Some of the anger infects me, too, and I turn on her, glaring. “You did trick me.” My anger cools when I see hers, however. “I didn’t spread the rumors, though. My men did. I know I said things… but I was humiliated. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see who you were before.”
“Funny,” she snarls, “because we were both hiding, weren’t we?”
I swallow thickly. Yes. We were. That was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? So that identity didn’t matter. So that we could talk to people from other clans without worrying about classic prejudices. I even when to a bar that had a chance of containing Hartsons. And Claymores, too. Perhaps we had associated with each other before without any knowledge of our true identities. Perhaps I had spoken with Hartsons before in Graves territory, and thought they were normal.
The thought makes me shiver in disgust. They’re not normal.
“I was furious. My family wanted to lock me up until they’d arranged a suitable marriage for me, so I could be sold like cattle. They thought no one decent would want a woman defiled by the enemy. Your people are loathed, Claymore.”
I let out a small, derisive laugh, again feeling that heat, and also something else. “You know how many Claymores have died to your monsters? You know how many of our ancestors were married and buried in the church grounds that your people demolished? I know people who lost husbands, wives, children to you. You rape our women, you –”
“You do all that,” Pearl stammers, her eyes bugging out in what I can only presume is sheer indignation. Though I’m the one who is indignant. She has no right to be. She’s of them. She’s a monster, just faking. For a second, a brief second, I imagine wrapping my hands around her throat, and squeezing until that accusation in her eyes dies out. My fingers twitch towards her, before I curb that impulse. Horrified by it. “You’re the murderers! The killers! You kill babies in their cribs, rape our women.” She splutters to a standstill, unable to articulate any further.
A coldness now replaces my heat, and it feels like something is scratching at my soul. She thinks the same things; the exact same things I’ve always thought. When I let go of my anger, I realize, aghast, that everything I’ve assumed, everything I know – it’s not the same for Pearl.
“Who do you think started the murders?” I say, and she blinks at me, confused. “What started the feud between our families?”
“You did, obviously,” she says, a scowl pasting her face. “Your ancestor, Cohen, he was a bloodthirsty killer. He took advantage of the disease plaguing our communities at the time – he and his cronies raped an entire village of women and killed them, along with the men and children.”
“That’s a lie,” I say, stung. “Your ancestor started it. Mulciber lined up Claymores and executed them for the simple crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accusing them of thievery when they had done nothing! He took the women, and seized lands. That was his real reason to do so.”
“What?” She frowns. “What the hell? They feed you that bullshit?”
I repeat her words back at her. Her bullshit. “You’re the ones who have been lying.”
“Someone started it,” she replies, incensed, voice shaking. “And the Hartsons are far more virtuous and honorable than your lot –”
“Enough,” I snap at her, noting how she flinches from my tone. “I tire of this, woman.” She falls into a sullen silence. I turn my back to her again once more, so she can’t see the erection prodding through my boxers, which is mortifying, to say the least.
The coldness still lies within my heart. I’m ashamed of the effect she seems to have on my physical body, ashamed that I would even dare to feel like that towards her. Especially as we yell about the atrocities of our ancestors.
It’s nonsense, her version, of course. To think that the Hartsons have been feeding their children these falsehoods, raising them up to believe that we’re the killers, when anyone sane knows that’s not the case. She’s so brainwashed. How the hell will I deal with someone like that?
Sleep doesn’t come. I lie in the bed for a good hour or two, until I’m certain she’s asleep. I felt her adjust her position more than once. She clearly didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the same bed, but unfortunately, we are going to have to keep up appearances. The Graves need to believe that we are determined to go through with this. We have to pretend harmony, and somehow, I’m going to have to hope that my own kinsmen and women don’t end up deciding to take matters into their own hands. I know our head servant, Ethel, has several bones to pick with the Hartsons, given that her two oldest sons died in a raid over ten years ago. I hope to god she doesn’t fuck that up for the rest of us. It’s entirely possible that she or one of the two dozen others we employ to help run the household will give into their own grief and justified rage.
The Graves will kill us if it’s proven that we are abusing Pearl. If we kill her. We don’t have the numbers to combat the Graves by ourselves. Though my father is trying, through gritted teeth, to spread the word that she must not be harmed, we all know that these words won’t hold much salt if anyone stumbled across her on a dark night.
Before I leave the room, I turn once more to look at Pearl. She’s huddled up into a defensive ball under the blue sheets, with only a small slice of yellow hair poking out. She looks tiny from this angle, and it’s hard to imagine for a moment that this bundle of flesh under the sheets belongs to the most hated family in our state. She likely feels out of place in my room as much as I view her to be out of place. My room is all whites and blues, representing the Claymore colors. Along with my guitar is a fine mahogany table, now cleared of all the documents it used to contain. Those duties were shifted elsewhere.
There are two Graves guards outside in the white tiled corridor, wearing gray-and-black sashes and outfits who peek in at the room when I leave.
“She’s alive,” I tell them testily. “Just sleeping.” That doesn’t stop one of them having the audacity to go right in and check for themselves that she’s breathing. At least they do so with as little noise as possible. I have to suffer this insult in silence, because I don’t want to provoke the Graves any further. They continue to guard outside the rooms. As if concerned someone from our household might do as I fear.
