PROLOGUE

I remember when I first bought this house. It was the autumn before my twenty-third birthday. The property market was slow, I recall, and this gem simply struck me as I wandered past intent on a shoe-shopping expedition. A grand lady she was then, and she is still, even after all the remodeling and earnest renovations I undertook in those whirlwind early years when I was young and reckless, little as you might believe it of me now, cantankerous old stick I am.

She was a bargain, even though I had no need to care for my purse, even then – a great relief for a young girl with expensive tastes. The House of Gavrillian was fantastically wealthy when I was but the Heir, and had been for many generations before me. But this was the first place I’d ever had to truly call my own, as strange as that sounds for a girl born into a family with more homes than members. It was a retreat, a place I could furnish as I liked, where I could behave as I liked, without a care for any old tradition or ancestor’s tastes. How fitting then, that I should sit here and write in the twilight of my life, not in that stuffy little Palace apartment, or the cold marble monstrosity on Snob Hill, or indeed, any of the magnificent and equally soulless houses I keep both within and without this vast Empire, that stretches over half the known world.

She’s not large - at least, not compared to some of my other homes, though she’s a far cry from the cramped little broom closets I shared over my twelve years at the Knights’ Academy with the future General Dama Justinia Ferox of the House of Zevran. Just three levels, plus basement, attic-studio, stables and carriage-house, barely a dozen staff, but she suits me well.

An old lady likes to live within the whirl of the City, here barely a block away from the shops and the theatres – certainly better than the isolated splendor of the Palace on its little peninsular, a city in its own right, or that genteel, pretentious walled complex of grand mansions on the Hill. I leave those to the young ones now, together with the political intrigues and adventures I adored so in my day.

Young ones. How once I would have laughed to think that they were young. Even my daughter – my younger daughter, at that - is enjoying a scholarly retirement between the Senate and teaching at the Academy and the University. Can you believe that I’ve outlived a daughter and a son? How time flies. Can you believe I’ve great-grandchildren in the Academy now?

It’s now my granddaughter who sits on the Council, advising an Empress like I advised the two before her. It’s Berenice VII, now, and she’s done well so far, though she’s nothing like her great-aunt the legendary General who I grew up with, and who I still miss dearly even after all these decades.

Only ghosts now. Quiet, patient Justinia. Bright, spirited Kay. Her twin, the romantic, delightfully amusing Yevgen. Coldly intelligent Rislyn. Calm, diplomatic Corin. Practical Lara. Clever, precise Ishtar, and her cousin and shadow, the deftly perceptive Lillias. Stubborn, proud Odette. My brothers – the infuriatingly sensible Rory and unnervingly complex Kelvar. Even Rory’s wife, the bitchy Selera, who preceded me into the Consul’s seat. All long gone into the Shadowlands now, with so many others I’ve known over the years. So many I’ve loved, hated, liked, despised, adored, respected…They beckon sometimes, wondering why I’m taking so long.

I wonder too, sometimes. After all, I must have courted Lady Death as many times as they, and yet I’m still here. No sword, no arrow, no dagger, no poison. Not even any falls from horses, no fevers, no trouble in childbed. Not even any hint of heart problems of cancers in my life.

A long life, I’ve had, and overall, a good one. Then again, when you get to my age, any life that ends in the overflowing library of a comfortable townhouse, with a roaring fire, wrapped in warm wool and silk, a tea-tray at my elbow is good. A good life. One full of joy and wonder as much as pain and despair. A life, I flatter myself to say is one worth recording.

Ah…so where to begin? I suppose I should start at the very beginning, that howling winter that I was born, at the very beginning of the reign of the Empress Vanaria III….

It was in those dying days near the end of the twenty-eighth century, when Vanaria III had barely placed the Diadem on her brow, that I came into the world. Into the Imperial House, quite literally, for all that I was no traceable blood relation to the ruling Delmaran family (quite an achievement, if you ask me, with a thousand-year-old pedigree). This immediately presented a whole host of problems, not least that I had (and still have) a tenuous technical claim to the Diadem, quite apart from being the heiress to one of the richest and most powerful aristocratic families in the Empire.

At any rate, it was the dead of winter, cold enough that the brand-spanking new Empress Vanaria did express her concerns for my mother, her best friend and oath-sister, being so insistent on travelling to the Palace from her comfortable mountain-and-harbour-view mansion so late in her pregnancy, to keep the equally-pregnant Empress company. It made no difference. I imagine Mother was as obstinate then as she was up until the very last.

Be that as it may, I came screaming into the world a good six weeks ahead of schedule, in the Empress’s very bed, the first (and only) daughter of Knight-Commander Dama Teleri Gavrillian, and her husband Sir Amergin Petronil.

After that, my childhood was rather typical, if the childhood of any member of a knightly House can be called such. I grew up with my elder brother Rory, two years my senior, and two years after my birth, we were joined by my younger brother, Kelvar, in the various country properties and city houses our parents owned. Like many knights who chose to have children, our parents made conscious decisions to scale back their soaring military careers in those early years, both of them taking the time to write, to study, to spend time with us. They taught us to ride our ponies (for the Gavrillian studs, while justly famous for our destriers, also breed ordinary riding and work horses for all purposes, even tiny termagant ponies), to swim, to read and write, to play a mean game of chess, to adore music and art, to appreciate the world around us.

How one grows sentimental for childhood.

It was over all too soon, though. First Rory went away to the Academy, then father, and then mother became more engrossed in their academic studies, then, later, continued their military careers. But I had no time to miss any of that. When I was six, I, too left the comforts of my childhood and entered the Knights’ Academy in Bersone.

The Knights’ Academy was, and still is, situated in the Old Palace, a few miles away from the (comparatively) new, bright city of Bersone, with its straight, wide streets, efficient sewerage system and public parks. The Old City is a grittier place, with narrow laneways that were probably designed by a myopic spider on drugs, though urban sprawl leading south from Bersone has made the two virtually indistinguishable. It is still, quite literally, a city of learning, for apart from the Academy, it also houses the Imperial University, the College of Medicine, the Conservatory of Music and Fine Arts, the School of Magic, the War College, and myriad other schools.

The less said about my time there, the better. Suffice to say that, in retrospect it was not the highlight of my life. I survived, I graduated, and I earned some honours along the way.

Do not get me wrong, it provided a fine education, if a harsh one. But twelve years in any place is a long time, no matter how many fine friends or magnificent adventures start there.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll skip ahead now. My schooldays had their share of events, but none that you won’t find in some biography of mine or another. I’ve lived a long time – almost double the years that were allotted to many who consider their lives full-lived, and I’d like to get the important things taken care of first. The things that you won’t find in any of those purported detailed works on my life that you’ll find in every publishing house or bookstore. No, the things that were once worth someone’s life to tell, but things that don’t matter any more because everyone else in them has long since departed from this world…

A dark tale to begin with, perhaps, but an important one. For one thing, it’s one that you won’t find in any of your glorious tales, or the sanitised histories that are all that seem to pass approval in these politically-sensitive days…