Wedding (28 page)

She was speaking, I realized at last, not
about my marriage, but her own. Whether the feelings she spoke of
were hers or Josh’s, she was describing the ideal of ’Graven
marriage, what my marriage could be if Dominic and I were true in
our communion. “When you take the oath to keep faith with Dominic,”
she said, “he will take the same oath, say the same words, promise
the same things. He will be tied to you in the same way that you
are tied to him, forever.”

“It sounds like being a prisoner.”

Eleonora shrugged. “You are a prisoner,” she
said. “Of
crypta
, of communion. Can you deny it?”

I stood in front of her, staring blindly,
lost in my thoughts, no longer able to dredge up the words to make
her see.

“Look,” she said, “I didn’t want to admit it,
but I saw it—we all saw it—when my brother came home. He was in
pain, crippled. And as soon as he saw you, when the two of you
formed communion, something happened. He was healed right there in
the courtyard, when you did that strange thing, touching Stefan’s
hand.”

“But Dominic wasn’t healed then,” I said. “He
still couldn’t use his arm.”

“The gods give me strength.” Eleonora had had
enough of this conversation. “Dominic was healed then in the sense
that he was capable of being healed. Before that moment, all any of
us could do for him was cosmetic: restore the muscles and the skin,
smooth away the scars. But he was never going to use that arm
again. It was a blockage in the mind, the nerves.”

“It was something to do with his alien
genome,” I said, thinking back to that strange healing session. “He
needed Naomi.”

“Even Naomi couldn’t have done much for him
without his being able to receive her help,” Eleonora said. “And we
all felt it there at the gate. Josh was nearly knocked off his
horse with the impact, he told me.” She giggled, a silly, girlish,
refreshing sound from so controlled a woman. “Even that old hardass
Ranulf,” Eleonora spoke with intimate freedom of her
Midsummer-night partner. “Even he knew you had proven yourself to
be ’Gravina Aranyi. He may not be gifted, but he’s known Dominic
all his life.”

I recalled that moment during the festival,
Dominic’s congratulation at my virile partner for that athletic,
sexual dance. “Dominic’s a little in love with Ranulf, isn’t he?” I
asked, smiling at my lover’s secret I had uncovered. I could
imagine it so easily:
the young Dominic, about Stefan’s age, the
unworldly face from the portrait, looking up to the trusted
retainer, his rugged masculinity, in the prime of manhood then.
Dominic must have had a boyhood crush on Ranulf that had never
completely faded, merely developed into an ongoing respectful
friendship spiced with just enough sexual awareness on both sides
to keep it from growing stale…

Eleonora grimaced. “Please, Amalie,” she
said, “try to keep your thoughts to yourself once in a while.” She
didn’t like it, I saw, neither Dominic’s desire for the craggy old
man who was neither gifted nor
vir
, nor the fact of my
intimate knowledge.

I tried not to grin at Eleonora’s
disapproving face.
It was better this way, when my feelings
about Dominic were not as everyone thought they should be, when our
love took its own path…

“Listen to me,” Eleonora said, breaking into
my thoughts. “I’m only going to say this once. I’ve seen others
like you, couples with a communion so strong that nothing could
keep them apart. All I know is, you and my brother are stuck with
each other until the day you die. Tattooing his name on your arm
and behaving as his wife will simply make it easier for him, and
eventually for you, to come to terms with it. But whether you stay
with him, or go to Eclipsia City, or back to that
Brooklyn
place you came from—you’ll never be free of him.”

She held me in a sibyl’s communion that
cannot be broken.
Love him, Amalie,
she said.
Give my
brother the peace he’s been searching for.

I
t was two more weeks before
Dominic returned. I was near the end of my fourth month and the
child was beginning to show. If Dominic could spend so much wealth
in secret, I decided, I could take a little, and I would tell him
when he got back. I had Saskia, the head seamstress, make me two
new wool dresses and some linen underwear out of the Aranyi stores.
The clothes were bigger across my breasts, with full waists and
skirts for the rest of my nine months. I was wearing one of the
dresses when Dominic and Stefan rode through the gates.

