So, this account still exists
I'm trying to organize my fiction that I wrote and posted to this account. I will be re-posting some stuff so I can save it to tags and memories on here. This is more for my own organizational purposes than anything else.
I've come to associate a certain smell with the pale, iridescent silks of a Kryt'thannu, I can tell which station, which route they have come off of: jasmine and the clearest, freshest water, these are Kreyt'thali.
It is from this place that my future husband has come. Like other Kreyt'thali, we have met before, since the fact of our meeting can change nothing about what is to come.
But his robes are not of pale silk: he comes in red and black, simple and austere, his hands sheathed in black gloves. His hair is the color of spider-floss, his eyes the color of flint.
He is perhaps half a generation older than me. We have been promised to each other (or more properly - to each other's families) since my birth.
But this man, my platinum-haired betrothed, is a Tzav'drin, one who consorts with Downworlders. It is with those Downworld that he makes the majority of his deals. And I see that going Downworld so much will change him. I have heard he speaks their language better than any other of our kind. Over the years, as the clans have been at war, this young man has been hidden within the walls of a Downworld university, where enemies cannot find his noble clan's only heir. He is learning to get along as those Downworld do - by learning the law so one can manipulate its many loopholes.
I sit behind this wall, listening to the men speak. My betrothed has been making some sort of negotiation with the man who has come to visit.
The man who sits across from him is shorter, but more powerfully built. Blue stains his face. His jet-black hair is pulled back into hundreds of tiny braids which cascade over his shoulders. Predatory, narrow eyes stand out like two fire agates in his chiseled stone-grey face. The gold-encrusted dagger at his belt may be the mark of a clan lord's son, but it holds a not-so-thinly-veiled threat: of just how he would intend to settle a negotiation that went bad.
One of the Kova'yin. I have read of them, but I have never seen one. By the blue-stained skin, I would judge his lineage for a noble of their kind, a member of their supreme lord's family. They are those among us who have traded salt and ore along the Perimeter and in the East for hundreds of years. As my people became the patrons of the Mastery, theirs resisted, often with force.
Suddenly, my platinum-haired betrothed stops speaking.
"We're being observed," he says, in his clipped, clean Kreyt'thali noble speech.
I have slipped from behind this wall, just slightly: there are now two pairs of eyes upon me, one flint-grey pair and one bright gold pair.
The noble is slightly stunned, put out. He has retracted his hands slightly into his robe: for he is thinking what any of us would think. He is thinking that I should not have been watching, I should not have been seen.
"Forgive... Forgive me, friend," he says. "This is Ehrd'rys, daughter of Lord Vandaru L'Zhdehnnan. She and her family's holdings have recently been granted to my clan. We are to be married soon."
Strangely, the Kova'i doesn't stand. He remains where he is, seated with his legs apart, his hands on his knees. He looks up, his lips curling slightly into a smile. A flicker of perfect, slightly pointed white teeth visible just for a second.
I slip back behind the wall.
Steel upon Silk: Lady Ehrd'rys Jaru'dar
I write, and it is the last thing I did as a noblewoman, that I still do. And
though I know that years will pass between my entries, still I write.
My journal is the last vestige of my old life, that I keep: I have kept these
books the way that a Kryt'thannu woman does, locked up in her comfortable prison
of leisure, spending all her time writing on handmade pulp paper with her polished
wooden quill.
But this book is not pulp paper. It is a simple thing recorded by stylus in
a hand-computer, it could dissappear at any moment due to the shifting and uncertain
fates of computers themselves: such a thing is impermanence. My lord would say
that it is because of the Varen themselves. I know that this is not so: but
I do not begrudge him his peoples' beliefs, the beliefs of most of my people,
that which sustains and preserves us.
My husband has insisted that I keep such a thing.
"Three children," our old Drinait'thon told me: traditional for the
people I've come to live among, even though nowhere else is a Drinait'thon a
soothsayer. "Two will be sons. Of the third, I am not certain. One will
be the pride of your clan and come when all hope is thought lost. One will die.
