by Jean Johnson
“Anyway, their interpretation and failure to aid us in handling the problem fulfilled the Prophecy,” Kelly enlightened her, “because the mainland exiled the brothers, putting them out here in the right place and time to intercept the Mandarites when they came here looking for land to conquer and loot. Which was a month and a half after Morganen scried me burning in my bed and rescued me by bringing me into this world.” She smirked. “That was plenty of time for me to fight with Saber, fall in love, get married, and have the Mandarites show up practically on our doorstep the morning after our wedding.”
“Oh. Who are the Mandarites?” Alys asked, scrubbing at her body with the strange, nubbly washing cloth that felt so much better than rough linen or wool did.
Kelly did her best to summarize what had happened. “There’s a continent on the far side of the Eastern Ocean, where all or almost all of the women are the only ones born with magical abilities. Apparently, a long time ago the whole culture was like what your uncle tried to do to you—treated women as chattel and little more. But then the women turned the tables, using their magic to make the men subservient instead. Of course, some of the men didn’t like that and rebelled. And they carved out a kingdom of their own called Mandare and started working on technological, nonmagical ways to fight back, since their men weren’t born with magic very often.
“They came out here looking for land and resources, arrived in the east bay right after our wedding night—Saber did a marvelous job of fulfilling that wonderfully naughty last line of the first verse, ‘when sword in sheath is claimed by maid,’ ” she added drolly, as Alys blushed, “and very nicely, too—and that was when we whipped up an impromptu ‘Kingdom of Nightfall’ with myself as Queen, Saber as my Consort, and the rest acting as courtiers. We—or should I say, they—even created illusions of people to fill in all of these empty halls; we did everything we could think of to impress the Mandarites and send them on their way. Since the rest of Katan officially wants nothing to do with us, thus ‘failing’ to aid us as prophesied, we did our best to help ourselves . . . but it wasn’t enough, in the end. The Disaster happened anyway.”
“Ah.” Unable to think of anything else to say, Alys stood up out of the water and balanced on the edge of the bathing tub to finish scrubbing her legs.
“There’s more,” Kelly informed her. “Dominor was playing the part of Lord Chancellor—I lost my temper at the attitude of their leader, Lord Aragol, and ordered him off the island, you see, which was our intent all along . . . but I digress. Dominor escorted them back to their ship and did his best to soothe any hurt feelings, except that Lord Aragol offered a trade of something called comsworg oil. He wanted the salt blocks this island produces as a part of its magical water-filtration system—we have plenty of fresh, pure water, so bathe and drink all you want,” she added in an aside. “The Mandarite earl asked Dominor, a mage, to go on board their ship and help seal their hold against leaking; Trevan said this was so that the salt would remain high-quality pure.”
Alys nodded in comprehension. Kelly drew in a breath, then let it out. Here came the hard part to admit.
“And then they did something to him so he couldn’t escape and couldn’t even respond when Evanor called to him, and sailed away. Trevan gave chase, but they injured him with a gun, one of their machine-weapons. A kind of weapon that I’m familiar with in my own world. The weapon is strong enough to injure whomever it hits, even when its target is heavily shielded. Trevan is pretty much healed, but Dominor’s still out there somewhere, eastbound on a ship none of us can reach, and there’s no way to scry for him until he can contact us somehow, since we don’t know his location well enough for his brothers to find him that way. And all of us are feeling guilt-ridden over it.”
“I’m sorry,” Alys murmured, moving on to her hair next, sitting back down in the stone-carved tub.
“Hey, it’s not your fault. It’s just my Disaster. And Saber’s,” Kelly said. She waited until Alys finished dunking and rinsing her hair, then eyed her thoughtfully. “You realize, of course, that there are seven bachelors left on this island, and seven more women-inspired verses to go . . .”
Alys blushed again. She knew the verses by heart. She had learned them as soon as the rumors had started in earnest, regarding the Corvis brothers. In fact, she had clung to the rules of the lines with hope in her heart, all this time.
“Do I detect a little blush?” Kelly teased her. “Hmm. Maybe I should test a theory here: . . . Wolfer?”
