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The eldest (by ten minutes) of the Swan children, borne by the niece of the Ardelay prime, has been a suspect for her great-aunt's successor since she was five hours old.
The twins' father is a hunti fellow who makes an odd match for his elay wife and an odder one for her overwhelmingly sweela family. He comes home from his excursion to bless his twins with flexibility, imagination, and contentment for his son in his left pocket. In his right pocket are two sweela virtues, intelligence and clarity - that's a clue as to her alignment, if not a guarantee - and power.
Not every prime is graced with that particular hunti blessing in their first batch, but it's certainly suggestive.
Kiribel is possibly the most obviously sweela child of all time. She reads, she holds intensely strong opinions and defends them with more firey passion than wooden stubbornness, she seems to entirely inhabit her own mind to the point of forgetting that she's in the middle of trying to walk. Her twin is less obvious, but by the time they're seven people are guessing he's torz, and he doesn't dispute it. Their little brother is elay like their mother.
It's Kiri people pay covert attention to, because when the old prime dies, the new one is called up. The prime makes plans to start teaching her things, maybe bringing her to court, when the girl is ten.
The prime dies when Kiri is eight.
It's the middle of the night when it happens, and Kiri wakes up thinking the brightness filtering through her eyes is sunshine. It is not; she has set her bed on fire.
The accidental arson doesn't take particularly long to get under control. It's the other, less obvious power of the Ardelays that gives Kiri real trouble.
If the previous prime had the gift of mind-reading, she never saw fit to mention it to anyone. Kiri tells everybody, and screams at her parents and her brothers not to get too close to her, and weeps, inconsolable, in her replaced bed. There is a range limit. She can have company. But if someone gets within a few feet of her -
"I can feel it," she explains to Aleko, her twin, who is a safe distance across the room. "It's in your - warmness. Just stay about that far away and it won't happen."
"You can try it," she says dubiously to Jayce, their little brother, when he suggests wearing a lot of coats and mittens to obscure the warmness. That he does this in the hottest part of Quinnahunti demonstrates his dedication to hugging his sister.
But it doesn't help unless his face is covered up too, to the point where he can't breathe, so that doesn't work.
Kiri does without brotherly hugs for a month until Jayce has another idea without such suffocating pitfalls, and then she waits until Jayce is asleep, and climbs in with him, where she'll pick up nothing but fragments of dreams and only until she nods off herself. (Aleko sleeps lightly, and will surely wake up if someone joins him after he's managed to fall asleep; and Kiri talks at night; but if she sleeps first and he wears earplugs they can arrange things that way and only have Aleko sneaking back to his own bed at three in the morning half the time.)
She imagines this will work until she is at least twelve, but has no idea what she will do once it's weird for her to snuggle up to her sleeping brothers.
By this time there has been a fair amount of rumbling from various political interests that the new prime, eight years old or not, should be meeting various people, ranging from the king and queens and princes to the other primes, and Kiri is all for it. As a sort of concession to her age there is no objection that her brothers and parents accompany her to the Ardelay property in Chialto that she has inherited. They can't hug her - not without letting slip any secret that may cross their minds, and not without her nearing nausea from guilt; if Great-Aunt Ardelay did this casual invasion of everyone she met then Kiri is glad she's dead - but they can support her, with enough space between them.
Renny, her mother, has the most experience of anyone in the immediate family with politics, even if she couldn't stand the stuff and ran off with a man of no significant family at her earliest convenience. She's the one who goes shopping for Kiri's pretty new dress in sweela coral-red and other wardrobe items suitable for a newly visible prime. (Kiri dreads trying to navigate a crowd and doesn't care what she wears anyway.) She's the one who goes with Kiri to the palace. She stays five feet back as they walk in.
The king has already been immunized against the various powers of primes, so there's that.
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calescent
"Well, Mom's coru and I'm coru, but I don't feel like Isten's going to turn out sweela," he says. (Because of two things, mainly - one, while Queen Risella is very definitely sweela, she also has very definitely zero interest in her child and he's not going to get any direct influence from that quarter. Two, Isten just doesn't come off that way. If he had to guess with this little to go on, he'd guess torz, or coru. But he doesn't think guessing with this little to go on is especially reliable.)
calescent
"I can't remember not knowing what I am. When'd you know?"
He shrugs. "I dunno. I don't remember ever wondering. I think - I knew what I was before I knew what coru was." He has vague memories of other people discussing his elemental affiliation while his concept of the elements themselves was still hazy, but he can't remember what their speculations were; the sheer obviousness of how coru he is has blotted them out in retrospect.
(There's - something - about the way in which he identifies with his element. He isn't thinking about it directly, so it's not very clear. But it's a thing that he sees as unusual about himself, and is proud of or satisfied with.)
(There's - something - about the way in which he identifies with his element. He isn't thinking about it directly, so it's not very clear. But it's a thing that he sees as unusual about himself, and is proud of or satisfied with.)
calescent
Kiri tilts her head, leans a little closer. She's not sure how much it helps but there's no time like the present to find out.
"Mm?" he says - and now he's wondering what she's wondering about, and not thinking about the elements at all.
calescent
"It's - doing words about it is hard, I'm not mostly getting words. Something you like about how you're elemental, that's different from how most people are whatever."