Dominic said nothing of substance, only
kissed me and held me, and laid his hand on my belly to feel the
bulge of the growing child.

I pulled at his hand in impatience. “Well? Am
I to be ’Gravina Aranyi or must I turn Christian to be
married?”

Dominic waited until we were inside, then
handed me a package and told me to open it. After digging through
layers of wadded cloth I found two arm bracelets of clear glass,
with spheres of color inside, and thin metal filaments that twisted
together in an intricate pattern.

I picked up the smaller bracelet, surprised
at the solid weight of it, turning it to examine the design. “Hold
it this way,” Dominic said, demonstrating with the larger one. The
filaments formed words, in that style of writing I was learning
with Berend—script. Not just any words, but our names
Herzog
and
Aranyi
, repeated and intertwined, the same design inside
both bracelets.

“You don’t have to go through with it,”
Dominic said after I had traced my finger over the words, all the
way around, several times. “But no true craftsman will make just
one of these.”

I still didn’t understand.

Dominic removed his tunic and shirt and
slipped the bracelet over his right wrist, pushing it up past his
elbow. “When we swear the oaths, we use our
crypta
to heat
the glass until it melts away. The color is burned into our skin
and the hot metal carves the words into our burned flesh.”

Stefan’s laughter broke the spell of horror
that left me unable to say a word, or even think. “That’s the
’Graven Rule,” he said.

“How can you possibly—” I couldn’t say it.
After what Dominic had been through with the Eris weapon, had only
recently recovered from, for him to undergo another crippling burn
was inconceivable.

“Because it’s the exact opposite of that,”
Dominic said. “That was a weapon, powered by hatred and anger.” He
flexed his left arm, unmarked, healed and strong. “And by the power
of your love, and Stefan’s and Naomi’s, I was healed, made whole
again. But this is a burn of love, and it leaves a scar that can
never be removed or erased, that will mark us as married, as
husband and wife, as long as we live.”

The bracelets were the reason for Dominic’s
huge expenditure, the explanation for his long absence. They had
been made to his specifications by a master craftsman, and could
not have been obtained by barter, only with money.

Dominic took my left hand in his right and
held our arms out in front of us. “You see, in the traditional
’Graven Rite of Matrimony, we burn together, locked in absolute
communion, speaking the oaths in unison.”

I noticed that the bracelet would go on
Dominic’s right arm, not the sword arm.

“There’s no need to take foolish chances,”
Dominic said, winking at Stefan. “No, we let the wife risk her left
arm.”

I wanted to cry but was too proud to break
down in front of Stefan. “I can’t, Dominic. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, Amalie. I didn’t expect you
to.” Dominic put his arms around me, holding me against his naked
chest, as pleased us both. “I know how frightening it must seem to
you, not brought up in our customs.”

Without forewarning the words came out. “I
have money, Dominic. Credits, enough for a dowry. I’m not coming
empty-handed to this marriage. You don’t have to feel that you’re
taking a charity bride or that you’ve bought me—”

Dominic reeled back from the flood of emotion
that accompanied the strange words. When the sense of it hit him,
the expression of contempt that came over his face was terrifying.
Just for a second, he looked at me as if I were that hated Terran
woman he had claimed did not exist. His anger when I had charged
him with mistreating Stefan had not frightened me, because I had
seen in his thoughts that he admitted the truth of my accusation.
Now, the only thought in his mind was disgust.

But only for a moment. His face softened as
soon as he saw how he had scared me. “Amalie, beloved,” he said,
“don’t you know by now that our marriage is not like other
marriages? Ours is based on love, not on property and family. You
need no money to become ’Gravina Aranyi. Your gift and our
communion, these are your dowry. They are yours and can never be
taken from you, but you have brought them to me in love, given them
to me freely at my need, haven’t you?”