I stalk through the familiar hallways, leaving the house so I can enter the little bar that hovers just on the lip of our estates. It’s a bar only the closest friends of the Claymores enter, an elite’s club, if you will, and when I enter, I already see a small knot of my friends there. Bobby, round-faced and red-cheeked, gulping down another of our mountain meads. Jensen, dour and nursing his own tankard, and Pippin, the shortest of our group, always trying to prove himself in other ways.
Bobby lets out a cheer when he sees me, though Jensen and Pippin are less enthusiastic.
“I’ll get you a drink!” Bobby slams me hard on the back, before dashing to the bartender to order a barrel of mead.
Jensen shakes his head when he stares at me. “I’m not happy with this.”
“Neither am I,” I agree. Especially since it was on the cards for a while that I might be courting Jensen’s sister, Mila Sycamore. “But it is what it is.”
“She’ll spy on us,” Jensen says, fixing me with his hard dark eyes. “She’ll pass on secrets to her kin, and we’ll end up murdered in our own beds. You see if we don’t.”
“You do know about why the marriage is happening in the first place?” I say. Jensen wasn’t there when the Graves threatened annihilation. Lucky him. “It was a do or die situation. We’ve specifically been told that if we dishonor the terms of this marriage, they will seek to exterminate us.”
“Hmph. The Graves are too big for their boots. Think they can just lord it around, tell us what to do.”
“They can, unfortunately,” I reply, which makes Jensen turn up his nose some more. “They severely outnumber us and I’m not about to bet on our chances to escape.”
“It’s awful,” Pippin says then. Compared to Jensen, wh
o is lean, tall, and willowy, Pippin is short and stocky, perhaps below the average height for our people, but more than packing in drive and determination. His hair is a dark blonde color, giving an almost grayish tint to it. “To think you’re going to be shackled to that thing. I’d hate to stick my dick in that.”
“He already did at least once,” Bobby says, dumping a barrel of mead on the table, rousing some cheers from our group as we busy ourselves with filling up our tankards. “He didn’t know what he was getting into at the time.”
“I warned you against going to that bar,” Pippin says, shaking his head. I glance around at the other people in the bar. Only four of them, and all of them seem like they’re trying their hardest to eavesdrop.
“I wanted to try the local drink. We don’t import the Coughin’ Coffins here. And it seemed polite to take off the sash.”
“Fool. If you’d just kept it in long enough to get back home, we’d never be in this mess in the first place.”
“She was pretty hot, though,” Bobby says. “Wouldn’t have minded a crack at her myself. I mean, before I realized what she was,” he hastily amends. “Even I have standards.”
“With your current women pull rate, I’m surprised you have any at all,” I say to him, and he simply grins and clashes his tankard with mine. The table we sit at is rounded and pockmarked, with chipped at coasters and stains the cleaners were never quite able to get out. The floor is a good, solid wood, as are the chairs, and there are candles on every table for mood lighting at night, and also for the bar to conserve electricity. “You still haven’t pulled anyone.”
“It’ll happen one day. Some slutty, pretty girl will just jump right on me, and I won’t even have to pay!” Yeah, yeah, Bobby. Keep dreaming.
“It defiles the Claymore name, to have one of them as wife,” Jensen says, still fixated on the fact that my wife’s a witch. “You must make her suffer.”
Jensen’s loathing is starting to get on my nerves. He’s acting like I could have made a different, better choice about the marriage. Like Pearl could have made one. But neither of us can exactly go back and change the things we did. The mistakes we made. “And risk the wrath of the Graves? No thanks. I can’t make her suffer, or they will make us suffer. Besides, she hasn’t personally gone and killed anyone,” I say to him, though it’s not enough.
“You should let us have a turn with her, at least. Teach her not to fuck around with our clans again. Someone like her is probably used to having multiple cocks stuck in her –”
“She’s my wife,” I snap, and the anger in Jensen’s eyes finally clear. “Don’t talk of her like that. It’s bad enough without you talking up a storm as well! Christ!”
He finally and wisely chooses to shut up on the matter, and Bobby, bless his soul, steers the topics to safer paths. Unfortunately, Jensen’s sentiments will be the sentiments of the general Claymore vassals, since most have good reasons to hate. It's going to be a horrible, uphill battle to fight.
“I’m sorry you can’t marry my sister anymore,” Jensen eventually says, starting on what I believe is his fourth drink. “I know she was eager for a chance to marry up.”
“My father wanted me to wait. He had his eyes on a Tielman woman from the salt flats who had recently widowed. The salt flats have porous borders, a creeping desert and suffer a lot of banditry, and maybe the Tielmans would appreciate an accomplished clan like ours. All they have is desert and salt, after all. We’d be a great boon for them.”
Not that I wanted to marry a widow. But I know what my purpose is. Marriages for people like me are not ones that happen out of love. If we want enjoyment, we find it on the sides, out of the way of family scrutiny, and we don’t talk about it. My father had his wild times, as did my grandfather. In fact, I know my grandfather frequently sought other sources of pleasure other than his wife, because she hated sex. She’d told us all as much.
