Wedding (9 page)

“Oh, they’re fertile enough,” I said,
laughing at her obscene gesture. “But they’re not gifted. I had to
travel halfway around the– world to find a man I’m compatible
with.” I compromised on the distance I would admit to having
come.

Magali did not possess
crypta
, but she
was sensitive. Some of my peculiar worries, so different from what
would bother a real Lady Amalie, must have shown in my face, been
revealed in my tone of voice, and were received by her mind, as
they had not been anywhere else. She nodded, her face softening in
sympathy. “You must marry one of your own kind.”

My perception of her heightened awareness
made me reckless, instead of cautious as it should have. “But is he
my own kind? Can I really become the wife of Margrave Aranyi?”

Magali stared. “But Lady Amalie, you are his
betrothed!” It was one thing for me to be honest about my
illegitimacy, quite another to question Dominic’s judgment. “He
chose you. He would not choose beneath him. Not him.” She smiled
with fondness for her absent master, his regard for the Realm of
Aranyi and his sense of what was due to it.

That was my own thought, more or less. Except
that Dominic hadn’t really chosen, any more than I had. We had been
thrust each upon the other, the link between our minds yoking us
together by compulsion, and we were trying to make the best of what
neither of us would have sought out on our own.

The look on my face and my continued silence
led Magali to another assumption. “Lord Dominic loves you,” she
said, using the title he had held for most of his life, while his
father had been alive. “I always knew he’d take a wife when he was
ready, once he had his fill of boys.”

Any momentary feeling of offense was
short-lived. My Terran ideas of masters and servants, nourished by
holonet dramas and historical novels, had died days ago, snuffed
out by reality. People don’t work for Margrave Aranyi, or even for
the Aranyi Realm—they
are
Aranyi, as much as Dominic is. It
gives them a freedom to speak and to think that a chief executive
on Terra might envy. Magali could criticize her master, or joke
about him with me, just as one family member can tease another. She
had already stopped the curtsying, treating me with a familiarity
that was far more respectful than her original fearful deference. I
had been accepted as Aranyi too.

Once I absorbed the sense of it, Magali’s
remark reminded me of similar conversations I had had about Dominic
at La Sapienza. Eclipsian men are encouraged to enjoy same-sex
relationships before marriage. It avoids all the usual problems of
teenage pregnancy, unwed motherhood and disruption of family
structure that societies have always tried to regulate. But by his
early twenties a man is supposed to marry a woman and set up a
household; for a man of Dominic’s rank, it’s less of a suggestion,
more of an imperative. Marriage has few of the romantic
associations of Terra. As for most of Terra’s past, love is seen as
developing after marriage, not as a requirement for it.

Men who are naturally
vir
, like
Dominic, usually have a male companion as well as a wife. A man who
remains single, unattached to either man or woman, into adulthood
and middle age is viewed as unusual, his manhood suspect. Among his
household, Dominic’s peculiar situation, at forty unmarried and
with no companion, was accepted, in much the same way that his
father’s insanity and womanizing had been, with an unspoken
allowance for the Aranyi temperament. Dominic’s high rank shielded
him from obvious discrimination elsewhere, and his skill as a
swordsman meant that, even drunk, most men would keep their
thoughts to themselves. Still, spending twenty-five years as an
adult in this atmosphere could only have exacerbated Dominic’s
anger and sense of alienation.

This time, with Magali, I laughed as if
gossiping about a mutual acquaintance. “Margrave Aranyi will always
want boys,” I said, shaking my head to suggest amused resignation,
not yet ready to divulge the attraction this aspect of his
character held for me. “Or men. It is his nature.”

Magali laughed with me. “But he has decided
to marry now. He never really wanted a woman before, except once.
His companion’s sister.” She winked at me, letting her pleasure in
reminiscing run away with her discretion. “She bore him a son, but
he never offered marriage. And she was ’Gravina, Ndoko, a good
match.”

“Better than me,” I said, sudden hostility
lowering my voice to a growl. I couldn’t help it; the words just
seemed to pop out of my mouth. I had known of this woman—sister to
the young nobleman who had been Dominic’s lover a couple of years
ago—but only indefinitely, from Dominic’s truthfulness in telling
me the basic facts of his past. Now, from the visual fragments I
picked up in Magali’s memories, I had specifics. Thinking of
Dominic with that Lady Melanie—fifteen years younger than me, tall
and willowy, the kind of elegant, aristocratic beauty that is
universally admired, not short and soft and round like me—I was
ready to fight. Who or what I would fight, or how, I didn’t know,
but my face must have shown bloody murder, because Magali let out a
shriek and covered her mouth.

