by S. K Munt
‘Why did you agree to it?’ I asked softly. ‘I know you love to leave the kingdom with him and travel… without his ‘friends’.’
She smiled demurely. ‘Because with both sons gone- I will be acting regent in their stead. Not only have I been waiting a very long time for that, but I’ll have the power to dismiss anyone who pisses me off without Elijah or Kohén here to overrule it.’
My eyebrows shot up, and I felt a thrill sweep through me. ‘I can piss you off!’
She smiled again. ‘Of that I am well aware. And because we’re getting along now, they won’t see it coming.’
‘What will I have to do?’
She picked up her necklace, and the canary-yellow stone blinked at me. ‘Steal a heart,’ she said softly, and mine sank. ‘Fitting, don’t you think?’
‘I’d be banished and branded as a thief?’ I asked, dismayed. ‘Everyone will despise me!’
‘Only the men in the family and Shep will know of the charge, and you’ll want them to think so little of you, won’t you? As in… to not trust you to be around jewels, or inside the harem again?’ She smiled, continuing. ‘But you won’t be branded and banished- for one, that’s something that must be made a public fact, and we cannot let it be known that one of our trained, angelic whores has been raised so poorly, and secondly- the necklace will go missing while you are around but it won’t be found on you- so I’ll dismiss you on suspicion of theft, but without proof that theft has occurred. So instead of having the grounds to banish you, you’d be sent off with the next convict Corps… the one heading to Pacifica on a new mission to Isthmus Island that very week.’ She grinned at my obvious delight. ‘And then a few years later, just after you are released from your service, I will find it amongst my own things, apologise- and bless your union with Kohl.’
I clapped my hands to my boiling hot face, impressed beyond measure. ‘You would do that for us?’ I asked, my eyes growing wet, my insides expanding to make room for this new surge of… ownership? Responsibility? God, if she did that for me, Kohl would replace Kohén as the boy who I saw every day, and as exciting a notion as that should have been, it was a heady prospect all the same. Kohl was so certain of us- as certain as Kohén had once been- but as deeply as I cared for him in return, my tummy rolled a little at the idea of jumping out of the fire and into a matching frying pan. Letter writing and occasional visits were one thing… but was I ready to see Kohl every day?
And would I see Kohl every day? Or would I see Kohén in his eyes and smile?
Okay breathe… she’s talking about December… that gives you four months yet to distance yourself further from Kohén and bury your feelings. Besides, Isthmus and Caldera are a day’s sail away from one another, so you won’t be seeing him that often, only sporadically, so you can handle that! In fact, the time between visits will probably be torturous!
The duchess smiled softly. ‘I was not yet completely sure, but seeing as you said ‘us,’ and not ‘we,’ Yes, Larkin, I will.’ She patted my hand then leaned back, as though she’d already hit her sentimental quota for the year in those few seconds. ‘But you must protect yourself until then, and help me keep things calm and that man from interfering.’ Her expression was insistent. ‘Avoid sin, Larkin, and do not present yourself as a temptation in any way. Do not call to her, do not be impatient and paranoid and do not antagonise Karol and Kohén further, or dwell in your misery… in fact, be kind to Karol, not sharp-tongued, so you don’t stir up his need to assert any sort of authority over you... try to look wounded rather than out for blood- and I will get you out of here.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re basically asking me to hide my personality as best as I can?’
‘Yes,’ she got to her feet and extended her hand to me. ‘Can you do that?’
I took her hand.
23.
I passed the early August days away by doing as I was told and laying low. I wrote to Lindy and Kohl, keeping the tone of the letters light so they wouldn’t sense my loneliness and so it wouldn’t cause a ripple of distress to tremble through my heart, across Calliel and to theirs. And I stopped counting jewellery on the girls- pretending like my eyes were as allergic to the sight of it as my skin was to the touch, and that little mind trick helped keep me calm in Kelia’s company- that and the fact that I kept my fist curled around the most valuable piece of jewellery in the kingdom- my wooden wave ring.
