inhabitants. The used fear as their primary source of control. The inhabitants had yet to realize that they outnumbered the army and the nobility by far. But the few who spoke out against the regime where brutally killed and the villages they lived in slaughtered. The ruling king was merely a pawn, being directed by one too cowardly to say his name and he rarely appeared in public, rather he preferred to send his king out for him.
The king was a stupid man; he liked to sit in his gardens, with his wine, food and women. Most of the women of the old nobility where his pets. Preferring the safety of pleasuring a fat man to the daily fear and threat of death outside the castle walls. The very few who did choose that fate where young when the war happened and held onto those memories, determined to somehow bring the old nobility back. People said they where crazy, they just wanted life, as they knew it back.
::-::
He watched sullenly was the king paraded past, his women surrounding him. Women he had once known and respected. Women he had once thought the greatest in the realm. Now they where slaves to the 'Empire'. What's so great about this empire? What good has it done us? I can only see bad results. But I'm probably biased. He thought, running hands through his now brown hair. He stopped to look in a shop window. Boy have I changed. He thought bitterly. Brown hair, brown eye's, brown, dirty skin. Far from the traits I used to have. He thought, allowing his mind to wander back, when he had always been clean, his hair had been gleaming midnight black, his eyes had been the color of prized sapphires he had never been dirty. His nanny had yelled fiercely if even the tip of his shoes got dusty.
The only thing left he had was the medallion of nobility that he had to keep hidden at all times. The circular pendant with the star carved in great detail in its center lay beneath his layers of clothing, heavy in the center of his chest. It was the only way the old nobility had of recognizing each other. The few that still lived free never trusted anyone unless they had the medallion, they couldn't all had to drastically change their appearances lest the kind or his adviser recognized them.
He shook his head and slipped into a bar, The Dancing Dove. Once a hide out for the realms thieves it was now a hide out for the nobility, also where he worked.
"Lo' there Johnny, here te' take o'er fer me?" Asked Lexus, the innkeeper, he worked the nightshift very rarely, he worked very rarely, only when there was no one else. Most of the time he sat in his room and wrote his book.
"Yeh." He said, sliding behind the counter. "Been busy?"
"Not too bad. Hired a new girl, make sure the' boys go easy on er." He said before disappearing into the kitchen and back to his cave, also known as the cellar.
Johnny shook his head and rested his head in his hands.
"Sir, sir, sir!" Came a slightly controlled shriek from the back of the room. He looked up in time to see a man grab a girl and throw her over his shoulder. The pitcher she had been holding clattered to the floor, broken into pieces, the ale wasted on the dirty floor. "Sir, I demand you release me this instant." She growled, twisting in his grasp.
"Or wha'?" The man said, laughing heartily.
"Or this." The girl finally growled, twisting her arm to grasp his neck. Gritting her teeth she strengthened her grip. The man growled and dropped her ungracefully on the ground. She hit the floor with her fore arms and rolled away unharmed.
"Why you li'le-" The man gasped rubbing his neck. Eyes flashing in anger he approached her.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. All of you need to go. We have to clean up. Third anniversary of the empire today, place must be in ship shape." Johnny rambled, grabbing the man's bicep and pulling him towards the door. "You're all welcome back tonight though." He said, waving them all through the door. When the last had reluctantly left. He slammed the door and bolted it.
He turned and looked the girl over. She wasn't so much a girl as a young woman, about his age he suspected. She had brown hair a little below her shoulders, brown eyes that at first appeared large and innocent but then you realized they weren't so much innocent as decidedly mischievous. As he looked her over he gasped and raced towards her, taking the pendant that was now hanging obviously from her neck, the gold shining, outclassing the dirty blue of her dress. He grasped it in his hand. The chain was long enough it should have stayed in her bodice had she not been upside down. He flipped it over to examine the family crest.
"Draconia eh? I'd out that away Princess, there are folk about not friendly to the old nobility." He said, walking into the kitchen for rags and buckets of water. Draconia, I thought they where all killed? What is she doing here? Draconia is month's travel from here, that's an island of the inland sea, even the Bazirh don't bother to climb the Southern wall to go there. Few ever make it that far south. He was late in realizing his own pendant had slid off his neck.
Whirling around he saw her studying it carefully. His own pendant had been magically altered so it looked like a plain circle of brass, but with the proper word of power-
"Thistærté." She whispered. The medallion flashed once and his family crest was revealed. She gasped and looked up at him once, brown eyes flashing. She dropped to her knees, her forehead touching the ground.
"Highness, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you." She said quietly into the ground, but he heard her words clearly.
"Get up." He said, his voice colder than he had meant. "I'm no longer in that place of honor."
"Neither am I, highness and yet you called me Princess." She said, voice just as cold.
"A Draconian Princess is always a princess. Dragons do not care about the rulers of a country." He said.
"Just as a Conté prince is always a prince the gods do not-" She began angrily, standing walking up to him, his medallion dangling from her hand.
"Are you insane woman, even the walls have ears these days. Especially in Corus." He said, pulling the only remaining proof of his identity from her hand.
"Ah, but it's no longer Corus is it? No it's Haimèt correct?" She said whispering fiercely.
Angered the Conté prince stepped closer bringing their noses scant inches apart from each other.
"I swear Woman if you do not shut that infernal mouth of yours shut I'll-"
A shrill shriek coursed through the air and the girl dropped to her knees once more, hands pressed on her ears. "No, no no! I'm fine, quiet, if you don't be quiet right now I'll. Silence! Rasparet! Hallus Ickor Nesfareate!" She said, crying words of silence.
He young prince watched in awed silence as these arcane words dropped like common from her tongue. The eerie wail stopped and a stunned silence reigned over the city before a noise fiercer than before commenced and chaos reigned outside.
"What was that?" He asked, his fury having dissipated.
"Is there a dragon here?" She asked, surprise evident on her now deathly pale face.
"Yes, Skysong, she was staying with the wildmage before..."
"Ah, that changes things."
"What things? What do you know?" He asked.
"Shh, not here. Not where people may hear." She said. "Come, we have to clean this up." She said, gesturing to the common room that was a mess of ale, breadcrumbs, empty plates and the occasional pile of regurgitation.
Johnny grabbed her arm. "We will talk later though, I promise you that." He said, his face inches from hers.
"That was never in question, Liam."
Ehehehe! There, chapter one up! And I'm 99% positive I'm going to keep this one up soo…Review! If you're going to flame me please at least tell me why it's bad, otherwise I will more than likely ignore them. Review!
~~Ana~~
Thistærté: Reaveal your true nature
Haimèt: Corus
Rasparet! Hallus Ickor Nesfareate! Silence, I demand Peace.
