by R Coots
She clenched her fists harder and bit her lip on a whimper. She could not let these women know she still had some of her sai. If they told the warlord . . . No, don’t think about that.
“So, the rest of you?” she asked, once she had her breath back.
Adafa sniffed and stepped out of the small crowd of women. Coming around in front of Jossa, she picked up one of the dresses Mivi had draped over the chair and held it up. “Most captives go to the Breeder ships. The Fleet men love the Breeder ships. All the women they could ever want, and not a one of them able to say no.”
She dropped the dress and held up another one, looking from it to Jossa. Her mouth twisted in a hard line, and her blue eyes glittered with what Jossa could only assume was hate. “But the warlords are above regulated leave time. Why shuttle over to a ship when you can keep a herd in your rooms and dip your usik whenever you please? And if everything lines up just right, he might get a squalling little brat out of the bargain. More fodder for their war.” Adafa’s eyes went sad for a second or so, before she blinked hard and scowled. “Not that milord Syrus has gotten any offspring on us.”
Jossa blinked, unsure if the woman was mad at the warlord for not siring children, or if she was relieved that none of them had born half-blood babies.
Some of the women behind her tittered nervously. The emotional onslaught eased as they took their hands off her back.
Adafa caught her small gasp of relief and misread it. She raised one elegant eyebrow, dropped the dress, and picked up another. It was deep gold, held together at the shoulders with knots of bronze, and almost completely see through. She nodded and waved at the cluster of concubines. “Shoo you.”
They shooed.
Adafa grabbed the towel wrapped around Jossa before she could escape and yanked. “Yes,” the woman said. “Milord has survived almost three years here on the Fleet. I am not a—” She stopped gathering the hem of the dress in her hands and gave Jossa a look. “What’s the word you highborn use?”
“Nehkeh.”
“Ah. The odd language you use. Adafa shrugged and jerked her chin at Julin, then at the tray of cosmetics. The girl jumped to obey. Jossa decided not to correct her. Not many people knew that He’la was the prophetic language, completely unrelated to highborn Imperial. Explaining the difference to commoners and those without the sai for Foreseeing was a waste of time.
“Anyway, spend enough time keeping milord happy and you’ll pick up a few things. From replanting seedlings to colorful new words for your genitalia. Arms up.”
Jossa obeyed just in time, barely managing to find the shoulders of the dress as Adafa threw it over her head. Then they pushed her into a chair. Someone gathered up her hair, Julin came at her with the tray of cosmetics, and Mivi snatched up a hand and attacked it with a nail file. It occurred to her in that moment that if they’d been told to get information out of her, they were doing a singularly bad job of it.
But if the life of a concubine among the Svis Konanuog was as dangerous as they implied, maybe their lack of curiosity was simple self-preservation. Why get to know a woman who could be dead soon?
If that was the case, then maybe she could survive this. Keep her eyes open. Hide her reactions when touched. Do everything she could to learn everything possible about the warlord. Then, when he came for her at last, do her level best to make her body remember every lesson she had ever learned in her childhood. Life in a harem was one great game of Survival. She’d won it before. She would win it again
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> Chapter Seventeen
Jossa
A concubine’s primary function is breeding. Our people may number in the trillions, but our natural birthrate is too low to worry about pleasure. If our master brings you to the peak, so be it. But woe to the woman who does so on her own.
-Chataf Kuchru lis Chuis isk Fuerrus, to Jossalyn
Water ran down her arm and dripped from her elbow as Jossa squeezed the cloth out over the bowel. She waited for it to stop before leaning over to wipe the last traces of cleanser off Delfi’s stomach. As with every time she touched her sousi, she pushed down the bond between them, praying she’d get a response.
Nothing.
By now she was so far past tears that she was operating in a dull haze of despair instead. Iira had allowed her to detach the mag tethers on one of the chairs out in the main room and rehook it here in the infirmary, so she could sit with Del when she wasn’t in the back rooms with the other women. But it wasn’t the consolation she’d thought it would be.