And one will leave you to follow its own path. I cannot tell you which of these
is which, as this is for you to learn."
I am pregnant. I have not told my lord of this fact, yet. To do so might be
dangerous: we sat together on the wedding night, and he brandished his own dagger.
I trailed my finger down it, and smeared the sheets. He licked the blood from
my finger, his eyes never leaving mine.
This would be enough proof I have not bedded another man. The danger would
not come from him: but from the people I have adopted. A fierce people, ones
who would not suffer the infidelity of a future clan lord's wife.
Nonetheless, he will believe that this pregnancy happened on the wedding night.
He would be pleased to know such a thing, as so many of us believe there is
no more auspicious thing, no more auspicious life for a child than to be conceived
on the wedding night.
I know better.
Even so, for all I know, it could've happened before: the things that I tell
this journal are things nobody else will ever know, secrets a woman must always
keep. For all I know, this pregnancy could've happened the very first time we
were together.
Our wedding did not happen under traditional circumstances. I had the choice
between two men.
The pale-haired, red robed man I was promised to, bartered me to another man
- one who offered an important alliance in exchange for my hand in marriage.
My intended asked my opinion of the matter first.
"If you do love me," he said, "That's worth all we stand to
gain from this alliance. I will forsake it. But I have always suspected you
can find no happiness here. I offer you the choice - you may choose me or him
and I'll accept either. It is more choice than you have ever been offered before."
I've kept the sword I practiced for years, hidden - a man of words, of a sharp
tongue, of politics, would have no use for such a one as me. Secretly, I imagined
my betrothed to be softened from his years of dealing with the Downworlders
and I found my stomach tying itself in knots. A man, yet no different from the
countless noble girls I'd lain with.
Worse, I could not be the wife of a member of one of the married Mastery sects,
if offered a choice in the matter. All my early life, I wore my hair free like
a man, and then one day my mother told me I must start becoming the young lady
who would be a noble wife. I must learn music, and literature. Secretly I trained
myself in the men's arts, the sword, the art of the deal. I had and have no
faith in the Varen. But I learned to act as a lady, even if by night I devoured
the adventures of the Pracha pirates, the stories of the far East: the Kova'yin,
the Khara'yin, the Nadrach'tani. I closed my eyes and pretended I lived in the
era of the merchant princes, before the Mastery had unified the exiles beneath
a common tribute, in the days when nobles' disputes were settled at swordpoint.
I snuck out of my room. I crossed the long corridor of the clanship, to the
airlock: I put my hair down like a man, then quietly, I walked into the forbidden
territory, I walked into a man's ship, the place dwelled in only by men.
I decided I would see the man that my noble betrothed had offered me to.
I came to his room. It is a thing that no proper woman must ever do. I did
it anyway. My feet carried me swiftly down the corridor in the small hours of
the morning. My dagger remained hidden, tucked beneath my robes where I could
get at it quickly.
This room: not the room of my noble betrothed, not like any room I had ever
lived in.
No soft pillows, no silks. No hand smelling of jasmine-water had ever touched
any part of this room.
The edges, sharp and rough, the smell of incense comingled with dust - thick.
It is with embarassment that I write things which are true, but which read
like one of the dramas that lonely noblewomen pass their time with.
"If you come here, to this room, then know what this means," he said.
He wore his casual robe when I had come, as if preparing for bed. His directness
shocked me! I had never heard a man speak thusly. No man would ever speak to
me thus - this was clearly one with no regard for kt'thran. "If you're
just a Kryt'thannu bitch playing games of power - then go. I have no use for
the weak and stupid."
My dignity offended, I spit in his face.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand. Still he stood straight, resolute,
unnaffected.
He siezed my arm.
Purple-blue dye of a Kova'i noble's robes, stained his skin. Low among our
people - but first among his own.
The eyes were bright and gold, his head a maelstrom of fierce black braids.
