[Flashback] Stealing What Should Be Mine

[Avari]

Season of Fall, Day 44 , 508 AV

The gracious, high-ceilinged library in the Kore family manse boasted tall bookcases that covered every wall with shelves of dusty volumes of literature and lore, erudition and esoterica. Of course, no mere private library in Mura could compare with the rich repository of knowledge in the Opal Temple's medical library, but at least the variety and selection here amounted to more than just shelf after shelf of medical dictionaries, healers' diaries, and botanical catalogues. Clad in warm-toned leather bindings, the myriad books of poetry, philosophy, history, the natural sciences, and other useful and instructive subjects gleamed with the promise of shared wisdom and inspiration.

However, as she inspected the shelves for perhaps the tenth time that afternoon, Avari couldn't help wrinkling her nose and sighing in irritation. Useful and instructive these books might be, but interesting and practical they were not. Here stood a bookcase filled with texts on fortune-telling, divination, the chavena, and odes to Avalis, but only two or three at most about reading people's faces or studying their behavior. Heavy tomes of legal structures and codes filled another bookcase, yet not a single account of how those laws were interpreted in a court of law or affected people's lives could be found anywhere. Avari's own favorite books, the travel memoirs and guidebooks with their descriptions of many different cultures and countries outside Konti Isle, all quoted from Tenrir Brockis' classic travel journal Just Stay Home, but of course Grandmother Eunoe had never seen fit to include such an uncouth book in her library.

The old sense of frustration welled up in Avari's heart. Despite the fresh breeze flowing in through the open window from the sea, sometimes she felt positively claustrophobic living here in the Kore home. If only...if only she dared leave this colorless island full of pale, cloyingly sweet women! She had dreamed so many times of simply buying passage on a ship and sailing away without anyone knowing. She could already feel the ship's deck swaying beneath her feet, hear the mighty sound of Laviku's waves lapping against the hull, and exult in the deep joy of being fully autonomous and free at last.

As sweet as these dreams could be, though, Avari always returned to reality with a renewed sense of frustration, this time directed at herself. She had never been able to carry her dreams out, because she wasn't brave enough. In her heart, Avari was afraid...afraid of leaving the familiar island where she had lived for thirty years for the vast and possibly hostile world beyond. And she didn't know what could rid her of her fears and give her the courage she needed.

Ashamed of herself, she let her head sag and her shoulders hunch over. She tried to close her mind as well, as best she could. No need for her feelings to leak out into the open, where any Konti could pick up on them.

In that pose, she found herself gazing at the bottom shelves of a delicately carved white bookcase. One book was tucked in further than the others, squeezed between two thick anthologies of Akvatari verse until it was almost out of sight. Had she not been looking down at this particular angle, she doubted she would ever have noticed the narrow gap that the hidden book made between the larger ones on either side. But now that she had spotted it, she couldn't stop seeing how it made the two Akvatari books lean awkwardly against each other and marred the otherwise fastidious symmetry of the books lined up on the shelf.

Avari's brow furrowed, distracted from her self-castigation by the small discovery. Was the book merely misplaced, or had it purposely been hidden here? Either way, it was an odd sight for this otherwise well-ordered, meticulously organized library.

Out of curiosity, she bent to tug the slim paperbound book from its nook. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw the title and author printed in elegant calligraphy across the cover.

"Laments of Love: Twenty Collected Poems," she read aloud, "by Charis Kore."

So, the mysterious tucked-away book was just another collection of poems by her mother. Avari had never seen this collection before, however, and she thought she had read all her mother's poems and stories by now. That maudlin title made this collection of poems sound decidedly unpromising, though, and probably explained how the book ended up stuck between the Akvatari poetry. When would her mother have been lamenting about love, anyway? Everyone had loved her mother, it seemed.

Idly, she flipped through the pages. Poems about loneliness; poems about maturity and ripening in the fullness of time, whatever that meant; and poems about finding and losing love...it was all so dreadfully sentimental.

Wrinkling her nose, Avari began riffling through the book faster, until she finally arrived at a page where the lines were arranged in prose paragraphs rather than lines of verse. It was the introduction page, as she might have expected. Her eyes scanned the words quickly and fastened firmly on the dedication at the end, which gave her a deep thrill of shock.

"With thanks to my beloved mother Eunoe Kore," Avari read aloud, "who has ever helped me harmonize my life and my poetry, and who helped me interpret the last few years of my travel diary into verses of lyrical beauty and grace."

Travel diary? Avari had never heard that her mother had kept such a thing. All she had ever known about Charis Kore's travels was that she had left Konti Isle to look for a mate...which would, come to think of it, explain the romantic and starry-eyed tone of the poems in Laments of Love. It was the only trip abroad that her mother had ever made, for she had come home pregnant, given birth to Avari, and died during the long, painful, and difficult process. No one had ever said that her mother had kept a diary of her travels, though. Her eyes roamed the shelves where the travel-related books were kept. Avari knew no such diary was kept here, for she had read every one of those books several times over. No one would destroy such a diary. But they might have hidden it.

Where was it be kept now? What had her mother written in it? Had she ever talked about the daughter growing in her belly or the man who had put her there? What had been the last words that she had ever put to paper, the last words that Avari could ever have from her?

Had she loved Avari? Had she ever said so?

Unexpected tears prickled at Avari's eyes at the thought, even as she clenched her jaw in determination. She would find out where the diary was and what it said. No matter how well it was hidden, she would find it.

[Avari]

Her mother's diary was in Grandmother Eunoe's study.

There was no other place where it could be hidden. After she learned of the existence of her mother's diary detailing her voyage abroad and perhaps her last years alive, Avari began a systematic search of the entire manse at every free moment she had. Despite the size of the house, her search was not as difficult as might be expected. After all, Avari had explored and wandered about the Kore manse since childhood, giving her an intimate familiarity with its many lovely opal-colored rooms and halls. She knew all the places where books were kept or could be kept, and during the next week she investigated them all.

To be sure, it wasn't nearly as pleasant as visiting the harbor during her free time and befriending the sailors. But it was important. Secrets had been kept from her, secrets involving her own mother. There was no way that Avari would back off from that for the sake of a few lost afternoons and a little dust.

Working from east to west through the manse, Avari methodically opened every drawer, chest, cabinet, and cupboard she could find and also probed under, behind, and inside more furniture than she cared to admit. With this approach, a particularly cluttered or richly furnished room could take the better part of a day to search thoroughly. Inevitably, she emerged from each room sweaty, weary, and disappointed. Her search did turn up a number of unexpected finds, from tarnished old mizas to forgotten toys, fallen hairpins, and the occasional frayed tarot card. But no diary belonging to Charis Kore ever turned up.