Alys tried not to blush again. She certainly didn’t look Kelly’s way.
“Wolfer . . . naked.”
The younger woman ducked immediately underwater, where the heat of her blazing cheeks made the warmth of the bathwater feel cool in comparison and heard the outworlder laugh.
“Come out of there! I won’t say a word, I promise! Unless you do something stupid,” Kelly added, as Alys came back up and wiped at her face, grateful to be able to breathe. “I have a low tolerance threshold for stupidity in adults who are old enough to know better.”
“I’ll try not to be stupid,” Alys said.
“Sorry; I tend to ‘open mouth and insert foot’ sometimes,” Kelly apologized. “I didn’t actually mean you. After all, you haven’t really done anything stupid yet. I don’t think you will anytime soon, either. You don’t strike me as that kind of woman.”
The odd expression made Alys’ mouth quirk up, relaxing her. She glanced at the aquamarine-eyed woman. “ ‘Open mouth and insert foot’—I like it.”
“Good. Because I’ve been dying for female companionship for almost two months, now, and you’re it for the time being. Not that I’ll be pestering you too much right away; Saber and I are newly married, you know,” the older woman added, smiling.
Alys, thinking of all that Cari had told her, bucked up her courage. “Do you like it?”
Kelly eyed her. “Like what? Marriage? Or the newly married, going at it like rabbits part?”
Alys blushed. “The . . . second part.”
“Oh, yeah! I get hot just thinking about it.” Kelly fanned herself with a hand, then stilled and eyed Alys, where she was scrubbing herself in the tub. “Do you know anything about . . . the marriage bed?”
Grateful for the delicate question, Alys allowed herself to be bold and confessed. “I had a two-hour lecture from a . . . a tavern wench on the whole subject yesterday, before heading out here.”
“A tavern wench?” One of Kelly’s strawberry blond brows arched up at that. “As in . . . ?”
Alys blushed once more. “A whore. I saw my Uncle Donnock coming down the street, panicked, and ran into this . . . brothel-tavern in Orovalis City, out on the eastern shore. Only he came inside, so I fled upstairs, and the next thing I knew—I—I was hiding in a wardrobe, and Cari and this other man were—right there! In the room with me! She discovered me in the cupboard after he had left, and she was really nice, and told me all sorts of things, but I’d seen my Uncle Broger doing it to his serving wenches, and they didn’t seem to like it at all . . .”
“Wait a minute; you saw your uncle?”
Alys flushed and looked down at the water.
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Was this deliberate on his part?”
“Yes.”
“Did he rape you?”
Somehow, the blunt words didn’t shock her, not coming from this particular woman. “No. But he wanted to. I convinced him I was worth more as a virgin . . . so he didn’t.” When Kelly stayed silent, Alys looked up. The aquamarine-eyed, strawberry-haired woman was glaring out the narrow quartet of windows illuminating the room, her expression rather fierce. “Kelly? Is something wrong?”
“He should not only be made to eat dirt, he is dirt! And I’d hoped I’d left that kind of sick perversion behind on my own world!” the redhead hissed.
“Your uncle treated you that way, too?” Alys asked, shocked.
“No. No, nothing like that,” Kelly said, shaking her head and looking at Alys again. �
�But those sorts of atrocities were beginning to be discussed openly by my culture, to help the victims and punish the perpetrators and hopefully make others think twice about doing anything like that themselves.
“Real love isn’t sick like that—and Alys, it is not your fault,” Kelly said slowly and clearly, holding Alys’ gray gaze firmly. “You didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of treatment. I can tell just by being around you, and for less than half an hour, that you’re not a woman who teases men mercilessly. You didn’t do anything to cause it. This is entirely your uncle’s shame. In fact, you are to be commended for redirecting his attention so well. You’re very brave.”
“Thank you—Cari thought it was smart of me, too. That’s the wench I talked to.”
“She sounds like a nice woman. I wish I could meet her,” Kelly said. “But I’m kind of stuck on the isle, at the moment.”
