He stood. Hair matted with congealed blood impeded his vision. He brushed it back with an impatient hand and inspected the results of his latest efforts.

Shia lay on the birthing table, her lovely face splattered with blood and frozen in a rictus of pain. Her belly was open, torn from sternum to pubis. Long flaps of shredded skin lay folded outward, indicating that the deadly assault had come from within her own body. In the ruins of her womb, nestled in a warm pool of blood and decimated organs, the infant Vadim had so carefully engineered lay quietly, regarding the world from pupil-less eyes that glowed like a Tairen's Eye crystal.

Triumph swelled, filling him with renewed vigor. He reached for the child, laughed as it hissed and batted at his hands with tiny fingers curved like claws. "No, no, my lad." He plucked the child from its mother's corpse. "What a fine, strong boy you are. What a fine, strong Mage you will make."

Cradling the child against his chest, Vadim walked to a connecting room. There, a dozen servants waited beside clear, thermal-heated pools. Several of them followed Vadim into the water and silently bathed the gore of the recent magic rites from the High Mage and the tiny baby he reluctantly handed to them.

When they were finished, he stepped out of the thermal pools and let the servants dry him with warmed, scented cloths and slip a thick, plush robe over his body to ease the chill these sessions always left in his bones. Those shivers helped mask the other tremors in his hand as he sat in a cushioned chair by a steaming brazier. The servants placed the swaddled babe back in his arms.

Already the magic had begun to subside in the child, and his eyes had reverted to their natural appearance, a clear pale blue rimmed with cobalt. Shia's eyes.

A surprising trace of regret touched the High Mage. Shia had been uncommonly lovely, and she had served him well. In addition to the many hours of personal pleasure she had provided him, she had birthed half a dozen gifted offspring sired by his most powerful studs.

He ran a thin finger down the baby's smooth cheek. "Your name, child, will be Tyrkomel. Mother's death."

After the Mage and his prize had left the birthing room, the umagi servants of Boura Fell entered to strip and cleanse it with brisk efficiency. Three women hosed down the bloody table and floors. Two men shuffled in to wrap the torn, cooling body of the dead woman in canvas and haul it outside to the waiting refuse cart.

The ragged, dark-haired girl stood beside the handles of the cart. She flinched when the canvas parted to reveal the frozen face, silky black hair, and staring pale blue eyes of the corpse within.

A soft cry—quickly stifled—choked in the girl's throat. When the two servants turned back to the birthing chamber, her slender, grimy fingers reached out, trembling slightly as they brushed Shia's lustrous hair. A rusty knife flashed. A lock of long, shining black hair came away in the girl's hand.

Clutching it to her chest, she ran. One of the servants gave an angry shout when she came out and found the refuse cart abandoned, but the girl didn't stop. She hurried down a series of dark stairs and narrow, winding corridors that were barely more than tunnels burrowed into the rock. Bare, filthy feet scrambled over age-worn rock down to the lowest level of Boura Fell, where the most dangerous prisoners were kept and the refuse pit reached bottom.

There, in a shadowed alcove beneath the stair, she huddled in darkness, rocking and stroking the lock of hair. She didn't make a sound—she'd learned long ago to keep silent—but inside her mind she sang in a hoarse, sobbing voice the words of Shia's favorite song. When she heard the snarl and furious barks of the ferocious darrokken in the refuse pit fighting over the newest morsel tossed down into their midst, the girl plugged her fingers in her ears and raised the voice in her mind to a shout. Not her. Not her. Not the sweet, soft, blue eyes with the tender hands. Meat and bone. That was all. Meat and bone.

The girl pressed the strand of Shia's hair to her lips, breathed in the scent, forcing herself to visualize the happy, smiling face of only a few bells ago. There. That was her. Shia. Sweet, kind Shia with the gentle hands who loved to brush the girl's hair and sing pretty songs about sunlight and soft rain and warm, fragrant winds that smelled of flowers instead of dark magic and death. She'd even given the girl a name and called her by it when she came…Melliandra.

The girl breathed and sang and rocked until the growling fury of the darrokken faded. In the silence, her body went still. Umagi did not rebel. Umagi only served. Their thoughts and memories and even their souls were not their own. But she would not share Shia—not with the High Mage who'd slain her.

Years ago, she'd learned how to hide small thoughts from him. Little things at first—the crust of bread she'd slipped in her pocket, the loose button she'd palmed from one of the pillows in his room. Over time she'd grown bolder, learned to hide more—like how much she hated him and wished him dead.

Now, she took the pain and the tears of Shia's death and used them, shaped them, forging a bright, hard shell around that small part of her mind where she hid her secrets. She gave that part of her mind a name—it no longer belonged to the worthless, powerless umagi called "girl." It belonged to the child Shia had held in her arms and sung to, the child Shia had named Melliandra.

Behind that bright, hard shell, Melliandra stored her memories of Shia and those too-short bells of brightness she'd found in the dark heart of Boura Fell. The High Mage would never get those memories. She'd die first.

Or he would.

Her eyes flashed open, cold and silver and filled with fierce purpose.