55 - Velvet Petal

The women in my bed always came and went while the sunlight was curtained out to darken my room. I never got a true look at their faces, so that if a serving woman winked at me familiarly in the corridors, I could never know for certain whether I’d made love to her or not, all part, I was assured, of the delights of royal Lakan hospitality. If my people had any idea what a seductive place this is, I thought, they’d never have sent me.

Then the women stopped changing. No complaint, for the one who stayed, Velvet Petal (they all gave names like this) quickly made herself my favourite. Her hair was long, thick but gossamer-light, flowing between my fingers like silk, her body lithe and smooth and strong, yet softly pressing in to fit against my side, tiny curls brushing my hip.

She taught me things I’d never have conceived, in bed; it was she who first bound my wrists with a silken scarf. “Don’t you trust me?” she said, when I balked; yet somehow the danger that someone would leap out from a screen and knife me while I lay tied made it all the more alluring. It was she who showed me the helplessness that releases one from all cares, and the ecstasy of consigning oneself entirely to another’s hands and will.

On the sixth night, it first came into my mind to return the favor. A hundred times I had answered the ritual question, “Are you mine?”—so exotically intimate, in Lakan—with, “Yes, I am yours.” Now after I’d lain basking for a while, I took a gentle grip of her wrists, then suddenly tightened it. “I am yours,” I said. “Are you mine?” She stiffened; for a moment I thought she was going to call the guards.

Then she took a deep breath, laughed a quiet silvery laugh, and husked, “Yes, timnimuz akdan.” I knew to keep my hands from trembling while I bound her; that would ruin the whole feel. Then I served her as long and sweetly as she had me. Her body answered as it never had before, thrashing, arching, trembling to every feather-stroke; afterwards as we lay limp and sweated she clung to me, saying, “Oh, to live every day in such pleasure!”

In the Lakan night’s equivalent of the death-hour, which is to say mid-afternoon, I woke. She had laid her head on my shoulder like a child, and pressed her brow to my cheek, eyelashes soft on my chin like a moth’s antennae. My body still smouldered with the imprint of her touch.

When I seized her, I thought, it wasn’t fear, for she didn’t shrink, but rather drew herself up, ever so slightly; it was affront. And why does she know so well how to bind, but this is her first time bound? I had never seen her standing; now I stroked her ankles with my toes, measuring. She was taller than I, by a fair amount.

I drew myself as tenderly as I could out of her arms; she clung tighter with a faint sound, full of the tone of “Don’t displease me.” When I’d worked my way free, I got up, opened the curtain a crack, and looked at her face.

All-Spirit—is this blasphemy? She’s supposed to be a virgin—have I committed a fatal diplomatic gaffe? But I was blameless; she’d come here, under false pretenses. And if she was a virgin, I was Klajen’s uncle. Another Lakan thing I don’t understand.

My head spinning a little, I closed the screen before the brightness woke her, and slipped back in beside her, taking comfort in her touch, already familiar. As usual, she was gone before I woke.

The next morning when we had been settled in snuggling for a time, I said, “Velvet Petal, I am seized with one desire: always you are in the dark, always your beauty is obscured by day’s necessitating shades.” (You learn to talk this way, in the Palace.) “For once, I want to truly see you, in all your lusciousness.”

“But timnimuz akdan,” she said, “you would see my flaws, then. The perfection that only imagination paints and truth always stains would be ruined for you.”

“Any flaws I have not felt I would never see,” I said, “and I swear I found not a one; my admiration of you could only increase.”

“O sweet timnimuz akdan, you flatter me no end; but surely the mysteries of womanhood are best not pierced to an over-great depth by manhood…”

So we argued floridly until I couldn’t stand it any more, and said, “If it’s that you don’t wish me to know who you are, don’t worry; I already do, Klaimera.”

You’d think I’d bested her beyond recovery. I thought so. But drawing herself up, as best one can lying in bed, she said, “I wondered how long it would take you, Fourth J’vengka. Men are so slow! All that time I’ve had to wait, to tell you: I love you.”

All-Spirit… do I love you too? I imagined how it would be if another woman and not her were there next morning. All through me I felt a crushing ache.

My first thought was, I must be mad. A Lakan princess, priestess, brown as tea and with ideas stranger than her color… for all I knew she watched the human sacrifices they did here with sacred glee. I could see Esora-e’s face. And her, raising a sixteen-armed idol, throwing curses and wanting to be served as befitted one of her position, in the Hearthstone Dependent… Of course marriages were arranged, here; since her father was dead I would have to make suit to her highest-ranked male kin, that being Astalaz. (It occurred to me he might even have had a hand in this, I realized, wanting such a match, to ensure lasting peace.)

