by Megan Hart
Another set of lighted lines showed we'd reached a doorway. Daelyn didn't pause, just pulled at a niche set into the wood and the door opened. He ducked through. I hesitated long enough to make Lir poke my back to get me moving, but I waited a moment longer even than that.
I suspected something shocking lay within the room before me. Exactly what, I couldn't be sure, but I knew it had to be illegal and dangerous enough to make a prince seek it through a hidden passage. The trouble was, I couldn't envision anything so corrupt that the Prince Regent of Alyria would have to hide his participation in it.
My mind had danced with visions of witchcraft, sorcery, black-market slave trading. What I saw instead made the floor seem to fall out beneath me as I stepped through the door. I stopped, stunned into immobility. I heard a ringing in my ears and sparks fluttered in my vision; I'd forgotten, for a moment, to breathe.
I'd never seen so many women in one place. They draped themselves on stone benches around a warm, bubbling pool, and knelt on giant cushions in front of low tables piled high with delicacies. They lingered in doorways leading to rooms I couldn't see and leaned on stone walls hung with embroidered tapestries.
They were young, most of them, with slim, firm bodies and laughing, shining faces. I could see this because none of them wore a kedalya. In fact, most of them wore nothing at all.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I was completely unprepared for the sight of so many women unclothed...and so many men making love to them. I stumbled forward, not certain where to cast my eyes, and managed to trip over my own feet. I made a bumbling fool of myself, but I didn't fall. Everyone turned to look at me. Conversation ceased, then began again, the flutter and stutter of it like the sound of lambs bleating in a springtime field.
Women's voices, raised in normal tones, not hushed and deferential. Laughing. Teasing. Flirting.
"Have a drink. It might cool down the fire in your ears."
I refused the tankard. "I'm not thirsty."
His gaze sharpened. "I'm only trying to be nice –"
"You're mocking me." The words blurted out, but I felt better for having said them.
He looked to where Daelyn had already cast off his fur and was turning around to the ooh's and ahh's of admiration. When he looked back to me, his mouth had thinned in anger. "I'm not mocking you. You looked like you might faint. I thought you might like something to drink."
I shook my head. "No."
He shrugged, then downed the liquid in a few quick gulps. He held out the empty tankard, and a woman appeared to take it. I was used to women anticipating men's needs, but not like this. She simpered and held up her cheek for a kiss, which, to my surprise, Lir gladly gave. When she turned to take away his empty tankard, he palmed her naked buttocks and made her giggle.
"You act like you've never seen a naked woman before," he said.
"Sinder's Arrow, no!" Again, my mouth spoke before my mind could restrain it.
He ran a hand over his chin. "Daelyn thought you sympathetic to women, else he'd not have had you join us tonight."
"I don't think women deserve to be treated like animals," I said with as much dignity as I could manage. "But making love to one is different."
"I wasn't suggesting anything," Lir said. "Daelyn wanted you to come. You're here. How you choose to spend your evening is of no consequence to me."
With that, he left me. I stood, lost, in the center of a room filled with naked and near-naked people. Daelyn might have thought he was doing me a favor, but at that moment I would gladly have crawled under one of the large floor cushions and hid my face forever.
"Aeris, come, let me introduce you to some people." Daelyn appeared, his cheeks flushed and his lipstick already a smeared mess.
He linked his arm through mine and showed me off as his new fetchencarry. The men nodded at me without much interest, then turned back to the women draped on their laps. Daelyn tutted and pulled me toward a knot of women stretched out on warm benches heated by coal braziers beneath.
He turned me to face him, and stared seriously into my eyes. "You know what would happen if this were discovered. I don't need to tell you of the danger."
I wanted to ask him why he sought it, when he could have had any man in any of the provinces, but I held my tongue. "I understand, my prince."
He shook his head. "I don't think you do. There is a war beginning in Alyria. It's my hope it will not be a bloody one, but in war one can never tell."
"A war?" I was alarmed.
He dismissed me in his casual way. "Posters and pamphlets are nothing. There is more –"
Before he could continue, a young woman clad in a diaphanous nightrail sidled up to him and slid her hand along his waist. "I was hoping you'd come tonight."
"I was hoping I'd come tonight, too," Daelyn replied with a laugh at his own pun. Without another glance at me, he was off. "Find something to amuse yourself, Aeris."
Amuse myself? I was overwhelmed. I figured we were in a bathhouse, the only place in Alyria men were forbidden to go. It looked little different from the men's bathing houses but for the line of hooks along one wall holding a row of brown and black kedalyas, indistinguishable from one to the next.
I found a place to sit, alone, in a corner. The air in the room was heavy with warmth and moisture, but despite the casual nudity of nearly everyone else in the room, I did not dare even loosen my collar. Sweat beaded on my brow and dripped down the sides of my face, and it trickled down my spine to pool unpleasantly in the crack of my buttocks.