At last, she found herself facing the tallest tower that spiraled up from the manse's western wing. Avari gulped. She knew that the only rooms in this tower were Grandmother Eunoe's office, workrooms, and private study. Having frequently been dragged there in the past for stern lectures on proper behavior, she knew the office well and knew it was more of a public room where Grandmother held meetings and lessons. Only a large table, some well-stuffed velvet armchairs, tiny glass lamps, and a fireplace adorned the room. Grandmother's workrooms wouldn't have much more than worktables, benches, and tools; a workroom was no place to store delicate and valuable documents.

That left...gulp...Grandmother's private study. Her private study. She never let anyone inside there, and the door was always left sternly and resolutely shut. Avari was certain that anyone who tried to enter without Grandmother's permission would get in horrific, devastating trouble.

Oh, Avalis, mother of us all, it just had to be there, didn't it? she thought bitterly.

Just climbing up the tower stairs and tiptoeing toward the study door made her nervous. In some ways, Avari was more afraid of crossing her grandmother than she was of the gods. She was sure the gods, at least some of them, forgave you. Grandmother Eunoe, on the other hand, never would. Avari couldn't believe she was truly contemplating sneaking inside.

But her curiosity about her mother's diary and resentment that it was kept hidden from her overcame her fear. Avari reached for the doorknob. Unsurprisingly, but even more frustratingly, it didn't turn.

Of course Grandmother Eunoe kept her private study locked. As if it wasn't terrifying enough to sneak into her office, Avari would have to force her way inside somehow too. She let out a deep, aggravated sigh and jiggled hopelessly at the doorknob, as if the thing would somehow respond if she tried enough times. Just above the doorknob, a narrow glass pane set in the door offered a tantalizing, maddening view of the elegant round room within, with its ornate desk and handsome bookshelves. Just below, the keyhole mocked Avari with its simple yet stalwart defense of the study's interior.

It wasn't even a particularly complex lock, from what she could tell. Mura was a peaceful and trusting place, for the most part. But for someone lacking that all-important key, even the simplest lock was enough to keep her out.

Or was it?

Avari leaned forward to examine the lock more closely, and her brain, refusing to be defeated by some small metal parts, began to hum with activity. Part of her still couldn't believe she was doing this, but part of her actually exulted in the thought. She was amazed at how profoundly she relished the thought of putting one past her formidable grandmother and getting away with it. Even though Avari was sure she'd be courting the worst kind of punishment imaginable, the risk somehow made the prospect of sneaking inside even more exciting.

From the sailors at the docks, she'd heard the occasional story about thieves breaking into homes by picking locks or prisoners escaping from prison by prying open their shackles with a pin. As long as they had some time in which to work and a narrow metal tool with a point or hook, a clever person could manipulate the mechanisms inside the lock and force it to open. A slow smile curved Avari's lips. In the last few days, she had managed to get her hands on a number of unused hairpins in quite a range of sizes and shapes. If she figured out how to use them together, could she actually pick the lock? Could she...break into Grandmother Eunoe's study and find her mother's diary?

At that moment, as her heart beat faster and her vision swam with images of what would happen if she failed, Avari heard footsteps in the tower stairway.

Quickly, she moved away from the study door and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. She tried to school her features into blandness, as though the mind behind it was not racing with ideas and hopes, and made her way toward the stairs. As the person ascending the stairs came into view, Avari's heart leaped when she saw it was none other than Grandmother Eunoe.

"Avari! What are you doing up here?" the tall, slender Konti woman asked. Clad in a deep blue gown that made her long pearl-white hair and ivory skin glow, she looked magnificent, like a vision dreamt by moonlight. As always, she dominated the space around her; Avari couldn't bring herself to look away from her. "Why are you here in my tower?"

"I...I..." Avari couldn't stop herself from trembling under that penetrating violet gaze. "I...I was looking for you, Grandmother, because...because..."

Fidgeting in her pocket, her right hand brushed against the edge of a worn pasteboard card. Thinking quickly, Avari brought out the card and held it in front of her, like a shield. It was one of the frayed tarot cards she had found yesterday, painted with a faded picture of a bright, laughing Fool on the edge of a silvery cliff above the foaming, white-capped sea.

"I thought this belonged to you," she said, trying to sound ordinary and casual. "I found it the other day, under the sofa in the parlor. It belongs to one of your decks, doesn't it?"

For a moment, she felt like the entire world was holding its breath as she stood still with the lie on her lips and Grandmother Eunoe carefully studied the card. It was an effort just to remain quiet and calm and genuine. Then Grandmother smiled slightly and nodded.

"Yes, it is from one of my older decks," she said, lifting one slender hand to accept the card. "Thank you for finding it, dear. I'm afraid it must have been more trouble than the card is really worth."

Avari struggled to hold back a sigh of relief. "Oh, it was nothing, Grandmother. I always like finding things that have gone lost or missing."

Grandmother Eunoe gave her a strange look, a tiny crease emerging with extreme delicacy between her perfect eyebrows. "I suppose that is true. But remember, Avari, some things are better left forgotten or hidden away. Sometimes they are hidden from us for a reason, so there is no use in trying to dig them back up."

With that, she swept past Avari and unlocked her study, closing the door carefully behind her. Avari stared after her, glimpsing a flutter of blue silk behind the corner of the ornate table that she used as a desk. Such strange words, from Grandmother Eunoe...almost as though she guessed a little of Avari's intentions. She was a Konti, after all, and no longer young or easily fooled.

But Avari set her jaw and began walking down the stairs. Grandmother hadn't questioned her about the card at all. Besides, her mind was made up. Let Grandmother try to stop her if she could.

[Avari]

Unsurprisingly, but unfortunately for Avari, the entire island of Mura seemed to offer very few resources to help an aspiring lock-picker learn their trade. Given the general Konti preference for nonviolence and social harmony, as well as the practically nonexistent incidence of crime on the island, none of the Konti she knew had attained, or was even interested in attaining, the skills that Avari most wanted to learn. Nor could she learn from travelers and visitors to Mura, for no slavers, sadists, murderers, thieves, and other unsavory individuals were ever permitted to enter the city harbor. So, as usual, she had to make do with scrounging up whatever information on lock-picking and breaking-and-entering she could find and improvising when she couldn't find anything at all.

Part of Avari was still horrified that she was contemplating breaking into Grandmother Eunoe's private study at all. Doubts filled her mind whenever she thought of the difficulty of learning how to pick the lock or envisioned the terrible aftermath that was sure to follow. Was reading her mother's diary worth all this trouble? How could Avari explain if another Konti perceived her illicit intentions? What if she was caught in the act? Even if she did succeed, how did she plan to conceal the evidence of her crime? Could she truly get away with such a heinous act?

However, a much larger part of Avari was simply too swept up in the excitement of the prospect and the thrill of danger to focus too much on her doubts. Swindling an ungifted traveler or two was a paltry trick, compared to defying her formidable and clairvoyant grandmother and finding out whatever secrets lay in her mother's diary. In addition, the lure of unknown information appealed irresistibly to Avari. Konti women generally hid very little from their children, considering the futility of concealing anything from even a child who bore Avalis' favor. But Grandmother Eunoe did have a way of not telling the entire truth to someone, if she thought the occasion called for it. No doubt this matter of Charis Kore's diary was one of those occasions. Just thinking of it made Avari seethe with resentment and curiosity.

