Kushiel's Avatar

Children, I gathered, did not last long in the Mahrkagir’s zenana , being altogether too fragile for his attentions. This one had lasted longer than anyone had bargained; it seemed the Mahrkagir wished him kept alive for some special purpose. With a slow-dawning sense of horror, I realized that they had bets on his survival.
    It is a different world, and a harsh one.
    I was new to it, then; I do not know if I can convey the sense of what it was to live there. It was not like a traditional hareem or zenana , no, where the lord’s attention was sought and a matter of pride. Here, the lord’s attention was death, or akin to it. Even so ... how else to gain rank? Those whom the Mahrkagir favored had special privileges; private rooms, personal attendants. It won them pity and envy.
    For the rest, they established their own hierarchy, based on force of personality.
    “Speak to him ,” a Chowati woman said to me, deigning to understand my Illyrian, jerking her chin at a young man huddled in foetal position at the edge of an outer carpet. “ He can tell you how the Mahrkagir treats with boys.”
    I tried to do so, crouching low before him, peering at his hidden face. He was Skaldi, I realized with a small shock, recognizing the cast of his features, the butter-yellow hair that curtained his face. I addressed him in his native tongue. He groaned and turned away, hands clutched over his groin.
    “What is wrong with this man?” I asked one of the attendants, indignation overcoming my common sense. “Why does no one call for a chirurgeon?”
    “He has been cut,” the attendant replied, “and does not wish to live.” His eyes glittered feverishly, and I knew by his accent he was Akkadian-that was when I began to understand, then, at least a little. “Do you blame him, lady? I do not. He is no longer a man.”
    I understood, though I didn’t wish to. The Skaldi lad wanted to die; and I, I could not blame him. He was alone, the only one of his kind. It was not right, but there was no help for it. What fell on him would not fall on someone else, not that day. He was alone, and so was I.
    So I sought an empty couch, and lay coiled onto my own perfect despair. I had attained my goal, the goal I never wanted, becoming a concubine of the Mahrkagir of Drujan. I had come a thousand miles to destroy the only true love I’d ever known. I had condemned Hyacinthe to age forever on his lonely isle. Of my own will, I had done these things. And for all of it, I had not found Imriel de la Courcel, whose face had haunted my dreams. It was fearful to contemplate what abuse he had undergone in this place, and I could only pray he had been spared the worst of it. What did it mean that the Mahrkagir kept him alive? For his three-fold path, the Chief Eunuch had said. I thought of the Skaldi lad and shuddered. If the Mahrkagir had a special purpose in mind, it could only be worse.
    There was no comfort in the distant memory of Blessed Elua’s presence. The gods are cruel, to lay such burdens on their mortal heirs. How can immortals reckon the cost to mere flesh? I did not know if I could endure this.
    I slept, and prayed I would awaken elsewhere.
    I didn’t.
    I awoke, stiff and sore, on a couch in the zenana of Daršanga, huddled in my stained travelling clothes and Valère L’Envers’ marten-skin coat. Well and so, I thought; I am still Phèdre nó Delaunay, and I will be no less. The zenana was stirring, attendants bringing wheat-porridge on platters, and honey to a select few. Though I had no appetite, I made myself eat. Charcoal braziers were chasing off the night’s chill, though the hypocaust which warmed the stagnant pool and the floors kept the zenana temperate. I thought with rue of my visit to the bath-house in Iskandria.
    “Is it possible to bathe?” I asked the attendant when he returned. He stared at me a moment and jerked his chin toward the pool, clearing my tray. I shook my head. I had smelled that water, and I would have to become a good deal more desperate before I let it touch my skin.
    Some women, I saw, had better luck; here and there, a few had small luxuries-a ewer of clean water, a comb, a bottle of scented oil. These held court on their islanded couches, sharing out their favors, combing one another’s hair, lowering their gowns to dab scent between their breasts with the dispassionate immodesty of women condemned to live publicly with one another. There was no joy in it and little pleasure.
    “You are