I close my fingers over the Dome Ring in my hand. The doctor-priest does not try to stop me. He knows he has just given me the most terrible news of my life.

I look at my twin baby girls. They are beautiful, beautiful as children can only be to their mothers. “Both of them?” I ask.

“Both of them,” he confirms.

I try to think about what this means. Both my daughters are eligible to be queens. Both of them can wield the Dome Ring.

Once Queen Kalia hears this news, I will never see them again.

“Did it have to be both of them?” I whisper, and this time the doctor-priest has no reply.

– excerpt from The Journal of the Lost Princess, Part I

Written 765 years after the Crash Landing

Chapter 40:

Mayah flicked the lightstick back and forth. She had learned in the past two days since Hanjan’s departure both how to cast its beam forward down a dark passageway and how to bend its light back so that it shined against her face. How did I get here? she wondered. Healing serfs and searching for the Dome Ring? This isn’t me. Or is it? Is this what it means to be against the rules of the Rajas?

She sighed. If only the eye goggles she was wearing didn’t press so tightly against her glasses underneath. If only her hair didn’t feel like someone had taken clay and braided it into every strand.

If only she could go to Sukren and demand an explanation.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Vek sounded so genuine. Like he actually wanted to know. Mayah almost told him that she wanted to leave the Temple, that she wanted to stop this ridiculous search for a Dome Ring that could be anywhere in the dank darkness, that she needed to talk with Sukren. But then a distant shriek reached her ears, and she froze against the slick wall beside her.

It was a Rajas voice, cracked with age and desperation. Weeping for rescue.

“You shouldn’t be hearing this,” Vek said. His normally steady voice betrayed a hint of uneasiness. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Let’s… let’s go get the Dome Ring.”

***

That evening in the bunker, Mayah dug through Vek’s knapsack until she found the map. Drawing it out, she held the lightstick over it.

No one believed in reincarnation anymore, not since the Famine of the Flowers, yet Mayah felt a chill as the tips of her fingers touched the map. For five days, now, ever since she had entered the Temple, she had been struck by the sense that she had been here before. That she knew these paths somehow. But why would she feel that way?

“Mayah?”

Mayah’s hands moved of their own accord, crumpling the map up and thrusting it behind her. At the same time, she backed up several paces until she was standing against the bunker’s rear wall. Vek looked at her from his hammock. “What are you doing awake?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mayah said. Too loudly. Too quickly. She winced. Vek’s voice made it sound like she was supposed to be asleep. Had she broken a rule? Oh, she hoped Vek wouldn’t be mad at her, please, please don’t let him be mad at her –

“You’re just standing with the lightstick on, doing nothing?” Mayah could see him grin. “It’s all right. You can tell me.”

Mayah wanted to believe him. Perhaps there was no need to hide. Perhaps she didn’t need to be afraid that Vek would get angry and punish her for breaking a rule. Maybe that was what it meant to be free of Rajas rule. All she had to do was pull the map around and show it to Vek. Do it! she told herself.

But her fists remained clenched behind her back.

“You’re a funny one,” Vek said. “Very mysterious.” He yawned. Mayah stiffened as he swung out of the hammock and strode over to where she had pressed herself up against the wall.

He stopped about an arm’s length away from her face. Mayah looked away, disliking that she wasn’t taller than he was. It was just another reminder that Mayah was not the Rajas she should be – most Rajas towered over serfs.

No, wait. That was Rajas glorying. It was bad to think that way.

“I can see you’re hiding something behind your back, you know,” Vek said, his voice amused. “Look, whatever it is, I’m not going to get angry. I promise.”

Mayah still couldn’t move.

“You can trust me.” His voice was soft. “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”

Slowly, Mayah pulled out the map. She held one end of it in her hand. The rest uncrumpled until it was hanging in the air between them.

“You were looking at the map?” Vek sounded puzzled. “That’s it? Jroya and Pal, I thought…” He began laughing. “Well, what did you find out? Did you discover something that’s going to help us get out of this place?”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Mayah gave Vek an uncertain smile. He really wasn’t mad at her? He didn’t think it was a problem? Or maybe the rules were different now. Maybe Mayah hadn’t broken one.

Picking up the hanging end of the map with her other hand, she once again ran her eyes along the maze’s lines. Then it shot through her, and a gasp escaped her lips. Those twists and turns! She did know those twists and turns!

Almost before she knew what she was doing, Mayah grabbed the lightstick from out of its stone pocket and ran for the revolving door. “I’ll be right back, I just want to check something!” she called to a sputtering Vek. She burst into the hallway, one hand holding the lightstick, the other grasping the map. Yes, there was a left turn here, and then a right, and then a lounge just around the corner, and –

Mayah came to an abrupt stop. Standing before her in the lounge, the surprise in their eyes warped by their goggles, were four Chenta serfs.

“She has a map!” one of them crowed.

Mayah didn’t stop to think. She turned at once and fled back the way she had come, the sound of pursuit swift on her heels. A few minutes later she was back at the revolving door behind which the bunker was hidden, and thank Sarana, Vek was outside it.

“Hey!” he said. “I told you not to run off…”

His eyes widened. Mayah didn’t need to turn to know that the four Chenta serfs had come into view. She ached with relief when Vek reached for her and pulled her around so that he stood between her and the approaching serfs. Oh, Sarana, how stupid she was, how stupid, how stupid!

