Beneath the Veil

by Megan Hart

  "My lord, please! I meant no harm!"

  "And I mean you none. I only want to ask you about what life was like here long ago."

  Trembling, the haberdasher sat down and wiped at his forehead. "'Tis a complicated question. And one you yourself said could get me into trouble."

  "I don't want to get you into trouble. I just want to learn from you."

  He sighed, then reached behind the tall counter and pulled out a flask. He took a long swallow and offered me the bottle, but I shook my head. He drank again, then recapped the flask and cradled it to him.

  "Rosten would have you believe life in Alyria has always been this way," he said. "But when I was a lad, women were not treated like slaves."

  He looked around, fearful, his old eyes wide. He drank again. "They were not equal to men, oh no. They had to dress plainly, and their place was in the home while their men went out hunting and carousing. But they did not have to cover their faces at home, only in the streets. I can still remember my mother's face."

  He looked at me a trifle defiantly, then, as though waiting for me to take issue with him.

  "I remember my mother's face, too," I whispered. I took the seat next to him and reached for his withered but still strong hand. "Tell me more."

  "Alyria's borders were closed, even then, because of the plague that took boy children and spared the girls. Many, many male infants died in the womb, or at birth. Many more were sickly, didn't thrive, died before they weaned from the teat. When I was a young laddie, I had seven sisters. I was the only boy of my mother and father who lived, as my father had been the only son of his mother and father. By the time I was born, there were three women for every man. My great grandfather told me how he'd joined himself with only one woman in his household. My father had five women of his house. In my time, with the successful haberdashery and tailoring business, I had eight."

  "The history books –"

  "History is only what is retold," the man interrupted. "When nobody is around who remembers first-hand, history is dead."

  "I know of the plague, and of the closing of the borders. I know why boys are so much more desired than girls. But how did we get from what you remember to what it's like today?"

  "How does anyone get anywhere?" The old man threw up his hands, then swigged again from his liquor. "Time. Trends. Men had always had the power. They used it badly. Fear made them pass the rules and the laws. Fear made them scan the Law of the Book to find ways to bend it to their needs. That's all."

  "Men like Rosten."

  "Like Rosten, yes. But normal men, too, who held their lifeless sons and could not figure out how to save them. Nobody ever has figured out why the disease struck only boys and not girls. Nobody ever found a cure. The priests of the temple said 'twas Kedalya's revenge upon Sinder."

  "I don't understand how nobody can recall how once life was different," I said, exasperated.

  "Anything beyond one generation is as easily forgotten as lion's mane fluff tossed on the wind. All that's important is the now."

  He leaned forward, close enough to me I could hear the whisper of his breath. "What the priests won't tell you and you'll not find in any book, is that the women almost won, once."

  "What?" I couldn't fathom what he was talking about.

  He leaned yet closer, so close his cheek pressed mine. "Do you think it happened overnight? Before they were forced to wear the kedalya all the time, before they were stripped of their last rights, the women rose up and fought."

  I thought of Carinda's daggers flashing in the moonlight, and of my own training with Lir on the fight field. I thought of slippered, silent feet and women whose faces were never seen, not even by the men who got children with them. "Tell me."

  The old man's whisper caressed my face. "There was a woman. She called herself Firynza. She spoke out about the way females were treated, how they were not allowed to belong to the councils, or to run shops. She spoke in the squares because she wasn't allowed in the poetry houses. She wrote essays and gave them out to the women in the marketplace. She refused to wear the veil, and dressed in the clothes of men. She refused to become a part of any man's household. Some women began to believe her, and she gathered a small but fierce following. They lived together on the edge of town and subsisted mostly by begging and charity, since they couldn't work and they had no men to provide for them.

  The King of the time, Parsen Avigdor, believed in punishing the whole for the sins of the few. He threatened to take away the children from the women who followed Firynza. The boys would have been sent to nurseries or other households to be raised."

  "And the girls?"

  His silence told me the answer.

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Who knows? Because though men might wish to control the females, they don't want to have to change diapers and clean up shite? Because the surest way to control women is by overpowering them, by forcing them to fear?"

  My lip curled. "So he threatened to take away their babies? To kill them?"

  "Parsen Avigdor, some said, was mad. He pissed blue and shat orange, and his face ran with pustules. 'Twas said he had contracted the fucking disease. From a woman. Some said from Firynza herself."

  "And all this happened within your lifetime?"

  "I was a wee lad when the women rose up. Took arms, they did, against the men who came to take away the children. Killed a lot of them, too. The women made their stand, but in the end they lost. 'Twas after that Avigdor made the laws that no female should learn to read or write, be allowed to raise a hand against a man, that they all must wear the kedalya at all times. I was only small, but I remember it. Firynza was wrong in her own way, though," said the old man suddenly. "Forcing women to live without men who would care for them is just as bad as forcing them to live with men who do not."