Two and a half weeks now. Two and a half she’d been up and walking around, and still Delfi lay there. Iira had vanished after the first couple days, and none of the writing on the medunit made any sense. Not that Jossa was any sort of medic. If Goris had been here, she might have been able to tell what was going on and when Del would wake. But Jossa was left waiting. Wondering. On her own in a ship full of tainted air and people who didn’t care if she lived or died, except in how it affected their own lives.
“Oh Del,” she whispered, dropping into the chair next to the medunit. “They put a crown on me, did I tell you? I think I told you.” She laid her chin on the edge of the bed and ran a finger up her sousi’s arm. The veins showed blue under Delfi’s pale skin.
“No growth plates or seepage points like the Imperial doctors tried. You know, before . . .” She might as well be touching a corpse, for all the emotional feedback Del put out. It was almost as if her own emotions were being sucked in to her sister.
She sighed. “It’s probably a good thing. Not that I’ll tell them that. Except they crowned you too, and when you wake up, I have no idea what that’s going to do to the bond.” When. Not if. Delfi had to wake up. She had to. They were just weaning her off the cryo drugs and on to whatever it was that made it possible for the outFleet to breathe on this ship.
She still hadn’t figured that part out. None of the concubines had been particularly forthcoming with answers. The few questions she had managed to ease into conversations had painted a very bleak picture. Especially when she put it all together with some of the things Iira had said. Weak lungs and breathing. Some sort of inoculation anyone who wasn’t Fleet born had to get before they could spend more than an hour or so aboard. Or down on the planets after they’d been conquered, if the stories the girls told amongst themselves were true.
“Guess that answers the question of why people call them Svis Konanuog.” Jossa stretched, feeling the vertebrae in her back pop and snap, then winced as a muscle pulled. “Such a long way from the Palace,” she said, taking the bowl of water and setting it on the floor at her feet. She should have finished cleaning Del up, but she just didn’t have the heart for it right now. There was that skin ink on Del’s hip, entirely mundane and inert. Another down by her ankle. Poor man’s decoration, when there wasn’t much in the way of maruste on the back. She’d gotten them on some backwater space station, twins to a set Denz had done the same day. They’d thought it was a great joke.
Jossa didn’t want to look at those right now. They meant more than a maruste ever would. Yet another reminder of a life she’d never have again. She couldn’t even run away to find it. They were gone. All of them. Rui and Denz and the Skatasi, and even those who’d been chasing them. Ancestors, if she were to walk into the Palace tomorrow, not a person there would know why she had a right to stand in that building. Not if the warlord had told her the truth of things.
She wiped her eyes on the sheet and laid her head on her arms. “Well, that was one thing about being a kuchru in the palace of the fuerrus. Attendants. I haven’t had a decent massage in . . .” She stopped to tally up the time, then laughed. “Three hundred and eight years. Give or take.”
Once the laugh started, she couldn’t stop. It just kept going. She clung to the edge of the bed and bumped her head against the mattress, laughing under her breath. “Oh Del. Del. Do you remember? Azia said she wanted to learn some of the tricks. And you said you’d teach her that one thin
g with your hips?” Jossa choked on the laugh. “Adan walked in just as you were demonstrating and looked like he’d died and gone to heaven.”
No answer from the girl on the bed.
“And then when we talked Rui into extra water tanks? Told him he had five women on the ship now and a three-minute shower only meant we’d reset the timer so often it’d break within a month.” She wiped more tears from her cheeks and gasped for breath. It had been a thing of beauty, what came next. The giant copper tub that Del bought from some poor junk dealer. Gotten it all the way to the ship and into the hold without anyone realizing it. What in the name of Ancestors she’d been thinking, Jossa had never found out. But she’d done it. She’d even managed to get it full of hot water. And keep it that way.
“Poor Denz. You were both so sure he was too tall to slip down like that. Nearly drowning in the middle of an orgasm. There have to be more ridiculous ways to go, but—”
“She sounds like a very unique person.”
