for years, their reaction upon seeing him had led arathan to believe he was unaccountably ugly, a conviction that had first brought his hands to his face in a habit of hiding his features, and soon the kiss of his own fingertips served for all the tactile reassurance he required. he no longer believed himself to be ugly. simply... plain, not worthy of notice by anyone.

though no one ever spoke of his mother, arathan knew that she had named him. his father's predilections on such matters were far crueller. he told himself that he remembered his half-sisters' mother, a brooding, heavy woman with a strange face, who had either died or departed shortly after weaning the triplets she had borne, but a later comment from tutor sagander suggested that the woman he'd remembered had been a wet-nurse, a witch of the dog-runners who dwelt beyond the solitude. still, he preferred to think of her as the girls' mother, too kind-hearted to give them the names they now possessed - names that, to arathan's mind, shackled each sister like a curse.

envy. spite. malice. they remained infrequent visitors to his company. flighty as birds glimpsed from the corner of an eye. whispering from around corners in the corridors and behind doors he walked past. clearly, they found him a source of great amusement.

now in the first years of adulthood, arathan saw himself as a prisoner, or perhaps a hostage in the traditional manner of alliance-binding among the greater houses and holds. he was not of the dracons family; though there had been no efforts at hiding his bloodline, in fact the very indifference of this detail only emphasized its irrelevance. seeds spill where they may, but a sire must look into the eyes to make the child his own. and this draconus would not do. besides, there was little of tiste blood in him - he had not the fair skin or tall frame, and his eyes, while dark, lacked the mercurial ambivalence of the pure-born. in these details, he was the same as his sisters. where, then, the blood of their father?

it hides. somehow, it hides deep within us.

draconus would not acknowledge him, but that was no cause for resentment in arathan's mind. man or woman, once childhood was past the world beyond must be met, and a place in it made, by a will entirely dependent upon its own resources. and the shaping of that world, its weight and weft, was a match to the strength of that will. in this way, kurald galain society was a true map of talent and capacity. or so sagander told him, almost daily.

whether in the court of the citadel or among the march villages, there could be no dissembling. the insipid and the incompetent had no place in which to hide their failings. ' this is natural justice, arathan, and thus by every measure it is superior to the justice of, say, the forulkan, or the jaghut.' arathan had no good reason to believe otherwise. this world, so forcefully espoused by his tutor, was all he had ever known.

and yet he... doubted.

sandalled feet slapped closer up the spiral stairs behind him, and arathan turned in some surprise. he had long since claimed this tower for his own, made himself lord of its dusty webs, its shadows and echoes. only here could he be himself, with no one batting his hand away from his mouth, or mocking his ruined fingertips. no one visited him here; the house-bells called him when lessons or meals were imminent; he measured his days and nights by those muted chimes.

the footsteps approached. his heart thumped in his chest. he snatched his hand away from his mouth, wiped the fingers on his tunic, and stood facing the gap of the stairs.

the figure that climbed into view startled him. one of his half-sisters, the shortest of the three - last from the womb - her face flushed with the effort of the climb, her breath coming in little gasps. dark eyes found his. 'arathan.'

she had never before addressed him. he did not know how to respond.

'it's me,' she said, eyes flaring as if in anger. 'malice. your sister, malice.'

'names shouldn't be curses,' arathan said without thinking.

if his words shocked her, the only indication was a faint tilt of her head as she regarded him. 'so you're not the simpleton envy says you are. good. father will be... relieved.'

'father?'

'you are summoned, arathan. right now - i'm to bring you to him.'

'father?'

she scowled. 'she knew you'd be hiding here, like a redge in a hole. said you were just as thick. are you? is she right? are you a redge? she's always right - or so she'll tell you.' she darted close and took arathan's left wrist, tugged him along as she returned to the stairs.

he did not resist.

father had summoned him. he could think of only one reason for that.