The All Important Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me(except the obvious) but are Tamora Pierce's. Wish they did- I could use the money.
A/N: Well this is nerve racking. Just so's you know the story is set midway through the PotS series. Please R&R- I need all the constructive criticism I can get this being my first fic. Since I've already written the next couple of installments you can expect updates soon- hope they're wanted. I'll just post this now- I'm beginning to sound needy. Hope you enjoy...
Prologue
Jaymina stood resolutely amidst the bustle aboard the ship heading for Tyra, contemplating the memory which had brought her to this moment. She had been ten years old when last she'd stood on the dock of the Zekoi River, watching the departure of another ship, bound for Tortall. She remembered watching from beside her mother as the animal mage, who had brought both destruction and freedom to Carthak, docked the ship and sailed to her home.
Jay (so named by all but her mother) had never felt Carthak was her home. She'd been a slave all her life regardless of the offer of freedom made to herself and her mother on behalf of the northern girl mage. With her mother's decision to stay in Carthak serving under the newly ascended Emperor Kaddar, Jay's fate had been sealed. So she had watched that ship sail away and contemplated a life where her choices were her own and anything she could imagine seemed possible. She dreamed almost every night for months after of being a stowaway on that elusive ship.
Today offered a new perspective as she watched instead the distance between herself and her birth place (she would never call it home) expand. She was finally leaving after being rewarded her freedom 6 years later of the initial release. Why? Because two months ago her mother died and there was nothing now for her in Carthak. Emperor Kaddar having heard of her decision to leave (it had caused an upheaval of memories concerning those groundbreaking days the girl mage had heralded) had, in response to a fond memory of a promise made over half a decade previously, renewed the terms originally offered to those who had accompanied Veralidaine Sarrasri to Tortall. She left now with a purse sufficient for the journey to her ultimate destination; Corus.
Excitement bubbled within her as she laid out her carefully made plans concocted from a childhood of daydreams. Finally she was escaping a place where for her entire life she had been made to feel excluded. Her slight frame, heart shaped face and diminutive height (just four inches over five feet) were unremarkable, but it was her large blue eyes, lightly tan skin and dark brown hair, in contrast to the standard Carthaki features, that shouted her mixed heritage. As the daughter of an unmarried slave this was unforgivable.
Despite the strict and frightening punishments within the palace during the rule of the Emperor Mage Ozorne, her birth was overlooked, predominantly due to the gossip surrounding her conception concerning a noble (and notoriously brutal and immoral) Tyran ambassador. She was, however, marked out as different and life as a slave within the palace made triply difficult. She'd worked in the palace since she'd been old enough to carry water to the palace kitchens. Her childhood had been devoted to fulfilling the desires of others, even those of her mother. She was never an individual but simply one of the masses who worked constantly within the confines of the palace walls. She had wanted out of that cage; out of the constant pattern of exhausting labour.
All that was behind her now, she thought, as she watched the ever disappearing shoreline. She could make her own path now and who knew where it would take her?