Jossa whipped around. Only the fact that she had a death grip on Del’s hand kept her from completely shaming herself and landing on her achek. For a moment she gaped, trying to figure out how Mivi had snuck up on her. Then she caught herself and regained control of her flapping jaw. “Yes,” she managed. “Very much so.”
What in the universe brought the woman in here now? Very carefully, Jossa laid Delfi’s hand back on the mattress and rearranged her fingers. The IV needle was taped to the back of the opposite hand, so at least there hadn’t been a risk of pulling that loose. When she looked up again, Mivi was still there, straightening the sheets on the other mattress.
“I always dreamed of being soul bonded,” the woman said softly as she pulled out the corner and retucked it. Her wealth of honey blond hair fell in curls and waves, shielding her face from view. “I thought it must be the most wonderful thing.”
It is, Jossa wanted to tell her. And the most horrible. Delfi had quite literally saved her. Many times over, in fact. But if she ever lost her sousi. That didn’t bear thinking about. There was a reason all the most overwrought stories featured a broken bond pairing. Those who survived, well. The stories had a nugget of truth at their center. The remaining half of a bond generally wasn’t considered useful to society. Especially if the one who survived was the unstable half, instead of the anchor holding them to sanity.
She realized she’d laced her fingers with Del’s and was gripping them hard enough to hurt. Hurt herself, if not her sister. She let go and concentrated on keeping her hands in her lap.
Mivi didn’t seem to need an answer. She moved up to the head of the medunit and pulled the thin pillow out of its casing, squeezing it as if trying to force comfort into it. Or out of it. Jossa decided to swap it for Delfi’s when it was time for bed. Del wouldn’t know any different. She hoped.
“I still got to be special, though. Even though they said I didn’t have enough sai to fill an ovary. Isn’t that nice?” Mivi’s smile was too bright, and her green eyes all but shone in the dim light of the room.
Jossa managed a weak smile in return. “It is.” So long as the woman stayed out of touching range, Jossa could go on pretending to be happy for her.
Mivi narrowed her eyes, lips tightening slightly. Jossa kept the smile on her face and willed herself to believe that yes, it was good that the woman believed herself special. And it was, in a way. It was a trick she’d learned long ago. Whatever her real thoughts, so long as she could see some part of a person’s opinion as truth or reality, she could make them think she agreed with them. Invaluable when it came to life among the kuchruog. Something she was probably going to need more and more often when dealing with the warlord and his. This one in particular.
“Four months,” Mivi said, looking down at the pillow she held. “He wouldn’t touch us. Wouldn’t hardly look at us. Now? Now, I’m the one he comes to. When something goes wrong on Campaign. When he wakes up raging in the night. I make him forget why he killed Brander. So for a little while, he can forget that the bitch he came for was dead before he even made it to the infirmary.”
Oblivious to Jossa’s reaction, Mivi stuffed the pillow back in its case. If the covering had been fabric instead of prefabbed synthsilk, she would have ripped the seams. Instead, she crushed the pillow down until it took up half the space it should have. And kept on pushing, face twisted in concentration.
Jossa fought to close her mouth before the other woman abandoned her abuse of the poor pillow. What? Who?
“Of course, it took him a while to realize I was there for him.” Mivi stopped punching the pillow long enough to let it fluff up a bit before jamming a fist back down into the case, “He’s usually so nice. So gentle with us all.”
Apparently satisfied with her work, she tucked the loose ends of the case in on themselves and slipped the whole thing under the sheets at the head of the table. She smiled as she smoothed the covers and tucked them in. Perfectly. Not a wrinkle to be seen.
Jossa eyed the medunit mattress she’d spent however many days occupying, then looked at the one Delfi still had possession of. It was wide enough for the both of them, wasn’t it? She slept quietly, and Del wasn’t in any shape to thrash around. She never had to touch the other mattress again.
Then she had the horrified realization of what would happen when Delfi actually woke up and learned the truth of their current situation. Assuming she didn’t come up kicking, and that Jossa could explain things before the warlord lost his temper. Because as sure as Barbicans needed keys, she’d get the job done. Del could anger a monk sworn to pacifism, and do it in record time.