My stomach clenched with nervousness for a while, but nobody bothered me. I watched the men and women talking and laughing as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Couples paired off and left and came back later with rosy cheeks and satisfied smiles.
I grew brave enough to help myself to some food and drink, though I let the small rolled cigarettes alone. I'd never acquired a taste for herb, which was supposed to expand one's consciousness. It only made me sleepy.
"My name's Galya. What's yours?"
The young woman had sleek, cropped curls as dark as midnight, and merry brown eyes. Her teeth were white and evenly spaced inside parted ruby lips, and her skin was the color of tea. She held out her hand to me, and I took it without thinking. Her fingers were warm and calloused.
"I'm Aeris."
She smiled. "You're with Dae, yes?"
Her casual address of the Prince Regent took me aback. "I'm his fetchencarry."
She nodded and squeezed my fingers. "He sent me over here to take care of you."
"Oh, but I –" my protests cut off when she slid onto my lap.
I held her awkwardly. Her breasts pushed against my chest, and her skin was warm and soft beneath my palms. Galya touched my nose with the tip of her finger.
"This is your first time?"
I nodded, uncertain of what to do. My head spun at the scent of her, the feel of her, the sight of her face. If I passed her on the street I would never have known the curve of her smile.
"With a woman?"
I nodded again and felt heat paint my face.
"With anyone?"
Another nod and more heat.
She didn't laugh at me. Instead, she lifted my chin until I met her gaze. "I will take good care of you."
"No, I –"
She silenced me with a kiss. Her tongue slipped delicately between my lips. Startled, my hands clenched on her hips hard enough to make her squirm. She pulled away and looked puzzled.
"Please," I said, breathless. "I'm not...I don't..."
Galya blinked and spoke in a flat tone. "You don't like women."
I shook my head. "You wouldn't understand."
She tilted her head to look at me curiously. "You're afraid?"
I pushed her gently until she got up from my lap, and I stood. My heart was thudding so hard I was certain she could hear it. I swallowed, uncertain what to say. Her kiss had sent liquid fire shooting through my veins. My body responded...but my mind was b
alking.
"It's not easy to throw away everything you've been taught your entire life," I managed to say.
"And you were taught to love men." Galya gave me a sympathetic smile. "You have no idea what being with a woman could be like, Aeris. We're so much...softer."
"I can see that."
She reached for my hand, and I let her take it. "Men and women were created to find love with one another, no matter what you were taught."
But I was not a man. "I'm sorry, Galya. I can't."
She caressed the back of my hand. "Come with me and let me see if I can change your mind."
Against my better judgment I let her lead me away from the bathing room, down a short corridor lined with doors. I paused in front of one, caught by the sight of Daelyn, hair unbound to cascade over his face and shoulders. He knelt between the thighs of a woman seated on a soft, cushioned bench. The woman was naked, her head thrown back and face alight with ecstasy.
I stopped so short Galya had to yank my hand. I couldn't see exactly what Daelyn was doing, but the woman moaned and wriggled against him, and she murmured his name along with words of love that had my cheeks steaming. I thought of what Rosten had said in court, about the woman who'd demanded that act of her man...and now I understood how one could pleasure a woman.
As I watched, the woman lifted her hips and clutched at the bench. Her cry echoed throughout the small room. Her body bucked and shuddered until Daelyn had to reach for her hips to keep her still beneath him.
My breath caught in my throat at the sounds of her pleasure, so different from the grunts and groans men gave as they took theirs. Her voice was like music, her ecstasy a song. My body answered; my pulse throbbed in my throat and wrists, and in the spot between my legs I'd tried forever to ignore. My knees felt weak and an urge I couldn't identify swept through me. The weight of my codpiece rubbed at me in a way that made me want to shiver as though with fever, yet I knew I was not ill.
Galya peeped in the door, then tugged my hand harder. "Come on."
"Daelyn and that woman...."
She looked over her shoulder at me as she pulled me into another doorway. "Daelyn is the Prince Regent. He sleeps with whoever he pleases."
"Has he slept with you?"
She stopped and took her hand from mine to put it on her hips. "Is that any of your business?"
I'd never heard a woman speak to a man the way Galya did. As though she were my equal. I reacted without thinking, and grabbed her arm, tight, to shake her.
She slapped me across the face and yanked her arm from my grip. "That doesn't work here!"
I'd appalled myself. "I plead your mercy, Galya."
She sniffed. "There's one place in Alyria where women aren't treated worse than dogs. We may have to put on our follyblankets when we leave here, and we may have to grovel and labor for our men when we do, but here we are human beings. Just like you!"
Tears filled her brown eyes, and I bowed my head. "Galya, please forgive me."