“You did like my sister, didn’t you?”
“She wasn’t bad,” I reply carefully. Not my type, I think, but Jensen didn’t need to know that.
We stopped the talk after that, steering away from the more emotional matters. The guys drank to me, perhaps out of pity, out of that wordless knowledge that yes. Being married to a Hartson of all people sucks balls. It’s a marriage I can’t escape from. Not without condemning my entire family to death.
All I can do is sit here and drink.
6
Pearl
I’m in hell. I’ve died and ended up in this accursed household. The moment the head servant walked into the room to change the sheets and clean it, spotting me there, her face had twisted up into an expression of intense dislike.
“You should be out of these rooms already,” she states, standing in a way as if she wants to lunge at me and strangle all the life out. “Why aren’t you with your husband?”
“I don’t think I want to be seen,” I say to her. Ethel, I think her name is. “I’m a Hartson in a house of Claymores.” I barely refrain from saying that I’m in a house of murderers, because I know I can’t afford to aggravate these people any more than they already feel. “People need to let it process that I’m here.”
“Nonsense. Go out. Be seen.” She forces me out of the room, even though I’m vaguely certain that she shouldn’t have the authority to do so. My experience navigating the entire household is galling, to say the least. Servants stop and whisper about me. Some of them aren’t exactly subtle about it. Guards glare with a molten anger, and the family members of the house more or less ignore me entirely. The presence of the Graves guards that lope after me, however, prevent anything worse from taking place. I don’t wear my sash or anything corresponding to yellow, since I suspect that the sight of the Hartson colors might drive some of these beasts to commit a “crime of passion.”
I do take the time to learn the names of the two Graves trailing me, proudly wearing their gray and black. Morgan and Danny. They at least don’t have any kind of agenda to kill me. That doesn’t stop the whispers, though. It doesn’t stop the hate.
“Protecting you might be harder than we thought, princess,” Morgan says, his dark eyes glaring around the kitchens. I’ve headed here for some food, because no one thought to bring me any. Probably deliberate.
“I’ll try not to get stabbed too much,” I tell him.
“Can’t be sure about that. We’re in a place with a lot of sharp utensils, you know.”
I hide back the grin, because there’s a sea of eyes looking at me. When I make the request for food, the kitchen staff stand there as if surprised a Hartson has the audacity to order them around. Right before they have to do that mental check in their heads, that I’m the heir’s wife, that technically, I have authority over them now.
I’m given a hard piece of bread, and when I grab a buttering knife to spread the mixture across it, one of the younger servants shrinks back. Like I’m going to stab her with the butter knife. Yes. “What, you think I’m going to eat the bread raw? Are there any syrups? Jams? Anything else I can use?”
The younger girl, who can’t be older than twelve, simply gawks, until an older, more robust woman barges past with a storm brewing on her face, and reaches inside a cupboard to take out a dark orange jar. “Here. I would appreciate it if you don’t come in here acting like you own the place,” the woman says. “We’ve got work to do.”
“I was hungry. No one brought me food. Surely that means I go to the kitchens if I want to get some?” That’s how it’s done in the Hartson home, anyway. The kitchens are a busy, mobile place.
The woman glances not too subtly at the Graves guards behind me. She licks her lips. “Yes, you can… but we’ll bring you the food to your quarters in the future.”
I sigh. The seven or so kitchen staff are now studiously ignoring me, apart from the fresh-faced girl and the older, chubbier woman. I know I have to somehow find a way to fit in this household, even though I’d rather not be here at all. “Thank you.” I think of the role these people want
me to play. The Hartson monster. Someone who disrespects them in every possible way. So I grit my teeth, smile, and try to ignore the comments that erupt up like little hissing fires all around.
“I don’t think they’ll be foolish enough to harm you, princess,” Morgan says. I’m not sure why he insists on calling me princess, although I supposed technically the Claymores are the rulers of their patch of land. Not that we use that kind of terminology nowadays. “But still, I have to wonder if someone might just take matters into their own hands.”
“They’d have to be suicidal to do so,” I say, startling a servant bustling past with a chamber pot. Apparently there’s an ill member of the house, unable to move far from their bed. I watch them go with narrowed eyes. “Given the conditions of this marriage.”
Danny lets out a snort of boredom. “Your two feuding families have been hot debate for a while, miss. Seems you can’t go a month without hearing about some altercation or another. You don’t even know who started the feud in the first place!”
I huff out frustration. “Of course I do. All the Hartsons know what happened.”
“Do they, though? Because the Claymores have a contradicting tale. Your husband said as much.”
I color at this, though I know that they were eavesdropping. The reason why we made the sounds in the first place was for their benefit. I just dislike the reminder that there will be no privacy here. “Yes, but he’s clearly been lied to. All of them grow up, swallowing the lies.” It gives me a headache to consider the fact. How do I make them see the truth?
“Clearly,” Danny says, following me into Desmond’s suite without a care in the world, “you’ve both warped your own histories to justify why you’re right, and the other people aren’t.” Morgan hesitates, clearly intending to guard outside, but eventually stalks in as well. I chew on my food, irritated.
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