One room had a tangle of vines that crawled up the walls, and in another room all the trees wore long beards of moss. One small room was devoted entirely to cacti. Birds and butterflies lived in the conservatory, the latter fluttering around the flowers while the former sang high above them. Here and there she glimpsed vividly colored wings.
“I already love it here,” Grau said. “And I’ve learned more in one day than an entire book could teach me. Look at this one.” He brushed his hand against a plant and all the open leaves shut at his touch. “They use this plant in defense spells and also spells that make people go into convulsions.”
“I can tell this is a much better fit for you than the border patrol.”
“Much.” He brushed his fingers across a wide leaf with small spines on the edges. “This one isn’t blooming now, but the flowers make a spell that quenches thirst on long journeys with just a few drops.”
He went on, showing her other plants. She was not quite as fascinated by the spells they could create, but she loved to look at them, each one so different from the last.
He picked one of the flowers, deep purple with very pointed petals, and tucked the stem above her ear. “I’m not supposed to pick them,” he admitted. “But we’ll bring one back for the table, to show Sorla.”
“I’m sorry about Sorla… I didn’t know she was so young.”
He shook his head and moved to kiss her when, in the depths of the conservatory’s many rooms, they heard a crash and commotion. Some terrifying animal scream ripped through the air.
Grau held out his crystal and gripped Velsa’s hand, edging toward the nearest door.
Something was moving through the rooms. By the heavy patter of four feet, it sounded like an animal. A dog? Or—
A large spotted cat ran into the room, its body hunkered low, tail swishing dangerously. It regarded them with golden eyes. A leopard, Velsa thought, recalling a book of animals she had read often. But they didn’t live anywhere around here. She supposed if Nalim Ima could have a conservatory of exotic plants, they might also have animals.
The leopard growled at them, baring its teeth. In one leap it could be on them. Grau didn’t move, but his hand was sweating around hers.
But the cat was terrified and confused. Velsa sensed this, but its body language already conveyed fear.
She reached out to the animal, hoping to calm it down, but drew back when she met unusual intelligence.
The leopard seemed to panic at Velsa’s telepathic probing, even gentle as it was. It leapt into the nearest group of plants and began easily climbing one of the trees. In another moment, it was hunched in a branch above their heads. They both looked up at the golden eyes staring down, the tail still swishing.
“Magic,” Grau whispered. He shifted his crystal to the hand that held hers, so it was between their palms and she could tap into its power too. She was not skilled at sorcery like Grau, but physical contact with the crystal allowed her to feel magic around her—and sometimes even see it, like an aura.
The cat had a faint angry glow, sparks of red and gold dancing around it.
“It’s an enchantment,” Grau said. “Or a curse. I think—it might be a person.”
“A person?”
“Do you think someone was here late experimenting and a spell went wrong?”
The way the leopard looked at her was very human. “What spell?” she asked. “Could it really be a person?”
Grau held out his hand. “Do you understand me?” he asked. “Can you come down from there? Maybe I can help you.”
She didn’t expect this to have any effect, but to her astonishment, after blinking at Grau, the leopard turned and climbed halfway down the trunk of the tree, jumping the rest of the way, back into the plants. Its face peered out warily.
Grau showed the crystal to the leopard. “I have a crystal to help strengthen sorcery.”
When the animal remained still and cautious, Grau took a few steps back and lowered to a crouch. Velsa followed his lead, staying a step behind him.
Carefully, the cat leapt down from the plants and walked toward him. It was relaxing now; the tail was low and calm. The cat bowed its head slightly as it approached, and Grau dared to touch it between the ears.
He pressed the crystal to the cat’s head. It flinched back, letting out another soft growl. Grau flinched too, like he thought it might attack, but he kept the crystal in place. Slowly, now, with minute changes of posture, he seemed to assert himself over the cat. His eyes were focused, his jaw set, and as the cat eased its body to the ground, Grau now put his hands around the cat’s face, still holding the crystal to its skin.
The cat began to shiver violently.
Velsa hoped Grau knew what he was doing.
The shivering body spasmed. The cat raked a paw across Grau’s knee, and he jumped back—but his pants were slashed to ribbons in that spot, blood blooming on the fabric.
“It’s not bad,” he told Velsa hurriedly, pulling her away from the cat.
It was helpless now, writhing on the floor, neck thrashing, tail snaking back and forth, four great paws bending at wrong angles.
The cat was changing before their eyes. Bones shifted, fur melted away. It was almost too strange and too gruesome to watch, and yet Velsa couldn’t take her eyes off the sight. The cat let out a very human moan as the paws shrank into hands with fingers splayed wide, and the shape of its body shifted into breasts and curves.
In another moment, it was over, and a girl remained, drenched in sweat, limp on the floor.
It was Irik, the foreign princess, now naked and letting out a few whimpering sounds.
Velsa could hardly bear to see such a regal girl reduced to a quivering ball of pain. She pulled off her cloak and dropped it over Irik’s body.
“Don’t touch me!” Irik snapped.
“I won’t—I won’t. I’m just covering you up.”
“I need the medicine…”
“What medicine?” Grau asked.