Besides, the whole idea felt so unreal to her, like a dream or a game. And what a challenging game it would be! If she managed to trick Grandmother Eunoe herself, if she "won" the game, what a triumph it would be!

So, like a child intently learning the rules of an intriguing new game, Avari began haunting the shops and smithies of Mura looking for clues that might help her. The local weapons store was no help, but the shop atop the Silver Velispar Bridge offered a satisfactory selection of different locks as part of its wares. Most were padlocks, but there were a few lock-and-key mechanisms on sale that could be nailed or screwed directly to a door or cabinet. The colorful shopkeeper Ra'mari was always willing to chat with her a little about each lock and how they worked, though Avari always kept these conversations brief to avoid arousing Ra'mari's suspicion or inhaling too much of the heavy clouds of incense and perfume that always hung in veils about the store.

At home, Avari finally managed to find a useful book that contained a chapter about locksmithing. While the paragraphs on history and technique made her eyes glaze over with boredom, the delicate, detailed pen-and-ink illustrations of lock mechanisms delighted her heart. As Ra'mari had told her, most houses in Mura were secured with pin-tumbler locks, so Avari devoted herself to studying the section on such locks with fervent attention.

She studied the pictures that showed how each lock possessed a horizontal cylinder that needed to be rotated to open the lock. This cylinder had a narrow vertical slot in the middle, in which keys could be inserted. Much to Avari's surprise, she saw from the illustrations that each lock was secured by small pins of different heights, drilled vertically into the cylinder's slot. How astounding that sturdy-seeming locks could depend on something so tiny and harmless! According to the book, the point at which the pins and cylinder aligned perfectly was called the shear point. Only the right key could lift each pin exactly the right height to line up at the shear point, allowing the cylinder to turn and the lock to open. If someone inserted the wrong key, at least one pin wouldn't rise up properly, forming a tiny but rigid obstruction that would cause the cylinder to get stuck and not be able to turn.

Now that she had a practical use for the knowledge inside this otherwise tedious book, Avari readily absorbed its information with commendable enthusiasm. Knowing the design of the lock that closed Grandmother Eunoe's study to her meant that she could figure out a way to unravel that design and trick the lock into opening. It was just a mechanism, after all. It couldn't read your mind or sense your emotions, and it couldn't stare you down into humility and meekness while you raged inwardly at your own helplessness.

Those discarded hairpins she'd found all over the house, for instance, would be perfect for picking the lock. Indeed, they were probably the only way she could pick the lock, because anything bigger wouldn't fit and anything smaller or non-metallic would probably just snap into pieces. Judging from the way the book described how the pins moved, she'd need one hairpin to elevate the pins to the shear point and another to turn the cylinder and open the lock. That would probably be easiest, she decided.

Avari narrowed her eyes in thought as she absently closed the book in her lap. She'd probably have to bend the hairpins a bit to make them the proper shape for inserting into a lock...a hook shape, perhaps, or an L shape. She'd have to find out when Grandmother Eunoe's tower was emptiest, so that no one stumbled upon Avari in the midst of breaking into her private study. Maybe she'd even have to practice her method of picking on other, less vital locks around the house, like the one to her own room or the smaller locks on desks or cabinets.

Ah, there was so much work to do! But then, this was a very dangerous game that Avari was planning to play. If she wanted to win, she had to be careful.

And despite all the terrible consequences that awaited, despite her inexperience and unabashed fear of Grandmother Eunoe's wrath, and despite the many difficulties and risks that lay between her and her goal...Avari wanted to win. Truly, she did.

[Avari]

That evening, Avari unobtrusively settled onto one of the plump settees in the parlor to sort, organize, and modify her assortment of hairpins and clasps, all gathered from either her own personal collection or during her dusty search for her mother's private diary. Tucking her legs under her, she surveyed the fruits of her search meditatively. Pretty and decorative, the array of hair adornments spread out along on the low table hardly looked as though they could be used as tools for any kind of deceitful, covert activity. Even so, it tickled Avari's fancy to think that fripperies fashioned from pure Konti craftsmanship could be twisted and manipulated into aiding and furthering some rather impure Konti goals.

Besides, it wasn't as though every hero sprung out of the ground already bearing a legendary sword and shield. Everyone had to make do with poor tools in the beginning. Later, perhaps, Avari would have both the means and opportunity to obtain higher-quality apparatus than these paltry hairpins, but for now, she had to prove she could be clever and resourceful with what she had.

So, she sat and frowned at her neatly organized assortment on the table. The ivory and glass hairclips were all wrong, for certain. Not only were they clearly too brittle, they also didn't appear fine enough to fit into a narrow, well-made lock. Avari pushed these aside.

This still left a large number of steel and brass hairpins. She bent forward to examine these closely, her fair hair sliding over her shoulders to curtain her face. After studying the internal structure of a pin-and-tumbler lock, Avari had intuited that the simplest way to pick the lock would be to bounce or 'rake' the pins inside the lock, by sliding a hairpin rapidly in and out of the keyhole across all the pins, until they all reached the shear point. Once they all jumped over the shear point, she could use another hairpin to turn the lock and open the door.

For this purpose, though, the straight-pronged hairpins would never do. They'd just cause every pin to bounce the same height, which meant some of them wouldn't clear the shear point. What she needed was something with tiny bumps or ridges to allow her to bounce the pins to different heights all at once.

Aha! The bobby pins would be perfect! She lifted one of the innocuous-looking little hairpins and held it to the light. The top prong resembled a gently undulating ocean wave. Perhaps it wasn't perfect, but she could use it.

Now for the second pick to actually turn the cylinder inside the lock, once all the pins had jumped above the shear point, she'd need to...

"Avari, dear? What are you doing over there?"

The tranquil, melodious voice broke through her concentration and made her visibly flinch with surprise. Reluctantly, Avari raised her face toward the speaker, even though she recognized the voice all too well and could have told who it was with both ears muffled. At the doorway, draped in sumptuous violet silks that matched the color of her eyes, Grandmother Eunoe gazed down at her with an expression of gentle amusement and affection. A thrill of fear coursed through the younger Konti as she helplessly wondered whether those lovely eyes had already read her chavi like a book and perceived her guilt.

"Hello, Grandmother," Avari greeted her formally, resisting the impulse to sweep all the hairpins out of sight. "I've been organizing these hair clips and pins, you see. Some of them were just lost or discarded, and I feel as though they could be put to much better use than sitting in a jewelry box or under a sofa cushion somewhere."

None of what she said was a lie, but of course they weren't the whole truth either. If Eunoe exerted her divination abilities in the slightest, she would know it immediately. Avari held her breath, realizing for the first time the full extent of her folly in trying to deceive a powerful Konti matriarch like Eunoe.