“It’s just that everything—my clothes, the
buildings and the land—belongs to you.” I tried to keep the whine
out of my voice. “And now I’m becoming your property too.
Everybody’s telling me what a good master you are, but I don’t want
a master for a husband, and I’m afraid of becoming another
possession. Kept indoors, surrounded by guards and wearing a burqa
to go outside, and now branded with your name—”

“Women from the mountain realms don’t wear
burqas. Everybody knows they’re as bold as the men.” Dominic tried
again to comfort me with humor, looking to Stefan for support. We
were alone in the room; Stefan, increasingly adept at anticipating
Dominic’s reactions, had slipped silently out the door at my
mention of credits.

“I am the one who will be branded,” Dominic
said into the silence.

It struck me at last.
Herzog
. He had
had my Terran family name fused into the bracelet, would wear that
name, that his mouth had rejected sometimes, as Terran and
unspeakable, burned onto his body for the rest of his life, and
beyond, even after death. He had ordered the bracelets designed in
the ’Graven style, the wife’s name joined with her husband’s in the
new couple’s compound name, and he had accepted my name, as he had
accepted me. He had not, after all, warped me into the lie he had
asked for, neither had he denied my reality. He had simply taken me
as I am into his life, and expected I would adjust, as I would, as
I had and would continue to do, until I became ’Gravina Aranyi in
every way.

As I almost was. For all its foreignness,
Aranyi was the only place that had ever felt like home to me. I
would become ’Gravina Aranyi in time, would learn to live in a way
that made both Dominic and me comfortable. And few people would
remember that I had once been Amelia Herzog of New York.

But ’Graven Assembly had known, I reminded
myself, and they had countenanced our marriage, or Dominic would
not now be showing me these beautifully-crafted instruments of
torture.

I thought with gratitude of what Dominic must
have had to go through. “Was it difficult to get ’Graven Assembly’s
approval for the marriage?”

“Only at first,” Dominic said. “I told them
if I could not convince them with words, I would convince them with
this.” He touched the hilt of his sword.

“Is that allowed?” I asked. “Dueling in
assembly?”

“How else do you think we reach agreement on
the difficult questions?” He was serious.

Months of worry, for nothing
. “If I
had a sword,” I said, “I would kill you myself.”

Dominic took a step back from me, entered my
mind quickly and saw what was wrong. “Oh, Amalie. It was not that
simple. The duel is a last resort, when debate fails or reaches an
impasse. And there are few in ’Graven Assembly who would dare fight
me, which means the result would always be open to question. I want
our marriage to have the full support of all the ’Graven.”

In the end, Dominic had got his agreement,
without resorting to swordplay. ’Graven Assembly was more accepting
than either of us had imagined. They had seen me, not so long ago.
They knew I had the gift of
crypta
, and the third eyelids
that allowed me to use it. My pregnancy only helped my case, as the
possibility of future gifted children was the best amends Dominic
could offer for such a break from tradition. He had not had to
fight anyone. What was much worse for him, he had had to endure
endless taunts about his breaking the rule himself that he had so
zealously enforced for others. But he had borne it all like a
soldier.

“They will forget,” I said, as he had
suggested my Terran origins would be forgotten. I took my dagger
from its sheath and held the prism in the handle up to the light,
thinking of how Dominic would teasingly call me a sibyl, and how
much I had wanted to become one. My gift had made my life on Terra
insupportable, and had not done much better for me at La Sapienza.
Yet, in the end, it had given me what was worth much more than
anything it had taken. It had given me a husband and a child, a
home and a family. It had given me a place in the world. “They will
look at me, and they will see ’Gravina Aranyi, and they will wonder
what there was to debate,” I said, confident that I spoke the
truth.

The dagger in my hand and the light bending
through the prism brought it all back: our night in the travelers’
hut, and our first real night of love, festival night. We had taken
something evil and dangerous, something potentially fatal, and
rendered it harmless, not by denying it, but by using it, changing
it to suit us. If not for my gift, Dominic could really dominate
me. He could overpower me, rape me, make me beg. He could keep me a
prisoner, here and in Eclipsia City, make me wear a burqa, force me
to be deferential, bear his children, be an obedient wife. If I
were not gifted, as I had known from our first meeting, I would
have run from him, although it would not have been necessary, as he
would not have been in pursuit.