Four months, and I could be free, and with the version of Kohén who was not spoiled by indulgence...
As though he’d taken on his mother’s advice to me as well, Kohén became a ghost who could only occasionally be glimpsed on the grounds. He started running a lot along the perimeter fence, and surfing often in the freezing cold water, and the only time I saw him inside was if he was going down to the study to have a meeting with his father and other important nobles (which he’d started doing a LOT) or to the training room. I knew that he was preparing himself to kick my ass in the next examinations, but I refused to compete with anyone but myself and practiced my dancing in my room instead of seeking out a tutor with my curtains drawn, so that no one would sniff out my ambition.
Besides, according to the test results, I didn’t have nearly as much room to improve as he did, so why exhaust myself? Hadn’t I worked hard enough for no reason already? Didn’t I deserve the chance to relax and sulk and be a heartbroken seventeen-year-old for once?
It was a week before Karol had the nerve to approach me again, and even after he’d come to sit at my side in a bench seat in the courtyard and said: ‘Good afternoon, Larkin,’ it took me a full minute to work up a response.
‘Thank you for not filing a complaint against me with a Shepherd,’ I said softly, closing my book but keeping my eyes trained on the cover. It was hard not to spit on him, but the book I was reading was the biography of Arcadia’s most notorious criminal- a Shepherd who had once fought for the abolition of the drafted Companion caste. He’d made good progress, and could have very well have become a hero... except for the fact that the girl whose cause he was championing (a sweet, gentle soul who like Kelia, who had apparently withered into herself with fear at the idea of turning sixteen) was only thirteen years old when she admitted to being pregnant with the same Shepherd’s child.
Shepherd Birch was the only corrupt Shepherd that Calliel had ever known, but he had also been the most popular before he’d been caught, and apparently incredibly handsome to boot- which meant that he’d had far to fall, and he’d sadly taken the good Companion name down with him. Instead of winning hearts for God and freeing Elijah’s father’s underage courtesans-in-training, he’d been accused of approaching several of the girls, found guilty of impregnating the one, and branded with the glyph for sexual assault. Then, as a warning to others, the girl had been evicted from Elijah’s father’s harem and shipped off to New Rome with a prisoner Corps, and her ‘protector’ had been castrated and sent out into the Wildwoods.
It was a woeful tale and one that reminded me of how damn seriously my ‘position’ within Eden’s walls was taken, and of how much trouble I could get in if I didn’t learn to tow the line. I swallowed hard as I closed the book, knowing that I had to play this moment with Karol well. In fact, I had to play every moment until I got out of Eden like a hand of twos that I had to turn into a royal flush. Kohl and I could not be discovered. Actually no- we couldn’t even be suspected.
‘I am sorry that I shoved you… and punched you…’ I swallowed down the bile, which accompanied the next lie: ‘And I did not mean what I said.’
‘Yes you did.’ He tapped on the book. ‘You think I’m as evil as Bastien Birch.’
‘No I don’t.’ I sighed gently. ‘I did not mean that you have taken advantage of your girls with ill-intentions,’ I said softly. ‘I just mean… you are destroying things the way plucking a flower destroys a garden: innocently but self-indulgently.’
‘But people pick flowers on purpose,’ he said. ‘We don’t know that’s what we’re
doing when we select you, but you do know what you’re doing when you come to us, and I’m yet to have anyone scream in fright when they do, and you’re the only person who believes that anyone ought to. So I can’t help but feel if you’d lain with Kohén by now, you too would feel differently, and understand that you’re more to us, than a mere flower in a vase.’
No, I’m one of many flowers in a vase, and that’s the problem. I am Kohén’s companion, but who is mine? Nobody. They’ve either been taken from me, or have turned against me.
