The princess paused again. The aide nudged her with an elbow while smiling ingratiatingly at Ria. What was up with the royal bride-to-be? Hadn't they prepared her for this? For such a pedantic race, that possibility was highly unlikely. Had she forgotten her lines? Was she just slow in the head?
"I, uhmm..." Another nudge from the aide was enough to get her blurting out the rest so quickly that Ria hardly had time to register it all.
"Iaccepthisofferandhopewecanbrokeralongandhappyrelationshipofdiplomacybetweenourgalaxies! Ugghh!" she ended with something that sounded like a gasp of horror.
Something was definitely off. If the signs had been subtle before, they were glaring now. But the aide seemed supremely chuffed with herself and the performance of her princess.
"Thank you, Ambassador Ria, we know you will successfully transfer the Princess' reply to the king." Her demeanour suggested the meeting was over, but Ria wanted a little more time to suss out the situation.
"If I may ask, Princess Venna," Ria said, "The King would like to know if you have any questions you would like answered before the next phase of courtship?"
The aide's self-satisfied smirk faded.
"Will he be gentle with me?" the question was unexpected, even more so to the aide than it was to Ria. The lizard being coughed, and spluttered, "I am sure the Princess meant no disrespect..."
Ria raised a hand to show that there was no need to make excuses for the Princess' question.
"The King is indeed a powerful and dominant being. He may seem fearsome and wild, but he is not unreasonable, and his heart is tender."
She knew she had not answered the question directly, and she also hoped against hope that the last part was true. As much for her sake as for that of the Princess.
"Thank you, thank you, Ambassador! So wonderful!" the aide was all but dragging Ria out of the room. "We shall arrange for another meeting in two days' time."
Ria left, unsettled. There was something not on the up and up here. For people who had so many rituals to protect themselves and ensure good relations with one's neighbour, they seemed to be hiding some skeletons in their proverbial closet.
The butler who had escorted the king and the Onoatiga away earlier, took Ria to a room on one of the upper levels of the palace, right next to King Xagrun's quarters. It boasted a balcony, no surprises there, and a magnificent view of the lush countryside. The bird cacophony appeared to be only an early morning thing and Ria enjoyed a peaceful lunch with the king in his quarters while she debriefed him and his creepy companions on her meeting with Venna.
The Onoatiga's lack of facial expressions freaked her out the most. There was no way to tell whether they agreed with what was said, or not, or what they might do with the information she gave. She decided to go along with the charade so well played out by Princess Venna's aide.
"So, tell us how the meeting with the princess went, Ambassador Ria," one of the Onoatiga rasped, as they were digging into the main meal. The king nodded enthusiastically, his mouth full of food.
It had been plain to Ria since the lunch began that he was anxious to know the outcome, but they both knew all topics of conversation had to be raised by the Onoatiga, or they could end up with serious problems.
"The meeting went very well indeed." This time it was just a little white lie. "The princess accepts your offer, King Xagrun, and she hopes that you can broker a long and happy relationship of diplomacy between our galaxies," she repeated the princess' words, but with pauses between.
The king looked a little deflated, and Ria had to admit, the diplomacy aside, it was a rather stiff upper lip kind of response.
She remembered he had said the arranged marriage thing didn't bother him, but she wondered now if maybe there was a little glimmer of a dormant romantic in this fiery dragon king.
"I would say that Princess Venna is looking forward to getting to know the king, and that she is satisfied with the first meeting's presentation." She tried to make things sound a little more promising.
"That is quite satisfactory work, Ambassador Ria," the Onoatiga to Ria's right said dully. "You may convene with the king in the next two days on what is to be said at the next meeting. Remember, Haut is renowned for its poetry, so you would do well to prepare a poem."
It was clearly an order, not a request. Poetry? Ria had never written poetry. Not good poetry, at any rate, and this planet was renowned for its poetry? No pressure, she thought, and groaned inwardly. Besides the cranial effort it would require, she wasn't sure if she wanted to wax lyrical for the ungrateful creature behind the veil.
"We will repair to our rooms now," the Onoatiga interrupted Ria's thoughts and stood up to leave. Without another word, they left.
As soon as the door had shut behind them, the king rounded on Ria. "What did she say about the love words, love letter, as you called it?" he asked, a strange pleading in his golden eyes that Ria had never seen before. Something tugged at the corner of her heart.
"She liked it." That was another white lie.
"Is that all?"
Ria decided to tell all. After all, he was the one going to marry her.
"All she said was, 'It's nice.' I don't know what's going on there, but her enthusiasm is seriously lacking."
"Were your magic words not enough?"
Ria hoped the king's faith in her would not start to waver because of this, but she had to keep telling the truth. Something in her refused to lie to this powerful yet obviously emotionally clueless being.
"I don't think it was that. I think there is something else going on, like, maybe she is just afraid. Afraid of marrying someone she's never seen... Gosh! I don't know, I'm just guessing here, but something's not right."
He looked at her for a long while, his body tense, his eyes troubled. Ria wondered if it had been wise to share all her thoughts with him. Perhaps she should have just given it a little more time.
"Take off your clothes."
