The carriage rocked hard enough to make her teeth click.

  Kaelrin tightened her grip on the bench, claws slipping against splintered wood as another rut jolted the wheels. The chain between her wrists clinked with every shake, a quiet rattle that still made her shoulders flinch. She forced herself to be still. Stillness meant safety. Stillness meant no reason for the guards to yank the collar again.

  The collar sat heavy around her throat, iron polished smooth and cold. Every breath she took lifted it a little and let it fall back against her fur. It didn’t bite like teeth. It pressed. Constant, unchanging. A reminder. The humans had stamped the Sunburst of Asterra into the front plate, a clean circle with straight rays. A ring of small letters sat under it, hammered in gold.

  She could not read all of them yet, but she knew the word.

  Mercy.

  They liked to put it on everything they used to hurt her people.

  Her tail lay numb under her own thigh. She wanted to move it, to shake feeling back into the muscles, but shifting meant risk. If the carriage rocked at the same time and she lost balance, if she hit the wall too loudly, if the guard outside decided she was being difficult, the chain would snap tight, and the collar would close around her throat like a hand. So she swallowed the urge and counted her breaths instead.

  In. Two. Three. Out.

  The air in the carriage smelled of damp straw, old sweat, and the faint sour trace of sick from whoever had ridden in here before her. Under it all, she could still smell her own fear, sharp as turned milk. She hated that they could probably smell it too.

  Outside, the sounds changed. Dirt under the wheels gave way to stone. Hooves clopped louder. A gate chain rattled high overhead, followed by the deep rumble of heavy wood moving. Voices echoed—short human words, clipped and sure.

  “—consignment—”

  “—palace writ—”

  “—let them through—”

  Kaelrin understood enough now to catch the shape of what was happening. They were being waved in. No one would stop this. No one would look into the carriage and say, This is wrong, send her home. That part of her had burned away years ago, back on the plains, the day they took her father’s paint from his hands and ground it into the dirt.

  The carriage slowed, then jerked to a rough stop.

  Her claws dug deeper into the bench. She stared at the thin line of light at the doors. It brightened as someone outside lifted the bar.

  “On your feet,” a guard barked.

  Kaelrin pulled herself up, careful not to let the chain pull too tight. The carriage doors swung open. Light poured in, stabbing at her eyes after the dim. She blinked hard. Her pupils narrowed to thin slits. A cold wind rushed across her face, and with it came the smell of incense, soap, and too-clean stone.

  “Out,” the same voice ordered.

  A gloved hand wrapped around the chain between her wrists and tugged. Kaelrin stepped forward, feeling for the edge with her toes before she committed her weight. The drop wasn’t far, but her legs had gone stiff in the cramped space, and the last thing she needed was to stumble and give them an excuse to laugh.

  Her paws touched stone. Smooth. Chill. Nothing like the dirt and grass of home. She let her weight settle and forced her knees not to shake.

  “Move,” the guard said, dragging the chain short.

  She moved.

  The palace plaza opened around her, wide and white as a bleached bone. Marble stretched underfoot in careful patterns, individual tiles fitted so close together she could barely see the seams. Two great pillars flanked the main gate, each carved with the Sunburst symbol from top to bottom. A portcullis hung between them like iron teeth, raised now, its shadow striped across the stone.

  Above it all, the main tower of the palace speared up toward a pale sky. Gold capped the highest points so that even on a gray morning like this, the building caught what light there was and threw it back in hard gleams.

  Kaelrin had seen it once before, years ago, from far across the plains. Back then it had looked like a bright tooth on the horizon. Something from a story. Something far away enough to ignore. It did not look like a story now. It looked like the end of one.

  A crowd had gathered in the plaza—humans in tidy cloaks and clean boots, some in the gray of common folk, others in finer cloth and color. A few had small sun discs hung on chains around their necks, polished so often she could see the light bounce off them from here. Children sat on shoulders or clung to skirts. They were all looking at her. None of them looked for long.

  “Beastfolk,” someone murmured.

  “Sanctified,” another replied.

  “Poor creature.”

  “Lucky creature. A collar’s better than the rope.”

  Kaelrin’s ears flicked, catching the words whether she wanted them or not. Her jaw tightened. Lucky. That word always came just before they did something unforgivable and wanted to feel good about it.

  A simple wooden desk had been set up near the center of the square. Papers lay stacked in neat piles. Behind it sat a narrow man in pale robes, quill in hand. His face didn’t look like it had seen much sun. Or much laughter. He lifted his eyes from the page only when her shadow fell across the desk.

  “Next,” he said.

  The guard jerked the chain, pulling her up to the front.

