Excerpt: Sleeping Dogs

Ranari Kirye could trace her bloodline to Ryesun's first dynasty. Her husband, Platim Salyn, was a member of the Ruling Council. The Platim Dynasty had been the third to rule Ryesun and were known as the Philosopher Kings. Twenty years ago, the joining of these two individuals had caused quite a stir. It had purportedly been a love match, not unheard of, but extremely rare among the nobility where marriage was viewed as the seal on alliances between families. Kirye's parents had been negotiating with the Viktearyn Family of the sixth dynasty for protection when their daughter eloped with a Platim. The negotiations fell through and the Ranari Family paid dearly for it. The Ranari were now almost as extinct as the Seivarnin of the second dynasty except that they didn't have hidden numbers in the military, who claimed no family ties. Kirye and her children were all that were left of the once great family. There were many speculations as to how they managed to survive what was now known as the Ranari Purge, but no facts were available to confirm or deny them. It was one of the great mysteries of the current age. Kirye, now the Ranari matriarch, held no position within any of the government departments which was unique as all the other dynastic family heads controlled some portion of the vast bureaucracy that ran the kingdom. Traditionally, the Ranari family controlled the Department of Records, which included births, deaths and marriages as well as any alliance contracts lodged with the government - basically all information pertaining to the kingdom's population. This Department was now under Platim control - specifically, Platim Salyn. It made the Platim Family the most influential family in the government as they also controlled the Department of Statutory Law. Ranari influence within the government was now considered negligible. Kirye controlled only her household it seemed. Her brood of eight children ranged from Lyan, her eldest nineteen year old son, to Sunni, who was only eight months old.

Ranari Lyan and his siblings had been educated at home by the best tutors available. Their mother seemed loathe to let them out of her sight and beyond what she considered her protection. While his younger sisters; Balthee, Cassia and Tonia; chafed at this restriction, Lyan had never given it much thought. He was of an age now and allowed the freedom to come and go as he pleased. He had also proven his ability to protect himself in a fight. He had vague memories of the Purge as a child and understood his mother's paranoia. He remembered having Ranari grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who were no longer alive and the succession of funerals he had been made to attend. It had all happened so quickly that by the time Tonia, the fourth child was born, they no longer had any other relatives. He was seven when his favourite cousin and playmate, Harme, only two years his elder had died in a riding accident. After that, there were no other Ranari outside of his household and his mother, pregnant with her third child had fought with her husband over sending her eldest son away to school. They eventually compromised by educating their children at home. The Ranari Family had fallen a long way from the power they had been in Kirye's youth. Her children grew up in isolation and the subject of rumour and speculation, whispered behind their backs and sometimes even hinted at to their faces.