Then Assembly would have to approve it.

But love sparks where it will. Were it less fickle, there would be no need for marriage. I decided not to worry about the implications for now, and just bathe in the joy of what I had. Lacing my white fingers in her brown ones afterwards, I would see our fingernails, the same color; her tongue was, too, and other parts; her blood and mine spilled would be indistinguishable. Who can deny, that inside all races are the same?

The nights, when our duties separated us, stretched achingly long; the days, ours to drown in each others’ arms, heartbreakingly short. Love became our world, and its language, so much more perfect for nuances of meaning than Enchian or Lakan—became our mutual mother tongue.

I would bury my hands and face in the endless black rivulets of her hair—its length whispering of limitlessness, the impossible attained, like a record harvest or the most ancient tree—and study her brown lines as an artist does, except with hands and tongue as well as eyes; she pulled the short curls of my forelock, then let go, the way they sprang back into shape giving her endless fascination, and studied my pale form the same way.

We created our signs and rituals, our jokes and tease-words, all the more charming for the misunderstandings of race: when she spoke of appeasing the Goddess, or offhandedly of having a slave flogged, it was endearing, for it came from her; when I spoke of the God-In-Myself, or the vote, I would see in her face the same bemusement.

I came to understand a little later, by asking around casually, the matter of her virginity. It was nothing for the high priestess to lie with slaves, as she had many, or with a Yeoli; anything but a Lakan, for only Lakans were considered men here. Thus, in name, she was a perfect virgin. And she can have all the pleasure she wants, I thought, laughing; how like this land of lattice-work. Well, who am I to object? But that also meant, as far as I knew, that she’d never before had someone free.

One morning, as we were just beginning to undress (each other), I asked her about the family. All have their way, when a question intrudes a touch deeply into heart or memory; hers was to be highhanded and distant. She walked away; I followed her, knowing she wanted me to. Like a servant I caught the satin lapels of her robe as she threw it off, and kissed her between the shoulder blades, through the blanket of hair. It would have been the nape of her neck, but I couldn’t do that without going awkwardly onto tiptoes.

It came out as if it were the events of last night’s soiree, or a snide remark among the women courtiers. “Tell me, J’vengka, do you believe a man owes love to the woman he has claimed?”

“If he wishes her to stay with him,” I answered. I wanted to show her my stand on that rather than say it, but right now things needed to be said.

“Of course he gave her everything a woman could want. Jewels, perfumes, silken cushions, twenty-four-slave chairs, winged cats, the most golden of kri, the finest wines, but… tell me, J’vengka: do you believe cold eyes, a thoughtless touch, a manner that weighs one only in gold can kill a woman?”

“If I were her,” I said, “I would seek richer pastures.”

“Married to the King?”

That stopped my wise counsel. Of course she could not divorce him, or seek lovers; not in this land where all gold and hence power was passed down from father to son, so a King must be certain his wife’s children were his if he wanted to keep his blood on the throne. She must be imprisoned, in spirit. The heir is caged, I thought, only because he is a man, and believed to have strength. A Lakan woman needs no cage; it being unthinkable to fight a man, she will stay where he puts her.

“He wanted four sons. But when I came, he decided three would do, and wanted nothing more to do with her. Of course she was always on his arm in public, but he would not see her alone… she kept up her smile at functions. She was the Queen. And kings have always enjoyed other women… It was the greatest mystery of the grapevine, why she became so pale and quiet.

“When she fell sick, he sequestered her even more thoroughly. He wouldn’t even allow us in, saying we would catch it, though even the Haian did not know what disease it was, whether it was catching. Once Az, when the guards were taking him to the training court, broke away, and ran into her room; he was there just a moment before they caught him. Father had him thrashed, and kept him locked in the cage, forbidden to see anyone, for a month. He was thirteen.

“She had a finer funeral than you could imagine, golden bells, mamoks, a hundred carrying her bier, dyed flames, all her slaves whipped to death, everything. No woman has ever gone in greater style.

“My other two brothers, like any children, thought Father was divine. But Az was too old. He had seen what none of us had. He never said what it was; but never again did he let slaves care for his chamber. They have to sneak in to do any cleaning. You may draw your own conclusions. “ Then she asked me never to speak of this again, and we drowned her pain in ecstasy.