‘Just like I believe that if you were in my position, you’d feel trapped by the glass walls that you cannot see. They do not stifle you, they do not press you, they…’ I swallowed and shook my head, remembering the duchess’s caution. ‘Never mind. It’s pointless, us trying to see eye to eye here Karol, for you are too far above my viewpoint for that to be feasible.’ I glanced at him. ‘That’s my problem though; the inequality between us, and how that contradicts God’s wishes.’
‘But God asked Miguel Barachiel to-’
‘To guide us,’ I said softly, deciding that throwing God in his face a little wasn’t something that could be misconstrued as flirting or provocation. ‘But I’ve never read anything in the Books of Creation, which translates that to using any of us for your own benefit or as punishment. In fact, I don’t remember the words heir or hereditary, or monopoly over the human race being used either…’ I stared down at the book, thinking about the nameless Companion who had been impregnated by Bastien Birch. What had become of her and her baby? If all of this had happened in AA563, then that baby had to be at least eighty-one years old by now but very possibly, still alive. In fact, now that the average life-expectancy of a Callielian citizen was ninety-two and a lot of people were lucky enough to make it to one hundred and ten years-old, there was a good chance that even the mother was still alive and living somewhere in New Rome still.
I felt the heat of Karol’s gaze on my profile. ‘God didn’t quote our kingdom’s laws in his own tongue, no- he didn’t have the time to. But we do know that he was against shaming women like Gabriella, and that he understood Miguel’s urges… and you should know better than anyone that the laws were set down in the hopes of creating a eudaemonist system, and that they restrict men almost as much-’
‘Almost as much as they restrict women,’ I said, more softly still. ‘Yet not equally.’ I looked at him at last, and my lip curled slightly in a rueful smile. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I still couldn’t let go of the hope of making him understand. The duchess swore that he was good or at least strove to be, and I myself had seen evidence of his logical thinking and good humour in the past… so was it impossible for me to convince him that what he was doing was wrong? ‘The male companion caste is voluntary, Karol- ours is forced. Women are ordered to take birth control, and yet nothing is offered to men until they are considered to be too old to father children and are moved to Rachiel. The Barachiel’s have had nine generations of kings, but not a single queen, and for a Barachiel marriage or Joining to take place, the female must be a virgin, but the male is expected to have experienced a harem’s worth of sexual exploration first.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me that’s equal.’ I hugged the book to my chest. ‘Tell me that if by some chance you have a powerful Nephilim daughter, she will be guaranteed a seraglio full of third-born sons of her own rather than married off young and virginal and most likely against her will.’
He frowned at me. ‘It’s assumed that a Barachiel princess would have a harem of her own- it just hasn’t happened yet.’
I leaned closer to him, locking my eyes on his. ‘I’m not asking about what’s assumed,’ I said pointedly. ‘I’m asking you to convince me that it will happen, and that the law won’t conveniently be changed in the name of protecting her before her fifth birthday arrives. Or that she won’t be forced to overcome her own urges, as Kohl has, in order to guard her royal womb.’
Karol stared back at me, and I saw a flicker of uncertainty behind his eyes and I knew that he didn’t see himself forcing birth control down his daughter’s throat so that she could have sex with multiple partners either. Hope brightened inside me, rising like a flame lifted by a fresh burst of oxygen- hope that I might get through to one of the perfect Barachiel creatures before it was too late for the next generation of Given girls.
Come on, come on… open your mind and the harem door!
But then Karol dropped his gaze to my lips and the heat of his stare- his prevalent, glowing green need was so bright in the facets of his emerald eyes that I sucked in a breath, snapping him out of his stupor just as he began to lean in.
‘Hell…’ I bemoaned under my breath, turning my face away just as his shimmering fingertips lifted to stroke my cheek- to rake me forward. I heard him groan in exasperation- what I prayed was exasperation with himself and not with me. ‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying-’
‘Larkin, I’m sorry,’ he caught my hand as I rose, and I felt his soothing energy throb though my palm, seeking entrance into my heart and mind, but I broke the contact and shook my head, not deigning to look back at him.
