Alleria buried her chin in her green muffler as she scaled the hill from the post-office with the packet hugged against her chest. The setting sun spilled hues of red over long feather clouds and she had to squint her eyes against the chilly, stinging wind.

While her feet walked, her mind was deep in a fantasy and she didn't notice that someone was approaching.

"Lerry," a woman's voice suddenly said causing the packet to fall to the ground and its content of papers to spread.

Tara, with her braid swinging as she bobbed down, helped Alleria quickly collect the papers before the wind swept them away. She bunched them together, her lips moving as she read the titles and then handed them over to Alleria.

"So, you'll be apprenticing?" she asked, her brow curling into a serious expression.

Alleria nodded her head.

"What will it be, then?" Tara asked.

"I haven't decided if I'll be a midwife or a Hand." There were precious few apprenticeships offered to girls. If she had had the choice, she would've become a doctor. But one year in the school for medicine cost more than her parents yearly income combined.

"So, you'll be either delivering babies or copying imperial documents in the emperor's handwriting?" When Tara said it like that, it sounded like these were bad jobs.

"I can reach nursing school through midwifery and get a secretarial position in a college through being a Hand."

Tara opened her mouth to speak but said nothing, which was worse than any response she could have had.

Alleria heaved a sigh. She wasn't fooling anyone, especially not herself.

"I just wonder, why'd you say no?"

"Because..." The full truth couldn't be spoken, it was a secret she had to take with her to her grave, so the half-truth would have to do. "I didn't want it enough."

"Oh, Lerry." Tara placed her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly. "You know, every day when I work in that stupid store, every single day, I've got me head bent over me little tasks and I forget, Lerry, I forget to lift it and look up at the sky. I won't lie, it was almost like a fairy-story happening in this small place. It makes me sad to think how much you're going to regret it."

Alleria clutched the papers she was holding, pressing them to her chest. "Even if I would've said yes, I would never have become a Scholar, Tara. They would never have allowed it."

Tara's eyes flashed angrily, but her gaze was distracted by a scratchy roar coming from behind Alleria.

It was the sound of a car driving down the single street of the village. Alleria turned to look whose car it was - there weren't many families that owned them - and was surprised to see that it was one she didn't recognise.

It was large, modern and black with tinted windows and big, round headlights. It raised a cloud of dust as it passed over the worn cobblestones. She and Tara moved aside to allow it to pass, but the car stopped before them and the driver lowered his window.

"Good evening, ladies," he said in a clipped city accent and a fake smile. "I'm looking for Bellencreek house. Could you perhaps point me in the right direction?"

Alleria's eyes shifted from the diver's face to the tinted window of the back seat. Strange, black cars with strange men never came out here. She heard the creak of a shutter as somewhere behind her someone was peeking out of an upper window to look at what was happening below.

An icy sense of foreboding prickled down her skin.

"Who're you looking for? Mr. and Mrs. Bellencreek, or their daughter, Alleria?" asked Tara.

The driver turned to whisper with someone sitting in the back seat. "We've come to discuss some matters with the daughter," he said.

"Why, then, you're in luck," Tara said, ignoring Alleria's elbow nudging into her ribs. "This here is Alleria Bellencreek."

Alleria took a step away from the car and another. She tried to tell herself that she had no reason to feel wary - but of course, that was a lie.

The door of the car was opened. A slender, feminine leg in black silken tights and a red, high-heeled half-boot stepped out of the car. Alleria cocked her head to the side and took an additional step away.

The leg was joined by another and out of the car stepped a woman the likes of which had never been seen in the little village of Sereby.

Alleria stood frozen to the spot. Judging by the deeply brown colour of her skin and her misty curls dancing in the wind, this woman was a pure-blooded Alaazian. Even in the empire, which considered itself a great power, Alaazians were esteemed. She was everything one would expect of an Alaazian; regal and beautiful, with wide, luminous, jasper eyes and a flower-bud mouth. Her movements were fluid as she crossed towards Alleria, appearing almost to glide.

"Miss Bellencreek? We need to talk," she said with the deep, unmistakably deep, voice of a man.

Alleria had the good sense not to gape, but her eyes went wide with an onslaught of curiosity. She swallowed and didn't trust herself to say anything. Imperial law forbade people to be anything other than a single, established gender, and the language served to trap them in those bounds even further, but the Republic of Alaaze, its people, culture and law were as different as could be.

The Alaazian crossed her - or his - slender arms and threw up his - or her - head. "The name's Zalee Salah, I've come on behalf of the Malluris."

"Er..."

"I'll be going now," Tara squeaked, shooting several glances at Zalee Salah as she rushed into the grocery store.

Alleria allowed a second or two to pass before she drew a deep breath. If she didn't know how to speak, all she had to do was ask. At least, she hoped so. "I'm sorry but, how would you like me to address you?"

"He, she, sometimes I'm more one or the other but both work - I'm not petty like other people. But I'm just one person, so don't use plural and we'll be fine."

Alleria rearranged the pronouns in her mind. The wind changed direction and whistled in her ears. She looked at the car, looked at the street. She didn't know if she should invite Zalee Salah to her house or not. "I... I don't know what to tell you, Lady Salah. My answer still hasn't changed."

"Let's talk about it on your walk home."

