Chapter 681 (1/2)

When Alta hopped off her mount she stumbled, but for a 10-year-old she was surprisingly balanced. Although it certainly looked like she would faceplant into the dirt track, a mad pinwheeling of her arms managed to stabilize herself.

Lucretia’s mouth twitched. For all the girl’s faults, fearfulness was not one of them.

Alta scampered across the dirt track to the edge of the sunflower field, her eyes wide. Lucretia reigned in her mount and spared a glance for the servant following her and Alta in the carriage. While Alta’s father and older brother were up ahead hunting god knows what, the women dithered behind.

“Look! Look! Tiny sun babies!” Alta said with a wide smile. She spun around and practically beamed at Lucretia. Even though Lucretia was expecting it, it still hit her with a physical force. Although there weren’t Skills in this world, there was a much more elusive and altogether useful sort of magic. Of which, Alta was a particular beneficiary. Her emotions were booming waves of force that hit you when you were near her. Volatile, sure, but powerful.

As her shadow, Lucretia was subjected to it almost every hour of every day. She rose with Alta and put Alta to bed. From the outside, Lucretia had perfectly fallen into the diffident servant to this small bundle of power. Even Lucretia wondered sometimes whether she was committing to this too emotionally, or whether the girl was influencing her overmuch.

But no matter what, Lucretia would never leave the girl. As Alta turned back to the field, Lucretia’s eyes focused on the girl’s heart. There, a thick thread of karma sat. It was slowly developing, almost like a flower blooming. When Lucretia had met Alta almost ten years ago, it was so faint that Lucretia worried that she had imagined it. But as time passed, her fervent hope turned out true.

Because that blooming karma was not with her.

It was with Randidly.

Lucretia eyes crinkled into crescent moons as she peered at the girl’s back. Not that she was tossing aside all other avenues. Lucretia had found to her delight that Engraving was still effective in this world, and had been working diligently every night. However, this was an obvious lead given to her by the world. She would not take her eyes off of it when it was building toward a possible connection.

And it was also clear in that karma something would happen today. Lucretia could hardly wait.

“Alta? Darling? Perhaps we should keep going. Your little sister is tired; if we continue to the summer home-”

Alta spun around and rolled her eyes at the face poking out of the window. “Whatever Darcy. Daddy said I could stop and look at the flowers if I wanted, right Creta?”

Lucretia nodded woodenly. “This is correct miss.”

“See? So there.” Alta spun around and skipped into the field, her expensive dress catching on some of taller weeds that choked the ground around the wildflowers. Not that she noticed. She was too lost in the delight in foiling Darcy.

Lucretia’ gaze slid to Darcy’s rapidly reddening face. Alta Bounty was the second child of the Bounty Family, who owned the transportation system between the different lands of the World Tree, and the power plants built on the connecting branches of the tree. Although Lucretia wasn’t too clear on the details, it seemed to feed on the electromagnetic energy given off by the bark of the World Tree. There might be individuals with more influence than the Bountys, but they were the richest Spriggit family in this strange world.

Alta’s mother died in childbirth, after having had Alta and Puar, her elder brother. A few years ago Alta’s father remarried Darcy, who took her step-daughter’s lack of respect as… well, an insulting lack of respect.

Darcy noticed Lucretia’s glance and narrowed her eye at her. “Are you not supposed to protect her, you stupid half-blood? Don’t stay here, your smell offends Dalmanica.”

For several long seconds, Lucretia just looked at Darcy with a widening smile. It only took a second before Darcy shivered and pulled her head back into the carriage. As soon as she was gone, Lucretia ignored the carriage driver’s apologetic glance and hopped down off of her mount to follow Alta.

Although Darcy hated it, Lucretia was attached to Alta from birth. Alta wouldn’t hear of firing her, and the way her oath to the family was written only required her to show reasonable deference to the family other than Alta.

Besides, time and time again Lucretia had demonstrated to Imnor Bounty, Alta’s father, why she was indispensable as a shadow for his precious daughter.