  “Name,” the clerk said, already dipping his quill again.

  Kaelrin’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her true name, the one her mother had sung at the Marking of Paths, would never sit right in human mouths. They had worn it down over the years, rounding the edges, cutting the click out of the middle. She gave them the version they used now.

  “Kaelrin.”

  The clerk frowned slightly at the sound of it, then wrote it down anyway. “Age?”

  The guard answered for her. “Eighteen summers. Chetari.”

  “Origin?”

  “The plains tribes. Exiled by decree of the Crown.” He passed a folded sheet across the desk. “Writ of transfer. Sanctified guardianship under palace authority.”

  The clerk opened it, scanned quickly, and nodded. “Very well.” His gaze flicked to the iron around her throat. He didn’t look at her eyes. “Can you speak the holy tongue, girl?”

  Kaelrin hesitated. If she said no, they might beat it into her. If she said yes, they might expect more than she could give. She chose the smallest truth.

  “Enough,” she said.

  He sniffed. “We’ll see. Place of service is listed as… royal apartments.” That made him look properly at her for the first time. There was curiosity there now. And maybe a hint of something else. “Interesting.”

  Kaelrin had learned enough of human faces to know that “interesting” from men like him meant useful, but not enough like me to matter if broken.

  “Inspection,” another voice said.

  The clerk straightened. “Captain Solen.”

  Bootsteps approached, slow and even. Armor knocked lightly with each stride. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they walked. The villagers back home had moved with the land—soft-footed, weight centered low, ready to spring. The men who had taken her family had walked like they owned the ground. Like it would hold them up even if it split.

  This man walked like nothing would move him unless he chose it.

  He came to a stop beside her. Kaelrin kept her gaze down, focused on the desk, but she saw his shape in the corner of her vision. Broad shoulders under a half-plate, cloak falling straight. Sunburst sigil bright on his chest. His gauntlets were polished too, though not so much that he couldn’t grip a weapon and keep hold of it.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Captain Solen, Paladins of the Light,” the clerk said, like reciting a title from a text.

  Solen did not acknowledge it. “This is the new consignment?”

  “Yes, Captain. Beastfolk, female, designated domestic service,” the clerk replied.

  “Raise your hands,” Solen said.

  Kaelrin lifted her chained wrists. Her fur bristled under his gaze.

  He took one arm and turned it, examining the fur like checking for flaws on a rug. His grip was firm but not cruel. Up close, she smelled oil from his armor, steel, and underneath all of it, the clean soap they used in the barracks.

  Faint traces of old paint still stained her forearm, dark lines hugging the curve of the bone. They had scrubbed her before loading her into the carriage, but some colors never came out all the way. Swirls for memory. Dots for family. Stripes for the path she had chosen at her Marking. Most of it was gone now, only ghosts left.

  Solen’s thumb passed over one of the stubborn marks. He stopped.

  “Remnant pigment,” he said.

  The clerk leaned forward quickly, eyes sharpening. “Proscribed. All tribal markings are to be removed.”

  “Already tried,” the guard said. “Scrubbed her raw. That much stayed.”

  Kaelrin kept her breathing even. If they brought the brushes again, she wasn’t sure her skin would take another scrape without splitting.

  Solen wiped his thumb on a bit of cloth at his belt. For half a heartbeat, his face shifted—something like recognition flickered and vanished.

  “None visible enough to draw trouble,” he said at last.

  The clerk sniffed. “So long as she doesn’t add more.”

  Solen’s gaze moved to her collar then, reading the sunburst and letters carefully. His brow ticked barely. “Palace issue. You understand what that means, girl?”

  “It means I belong to the Crown,” Kaelrin said.

  The words tasted like ash.

  “To the Crown’s service,” he corrected. “There is a difference.”

  Not one that mattered to her, but she did not say that aloud.

  “Open your mouth.”

  She obeyed. He checked her teeth, tongue, the inside of her cheeks. Someone in the crowd made a small sound of disgust. Someone else murmured a prayer. Solen ignored both. His fingers were efficient and impersonal.

  He let her jaw go. “No sign of sickness. No obvious injury. She can work.”

  “Good,” the clerk said. “The palace is always in need of more hands. Especially now with—”

  Solen cut him off with a small movement of his head. “The kneeling.”

  The priest was already on his way, white robes whispering against clean stone. He carried a small brass brazier on a chain. Smoke curled from its mouth in pale streams, smelling of sweet resin and something sharp that stung the back of Kaelrin’s throat.

  “Kneel,” the priest said.

