Neripha - Part 1
Page 10
Klaiser hadn’t been in throne long enough to have that many concubines yet. The former kings also started with a small number of concubines and the number often increased quite fast later on. More concubines were encouraged because more royal offspring were desired. However, even if Klaiser had had more time, he wouldn’t have gathered that many concubines. He had been weak all his life; he had gotten sick frequently and needed a lot of sleep for a small amount of active time in a day. He also didn’t have much appetite, which proved to be a hard mission for the Royal Food House and the Medicine House, because they could be punished for Klaiser’s poor health that resulted from his lack of appetite. Being weak took away Klaiser’s desire for women as well, Sadie thought.
‘Good thing you aren’t trying to emulate King Ladus, Klaiser’ Sadie thought to herself. She had gone through so much to be where she was.
Sadie was very young when they got married, too young to sacrifice her beauty and youth in her mind. A random, commoner girl who got promoted directly to the king’s concubine wasn’t going to make her life difficult for her. It could only be the other way around.
All five of her servants washed her hair, massaging her scalp. Then they sprayed fine mist of scented oil on her hair and dried it slowly with large fans. Her hair was so soft and fragrant from the oil.
“Braid my hair and put it up today,” Sadie ordered with a faint, relaxed voice, as she closed her eyes dreamily. The servants opened a chest that stored Sadie’s hair accessories.
“What would you like to put in your hair today, Your Highness?” One servant asked.
“Use those amethyst clips,” Sadie replied, with sleepy eyes. The servants sat around Sadie’s long brown locks and braided them. She had a room dedicated just for this purpose. She called it the grooming room. She had collected scented oils, perfumes, and mineral solutions for her skin and hair and displayed them in the wall cabinet which had glass doors over it. There were little slots to fit each item and all different containers were neatly displayed behind the glass doors.
When the merchants from Decarta and Rogath visited, they frequently came to the palace first, because they could demand higher prices for the same items to the royals. Sadie was willing to pay more to have those merchants come to her with full stock before any woman could even take a look at their inventory. Sadie had a cabinet just for the imported goods, and they were all her favorites. She especially liked Decartan beauty products.
Decarta was famous for beautiful women with radiant skin and strong, shiny hair. Decartan women enjoyed using oils on their entire bodies and Sadie, too, liked their rigorous beauty regimens. It wasn’t to please Klaiser. He was her king and she was his queen; that was all. The tenderness in their royal marriage had gone away a long time ago. It was just because she was the mother of Sarum; she was above all women in every aspect and needed to show it to the public.
One of her servants went to the wall cabinet for the Decartan products, and took out a little yellow bottle with a red ant drawn on it. Then the girl shook it a little and applied a thin layer of a pinkish red viscous liquid on Sadie’s face.
It was Rednest ant’s honey. Rednest ants lived in the south of the Ippa continent, covering a small strip of Decarta in the south and most of Kshandya. Rednest ants made a nest deep in the ground, which digging up with a shovel would be too impractical to even consider. They were about as large as a little finger of a grown man, and were very belligerent. They collected honey like bees and made a deposit of it in their gargantuan nest underground. The honey turned pinkish red in contact with the ant’s secretion from the mouth. Their secretion turned the soil a little red too, which was why the Decartans gave them such a name. If their nest was attacked or flooded, they would quickly channel another hole somewhere far away as a backup while an angry army of them would jump out of the nest to fend off the intruders. Their digging power with their three-pronged mouths was enormous.
This Rednest ant’s honey could only be obtained by a very skilled honey collector. The honey collector must use Vito to make a puppet out of one of the ants and send it in to find the location of the honey. This meant the honey collector had to be a very good Distributor whose range was as large as the nest, a hard requirement to meet. If the honey collector’s range was small, then the Vito-controlled ant would escape his range while it went down the nest, which would then go on its own way instead of leading him to the honey deposit. Since there were not too many Distributors who had that large range of Vito distribution and even fewer of them were willing to be honey collectors, the price of the rare honey was exorbitant, making it affordable only by a handful of nobles and royals. Sadie had bought it out every time Decartan merchants came so she was sure no other woman in Sarum had it.
While Sadie’s perfect skin was getting treated with the Rednest ant’s honey, the other servants had rolled up the braids and were about to put the purple amethyst clips in her hair as the final touch. Two of the clips made a pair and were connected with thin silver chains which jiggled with her movement. She put some rouge on her lips and she was all set. Her head servant came in.
“Your Highness, Sir Rubic has arrived and is waiting at the guest room.”
“Escort him to my bed chamber. Tell him I will be there shortly.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” her head servant replied and quickly left the grooming room. Sadie smacked her lips and looked into the mirror. She looked particularly beautiful today, she thought.