Five strangers bound together by the prophecies of the Third Dauphin’s coming, move towards events that will undo their lands, yet at a painful cost, salvage hope from the Dark Concern, still powerful, still present.


***

The Bondewii, however, replied with a question, “Where do you keep your treasure?”
 

“My treasure?” Octavia soberly responded.  Its query annoyed her. “I have no treasure.  I am a HartBorn Nonfree.  Property does not pass to us,” she snipped as she instructed her odd guest. HartBorns practiced strict caste-ordered humility, but such humbleness was merely a cloak of pride. In other words, humility in the inferior caste was a badge of superiority.  As a slave might polish his chains, seeking self-meaning in his slavery, Octavia practiced self-importance in having no property, no things.  Why else did she forego the warmer quarters of the Dooling warehouse?  For her relations?  No, for her pride.
 

“Which is it that you value most?” continued her greeter.
 

“I value my nephews, of course, and their families.  Why do you ask?” the aging woman brusquely responded.
 

“Where are these?”
 

“Below us, on the second floor. Why do you ask?” Skepticism regarding the intentions of her bedroom interloper mounted in her brain and she repeated her inquiry.
 

The figure turned its head, and with eyes dark as soot, turned in the direction of her only door.
 

“If these die,” the creature went on, “what becomes of your treasure?”  Without malice and with no affront, it put the simple question forward. The creature had flushed out Octavia’s inmost fear and her driving motivation. 
 

“My fortune,” she acknowledged.  She remembered how the brutality of the Guard took the lives of her brother and his lovely wife, the parents of her inherited family. Octavia feared that former day.  Indeed, she shrank from it.  Once the two boys had entered her house, the burden of their care and the responsibility of their lives settled upon her heart like a nightmare within a pleasant dream. When they had their own families, her love intensified, but so did the gravity of dread over their eventual passing. Fear of loss disenfranchised her desire to prize her family.  Indeed, in her distress, her love and her inability to love became her treasure.  She held onto both. Love was her need, but Fear was her protection.

***

"Octavia was indifferent and closed-off to people. Furthermore, she felt herself uncomfortable an ill-suited for the rigors of such a trip even though she had been reared in youth among the austere communal HartBorn granges in the rural parts owned by wealth Citizens. She had never married, and outside her brother's children, she had no family alive. Nor had she felt the hand of self-sacrifice upon her shoulder to devote her life for the betterment of others less fortunate than herself. One might say that for her entire life she had looked no farther than the end of her own arm, which is not to say that she lacked foresight or economy of mind. Rather, she was simply selfish. Octavia, like so many people, treasured her fears, frets and worries, and held onto them securely as if they were her life's savings."
 

***

"Erikstrand waited still.  He felt sad, odd, and unimportant for this moment.  He also desired to bring it to an end.  He had been the whore; he had prostituted himself and his House.  Now was the time to go calmly, to die as Salvator Sept, and to rise as a servant Dauphin for just this instant.  Jon was a great soldier; Randal, the Dream-Walker; he, the prostitute quelled.  Rahab Quelled, they would remember him in that name."