“Oh, Lady Amalie,” she said. “I didn’t think–
I didn’t mean—” Magali gasped and gulped, afraid she had ruined our
relationship, and after so promising a beginning.

I stared, my eyes refocusing from my thoughts
of war, returning to this frightened woman of my own age. Once
again my face had betrayed me. Magali was cursing herself for her
unfortunate words, sure that she had enraged me with her reference
to the Ndoko woman’s full ’Graven status and its contrast with
mine, the illegitimate, half-’Graven orphan.

It was becoming natural to play along with
the role, and I seized the chance to get away from my darker
thoughts. “It’s all right, Magali,” I said with fraudulent grace,
forgiving an unintended insult for a false condition. “I know you
meant no offense. But you see why I wondered if Margrave Aranyi
could marry me, whether I would be a suitable choice for him.” I
wanted to put my arms around her, dared not initiate contact, as
she should not touch me, and sat back, helpless.

Magali was pleased by my easy forgiveness,
anxious to make amends. She waved her hand and lifted her chin.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone can see your father was
’Graven. If he wasn’t man enough to own up to it, that’s no reason
you should suffer.”

I thought of my real, Terran, father,
somewhat too fond of drink and not much of a success, but kind, and
proud of my every minor achievement. Silently I apologized to his
memory, transformed forever here into a neglectful ’Graven lord,
not willing to trouble himself over the unwelcome girl his
badly-treated and long-since discarded mistress had produced, too
selfish to burden himself with acknowledging the child and giving
her the coveted natural-born status that could soften an otherwise
harsh life. I patted my belly where my own half-’Graven daughter
was growing. “At least this one will know who her father is,” I
said, thinking only of how cunning I was to speak in character.

Magali’s mouth opened in astonishment. She
had no adequate response to this revelation. Stupidly I had assumed
that Eleonora had informed the household of my pregnancy, to shame
me; I had not appreciated how my standing would rise with this
news. Living in Dominic’s house, accepted by his family, I was
already considered to be his betrothed. By carrying his child, I
confirmed our marriage more surely than approval from the distant,
faceless ’Graven Assembly. Eleonora would not have breathed a word,
hoping for anything—a miscarriage, or that Dominic would tire of me
before the baby began to show—that might make such an announcement
unnecessary.

Finally Magali found her voice, sneaking a
look at my waist. “But when?” She had heard only that I had been
cloistered in La Sapienza for six months.

“In a travelers’ shelter,” I said. It did not
occur to me to be shy, or to feign hauteur and refuse to tell
Magali what she wanted to know. “We were trapped there for almost a
week.” I could not say the name of Eris; let Magali think what she
would of our imprudent behavior.

Magali howled with laughter, leaning close to
commiserate. “Men!” she exclaimed, both disgusted and awed. “They
can never wait. My own Harald is the same. I was six months gone,
and big as a house, before—” She thought of the ramifications.
“Never fear. Lord Dominic will marry you in time. He won’t want
another natural child, not after fathering one already.”

Here was another side of the problem. I bowed
my head, remembering my foolish thoughts at La Sapienza, when I had
wanted to bear Dominic’s child without having to be involved in
marriage. How complicated everything had become.

Suddenly Magali reached over and did what I
had wanted to do: hugged me tightly, patting me roughly on the
back. The unexpected touch made me jerk, my body trembling with the
temporary blockage of the electric circuit from my active
crypta
. Little sparks shot out of my extremities. Magali was
clearly receptive enough to cause such a disruption. She released
me after a moment, satisfied, having proven what she had known all
along. “You have the gift,” she said. “That’s all that
matters.”

I sighed. I wished that was all that
mattered. Now I was trapped in all my lies. Betrothed to Dominic.
Half ’Graven. “Lady Amalie.” As if to reinforce my discomfort,
Magali echoed my thoughts, lifting her chin, her challenging tone
reminding me of Dominic. “Be brave, my lady. To us you are Lady
Amalie. Soon enough you will be ’Gravina Aranyi. No one can say a
word against you then.”