“You would actually want to meet a whore?” Alys asked, surprised.
“I try to judge people on their actions and their motivations. If she’s happy doing that kind of work, then I’m glad she likes her job, and I hope she makes lots of money and never catches a social disease from it,” Kelly stated firmly. She eyed the younger woman in the tub. “Hold up your fingers.”
Alys drew them out of the water. They were pruney and wrinkled. Kelly grinned.
“Okay, we know you haven’t been bitten by a watersnake. Time to get out, young lady, and dry off while I run over to the sewing hall and fetch back some clothes.”
“Watersnake?” Alys asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. About a month ago, her uncle had forced her to help him teleport a clutch of his watersnakes to Nightfall, scry-linked through the eyes of one of his wyverns. She hadn’t actually sent them, but she’d been forced to fetch and hold the spellbound cage until he was ready for them.
Kelly chuckled, holding out one of the nubbly terry cloth towels she had shown the brothers how to make on her arrival. “My very first night here, we were attacked by mekhadadaks—and mind you, it took me a month to learn how to say that name. Then two weeks later, wyverns and watersnakes. And demonling-things in another wing in the same attack, though I didn’t see them, myself. I was in the room the snakes were teleported into. Saber got bitten, though he got most of the poison out, and I soaked a pair of slippers to the skin stomping on them. I’ll tell you, I can laugh about it now, but at the time . . .
“It also forced the two of us into, how shall I say . . . ? Intimate contact, when he’d been stomping around, glaring at me, and resisting his Destiny very vigorously until then.” She shook her head wistfully. “We must have talked for eighteen hours straight, stuck in that tub together . . . well, between soaking and drinking and running to the refreshing room, while the poison worked its way through our systems.
“They tell me they used to be attacked once every week or two, until I cleaned up the castle and made everything look different. Then Morganen came up with this color-changing paint,” the talkative outworlder added, gesturing at the walls that had looked like a pattern of green-on-green tropical leaves before Alys had begun her bath, and which now looked like a gentle, star-studded, dark blue night sky.
Alys blinked at the slowly shifting designs, amazed; the changes had been so subtle, she hadn’t even realized they were happening! “This . . . this stuff changes the appearance of the rooms and the halls enough so that it’s hard for . . . for anyone to teleport anything in here, doesn’t it?”
Kelly nodded. “Yep.”
“It foils the mage or mages who have been sending these creatures, for they cannot scry by mirror over the distance; their memory or painting or whatever of the room is too different to succeed, anymore,” Alys figured out, rubbing herself with the stimulating, odd, nubbly textured drying cloth as she stared at the slowly changing walls around them. “From hour to hour, the room subtly changes, and that means it is never consistent!”
It was amazing, really; a genius-level piece of self-defense against scrying. This was the reason why her uncle had been thwarted of late! She was glad of it, too, though Lord Broger hated being thwarted in anything and usually took it out on whomever was near at hand.
“Kata . . . mages and nobles would pay a fortune for the secret to this paint!” Alys exclaimed, eyeing the walls.
Kelly nodded her strawberry-copper head.
“Exactly. But I don’t think the boys are going to sell the secret of it any time soon. So . . . we haven’t been attacked, lately—though that could change at any time—and we’ve only suffered the Mandarites of late. But that was more than bad enough,” Kelly muttered. She sighed and smiled. “I’ll go fetch some clothes, and we’ll see what fits you; I’ve been cutting my own clothes loose, since I’ve been gaining back the weight I lost. I was in bad shape before I came here; the people who tried to burn me down in my own house ruined my sewing business to the point where I could barely afford food, so I was slowly starving to death. But now I’m getting it all back . . . so long as I avoid Saber’s cooking.”
Alys frowned at that. “What’s wrong with Saber’s cooking? I didn’t even know he could cook.”
“He does. As they all can, more or less . . . but his brothers don’t let him do it often.” Kelly tucked her hands on her waist, cocking one hip slightly. “Let me put it this way. You know how Koranen’s associated with fire?”
Alys nodded. She’d seen him burn down a henhouse accidentally, when his magic had started developing years ago. “I know he is the Son that is Flame, yes.”