His command startled her. She needed time to adjust her mindset from her diplomatic role to her concubine role and here he was springing it on her out of the blue. One look at his face told her she had better capitulate. He was obviously stressed, and who wouldn't be under the circumstances? As she removed her garments, her eyes downcast, he did the same.
Then he grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly into the bedroom. She didn't resist, and not only because it would it be pointless. That tangible magnetism was flowing from him again, drawing her into its depths like a black hole of intoxication.
The storm raged about her again, with the ferocity of a category 5 hurricane, as her mind and heart disengaged from her body and floated off in their little pod of self-preservation.
It got less scary every time. Probably because she knew what to expect, but that didn't stop the thick cloud of shame from blanketing the paroxysm that coursed through her, leaving a bitter aftertaste in its wake. What she detested most was that the repetition of this experience was turning something that had once been so beautiful in her eyes, into a distasteful chore.
His frustration released, King Xagrun turned on his side with his back to her and said, a tired note in his voice, "You have pleased me, once again, Ria. You may go."
She ignored him and lay on her back, staring up at the silk-like wisps of cloth that cascaded over the four posts of the huge bed in the royal guest room.
"Have you ever treated a woman gently, that you've lain with?"
The king stiffened, "What do you mean?"
"Do you always just ravish a woman and leave her empty?"
He spun around on the bed to face her and towered over her menacingly, his scales beginning to glow red as they did when he was angry. She looked up into his face without flinching.
She knew he needed her for his courtship negotiations. In fact, she was more valuable now than she had ever been before. They were in the middle of those negotiations and she had the 'magic words' as he had called them.
He couldn't afford to behead her and find ano
ther Ambassador at such short notice. In any case, that would cast a shadow on his ability to run his kingdom, and severely jeopardise the success of his impending nuptials.
"And what if I do?" he asked gruffly, trying to look like he didn't care, but she knew instinctively she had hit a raw nerve.
"You might like to try varying your approach, your Highness. One dimensional copulation can become tiresome after a while."
"I command you to leave and not mention this to me again. Your duties are your duties, and your only concern is with their expedient execution. You are dismisse, concubine."
Ria knew she had pushed this envelope as far as it could stretch. His voice held a definite edge of resentment at having his mating proficiency brought into question. No matter, she had planted the seed. She need only be patient. She rose and dressed quietly before letting herself out.
* * *
The busy hubbub of the market was a familiar balm to Ria's soul. Somehow busyness seemed to reassure her more than stillness, perhaps because it distracted her and drowned out the insistent voices of her thoughts.
Peddlers were advertising their wares in huts that looked like they had been built by woodland fairies. Live branches, moss and ferns were the main building materials that adorned what seemed to be a large, conical hill that had been terraced into row upon row of crowded stalls.
The wares on display were widely varied, but each category of goods was grouped together, and Ria quickly found the tech stalls.
There were a whole new range of unfamiliar gadgets and fittings that captivated Ria's engineering mind. At the largest stall, she was looking curiously at an oddly shaped, flat gadget when the peddler who ran the stall came over to speak with her.
"That's an excellent choice, miss! Yes, yes indeed, a very nifty little add-on to an existing drone collection, the shepherd drone. And it's at a special price for you today, and only today, sixteen Butri."
"Oh, no, sorry, I was just looking!" Ria protested, hastily replacing the gadget where she had found it.
"Come now, miss, you won't find a better price in the whole galaxy!" He was not letting a sale go by that easily.
"I'm sure you're right, it's just, I don't have any, uhm, Butri with me. I'm visiting from Dragona."
"But why not use your bracelet then?" the seller indicated towards her smooth rock bracelet.
Ria held up her left arm, "This bracelet? I thought it only works for Glomp?"
"Not at all, not at all! You can use that to buy in any currency! And," he said, taking Ria's arm and turning the bracelet this way and that as he tapped at it and inspected it, "this is quite an advanced model. This one is loaded with your genetic code and reads the genetic code of whoever is touching or holding it. Take it off, or put it on someone else's arm, and it simply shuts down."
"Wow!" Ria was suitably impressed. King Xagrun hadn't told her all this info, probably because he merely wanted it to fulfil his most pressing purposes and the rest didn't interest him. It was a pervading character trait of his, she had to admit.
"Oh!" the peddler cried, suddenly, dropping her arm as if it had burned him, "And this one is a royal issue credit bracelet! You're an ambassador, aren't you?"
"How did you know?" Ria asked suspiciously.
"Well, you see here?" he pointed to a small inscription on the inside, neatly hidden under a flap of the leather lining. "This bracelet will summon nano drones to destroy the target if you tap three times on this inscription here."
"Seriously?" Ria was suitably intrigued. "Tell me more."
The peddler was only too happy to share his fast knowledge with a visiting dignitary and proceeded to give his willing audience of one a detailed tour of the virtues of her high-end gadget.
When he had told her all he knew, Ria thanked the seller enthusiastically and then, since he had been so helpful, she bought a bag full of tech gadgets, following his recommendations of what would be useful and interesting. With her head spinning with the mass of new information and buzzing with the anticipation of tinkering with her new toys, Ria returned to Princess Venna's palace.
