A/N: You don’t have to have read my other Orlathian stories to read this one. If you have, and want to know where it’s placed: timewise, this story would take place parallel with the end of Golden Heresy, and shortly after "The Last Queen of Dalzna."

"There is no doubt that some actions are of the Dark, and some of the Light. There may be thin and fuzzy dividing lines at times, but most of them are very sharp and clear, and no sensible person should have even a moment’s doubt about the right thing to do."

-Saldor of Amorier.

"Nerazhan?"

Nerazhan tenderly laid the baby back in the cradle, and glanced up with a smile. Her older son stood in the doorway, his eyes politely averted. Timazh was adopting the customs of adulthood quickly, from calling her by her first name to not looking at her when she fed the baby.

"What is it, my son?" she asked. Adult he might be, but a mother never lost her privileges.

"There is a messenger at the door," said Timazh. He hesitated, then added, "And he wears a crown on his shoulder."

Nerazhan stiffened. The sleepy warmth she always felt when the baby had fed vanished. She did up her tunic with fingers that trembled, and said, "You may show him into the waiting room. I will come at once."

"Yes, Nerazhan." Her son, sounding grateful to have a task, turned and dashed up the hall.

Nerazhan stood there for a moment more, gazing at the babe in the cradle. He was only a few months old as yet, too young to grow his first teeth, old enough to start showing signs of the features that Nerazhan was sure would someday make him a handsome man. But then, didn’t every mother think such things about her children?

Save that he is not my child.

But he was, in all the ways that mattered. The officious messenger who had come would not see it that way, but Nerazhan saw it that way, and she would make it so.

She turned towards the waiting room, and managed to walk without a tremble in her step. She had decided a long time ago what she would do, if it came to this. Now she only had to have the courage to do it.

"Lady Nerazhan."

Nerazhan flinched at the title, but inclined her head graciously. The messenger was one she had not dealt with before. He was unlikely to recognize the signs of her fear. "My lord. What is your name, and how was your journey?" It was the first of the code phrases, designed to let her know if someone had managed to worm his way into the system of contacts.

"Pleasant, with a light breeze," said the messenger, the correct code phrase, and turned his hand slightly. The ring that Nerazhan had been trained to look for flashed on his right index finger.

"And your name?" she insisted, as she would have to do.

"Sulis," he said, the name that simply meant "of the Light" and had been borne by several heroes of Dalzna. He sat back against the couch. "I have come for the child," he added, dropping the next codes.

Nerazhan looked into his eyes, and saw nothing there but determination. That made it both easier and harder. She would still have a hard time ending this, but at least she knew that he wouldn’t give her any other option.

"The child is very happy," she said. "It seems a shame to take him from his new home so quickly."

Sulis shook his head. "He will have no memory of his time here. And really, that is as it should be." His lip curled slightly as he looked around the trim little house, and then he looked back at her and shook his head again. "You have done an admirable job of concealing him, Lady Nerazhan, but that must end now. He will be taken away, and reared by Light loyalists until he is of an age to claim his throne from the Dark."

"And that is a good thing?" Nerazhan asked, trying one last time.

"It is. Of course." Sulis leaned forward intently. "Yes, the last Queen was a little mad, but that does not mean that we can do without a royal line."

"I have heard some of my neighbors giving thanks to Death that she is dead," Nerazhan murmured.

Sulis’s face tightened. "Peasants will say anything, of course," he said, with a dismissive little wave of his hand. "One might admit that a spirit of corruption had entered the Dalznan royal line in the last few years. But that does not mean that every member of it was tainted. Or you would not have agreed to raise the child, would you?"

"No," Nerazhan agreed. The taint that had haunted the royal line of Dalzna in the last generations was a fearful thing, a madness that drove them to suspect enemies hiding in the shadows and butcher innocents in droves, and she wouldn’t have taken in a child who might have manifested the same signs. But he didn’t, her little Dalazh. "But I wonder if he might not become tainted again, if he is set back among the thrones and tapestries of the Court."

"He will be raised in the wild," said Sulis. "The Dark rules in Serian now. It would hardly be safe to take him back to the city."

"But with all the honors due his status as a Prince of Dalzna, of course," said Nerazhan.

"Of course."

Nerazhan let out her breath. "I think that he should stay here," she said. "He will have a better life if he grows up thinking he’s a peasant, and then resumes his throne in the fullness of time. All the history-tales say so. He will have learned honor and humility here, and that is-"

"He needs to learn pride and dignity," Sulis said, and now he was sitting up. "My lady, bring out the child, now, or I will be forced to conclude that you have betrayed us, and deal with you accordingly."

Nerazhan bowed. She was trembling in every line of her body, but she stood up and walked into the small room where Dalazh lay in his cradle.

For a long moment, she stared at him, tears running down her face. "Forgive me," she whispered. "I hope that you would understand."

