The Queen (to be revised completely)

Prologue

The Nemertea Trilogy: Book One

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PROLOGUE

It was a typical prisoners' crematory; gentle, pulsating fires from the wall torches shedding pale, golden glows on the slabs of marble laid neatly in rows on the dirty, ashy ground. The rest of the room was just as dark, hard, and cold. Not a single sound could escape through the thick bricks of cement, and except for the surveillance camera hanging near the spiral stone staircase, there was no way anybody could witness what was happening in the room. And there were no windows.

On top of the marbles were mountains of ash. The remains of subversive prisoners were not allowed to be placed in urns. Several inches above the piles of ashes were hologram screens bearing the name of each subversive and their crimes against the government. As it was past the visiting hours (and well into the night), the screens were turned off and one could see right through them and look at the piles of ash very clearly.

But standing around one marble were three visitors, one woman and two men, all in elegant golden cloaks that boasted of their wealth and position. The woman, around her late thirties or forties, shook her head slowly. Turning her serious large eyes to the man beside her, she said simply, "it can't be."

"It is," the man replied. He was much older than her, old enough to be father. True enough, he was the father of the other man, who happened to be the woman's husband.

"But how?" asked the younger man.

The three stared hard at the marble by their feet. There, among the piles of fine, grainy, gray ash, was a single blinding sparkle that glowed more brightly than the fires illuminating the room.

Carefully, the woman knelt down; brushing her hand in the ash with a flourish wave, and a smudge of black stained her elegant satin gloves. She frowned and took them off. With her lips pursed, she slowly and carefully picked the little sparkle with the tips of her bare fingers and pulled out a long necklace.

The two men stepped backwards.

It wasn't the beauty of the necklace that captured everybody's shock; they had all seen necklaces and other jewelry that were far more expensive and dazzling, and this one was actually quite old-fashioned. Its crystal clear pendant---which was delicately carved into a thin, flowery "J" with the Edwardinian sigil (the yellow ribbon) etched on the bottom curve of the letter--- didn't hang from the chain, and was kept afloat by the special magnets on its beads. The pendant, when touched by light, gave off beautiful waves of sparkling colors.

The woman shook her head again. Her own necklaces were bigger, their pendants showed a greater variety of colors, and the magnets on their chains were stronger and more modern. The chains of this necklace were studded with tiny black beads. All of the magnets on her necklace chains were invisible.

None of it made sense. All of her necklaces were sealed in specialized vaults, delicately handled from hand to hand since they would shatter into a million pieces from a little fall. When worn on her neck, they were rarely even fingered or fiddled with, since they were very easily scratched and bruised.

This old-fashioned necklace, however, survived an electrocution.

"Shall we keep it?" she said, surveying its glow. "It's quite pretty, actually, and it's very special."

"The woman who wore it was a traitor," said the elderly man.

"Think about our son, lovey," her husband said.

She shot him a stern look, before turning back to the necklace. "Look, it has our family sigil on it. Forget who wore it. She may have betrayed our family, but since the necklace is so intact"—she fingered the tiny ribbon on the pendant, and the glow of one of the nearby torches made it glow even brighter—"she must've spent her last seconds staring at it, at the little ribbon, feeling guilty for doing such a thing to us."

"Give to your daughter," the old man ordered.

He was the head of the family and every word from him was an order. The woman and her husband dismally looked at each other.

"Your other daughter," the old man corrected. "Millandra's turning twelve soon, isn't she? Have you found a suitable boy? When her brother was around her age, he already was betrothed to Lucrezia."

The woman sighed sorrowfully. "He was thirteen." The wedding never pushed through.

"Even so. Twelve's the betrothal age. Right now we need all the connections we can get for this family. That necklace will serve as a reminder."

"I still can't imagine little Milla getting married," said the woman.

"She won't be married to just anybody, that's for sure," replied her husband.

"And I," said the old man with a sly smile, "will make sure of that."

The woman slipped the necklace from hand to hand. "I'll be keeping this, then." She slid it into her cloak pocket.

"We'll continue this talk in the family hall," the elderly man said. "And don't worry, I've paid the guards enough to let us in and keep all of this a secret. They all know what could happen to people who betray me." He pointed his chin at the direction of the marble and led the way upstairs.