The Peacock General limped into the doorway. A bandage tied around his leg showed that Grau was not the first victim of Irik’s claws. He moved faster when he saw her.
“You two shouldn’t be here,” he told Grau.
“I apologize, sir, Professor Belzin told me I could come anytime.”
“That’s—true. I just didn’t expect anyone would take him up on that offer so late in the evening.”
He crouched in front of Irik and pulled her head onto his lap. She screamed when he touched her.
“Calm down, Princess, I’ve got your potion,” he said.
Once she saw him take the bottle from his pocket she reached for it instead, gulping it down.
Velsa had a slew of questions she was dying to ask, but the Peacock General had dismissed them, and so Grau led the way right for the door. Velsa’s cloak was left behind.
“What on earth,” Grau said, once they were outside again. “I never thought I’d see shape-shifting like that. I’ve heard there are people capable of it in some of the southern kingdoms, but to tell the truth I wasn’t sure, beyond the Drai royalty—and that’s thanks to dragon magic, not our sorcery.”
“I hope she’s all right,” Velsa said. “I’m not sure she wants to be here.”
“I do wonder what the point of all that was. Maybe they were just testing her powers.”
When they returned home, Sorla was fast asleep on their bed.
“Poor girl,” Grau said. “She looks exhausted.” He left her undisturbed.
While Grau was making one cup of herbal tea to warm himself up before bed, Sorla immediately rushed out of their room.
“I’m so sorry, sir and miss, I didn’t mean to sleep through your return.”
“It’s all right,” Velsa said. She gave Sorla one of the pillows from the bed, and a spare sheet stocked in the cupboard. “I’m sorry I can’t spare a blanket. Grau gets cold. But at least you won’t have to sleep right on the bare floor.”
“It’s nice and warm
here by the stove,” Sorla said. “Thank you…” She didn’t meet Velsa’s eyes, and her voice was a little ragged.
Velsa understood. Sorla was afraid to trust their kindness. She knew it would be over soon.
Grau and Velsa went to the bedroom. Grau inspected the slashes on his knee and put some healing balm on them, followed by a bandage. They climbed into bed and he gathered her small body up beneath him, stroking her thighs. Since the first night they had sex, they had continued to do so every night after, except for his patrol stint when they had no privacy. It was unspoken by now. On any given day, she didn’t feel quite fulfilled or complete until they made love.
He treated her like a Daramon husband would treat his wife. Men were supposed to come to a marriage with experience, while women were innocent maidens, and certainly in every sphere of Daramon society in Atlantis and Nalim Ima, men had greater power than women. But the Daramons did believe that unhappy women produced sickly children, so it was a man’s duty to put his wife’s pleasure ahead of his own, to cherish her and love her slowly and delicately.
Fanarlem concubines were another story. They had no future children to protect, and many people believed they needed to suffer to cleanse their karma, so a man could buy a Fanarlem girl and abuse her without consequence. This was the horrifying potential future she had grown up expecting, and with Grau, she was safe—but she was still glad to have it affirmed, every night of her life, that he was always aroused by her but put her satisfaction ahead of his own, the way a husband would.
Tonight, she was thinking of Sorla, sleeping on the bare floor, even as Grau’s fingers slid inside her to oil her so her body wouldn’t be too dry, and she tingled with pleasure.
“Velsa? You seem a little far away. Do you not want this tonight?”
“I’m afraid Sorla will hear us…”
“This bed isn’t very creaky. But I’m pretty tired myself. I just know this is how you like to fall asleep.”
“You like it too…don’t you?”
“Are you kidding? I love it. But there is a time and a place. And my knee is hurting.”
“You got me all ready, though…” She felt unaccountably sad. “But it’s all right.”
“Nah, come on.” He was already holding her thighs under him, and he easily pushed himself into her with slow, deep strokes. His arms moved up to hold her again; his embrace was strong and warm. He left his mind open to her, to the immediate sensations he was feeling. She sensed that he wanted her to touch her mind to his, so she would feel his body as well as hers and climax quickly. There was nothing personal in this; he was just tired.
Her body wasn’t as responsive as it usually was. She was thinking of Sorla.
Sorla, making food for them all day with quiet industry, at the age of thirteen. Velsa, at thirteen, spent her days talking and laughing with the other girls, going to lessons and music practice, and reading. Not to say it had all been fun and games—she knew what was coming, but it was still a long way off.
Sorla, left home in a quiet apartment while she and Grau went out, and now sleeping on the floor with the pillow and blanket she almost hated to accept, because soon she would be leaving them, and these small kindnesses would be gone too.
Yes, Velsa understood.
She was Grau’s wife now. Not his concubine.
It made her feel strangely empty. She was like Sorla, raised to serve. Grau made this a pleasure, and how simple that was. In his arms, she always felt so deeply protected. If she was his wife, she had to evolve into a fully fledged person. She had to confront the world, and he wouldn’t always be there to shelter her from it.
“Darling bellora…” He gently stroked her hair. “You still seem sad.” He glanced toward the door. “You’re thinking of Sorla, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Five pieces isn’t that much. Maybe we could hire her from time to time.”
She nodded again.