Arranging all her new purchases on the round table on her balcony, she sat back, watching the triple sun setting on the horizon. She absentmindedly stroked her bracelet and remembered the words of the peddler, "This bracelet will summon nano drones to destroy the target..."
She had wanted to learn more about the tech of these undiscovered worlds so that she could take it back to Earth when she managed to escape. Now she wasn't so sure if that was truly the good idea she had initially thought it to be.
Sure, she could take it all back there, with the best of intentions, wanting to improve the quality of life for her nation and her planet, but could she entrust humanity as a whole with such powerful gadgets?
History had already given her the answer to that question if she was brutally honest with herself. She didn't want to have the same regrets as Einstein. Nuclear power had been meant to promote life, but, in the hands of ruthless politicians, it had become an agent of death.
Ria shuddered. No, thank you. I'm fine without blood on my hands, she thought grimly. She would have to content herself with knowing what she knew and using it discreetly to do good. Maybe somewhere in her children's future they would be able to introduce it to society at large. Hopefully by then, lives would have become more important than agendas.
Chapter 7: Puppeteering
What fascinated Ria the most about the alien gadgetry that now lay in dissected bits all over the table and floor of the balcony, was its profound simplicity. The manufacturers had taken so many shortcuts that seemed theoretically to be impossible, and used materials that, granted, were alien to Earth in their fundamental composition, but which could be constructed from Earth elements without noxious by-products or side effects.
Even the design and construction was uncluttered and streamlined and seemed to defy the laws of nature until Ria properly inspected and reconstructed them, and then it all made sense. The fundamental purpose of each gadget began in the fundamental purpose of the materials with which it was constructed, and the design flowed from that.
It seemed to her that that was how things generally worked here. Nobody was trying to be anything other than who they were. Even the Hautians with their over-the-top rituals and the Dragonesque with their complete lack of niceties were simply being themselves.
A cough and the sound of the door to her room opening alerted Ria to the presence of King Xagrun. She stood, respectfully, and bowed her head, wondering if he was going to punish her for her forward comments in his bedroom earlier that day.
"Good evening, your Highness," she said, as demurely as she could.
"A gentle word turns away wrath," her mother had always liked to say. This was one time where such advice could be put to good use.
The king ignored her, moving over to the mess of tech parts littering the balcony. He picked a few things up, turning them over, and peering at them, but obviously with unseeing eyes. His focus was on something happening inside his head.
Ria decided that her best bet was to keep silent and allow him to speak when he saw fit. His facial expression was a mixture of perplexity and disgruntled unrest, and yet, his features had a certain beauty to them that Ria had not fully noticed before.
That self-contained confidence still filtered through. He never doubted himself, even though he might doubt decisions he made or circumstances he found himself in. He had a mysterious calm that emanated from his innermost being, no matter his outward, temporary emotions. It was a kind of core emotional stability that Ria found irresistibly magnetic.
She shook her head, surprised at her own thoughts. This was the male creature that demanded she satisfy his sexual needs and tossed her aside like a battery-operated sex toy when he was done with her.
And yet, the other part of his magnetism was that raw power, that domination, that effortless ability to take control. Despite his rough and often ham-handed treatment of her, he made her f
eel safe as if his very presence guaranteed that she need fear nothing, that she could shelter in his shadow and know that she was protected.
She found herself wishing that he could find his gentle side, the vulnerable side, the one she had seen popping up when he had asked her about Princess Venna's response to his, or rather, her courtship letter.
"What are you doing with all these... things?" King Xagrun eventually broke the silence.
"I'm taking them apart to see how they work. I find it quite fascinating. I've always loved knowing how things work and the best way to do that is to—"
"I see." He cut her short, his mind clearly still not focussing on the parts he held in his hand. Suddenly he took a deep breath, "Did I not tell you that every other concubine in my harem congratulates me after they have spent time in my bed?"
So there it was. She had hurt his pride. And he was here to set her straight, no doubt, and prove to her what an ungrateful hussy she was.
"What exactly makes you the expert in copulation that you have the gall to insinuate that my performance in bed is 'one dimensional' as you so eloquently put it?"
Feeling like an elephant on thin ice, Ria looked up at him. A gentle word turns away wrath, she thought before she answered him, "I am no expert in copulation, but I am a woman, and I have experienced lovemaking. That is something entirely different."
He reverted back to his first statement, obviously unsure how to respond to her answer. "Tell me then, how it is that all the other women I share my bed with, besides you, fall over their feet to compliment me on my lovemaking abilities?"
Surely, he could not be so obtuse, Ria thought. She felt the feisty Ria rising up and could hold her back no more. "Well, I guess being thrown out into the street, branded, and becoming fair game for any lecherous commoner who has fantasised about sleeping with the king's concubine, would be a good incentive for most women not to take any chances at insulting the king's sexual prowess."
She was on fire now and found it impossible to tame her tongue for a minute longer, even with the realisation that she could possibly be dooming herself to the very fate she had just described. Ria felt her boldness grow. "How do you think you will be able to love the genteel Princess Venna if all you know how to do is ravish a woman?"
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