A Sharpened Axe

by Jill M Beene

  The girls tittered as they retreated. Aster appeared at Samiris’ side, silent as a wraith, at the same time Cyra’s maid approached her.

  “Can you believe those ladies?” Samiris said.

  Cyra stood quickly, avoiding Samiris’ gaze and departing without so much as a smile. Samiris sat, head bowed for a moment, collecting herself. Confusion swirled in her mind like the currents of a river. She had thought that she had formed a bond with Cyra on the journey. It was as new and fragile as an unfurling fern frond, but it was something.

  But Cyra had done little to acknowledge her; the only kindness she had shown had been murmured information when no one else was paying attention. Samiris frowned.

  “My lady,” Aster prompted.

  Samiris stood with as much grace as she was able and followed Aster out. As she left, she could hear laughter in her wake like the cawing of crows.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Artem was waiting for her in the hall outside her bedroom. He looked both ways, then grabbed her elbow and pulled her into her chambers, shutting the door behind them. Aster departed like a frightened doe.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked, color high in his cheeks.

  “Excuse me?” Samiris said, swatting his hand away.

  “Your expression at breakfast. How you were looking at the Crown Prince. You looked like you wanted to kill him.”

  “I’m not even allowed to have expressions now?”

  “I just want to know what the expression meant.” He ran a hand through his ink-black hair.

  “I don’t think you do,” Samiris snapped.

  “Try me,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Fine. Just remember that you asked me.” Samiris gathered her thoughts. “That... man...that big buffoon...he sits in his gold-encrusted castle all day thinking of things. And do you know what he comes up with? Ways to make his life better, his court’s life better. Instead of coming up with ways to break the curse or alleviate his people’s suffering, he invents things to make it easier to bathe at a moment’s notice.” Samiris felt ill at the thought. “It’s despicable!”

  “Samiris, though you think the Crown Prince is evil, he is not. He loves his people, and would do anything to save them.”

  Samiris threw up her hands in frustration. “Then why does he let them starve? He has a castle full of gold!”

  “Where would you send the resources?”

  “Wherever they are needed!” she said, throwing up her hands.

  “The empire is massive, and regardless of what you may think, the small amount of land that wasn’t affected by the curse isn’t enough to support the rest of the country. So would you send the food north, or would you send it south? Would you bankrupt the capital and the surrounding lands to bring small comfort to the rest?”

  “So the Crown Prince’s official position is that since he cannot alleviate all the suffering, he chooses instead to do nothing? There has got to be a better way, Artem,” Samiris said. “You don’t know what it is like out there. You are all in here, where there are tables buckling under the weight of all the food, and you are warm all night long, without having to go cut the wood yourself. If someone’s dying, you have healers, and you can afford them.”

  Her voice broke and she turned away, embarrassed to find herself choking up. Samiris hoped that dim light of her entryway covered the tears that were welling in her eyes, hoped that her rough attempt at a cough covered her ragged breathing. She felt a warm, heavy hand on her shoulder.

  “This must be overwhelming for you. I am sorry.”

  The apology surprised her, and she worked hard to get her emotions under control.

  Artem continued, his tone gentle, “The Crown Prince tried very hard, at the beginning. We all did. But after several years of the Choosing... with all respect, you can’t know what it is like to helplessly watch your people and all those women die. And you can do nothing... nothing to save them.”

  Samiris’ back straightened and she turned, swiping away the salty remains of the tears that had escaped. “So you gave up? You just gave up?”

  Artem’s hand dropped from her shoulder like a stone and the gentleness went out of his face. “We didn’t give up,” he said. “We came to grips with the reality of the situation. We have to rule the nation we have, not the nation we want.”

  “Semantics. If you aren’t fighting against it, Artem, you are accepting things as they are.”

  He took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, and shook his head. “There’s just no talking to you, do you know that? You are as stubborn as a mule.”

  “I’m so sorry that I’m not as pliable as all the other dim-witted ladies you speak to. I bet none of them ever tell you that you’re wrong.”