“Well, so is Saber’s spicy cooking.”
Alys grinned. “I take it you don’t like it?”
“Once in a while, maybe, when I get a craving for chili, but I’d rather have him hot and spicy in my bed.” And with a wicked grin, Kelly took herself out of the bathing chamber.
FIVE
Trousers. She was wearing trousers. Loose-legged, gathered at the ankle, with a thigh-length tunic over them. Alys had also been given fresh under-trousers and a half-length corset that was wonderfully cool in the heat of this summer climate. It was distinctly warmer than the one she had known back around the Corvis and Devries lands.
The outfit had been stitched from cool, cheerfully dyed cotton in shades of green and blue. With her hair still damp, but detangled with hair lotion and combed out, then pulled back into the braid she had grown used to wearing—to keep it out of the cages of her uncle’s “pretties” while she was feeding them, lest they yank her in for a different meal—and wearing trousers of all things, Alys felt . . .
“They give you a real sense of freedom, don’t they?” Kelly sighed, eyeing her new female companion.
“Yes. Yes, they do!” Alys agreed, looking up from her clothes at the other woman. She stepped forward and then strode forward, then jumped a little, spread her feet on landing, and bent her knees. That was the exact word for it: freedom. “I like this!”
“Where I come from, women get to wear just about anything they want,” the other woman confessed as Alys spun around, delighted in the freedom of movement. “Of course, I get away with it here because I’m from another universe, but if you like, I’ll formally decree that everyone can wear whatever they want—within certain general bounds of decency—whenever they want to wear it.”
“Decree?” Alys asked, stopping mid-spin.
Kelly shrugged mock-modestly. “I am the Queen of Nightfall, after all. Well, on weekends, holidays, and when visitors are here.”
Alys raised a puzzled brow at that, then shook her head. “If you say so . . .”
“So, what do you like to do?” Kelly asked her.
“Do?” Alys repeated, confused.
“I do sewing, and embroidery, knitting, crocheting. Evanor, who’s the most domesticated of the brothers—he’ll make a fantastic househusband for some lucky woman someday—is showing me how to weave on one of the looms in the sewing hall. That’s what I do. I embroider and sew and make clothes. Quilts. Pillows,” the woman stated with a shrug
. “I used to make rag dolls, though since we’re isolated here, and since the guys don’t want to advertise the fact that there are women here in case someone comes hunting for us, I haven’t got any reason to make rag dolls for sale anymore, and I have no kids yet to make them for.” Kelly eyed her, tucking a stray lock of her straight, strawberry blond hair behind her ear. “So what do you like to do?”
“I . . . can feed things. Different types of animals. I could probably hunt, though I’m much more of a caretaker. So long as they’re not vicious,” she added firmly, thinking once again of her uncle’s “pretties.” “I don’t want anything to do with vicious creatures, ever again.”
“Well, in that case, feeding the chickens is out,” the other woman muttered wryly. “I had that chore once. Once,” Saber’s wife added in emphasis, mock-shuddering. “They not only pecked me to death around the knees, half of them got out of the coop, and it took over an hour for the others to catch them—they’re vicious, trust me.”
Alys shook her head. “Oh, no, that’s not vicious. I could feed the chickens and anything else you have; I’m not going to stay here and do nothing to recompense you. I do know how to spin, weave and sew, and crochet, though I’m not very good at embroidery. And I can cook, and clean—oh, and garden. I’m good at helping things grow and keeping chattel-animals healthy.”
“Well, we only have the chickens, and that’s mostly for fresh eggs. But I would like some milk, if we could get a handful of dairy cows and a bull to keep them in calves,” Kelly mused aloud. “We get cheese and butter on the trading ships, but it’s not the same thing as milk and cream.”
“I could take care of the cows,” Alys offered. “And milk them, and even make cheese.” Her uncle had taken delight in making her do servant’s work all day long. She hadn’t minded, because it limited how much time she had to spend with him. If not necessarily with his vicious pets, which had to be fed twice daily.