She turned without speaking and went to a soft, cushioned bench, where she sat with her knees drawn up to her chest. "The men who come here are different. Everything you've been taught of how to behave, how to love, is different here."
"Why?" I crossed and sat next to her. "I don't understand. Why here? Why the risk?"
She laid her cheek on her knees. "I don't know. And I don't care. Out there, I live with a man who beats me if I don't bring him his breakfast fast enough. The same man passes me off to his neighbors once a month so as to maybe get a son from me, since he shoots dead seed. He has three women in his household, and he works us without mercy. I'd die rather than bear a daughter to take my place."
I slipped off my shoes and mimicked her position. "Not all men treat their women so poorly."
"But very few men don't. Even the ones who don't beat the women of their household offer them no affection, no respect, nothing more than the lowest care they'd give a beast in their stable. We're used to breed and cook and clean, to serve men, to work. We are not loved."
Her shoulders shook with weeping. Without thinking, I took her in my arms and held her, as my mother had held me. Her tears wet the front of my tunic. I stroked her hair. Galya put her arms around me and cried.
"I'm sorry," I said after awhile. "It's not fair."
She snuggled closer to me. "More men need to feel the way you do."
I wet my lips. Her face, streaked with tears, made me want to cry too. "I know."
She kissed me again, and I let her. When she ran her hands up my chest, though, I stopped her. She pulled away.
"I'm sorry, Galya. I can't."
"You don't think I'm pretty."
"I think you're lovely." I touched her short curls, then ran my hand along her jaw. "And brave. And kind."
Her white teeth bit at the ruby plumpness of her lips. "Then why not take what I can offer you?"
I was sore tempted, I'll admit. My body had been set to singing by her kisses. Yet Galya was right when she said men and women were created for loving each other. I was a woman, who wanted a man.
"I can't be your lover. But I'd be honored if I could be your friend."
She sighed and pouted, but pressed me no further. She got up from the bench. "I'll be your friend, Aeris. Here, at least. But think of this. If you should pass me on the street, would you even know who I am?"
I thought of her bright brown eyes, and I took her hand. "Galya, no matter how your face is covered, I swear I will know you."
"But you won't be able to acknowledge me," she said sadly, and for that I had no answer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
For the first time ever, I missed my morning training with Lir. The night before and my monthly flow had sapped my energy so severely I didn't even wake until the chimes had rung nine. I rose and bathed, changed the tightly rolled tube of rags, and dressed. I expected to find Daelyn still abed, but when I emerged from my privy chamber he was already awake.
He sat at his desk, a sheaf of papers before him and a pen in his hand. He'd rubbed at his forehead, and ink smudged his skin. Today he'd chosen his own clothes. Soft, comfortable fabrics and loose-fitting trousers. Slippers instead of the high-heeled shoes he preferred even in the privacy of his chambers. He'd pulled his hair back into a loose tail at the nape of his neck, and his face was clean save for the ink.
The remains of a breakfast lay on a tray by the door, and I rang for a folly to take it away. Daelyn continued to read and scribble. When the woman brought back the hot tea and oat cereal I'd asked for, I gobbled it to ready myself for when he needed me. Daelyn kept working.
At last he put down his pen with a sigh and rubbed at his eyes. He leaned back in his chair and rolled his head on his shoulders. I didn't wait for him to ask to massage his neck. He sighed again when my fingers began to work on the knots in his muscles.
"Damn that Book Monster to the Void," Daelyn said at last. "He's kept me busy all morning, going over his asinine proclamations and security measures. He's bulked up the border patrol. Now he wants permission to recruit more soldiers. Winter's going to bite us in the ass before we know it. Very few men in Alyria want to go tramping around in the snow and the cold, Aeris. He's not going to have many volunteers, which means he wants the right to conscript the men he needs. He's probably out there right now, pinching young men's arms to see if they have enough muscle to join his crew."
"Can't you stop him?" I smoothed his shoulders and pressed firmly on the tense places.
He let out a low groan. "He has the votes. The governing body is nervous about the escape and what it means for Alyria. I could stand against him at the loss of my credibility with my advisors. And really, what care I if he forces every single man in Alyria into his army? It won't help him."
I paused at his words, but his impatient snort got my fingers moving again. "No?"
He glanced at me over his shoulder. "Rosten sees insurrection and rebellion wherever he looks. He simply looks in the wrong places."
&nb
sp; I thought on what he said. Daelyn tapped my hands to stop the massage, then got up from the table. He rubbed again at his forehead.
"Are you in pain, my prince?"
"My head aches. Too much strain from reading Rosten's rambling verbosity." He rolled the now-dry papers together and tied them with a length of ribbon. "The man's a pompous monster whose joy at written discourse is second only to listening to himself speak. Fetch me a headache powder, will you?"