Squatting down in the dust, Daneni Bayle screwed her face up into an ugly scowl of concentration as she gently worked the lock.  "Come on, you!" she told it, easing her lock picks apart in the hope of finally engaging it.  A satisfying click told her all she needed to know.  With a grin, she began to turn the mechanism over and the bolt clunked open.
 "Done it!" She cried, patting the lid of the solid oaken chest.
 "About time, Daneni!" cried Jared, leaping down from the top of a bookcase, throwing dust into the air in great billowing clouds.  He was two years younger than her, little more than a boy really, though good enough company.
 Daneni coughed, turned a grime covered face to look up at him and laughed.  "D'you think it's safe to open?"
 He shrugged, playing with the point of his dagger.  "Do you want me to..?"
 She shook her head, "You know I'm quicker at it than you."
 He shrugged again.  "Okay.  Just be careful."
 "I always am!"  She drew her own dagger, a beautiful and ornamental thing - a courtly weapon - and began to gently feel around the gap between the lid and the chest.
 Feeling nothing, she carefully felt around the back and the side of the chest, looking for anything unusual, an opening that might release a bolt or a poisonous gas.
 "Anything?"  Jared sounded excited.  He tended to get that way when they got close to treasure.
 "No.  But let's get on the otherside of it anyway."  She reached into her pouch and took out a short length of silk cord with an iron hook on the end of it.  She hooked one end on the lock clasp and walked round some distance to the side, behind the chest.
 She looked around for Jared, found him stood beside her.  "Hold your breath," she cautioned him.
 With a violent jerk of the cord, she wrenched the chest lid open.
 Nothing happened.
 Daneni let out her breath with a sigh and the two friends rushed eagerly forward to examine their haul.
 Jared laughed.  "Nothing but mouldy old clothes."
 "No wait!"  Daneni felt something hard amongst the cloth, small and round.  "What's this?"  She drew it out, holding it up to the small shaft of sunlight shining through a skylight far above their heads.
 "Some kind of jewel?"
 She shook her head.  "No, it's got a portrait painted on it.  I think it's a box of some kind.  She dug her fingernails into the sides and pulled it open.  Inside, was a small silver chain bracelet, with beautiful pearls hanging off it.  "Not bad," she said, turning it slowly over in her hands.
 "So," said Jared, grinning, "You get the box, I get the bracelet."
 Daneni laughed.  "I think not, my Lord," she said, "We'll split the spoils as we always do."
 "Oh, Daneni!  You always get the good stuff!"
 "Don't be a baby, Jared!  I let you have that sword, didn't I?"
 "Yes, but.."
 "But nothing, kid!  Come on, time for another room."
 "I don't think so," he said, a little sulkily.
 She frowned, "You reckon it's time to go back?"
 "It must be, Daneni, my stomach's rumbling."
 "Oh dear!  Well then, my brave adventurer, we'd best get you back to the nursery clean and tidy!"
 Jared hit her on the arm, making her cry out with pain.  She swung round on him, hand raised, then let it fall again with a laugh.
 She drew herself up to her full height and turned an imperious eye on her scruffy friend.  "That was unkind, my Lord Jared, you should conduct yourself in a more seemly manner."
 He bowed, "I shall endeavour to remember, my Lady Bayle."
 Daneni flinched, "Don't use that name!"
 "Why?  It is your name.  Lady Daneni Bayle, daughter of Antonius Bayle of the City of Roses.  Well, at least, until you're married.  What's that man called?"
 "Who?" she stowed the painted box in her belt pouch and brushed the worst of the dirt from her trousers.
 "I heard mother and father talking about it.  They said you were going to marry.  Something to do with an alliance.  Anyway, they said they thought it would be you, since you're just the right age."
 Daneni leaned against a wall, arms crossed.  "And what have your parents got to do with me?  Don't you think my father might have a say in it?"
 He shrugged.  "The City's always marrying people off to someone or other.  Or did you want to be an old maid?"  He laughed.
 Daneni stamped a foot in irritation, "He's not marrying me!  I don't want a husband!"
 "Why?  Then you'll get to have a big wedding, and a huge cake!"
 "Oh don't be an idiot, Jared!  If I get married, that means I'll be taken away from here!  No more games, no more adventures.  Just polite conversation and - and embroidery!"
 Jared said nothing, feeling uncomfortable.
 "Let's get out of here," she said, taking Jared's hand in hers.
 

