You can always tell who has decided that they cannot live under the rule of the Rajas.

It was a good line, if Vek said so himself. It had taken him several days to come up with, playing first with the words in Rajim, then ultimately in Chenmay. He had asked several of his Free Serf friends for their opinions and all the girls had agreed that it sounded perfect, a slogan Lady Nari herself should adopt. But Hanjan had simply snorted. “It sounds like something you’d say to a Free Serf girl to get her to sleep with you.”

After that little dose of encouragement, Vek hadn’t been sure exactly how to proceed. Sukren would have been the best person to ask, but Sukren was in hiding now. Hadn’t Sukren told Vek, though, that the princess was a girl like any other? And wasn’t the purpose of Sukren’s notebook to get her to identify with the Free Serf cause? If the line had worked on every Free Serf girl Vek had asked, surely it would work on the princess as well.

Vek had been much less certain about showing her the design burned into his skin. He knew the princess would recognize it, but how would she react? The design marked him as a troublemaker, one who was to be denied any patron’s protection. You’re as good as dead, the Eenta guard had sneered when he’d seared it into Vek’s inner arm.

Lady Nari had told him to go ahead and show it to the princess. “It’s Matter’s mark on you. It’s how I found you.”

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That was true enough. Vek remembered how Lady Nari had tracked him down after hearing word of the Chenta serf boy who at age eleven was already marked. “Join me,” she’d told him, her respect quenching in Vek a thirst he hadn’t known he had. With the flesh still inflamed around the burns on his arm, Vek hadn’t hesitated. Five years now, he’d been in the service of the Free Serfs. He would remain so until the day he died.

That was why Vek had been selected for this assignment. Not because he was particularly good at keeping secrets, or because he was especially clever, but because there was no one in the Free Serfs who rivaled Vek for dedication to a mission. Lady Nari knew that. She could trust Vek to see an assignment to its bitter end, even if it meant death.

“And it just might mean death,” Lady Nari had warned him. “If they catch you, they will have no mercy. This isn’t just any princess we’re talking about.”

“I know,” Vek had replied. “But they won’t catch me. This is one assignment we all know I’ll pull off.”

Lady Nari had laughed. “The prophecies aren’t forecasts of the future. They’re instructions we’re called to follow. We’re Enablers, remember? Not Watchers.”

“I know,” he had repeated. But if Vek were being honest, he didn’t really care about the difference. The important thing was that they had the Promised Daughter. Without her, there wasn’t even the opportunity to follow the prophecies. With her, though, there was hope. Hope that justice would prevail. That the Chenta would no longer have to bow and scrape before the flaring Eenta. That Mother would no longer have to wear her fingers down harvesting biopolymers, sacrificing her body for an unworthy master.

That Father would no longer want to.