The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (18 page)

M
y
days were
a monotony of blood, couplings, and the sticky sweetness of night queen. Years passed—so many I lost count in my potion-dosed state—while I lived this half-life in the Vorisipor harem. Women came and went, holding the governor’s attention only briefly. Harem life drifted. The women who lasted grew fat, but not with children. I wandered through my mind as I had when I was a child locked away in Kaluq stone caverns.

Indeed, my life in the Kaluq camp had prepared me well for Vorisipor. I’d learned early and well how to exist in a quiet, dread-filled stasis punctuated by an abhorrent duty. Only the duty had changed.

I reminded myself of my mother, especially when I allowed Onatos to intrude upon my thoughts. I did not want to remember his mouth on my body, did not want to remember the comfort of his touch or the scent of his skin. Even so, I would wake on a dark morning in the governor’s bed, and I’d think, in my drug-blurred state, that Onatos lay beside me. Only when I’d turn towards him in my confusion would I remember that I’d lost—and left—Onatos forever.

Regrets could wound. Mine cut like ritual, leaving scars.

For days after imbibing the night queen, I would have dreams. Images stuck in my mind, and I could not escape them. A baby and the father who slept beside me. Sun-kissed rolling green hills. Four children frolicking across grass, plucking oranges from the trees to juggle. I recognized Laith in one dream child, and the black-haired girl who toddled after him with hero-worship in her eyes had to be my Leila.

I’d wake trapped in these unfulfilled stories, never only one story—always a second story beneath the first, and then a third, and on, and on. All my stories spoke of longing, and all my longings told tales of my regrets. I’d run from the women’s house to kneel in the moist dirt of Vorisipor. I’d stab into my arm or my leg using any sharp edge I could find, a rock or a hair pin, and bleed. Halfway across the world the Hinge hungered for my blood. My biggest regret was that I could not also cut the foul ung-aneraq that bound me to the governor. It grew ever thicker.

Yet eventually the governor’s interest in me waned. He sent for me less and less. He found new girls for his harem, and the older ones disappeared. I tried not to worry over what fate awaited me when he decided I would not produce. I had made wary friendships with some of the women, over the years, and all of them had disappeared without warning or explanation. The governor held onto me for longer than most, perhaps because of those stretch marks on my belly.

I never saw any chance of escape, so closely were we watched. If it wasn’t the soldiers in their fish-scale armor or the strange hooded man who crept along the perimeters of the compound waving bottles emanating foul and dangerous odors, it was Lari with a sickle blade at her waist, and I had no doubt the woman was more deadly than she looked.

Rumors abounded about girls who tried to leave. The governor himself had killed one, and he’d mounted her head on the walls over the women’s house for all to see. But most who tried to flee were killed with poison by the hooded man—the Vhimsantese had great skill with plant potions such as the night queen. The harem women said the poisons could ease life away gently or violently, and that the governor’s potion-master selected which kind of death a runaway would suffer.

So I remained. Where would I go, if I did manage to scale the high compound walls? I knew nothing of the vast city beyond. I had no friends, no money, no plan. At the compound, at least I had food and a bed, and most of the time I was left to myself. I kept my body trim by never overindulging in the sweets that consoled the other women. I rose early to take loops of the gardens on foot, always observed by the harem guards, always shadowed by a lackey or the potioner and his miasmas.

To pass time, I cared for the summer-blooming rose vines. I knew only a little about plants, and those in Gante were not easy to cultivate due to the difficult climate, but the soft Vorisipor roses thrived under care. At first they scratched me often, which I believed to be like working with the blackstone—a penalty paid for daring to shape a wild, beautiful thing. Often I let a thick thorn tear my arm, offering my blood to the dirt below. Did it do the Ganteans any good, feeding blood to this sun-soaked earth so different from the veined soil of my home? Perhaps it only helped
me
to perform the ritual, to believe I still sustained a vital connection to the world’s magic. If I reached deep, I could still feel the taut thrum of magic through the earth, but at times it wavered, as though the Hinge teetered on a precipice, waiting to fall, more fragile than ever.

