Chapter 1

Lady Shiena of Jenni, head of the ruling Council of the nation of Tran Kor, was in pain. Body and soul. Lying back on her childbirth bed, she looked up in disgust at her husband. She flicked a hand at the handsome Ce'al sculptor with the hang dog look and then motioned for her two eldest daughters to approach her. Before they could, the healer brought the swaddled babe over to show the sleeping male child. Shiena's lip curled in disgust and waved the shocked healer away. Her daughters approached, their faces blank, looking down upon their disheveled matriarch. Her sweat-soaked hair was now so dark a green it was almost black and her yellow-green eyes were stricken with a pain deeper than child birth could account for. Her normally smoothly pine green skin was mottled with browns and yellows from her exertions and her eyes rimmed with black from crying.

Shiena took a deep breath and slowly released it, tucking a strand of soaked hair behind her elegantly pointed ear. "This will be my seventh son!" she rasped, her voice nearly gone with the difficult birth. "The Gods have cursed me! Ten children in fifteen years and only three daughters!"

"But mother, think of the alliances those males have garnered," Shayla, the younger of the two eldest daughters, ventured with strained hopefulness. "You sit where grandmother sat, at the head of the Council because of those alliances and despite your young age!"

Ceilia looked at her scathingly. "Males bind others to us, yes, but those alliances are fleeting at best and you know it, Shayla. Do not try to smooth over this disaster! That child should be smothered and we should announce a still birth! You know the other councilors already talk behind your back about the number of males you whelp, mother."

Shiena gritted her teeth at the truth her eldest and heir spoke. Ce'al women were prone to birth more males than females, but she seemed to be cursed with an abundance of the filthy creatures dropping from her womb. And it mattered not with whom she mated, either. She has had three husbands and all three gave her a male child first! Granted her daughters were all exceptionally beautiful and intelligent, but that did not counterbalance seven males. Seven! Five were already out from under foot in other Houses, chits in the Game that brought her to her grandmother's place of power at her death. One was kind enough to get himself killed in a border skirmish before she had to try to find a House for him as well. And now this latest whelp. What was she-

The dratted healer was back! "What do you want, woman?!? Can you not see I am trying to decide what to do with that inconvenient ball of flesh you just removed?" she demanded hoarsely, her eyes shading deeper yellow in her anger.

The healer's mouth firmed and her eyes tightened in disapproval. "I was wondering what you were going to name the ball of flesh? Documentation must be filled out for the Council and the Houses and an announcement made," the woman replied stiffly.

Master Auley was one of the best healers in Tran Kor and she knew it. Her profession shielded her from retaliation by nobles and her skill allowed her the freedom to speak her mind to women who did not always appreciate that quality in a healer. She could see Lady Shiena's coloring get darker with her anger and was indifferent to the temper tantrum she was about to throw. Children were the gifts of the Gods and not mere pawns on a game board, as Lady Shiena seemed to think.

Shiena could see that the woman was unmoved by her wrath and unafraid of the consequences of her disrespect, but she also knew the woman was immune to retaliation. Nobody in their right mind irritated the Healers' Guild. Especially the Healers' Guild Master, Lady Lilith Auley. Shiena took a deep, calming breath and pushed back her anger. From the healer's tone, she was almost certain others had been informed of the birth, making Ceilia's solution untenable. Since this child was her bane, so he would be named. "He will be called Sharn Jenni of House Jenni."

"Sharn? That does not sound Ce'alian, my Lady," Master Auley remarked.

"It is not. It is Gnathar, since my womb seems to have become like their sluts' wombs, churning out males as if they were useful for anything other than killing other males," Shiena shot back irritably.

"And what, pray tell, does 'Sharn' mean in Gnathar?"

The Matriarch of the House of Jenni smiled grimly and replied, "Lady's Bane."