  “They don’t, because I’m not.” His face was granite.

  “Whatever you say, Captain Trego,” Samiris cooed, fanning her face with her hand. “I’m so glad there’s a big, strong man like you around to tell me what my opinions should be. Thinking is such hard work, after all.”

  Temper flared in his eyes once again, his face turned red. “You can think whatever you want. Just control your actions.”

  He turned and slammed the door behind him.

  The rest of the day was long. Samiris’ mood was grim, her outlook as grey as a foggy morning. She went through the motions of Aster’s suggested toilette, (another bath, though she had done nothing to dirty herself), but her mind lingered over sullen thoughts, caressing the same grievances like treasured possessions.

  Why couldn’t Artem see her point about the Crown Prince? Was he so fond of Fitzhumphrey that he couldn’t see reason? Why was no one else angry about the abundance of wealth in the capital and the poverty everywhere else? And why had Cyra not so much as smiled at her during breakfast? She had barely met Samiris’ eyes. Samiris sighed. Perhaps the girl was as nervous as she had been.

  Or perhaps she was embarrassed of you, of your ragged appearance, a snide inner voice said.

  Samiris’ cheeks flushed red as apples at the thought. She straightened her spine. She would not embarrass herself again. She would not embarrass Cyra, either. Regardless of her opinions of the Crown Prince, she was here to try to make him love her, and try she would.

  “What else?” Samiris said suddenly, causing Aster to start. “What else can I do to improve my appearance?”

  Aster’s smile was small but understanding. “Sit over there, and we’ll begin.”

  An hour later, Samiris had been plucked, buffed and moisturized. Aster was satisfied, her smile wider, but all Samiris felt was disgruntled. She’d never been handled so much in her life. She thought she knew how bread dough must feel as it was being kneaded. When a crisp knock sounded on the outer door, signaling the arrival of her dressmaker, Samiris scowled.

  Aster answered the door and was followed back into the sitting room by two women. They both wore dresses like the ones Samiris had seen this morning, but their bustles were more pronounced, looking like they could support a tea service on each of their velvet-enhanced rumps.

  One lady was plump, young, and following the other woman, a cub following its mother. The woman in front was tall, her midsection as thin and straight as a broom handle. Her blue eyes, cold as chips of ice, flashed over Samiris. Then her thin lips clamped together in a line.

  She snapped long, reedy fingers at her assistant. “Bring the trunks.”

  Her assistant obeyed, retreating from the room in a flurry of velvet and ribbons, her posterior flounce bobbing oddly with every step. Aster followed to help, leaving Samiris to the merciless gaze of the seamstress. Samiris fidgeted.

  “My name is Samiris, Lady...” she began, to ease the tension she felt in the silence.

  “I am Lady Cloris, and I know quite well who you are,” the lady snapped. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. We’ve got mountai
ns of work to do, and I can tell it will be no easy task. There is no time for prattle.”

  Samiris’ eyebrows raised, but she remembered Tamrah, thought about how much her sister would love to have new dresses. She tried to muster up a feeling of gratitude, but it was as difficult as drawing water from a well without a hand-crank. Since she couldn’t manage gratefulness, she settled for silence instead.

  Cloris circled Samiris, examining her from every angle. Every once in awhile she would mutter something just loud enough for Samiris to catch the words, as light and fleeting as a leaf on the wind.

  “Good heavens, those biceps...built like a farmhand...a clear complexion, but the skin tone...still in her old boots...no standing out with this one, we’ll just try to do our best to blend...”

  By the time Aster and Cloris’ assistant returned, Samiris was staring straight ahead, her fists clenched, her jaw clamped like a dog playing a game of tug of war, her lips pinched against the rising tide of words she longed to loose upon her seamstress. Aster smiled at Samiris, but at the expression on her face, Aster retracted the gesture and looked to the ground.

  “Measurements first,” Cloris snapped at her assistant.