I worried. Did this unsteadiness in the power mean that the Ganteans no longer made offerings? Did my blood no longer feed the Hinge? Was I insufficient, as Ikselian had always claimed?

I changed from a headstrong girl of nineteen winters to a languid woman of middle age, well past thirty, who had lost track of the seasons, confined in the Governor of Vorisipor’s compound where winter never came.

My experience was narrow. I knew nothing of the situation in Gante or Lethemia, and only a little about the Vhimsantese Empire. The Imperial people did not think women should have knowledge of politics or world events, and the governor’s women were kept, in every sense of the word. Kept hidden. Kept ignorant. Kept fed and watered like cattle.

I lived, but in the way that a creature lives in winter, slowly, mindlessly, without hungers or passions.

O
ver the years
Lari had grown stooped and wrinkled; it was amazing she could move as fast as she did.

One afternoon she stepped over the threshold to my room—I did think of it as mine after so many years. None of the women I shared it with had lasted as long as I had.

“He sends for you,” she said.

I stared at her. The governor never sent for his women in the middle of the afternoon. In all my years as his concubine, women had never been summoned for the duty during daylight hours.

“Now?” I smoothed down the white wrapping I wore. Mud caked the hem from my morning with the roses.

“He is entertaining,” Lari explained, “and wishes female companionship to impress his guest.”

Occasionally the governor did send for someone to act as his hostess, but never so early in the day, and never
me
. He would pick a hostess from his young Imperial girls, girls who understood the customs of this place, girls who belonged in this Empire, the ones who worried over his preferences, who plucked their eyebrows into thin lines and soaked their feet in floral tonics to make them smooth and fragrant to please him.

“Come,” she said, turning. She expected me to follow. I had never resisted the duty as some of the girls did; I had seen early on that to do so would only bring pain.

I stood, frozen and daunted. I did not believe Lari’s request.

“I—my clothes—” I faltered. My aging face. My hair. My rough, scarred hands. I was no soft Imperial flower. They couldn’t want me to impress a guest.

“Come,” Lari said again. So this was how it went, when he was finished with a woman. They told her she was needed for a special duty, but they took her beyond the walls and fed her a potion more toxic than night queen? I hoped mainly for a painless death.

If I had been my old self, the impetuous girl who first came to the harem, I’d have argued for my life. But no longer. Years had numbed me.

Lari took me to a chamber in the governor’s house that I’d never seen. She bathed me, dressed my hair, and arrayed me in a fine silk gown with a bodice that laced up the back—a Lethemian dress, as heavy and protective as armor, pressing my body into structured lines. I asked no questions despite my surprise. It seemed a waste to adorn a doomed woman.

Lari pushed me down the dark corridors. I sailed into the great hall in a daze, the dress holding me erect. The governor took my arm.

I blinked into the well lit receiving hall, confused. Had Lari spoken the truth? There was a great gathering of people, as though for an entertainment. Perhaps I truly was simply meant to serve as a hostess.

The governor placed me in a row of his courtiers, saying nothing, though I took the firm squeeze of his hands on my shoulders as instruction to stand silently and appear placid. I knew the man’s preferences well enough.

“Lord Xander Ricknagel of Ricknagel Province, Lethemia!” A crier shouted, his voice echoing through the high ceilings of the hall.

The guest was from Lethemia! I controlled my face, showing no surprise. Lord Xander Ricknagel? I did not know of him, but I did know that relations between Lethemia and Vhimsantyr were never easy. Everyone knew the Vhimsantese Emperor sought to continue his westward expansion over Lethemia’s borders.

Lethemian magic was an iron leash that kept the snarling Imperial tiger at bay, but Lord Ricknagel should never have ventured this deep into enemy territory.

I studied the Lethemian lord with open curiosity. The Ricknagels were second only to the Galatiens in the families of Lethemia’s Ten Houses. Xander Ricknagel was a fine specimen of a man—strong and well built, perhaps ten years older than I.

He rose like a giant in the present company, as the Vhimsantese tended towards low stature, and Ricknagel was tall even for a Lethemian. He came into the receiving hall in a jeweled breastplate, armed with a long spear topped by a blade. An old mage stood at his side dressed in the requisite white robes.