Alleria nodded, feeling shy, and began to walk. The street was deserted at this hour and in this weather. "Have you lived long in the empire?"

"Longer than you're alive."

Alaazians came to the empire as tourists, as diplomats, as academics and businessmen. Some even chose to make their lives here, although all evidence pointed to the fact that Alaaze was a better-run country.

"I've been a business associate of the Malluris for years and they sent me to talk to you because they think I'm the only person who could convince you to become something that you're not," Zalee said once they reached the gate of Alleria's house.

"Is that what you're doing?"

Zalee glanced at her from the corner of her eye. "Yes. Is it working?"

Alleria tried a smile. "Would you like to come in?"

Zalee leaned against the gate with her back, wrapping her long crimson coat closely around herself. "We'll have this talk out here."

"But you said so yourself, you can't convince me to be something that I'm not."

"I don't have to convince you of that. Even if you said yes, it'll be years and years before you sit your little bottom on a cushioned chair of a Scholar in the Bureaucracy. All I need to convince you of is to give it a shot."

"I'm not willing to take the risk." Alleria didn't have to dig far to find the conviction she needed to say that.

Zalee exhaled through her nose. "Kids... I don't like kids. I don't have the patience to think about how a half-formed brain works. I didn't know why you declined Malluri's offer until I saw you. Now I know you're ruled by your fear."

"If you're going to try to goad me into agreeing -"

"I'm not finished." Zalee's glare made Alleria step back. "I don't care what your story is, or what you told yourself to make you think the way you do. I just know what the world and this backwards empire are like. And what little girls wearing little dresses are told by their Mammas. You don't think you were made for this, and that you can handle it and that you even deserve it."

"That's not -"

Zalee flashed a smile, her teeth bright white. "Of course not."

Alleria shook her head. She wasn't about to start arguing. "Aye, maybe it is. Maybe you're right. I don't see how that changes anything. What good will ambition and aspiring for power do to me? Why should I just go out there and... and destroy myself?"

"Because this isn't about you, baby Bellencreek. This isn't about power. If you want a reason to do it, it's because you can."

Those had been Alleria's own words. That had been the reason she had gotten into this mess in the first place. She couldn't afford to bring attention to herself, anything could cause the past - and its dangers - to resurface. She was suddenly able to look up and hold Zalee's gaze. "That's not a good enough reason."

Zalee's eyes challenged her, as if there was a joke Alleria couldn't understand. "If you were a boy, baby, it would've been. Those fat old Scholars who're deciding everything for everyone, what do you think drove them there?"

Alleria pursed her lips

"Their ego," Zalee answered for her. "A narcissistic need to be all-important. Like everyone, they want to be listened to, and here they found their way to force their words into people's heads. And it's the same men over and over again. Their faces change and their names but it's a machine that exists only to serve itself."

"And you think I'll change all that?"

"I think you could." Zalee left the gate and walked a step towards Alleria. "Honestly, who knows if you'll even make it? But you might be the kind of different this empire needs."

The sun disappeared off the horizon and instantly the air grew colder. Alleria shivered and dug her hands into her pockets. "Why should it be me, though? I'm not... that kind of person."

"Who cares what kind of person you are? All we really want to stand behind is that mind of yours. You have a choice between solving the problems of your backyard, or solving those of the whole world - which will it be?"

Zalee waited for an answer, one Alleria simply couldn't give. What the Alaazian had told her wasn't without merit, she could clearly see the truth in it and how it fell in tune with the insistent yearning in her heart.

When her silence held, Zalee heaved a dramatic sigh. "Well, I tried." She turned away.

Alleria didn't go inside. She watched the lean figure in the crimson coat walk away with swaying hips. The conversation had been so abrupt and was over as soon as it began. She pressed her fist to her heart and thought of the words that had been said.

Alleria was ruled by fear. Somehow, Zalee had seen that within a moment. But the fear was a justified one to have. She knew where her boundaries were. She didn't fear failure, loneliness or hardship. What she feared most was exposure.

Mysterious childhood experiences were tangible dangers in the empire. Even now, the little she had could be taken from her if anyone knew about the figure she had seen standing on the water outside the forest.

But as she stood there in the deepening darkness, the fear couldn't seem to hold her heart down anymore. Declining had been the rational, correct choice. But something inside her chose at that moment to tear through the perfectly manicured garden of logic and wreak havoc on her soul.

The packet of papers she was holding fell out of her fingers and the wind snatched it away instantly. She broke into a run up the hill, in the dark, deserted street. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

The car.... The car? Where was the car?

She stopped by the grocery-store, her hair flying into her face from the wind in her back her arms falling to the sides of her body.

What had she done?

She tried to tell herself it was all for the best. Being reckless just wasn't the right way to do anything.

But when two red lights suddenly appeared down the street, she resumed her run. "Zalee Salah!" she cried as the car began move, crunching over the gravel mixed with cobbles. "Wait!"

She wasn't sure anyone heard her, not with this wind, but she continued to run.

Even when the car stopped, she continued to run.

Even when the door opened, and the Alaazian woman stepped out.

She stopped only a foot away from Zalee who smiled and waited.

"Fine," Alleria choked out the word while still trying to catch her breath.

"Fine?"

"I'll... I'll try."

Zalee chuckled. "Kids,"she said, shaking her head. "I knew the goading would work."