by Susie Mander
Drayk pulls away. His face is creased. “Verne, I must tell you something.”
I wait for him to continue.
He starts reluctantly, glancing at me the way my father glances at my mother, hoping for my approval, anticipating my wrath. “I want you to know, when I was a young man, before your mother let me join her personal guard…things were different. I was not the man I am today. Your mother led me to believe that I needed her, that I was indebted to her for my food, my shelter, my education.”
“She has that power over most of us.”
“Your mother manipulated me.”
I want to probe him further, to demand clarity, but I accept this morsel of information and cherish it, believing that in time he will give me more. He takes my hand and I am surprised by the strength of his grip.
“I want you to know that I would never hurt or betray you—never. I wanted to leave Tibuta but on my twentieth Name Day I realised who I was and I knew I was in a unique position to influence your mother, to help her tap the knowledge of the ages, my accumulated knowledge, to bring peace to Longfield, to stop the Tempest. Even then I had my doubts she would listen to me. I could have left. But you were born and as you grew I saw more potential in you than in any other monarch I had come across in all my thousand years.”
I listen attentively, holding my tongue when I want to interrupt because to do so would break the spell.
Drayk paces in front of me. “Before I came to Tibuta I longed to find others who were like me. For some hundred years I dedicated myself to tracking them down. One was corrupt. He used his immortality to accumulate riches, which he hid in a vast network of tunnels beneath a mountain. Another became an Ooruk monk and worshipped atop Mount Atha, waiting for the gate to open. I joined him for a time but became impatient when, after many lives, the gate remained shut.” He laughs bitterly, stroking his short beard. “I realised it was better to commit my life to humanity than live in false hope on a mountain.” He stops to look at me and I feel I could break under the intensity of his gaze. “Of course I wanted the gates to the Elysian Fields to open like everyone else, this is the only path to my freedom, but I realised there were other ways to wait, different stories to follow…” He takes my hand. “Verne, none of the immortals I came across in my travels were as passionate as you. They were distracted by greed and envy. None could see the value in committing their lives to a higher purpose, to pursuing something bigger than themselves, to putting their own happiness aside in the pursuit of something so magnificent, so awe-inspiring it could change the very course of history. You refuse to sit atop a mountain waiting. This is what sets you apart. You see what must be done and you do it. This is why I love you.”
I whisper, “I love you too.” Energy pulses between us. I am frightened by the earnest expression on his face.
“When you were young I promised to stay with you because I saw your potential. More than anything I want to be able to stay with you now. You know I have dedicated my life to serving Tibuta and House Golding. I have only a few more years to give before I am reborn elsewhere. I want to give them to you, Verne, before it is too late.”
He brings his hands to the back of his neck. “I have wanted to give you this for some time.” He holds out his amulet. “I love you. And what pain it causes me, what blissful release, after so many years, so many lives!” He pauses. “I love you, Verne. Not your body, though it is magnificent, not your beauty, but your mind. I love you for your wisdom, for what you have already done and for what you are going to achieve. I want to give myself to you.”
I am speechless. My body is alert, fearing danger, a trap, but also coursing with hot energy that pounds in my heart. He holds out a hand lined with the passage of time, each wrinkle a testament to his experience, each callus proof of his hard work. In the centre of his palm is a red stone no bigger than a pea. It swirls with his life force, red and grey storm clouds entrapped in a tiny bead. The gem is secured in a silver gallery on a leather thong.
“Your serpent stone?”
“I offer it to you as a symbol of my loyalty. Take it and know that whatever happens I love you.” I reach out and run my finger over the stone. It is hot to touch and pulses as if alive. “If anything happens, I will be reborn beside you. Nothing can come between us.”
I experience a sinking despair, as if the door of a cage has clanged shut. Yet Drayk’s youthful joy is contagious and I grin through moist eyes. He secures the stone around my neck with trembling hands.
Before I can change my mind I stand on tiptoe and place my lips against his. I run my fingers down his right ear to squeeze his earlobe in a gesture Tibuta women use to claim a man.
“You will not regret this. Trust me,” he says, kissing me.
I have heard that on the mainland a woman is expected to wait. She is expected to feign chastity and deny herself pleasure for the sake of…I am not entirely sure what. A man’s pleasure, perhaps? To maintain a contradiction? This is not the case in Tibuta. Rather, our society holds that a woman is entitled to just about whatever she pleases, that her delight only intensifies that felt by her companion. So why wait?
I skip across the mosaic tiles once the door to my suite is closed behind us. Drayk takes my hand and pulls me to him. We laugh. I run. He chases. We fumble. He sits on the edge of the bed and removes his sandals, slowly unlacing the leather thong and unwrapping it from around his firm calves. I watch him the way one might watch a foreign creature in a zoo then laugh and remove my own shoes, kicking them across the room.
We lie facing each other, knees and noses touching. “I could stare at you forever,” I whisper, losing myself in his grey eyes. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. Our lips meet.
“Six years,” he says, rolling on top of me.
I groan in despair. “It’s not enough.”