  Samiris was measured, then swatches of fabric were held up near her face. Samiris tried to ignore the grimaces and winces, the muttered words she was unsure if she was meant to hear. She stared straight ahead, subjecting herself to the bustle of being fitted. It wasn’t that they were too rough as they stripped her down to her undergarments, it was more that they were ruthlessly efficient, and thought any time spent in kindness was superfluous.

  After they took her measurements, they bustled off to the sitting room off Samiris’ bedroom to work, leaving Samiris bewildered and still in her underclothes. Aster lifted the brown brocade dress that had been heaped onto a chair.

  “I’m sure this will all be worth it,” Aster said, helping Samiris back into the dress.

  She didn’t sound sure at all.

  It was hours before Cloris and her assistant emerged from the room. Samiris was as ready for the formal dinner as she could be, without clothes. Aster had brushed, braided and pinned Samiris’ hair into a fussy arrangement that left the top of her head unadorned while the sides and back were complicated.

  “It’s what Cloris told me to do,” Aster kept mumbling around the pins in her mouth while she worked.

  The words sounded like an apology to Samiris. Cloris and her assistant had merely nodded at Samiris’ head, as if the ornate hairstyle were a cup of tea they had ordered. Then they stripped Samiris down to her crisp cotton undergarments again.

  “I really wish you would stop doing that,” Samiris said through gritted teeth.

  “Step forward,” Cloris said, ignoring her. “We need to get you into your pannier.”

  Samiris took a step forward, and her eyes grew wide as Cloris’ silent assistant opened a large domed trunk. Inside was a cage-like contraption of curved wood and leather straps. As Samiris watched, the small woman tugged and unfolded the thing, snapping snaps and locking hinges, and the item took shape. It was nearly five feet across and had a belted hole in the center, with lacings that could be tightened. On either side of that hole were two large ovals of wood, each about three feet across. Hanging down from each oval was a framework of wood and leather.

  “What is that?” Samiris said.

  “Your last layer of undergarments, of course,” Cloris said. “Every lady wears something like this under her formal gowns. It’s the structure for the dress.”

  Samiris knew by the pinched expression on Cloris’ face that she shouldn’t argue, but she couldn’t help herself. “I thought that my body provided the structure for my clothes. My mother’s gowns were nothing like this.”

  Cloris and her assistant hefted the monstrosity over Samiris’ head, positioned it at her waist, and strapped her in.

  “Those designs must have been ancient. Panniers have been the fashion for eons, now,” Cloris huffed, cinching a strap tightly. Samiris gasped at the pressure and placed a hand on her stomach.

  “Maybe it’s time for something different?” Samiris said. “I don’t think I can walk in this thing.”

  “You had better learn quickly,” Cloris snapped.

  They were done affixing the framework to Samiris’ waist. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, although it was massive and unwieldy. Samiris’ eyes were wide as she looked in the mirror. She felt as if she were now a horse strapped into a carriage. Cloris retrieved a huge bundle of whispering blue fabric from the corner and Samiris obediently lifted her hands over her head as the two women pulled the dress onto her. When they dropped it in place, Samiris’ knees buckled. She regained her balance with effort, but was horrified by what she saw in the mirror as they pulled the fabric into place over the frame like a tent.

  She was dressed in acres upon acres of tight, blue and white ruffles. A confusing array of bows, ribbons, and rosettes ran down the center, and layer upon layer of silk chiffon had been stitched together to form rippling bulges of ruffles on either side. There was so much going on with the dress, Samiris didn’t know where to look. It hurt her eyes.

  Cloris mistook her silence for awe.

  “I know, dear,” she said, patting Samiris’ shoulder awkwardly. “It’s amazing what the right dress can do.”

  Samiris just opened and closed her mouth, a fish out of water. She stared at her reflection and turned this way and that. With the wooden pannier, she was now five feet wide and two feet deep. She placed tentative hands on the wide oval constructions that hid her natural hips. Her waist had been cinched to help support the wooden frame, so she could barely breathe. Only the bodice of the dress was an honest representation of Samiris’ form, as the sleeves were puffed with ruffles, too.

