92 AC
"Domina… Domina, where are you? Please, do not trouble your humble servant so."
The voice was brittle, cracking against the vast silence of the Peristyle. Elara hurried across the flagstones, her footsteps echoing like frantic heartbeats. She was an old woman, her face a map of deep wrinkles and tension, framed by grey hair pulled taut into a severe clasp. Her dark linen tunic, the mark of her station, rustled as she checked behind a massive porphyry column.
Nothing but shadow.
Around her, the palace stretched like a city of stone. It was a fortress of luxury, modeled on the ancient seats of power remembered from a world long dead. Massive columns of red Ghiscari granite supported arches that soared into the gloom, holding up a ceiling painted with the constellations of a foreign sky. To her left, the octagonal mausoleum loomed, its dome piercing the heavens; to her right, the Temple of the One—cast a long, imposing silhouette against the morning sun.
"Domina!" Elara called again, peering behind a statue of a weeping angel. "The praeceptor will have my head if you are late for your lessons!"
She paused in the center of the courtyard. The silence was absolute, save for the distant murmur of the Praetorian Guard changing shifts at the Golden Gate. Elara sighed, a sound of theatrical defeat. She reached into the folds of her tunic and withdrew a small vial of amber glass.
"A pity," she announced, her voice pitched loud enough to carry to the heavy velvet drapes near the arcade. "The confectioner sent fresh honey drops this morning. Gold as sunlight, sweet as summer. But if no one is here to claim them..."
She uncorked the vial. The scent of crystallized sugar and wildflower honey drifted on the stagnant air. Elara made a show of tilting the vial toward her own lips. "I suppose I shall have to consume them myself. Old bones need sweetness, after all."
The velvet drapes exploded outward.
"No!"
A blur of motion shot from the hiding place. Small feet slapped against the marble as the girl skidded to a halt before the servant, breathless and flushed. She was seven years old, with hair that defied gravity and eyes that held a spark of dangerous intelligence.
"You cannot," the girl declared, eyeing the vial with desperate intensity. "They are for me, Pater said so."
Elara corked the vial with a triumphant click, fighting back a smile. She bowed low, offering the glass to the child.
"Found you, Domina."
Elara's hand, gnarled like an old olive root, closed gently but firmly around the girl's small, sticky fingers.
"The honey is yours, Domina," the old servant said, her voice brooking no argument, "but your time belongs to the Praeceptor, come we must not let the sun outpace us."
The girl crunched the honey drop, the sound sharp in the quiet corridor, but she planted her feet. The leather sandals slapped against the marble, holding their ground.
"I do not wish to sit in the dust and read of dead men today," the Domina protested, her voice echoing slightly off the high, vaulted ceilings. She pointed toward the sliver of bright blue sky visible through the distant archway of the Golden Gate. "I wish to roam the city. I want to see the new elephants Pater brought from Ghiscar. I can hear their trumpeting from the gardens."
"And you shall," Elara said, tugging her forward. The girl stumbled a step, then resigned herself to the motion, though her lower lip jutted out in a pout that could have leveled lesser cities. "If—and only if—you finish your recitations. The Praeceptor demands perfection."
"You say that every time," the girl grumbled, kicking at the hem of her tunic as they walked. "You say, 'Finish your sums, Domina, and we shall see the harbor.' Or 'Conjugate your verbs, Domina, and we shall watch the legions drill.' But it never happens. The sun sets, the bells ring, and I am sent to supper. Your promises are like morning mist, Elara. They vanish by noon."
Elara chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. They turned a corner, passing a row of severe marble busts—senators and generals who watched their passage with stone-blind eyes.
"Ideally put, Domina. But today the wind blows differently," Elara said, leaning down conspiratorially. "Praeceptor Caius has petitioned for a field excursion. He believes the classroom has grown too... stifling for a mind such as yours. Permission was acquiesced to not an hour ago."
The girl stopped dead. Her eyes, sharp and dark, widened. "Truly? We are leaving the palace?"
"If," Elara emphasized, raising a warning finger, "you arrive before his patience withers."
The promise of freedom put wings on the girl's heels. The rest of the walk was a gust of hurried steps until they reached the heavy oak door at the end of the scholar's wing. It smelled of old parchment, cedarwood, and the iron-tang of ink.
Elara rapped her knuckles against the wood.
"Praeceptor," she announced, pushing the door open. "I have brought the Domina. She has been... retrieved."
The study was a cavern of knowledge. Scrolls were piled like kindling on every surface, and maps of the known world—from the Shivering Sea to the Shadow Lands—covered the walls. In the center of the chaos sat an old man.
Caius was a relic of a different time, his scalp bald and spotted with age, a fringe of white hair clinging to the sides like snow on a mountain peak. He wore a simple white toga, unadorned save for the ink stains on his fingers. He looked up from a sprawling diagram of the Valyrian peninsula.
"Ah," Caius said, his voice soft and wheezing. "Enter, Domina. Take your seat. The chair is high, but your mind must reach higher."
The girl climbed onto the heavy wooden stool, her feet dangling inches from the floor. She watched him warily, waiting for the scolding. The sand in the hourglass on his desk showed she was nearly twenty minutes late.
"You are not angry?" she asked, tilting her head. "Elara said you would have her head."
"Elara is dramatic," Caius said, waving a hand dismissively. "And anger is a waste of energy better spent on philosophy."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the cluttered desk.
"Why were you hiding, Domina?"
"I didn't want to come," she answered honestly.
Caius smiled, and the years seemed to melt from his face. "Good. Neither did I, when I was seven. The sun is warm, the world vast, and this room is full of dust."
The Domina chuckled at that remark.