Another woman might have cried out but fascination ruled me: this is not how
a nobleman would have ever behaved, not how any other Nadiranai would have ever
even talked to me. I found myself remaining, to see what he might do next.
He could not possibly know of my fighting skills. I studied him: the pressure
points along that body. If he attempted to force himself upon me, I knew I could
fight him off. And while it is unheard of among most of our people, for a man
to do such a thing - these were the Kova'i. I knew what the nobles thought of
them, what my people said about them.
But he did not do such a thing. His grip tightened slightly, his gaze become
somewhat fiercer. Not a look of anger - but a look I had never seen in a man's
eyes before, something feral.
Something raw.
More.
Something entirely honest.
Even as his grip on my arm grew painful, his other hand reached forward to
cup my silk-encased breast: he seemed surprised at how small I was, but the
hand touched me as gently as the silken sheets of my soft bed, but the hand
itself was as rough as the rough-woven mesh sheets on the hard mat he called
his bed. A paradox.
No man had ever touched me before, but I already knew about desire and about
my weakness for rough hands, my attraction to danger.
As a young girl, just after having my first blood, I became the lover of a
retainer twice my age, a guard who sometimes concealed her sex and lived as
a man. She had run away from the Solitaire guilds; she had once been a brigand
and this was only the latest of her adventures. Her stories thrilled me. Like
most women, I had lain with many other girls, always careful to preserve my
most coveted gift: the most coveted gift a husband could receive from a wife.
That spot of blood on the sheets.
This was different. The thrill of finding soft breasts attached to a body made
of hard muscle...
I loved her rough hands. She owned me with them, explored my every mystery.
She was both tough and tender: even when she owned me, she clipped her nails
short and rubbed her hand with balm. This act was our secret: the risk...
I cried in pain at first, but the pain dissolved, and I dissolved, with it.
I loved her, but such a thing could not be. Like all retainers I was not her
only lover, and maintaining the lie that she was a man meant moving from ship
to ship, never staying in one place very long.
I had known deep and fierce pleasure, and thereafter, the pale, silken skin
and smooth hands always left me wanting.
But now: the here and now, with the Kova'i. The lover who had left me behind
so many years ago, seemed so far away now. I stood here, in this room, with
a man clearly excited by the prospect of owning a noblewoman, of pressing his
hard body and rough hands against a pale, silken, empty shell. Even under the
heavy robe I could see his excitement: I was surprised to have seen such a thing.
He must have been formidable. He must imagine me a physical virgin, he must
imagine I would cry out in pain being pierced by that thing. The thought must
thrill him.
I wanted to see how far this game would go. He pressed me against the hard
mat. He took off all of my robes, leaving me vulnerable: he gasped in surprise.
He expected the flaccid skin of a noblewoman. Instead, he found out just how
many years I had trained, in secret.
He found the dagger under my robes.
My secret, revealed.
He backed away suddenly, as if he had retreated inwardly, but I lay on the
bed until the knowing look came into his eyes.
He knew, at that point, that this was a game. I pretended nonetheless to be
weak. And he pretended to be my lord and master.
Sometimes he kissed my face: sometimes he nipped me with his sharp teeth. I
would never know which it would be. It would appear he had taken me because
I pretended to do the things our women must do: to be passive. All the while
I knew I could kill him right there if I wanted to. He knew it, too.
He did not sleep after the deed was done. He lay in the dark, in the quiet,
for a long time, and finally he told me stories I did not expect to hear. I
expected from him, stony silence.
He had been married once, briefly. She lived solely among the women of the
clan and had no interest in decisions of state, in the important decisions he
had to live his life with. She took another lover. The clan discarded her, quietly:
they had to protect his reputation.
He lived in awe and mortal terror of his father, the man who had united all
but five of the Kova'yin clans, the man who had formed the alliance with the
Downworlders.
He told me the thing a man never tells any but a cherished lover: his true
birth name.
I stood there two days later, in the room with both men, knowing I must choose,
even as I had given my body to the Kova'i whom I had barely known. The choice
was still mine.