In a sweep of silk, her grandmother sat down on the sofa opposite Avari. "I applaud your sentiments, my dear, but are you sure this is an appropriate use of your time? Sorting pins is hardly a cerebral activity." She paused, then continued, "I have also heard that you have been spending a large amount of time at the shops and markets, though you rarely purchase anything. You look at things like bowls, compasses, and locks, ask questions, and wander about, before returning home empty-handed."

"I suppose I should not be surprised that you know, Grandmother," Avari replied with a resigned smile.

"No, you should not be," Eunoe agreed. "I know you have always been more...self-willed than most girls, but it seems that you have a great deal of idle time on your hands these days. You spend your time window-shopping, you show interest in the most mundane objects, and now I find you studying the size and shape of hairpins. It is quite concerning, Avari."

"Grandmother, I..."

"Idle hands are the root of mischief, as the proverb would have it," Eunoe interrupted, "and I fear you may be tempted towards ennui and ill behavior."

She fixed her violet gaze steadily on Avari. The thought flashed in Avari's mind, irresistibly: She knows! She knows, she knows, she KNOWS! It seemed Grandmother Eunoe knew everything Avari had been up to, and she was sure to put together all the pieces into a most damning puzzle. It would not be hard, especially when Eunoe could also look into her chavi and read the whole foolish plan therein. She fought to keep from trembling under that implacable stare.

At last, Grandmother Eunoe gave a single slow blink. Avari suppressed a surge of mingled relief and anxiety as those bright, keen eyes turned away from her. Her grandmother rose to her feet.

"But," she said at last, "I dare say there is no harm in a little aimless amusement. I sometimes forget how young you are, Avari. But I hope you will spend your time a little more productively from now on, my dear."

"I...I will," Avari stammered, stunned that no condemnation or punishment seemed to be forthcoming.

"Very good, my dear." Grandmother Eunoe turned to leave with an ethereal whisper of swishing silk. At the doorway, she paused again and half-turned back to give her watchful granddaughter a significant look. "Oh, I should also let you know, my dear, that the Grandmother's Circle will be holding unofficial gatherings for its members every seventh day after tomorrow, until the end of the season. I understand the gatherings may take all afternoon. Do be sure to take good care of yourself and find some worthy occupation during those days, Avari."

Even in her bewildered state of mind, Avari's mind seized on this seemingly inconsequential statement as an opportunity. Grandmother Eunoe hadn't seen what she was intending, apparently, and now she was going to be gone for a whole afternoon every few days! Good fortune had favored Avari, it seemed.

She managed to respond haltingly, "Yes, I will, Grandmother. I promise."

With that, her grandmother departed gracefully from the room, leaving Avari alone once more with her hairpins, her relief, and her developing plans.

[Avari]

After Grandmother Eunoe had left, the initial burst of relief and euphoria faded quickly as Avari stared contemplatively at the empty hallway beyond the parlor's threshold. At the best of times, Eunoe always unnerved and unsettled her granddaughter with the sheer force of her presence, but those moments of uneasiness were nothing compared to the roiling uncertainty and doubts that assailed her in Eunoe's wake. On one hand, Eunoe seemingly had not perceived Avari's plans and in fact unwittingly supplied her with invaluable information on when her private study would be empty and unattended. On the other hand, however, the terror she'd felt when Eunoe had gazed into her eyes had reminded Avari about the foolhardiness of pitting herself against the subtle, calculating mind and skillful divination of the formidable Kore family matriarch. Avari had thought she was being so clever, so resolute, but all it had taken was a single glance from her grandmother and she had felt her resolve crumbling like an ill-constructed masonry wall.

She had been thinking of the whole venture as a mere game, but Grandmother Eunoe's brief words gave her a sharp jolt back to reality. If Avari failed and was caught, her punishment would not be mere play. While Mura did not have dungeons or holding cells as such, Avari was painfully familiar with the Konti's inflexible, rigorous notions of morality and justice. She could only imagine how they would deal with transgressors to the precious harmony and tranquility of their society.

For all she knew, Avalis herself would emerge, summoned by the combined wrath of her daughters, to chastise Avari as only a goddess could.

She thought about the issue all through the night and into the next morning. Perhaps it was too much risk, after all. It was futile and far-fetched beyond belief to think that she could actually hide her plan from an island full of diviners and seers. After all, weren't the Konti by definition a race that couldn't be fooled? If that was true, how did she plan to get away with breaking into Eunoe's private study?

The thought was chilling. Even if Avari succeeded in hiding her emotions and desires somehow, there was bound to be some troublesome woman on the island who could use her powers to uncover Avari's tracks after the fact and prove her guilt. Her own cousin Sondra could have done it just by holding her hand, if she had stayed in Mura.

Was it worth being inevitably caught to get her hands on her mother's diary? For all that it held the allure of the unknown and mysterious, Avari had to admit that she had no real idea about whether it contained pertinent or interesting information. When she stopped to think about it, she wasn't even sure what she expected to read. How ridiculous she would feel if she went through all this, just to find the diary only contained lists of dates, names, and symbols.

Just before dawn, Avari decided that perhaps her mother's diary was not worth it, after all. Reading about Charis Kore getting seasick on a ship or roughing it in Sylira might be entertaining, but not nearly enough so to risk incurring Grandmother Eunoe's wrath.

With that, she promptly sank into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She was awakened a little past noon by the sound of voices outside her bedroom door. Honey-golden rays of sunlight shone through the filmy curtains on her windows and tickled at her eyelids, causing Avari to toss and mumble impatiently. Even to her sleep-addled brain, it was clear that she had gone to bed far too late, thanks to mulling all night over the business of breaking into Grandmother Eunoe's study. Slowly, as she reluctantly became more alert, the voices outside her room grew clearer, and she recognized one of them as belonging to her aunt.

It took longer for their words to penetrate through the wooden door. From the unguarded, informal tone of her aunt's voice, she was speaking to a friend of hers. The high pitch of her voice and the way she bit off the syllables suggested snappishness, even complaint. Avari half-rose out of bed to listen more closely, wondering what was causing her aunt to sound so temperamental.

"That m...dening girl," she heard, somewhat indistinctly. "You can't...m...gine how h...strong she is! And n... here she is, sl...ping late! Wh... am I s...posed to do w... her?"

Avari frowned. Who was her aunt talking about?

The friend said, "Can't you just..." but the rest of the suggestion was muffled.

Her aunt's voice grew louder and clearer, as though she had moved closer to the door. "No, I wish I could! But that stubborn Avari just doesn't respond to coaxing and advice like the other girls. I wish she were half as tractable as some of my other nieces." She paused and then added darkly, "She gets it all from her father, I'm sure of it."

Her father!

Those last few words made Avari spring upright in bed in startlement. Her aunt had been talking about her! The irritation she showed toward Avari wasn't terribly surprising, but her last words had been a shock. Avari's father? She was like him, it seemed? Who was he?