From that day on, Magali became my staunch
friend and defender. She looked after me like a mother, checking in
on me each morning, co-opting a maid to bring me breakfast in bed
if she thought I looked tired. After the first time I decided to
tell her that I disliked eating so early in the day, then realized
pregnancy had changed me. My appetite, always robust, had increased
to the point that I wanted all that food, first thing in the
morning and last thing at night, the meat and the porridge, the
spring greens and fruit, and especially the cheese. I vowed to stay
strong, to bear a healthy child, whatever she would be at her
birth, and I tried to feel worthy, as befit the future ’Gravina
Aranyi.

When Dominic had been gone a week I was
reminded again of the reason for his absence, and what had caused
the latest rift between us. My dreams one night were disturbed by
the image of Eris, the lightning goddess of discord, blazing in the
darkness. In the days that followed, my chest was tight with
tension and my thoughts were oppressed by a looming sense of
danger. With no physical enemy to fight, my muscles strained to
constant readiness, I was edgy and bad-tempered, my movements
clumsy so that I spilled things at the table and bumped into the
sparse furniture. The telepathic cells of Eris and of ’Graven were
dueling, and with so many gifted people at work, the ripples of
static extended well beyond their immediate surroundings, to Aranyi
and no doubt farther.

Only one other being in the household shared
my discomfort. Naomi was a witch—it was she who used the word, not
disguising it in the euphemism of “sorceress”—a gifted woman from
the forest who worked as a healer at Aranyi. She knew nothing of
her father, had no family name, her only relative an equally
solitary and gifted mother. Naomi came from a long line of wise
women, she told me, as proud of her unusual heritage as Dominic was
of his.

Alone among the castle’s inhabitants, she had
not fully accepted me, had not fallen under the spell of this “Lady
Amalie” I was becoming. Naomi knew well enough where I came from,
and that I was no more ’Graven than she was. Like Lady Eleonora,
she seemed protective of Dominic and his interests, deploring his
attachment to a Terran. And, like Eleonora, she had no scruple
about using her strong gift to find out the truth of anything or
anybody that threatened her home. I was convinced there was little
I could keep from her.

Yet she let few secrets of her own escape.
She had an aloof presence, tall and slim, with something
androgynous about her, her height and rawboned limbs, her straight
body with small breasts and narrow hips, although she dressed in
conventional women’s clothes and had a woman’s name. It was as if
she had chosen the female persona, not had it determined by anatomy
or genetics. Even her age was a mystery. She had the unlined face
and firm flesh of youth, but there was the wisdom and the cynicism
of middle age in her mind. Her thick dark hair, always escaping
from its clasp to wave around her head like so many snakes, her
high forehead, prominent nose and determined chin gave her an
intimidating look, and her green eyes with their clear, glassy
third eyelids seemed to penetrate my consciousness the way
Dominic’s did. Once I noticed it, I found the vague resemblance
between her and Dominic unsettling.

As the ’Graven forces battled the rebels, I
sensed Naomi’s mind quickened to its aroused state, almost as if
she could participate in the distant cell, along with Dominic and
Eleonora and Josh, by linking with them in communion. She would
take out a prism-handled dagger like mine, hold it up, but stop
short of using it to bend the light into her eyes and, muttering
and cursing, put it away. Lurking in the shadows of dim corridors
or huddled in half-closed doorways, she watched me, gauging the
effects of the conflict on my equanimity. Her eyes bored into me at
meals from her own place in the great hall, but she would look down
or away when I dared to meet her gaze.

Despite her gift and the prism she possessed
and undoubtedly knew how to use, she had not gone with the other
telepaths. She seemed tied to the land of Aranyi, as if she could
not survive too far from her native ground. Like a half-tame
animal, a cat or a fox, she prowled between the castle and the
forest, staying out for days at a time, coming in wet and rank for
a hot meal and a bath when it suited her. Apart from the necessary
observance of the daily eclipse, she was most active at night,
preferring to sleep during the mornings, often taking dinner as her
first meal. Unconcerned with her appearance or her reputation, she
stalked proudly through the castle’s corridors, like the cat she so
resembled, furtive by habit, not from fear, protected by her
abilities and the awe they inspired.