Fornella pulled her woollen shawl tighter about her shoulders, the sadness fading into fearful remembrance. “Yes, a daughter. I met her too, once. One meeting was more than sufficient.”
“Are they like you? The general and his daughter, do they still live?”
“The general’s madness grew with the centuries, his hunger for victory over the Alpirans becoming a madman’s obsession, birthing a calamitous defeat. The Council, by now all recipients of the Blessing and advised by the Ally’s other lieutenants that the general’s glorious career should reach a conclusion, employed their chief assassin to provide one. If what the queen says is true, however, she may well have met her end alongside King Malcius.”
“The general’s daughter? She killed her own father?”
“She’s taken countless lives the breadth of this world, my lord. If we’re fortunate, she’ll plague us no more. But I increasingly find fortune to be a rare commodity.”
“Does your mother still live? Did she also take the Ally’s Blessing?”
She shook her head, raising her gaze to meet mine, smiling fondly. “No. She grew old and she died, though I begged her to join me in this new age of limitless life. She alone knew the true nature of the bargain we had struck, though none would listen to her. She knew what drew the Ally, if not what had birthed it.”
“And what is it? What draws it?”
“Power. That’s how the first were chosen, not those with the greatest wealth, but those with the most influence, the greatest sway in Council. Because it happened over decades rather than years, only one being chosen to receive his bounteous gift in every dozen years, it seemed the choosing was random, the whim of a being as close to a god as any could be. But my mother lived long enough to see the pattern. Every bargain struck increased its hold on us, every gift bestowed made us more its servants.
“She said just one word the last time I was permitted near her, before she ordered me barred from her house. She was nearly ninety years in age, just a tiny collection of bone and skin in a very large bed. But her mind had never faded and her eyes were so very bright, and though she could only speak in whispers, I heard it, clear and true, though at the time I thought it just the final croak of a bitter old woman.”