Like many Konti, Avari had never known her father. Her mother had left the island to find a mate and had returned pregnant, choosing to give birth in the company of her own family rather than her mate's. Considering that the Konti always gave birth to Konti daughters, fathers were rarely mentioned in Mura. One's father could be anyone in the world, but it would never show in their features. But it seemed that in Avari's case, her father's heritage seemed to show in her headstrong, stubborn, and unsympathetic ways.

Avari's fists tightened on her blanket. Again, she wondered: Who was her father? How was Avari like him? And why did her aunt speak of him in such dark, baleful tones, as though being like him were something terrible and unwelcome?

After spending all night thinking of reasons against sneaking into Grandmother Eunoe's study and finding her mother's private diary, Avari impulsively changed her mind and decided to do it, after all. Now she knew there was something too valuable in that diary to forgo, even though she was almost certain to be caught. Her mother's diary was sure to mention her father, the one person whom she knew nothing about and who was apparently regarded with disdain and scorn by her aunt. She hopped out of bed and gathered her collection of bobby pins and hair clips, rubbing them speculatively between her fingers. If her grandmother was hiding information about her origins from her, about her father and mother and whatever happened between them on her mother's journey abroad to find a mate, Avari intended to find out.

[Avari]

Once Avari had made up her mind at last, she quickly realized that she had very little time left to waste. If Grandmother Eunoe had been telling the truth during their last conversation about the gatherings of the Grandmothers' Circle, then the next time her private study was sure to be unattended would be in only seven days. That meant that Avari had only seven days to practice and refine her lock-picking skills and break into her study in search of her mother's diary.

On one hand, she wished the whole venture could take place tomorrow, now that she had made up her mind and was impatient to start. Seven days seemed like an interminable amount of time to wait and to try to behave normally despite her racing thoughts and anxious heart. How could she conceal her plans successfully for a whole seven days from her suspicious and all-too-perceptive Konti brethren? For that matter, how was she going to endure waiting that long to find out the true story of the mystery about her mother's travels and her father's identity?

On the other hand, considering that she was planning to commit an act of complete defiance against Mura's laws and society, Avari couldn't help wishing she could have just a little more time to prepare herself. Seven days didn't feel like nearly enough time to strengthen her will and get her mind properly adjusted to the thought of flouting every expectation and custom by which she had been raised. It was certainly not enough time to prepare herself to face Grandmother Eunoe's wrath when she found out. On a more practical level, she wasn't sure that seven days was enough to master the art of lock-picking. Though Avari had never met a professional thief or bandit, she was fairly sure that most of them didn't learn the techniques and tricks of their trade the way she was doing, by extrapolating from a musty old book. She didn't know if her theory in lock-picking would even work in practice, making her wish she had more time to study and, if the need arose, regroup.

Every time she felt a tendril of doubt or fear curling around her heart, however, Avari would remind herself about the injustice of being denied valuable knowledge about herself. Her curiosity about her father was certainly not a new development. However, her aunt's careless words outside her door had opened up a new avenue of understanding for Avari. All her life, her aunts and elders seemed to look at her askance and regarded her with a baffling mingling of pity, contempt, and uneasiness no matter what she did to win their approval. She had always thought their attitude was due to her too-assertive, self-interested personality, but it seemed that part of it came from her father as well.

From there, it was only natural that Avari wondered, Why? and sought to find the answer.

As the answer to her question could only be found inside a locked room, she began in earnest to teach herself how to pick locks. Avari started with the seldom-used lock on her own desk, which, despite its creakiness, had the advantage of not making her look terribly suspicious if someone noticed her fiddling with it. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the pin-tumbler lock illustrations from the book. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes again, and thrust the first hairpin into the lock, the one that would be used to turn the cylinder inside once the pins had been lifted.

It slid in easily. However, as Avari twisted it experimentally from side to side, she could tell even before attempting to pick the lock that the hairpin would not rotate properly with a sufficient amount of force to turn the cylinder, at least not in its present form. She withdrew the hairpin and studied it, wondering what she should do.

After sorting through the hairpins in her pocket, she finally found a smaller hairpin made of more ductile metal and bent it into a rough L-shape. Avari reasoned that the vertical section of the bent hairpin could serve as a sort of handle. She stuck her modified hairpin inside the lock and nodded in satisfaction when she felt how much easier it was to turn the hairpin like a key.

However, Avari sensed that that was the easy part. Now came the part where she raked the pins inside the lock and persuaded them to give way. Uncertainly, she poked a bobby pin all the way inside the desk lock and wiggled it around. With mild surprise, she realized she could faintly feel the pin mechanisms wobbling above the ridges of the bobby pin. Tentatively, she slid the bobby pin back and forth more rapidly, imagining the pins bouncing and jumping up and down. Then she turned the L-shaped hairpin, waiting for the lock to open.

It didn't work.

She tried again and again, inserting the bobby pin and removing it quickly and rotating the bent hairpin in different orders, at different times, with different amounts of force. Each time, she failed.

Gradually, though, Avari became aware of the soft sounds and delicate forces inside the lock: the feel of the pins moving and settling, the quiet click as each pin fell back into place. She began to understand that lock-picking required both her hands to move simultaneously with precise timing and sensitivity to manipulate the stubborn lock. She had always had quick hands and nimble fingers, and now it was time to put them to use. Tiny pearls of sweat broke out on her brow and gleamed on the scales on the backs of her hands as she labored diligently to rake the lock, glancing every now and then at the door to make sure no one noticed her.

On her eleventh or twelfth try, she narrowed her eyes in concentration and inserted the bobby pin deep into the lock. As she pulled it out with a single rapid jerk, she also turned the bent hairpin inside the lock cylinder, so that each pin settled on top of the cylinder without obstructing it. She bit her lip, trying to balance speed with delicacy so that she didn't accidentally break the lock instead of opening it. With a click, the lock turned smoothly, and Avari pulled the desk drawer open.

"Yes!" she whispered, fiercely triumphant. Then she clapped her mouth shut with the hand still holding the bobby pin, afraid that someone might have heard her small cry of rejoicing.

For the rest of the day, Avari practiced on the desk drawer, refining and perfecting her technique, until she grew sick of sitting in front of the hopeless thing. By the end of the day, she could pick the lock on the desk on every single attempt. She went to bed that night well-satisfied with her efforts.

In the next seven days, Avari turned to practice on a different lock in the house during her spare time: the lock on a seldom-used closet, a discarded padlock she found in the library, and, when she felt braver, the locks on a private, secluded gazebo in a quiet, flower-bedecked bower. Crude though her tools and techniques were, once she became used to the tension, flexibility, and smoothness of the individual lock, she could pick the lock and open it successfully. Speed, unfortunately, remained a problem, as she knew she spent too much initial time experimenting with the lock and making failed passes with the bobby pin to be quite efficient. Unfortunately, she knew of no way to force a lock open, especially without risking either breaking the lock or her precious hairpins.