My eyes went from man to man.
The pale-haired, pale-eyed nobleman; we had been pledged to each other since
childhood. I could be completely safe in the role promised to me since birth:
a woman of mediocre stature among the living gods.
The onyx-haired, gold-eyed Kova'i clan lord's son.
If I accepted this role, I would fall far, far from the heights promised to
me by my birthright. I would never sleep on a soft bed again, nor know most
of the comforts I have lived with most of my life. Even more, we know that such
a man cannot be served by one woman alone.
But I knew in the marrow of my bones that one day, the man whose bed I had
shared two nights before, would be lord of all the Kova'i. I imagined the remaining
clans falling before him: the Zhaidukhar, the Zhaikhara, the Zhodai, and all
of their underclans. It would not end there.
Choice. Such a rare thing for one of my sex. I revelled in it, wanted that
moment to last as long as possible, but finally my eyes locked with those of
the Kova'i clan lord's son.
He thought he was taking me, he was sullying the perfect white skin of a Kryt'thannu,
he was playing with the toys which belonged to another man. It must have thrilled
him to know he was winning me from a man far above him in station. It must have
thrilled him to be possessing me, his golden haired prize. It must have thrilled
him knowing that two nights before, I had come to his room and he had taken
the most prized thing a woman of my station can ever possess: the spot of blood
on those rough sheets.
I smiled inwardly, even as I sat in my silken robes pretending to be meek and
good, pretending to be the virgin he would take on our wedding night.
I smiled to myself because he cannot know the thrill I felt in letting him
believe these things.
He'll never know that when he slept, while it was dark, I found my knife, and
I pricked my finger.
I would pretend to have given him my maidenhead.
And he would pretend not to know I was pretending.
It is said that the Kova'i claim their brides, and perhaps he thinks, too,
that this is what happened. That he had seen my golden-haired head when meeting
with the grey-eyed man I was supposed to marry. That he had decided to possess
me right then and there.
He cannot know, does not know that I had meant to be in the room the day that
he had arrived.
I've come to associate a certain smell with the pale, iridescent silks of a Kryt'thannu, I can tell which station, which route they have come off of: jasmine and the clearest, freshest water, these are Kreyt'thali.
It is from this place that my future husband has come. Like other Kreyt'thali, we have met before, since the fact of our meeting can change nothing about what is to come.
But his robes are not of pale silk: he comes in red and black, simple and austere, his hands sheathed in black gloves. His hair is the color of spider-floss, his eyes the color of flint.
He is perhaps half a generation older than me. We have been promised to each other (or more properly - to each other's families) since my birth.
But this man, my platinum-haired betrothed, is a Tzav'drin, one who consorts with Downworlders. It is with those Downworld that he makes the majority of his deals. And I see that going Downworld so much will change him. I have heard he speaks their language better than any other of our kind. Over the years, as the clans have been at war, this young man has been hidden within the walls of a Downworld university, where enemies cannot find his noble clan's only heir. He is learning to get along as those Downworld do - by learning the law so one can manipulate its many loopholes.
I sit behind this wall, listening to the men speak. My betrothed has been making some sort of negotiation with the man who has come to visit.
The man who sits across from him is shorter, but more powerfully built. Blue stains his face. His jet-black hair is pulled back into hundreds of tiny braids which cascade over his shoulders. Predatory, narrow eyes stand out like two fire agates in his chiseled stone-grey face. The gold-encrusted dagger at his belt may be the mark of a clan lord's son, but it holds a not-so-thinly-veiled threat: of just how he would intend to settle a negotiation that went bad.
One of the Kova'yin. I have read of them, but I have never seen one. By the blue-stained skin, I would judge his lineage for a noble of their kind, a member of their supreme lord's family. They are those among us who have traded salt and ore along the Perimeter and in the East for hundreds of years. As my people became the patrons of the Mastery, theirs resisted, often with force.
