It was my eleventh birthday. Riel had planned a huge feast for me, though I was not supposed to know of it – it is difficult to keep secrets such as that in a castle as close-quartered as ours. Even so, I played my part and pretended to be oblivious to the hurrying servants and the worried cooks. Valien and I had decided to go out on the sea, sailing along, close to the shoreline where it was relatively safe.

'Ji,' she asked, looking at me out of her sweetly innocent blue eyes. 'Why hasn't father returned from his trip south?'

I stared at her in shock. Had nobody explained to her that he wasn't coming back? That he hadn't really gone south? It made me sick to realize how little she knew. How little people had deemed necessary to tell her. I may have been keeping our brother's involvement in his death a secret, but she deserved to know that she was never going to see him again!

'Valien...' How did one go about telling such a sweet child that her father was dead? For an instant, I almost understood why she didn't know. Almost. 'Dad is... not coming back. Remember a few months ago, when we dressed all in red and processed down to the quarry?'

'Yes.' Her voice was hesitant, as though she wasn't sure she really wanted to hear what was going to come next.

So I gave her a moment to think about it, then continued. 'That was his sending – he was placed in the river and left to float out to sea. He's dead, Valien.'

She stared at me, her eyes growing wider as she began to understand what I was saying. 'Dead?' And then, quite without warning, the tears came. The flooded out of her eyes in more or less the same way that the sea flooded every spring. I was angry, no, furious that they had left me with the task of breaking such news to her. Someone was going to regret that.

But I never got the chance to comfort her. We sat there, floating around in circles upon the breast of the sea, close enough to the shore that our guardians could still see us (I had refused to let them come out with us – I was, after all, eleven years old now). I offered the child some water from my kine skin, and she drank from it deeply. Even as she passed it back to me, I knew something was wrong. She dropped the skin and stared at me, fear and pain clearly visible in her dilating eyes. Her muscles tensed and she began to seize. I held her close to me, desperate to stop her spasms, but there was nothing I could do. Only moments later, her body went limp in my arms. Her breathing had stopped.

I glanced back at the shore, and, if looks could kill, none of those watching would have survived my gaze. I stood, even on the uncertain waves that rocked the boat. 'Someone has murdered my sister!' I screamed. 'Let it be known that I shall hunt you down, and you will suffer greatly for this!' Not very creative, or even intimidating, but for a boy of eleven years, my anger was great. Even now, I hate the man who did it. Even now, when nothing matters to me, I wish that they had suffered the same fate as I.