And if she took it upon herself to try and protect Jossa? To offer herself in Jossa’s place? As Mivi apparently had?
Many a room and the furniture within had fallen victim to the enthusiasm of Delfi and her husband. Teeth marks and sprains and bandages had not been uncommon. Traveling for miles just to get out of range of their broadcasted feelings had been a necessity for Jossa, just so she could tell her own emotions apart from those of Delfi and Denz. Rui had nearly booted them off the ship a time or two. Only that fact that Del’s departure would mean Jossa’s as well had kept them safe.
All that had happened when Delfi was in a good mood. Now? Just the two of them on this ship? Jossa couldn’t keep the shudder from crawling down her spine at the thought. How she would take the fact that they’d lost their gamble, Jossa couldn’t be sure. But it would probably have something to do with sinking her hooks into the nearest man and torturing him in every way possible.
“I said, are you listening to me?” Jealousy and anger oozed up Jossa’s arm, sending spikes of chill pain through her nerves.
“I’m sorry.” Jossa covered the Mivi’s hand with her own and loaded as much calm acceptance into her voice as she could manage. “I guess I got a little distracted.” She tried a smile.
It worked. Somewhat. Mivi smiled back, her emotions stepping back down into the realm of mild frustration. Jossa left her hand where it was, just in case, and shored up her defenses. It had been a long time since she’d done this particular dance, and last time she’d had Delfi to help. “What was it you were saying?” she asked when she thought it was safe enough.
“Oh!” Mivi took her hand back and went to perch on the bed she’d just made up. “Just hoping she recovers soon.” She nodded at Del’s still form on the mattress of her medunit. “It is so odd, having someone in here. Milord hasn’t come within ten feet of the door since, well—” She shrugged.
Jossa pulled her feet up to the edge of the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees, eying the door to the main room. It would be just her luck for the warlord to come back now and discover them having this discussion.
Mivi must have seen her nervousness. She laughed and waved a hand. “Oh, don’t worry about him. There’s an alert, you see. He made one of the techs set it up so we’d know when he came in the main room.” She sneered elegantly. “Milord Brander liked to keep us on edge. Liked to ambush us and make
us run scared through the quarters. Milord Syrus, though, he doesn’t think like a Fleet man.”
Jossa blinked, then tucked her head down to hide her face. Worried for his women, her mother’s uncle. The warlord just wanted to know if someone else was trying to get at what was his.
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” Mivi sat back and crossed her ankles under her. “Even I haven’t managed to get him to open this place up; he’s that careful with us. Well, with me I guess. Like I said, he’s absolutely gentle with everyone else. I guess you could say I walk that line.” She held her hands up as if balancing an ancient set of scales. “It’s there, you know. There’s only so far you can go before the bruises turn to broken bones. The old warlord, he was harder to gauge.” She rubbed a hand along the edge of the mattress she was sitting on, as if it was an old friend.
Jossa decided right there that she was squeezing in with Delfi, no matter what. If there was ever a time to be grateful for a crown, this was it. Right now. Her taste of this woman a few minutes earlier had been quite enough. If she had to endure the poisonous mix of emotions that comprised Mivi’s being for more than a few seconds, Jossa thought she might go just as mad as the woman herself.
Then she realized that Mivi was waiting for an answer of some sort. “You are very special,” Jossa said, with every ounce of truth she could muster. “To be able to do what so few can master.”
It was like giving water to a parched plant. Mivi beamed, eyes practically glowing. She hopped off the mattress and stroked a hand along Delfi’s hair. “She’ll be fine, you know. These Fleet medics really do know what they’re doing. They can put almost anyone back together. If it hadn’t been for that bitch Rissa going catatonic, they might even have gotten her patched up in time.”
She turned to smile at Jossa. “You won’t tell anyone I talked about her, will you? We’re not supposed to mention her. Everyone gets so very upset when she’s talked about.”