“Welcome, Lord Ricknagel.” The governor’s movements appeared almost effeminate next to Ricknagel’s firm, strident steps. “I hardly expected you to come again yourself.”

“We have much to discuss, Governor, and the fewer who hear it, the better.” They spoke in Lethemian, and I doubted anyone in the hall understood save me. The Imperials believed that their language was the tongue of the gods; they did not often learn any others.

I leaned forward. What could they have to discuss? Xander Ricknagel’s taut expression showed that he wasn’t happy to be here. He could be kidnapped or killed, especially if the governor was hatching secret plans to launch an attack on the Ricknagel city of Shankar—no preposterous idea. Shankar, Lethemia’s easternmost port, lay only a few hours’ journey by sea from Vorisipor.

And the reckless man had come with a minimal guard of soldiers and one wizened mage! Ricknagel was either arrogant or crazy. Both, I decided when he gestured to his few men to step back. The governor and Ricknagel exited the hall together, presumably for privacy. My feet itched to follow, but apparently my hostess duty did not extend beyond the receiving hall.

The various underlings and courtiers who had been displayed along with me scurried off to their duties.

Lari hobbled over. “There you are, girl,” she said, as if I were still a naïve nineteen-year old. “Come along with me.”

Lari led me into an unfamiliar bedchamber. I wondered why the governor had changed rooms for Ricknagel’s visit, but I knew better than to ask. Lari did not sanction any questions but her own.

She frowned. “Is it better that I help you out of that horrific fashion or leave you in it? Which will he prefer?”

I’d never been consulted about the governor’s preferences before. “I don’t know.”

“How do your kind like to seduce their women?” she snapped.

“My kind?” Did she mean Ganteans? I almost answered that they liked them naked beneath warm skins.

“Westerners!”

“Oh, Lethemians.” I’d only ever known Onatos, and he hadn’t cared what I wore. But the governor was particular. He wanted silence and stillness and softness in his women.

“We’d better leave it on,” I advised. The governor might be dismayed to find me naked, and I did not wish to be slapped for his displeasure. Had he taken on a fetish about Lethemian women due to Ricknagel’s arrival? I rolled my eyes while Lari wasn’t looking.

Lari nodded. “Very well.”

When she left I took a seat on the bedchamber’s lone chair—western style, winged and padded—and waited. The past years of my life had followed such a regular rhythm that this day of oddities distressed and excited me. Darkness fell, but I did not rise to light a lamp.

The door creaked when it opened. I sat up straighter and arranged my face, turning myself into the lifeless creature the governor preferred. My limbs slackened; my spine softened. What if he didn’t know how to unlace a western bodice? What if the jewels in my hair offended him?

My palms sweated as I listened to him approach.

“I have been given the room next door, my lord,” a man’s voice said in Lethemian, startling me so much I nearly leapt from my seat. Sudden illumination cast a soft glow into the room.

“Go then,” answered another voice, still deeper, also in Lethemian. “I can manage myself. Gods, I hope they serve something edible for breakfast. I could hardly swallow that muck. I’m sorry you had to try it.”

Laughter and footsteps. The door creaked again. The man remaining in the room sighed. Fabric rubbed on fabric. Ever so cautiously, I peeked over my shoulder. I could see nothing above the tall back of the chair. Had Lari put me in the wrong room?

A burning sensation rose in my stomach, a squeezing I only barely recognized as anger. I hadn’t bothered with anger since I’d left Onatos on the Queenstown docks.

My anger surprised me into action. How had I let the governor scrape me so clean of myself that I should sit in fear and terror in a man’s bedchamber? I, the Cedna of Gante, who controlled oceans of magic and could strike a blade fit to cut the air? I had blackstone bloodlight with a hard diamond heart. What could hurt me? I surged from my seat, dragging the chair legs backward as I whirled to face the man.

Xander Ricknagel stood with his mouth hanging open, clad in nothing but a long white shirt. His bare legs gleamed in the dim light.