The Traitor's Heir

Chapter Eight

"They aren't just asking anyone to take the oath Mother. Xav and I were chosen, along with a group of about ten other Squires. That's ten out of nearly a hundred. We're the best of the lot, Mother, and this is a great honor." They were sitting around the table in the common area and their Mother, known outside of the small house as Aquala Kalena, although many still remembered her by the name she'd been born with, Aquala Inalara, of the powerful Inalara Clan, sat, fixing her youngest son with a grim stare.

All of the Kalena children knew that look all too well. It was a look that, in their early childhood, would lead them to drop the cookie back onto the plate they were pilfering it from when she caught them in the act of stealing one of her delicious desserts. Iggy squared his shoulders and tried to return the gaze, but after a few seconds he dropped his eyes to his plate, pushing an eggplant around with his knife.

There were five Kalena children in all that had survived the perilous first year of life, when so many children succumbed to illness and each had been welcomed into the community with a great celebration on their first birthday, as was the tradition at all levels of society. The oldest was Clar, who had been followed close behind by Xav. Clar was the only member of the Kalena household who was already completely independent.

Clar had never been particularly close to her two youngest sisters and by that day when Lina asked Quara to go on an adventure with her, Clar was no longer particularly close with any of the six people who sat in the brightly lit room. She had gone to great lengths to distance herself from the family she'd been born into, for if there was ever anything that their eldest daughter had wanted in her entire life, it was to be exactly like everyone else. She hated standing out. She hated being the Girl from the Plains, when she'd never set foot on the Plains in her entire life. She belonged as much as anyone else, she would rant to her mother after coming home from school, and her mother would touch her beautiful golden hair and smile into her turquoise eyes and tell her that being exactly like everyone else was overrated.

She'd never managed to convince Clar of that fact though.

Clar married a week after she finished her schooling and had moved that day into a tidy set of rooms that her new husband, a Master in the Fine Arts Guild, had obtained for them when he'd first asked her to be his bride earlier in the year. She had been seventeen at the time.

Aquala and her oldest daughter had had a heated argument about how young she was, and whether or not she was mature enough to marry anyone, much less a man who she'd met only a few weeks prior to his proposal. Now Clar avoided the portion of the Caverns that she had grown up in as if it were harboring an outbreak of plague.

She had gotten her wish though, Quara thought with a sigh. She had pinned up her hair as a married woman would and wrapped it in a fine linen scarf that her husband had given her, as if she were trying to keep her hair clean during the day's work, rather than hiding the most visible symbol of her otherness. Before long she began to believe that everyone had finally forgotten, at least for the most part, that she wasn't entirely from a family who had been in the Caverns since it's very founding. She'd already started being invited to parties and teas with girls who had hardly given her the time of day when they were in school together, a sure sign, she told herself, that whatever little sacrifices she had made along the way were worthwhile.

Xav, at eighteen, was the oldest boy. In many ways, he reminded Quara of their father. He had the same broad shoulders that both Iggy and Quart shared, with a narrow waist and strong arms that looked as if they were made to wield a sword. He was as at home on the battle field as he was working alongside their Father in his metal shop, and sometimes Quara thought that he was even more comfortable when he was deep down below the surface of the earth, bringing forth fine gems and jewels that he then worked into fine weapons. His swords were fit for a King, their father would say proudly, if there were still one alive who was worthy of his creations.