Thank you for the lovely comments on the previous part!

II: Omens and Opening Moves

Andrea clutched her cloak close as she meandered through the streets. She kept her strange, hawk's eyes down, her Gifted, cursed hands clasped tight around her bag. People drifted by like wraiths, every stare hard and apprehensive.

She knew that they all watched her; after all, her mother had been a hedgewitch. She would have hung if the plague hadn't come.

They suspected...but they had no proof. Andrea took care not to give them that.

Goddess blazing, the walk would be so short, and the last drop as deep as death.

But she was in trouble and she knew it. What little money her parents had left after they entered the Realms of the Dead was running out; no one would employ her, but neither did she dare she leave - they told such terrible tales about the outside world, about the thieves, the murderers, the dreadful, wicked sorcerers, and worse.

Worse than the gallows? a voice asked her.

There must be worse things, part of her whispered back. And what if...what if they're right? What if I am cursed?

It was a doubt that had niggled at her heart since the executioner arrived. But how could her Gift be evil? Was taking away a cough with a brush of her fingers evil? Was knitting bone and sealing cuts wrong?

She reached the market and hurried over to Jaton's stall. He was a dour man, with dark, shifting eyes, but his produce was good quality and low priced. She watched him finish his haggling with a stout woman before edging forward to buy her meagre lot for the week.

She gasped at the price. "But that's gone up from last week!"

"Aye, what of it?" His eyes were flat and cold as the dead fish he sold. "Some has to pay more. You just happen to be one of them."

"But..." Her protests died. "I have so little money," she tried.

"Mebbe you should marry then." His smile had a hungry edge to it that made her skin crawl. "There's some as would be glad to look after you."

She felt her face flame as she paid the money, trying to avoid touching his hand. She had seen the looks some of the men cast her way. It wasn't that she was beautiful: just that she was rare.

Child of a Scanran father, as much of an oddity as her hedgewitch mother, Andrea was unusual in a village of dark, sullen men and women. She was as startling as a star tumbling through the night sky, all light and grace.

"Jaton!" The sharp voice was the man's wife and his leer quickly faded.

"Aye, Lethna, what is it?"

The woman's dark eyes glittered with malice. "There's a meeting today. The Executioner has found another. There'll be a pretty dance this evening." Her voice was rich with satisfaction, and the stare she cut at Andrea left no doubt as to her meaning.

She felt her stomach plummet. The dream! Gods above, it was coming true! Andrea turned away hastily, but not fast enough to miss that insinuating, triumphant whisper.

"That girl'll swing, you mark my words."

oOo

"Ouch." Ryan winced as Hana bathed the cut on his head. "That stings."

"O' course it stings, you fool," she snapped, half-tempted to put salt into the water. "That's what happens when ye get yourself involved in street brawls. What was it this time?"

"One of the thieves was..." Ryan squirmed uneasily, and his eyes, flecks of bright, impossible blue like shattered sapphires glinting in them, slid away from hers. "...he was sayin' things about you, like."

"You were fightin' over my honour?" Hana snorted, but sobered at the hurt in that thin face. "Lad, I don't care what they say about me. I say far worse about them."

"Yeah, well, I got them good. An' there was three of them." Then he glanced at her uneasily. "Hana...one of them said somethin' funny."

"Funny?" she asked, and was startled to see the blue flecks swell and flood his eyes until they were pure, blazing blue, like the sky at false dawn. She tried not to be afraid; the magic that ran in Ryan's blood was Gods-gifted, even though the lad wasn't aware of it.

As a child, he'd often had prophetic dreams – his foresight had saved them from the Provost's men, from the vengeance of the Rogue, from a thousand things great and small. When he had realised that this was not normal, he had been so scared by the thought something was wrong with him, she had lied and said it was the gods blessing them, pretending to have had the same dreams herself.

"One of them called me...a...a..." He flushed abruptly. "He said I was a fireborn freak. An' that they should a' drowned me at birth, an' that my da had tried to, afore you came along."

Oh dear. Hana stopped tending his hurts to try and hold that power-filled stare.

What she could say? Deny it? How often had she seen that azure halo shimmering round his body while she slept? Hadn't she shivered at it, a gleaming mist cloaking him when he lay in that alley some ten years back, battered and broken?

Maybe it was time he knew. She had heard that unlearned magic could be dangerous. And though every sense told her that her ferocious little thief would never harm anyone intentionally, well, what about unintentionally?

"They was right, Ryan," she admitted. "You have the Gift. All those strange things you ain't never been able to explain...the way you always knows where anythin' I lose is, how you sometimes dreams true...it's all your Gift."

"My...Gift?" he whispered uncertainly. And suddenly he didn't look fifteen at all, but frighteningly vulnerable and afraid. "But I ain't never done anythin' magic."

"You have, lad," she said. "You just didn't know."

"I got the Gift." Not a question, but a stumbling truth. "I got the Gift."

"Yes," she answered, a little worried. "Look, I'm goin' to get a potion to heal them bruises. You stay here...try an' sleep, that'll help. Dream sweet, Ryan."

Eyes filled with wonder, with thoughts of magic, he curled into a corner of her dark house and slept.

And in the other place, where the mortal world was merely a gaming board for idle gods, the pieces were arrayed - some already on the board, others yet hidden. They stood arrayed: the shadow man and the golden girl, the lady knight and the lady of the night, the thief of coins and the thief of hearts. Move, and counter-move - and the world began to change...

oOo