“But try not to think about it right at this particular moment.” He looked at her carefully. “You just don’t seem very turned on.”
“I’m—I’m not.”
“Then why am I doing this?”
“Grau, I…” He was asking her to articulate something that she had never wanted to explain. “For me, I’m not sure having sex is about being turned on. I mean, sometimes it is, but—more than that, the closer I am to you, the safer I feel. I like to feel the weight of you on me, I like—” She gasped as he started rocking deeper into her as she spoke. “I like to feel like you could break me and I would become a part of you…”
“Velsa…” He breathed into her ear, kissed her neck. “I don’t want you to be a part of me. I like that spark of fire that I know is inside of you.”
Velsa was melting beneath him. “Sometimes it seems…like it was easier…just to be your concubine…”
“Easier, maybe,” he said. Then, “No, I don’t think that’s true. There’s nothing easy about being treated as a lesser being. You’re scared of the unknown, that’s all.”
“I don’t know where I belong now. Except here. I belong here. I dreaded my fate until it was you.” Her eyes were half-closed, even as she studied the lines of his face, his jaw and nose strong but also rather refined, in contrast to the ruggedness of his sun- and wind-beaten skin. “I like being your concubine.”
“If you want to be my concubine in the bedroom, I’m happy to oblige.” He wrapped his hands around her knees and splayed her legs wide, working her deeper. She bit her lip, writhing inside his grasp.
“But—know that is is a fantasy. An illusion that works only because you know you can trust me. You don’t really want to be a concubine, Velsa. You’re much more than this. This is good, but I don’t want it to define you. You know I never wanted that. But I guess freedom could be scary at first. Give yourself time to get used to it.”
Grau was always much more articulate than she was in these moments. She whimpered a little.
He laughed softly. “My knee is killing me.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“I think you’re the one who’s going to break me.” He raised an eyebrow. “If you want to be a good concubine, you’d better get this over with.”
“You’re the one who—” Before she could finish protesting that he was being too gentle, he thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she flicked her hips with his rhythm, tightening her pelvis around his shaft as best she could, although since Fanarlem didn’t have true muscles, her control was limited. Her body was built to take more than to give.
Still, he made a murmuring sound of pleasure as he kissed her, and her mind reached out once more to feel the sensations building in him from her tight passage, while at the same time she felt it on her own end. When she had a grip on both feelings at once, she shared it with him, and they tipped over the edge, his warm panting breath in her mouth before he drew back. She loved the sensation of being close to his vibrant, breathing, pulsing body.
“You have my heart, Velsa,” he said. “You don’t need to become a part of me. We’re a part of each other, aren’t we? When I’m with you like this, especially with your telepathy free, I can hardly bear how sweet it is to be so close. But we’re separate, too. We can have separate lives. It makes the joining sweeter.”
“Yes,” she said.
As he fell asleep, she imagined his heart beating inside her rib cage. There was nothing else there but stuffing. She worried sometimes that this was all she really was—hollow inside.
Chapter 4
“Sorla…who taught you to read?” Velsa asked.
“How did you know I could read?” Sorla had been scrubbing the oven, but her hands immediately stilled.
“In the market, I noticed. You were reading the labels.”
“When I lived with…a family, the daughters were learning to read themselves and they thought it was fun to teach me what they learned.” Sorla’s tone was slightly dark. Almost sarcastic.
Velsa thought she better not pro
d anymore, not when she couldn’t tell Sorla that she understood, that she had once been a slave too.
“I wanted to go to the library today,” Velsa said. “You could help me find books to read and carry them home.”
“Miss, I don’t think I should help you find any books. Fanarlem like me aren’t welcome to browse the library. But certainly I can help carry them.”
“Well…when we get home, we can both read them,” Velsa said.
Velsa had never been to a true library; it seemed an important enough occasion that she changed out of her trousers and into her more elegant tunic and put her abalone clips in her hair. She only wished she had not lost her cloak the other night.
She walked with Sorla in her shadow almost all the way to the Palace of Blessed Wings, where the library stood just a stone’s throw away. The three-story building was full of books and newspapers and even a room of tools and devices, like scales and abacuses and rulers. Kalan Jherin’s picture hung in every room, always with a motto, like ‘Curiosity is the greatest magic Daramons possess’ and ‘In these rooms, seek knowledge, and when you depart, take knowledge with you’ and ‘In science and sorcery, all begin on equal footing.’
The unspoken message in all these sayings was that Daramons should not accept that the telepathic Miralem, who had long held the edge in every war, were not a superior race.
Her opinion of the High Sorcerer rose just a tick. Even though Velsa was telepathic, she wanted to believe this was not the only power she possessed either.
She spent hours in the library, accumulating a stack of books on a wide variety of subjects. A guide to baking pastry, a book about the new steamships, books about people in other parts of the world since Nalim Ima was a city of immigrants, and several books about Fanarlem. She flipped through Maintaining Your Household Fanarlem, skimming a passage about how the joints of Fanarlem slaves needed regular maintenance, as screws became rusty and tight or stripped and loose over time, depending on how the slave was treated.
Maybe Sorla’s stiff, creaky joints could be repaired.
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