  She dropped, her knees striking the marble. Pain shot up her legs. Her palms brushed the floor to catch herself. The stone was as cold as a river rock in winter.

  The brazier swung close. Smoke washed over her face. She couldn’t help coughing once, eyes watering. The priest dipped his thumb in ash and pressed it to her forehead, drawing the familiar circle and lines of the Sunburst over the faint scars of her old paint.

  “You will serve in purity,” he intoned. “You will obey in love.”

  Kaelrin repeated the words quietly. Her accent clipped them, made them strange, but the priest did not correct her. He only smiled that soft, empty holy smile.

  “In the name of Aurelian, Light of the World,” he finished. “Rise, sanctified servant.”

  The crowd murmured. More of that same word floated on the air.

  Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.

  Kaelrin pushed herself up. On the way, her eye caught the thin crack in the perfect marble just beside where she’d knelt. A single thread of green had grown inside it—moss, or a small weed. Something living, clinging to a place that had not been made with it in mind.

  “Proceed,” Solen said.

  The guard took up the chain again.

  They had barely turned when a bright voice cut through the murmurs.

  “Oh, how darling.”

  Kaelrin’s fur stiffened along her spine.

  Three noblewomen approached, skirts sweeping the ground. Their dresses were fine silk in muted colors—rose, pale blue, soft green. Jewels winked at their ears and throats. Their hair had been arranged in careful curls and braids that must have taken some handmaid an hour at least. Fans fluttered lazily in their hands, more decoration than shield.

  The tallest, a woman with pale hair and a smile as thin as a blade, looked Kaelrin up and down like assessing a new piece of furniture.

  “I’ve never seen spots that close before,” she said. “Do they feel coarse, I wonder?” She reached out with the closed fan, not quite touching Kaelrin’s cheek.

  Kaelrin held still. Her skin crawled as if the fan had already made contact.

  The second noblewoman, shorter, dark-haired with sharp eyes, circled to Kaelrin’s other side. “Such a fine collar,” she said, voice dripping false pity. “Look at the work on the metal. That’s royal issue, isn’t it, Captain?”

  Solen’s expression did not change. “It is.”

  “For the royal wing,” the clerk added helpfully. “The writ lists the royal apartments.”

  “Oh, Saints.” The third woman, freckles dusted over her nose like someone had flicked cold ash there, laughed. “The princess with a pet beast. Imagine the stories.”

  The pale-haired one’s eyes brightened. “She should walk beside Her Highness’s chair during court. It would make the foreign envoys talk.”

  “Envoys talk anyway,” the dark-haired woman said. “At least this way they’ll know what happens to the beasts in this blessed land of ours.”

  Kaelrin tried to focus on the crack in the marble again. On the moss. Anything but the words.

  “Does it understand us?” the freckled one asked, leaning in too close. “Do you understand me, creature?” She slowed her words as if speaking to a child. “Can. You. Do. Tricks?”

  Fira’s voice flashed in Kaelrin’s memory, from some earlier holding pen. Humans see you as a mirror. If you show teeth, they see beasts. If you show fear, they see control. Never show them what you really feel.

  Kaelrin kept her mouth shut.

  “Answer when spoken to,” the freckled woman sang, mockingly echoing the order she must have heard given to actual people once.

  “Enough,” Solen said.

  His voice stayed level, but it cut through their amusement.

  The pale-haired woman tilted her head, fan pausing. “We’re only amusing ourselves, Captain. Surely the Light does not begrudge us a little humor.”

  Solen didn’t blink. “If you have concern about the Palace’s use of sanctified servants, Lady Seraphine, you may bring it to the High Solar.”

  Seraphine’s face tightened at the hint of being called out. Then she laughed it away, fluttering her fan. “Hardly worth the bother. It’s only a beast, after all.”

  The dark-haired one gave Kaelrin one last searching look, lips curling slightly, then followed Seraphine away. The freckled woman lingered a heartbeat longer, curiosity warring with disdain, then spun on her heel and went after the other two.

  Their perfume hung in the air after they left. Violet. Orange blossom. Sugar.

  “Move,” the guard muttered, more to Kaelrin than anyone else.

  She moved.

  They passed under the shadow of the gate and into the palace proper. The noise of the plaza dulled behind them, replaced by the gentler sounds of an ordered house: distant steps, the clink of dishes, a broom whispering over stone.

  Inside, the walls rose high, white and smooth. Thin veins of gold ran through the stone. Sunburst carvings watched from doorframes and lintels. High windows let in narrow slices of light that fell in straight lines across the floor, as if the sun itself had been trained to walk only on the paths they chose.