"Oh! That," he says. "Yeah." And now he is thinking about it.
It goes something like this: He is very coru. But he is very coru only because lots of things about coru are him and lots of things about him are coru. He hears people all the time talking about their own or others' elements like the element defines the person - as though someone who is elay but very practical, or hunti but sometimes indecisive, or sweela but shy, is not just imperfectly their element but imperfectly themselves. As though, unless they can be appropriately categorized into another element that fits a defined role - his mother's crown of elay, for example, that leads people to guess it for her all the time, or the palace cook's heart of sweela that puts art and fire into her work when to look at her you'd think torz through and through - any trait a person has that plain doesn't fit is something wrong and strange about that person.
To the prince, this is nonsense on the level of kiertens. People are themselves. The elements define obvious categories, but if someone doesn't fit those categories perfectly, that's just a fact of who they happen to be and it doesn't make the not-fitting parts of them any less theirs.
It goes something like this: He is very coru. But he is very coru only because lots of things about coru are him and lots of things about him are coru. He hears people all the time talking about their own or others' elements like the element defines the person - as though someone who is elay but very practical, or hunti but sometimes indecisive, or sweela but shy, is not just imperfectly their element but imperfectly themselves. As though, unless they can be appropriately categorized into another element that fits a defined role - his mother's crown of elay, for example, that leads people to guess it for her all the time, or the palace cook's heart of sweela that puts art and fire into her work when to look at her you'd think torz through and through - any trait a person has that plain doesn't fit is something wrong and strange about that person.
To the prince, this is nonsense on the level of kiertens. People are themselves. The elements define obvious categories, but if someone doesn't fit those categories perfectly, that's just a fact of who they happen to be and it doesn't make the not-fitting parts of them any less theirs.
calescent
"Huh," says Kiri. "I'm not shy, but sometimes I'm - I guess the word for it is 'calculating' but I don't think that's a nice word for it - and even though that's a very think-y mind-y thing to be and it seems perfectly fitting to me it's not how some people think sweela people are supposed to be. We're supposed to be the most emotional."
"Yeah," says the prince. "And I'm coru in like the exact opposite of the way my mom is coru, and plenty of people think that's weird, but I don't."
Now that he's thought about the palace cook, it occurs to him that while at this point the food here is nothing remarkable to him, Kiri probably did not grow up on Beryn's cooking and is therefore about to be pleasantly surprised.
Now that he's thought about the palace cook, it occurs to him that while at this point the food here is nothing remarkable to him, Kiri probably did not grow up on Beryn's cooking and is therefore about to be pleasantly surprised.
calescent
Kiri grins. "Renny mostly cooks at home. I can do a little. The Chialto house that I guess is mine now has some staff in it and one of them cooks pretty good but I bet palace food is better."
("Home" is still the little house in Swiftford where she grew up, even now that she has technically inherited both the Chialto house and the larger Ardelay manse farther upstream on the Swiftness River, and between those places and the palace she'll probably spend less than a quintile "home" in any given year.)
("Home" is still the little house in Swiftford where she grew up, even now that she has technically inherited both the Chialto house and the larger Ardelay manse farther upstream on the Swiftness River, and between those places and the palace she'll probably spend less than a quintile "home" in any given year.)
"I bet palace food is better too," he says smugly. "Beryn's the greatest."
And food should be occurring aaaaaaany minute now.
calescent
Here it is! Kiri watches Renny for cues on how she's supposed to eat. Renny is obligingly making everything she's doing fairly obvious from Kiri's perspective.
"Mmmmmmmmmm," says Kiri when she has eaten a taste of the main course.
"Mmmmmmmmmm," says Kiri when she has eaten a taste of the main course.
The prince beams.
If she wants extra tips on table etiquette, she can listen in on him; he is aware of all the rules even while he breaks them.
If she wants extra tips on table etiquette, she can listen in on him; he is aware of all the rules even while he breaks them.
calescent
She makes use of his thoughts once or twice. She wants to get this right from the beginning; she's going to be prime for the rest of her life and is rather keenly aware that this means she's going to have to live with whatever reputation she begins to collect at the age of eight. However clever she considers herself, this is a handicap she wishes to work around.
The food continues to be amazing. The prince thinks cheerfully smug thoughts about how great a cook Berynette is and how lucky he is that she works here.
calescent
"This is the best food I have ever had," pronounces Kiri after she has eaten enough to make such a judgment.
He grins at her.
"I am not even a little bit surprised."
"I am not even a little bit surprised."
calescent
"You'll have to satisfy that blessing someplace else, I guess."
He giggles.
"I think I surprise other people more than they surprise me," he confides.
"I think I surprise other people more than they surprise me," he confides.
calescent
"I guess. I was surprised when you didn't mind being mindread."
And she was surprised after she read his mind, too! But he is not going to bring that up at the dinner table.
"I noticed," he says instead.
"I noticed," he says instead.
calescent
"My parents told me not to worry about it if I need to pass them in a hallway really quick or something, so it's not as bad as it could be, but nobody hugs me anymore."
He would really like to fix that. He would so much like to fix that. He would not like to fix that while they are supposed to be eating dinner, because he doesn't feel like inciting punishment today, but he would like to fix that at the earliest available opportunity. And then continue to fix it afterward. Hugs are good and he wants her to have lots.