What mattered, though, was that she could do it. She was proud of herself for learning how all her own.

It was a wonder that no one had caught her practicing every day, but Avari didn't stop to think about that. That thought only led to other, even more troublesome thoughts about the consequences of getting caught, and she had enough to worry about as it was. Every day, she practiced on all the locks she could find in the family manse, trying to improve her speed and timing. She put herself under time limits, forced herself to improvise new lock-picks or use unfamiliar hairpins, and kept moving from lock to lock to ensure that she wasn't getting too accustomed to the feel and ease of a particular lock. She did everything she could think of to prepare for the much-dreaded, much -anticipated afternoon when Grandmother Eunoe would be out and her private study would be open to any intrepid intruder with a pocketful of hairpins.

Much too slowly, but also much too early, the seventh day arrived at last. That afternoon, Avari sat in the parlor, ostensibly reading a book but in fact observing and eavesdropping on her grandmother's movements through the house. Eunoe's melodious voice floated from one room to the next as she got herself ready for the Grandmother's Circle gathering, touching up her hair and choosing a silken shawl to loop around her shoulders, giving orders to the household and wandering through the halls.

As her grandmother came through the parlor, she flashed a quick, warm smile at Avari. "Do take good care of yourself, dear. I'll be back soon."

As soon as the door closed behind Grandmother Eunoe, Avari dropped the book onto the table and was gone in an instant, running lightly through the hallways toward the westernmost tower in the family manse. The hairpins rattled in her pocket, and she slipped her hand around them to keep them from betraying her. At last, the private study that held her mother's and father's secrets was unguarded, but for a single locked door...a door that would not, if Avari had anything to do with it, remained locked for long.

[Avari]

The afternoon sun blazed through the narrow windows that lined the spiraling stairway in the western tower that led to Grandmother Eunoe's study, gleaming on the pale, veined stone of each stair and the soft blue paper on the walls. The clear windows were bordered with decorative panes of rose-colored glass, and the slanting sunlight threw bars of blushing pink light across the stairs. Avari had always found the effect cloying, but now she saw those rosy bars of sunshine as beacons, guiding her to her goal at the top of the tower. Up and around and about she ran, propelled by excitement, curiosity, impatience, and no small amount of fear, her feet barely touching each step as she wound her way higher into the tower.

At last, panting and flushed, Avari arrived at the stairway landing that led to her grandmother's private study. The sight of the closed wooden door with its small glass viewing pane gave her a momentary pause. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she had to clutch both hands tightly together to keep them from trembling. Never before had she ever thought she could make it past that door, let alone like this, without Grandmother Eunoe's permission or knowledge.

But then, when she thought about it, getting invited inside was such a mundane way to enter a locked room. Frankly, it'd probably take much more effort, too, considering how utterly impervious Grandmother Eunoe was to every means of persuasion, begging, and wiles she knew. Picking the lock and sneaking inside felt much more challenging and nerve-wracking, but also much more fun.

Setting her jaw and darting glances from side to side, Avari tiptoed furtively toward the door and knelt before it. For one peevish moment, she glanced through the glass viewing pane at the open, unlatched window in the study. Eunoe always did love her natural light and fresh sea breezes. If only Konti were born with wings instead of gills and scales, Avari wouldn't have to go through all this hassle.

Wasting no more time, she plunged one hand into her pocket and brought out the pair of hairpins she'd grown most comfortable with using. First, she pulled out the bent, L-shaped torque-applying hairpin and inserted it into the keyhole with her left hand, turning the hairpin in the same direction that she would have turned the key and exerting gentle pressure. Meanwhile, she took out her bobby pin and pushed it in above the L-shaped hairpin, all the way into the back of the keyhole.

With a quick jerk, Avari pulled out the bobby pin, setting the pin mechanisms inside bouncing upward. Hurriedly, she tried turning the L-shaped hairpin in the keyhole the rest of the way. She felt it give, but not all the pins must have bounced above the shear point or had fallen slowly enough, because the lock didn't turn.

After a week full of initial, and secondary, and even duodenary failures, though, Avari had expected this. Muttering under her breath, she reinserted the bobby pin into the keyhole for another try.

Perhaps getting invited inside wouldn't have been so bad, after all.

On the fifth try, Avari slid the bobby pin inside the keyhole and pulled it out swiftly and sharply enough that the pins inside must have been bouncing violently about. As the bobby pin exited, she turned hard with the L-shaped hairpin. With a click that to her ears rang as loudly as a thunderclap, the mechanisms inside the lock gave way and the lock sprang open.

Avari's eyes widened at the sound. As she stared at the hairpin, rotated ninety degrees to the right, a fierce surge of elation and pride swelled her heart, followed almost immediately by an equally fierce flood of fear and impulse to smother her joy, lest her sudden burst of emotion be detected by every pale empath on the island. She forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down, even as her mind danced and her blood sang within her veins.

She had...she had really done it. Had she really done it? She really had. But she mustn't let herself get too excited over merely picking lock. That wasn't what she'd come for, after all.

Rising to her feet, Avari dropped both pins back into her pocket and listened for nearby noises. Hearing none, she turned the doorknob and eased inside, closing the door quietly behind her. The first thing she noticed inside was the cool breeze from the open window, filling the study with faintly salt-tinged sea air. Decorated in the same style as the rest of the manse, but richer, the airy, elegant round room took her breath away for a moment. A glittering depiction of the night sky adorned the high domed ceiling in tints of indigo and silver, its dizzying patterns of constellations and nebulae reflected in the long silver mirror that stood against one section of wall. Near the center of the room, an ornate table served as a desk, its graceful, flowing lines and sinuous curves clearly denoting its classic Konti workmanship.

But Avari had eyes for none of these lovely furnishings, only for the tall bookcases along the southern wall. Dozens of books rested upon their shelves, as well as various exotic, mysterious objects ranging from an elaborately carved ivory ball, to a small mirror of black glass, to a tall vase of earthy-red clay that glimmered as if dusted with gold. Her eyes ran admiringly over these objects, then scanned the books for one inscribed with her mother's delicate, curlicued handwriting.

It took her a few minutes, but at last Avari spotted a diary bound in worn, supple leather, slightly faded and dog-eared with much use. Though the title read simply, "My Diary," the script across the covers and spine belonged unmistakably to Charis Kore. Trying to still her trembling, she reached out and tugged the diary free.

She swallowed, suddenly frightened. What would she find in there? What in the name of Avalis was she even doing here?

But it had been too late to back out ever since she heard the lock on the study door clicking open. Avari took a deep breath and opened her mother's traveling diary to the first page, which was marked with the notation, "506 AV, Season of Summer, Day 14." Standing inside her grandmother's formerly locked private study, holding her mother's previously hidden and unknown diary about her travels in search of a mate, Avari began reading.