Then she picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle she had prepared earlier and carried it out to Sulis.

He took it with a curt bow. "I trust that you will not mind me checking that this is indeed the child," he said, unwrapping the blanket.

Nerazhan didn’t mind. She had counted on it.

She found that she couldn’t watch, though, as the viper she had wrapped in the blankets lunged out and bit Sulis on the arm. He screamed and thrashed, falling to the ground almost at once. Nerazhan stepped out of the viper’s way as it loosed his arm, and Timazh ran forward. He had the poker ready, and he nudged the serpent out the door and away from the house.

Then he came back to her, his face very pale. "What now?" he asked.

Nerazhan snapped out of staring at the body. Sulis was dead already, of course. It was part of the reason she had chosen that particular snake; their bites killed almost instantly. "Join with me, my son," she said, reaching out to him. "We cannot risk the body being found. We will have to burn it completely."

Looking a little sick, Timazh nodded, and then opened his own conduit to the Scarlet. Nerazhan opened hers in return, and together they sent flame flooding onto the body, burning and burning and burning. It took a long time, and they stood in the middle of the scent of roasting flesh before they were done. Timazh had to stop in exhaustion, while Nerazhan went on charring the body until even the bones were ash.

"Now, the broom," she said, when she was so exhausted that she could barely stand and the conduit to the Scarlet snapped shut of its own accord.

"Mother," said Timazh, forgetting the pretensions of an eldest son, "you should rest-"

"The broom."

He looked at her face and fetched it without question.

******

Of course, he asked her why the next night, as Nerazhan sat by the fire and nursed Dalazh. The baby gurgled and squealed at her, and waved his feet in the air when he was done. Nerazhan stroked his soft brown hair and closed her eyes. She could almost imagine him growing up.

Completely a peasant. He would never sit the Dalznan throne, and she would never tell him that he might have done so.

"Mother?"

Nerazhan opened her eyes and looked at Timazh. "Yes?"

He didn’t even have to speak the words. He was worried that with their murder the previous night, they had done something that was truly of the Dark.

Nerazhan sighed, and stroked the baby’s hair again. He was already asleep. "Because," she said. "Because we might have freed ourselves of the threat at last, with Death’s help, only to see another Prince with the same taint in him sit the throne. I don’t believe that the madness came from the royal blood alone, Timazh, or even from their breaking their bargain with Death. I think that the Dark conquered because the Queen was spoiled and self-indulgent."

"But if we’re of the Dark…"

"Does it matter?" Nerazhan asked.

Timazh paused. Nerazhan could hear him sorting out the question he wanted to ask in his mind, and smiled into Dalazh’s face. I mothered no stupid boy. And, if Death is willing, then I never will.

"The Dark rules in Serian now," said Timazh. "Do you think that it will rule all of Dalzna in time?"

"I do," said Nerazhan. "And so we do something that might be of the Dark, in order to keep something of the Light alive in our hearts. Or perhaps it is of the Dark, after all, to make sure that Dalazh will never sit his throne." She cradled the baby close. "I only know that it was right. I love him, and will not let him go."

"And that’s the real reason, isn’t it?" Timazh asked, his voice soft with wonder. "You do fear the royal taint, but there’s no guarantee that he would grow up honorable and humble as a peasant, after all. You love him, and will not let him go." Despite the fact that he was only repeating her words, Nerazhan thought, he gave them an inflection that was all his own.

"That is the reason," said Nerazhan. "You are the only one who knows, Timazh." He really was the only one. Her husband was months dead, her other children married and living far from home. No one would ever know that Nerazhan’s own child had died and she had agreed to serve as wet nurse to a Prince. "You are the only one who can betray me. If you don’t, then Dalazh will grow up as my son and your brother."

"But the Lightworkers who sent Sulis know where he is, and they’ll know something is wrong when Sulis doesn’t return."

"They’ll think he died along the way, with the child, and they’ll go even deeper into hiding," said Nerazhan.

"Are you sure of that?" Timazh’s face glowed with the need for reassurance.

"Yes," said Nerazhan. "I can promise that they will not ever bother us again." Not the least because she had spoken to the Darkworkers herself. They had been delighted when she agreed to reveal the location of a nest of Lightworkers, and if the only price was leaving a child whom they had no desire to see on the throne anyway with her…that was coin they were happy to pay.

"Good, then," said Timazh with a little sigh, collapsing back against the couch. "Then that settles it."

Nerazhan closed her eyes, and bowed her head into the baby’s hair. She could smell the milk scent on him, and feel the warmth of the fire, and the softness of Dalazh against her.

Let Timazh think that we preserved the future of the Kingdom, if that’s what he needs to think. This is what I fought for, what I needed, and what I shall now have. And if it be of the Dark, then I am a Darkworker. And I do not care.