  For the second time that day, Samiris felt like throwing up. Then she looked up, and it got so much worse.

  “What is that?” Samiris said, eyes wide.

  Cloris was carrying what looked like a bejeweled miniature sailing ship covered in gold leaf. It was complete with a captain’s wheel made from pearls and pink ostrich feathers in place of sails. The creation was about a foot wide and two feet tall and sat upon a narrow brim of blue satin.

  “It’s your dinner hat.”

  Samiris stared at it in shock. “Please tell me this is some kind of a joke.”

  “It goes with the dress.”

  Samiris looked down. Now that she mentioned it, the frills of blue and white chiffon did give the illusion of a sea full of ocean waves.

  “It is considered a massive insult to eat with your head uncovered. You wear this, or you don’t eat.”

  Samiris closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She remembered Tamrah’s words: It will not be easy, but I have faith in you. Try. Just try. She nodded and exhaled.

  “Alright,” she said. “Tell me what I have to do.”

  It took thirty minutes of pinning and tying to secure the heavy contraption to Samiris’ head, and another fifteen minutes of walking round in circles in her room before she felt she had any hope of holding the thing level while she moved. The trick, she found, was to continually hold her stomach rigid, like she was desperately trying to hold back digestive gas in public.

  “It will not fall off,” Aster said. “I have secured it properly.”

  “Yes,” Cloris added. “Just pretend you are doing one of those balance exercises your governess taught you.”

  Samiris did not dare tell the woman that she hadn’t had a governess, and that the only time she had tried balancing something on her head, it was a stack of clay plates in the bar in Faro. They used to get drunk and challenge each other to walk the breadth of the room with an ever-higher stack of plates. Whoever won got the small pot of coins. Peg had stopped the practice after Kalan had fallen over with twelve of her plates on his head, and had only caught one.

  “It’s ti
me,” Cloris said, shooing Samiris toward the door with elegant white hands. “Remember, bring the utensil to your mouth, not your mouth to the utensil, and you will be fine.”

  Samiris exited the room, bending her knees slightly when she walked through the doorway.

  “The doors are ten feet tall,” Cloris crowed from behind her. “There is no need to duck.”

  Samiris was grateful to find Cyra waiting for her in the hallway. Cyra was dressed entirely in white, but like Samiris, she was covered from neck to hem in an abundance of tight ruffles. Upon her head was a hat even taller than Samiris’. It consisted of several stuffed white doves strung together on wire. The birds looked as if they were flying down to roost on Cyra’s head.

  Samiris did her best to keep a solemn face. “Is this the custom where you are from? These....dinner hats?”

  “If my brothers saw me in this ridiculous excuse for a hat, they would mock me mercilessly. However, my dressmaker assures me this is the custom here, and I want to fit in.”

  “I’m trying, too,” Samiris said. “But this thing is so heavy it is giving me a headache.”

  She reached up to steady it, then remembered Cloris slapping at her hands earlier, and let them drop.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Samiris stepped onto the raised dais and gazed over the milling crowd. The grand banquet hall was aptly named. The ceilings were five stories tall and painted with billowing clouds that looked as if they were moving across a cornflower blue sky. The floor was marble inlaid with ribbons of gold, the walls were of the same material, but draped in thick pleated curtains of velvet the same color of the faux sky above them.

  What struck Samiris even more than the cavernous size of the room was the light. Six massive crystal chandeliers were suspended above the glittering throng of people. Thousands of candles lit the room, their wax dripping and pooling around their bases like morning dew. The flickering glow from the flames overhead was reflected back from the marble floor and pillars. The light danced off the diamonds woven into ladies’ hair, off the rubies, emeralds and sapphires nestled in bosoms and winking on delicate, waving fingers. The light flickered along lines of satin and silk, and became a subdued glow when it hit velvet.