At least nothing particularly dreadful was happening to him right now. Probably it was only a matter of time. -- Terry Pratchett, Eric

Death, contrary to popular belief, was not pleased when people actively put themselves in danger. Especially when a child put themselves in danger. When someone had a near-death experience, she had a strange experience of being near them, even if she was galaxies away. No matter what the outcome was, feeling torn in two like that was not pleasant.

The feeling was infinitely stronger when the person in danger was someone she knew.

She was in the middle of a disagreement with Pestilence when the world blurred before her eyes. Instead of seeing only the headache-inducing bright colours of her son's realm, they were interspersed with a vision of a long hallway and a girl trying to climb out a window. The two sights bled together dizzingly. Death blinked and shook her head. It didn't do anything to help. Not only was her vision affected, she also felt as if she was half in one world and half in another. The feeling made her head ache and her stomach churn.

"Mother? Mother! What's wrong?"

Pestilence might not be the most perceptive of Death's children. But even he could tell something was wrong when she stopped in the middle of a sentence and turned a faint shade of green.

"Nothing," Death said, even though her head was spinning, her brain felt as if someone had stabbed needles into it, and her eyes couldn't focus on anything. "Excuse me for a moment. I have a stupid little girl to rescue."

Thank goodness, the double-vision, pain and dizziness ceased as soon as she appeared in the hallway. As so often happens to so many people, Death discovered that she arrived at the very moment when her help was no longer needed.

"Please come down from that window now," Prince Gialma was saying. "Your parents will be very angry with you if you don't. They might decide never to see you again."

Linyie hesitated with her hands still on the window-latch. "But I want to climb that tree!"

The tree in question was more than six feet away from the window. Death had to wonder how anyone, even a little girl, could possibly think the best way to reach it was to jump out a window.

"You can climb it tomorrow," Gialma said after a pause. Death could hear what he was thinking as clearly as if he'd said it aloud: Why am I the one who has to deal with this? "It won't go anywhere."

Linyie reluctantly climbed down. Death and Gialma breathed a sigh of relief in unison. Death turned and went back to Pestilence's realm, convinced that there was no more imminent peril in the palace tonight.

"What happened?" her son asked curiously. "Did Fate do something worse than usual?"

The mention of Fate reminded Death of a certain conversation they'd had some time ago. Her wretched superior would soon come knocking again, trying to get Death to follow Her latest hare-brained scheme.

"No," Death said in a tone that clearly showed the topic was closed. "Now, about your plagues. I still insist an epidemic of two diseases at the same time is overkill."

Pestilence immediately sprang to defend his latest bright idea. "But I've invented a brand new disease! And it probably won't even be fatal!"

"And what if something goes wrong again?" Death asked, raising an eyebrow. "Have you forgotten the terrible mess you made with that bubonic plague?"

Pestilence sprang to defend his terrible judgement in that memorable case. The argument continued. Linyie's danger was almost completely forgotten.

~~~~

Lethil had secretly hoped her sister would be someone almost her own age, someone she could play with and talk to. She was bitterly disappointed to discover her sister was in fact "a mere baby", as she contemptuously thought. To a five-year-old who thought herself very grown-up, a two-and-a-half-year-old who cried when things went wrong was hardly a suitable playmate.

Linyie was equally unimpressed. The younger girl took one look at Lethil's neat new dress and carefully-brushed hair, folded her arms, and immediately announced she wasn't going to play with someone so tidy. It was hard to imagine anything more disgusting to a small child's mind than being forced to be neat and tidy. Lethil promptly forgot that she herself had grumbled endlessly when forced to put on this dress.

"I'd rather be tidy than be a dirty little ruffian like you," she said with a sniff. She wasn't exactly sure what a ruffian was, but she'd heard an aunt complaining that an ill-mannered earl was one.

Linyie had never heard the word before at all. But she instinctively knew she was being insulted. She reacted with an angry pout and a loud, "Am not a ruffy-an! You are!"

"For goodness's sake!" Grandmother's patience ran out. "Neither of you is behaving as befits a princess of noble lineage!"

The girls didn't know what "befits" meant, or what "noble lineage" was. Lethil had a vague idea that it was some sort of very important history book -- an idea she had gotten because the phrase was often mentioned in her history lessons. Both of them, however, understood perfectly that Arásy was displeased with them. They lapsed into a sullen silence, giving each other dirty looks when the adults weren't watching.

Adults in general have an idea that children will instantly become friends simply because they're children. Differences in age, interests, temperament, and behaviour -- what does any of that matter? No one would ever assume two adults should be friends simply because they're both adults. Yet that assumption is constantly made about children. And then people are amazed when, instead of becoming friends, the children end up hating each other.

"Run along and play with your sister," Særnor told Lethil.

Kilan looked worried. "Are you sure that's a good idea? They barely know each other."

Arásy shook her head. With the kindest possible motives, she said, "They'll be fine once they have some time to get used to each other."

Lethil and Linyie found themselves being shooed out of the sitting room and into Linyie's nursery. They both sat down and stared judgementally at each other. Lethil thought Linyie looked ridiculous with her silk shoes. Linyie thought the bows in Lethil's hair were stupid. A serious argument might have followed if an interruption hadn't arrived.

Linyie's nursemaid bustled in, holding a tray full of yengkan[1] and glasses of udeo juice[2].

"There you go, dearies," she said cheerfully. "It doesn't matter if you get crumbs on the floor, but be careful not to leave sticky fingerprints all over the place."

It's very hard to implacably hate someone when you're munching sweets with them and pouring out juice for yourself and them. The initial hostility between the half-sisters rapidly lessened. Lethil decided Linyie's silk shoes weren't as ridiculous as she'd thought. Linyie decided Lethil's hair bows were pretty and not at all stupid. Both of them quickly found themselves with much more friendly feelings towards each other. Before long they were playing guou[3] together companionably -- and, I'm sorry to say, leaving very sticky fingerprints on all the pieces.