  "How can you be the only one who remembers this?" I paced the narrow room. "Surely there must be others!"

  "Sure, and there must, though few they are. But what man would stand against the might of so many others? Who would risk the privilege of being superior when the punishments for speaking out are so severe? Women have their shackles, 'tis true enough, lad, but I venture the men are just as imprisoned. When loving one's children and the person who gave them to you is a crime...." He trailed away and gave a great sigh. "All that 'twas long ago, lad. There have been four kings since then, and now the Prince Regent."

  "And in all that time...?"

  He shrugged again. "Some things has been better, some's been worse."

  "You risk much by telling me this tale, old man. How do you know I won't turn you in to Rosten as being part of the rebellion?"

  He took my hand and clasped my fingers to his. He brought them to his wrinkled lips and kissed the back of my hand softly. "Because you reminded me of my Sondrina."

  I'd known a mother's love, but not a father's. The old man's sentiment moved me. I thought of what he'd said, about the women rising up, and knew what I had to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Daelyn was well-pleased with the hat I brought him, but not so pleased with what I proposed. He scowled and turned from the mirror where he'd been admiring his reflection. I settled the other packages I'd brought for him on the table.

  "How much longer can you keep smuggling them out?" I kept my voice, low, respectful. "The risks are too great."

  "You don't need to tell me about the risks."

  I was going to lose him if I wasn't careful. Daelyn and I had shared much – but he was still the Prince Regent and I was not. I softened my tone and kept my gaze averted. Non-threatening.

  "Wouldn't it be better to teach them how to take care of themselves?" I asked him. "Train them to fight? Teach them to read and write, to do sums?"

  "And what would they do with those skills?"

  "They might not be so complacent." I took his new hat and brushed the feathers, then hung it on the rack. Finally, I turned to meet his eyes. "If you give them knowledge, they'll be able to take care o
f themselves. And if you train them how to fight –"

  "Are you talking about war?" Daelyn asked softly.

  I had to think before I answered. "Yes. I think I am."

  "You want us to train the follies to fight, as Lir has taught you? Give them daggers to put beneath their kedalyas? To use on who?"

  I hedged in my answer. "Some of them might love the men of their house. Some of the men might love their women. The solution is not to get them all out of Alyria, but to change Alyria so they can stay."

  "And you'd have that happen through bloody battle, would you?"

  I lost my temper, and too late, realized he was taunting me. "And how else would you have it? Smuggling three and four out a week? There are thousands of women in this city, and thousands of children, too! It would take years to get them all out, even if you could, and for what? To send them, helpless, to Elitan? What happens to them there?" I stopped for breath and expected him to rail at me, but he only shook his head.

  "My sister says much the same thing. I have thus far hoped to sway the councils toward leniency rather than strictness, and to make life easier here than have them go away. I've said before, Aeris, a country without children is a dead country. And without women, there can be no children. If I were King –"

  "But you won't be King, will you?" I smacked my fist into my palm. "Not if you need to get a son, first. How do you expect to do that, Daelyn? A miracle?"

  He slapped me. I slapped him back. He put a hand to his face, as though I'd stunned him, but he didn't hit me again.

  "One way or another, I'll have my son, if I have to buy or steal one."

  "Rosten controls the voting council. You can become king. But you can't overrule Rosten."

  "Rosten's blood is as easily spilled as anyone else's." Daelyn's teeth flashed in a grim smile. "All it takes is the right blade."

  "And Adamantane? Simelbon?"

  He looked down his nose at me. "You speak of politics as though you understand them."

  "I don't pretend to understand anything. And you will tell me nothing." I clenched my hands again in frustration. "I know bits and pieces, that's all. You should have left me selling melons –"

  Daelyn moved forward so quickly I couldn't pull away. His lips were soft on mine. His tongue quested between my lips as his hand found the back of my head.

  I melted at first beneath the sensual onslaught but then pulled away. My mouth felt swollen, my eyelids heavy. It was difficult to catch my breath. "Don't use me that way."

  He sighed and pulled away from me, his tongue a ribbon of pink swiping the taste of me from his lips. "Aeris, there is more to this than simply teaching writing and arithmetic. You're talking of civil war. Do you know how many people would die?"

  "How many are dying now? Or don't they count, because of their gender?"

  He curled his lip at me. "Don't insult me that way."

  He gave me his back, and for the first time since coming to his service, I didn't leap to placate him. His head bent and he gripped the back of a chair. When at last he spoke, his voice was low but not soft, quiet but not meek.

  "What would you have me do?" he asked. "Send them out against the men to be slaughtered? They are our mothers and our sisters. Our daughters. I'm responsible for them."

