by Samuel Fort
Chapter 2: The Penitent
The scene that greeted her beyond the foyer took her breath away. She marveled at the electric lights and the polished floor. She stared disbelievingly at the dozens of clean, well-dressed people in the chairs around the several fireplaces and passing to and fro in front of her. It was as if she had been transported a year into the past, and then into the lobby of a five-star hotel. For a brief moment she doubted her sanity.
A long table had been positioned against one of the walls and on it had been placed baskets of freshly baked bread, and alongside the bread, jam, coffee, and orange juice.
The emaciated woman could not remember the last time she had eaten.
“Persipia?”
She turned toward the voice. At the far end of the room, a million miles away, Lilitu, known to the Ardoon as Lilian, sat alone in a large leather chair. She wore a white turtleneck sweater, jeans, and brown leather boots, her hair in a simple ponytail. Papers were on her lap and she held a pen in one hand, a mug in the other. Her expression was neither menacing nor friendly.
Persipia, who wore black knit cap, tattered cargo pants, oversized military boots, and four layers of grimy sweaters, understood that she was the elephant in the room and that everyone in it was politely, and thus rudely, looking in every direction but hers. The buzz of conversation became a spattering of coughs.
She knew very little about Lilitu, having only met her twice, both times while making rounds in Europe with her mother, Lady Del. The last time had been many years ago, when Persipia was just nineteen. She and her mother had found the fallen princess loitering in a decrepit mansion in France, an opium pipe and entourage of barely clad fetches her only companions. Yet Lilitu was particularly amicable when Persipia’s mother had introduced her, even sharing her pipe. Persipia remembered Lilitu stroking her hair while she partook of the exquisite vapors.
Only months ago (which seemed very much like decades, now), Lady Del had advised her daughter that Lilitu had made an offer she would be wise to accept. Lilitu wished for Persipia to serve as consort to her Ardoon husband, a man likely to gain a crown by device of the Great Sage. Persipia had initially been heartbroken by the prospect, because she was sereti, and had thus spent most of her life preparing for marriage to a noble. She had envisioned herself as the companion to at least a duke, if not as asatu, then at least as senior serretu. Because any nobleman’s sexual desires were finite, the consorts Persipia knew spent most of their time as handmaidens to serretus. They were granted no titles and were excluded from inheritance.
Worse, Lady Del had intimated that the ardoon’s sensibilities did not allow him to take another partner. In the strictest sense, this should have been a good thing, because Persipia had ascertained as a young woman that she had no particular physical desires, other than comfort. No, the dilemma presented by her mother’s revelation was that Persipia would be unable to ingratiate herself with the person who had the most to offer her. Lilitu might on occasion be generous to a servant, but Persipia calculated that she would fare much better with the king, a former slave who might be generous to a fault.
Nevertheless, with the world at an end, Persipia had tentatively decided to take the hand that Lilitu had extended to her. The woman might have been lounging in a silk robe even now, if not for the attack of Lord Moros, and the shortsighted cowardice of both Persipia and her mother when they had surrendered to him. Yet who could blame the women for their actions that night? The Great Sage was missing, as was the Ardoon who was to be king, and Moros’s Peth had successfully captured Steepleguard. And Lilitu...
Persipia frowned. Whenever she tried to summon memories of Lilitu’s activities that night, a dark fog filled her mind. It was as if the queen had been present when Moros attacked, but was made invisible. Persipia imagined that the trauma of that evening, or the horrific days since, had damaged her memory, if not her mind. She could remember kneeling in surrender to Moros on the floor of the Great Hall, and walking out of Steepleguard and into the darkness afterwards. She knew that, in the interim, Moros had been defeated by Disparthian and the Ardoon king, though she remembered nothing of the battle.
She also remembered being told by someone (or some thing?) that she and the other traitors could return to Steepleguard to beg the queen’s forgiveness, and seek refuge, after the then-imminent apocalypse had commenced. Few of her fellow traitors survived both the trek down the mountain and the horrors of the end days, and most who did set out for more distant kingdoms, being either too proud to return to Steepleguard, or too afraid.
Persipia had no use for pride. In the prior decade, pride had compelled her mother to refuse three fair suitors, to include a viscount, when Persipia was in her prime. Pride had tricked Lady Del into thinking that her daughter’s age was of no consequence, when Persipia knew it was. Though an attractive thirty or even forty-something Ardoon woman might have no trouble finding a suitable mate, Persipia was not Ardoon and not average. She was Nisirtu, a member of the ancient ruling class, and sereti. She did not desire just a mate. She desired a noble, and a high ranking one at that, who could give her the lifestyle she had coveted since youth.
