Fic: (Narnia) Poleis 2/?
Title: Poleis
Author: Corbeaun
Fandom: Narnia
Summary: Eunuchs, male bonding, and the selling off of a queen. The Pevensies and imperial intrigue in the Calormen city of Tashbaan during the events of the Horse and His Boy.
Previous: Poleis - Part 1
Poleis
2
Of the life before he was sold, Muti has vague memories of hard, calloused hands that cradled him to sleep and the sting of a cooking fire too close to sleeping quarters. He remembers the biting pain of an empty belly the winter before he was sold. So many years later, he cannot even remember if it was a man or woman that first took him from the village that long ago winter day. He thinks back on his first impression of Tashbaan and it is only a riot of smell and color and pain as the slave-trader’s heavy hands held him down on the cutting block.
Of his first owner, he remembers the bristly rasp of the beard and the sweetmeats offered after. It lasted till he began to grow and then he was quickly sold. His second owner was a woman, who had a maternal smile and soft touch and Muti thought he could love her, ‘til the day she gifted him to a friend on a whim. Of his third owner, he remembers only perfumed hair and fat, bejeweled fingers that pinched and pulled. His fourth owner was kind but helpless against his rich and powerful wife.
His fifth owner is a barbarian and an unbeliever.
The sorcerous king of a wild land in the north, so Muti learns in the days after. He sees with his own eyes the half-beast half-man creatures that prance through his new master’s quarters, and he hears with his own ears the human voices coming from inhuman throats. Half-goats and talking birds, such guises as demons wear to taunt children in dreams. It is no more unbelievable than the men who are beardless like women or eunuchs, and walk shamelessly in public without covering the bare skin of their legs-a disgrace not suffered by even the cheapest whore in the Ivory Quarter. The women are man-like in their movements and not even the highborn among them veil their faces before strange men-not even his master’s sister-wife.
“The Queen Susan will not be pleased,” a pale-faced barbarian lord had said to his master the king when his master had brought him back to his living quarters. And indeed she was not. Muti knew enough of jealous and powerful wives to be uneasy, and he had taken care to only show submission in his body when the queen came to scrutinize him with a hard eye. That she is both sister and queen surprised him little, for the temple teachers often warn against the perversities of the northern lands, and it only troubles him for the influence he know this relation would mean she has over his new master.
He disliked her cold hard stare and her white face. She did not touch him, and for that he was glad. She left together with his new master, saying nothing, but later when the notice came for Muti to live in the common slaves quarter, he knew whose hand had penned it. It was little consolation to remember that this disgrace is preferable to the cutting block.
Muti only hopes his new master sells him before, rather than after, leaving civilized Calormen for his wild Northern kingdom.
TBC
Author: Corbeaun
Fandom: Narnia
Summary: Eunuchs, male bonding, and the selling off of a queen. The Pevensies and imperial intrigue in the Calormen city of Tashbaan during the events of the Horse and His Boy.
Previous: Poleis - Part 1
Poleis
2
Of the life before he was sold, Muti has vague memories of hard, calloused hands that cradled him to sleep and the sting of a cooking fire too close to sleeping quarters. He remembers the biting pain of an empty belly the winter before he was sold. So many years later, he cannot even remember if it was a man or woman that first took him from the village that long ago winter day. He thinks back on his first impression of Tashbaan and it is only a riot of smell and color and pain as the slave-trader’s heavy hands held him down on the cutting block.
Of his first owner, he remembers the bristly rasp of the beard and the sweetmeats offered after. It lasted till he began to grow and then he was quickly sold. His second owner was a woman, who had a maternal smile and soft touch and Muti thought he could love her, ‘til the day she gifted him to a friend on a whim. Of his third owner, he remembers only perfumed hair and fat, bejeweled fingers that pinched and pulled. His fourth owner was kind but helpless against his rich and powerful wife.
His fifth owner is a barbarian and an unbeliever.
The sorcerous king of a wild land in the north, so Muti learns in the days after. He sees with his own eyes the half-beast half-man creatures that prance through his new master’s quarters, and he hears with his own ears the human voices coming from inhuman throats. Half-goats and talking birds, such guises as demons wear to taunt children in dreams. It is no more unbelievable than the men who are beardless like women or eunuchs, and walk shamelessly in public without covering the bare skin of their legs-a disgrace not suffered by even the cheapest whore in the Ivory Quarter. The women are man-like in their movements and not even the highborn among them veil their faces before strange men-not even his master’s sister-wife.
“The Queen Susan will not be pleased,” a pale-faced barbarian lord had said to his master the king when his master had brought him back to his living quarters. And indeed she was not. Muti knew enough of jealous and powerful wives to be uneasy, and he had taken care to only show submission in his body when the queen came to scrutinize him with a hard eye. That she is both sister and queen surprised him little, for the temple teachers often warn against the perversities of the northern lands, and it only troubles him for the influence he know this relation would mean she has over his new master.
He disliked her cold hard stare and her white face. She did not touch him, and for that he was glad. She left together with his new master, saying nothing, but later when the notice came for Muti to live in the common slaves quarter, he knew whose hand had penned it. It was little consolation to remember that this disgrace is preferable to the cutting block.
Muti only hopes his new master sells him before, rather than after, leaving civilized Calormen for his wild Northern kingdom.
TBC