Pinned beneath his weight, I hold my hand against his chest, partly to keep him at bay, partly to feel the strength of him against me. Admiring his crumpled uniform, I am aware of everything, alert like a hunting owl: my face in the straw of his hair, his tongue in the indentation of my throat. The taste of his finger in my mouth as he guides his tongue inside me. He takes hold of each of my fingers and sucks, his teasing eyes trained on my face.
I pull his shirt over his head and I trace the bronzed and freckled scar over his heart. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, looking deep into his eyes. “No one should ever be allowed to hurt you.”
He runs the tip of his finger along the neckline of my dress and between my breasts, sending ripples down my spine. “I’m not hurt.”
Drayk pushes my sleeves down and kisses the tops of my shoulders, his breath hot against my skin. He pulls the peplos to my waist revealing my tiny breasts. “Heritia you are beautiful,” he says and I am emboldened. I pull his head to my chest. His kisses are firm, making me groan. He works down my body with a skill afforded him by hundreds of year’s practice.
When he reaches my bellybutton I shudder in anticipation. I undo his belt buckle and help him out of his pants. His head disappears between my legs and makes a tent of my peplos. The distant ceiling is a blur.
A lark begins its melancholic morning song and Drayk reappears. “Is that the morning already?”
I laugh, take his head between my hands and pull him up to lick his face. My desire is living and breathing. It must be fed. I arch into him, gripping the side of the bed, my knuckles turning white.
He enters me slowly, gently, and holds me close until the pain is replaced with brilliant pleasure.
With eyes shut, I search for the gods and I find them hovering above the bed. We reach out to one another—the gods and me—our fingertips almost touching. I grope for them, pleading with them to let me touch them. Please. I feel exultant joy as I come closer and closer. Then it happens. The gods take my hand and pull me forward, out of the bed and into the air. A violent ecstasy shakes my entire being. Then they release me and I am with Drayk again, disorientated, grinning like a fool.
I feel no shame. Shame is an emotion saved for women of the mainland who do not realise that our pleasure is the gods’ gift. It is the greatest expression of their love.
Chapter fifteen
I dream of my parents. My father lies beside the queen in the sticky morning heat. “I don’t know, Ashaylah,” he says, wafting the sheets to send a cool breeze over his frail naked body. “Are you sure you want to let the prince choose? What if he picks Adelpha? Anyway, no man of Whyte will let a woman rule. It is not their way.”
“Precisely,” says my mother. She leans over and rings a gold handbell.
I lie with my hands behind my head, staring at the canopy above. The residue of my dream recedes from my mind but the memory of last night is there to be relived, pure bliss, over and over again. It is as though my whole body throbs with the knowledge that Drayk loves me and with that love I could do anything.
Love is like that. It is capable of reducing our whole existence to a few moments, a few meaningless interactions, physical sensations, urges.
My immortal stirs beside me. I curl up against his back and breathe him in. I want to lie like this forever but—I wake with a start. Harryet. Ried. My mother’s threat. I push the sheet aside, throw a himation over my dress, and go looking for Bolt.
Bolt—predictable, reliable Bolt—is in the hallway. His eyes plead with me and I wonder, as I have often wondered, what he would say if he could speak, what secrets he would reveal. I ask him to prepare a littler. “Harryet is to travel to Caspius and, if it is not disagreeable to you, I would ask you to go with her.”
He grins and nods.
“So you will go?”
He nods more enthusiastically.
“You must take good care of her. She is very important to me. But then she is very important to you too, isn’t she?”
More grinning. More nodding.
I throw my arms around the war-wit’s goose-white neck. Startled, he rests his hands lightly against my back. “You are important to me too. I will miss you.”
A cough along the hallway makes us turn. “Is somebody there?” I say, peering along the hallway which goes on and on until it reaches a vanishing point in the distance. There are no shadows on the chequered floor. Every door of the east terrace is shut.
Bolt reaches for his throwing knives. There is a gentle chuckle, the sound of bare feet on marble then a pause. Laughter, like water rushing over stones, comes from a spot by Bolt’s ear. The war-wit waves his knives around like he is swatting a fly. We are still for a moment. A tap on my left shoulder makes me spin left. My cousin shimmers into view on my right. “Got you! You should have seen your face,” he says with a wicked grin.
Gently scolding him, I turn him towards my door. “Get inside before somebody sees you.” He enters obediently and I follow, looking back at Bolt with arched eyebrows.
We sit facing one another. My cousin’s sullen expression has been replaced by budding optimism. He is full of energy, positive energy, the sort that makes it impossible to sit still. I suspect it is because he has been given a purpose. A man without a purpose remains half asleep, his potential lying in wait, disintegrating. My cousin is stirring.
“What can you tell me?” I say, clasping my hands in front of me.
“You wouldn’t believe it, your mother intends to let the prince of Whyte pick between you and your new sister,” he says.
“I know.”
Chase frowns, wiping a blond curl out of his eye. “How could you possibly know? I was just listening to them. They were still in bed only a moment ago.”
I wave his question away. “My mother mentioned it. What else can you tell me?”