Suddenly, my platinum-haired betrothed stops speaking.
"We're being observed," he says, in his clipped, clean Kreyt'thali noble speech.
I have slipped from behind this wall, just slightly: there are now two pairs of eyes upon me, one flint-grey pair and one bright gold pair.
The noble is slightly stunned, put out. He has retracted his hands slightly into his robe: for he is thinking what any of us would think. He is thinking that I should not have been watching, I should not have been seen.
"Forgive... Forgive me, friend," he says. "This is Ehrd'rys, daughter of Lord Vandaru L'Zhdehnnan. She and her family's holdings have recently been granted to my clan. We are to be married soon."
Strangely, the Kova'i doesn't stand. He remains where he is, seated with his legs apart, his hands on his knees. He looks up, his lips curling slightly into a smile. A flicker of perfect, slightly pointed white teeth visible just for a second.
I slip back behind the wall.
Steel upon Silk: Lady Ehrd'rys Jaru'dar
I write, and it is the last thing I did as a noblewoman, that I still do. And
though I know that years will pass between my entries, still I write.
My journal is the last vestige of my old life, that I keep: I have kept these
books the way that a Kryt'thannu woman does, locked up in her comfortable prison
of leisure, spending all her time writing on handmade pulp paper with her polished
wooden quill.
But this book is not pulp paper. It is a simple thing recorded by stylus in
a hand-computer, it could dissappear at any moment due to the shifting and uncertain
fates of computers themselves: such a thing is impermanence. My lord would say
that it is because of the Varen themselves. I know that this is not so: but
I do not begrudge him his peoples' beliefs, the beliefs of most of my people,
that which sustains and preserves us.
My husband has insisted that I keep such a thing.
"Three children," our old Drinait'thon told me: traditional for the
people I've come to live among, even though nowhere else is a Drinait'thon a
soothsayer. "Two will be sons. Of the third, I am not certain. One will
be the pride of your clan and come when all hope is thought lost. One will die.
And one will leave you to follow its own path. I cannot tell you which of these
is which, as this is for you to learn."
I am pregnant. I have not told my lord of this fact, yet. To do so might be
dangerous: we sat together on the wedding night, and he brandished his own dagger.
I trailed my finger down it, and smeared the sheets. He licked the blood from
my finger, his eyes never leaving mine.
This would be enough proof I have not bedded another man. The danger would
not come from him: but from the people I have adopted. A fierce people, ones
who would not suffer the infidelity of a future clan lord's wife.
Nonetheless, he will believe that this pregnancy happened on the wedding night.
He would be pleased to know such a thing, as so many of us believe there is
no more auspicious thing, no more auspicious life for a child than to be conceived
on the wedding night.
I know better.
Even so, for all I know, it could've happened before: the things that I tell
this journal are things nobody else will ever know, secrets a woman must always
keep. For all I know, this pregnancy could've happened the very first time we
were together.
Our wedding did not happen under traditional circumstances. I had the choice
between two men.
The pale-haired, red robed man I was promised to, bartered me to another man
- one who offered an important alliance in exchange for my hand in marriage.
My intended asked my opinion of the matter first.
"If you do love me," he said, "That's worth all we stand to
gain from this alliance. I will forsake it. But I have always suspected you
can find no happiness here. I offer you the choice - you may choose me or him
and I'll accept either. It is more choice than you have ever been offered before."
I've kept the sword I practiced for years, hidden - a man of words, of a sharp
tongue, of politics, would have no use for such a one as me. Secretly, I imagined
my betrothed to be softened from his years of dealing with the Downworlders
and I found my stomach tying itself in knots. A man, yet no different from the
countless noble girls I'd lain with.