  "You know women can fight as well as men. And, forgive me, my prince. They have more reason to fight to win. Because of their children."

  He sighed, and his shoulders lifted. "I am breaking."

  Then I did go to him, and put my arm round his shoulders, and brought him into the safety and solace of my embrace. "You don't have to break. Not when you have me and Lir to stand beside you."

  He looked at me with wet eyes and managed a smile so brilliant it took my breath away. "Love or fear, Aeris?"

  I touched my cheek to his. "Love."

  "For me? Or for Lir?"

  I thought of Lir's face, and my stomach did a slow, rolling tumble. I wasn't certain what I felt for Lir. It was not fear. But was it love?

  "You don't have to answer that," Daelyn whispered in my ear. "Not to me, anyway."

  He pulled away, went to his high-backed chair, and waved at me to sit. "Call for some refreshment. I've got a story to tell you, this time."

  I rang the bell and we waited while the folly brought us a tray loaded with hot cacao and velvet-soft biscuits slathered in creamy butter. Daelyn ate three of the small biscuits and drank two cups of cacao before he paused, wiped his lips on his napkin, and stared at me with an inscrutable look.

  "You still think of me as he," he said, which startled me into spilling some of my drink.

  The hot liquid stained my tunic, but didn't burn the skin beneath. I wiped at the splotch with a cloth. "I think of myself as he, even though I know what I really am."

  He picked up another biscuit but did not bring it to his mouth. "I understand. When one has lived one's entire life as one thing, it's difficult to pretend to be another."

  We stared at each other over our plates. "Who decided for you?"

  "My mother, the same as you." He shrugged delicately. "She was King Harrigan's favorite folly, the one he took to his bed more times than any other, and the one who brought forth the most children from him. All daughters...until me."

  He laughed and put his hand between his legs. "You'd think they'd pay better attention, wouldn't you? To a child that's meant to take on the royal throne? But they don't. Men...they don't want to be bothered with the shite and the puke, the "vile" breastfeeding. And, I suppose my father trusted my mother, who’d never given him any reason to believe she would play him false. I think it was quite impossible for him to believe it of her, as it is for many men. They don't give the follies credit for being able to think well enough to deceive."

  "So she gave birth to yet another daughter and named her as a son, instead." Now I took another sip of my cacao, and managed not to spill it.

  "She gave birth to twins. One girl. One boy. One died at birth. The other was me. She named me Daelyn, which means hope. I was the last hope for her. As much as my father preferred her to the others, he was swayed by the lover he took to his bed when he didn't share it with my mother."

  "Rosten."

  "Aye." Daelyn nodded and put the last uneaten biscuit down, as though speaking the man's name had soured his stomach. "Rosten. Perhaps he was jealous. Perhaps he didn't care for the time my father spent making babies with my mother. Who knows? Maybe he truly believes in the scripture."

  "And your sister?"

  "Carinda?" Again, Daelyn laughed. "All my mother's daughters 'died' in their infancy. Or so she had my father believe, and so he did not really care. The reality was, she sent them away to Elitan, to be fostered there by the monarch. At the time it was Queen Anaile, who was herself an Avigdor, though one of distant line. She married but had no children of her own, and was glad for the chance to raise her heirs. When Carinda became of age, the Queen transferred her throne and her crown to her. Though Elitan is not prosperous or large enough to be able to invade and take over, else they surely would have by now."

  "And the others?"

  "Married and moved away, or died. At any rate, so far as I know, none of them ever looked back to Alyria. And I've never met any of them, as they were much older than I. Carinda was the last child my mother 'lost.'" Daelyn toyed with his biscuit, crumbling it between his fingers. "My father died soon after."

  "Of poison."

  He cocked his head and gave a half-smile. "So some say. They strung up my mother for the crime. They gave the care of me over to another woman, the one who'd born my father. She also knew my secret. It was the reason I was never discovered. Like I said, you'd think they'd take better care in such matters."

  "I think Rosten will, now."

  Daelyn raised a brow at me. "I think you're right. You know, Alyria wasn't always so isolated and backward. Before they closed the borders, Alyria had many visitors. We were, in fact, hailed as being very advanced in science, and fashion, and philosophy. Now th
e only ones who hail us are ourselves."

  Daelyn indicated his hat. "You might think me very silly for caring so much about my appearance. About my clothes and my entertainments. I've done it for so long I've almost convinced myself these are the things that really matter. Believe me, Aeris, all I ever wanted in my whole life was to be as silly as I pretended to be."

  "All I ever expected out of life was to get out of my uncle's household and open my own fight school." I laughed. "How was I supposed to do that, I wonder, when I had no skills? No training? And now I've had the training, but there's no way to make that dream come true."