“It’s a Chenta,” the tall serf to the very right said, a lightstick in his hand. “A Chenta and a Rajas.”

“What do you want?” Vek called out, as the tall serf drew nearer. Mayah closed her eyes. She clutched the wall behind her.

“Rajas tail,” a bow-legged man in the back sneered. “Why didn’t you dump your Rajas like the rest of us? You actually believe the story that we’re supposed to protect them?”

“I’m no Rajas tail.” Vek’s voice was calm. “I’m branded.”

Bow-legs exchanged a glance with a stocky, young Chenta next to him. The fourth member of the crew looked, with quick, sharp eyes, first at Mayah, then at Vek. “Check him,” he ordered.

Bow-legs and the stocky Chenta moved in to obey. Mayah flinched as they forced Vek’s right hand up and against the wall, then flinched again as they yanked down his sleeve to reveal his mark.

The tall serf whistled. When he spoke, his tone was admiring. “No patron protection at all, ever?”

“Until I die,” Vek confirmed. He pulled his hand out of the grasp of the two Chenta serfs, who looked at their leader.

“If you’re branded, you understand,” the leader said. “The Temple is the only place we Chenta can have our vengeance on the Rajas who put us here. Be true to your tribe. Kill the princess, and join us.”

Mayah took in a very quiet, very shallow breath. But Vek was shaking his head. “You don’t want to kill this Rajas.”

There was a slight emphasis on the word this. Mayah almost missed it in the cadence of the Chenmay, but then Vek repeated himself. “You don’t want to kill this Rajas.”

Bow-legs spat at Vek’s feet. “Religious fool,” he jeered.

Mayah held very still. What did Matter and Intelligence have to do with any of this?

“We’ll have the map, then,” the bow-legged man announced when nobody said anything else. His arm reached around Vek and grabbed Mayah’s wrist. She stiffened in resistance but didn’t even have time to cry out before Vek turned and slammed his elbow into the bow-legged serf’s face. His own face a mask of anger, Vek grabbed the man’s littlest finger and wrenched it backward until it broke with a snap.

The man howled and released Mayah. She stumbled backwards against the revolving door. She watched as the stocky and tall serfs rushed forward to grab Vek. The former prevented Vek from smashing down for the third time a fist-sized floor fragment onto Bow-leg’s fingers, while the latter grabbed Vek’s other arm. Between the two of them they pulled Vek back and slammed him against the door, which wobbled ever so slightly.

“Kill him!” The bow-legged serf was livid. “By the rock-god, kill the Rajas tail, kill him, kill him!”

“Just because it’s legal to kill him doesn’t mean we should,” the tall serf said, standing uncomfortably close to Mayah.

“He destroyed my hand!”

Mayah scooted further down the wall. She was startled when the map was snatched from her hands by the leader, who tucked it into his belt without even glancing at her.

“Idem is right,” the leader said. “It’s dishonorable to kill a branded man. Let him go, Dast. We have the map, he can keep the princess.”

“No.” Dast was holding his battered hand close to his chest. “No. If you won’t let me kill him, I invoke the rock-god’s law of mercy.” Whipping his head around, Dast glared at Vek. “And if he refuses to submit to the rock-god’s law of mercy, we know he’s no true Chenta, and we kill him as a Rajas tail.”

Holy Sarana, Mayah thought unhappily. This is all my fault. She tried to pray, her fingers creeping up to touch her eyelids, but they only brushed against the bioplastic of her goggles. The vindictive tone of the bow-legged serf made Mayah feel that the rock-god law of mercy, which she had previously heard of only vaguely, was going to be anything but merciful.

“I’m no Rajas tail.” Vek spoke the same words as before, but this time he was breathing much more heavily. “I submit to the law of mercy.”

“Good,” Dast snarled. “Which hand is your strong hand?”

“Right,” Vek said.

“Give me his right hand,” Dast ordered the tall serf, Idem, who glanced away. Mayah saw uneasiness flicker across his face.

“Look,” Idem said. “He’s branded. He’s never going to get back into a patronage, while we will someday. His only protection is his ability to fight. If you take a finger from his strong hand…”

“Oh, will we get back into a patronage, Idem? Someday, will we? Only if we make it out of here alive! And with this Rajas tail chasing after us, trying to get his map back, who knows?”

“Still –”

“He broke the bones in two of my fingers on my strong hand!” Dast screamed. “I’ve lost them!”

I could set your fingers for you, Mayah thought numbly. You probably haven’t lost their use. You just need a good splint.

“Just hurry up and do it,” the leader replied. “He’s already submitted to the law of mercy. Idem may be right, but we don’t have time to argue about it. We need to get out while we can. And actually, while we’re doing this, take his daysclock too.”

Mayah closed her eyes and sank down to the ground, folding her legs into her chest. She winced as Dast growled at Idem to place Vek’s hand against the wall behind them, and then again at the sound of sliding bioplastic. They were going to cut Vek’s finger off? How in the bio-dome was this merciful?

She couldn’t bear it. Mayah covered her ears and hid her face in her knees and did not look up until after she was sure all four Chenta serfs had left, until after she felt Vek touch her shoulder.

“Vek!” Mayah gasped, scrambling to her feet. “Vek, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

A wry smile touched his lips. “I think I’m going to need you to dress this wound.”

Mayah swallowed. Blood, bright and red, was dripping down from Vek’s mutilated joint.

“And also…”

“Yes?” Mayah whispered.

“Please don’t run off like that again.”