“Did you know she only intends to let him pick between you because whoever he chooses will have to leave Tibuta for the Dual Kingdom? She assumes you or Adelpha will be too busy giving the prince children to contest her. Once she has what she needs she will deny the prince the throne and turn Petra against his soldiers. There are only a few hundred. That way Tibuta will remain hers.”
“And the daughter he rejects?”
Chase looks apologetic. “She seemed confident the prince would choose Adelpha.”
“Yes but did you hear her say whether she would name me as her successor?”
He nods eagerly. “She said after what you’ve done…she would rather see you dead.”
Harryet enters my solar as she has done almost every morning since she began as my lady-in-waiting seven years ago. She has her hair tucked up beneath a scarf, functional and elegant as always. Her hands are piled with my clean clothes and she speaks as if we are alone. “I will lay out your finest peplos and run you a bath—” Seeing Chase she stops. She puts my clothes down on the armrest very slowly.
“It’s all right, Harry. I invited him in.”
Chase grins at her. “Hello.”
“Hello,” she says, eyeing him suspiciously.
A moment later Drayk escapes my bedroom like some oversized bear. Harryet’s eyes go wide. “Excuse me: I did not realise. Should I…?”
“Stay,” I say.
“Harryet,” Drayk says, nodding at my friend. He looks at my cousin. “What is he doing here?”
“I invited him.”
Chase crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s right.”
“Everyone sit,” I say and Harryet pulls up an armchair. Drayk sits beside Chase on the kline, keeping as much distance between them as he can. I tell them what I have learned from my new spy and they accept it with a nod. Turning to Harryet, I say, “Have you had any word from Ried?”
“None.”
I try to hide the true extent of my worry. “It’s not safe for us here anymore. You must leave immediately. I am sorry, Harry.”
“Now?” It is her eyes I will always remember: big, pleading.
“There is no time.”
“Can I say goodbye to my friends? To Cook at least?”
“They must not know. Not until I have a chance to escape the palace.”
Harryet nods. “All right.” Her tender reasoning and her absolute faith are two flexible, springy branches despite my attempt to snap them.
“You will have Bolt with you. There is nothing to be afraid of,” I say.
“That is some comfort,” she says and we stand watching each other, not knowing what to say.
I finally break the tension. “I will help you pack.” Drayk leaves us to make the final preparations for Harryet’s departure. Chase hovers, waiting for further instructions.
“Chase, you are to go wherever the queen goes. Tell me everything you learn.”
He grins, makes an exaggerated bow and says, “As you wish.” He does not grasp the gravity of the situation or if he does, chooses to ignore it.
I take Harryet by the hand and lead her into my room.
I remember a time when Harryet and I were young, before we were aware of the responsibilities that would shackle me to this life. We would lie awake in my bed for hours, exhausted but unwilling to give in to sleep. We wanted to test our endurance. The longer we remained awake, the stronger our friendship would be. Each moment we shared, each secret whispered beneath the bedcovers was proof that we would be friends forever.
But forever is a long time. As far as I am aware, there are no such absolutes, only the conditional grey space between black and white, a place where I have chosen to walk, balancing good and evil, remaining both here and there.
I dress my friend slowly, labouring over each detail, hoping to prolong our time together. I wrap her body in a square of yellow silk, which I tie at the shoulders, and encircle her waist with a gold band. I encourage her to sit in my chair so I can braid her hair with painstaking care, pinning it up in a crown around her head. I want to indulge in every part of her. I cannot help myself. It is like preparing for death.
We exit via the service stairs. A small door in the side of the east terrace deposits us at the back of the apartments on a grassy mound, where Bolt and a palanquin are waiting.
“Goodbye, my dear friend,” I whisper, holding the curtain back so Harryet can step gracefully into the confined compartment and settle herself among the silk pillows like a canary in a cage. I realise she is crying. Each tear is a silent accusation and I have to look away. Bolt swings in beside her and takes her hand. I smile sadly at my war-wit. “Take good care of her.”
The fleets call to one another in a language punctuated by clicks and hisses and on the count of three they lift the heavy beams onto their shoulders. Their lean muscles bulge under the weight and in the heat the white paint that covers them head-to-toe peels, revealing orange, hairless skin. Harryet pokes her head out from the curtain; I wave goodbye to my friend.
The paths are alive with dull-eyed servants coming and going. They trail twig brooms as they race towards the ballroom to sweep away the muck. Others push barrows of dry seaweed, which they lay over churned earth that is already drying in the indifferent heat. Guests who spent the night curled up under the tables wipe the sleep from their eyes, call for their servants and stumble home. With all the hullabaloo no one even notices Harryet’s departure.
Three royal palanquins sit in the Upper Ward on the lawn beyond the gardens like black toads. Fleets stand at each corner waiting to lift us onto their shoulders. They look bored, their attention focused on the horizon as if they await a miraculous being that will pluck them from this place and save them from tyranny.
Petra has raised two units from a drunken stupor and the hundred soldiers stand in rows of ten with their helmets in place, their spears raised. I imagine their heads pounding in the sun and bile burning in their throats from hour upon hour of drinking at Adelpha’s ball, each trying to outmatch her companion, none realising that oblivion is no proof of virility but a demonstration of powerlessness.