~~~~

All was not well in Malish. Jalakanavu didn't know about certain events in Hamdeyahmar, but she had plenty of other things to worry about. It was scandalous in her people's eyes for her to rule alone. They had tolerated it at first. But as the years went by and it became clear she never intended to marry again, the whispers began. The religious leaders started it. It was an outrage, they said, for a woman not to have a husband to guide her. It was against the natural order.

Jalakanavu had expected this sooner or later. She had a plan ready. She would marry a man of her own choosing, one who would do what she told him to. The problem was finding a man her people would not object to. He must be of high birth. Yet a nobleman would expect her to let him rule, while she became only a powerless ornament.

It was a problem.

She gathered a list of men descended from previous Iquis and sent her spies to investigate the unmarried ones.

When a prince became Iqui he killed his surviving brothers, but he let his sisters live. Many of them married and had children. These children had no legal claim to the throne but were of high enough birth to be eligible to marry back into the main line of the royal family. Jalakanavu had only to choose one of them to marry.

But that was easier said than done.

~~~~

When one had to deal with Fate's... eccentricities for literal millennia, one found innumerable ways of getting around Her, or doing exactly what She asked but not what She wanted. Death amused herself by thinking of a thousand different ways to thwart the other personification's plans.

She had just come up with what sounded like a foolproof -- though somewhat over-dramatic -- idea when she got the distinct sense someone was talking about her. Not about death as a concept; about her personally. Knowing when people talked about her was a mostly useless and rather uncomfortable power that mainly achieved nothing but letting her know exactly what people thought about her. She always listened in on those conversations, though. They were highly entertaining.

This conversation wasn't quite what she expected. Death had almost imagined it was Varan or some other Reaper grumbling about her, probably to Gialma. Instead it was Linyie telling Lethil about her "shadow-friend".

"She tells me stories," the little girl was saying. "And she comes from a place where there is no time! How do you think people aren't late for things there?"

Death grinned wryly. No one in her realm had any reason to fear being late for anything.

"I have a friend like that too," Lethil said. She frowned faintly. "I used to think she lived inside mirrors. But now I think she just walks through them."

Death stared. How in the world-- Mirrors, being common household items all over the universe, were one of the pathways her Reapers favoured when collecting souls inside houses. But how had Lethil known that? Had she remembered her own fall through a mirror and put two and two together?

"My friend walks through mirrors too!" Linyie clapped her hands excitedly. "I've seen her do it! I tried to walk through one once, but I only got a sore nose."

She sounded utterly disgusted by this.

"I wonder if we have the same friend," Lethil said thoughtfully. "What does your friend look like?"

Linyie screwed up her face in thought. "She's very tall. And she looks like a ghost but she smells nice. Like those flowers Mother has on her table."

Death tried to figure out what flowers Linyie was talking about. Qihadal only had dead, dried flowers on-- Oh. Well, that was the first time anyone had ever said Death smelt like flowers, even dead ones.

"Her hair is even blacker than mine!" Linyie finished cheerfully.

Death's hair was not really an extraordinary shade of black. It simply didn't reflect light the way a mortal's did.

"We must have the same friend," Lethil said. Her faint frown deepened. "Do you know she's Death?"

Linyie shrugged. "What's that?"

Lethil stared at her as if she'd said she didn't know what air was. Perhaps she didn't; this was a small child, after all, even if she was a child who had the soul of a dead empress. "Death is-- It's like--"

Death left them to puzzle out that important question. No doubt they would come to an extraordinary, incomprehensible conclusion that made perfect sense to them but no sense to anyone else. Children usually did.

Now, where was Kilan?

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] yengkan = A sort of sweet similar to baklava, made with honey, finely-ground nuts, and fruit.

[2] udeo juice = A drink similar to lemonade.

[3] guou = A sort of game similar to draughts.