House of Night

Chapter 5

Lumi froze. The knife was cold against her throat. She could feel her heart beating, heat against the cold of the knife. And against her back she could feel another heartbeat - that of Lieutenant Chetharom. It would have been so easy to give into panic, but she remembered how she had meditated in Reunsgar. She slowed her breathing, until she could feel herself breathing at the same rate as him.

Then she took hold of the power in his heart.

He let out a strangled gasp, and she felt the knife at her throat drop as he reeled from her in shock. The knife clattered on the ground. Lumi turned, hand outstretched, feeling for the heartbeat of his magic, and pulling it from him.

She kicked the knife away, and then held up her palm. Fire roared to life more easily than it ever had. With just one hand, she held the fire and heat of ten fire starrlings. The lieutenant shied away from the fire.

"Please, your highness," he whimpered.

"You thought I would be as weak as the child you remembered. You thought wrong. You should have been loyal to me, Chetharom," Lumi said. "Who are you working for? My aunt? The Liaohuans? Taikku?"

"No one," he said. He looked pitiful now, on the ground. His face shone with sweat. She could feel the way he tried to fight her quelling, but she was relentless. "Please," he whimpered again.

"Then why would you want to harm me?" Lumi asked him.

"I'm not working for anyone," he said. "I swear it on my life. On my children's lives. My children."

"Another lie. For all I know, you have no children," Lumi said. She was angry now. She had wanted to come to Singtsu and be welcomed as a queen. She wanted to come and prove just how much she had grown, and just how ready she was to take the throne. She wanted to come and be loved by the people that she cared so much about. But now the very person she thought she could trust had betrayed her.

"I do have children," the man said. "Two children. Both fire starrlings. One is twelve, the other would have turned seven."

"Would have?" Lumi asked.

"They're gone," Chetharom said. "They disappeared, the night of the volcanic eruption. When we heard the earthquake, my wife and I rushed to our children's rooms to make sure they were okay, and to get them to safety. But they were already gone."

Lumi lowered her hand, and the fire settled to a small flame in her palm.

"Someone has been stealing children," Chetharom said. "I thought it might be you. There have been... rumours."

"And why should I trust you, now that you've had a knife to my neck?" Lumi asked him. "You have betrayed everything."

"Perhaps when you have a child, you will understand," Chetharom said. "I would betray my entire nation, if it meant I could save my children."

Lumi felt herself soften. She remembered how this man had cared for her and her brother when they had fled from the war to hide in the mountains. If his oldest child was twelve now, that meant Chetharom had left his own wife and child to protect the prince and princess.

"You're certain your children weren't killed in the earthquakes or the volcanos?" Lumi asked.

"They would never have left the house without us," Chetharom said firmly. "They were taken."

"Children have been going missing all over the world," Lumi said.

"I've heard of a lot of children missing in the Fire Lands," Chetharom said. "Until my own children went missing, I thought it was kids deserting before their time in the army. There are rumours of a war, and kids don't turn up to the fire army? That would have made sense. But my children were too young."

"Someone has been taking them," Lumi agreed. "Starrling children from across the world have been going missing for at least a year, but likely for much longer. First it was poor children, and no one cared enough to go looking for them. But now whoever is stealing these children is getting braver. To steal the children of a well-known lieutenant in the Fire Army? That is brave indeed."

"All starrlings?" Chetharom asked.

Lumi nodded. "As far as I've heard, no ord children have gone missing."

"I may be an army man, but that makes me think these children are being stolen -"

"...to build an army."

Chetharom nodded.

Lumi stared down at the man on his knees before her. Sweat lingered on his forehead and even in his moustache. His eyes were glassy. He was weak before her, she knew, as anyone was. She could quell any starrling, no matter their power. But he had still surprised her at knife point. She had not expected him to turn on her.

This was a lesson, she decided. She would not trust as easily as she had.

"Stand," she told him.

Chetharom swallowed, and then stood weakly. She noticed that his uniform was torn at his knees now. This small detail made her feel sorry for the man. He was good, she thought. He wanted to find his children. She could understand his recklessness. But she couldn't let him get away with it.

"No one shall know what has happened here today. No one need know you attempted to betray me. In return, you shall remain loyal to me, as I know you will. Because if you don't, you will never see your children again. This, I can promise you. I will take your magic from you, and from your children."

She might come to regret this. But Lumi had very few friends in the Fire Lands, and she needed someone, anyone to be loyal to her. She had thought that Chetharom would be loyal to her out of love, but if that was not the case, then he could be loyal to her out of fear.

It was a particularly Tai-like thought, she pondered, as she nodded for Chetharom to stand. Was this what power was? The ability to make people fear her, if they would not love her?

Better to be feared than to be dead, she thought.

"You'll accompany me to see my Grandmother," Lumi told him. "Then you shall prepare for me a detailed report of the current state of the Fire Army."

"Please, will you do something to find my children?" he asked her.

He was pathetic, now. A simpering man, realising that he could not overpower her, could not best her with his magic or his strength. He thought now he could find her other weaknesses. Was her compassion a weakness?

"I have no doubt we shall find these children," Lumi said. "But I want my army prepared by then. It may be that when we find your children, it will be when we are fighting against them."