  Servants in plain gray moved along the halls, heads bowed. Some carried baskets of folded cloth. Others bore trays of polished silver or bowls of fruit. They stepped quickly, efficiently, and made themselves as small as possible when someone in finer clothing passed. Most didn’t look at Kaelrin at all. That was almost worse than the staring. At least staring admitted she existed.

  They went down one corridor, then another, making a turn that left Kaelrin disoriented. She tried to count steps and doors, to mark smells and sounds, to piece together a map in her head the way she had done as a child running along dry creek beds and through tall grass. But everything here was stone and echo and straight lines. It was hard to find a path in a place that had never belonged to her people.

  At the end of a side hall, the smell changed—yeast, smoke, fat, herbs. Warmth rolled out like a thick blanket. The guard pushed open a swinging door, and suddenly Kaelrin stood at the edge of the palace kitchens.

  They were larger than the whole meeting hall back in her village. Fires burned in three separate hearths. Pots big enough for her to curl up inside hung on hooks or sat on iron stands. A long central table was covered with knife-scarred boards, piles of chopped roots, and mounds of dough. Human and Anthro servants moved between stations with practiced ease, passing around each other without colliding.

  “Cook,” the guard called out over the noise. “New one for the royal wing.”

  The broad woman Kaelrin had glimpsed earlier turned from the oven. Sweat had plastered stray hair to her temples. Her apron looked like it had lost several battles with flour and won all of them anyway. Her eyes, when they landed on Kaelrin, were sharp and assessing.

  “Bring her here,” she said.

  The guard obliged, hauling the chain.

  “Stand,” the woman ordered. “Let me look at you.”

  Kaelrin stood.

  The woman’s gaze traveled from Kaelrin’s ears to her toes, taking in the collar, the reddened skin beneath it, the chain, the too-thin arms, the faint stains of old paint. Her mouth pinched, but not in disgust.

  “Skin and bone,” she muttered again. “Of course they expect her to carry a full silver tray like that.”

  “She’ll manage,” the guard said, indifferent. “Or she won’t. Not my concern.”

  The woman shot him a look. “In my kitchens, we feed the ones we mean to use.” She reached into a basket on the table, pulled out a heel of still-warm bread, and thrust it into Kaelrin’s chained hands. “Eat.”

  Kaelrin blinked. “I—”

  “That wasn’t a question,” the woman said. “Mira. Head cook. You’ll learn that when I say eat, you eat.”

  Mira.

  Kaelrin took a cautious bite. The bread was soft inside, the crust cracked just enough to give it structure. Warmth spread through her chest with the first swallow. Her stomach cramped in confusion before relaxing enough to receive it.

  “Slowly,” Mira said. “You’re not in a fight with the loaf.”

  A foxfolk girl with bright russet fur leaned on the table nearby, watching with a smirk. Her tail flicked lazily behind her, tip twitching in amusement.

  “She eats like she thinks someone’s going to snatch it,” the foxfolk noted.

  “Maybe she’s right,” Mira said pointedly, glancing at the guard.

  He rolled his eyes.

  The foxfolk girl stepped closer, head cocked. Her eyes were sharp and playful. “I’m Fira,” she said. “I sweep, scrub, and make the nobles nervous. You’re the princess’s new shadow, then?”

  Kaelrin frowned. “Shadow?”

  “They like to call it handmaiden,” Fira said, drawing the word out in an exaggerated accent. “Means you get to stand still and look pretty while someone else bleeds for the work you can’t see.”

  “Enough,” Mira said, though there was no real heat in it. “Fira talks too much. Don’t listen to half of what she says.”

  “Listen to the useful half,” Fira amended. “Rule one: don’t speak first. Rule two: don’t look a noble in the eye unless they tell you to. Rule three: if a paladin is in a bad mood, be somewhere else.”

  Kaelrin took another bite of bread to avoid having to answer. The rules were not new. Only the scale of the place was.

  From near the woodpile, a lanky human boy straightened up. He had a stack of kindling in his arms and sawdust in his hair.

  “I’m Tovin,” he said quickly, as if afraid someone would stop him. “I tend the fires and the stable door. If you ever need to know which yard the guards are drilling in, I— I hear things.”

  Mira snorted. “This boy hears more than he should and remembers all of it. Use that or don’t, but don’t get him flogged while you’re at it.”

  Tovin flushed red and ducked his head.

  Kaelrin swallowed her mouthful. “Kaelrin,” she said, giving them the name as the humans spoke it.

  “Kaelrin,” Mira repeated, testing the shape of it. “Right. You eat that, then you go where the guard drags you. Remember what I said.”

  Kaelrin nodded.