The Traitor's Heir

Chapter Three

At least a dozen wispy golden waves had worked themselves free already, and she pushed them back behind her ears and sighed, wishing for a moment that she had her sister's sleek, straight hair. It always stayed in place, even when she was moving about the Caverns at a frantic pace on her way to her next adventure. Lina had shorn her hair herself years earlier, so that it barely fell past her chin.

Quara had gasped when she'd seen it, and her hands trembled as she'd touched the uneven ends. What would their mother say? The women in the caverns wore their hair long, plaited and down their backs when they were young and then bound up on top of their heads, at least in public, after they married. She was certain that her mother would be upset, but when she'd seen it, she had merely plucked her sewing shears from her apron and carefully trimmed the ends until they were neat and fell in layers that turned out at the bottoms, all while perfectly framing Lina's face. Then she'd sighed and touched Lina's cheek with a soft smile playing at the corner of her mouth before going back to making dinner.

When Father had come home late in the evening, he'd let out a great laugh and asked her if she was afraid her long tresses would interfere with her climbing, at which point her sister's cheeks had turned slightly pink and Quara had known with sudden certainty that their father had caught Lina pushing some new boundary that she'd thought she'd managed to keep secret from her worrying family.

The truth was though, that they worried less than they once had. After living in a perpetual state of stress for her first seven or eight years of Lina's life, they'd begun to realize that somehow the young girl always came through even the most dangerous of adventures, without a single mark on her. They'd almost come to take for granted the fact that Lina had never been hurt while setting tasks for herself that would have felled nearly anyone else, had they tried even one of her odds defying stunts.

Pushing the thoughts aside, Quara stepped into the Guild Masters' Hall and glanced around quickly. Was her Father working in the mines today, searching for gems to set in gold, or was he with the other Metal Smiths at his workstation, or out in the open area, working on a community project? When her gaze didn't find him she strode across the room, headed for a narrow doorway that lay between the entrance to the Weaver's Hall and the Metal Worker's Hall.

The Hall of the Master's, or Hall of Crafts as it was sometimes called, was said to be the second level of the mountain kingdom, but in truth it was actually the first, unless you counted the mines that lay deep within the bowels of the earth, which nobody really did. Directly below the Guild Hall lay a labyrinth of passage ways, most of which were thick with traps and dead ends.

There were three true entrances to the Caverns, and of those three one led directly to the mine shaft and, while it was workable as an escape route in case a need for one ever arose, it was seldom used for anything else. It was on the East Side of the Dome and if a man did wander down its lengthy corridor he would find himself emerging in the middle of a remote, mountainous region, where the Walemont Dome was only a faint silhouette that could hardly be seen against the horizon. Of the two remaining entrances, one came out on the river side of the mountain, which lay to West, next to an area frequented by the false king's troops. The residents of the mountain were forbidden to step foot in even the start of the tunnel, which was always guarded by at least two soldiers. The last entrance lay directly to the south of the Dome. And then there were the many, many false entrances that led to almost certain death or an entrapment that would ultimately result in that same fate.

As Quara picked her way carefully through the bustling room, she hardly heard the busy chatter around her. There were weavers holding up brightly colored bolts of fabric for a small group of seamstresses, who appeared to be debating the perfect color for a new gown. A sculptor was coaxing a form from a giant slab of granite and a painter, with his easel set at an angle that made the canvas impossible to see from the center of the room, was staring off into space, lost in thought.