Yet her mother had forbidden marriage for so long that potential candidates for her hand began to assume that Persipia had been reserved for an unknown - if currently ineligible - suitor. As such, she was deemed unmarriageable and ignored by even the lowest patricians. The end of the world had not improved the sereti’s circumstances.
No, Persipia had no use for the liability of “pride.”
Fear, on the other hand, was the woman’s lifelong companion, and despite its ill advice the night of Moros’s attack, she would always trust its counsel. At this juncture, that counsel was that Lilitu’s wrath, however horrible, was better than death. She imagined that death had already come for those proud or cowardly Nisirtu who had foolishly journeyed toward the coast, or across the plains, in hopes of refuge elsewhere.
Fear also advised Persipia that she was a miscalculation away from being tortured to death by the new queen. Show her, said Fear, that you have trampled Pride underfoot. Prove to her that you will undergo any humiliation to remain alive.
Summoning all her will, the woman dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward as a penitent was required to do. Only six months ago she would have said she'd die before humiliating herself in this way. That was before she suffered hunger - true hunger. And cold. And ruination. Now crawling for survival was the most natural thing in the world, though that made it no less degrading.
The hall was remarkably large and the place where Lilitu sat was so far away that the woman thought she might die of exhaustion before she ever reached the new queen. As Pride tried to reassert itself, she found herself close to tears.
Somewhere above her, a door opened, and she looked up to see a man descending one of the wide staircases. He had a book in one hand and reading glasses at the edge of his nose. Though she had never seen the man before, she knew from her mother’s description that he must be the Ardoon husband of Lilitu and Fiela.
No, she reminded herself, Nisirtu, not Ardoon, and far more importantly, the king. Admittedly, the old tweed jacket and slacks he wore were not the standard garb of regents, but he was a strikingly handsome man; tall, with broad shoulders, and a warm, intelligent face.
At his side was the girl who had given her the tea and whom she now realized was the fabled Fiela, niece of the Great Sage, co-regent of Steepleguard, and hero of the Maqtu wars. The assassin was dressed in jeans and green sweater, her red hair cut to her shoulders. She was holding onto the king’s arm, a carefree smile on her face. Persipia intuitively sensed a powerful emotional connection between the two.
The king slowed, stopped, took off his glasses and surveyed the hall, a bemused expression on his face. Fiela’s carefree smile vanished as she moved in front of him. A gun mysteriously appeared in one of her hands. The man placed a hand on the Peth’s shoulder to calm her.
He said in a
booming but cordial voice, “What did I miss? I normally can’t get you people to shut up.”
Everyone in the room chuckled politely and Persipia watched him following their eyes to her, the ragged woman on all fours ruining their festivities. When he saw her, he frowned, and looked at Lilitu.
“She is Persipia, husband,” said Lilitu. “Nisirtu,” she added with polite emphasis. Her domain, in other words.
“Ah, I see,” he said with the briefest of smiles, snapping his book shut and continuing down the stairs. At the bottom Fiela gave Persipia a last glance and whispered something to the king before withdrawing into a nearby hallway. When she was gone, the man walked to Lilitu and the two talked in a hushed tone. He used his reading glasses to slowly chop the air, as if making a point, and Lilitu was nodding, looking pleased and displeased at the same time.
He is saying, thought Persipia, that he did not want me before and he certainly does not want me now. He was averse to the idea of consorts because of his slave morality. Even had he been agreeable before, her treason and haggard appearance today was sufficient reason for him to reject her.
Finally, the man turned toward her.
“Persipia. You’re the daughter of Lady Del?”
“Yes, Anax.”
He nodded and said solemnly, “There’s a medical team collecting supplies from the infirmary. They’ll be here shortly. In the meantime, my wife would appreciate a few words with you, if you’re up to it.” He said this in a tone that suggested the newcomer might refuse. To her amazement, his Agati was perfect, that of a great orator, with no trace of an accent. “Can you walk?”
Persipia nodded and stood unsteadily, looking only at the man who spoke to her because she could not endure the scorn of the others in the room. She peeled apart her chapped lips and said hoarsely, “I can, Anax. You are most generous.”
The king scanned the room, shook his head, and yelled, “Is there not a single gentleman in the room?”
As if seeing her for the first time, a number of the men in the hall suddenly rushed to Persipia and offered her their arms. Nearing collapse, she gratefully accepted two of the offers and allowed them to escort her forward. Everyone else appeared to lose interest and the room roared back to life. The king gave the queen a last look and then walked into the corridor that had swallowed Fiela.