Stupid, stupid! I promised the duchess that I could avoid these kinds of encounters and yet, here I am, baiting a shark and having him distend his jaws for my trouble!
‘No, you just proved my point,’ I said woodenly, wanting to cry. ‘Kissing you could get me whipped and yet… yet you keep…’ I looked up at the sky above Eden’s awnings, blinking back the tears. ‘I’m not a person to you, your highness; I’m someone you’d like to snack on until the time comes for you to sink your teeth into a worthy, first-born, three course bride. It’s a biased way of thinking and an archaic one, and yet our kingdom’s laws support it, so how can someone as educated as you wonder why it’s upsetting to a girl like me?’ I tugged my hand free and hugged the book closer to my chest, knowing that my grip on it was the only thing preventing me from clawing his blind eyes out. ‘How can it surprise you at all, that I’ve come to hate the God who you claim supports my despair?’
I heard Karol breathe in sharply. ‘You can’t mean-’
‘And yet, I do,’ I said coldly, and began to walk away, shaking a little. Every time I said out loud that I was losing love for God, I began to believe it a little more, and grew that little bit more afraid of myself- of the potential evil that was lying dormant in my bloodstream.
‘You’re not going to fall, Larkin!’ Karol called after me but to my relief, did not give chase. ‘Our family won’t allow that to happen! You are too clever and ambitious, and mean too much to us-’
‘And the others?’ I whirled back and faced him across the courtyard, Miguel Barachiel’s cottage providing a scenic backdrop to our unhappy exchange. Idly, I wondered when that cabin- once so dear to Miguel- had become inadequate, for I knew they’d broken ground on it long before his death. Had he built himself palace because his family had expanded? Or because his sense of self-importance had? And most importantly, when had they put up walls to keep the ones deemed unequal out?
Karol’s brows pulled together. ‘What?’
I sighed and gestured inside. ‘The other girls? My equals?’ I was thinking of course, about the duchess’s escape plan, and the fact that it would help only me. ‘They’ve already fallen, Karol. Where was your family then?’ Tears formed in my eyes, blurring him. ‘Where was God when they were in need of assistance? Where is God right now, while kids as smart as I am are toiling away in mines, or sifting through wreckage?’ I held up my fingers and wriggled them. ‘Their brains are shrivelling up as their hands are, and yet here I am, getting expensive manicures that I don’t want while they live on rations! How is that right?’
Karol looked perplexed, even through my unfocused gaze. ‘Is it not enough that I’ve done all you’ve asked of me thus far? Must I save the entire fucking world in order to prove God’s existence and my-’
‘No, you don’t have to save anything, or anyone,’ I said honestly, holding up my book.
‘I’ve been reading books for happy endings and heroes, your highness, and they have softened the blow of reality for me enough for me to endure it and the manicures too. All I ask of you, is that you not try and convince me that my reality could feel like a fairy tale if I’d only succumb to your charms and turn a blind-eye to the equality lie.’
Karol took a step closer. ‘But that book doesn’t have a happy ending, little swan, and it’s a biography- not a fairy tale.’
‘I know,’ I smiled sadly. ‘Like you said: I’ll be eighteen soon, and it’s time that I grew up and faced facts…’ I tapped the book. ‘This is an Eden whore’s fairy tale... and you wanna know why?’
He didn’t look like he did, but with a pinched expression he said: ‘Why?’
I smiled and threw the book to the ground. ‘Because at least she got to know what it was like to have life growing inside her, if only for a minute. At least for one second- she got to be someone’s everything, which is a fate that no other Companion will ever know.’ I turned and began to walk away, but I’d only taken two steps before I remembered that the way I was lifting my chin was proud, and that I wasn’t supposed to antagonise him, so I dropped my chin back to my chest and settled for looking pathetic, rather than like I’d had the last word. It was fortunate that I did too, for I caught the scent of Kohén’s aftershave the moment I walked through the courtyard doors.
‘Larkin,’ he said coldly as he passed me by.