[Avari]

Avari stood still in front of the bookcases in Grandmother Eunoe's private study for what felt like hours, poring over the dense, tightly spaced lines of text that covered almost every page of her mother's diary. Unconsciously, a rueful smile crept across her face as she continued reading. Having heard about Charis Kore's lyrical and evocative writing style all her life, she should have known better than to fear that her mother's diary would ever contain anything as impersonal as a list of dates and notations. She recorded everything she saw, heard, and experienced with enthusiasm and in excruciating detail, no doubt with a true artist's awareness that everything around her could inspire a future masterpiece. Thus, to Avari's mingled dismay and amusement, exuberant descriptions of the opalescent seafoam and of lightning-lashed storms at sea overflowed her mother's accounts of her ocean voyage from the harbor of Mura to the island of Sahova and finally to the bustling port city of Zeltiva. Interspersed with these fanciful accounts were occasional entries about her overwhelming urge to find a mate and hopes of returning home a happy wife and mother.

Avari started flipping more rapidly through her mother's diary. Zeltiva, it seemed, had not been to Charis Kore's taste, for she left the city within two weeks of her arrival. With the astonishing naïveté that only someone born and bred in the safety and security of Mura could possess, she began the journey on the Kabrin Road to Syliras entirely alone. The thought of bandits or robbers never once entered her pretty, pampered little head, if her diary entries about the beauty of autumn leaves and the novelty of different races were any indication. All of it caused Avari to roll her eyes. Even she, several years younger than her mother was at the time, still knew better than to venture into the Wildlands of Sylira in such an unworldly, foolhardy fashion.

Her mother's luck lasted longer than she would have expected. She was fortunate enough to stay her first few nights on the Kabrin Road in travelers' shelters established by the knights of Syliras. However, her exotic loveliness and fine, Konti-crafted attire and belongings, with their elegant lines and gem-like colors, must have practically shouted nobility and wealth to all who saw her. Without question, it surely had attracted the group of bandits that beset her along a deserted stretch of road, reckoning a single woman easy prey.

Of the attack itself, Charis Kore did not write, only its aftermath. Her handwriting visibly shook as she tersely mentioned four men swarmed at her, too much for her to handle even when she tried fighting them off with a pair of suvai. Avari could picture the scene, though: two pairs of poor, hungry men with tattered clothes and grubby hands clutching and grabbing at her mother from the front and back. She might have died or been captured right there, had it not been for a passing woodcutter who saw her trouble and acted to save her.

With admiration, she wrote of his prowess with the humble woodcutter's axe he bore, catching two of her assailants unaware and dispatching them swiftly. As the other bandits turned to see their comrades crumpling in death, he managed to deal grievous wounds to both of them and they fled without further bloodshed. At this point, Avari's mother fainted dead away from the terror of the encounter.

According to her diary, the next time her mother awoke was in the woodcutter's cabin in the forest deep within the Wildlands. The woodcutter had tended her while she lay unconscious. She didn't know where she was exactly, but she knew she was safe.

Avari could have groaned as she read her mother's words. "He was a good man; I could feel it in every nerve and fiber of his being and see it in his every action. Of course, he was a simple, unlettered fellow who lived alone in the woods, without any knowledge of culture or art. He must hunt for his food, chop wood for his fire, and wrestle every day with the wilderness to stay alive. But I sensed he had a beautiful soul, as beautiful as his deep amber eyes and his tall, graceful, muscled body.

"I sensed in him a profound, overwhelming eagerness to please and make others happy. Loyalty and protectiveness, too, I felt in him and saw in his gentle yet generous behavior. He is so strong, so caring, and so humble. I could not have asked for a better rescuer from those awful bandits on the road.

"I wonder how I could ever thank him for his kindness? He has refused mizas or gifts, including having his fortune told. However, sometimes I find myself grateful for the excuse to linger here longer while I think of a suitable means to show my gratitude. I have never met a man I found so appealing and noble, both inside and out. I find myself wanting to stay close to him, finding the feeblest reasons to touch him, trying to make myself beautiful so that he will admire me...

"He is a man, after all, one who is strong and handsome and good. I am a woman. Is this not what I had dreamed of happening when I left Mura to find a mate? Has Avalis, all-knowing mother, led him to me to be my husband and the father of my children?"

At this point, Avari's heart contracted and she grimaced hugely. Abruptly, she skipped through a thick chunk of pages. It was enough to know that her mother was determined to take this humble woodcutter for her mate; she had no desire to read more about her mother's emotions, on which she would undoubtedly continue rambling for pages and pages, let alone about any of the events that would probably lead to Avari's own conception. The very thought made her shudder with distaste. Why on earth love and desire made fools out of everyone, she would never understand.

Avari only stopped flipping when she came to a page with three words scribed prominently under the date: "I Am Pregnant!" Underneath, in smaller, more restrained script, she wrote, "I have read the tea leaves, and there is no doubt. Even I cannot find the words to express how happy I am. So exciting, so wonderful! I cannot wait for the baby to be born. My mate is very pleased and is looking forward to welcoming our new 'pup' into our home, he says.

"Oh Avalis, the joy! I am going to have a baby! A sweet, lovely girl-child of my own! I cannot wait to bring you into the world, my precious one!"

[Avari]

There was no doubt left in Avari's mind, her illicit venture into Grandmother Eunoe's private study had been worth it. All the preparations she made, the fears of being caught, the doubts and the difficulties she had faced had been necessary to unearth these eye-opening, if sometimes discomfiting discoveries in her mother's travel diary. Reading about not only the monumental and fascinating truths about her mother's travels and her father's identity but also the modest, everyday details like her mother's choice of names and sewing baby clothing made Avari feel as though she were finally gaining insight into her own origins and unraveling the mysteries of who she was and why she had been born.

Oh, mother, Avari thought, reading the euphoric, loving words her mother had written about her unborn self. Was it contempt that Avari felt for her mother's fatuous affection, or pain, or longing for a living mother to utter those words aloud to her? The mixed feelings that she had always experienced for her mother had only intensified as her mother's diary made its first mentions of Avari herself.

Slowly, she forced herself to turn to the next page. As she began reading the next entry, Avari's eyes suddenly widened in disbelief, and her tangle of confused emotions fused into a single sensation of horror. Her thoughts became, Oh, foolish mother, fool of a mother! Foolish, foolish, foolish!

"My...my mate," her mother wrote, even more shakily than after the bandit attack. "My...mate. He is not what I thought he was. I was wrong about him. So wrong. How could I ever be so wrong? Was I so blinded by my own feelings, my desire and gratitude?

"He is strong and humble and willing to please...but the one he wishes to please is not me. My mate is not human, as I had believed. He is a Kelvic. A wolf! I saw him transform before my own eyes. The one he wants to please is his Master. And his Master...! Oh, Avalis, protect me! Laviku, wash away my fear!