Worse, I could not be the wife of a member of one of the married Mastery sects,
if offered a choice in the matter. All my early life, I wore my hair free like
a man, and then one day my mother told me I must start becoming the young lady
who would be a noble wife. I must learn music, and literature. Secretly I trained
myself in the men's arts, the sword, the art of the deal. I had and have no
faith in the Varen. But I learned to act as a lady, even if by night I devoured
the adventures of the Pracha pirates, the stories of the far East: the Kova'yin,
the Khara'yin, the Nadrach'tani. I closed my eyes and pretended I lived in the
era of the merchant princes, before the Mastery had unified the exiles beneath
a common tribute, in the days when nobles' disputes were settled at swordpoint.
I snuck out of my room. I crossed the long corridor of the clanship, to the
airlock: I put my hair down like a man, then quietly, I walked into the forbidden
territory, I walked into a man's ship, the place dwelled in only by men.
I decided I would see the man that my noble betrothed had offered me to.
I came to his room. It is a thing that no proper woman must ever do. I did
it anyway. My feet carried me swiftly down the corridor in the small hours of
the morning. My dagger remained hidden, tucked beneath my robes where I could
get at it quickly.
This room: not the room of my noble betrothed, not like any room I had ever
lived in.
No soft pillows, no silks. No hand smelling of jasmine-water had ever touched
any part of this room.
The edges, sharp and rough, the smell of incense comingled with dust - thick.
It is with embarassment that I write things which are true, but which read
like one of the dramas that lonely noblewomen pass their time with.
"If you come here, to this room, then know what this means," he said.
He wore his casual robe when I had come, as if preparing for bed. His directness
shocked me! I had never heard a man speak thusly. No man would ever speak to
me thus - this was clearly one with no regard for kt'thran. "If you're
just a Kryt'thannu bitch playing games of power - then go. I have no use for
the weak and stupid."
My dignity offended, I spit in his face.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand. Still he stood straight, resolute,
unnaffected.
He siezed my arm.
Purple-blue dye of a Kova'i noble's robes, stained his skin. Low among our
people - but first among his own.
The eyes were bright and gold, his head a maelstrom of fierce black braids.
Another woman might have cried out but fascination ruled me: this is not how
a nobleman would have ever behaved, not how any other Nadiranai would have ever
even talked to me. I found myself remaining, to see what he might do next.
He could not possibly know of my fighting skills. I studied him: the pressure
points along that body. If he attempted to force himself upon me, I knew I could
fight him off. And while it is unheard of among most of our people, for a man
to do such a thing - these were the Kova'i. I knew what the nobles thought of
them, what my people said about them.
But he did not do such a thing. His grip tightened slightly, his gaze become
somewhat fiercer. Not a look of anger - but a look I had never seen in a man's
eyes before, something feral.
Something raw.
More.
Something entirely honest.
Even as his grip on my arm grew painful, his other hand reached forward to
cup my silk-encased breast: he seemed surprised at how small I was, but the
hand touched me as gently as the silken sheets of my soft bed, but the hand
itself was as rough as the rough-woven mesh sheets on the hard mat he called
his bed. A paradox.
No man had ever touched me before, but I already knew about desire and about
my weakness for rough hands, my attraction to danger.
As a young girl, just after having my first blood, I became the lover of a
retainer twice my age, a guard who sometimes concealed her sex and lived as
a man. She had run away from the Solitaire guilds; she had once been a brigand
and this was only the latest of her adventures. Her stories thrilled me. Like
most women, I had lain with many other girls, always careful to preserve my
most coveted gift: the most coveted gift a husband could receive from a wife.
That spot of blood on the sheets.
This was different. The thrill of finding soft breasts attached to a body made
of hard muscle...
I loved her rough hands. She owned me with them, explored my every mystery.
She was both tough and tender: even when she owned me, she clipped her nails
short and rubbed her hand with balm. This act was our secret: the risk...
I cried in pain at first, but the pain dissolved, and I dissolved, with it.
I loved her, but such a thing could not be. Like all retainers I was not her
only lover, and maintaining the lie that she was a man meant moving from ship
to ship, never staying in one place very long.
I had known deep and fierce pleasure, and thereafter, the pale, silken skin
and smooth hands always left me wanting.