 "How can you make me marry that - that - thing?"  Daneni flung herself bitterly onto her bed, violently screwing up a pillow in a vain attempt to control her rage.
 "Graf Mackenzie is an honourable man," Antonius Bayle tried, his voice beginning to acquire a less patient tone.
 "Father, he's about a hundred and fifty!  And - and - a Barbarian!!"
 "Don't tell lies, Daneni, you know he's only forty-eight."  Her mother had definitely lost patience with her.
 "And - and what about his horrible scars?  Even Fippy Darkpaw would be a better husband than him!"
 "Most women in this city would be proud to marry Graf, girl," said her mother.
 "He got those scars fighting the Teir'Dal hordes in Kithicor Forest.  Everyone knows that," her father added.
 "I don't care if he got them fighting Cazic Thule, he's horrible!"
 Her father shook his fist at her.  "Horrible or not, old or not, you will marry him, Daneni, you can be quite sure of that!"
 Daneni didn't even look up as her parents left her room, closing the door behind them with a solid clunk.
 "Impossible child!" her mother exclaimed, as their footsteps receded down the hall.
 Any reply her father might have given was lost within her own cries of misery and frustration.  Frustration which gave way to anger as she flung her pillow against the wall and tore her sheets off her bed.

 
 Shifting the uncomfortable weight of her pack from one sore shoulder to the other, Daneni cursed the horse trader bitterly.  She'd gotten pretty good at cursing, thanks to some of the rough company she'd kept of late.  She kicked a stone from the roadside, sending it skittering across the empty road into a dusty rut.  The moon was up, but otherwise it was deathly peaceful out here between towns, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, lost in the empty wastes of the Karanas.
 Somewhere she wouldn't be, had she got a good price for her brooch.
 "There's no way that diamond was flawed!" she cried, startling a rabbit from its hiding place beside the road.  "I should have gotten a lot more for it than fifty lousy platinum!"
 "Fifty platinum is a lot of money" said a voice, startling her from her very personal temper into a sudden fear.
 She drew her dagger, letting the pack slide onto the ground behind her.  "I know how to use this, you know," she said.
 The voice laughed, rich and confident, a man of good breeding, no doubt.  "I'm sure you do!"
 "Why don't you show yourself!" she cried, looking about her fiercely.
 A man, tall and well dressed, stepped softly from the shadow of a tall oak and bowed smoothly.  "Benedict Mattock, at your service, Madam."
 Daneni backed away a little in surprise.  "I - I'm Danielle", she managed.
 "Indeed you are,"  laughed Benedict, smiling smoothly.  "Indeed you are.  Worth a good five hundred plat, I believe."
 She pointed the dagger at him, her free hand extended for poise and balance, as Jared had taught her.  "Who sent you?"
 "Why, my dear, your likeness is upon every tree from here to High Hold, did you not know?"
 "What - what likeness?"
 "The likeness of my Lady Daneni Bayle, formerly of Qeynos."
 "Who?"
 "Oh come now, we can do better than that.  The proud demeanour, the raised chin, the fiery eyes.  Really, my Lady, you must try a little harder to disguise yourself."
 Daneni let her shoulders sag, and sheathed the dagger.  "Is it really so obvious?"
 "Very, I'm afraid.  Might I be permitted to make some recommendations?"
 Daneni laughed, "You may, my Lord," she said with a curtsey.
 "You flatter me.  Don't.  I really don't deserve it.  I'm a scoundrel in truth, and would have had you back home in three quarters of an hour if your spirit hadn't stirred a certain admiration in me."
 Daneni raised an eyebrow at him, but decided to let it pass.
 "Your golden hair.  It's very beautiful, my lady, but rather distinctive.  It shows your breeding.  Most peasant girls would never have so fine a head of hair, and if they had, would have sold it long ago to a passing wig maker.  I suggest you do likewise.  Or at least dye it some other less pleasing colour."
 She pulled at a lock of her hair, looking at it critically, then tossed it with a shrug back over her shoulder.
 "Likewise, your clothes.  The colours are dull enough, but really those trousers are finest velvet, and even in the moonlight I can see that those boots were painstakingly handcrafted by the finest Kelethin shoemakers!  Sell your clothes my dear, and don peasant garb."
 "Any other suggestions?"  She was beginning to get bored of this.
 "Yes.  One final suggestion.  Your manner.  Change it.  You know, you even swear with a certain delicate charm."

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four