"His Master came to see us this morning. Only then did I learn where my mate had taken me. We are much farther north than I suspected, in the outskirts of the city of Ravok. His Master is a slaver, a dealer in living flesh! And he had been seeking a fertile Konti, to breed me and sell me to whoever will pay for a prescient seeress at their side! I would sell for thousands of gold mizas, no doubt. When my mate saw me on the road, he knew I was exactly what his Master wanted. He was so simple-minded, so eager to please, he never thought that what he was doing was barbaric and wicked at all. He was only serving his Master. Thus, I never saw any guilt or wrongness in his heart. Oh, the horror, the horror! To be betrayed and deceived like this!"

The ink was blotted, surely with tears, where her mother had written, "I loved him, and he lied to me. He betrayed me. How could he? I loved him!"

Avari went so cold that she felt as though her heart had frozen to ice inside her chest. I should have known, she thought bitterly. I should have known from my mother's descriptions. There are no small settlements outside the cities in the mainland, let alone men who live in their own cottage in the forest. The world is too dangerous for that, too unpredictable. Of course, that seemingly humble, simple woodcutter was more than he seemed! She should have known too. How could she be so blind and foolish? A Kelvic, a servant to a slaver! Oh, foolish mother, you little stupid fool!

She flicked through the brief, scattered entries that remained. Her mother had managed to escape from the Ravok slaver by persuading one of the slave pen guards to help her. From there, she bought passage upon a merchant's caravan headed for Zeltiva, selling fortunes and prophetic advice to join them. Where once Charis Kore had been idealistic and cheerful, she was now hardened and detached. The betrayal of her mate had wounded her deeply, and all her enthusiasm and naïveté was gone. Bleak depression and lingering distrust of everything and everyone she saw had taken their place.

Of her traitorous mate and his child inside her burgeoning belly, Avari's mother wrote often, sometimes in bitterness and sometimes in sorrow. The many woes and indignities of pregnancy began afflicting her when she was already at her weakest emotionally, and it showed in her writing.

"I hate you, spawn of that lying, petching wolf bastard! I don't want you! He only planted you inside me to get more mind-reading slaves out of me! I hate you! If I could tear you out of my womb with my own hands, I would!" she wrote once. Avari trembled to read those vicious, furious words, for the hate in them was palpable.

In another, gentler entry, though, she wrote, "Oh, my poor sweet daughter, I know you cannot be held accountable for your birth. You are ill-conceived, it is true, but I will bring you to Mura and reap some joy from this dire misfortune. I will raise you among my sisters, my aunts, and my mother, and you will never, ever, ever hear about your father or the way in which you were conceived."

The diary ended soon after, with a simple entry about how her time to give birth was nigh. Avari closed her mother's diary with a snap and, after a moment's hesitation, placed it back on the shelf.

Why had they hid all this from her? Konti women usually concealed nothing from their children. Yet, her own mother had not wanted to reveal the story of her own birth to her. Perhaps Grandmother Eunoe and the other women hadn't felt it was their place to tell her, after her mother died. Perhaps it grieved them too much to think of her mother's suffering at the hands of the slaver in the midst of her funeral. Perhaps they just hadn't wanted to talk about it. When Avari remembered the rage and anguish of her mother's entries at the discovery of her mate's betrayal, she couldn't blame them, any of them.

She was surprised to feel her eyes stinging with tears. Despite all her scorn for her hopelessly unworldly mother, it hurt to think that such a vibrant and vivacious personality no longer existed, because of Avari. The childbirth had killed Charis Kore. No longer would her poetry delight listeners' ears; no longer would she write new stories and verses whose lyricism and levity tempered by experience and grief. It hurt to think that she, Avari, was responsible for her mother's death. And if it hurt her so much, considering she had never met her mother, could she truly blame her mother's friends and sisters for hurting even more deeply and for shunning the source of their pain?

Even stronger than her grief and guilt, however, was Avari's growing realization that she herself was nothing like her mother. Her only child, yet she had none of her mother's charisma and wit, her joy in life, or her artistic flair. Instead, Avari was deceptive, unscrupulous, and amoral, and had never fit into the harmonious social community of Mura.

In short, she was her father's daughter.

Hadn't she proved that by always running wild and throwing off every restriction the women tried to put on her? Hadn't she always felt like she was rattling the bars of her cage, like a feral creature dreaming of the jungle? Indeed, hadn't she gotten into Eunoe's private study not by asking, not by being invited, but by picking the lock and sneaking inside like a criminal?

She had always felt different from everyone else on the island, who seemed so content with the way things were. In return, they looked at her askance and tried to mold her into the proper Konti woman they wanted her to be, like her mother. When she didn't comply, they narrowed their eyes and hissed behind their hands to each other, "That Avari, she gets it all from her father, I'm sure of it."

Inside Avari, the long frustration, the dreams of escape, the desire for independence, the curiosity about the world beyond Konti Isle, and the patient cunning that had brought her into this room all coalesced into a single fierce certainty. She did not belong in Mura and never had, since the moment of her birth. Now that she had defied Mura's laws and customs to find this out for herself, she had no place left here. Lingering here would only prolong the sense of alienation and risk her being brought before a tribunal of her sisters for breaking into her grandmother's study. They would find out what she had done; they would hold her hand and see the truth, and they would judge her, sentence her no doubt to something terrible.

Finally, she made up her mind. She was leaving Mura and never looking back. She would need money and time to find a ship bound for Zeltiva or some other port city where she could lose herself. Not that she expected Eunoe to spend much time trying to find her; no doubt the old woman would be grateful to be rid of her.

Almost absentmindly, Avari headed toward the desk and jerked open the lovely enameled box with bronze filigree feet set upon it. Inside, various compartments held quills, pins, stamps, and other useful office utensils, but she had eyes only for the partition that held a handful of gold-rimmed mizas, usually used for pin money and minor household expenses. She scooped the coins out of the box and slipped them into her pocket, next to the hairpins she'd used to pick the lock. There in that pocket lay freedom, from Mura and its endless rules and expectations.

And if she thought about it, she could probably remember a sea captain or trader down at the harbor planning to depart Mura soon and might have a berth or two open, for a paying customer…

Avari smiled softly in anticipation, even as she blinked back the last few tears from reading her mother's diary. She could feel the deck swaying beneath her feet and hear the roar of the ocean waves already.

[Cachet]

Avari SKILLS Larceny 5 Locksmithing 1 Stealth 4 Investigation 5 LORE Determination of Acton Plotting a Mischievous Plan Learning the Horrid Truth Conviction of Action Thinking Under Pressure Misc Notes: I liked how well you played all this out. You captured your characters frustrations very well. I very much enjoyed reading this; especially because it outlined your characters history so well. It also outlined Konti culture very well; the obstacles you had to overcome were accurate (needing to find out more about lockpicking). In all it was a wonderful read and really very entertaining as well. You created all kinds of wonderful tension and I loved every bit of it. Anything seem out of place? Any questions please feel free to contact me ASAP.