But now: the here and now, with the Kova'i. The lover who had left me behind
so many years ago, seemed so far away now. I stood here, in this room, with
a man clearly excited by the prospect of owning a noblewoman, of pressing his
hard body and rough hands against a pale, silken, empty shell. Even under the
heavy robe I could see his excitement: I was surprised to have seen such a thing.
He must have been formidable. He must imagine me a physical virgin, he must
imagine I would cry out in pain being pierced by that thing. The thought must
thrill him.
I wanted to see how far this game would go. He pressed me against the hard
mat. He took off all of my robes, leaving me vulnerable: he gasped in surprise.
He expected the flaccid skin of a noblewoman. Instead, he found out just how
many years I had trained, in secret.
He found the dagger under my robes.
My secret, revealed.
He backed away suddenly, as if he had retreated inwardly, but I lay on the
bed until the knowing look came into his eyes.
He knew, at that point, that this was a game. I pretended nonetheless to be
weak. And he pretended to be my lord and master.
Sometimes he kissed my face: sometimes he nipped me with his sharp teeth. I
would never know which it would be. It would appear he had taken me because
I pretended to do the things our women must do: to be passive. All the while
I knew I could kill him right there if I wanted to. He knew it, too.
He did not sleep after the deed was done. He lay in the dark, in the quiet,
for a long time, and finally he told me stories I did not expect to hear. I
expected from him, stony silence.
He had been married once, briefly. She lived solely among the women of the
clan and had no interest in decisions of state, in the important decisions he
had to live his life with. She took another lover. The clan discarded her, quietly:
they had to protect his reputation.
He lived in awe and mortal terror of his father, the man who had united all
but five of the Kova'yin clans, the man who had formed the alliance with the
Downworlders.
He told me the thing a man never tells any but a cherished lover: his true
birth name.
I stood there two days later, in the room with both men, knowing I must choose,
even as I had given my body to the Kova'i whom I had barely known. The choice
was still mine.
My eyes went from man to man.
The pale-haired, pale-eyed nobleman; we had been pledged to each other since
childhood. I could be completely safe in the role promised to me since birth:
a woman of mediocre stature among the living gods.
The onyx-haired, gold-eyed Kova'i clan lord's son.
If I accepted this role, I would fall far, far from the heights promised to
me by my birthright. I would never sleep on a soft bed again, nor know most
of the comforts I have lived with most of my life. Even more, we know that such
a man cannot be served by one woman alone.
But I knew in the marrow of my bones that one day, the man whose bed I had
shared two nights before, would be lord of all the Kova'i. I imagined the remaining
clans falling before him: the Zhaidukhar, the Zhaikhara, the Zhodai, and all
of their underclans. It would not end there.
Choice. Such a rare thing for one of my sex. I revelled in it, wanted that
moment to last as long as possible, but finally my eyes locked with those of
the Kova'i clan lord's son.
He thought he was taking me, he was sullying the perfect white skin of a Kryt'thannu,
he was playing with the toys which belonged to another man. It must have thrilled
him to know he was winning me from a man far above him in station. It must have
thrilled him to be possessing me, his golden haired prize. It must have thrilled
him knowing that two nights before, I had come to his room and he had taken
the most prized thing a woman of my station can ever possess: the spot of blood
on those rough sheets.
I smiled inwardly, even as I sat in my silken robes pretending to be meek and
good, pretending to be the virgin he would take on our wedding night.
I smiled to myself because he cannot know the thrill I felt in letting him
believe these things.
He'll never know that when he slept, while it was dark, I found my knife, and
I pricked my finger.
I would pretend to have given him my maidenhead.
And he would pretend not to know I was pretending.
It is said that the Kova'i claim their brides, and perhaps he thinks, too,
that this is what happened. That he had seen my golden-haired head when meeting
with the grey-eyed man I was supposed to marry. That he had decided to possess
me right then and there.
He cannot know, does not know that I had meant to be in the room the day that
he had arrived.