Description: Chapter One Selling off the slaves she had known all her life was the hardest thing Luciena Mariner had ever had to do. Watching them being loaded into the wagon from Venira's Slave Emporium, chained and forlorn, was the most heartbreaking scene she had ever witnessed in her meagre seventeen years. Some of the slaves had been with her family since before Luciena was born. Young Mankel, the kitchen boy, was born in this house. He had never known another home. Her voice quivering with emotion, she turned away from the boy's distraught sobs and instead tried to explain for the hundredth time since her mother had died how much better they would fare in Master Venira's exclusive showroom than if she'd simply sold them on the open market. Her words were little comfort. The slaves weren't fools. They all knew the chances of finding a household as good as the one they were leaving were remote. What choice did I have? Luciena asked herself bitterly, as she climbed the stairs once the wagon had left. The heavy purse she carried made her feel worse, not better, even though it would go some way to reducing her debts. The big house echoed with loneliness, the blank spaces on the walls where paintings had once hung glaring at her like blank, accusing faces. On the first-floor landing, the pedestal where her father's marble bust had always taken pride of place stood empty now. It had been one of the first things to go, sold to help pay the huge debts her mother's death had revealed. Luciena made her way along the tiled hall towards the small study where her mother had spent so much of her final days, trying to conceal the seriousness of their desperate position from her daughter. Her slippers hissed softly against floors that had been covered with expensive rugs. Luciena had sold them to pay the livery bill. The upkeep on the coach-and-four hadn't been paid for months. She'd sold the coach and the four matched greys without much emotion, but parting with her horse, Wind Hunter, had almost gutted her. And I'm not out of the woods, even yet, she thought as she pushed open the door to her mother's study. To maintain their lifestyle, her mother had mortgaged the house, her jewellery, even the furniture and the slaves. Luciena would be lucky if she could keep the clothes on her back by the time the debts were paid. She stopped in the doorway, looked at the pile of paper on the small table, and felt tears welling in her eyes, yet again. It didn't seem to matter how much she sold, how much she sacrificed-that damn pile never seemed to get any smaller. "Luciena?" She turned to find Aleesha standing behind her with a tray bearing a tall glass of something gold and sticky and several slices of flatbread and cheese. A year or two older than her mistress, Aleesha was the only slave Luciena had not been able to bring herself to part with. The young woman was more than just a slave. She was Luciena's best friend. "I'm not hungry." "You have to eat." "I can't afford to eat," she sighed, holding the door open to allow the slave through with the tray. Aleesha walked past her mistress and placed the tray on the side table by the window before turning to face Luciena, hands on her ample hips. "I'll hear none of that, my girl. I know this is difficult, but we'll find a way to survive it." Luciena smiled wanly at the slave's determined enthusiasm. "How, Aleesha? I'm running out of things to sell faster than I'm running out of creditors." "Is there nothing left of your father's money?" the slave asked, obviously puzzled by how easily their fortune had evaporated. Luciena knew how she fe< she had trouble believing there was nothing left, too. "Mother wouldn't have mortgaged the house to that leech, Ameel Parkesh, if there was any money left." "But she always claimed your father had made generous provision for you," Aleesha insisted. "When he married the princess . . ." Luciena's expression darkened at the mention of her father's only marriage, very late in life, to the High Prince's sister. "That was a marriage of convenience, Aleesha, and the only one who seemed to do well out of it was Princess Marla." Aleesha shook her head, even now refusing to believe someone so powerful had robbed Luciena of her inheritance. "Your mother believed Princess Marla would take care of you, lass. I know that's what your father promised." "Then more fool my mother and father." Luciena walked across the room to the table and dropped the proceeds of the slave sale onto the desk. The purse landed with a dull thud. "Her Royal bloody Highness refuses to even acknowledge I exist. She married my father, extorted his fortune and his shipping business out of him with false promises of a grand future for his only child and then drove him to an early grave, leaving his bastard daughter and her court'esa mother to fend for themselves." She stared down at the pile of debts still left to pay. "That's why we're in such a mess, you know. Mother kept waiting for a summons from the palace. She had us living like lords, waiting for an invitation that was never going to come." "Perhaps the princess doesn't know-" "Princess Marla knows everything that happens in Greenharbour," Luciena scoffed, turning to look out the window. The street outside was deserted now. It was the hottest part of the day, and although it wasn't officially summer yet, the heat was enough to drive people indoors until the sun passed its zenith. "I'm sure your poor mother only did what she thought was best," Aleesha insisted, obviously disturbed Luciena was speaking ill of the dead. "I know," Luciena sighed, leaning her head against the warm glass. "But what's it got us besides a pile of debts I can't jump over? Or repay?" "Isn't that the same thing?" Luciena shook her head, looking over at the letter that lay on the top of the pile on the desk. It was that letter, more than any other, that burned a hole in her gut. "There's a difference between owing money and owing a debt, Aleesha. I can live with owing money, but to be unable to help my father's only brother . . . that hurts more than anything else I've had to deal with lately." The slave glanced at the desk, and the letter from Fardohnya to which Luciena was referring, and shook her head. "You can't be expected to take on the woes of every poor sailor in the world, Luciena." "The poor sailor you refer to is my uncle." "The uncle who fought with your father with every breath he took and never spared him a kind word in twenty years," Aleesha reminded her mistress unsympathetically. "I don't care what your father promised him, Warak Mariner had his chance to be a partner in your father's business and threw it all away for some Fardohnyan fisherman's daughter. If he's in trouble now, it's not your fault. Or your responsibility to make it better." "But the boy he wants me to help is my cousin." "Second cousin," Aleesha corrected. "And he's a Fardohnyan." "But he's still family." Aleesha sighed heavily and placed her hands on her hips, frowning at her mistress. "Your uncle fought with your father, Luciena, before you were born and pretty much every day after. When he ran off with that woman, your father warned him he'd never have anything else to do with the Mariner family. He ran off with her anyway. That was his choice and, to be honest, I always secretly admired the man for throwing away so much for love. But now I'm starting to wonder about him, because here he is, with your poor mother barely cold in the ground-and when you can least afford it-suddenly in need of your help." "I'm sure the two events are unrelated." "Really? Convenient, don't you think, that this urgent need for money to send his grandson to Greenharbour coincides with your mother's death?" "My uncle claims his grandson has some sort of magical talent; that he needs to be apprenticed to the Sorcerers' Collective." "And I'm the demon child," her slave scoffed. "You think he's lying?" "I think any man who writes to a niece he's never met the day after her mother dies in the mistaken belief she's inherited her father's fortune, asking for money to save a cousin she doesn't even know exists, is suspect." "Then what do you suggest I do?" "Eat," the slave ordered firmly. She took Luciena's hand and led her to the table before making her sit with a firm push. Aleesha shoved the pile of bills aside, al

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