Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  Entirely too many competing thoughts coursed through Kathlyn at that. She instantly wondered exactly how well Biyu knew her father, and in what capacity. But then, she thought she probably already knew the answer to that. She couldn’t imagine Athenian let Biyu run a separate little kingdom of her own down here without exacting some or other tax for the privilege.

  As Kathlyn knew well, he was remarkably inventive about such things.

  “If my father did have a stroke,” Kathlyn said after a moment, “I would no longer require your help.”

  Biyu blew out another stream of smoke. She looked as if she was turning something over in her head, and once again, Kathlyn could see the sheer calculation in her gaze. Or maybe that was just a part of the smoke that hung around her and that impossible, almost shocking prettiness that she seemed to wear so easily.

  Because you expected a courtesan to really, truly look like a courtesan, she realized. Ruined from head to toe and marked with it.

  As if she knew exactly what Kathlyn was thinking, Biyu’s smirk deepened.

  “I’m sure I’ll regret this,” the other woman muttered. “But my curiosity gets me every time. I always want to know the story.”

  Biyu stepped back, jerking her head toward the interior of her rooms in what Kathlyn assumed was her version of an invitation. Kathlyn took it.

  She stepped into Biyu’s chamber as the other woman went to close the door, then locked it. The room was lit with a fire on one wall and small, soft lights in strategic places that made it feel light while still leaving quite a bit of shadow. It looked . . . not unlike her own rooms, she realized after a moment. But Biyu’s was bigger. And in many ways, nicer. There were thick rugs on the floor and fine tapestries on the walls, and seating for far more people than could fit in Kathlyn’s little living room. There was another one of those arched doorways with fabric hanging down, and through it, a bedroom with a fine, high bed stacked with inviting linens and pillow, and furs thrown down on the concrete floors.

  “I appreciate this,” Kathlyn began, folding her hands in front of her. “I can’t tell you how much—”

  “Where did you get that cloak?” Biyu asked. When Kathlyn looked at her, she’d turned around and was standing by her door, one hip cocked and her gaze frank. Direct. Not so much accusing as matter-of-fact. “I think we both know that’s not standard issue in the cattle courtyard.”

  “The cattle courtyard? You mean . . .”

  “The wives,” Biyu supplied, with perhaps a little too much relish.

  “You consider them cattle?” Kathlyn asked. It was an apt comparison. She just wasn’t sure she liked hearing it from a courtesan. It turned out that maybe she was a little more attached to her rank and her place and her beliefs about how the world worked than she wanted to admit.

  That’s why they call it ruined, a sharp voice inside her piped up. If it wasn’t a big deal, they wouldn’t call it anything, would they?

  “What else would you call dumb creatures who allow themselves to be herded this way and that?” Biyu asked softly, her gaze challenging. “I call them cattle. Brightly colored cows with theatrical hair.” She waved her pipe at Kathlyn. “But we were talking about that cloak.”

  “A friend gave it to me,” Kathlyn replied after a moment.

  “Funny. I’m not your friend and I didn’t give it to you. Yet it looks a lot like one I thought I misplaced.”

  Kathlyn made a show of looking down at the cloak, as if she wasn’t perfectly aware that her friend Yajaira had snuck down here—to the lower laundry, she’d claimed, not into anyone’s actual rooms because that was really crazy—and snatched this cloak and the other hardly-there clothes she’d worn that fateful night.

  “How curious,” she murmured. “But then, so many things look the same, don’t they?”

  Biyu’s smirk deepened. “No one else in this palace would dare walk into my stews and right on into my home wearing my very own stolen cloak. Are you that daring, Princess Kathlyn? Or are you a little lost cow too dumb to know better?”

  Kathlyn smiled. “I’m little of both, I’m afraid. Aren’t we all?”

  Biyu laughed, looking as if it surprised her as much as it did Kathlyn.

  “You want me to help you.” She studied Kathlyn a moment. “When you well-bred ladies venture down into this grand mess of mine, it’s only ever about one thing. You’re either pregnant and don’t want to be, or you’re afraid of getting pregnant. Which one is it? And you should know upfront that one is significantly more expensive than the other.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” Kathlyn said automatically. Though it occurred to her, with a little shock, that for the first time in her life, she could be. That putting aside how hard it was to get pregnant and how few women did, it was something she now had to consider. It didn’t scare her. It made her feel human for the first time—maybe ever. Just another woman with a woman’s concerns, not a sad little locked-away pawn in her father’s game anymore. Or not entirely, anyway. She considered what Biyu said. “Do women really . . . not want to get pregnant? I mean, I know about that tea, of course. But that always sounded more . . . theoretical.”

  “The church doesn’t have to raise the babies, does it?” Biyu sucked on her pipe a moment, then blew out another cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. “It’s not the church that suffers, it’s the woman who’s forced to stay another year with the husband who smacks her around. Who gets big and vulnerable and unable to protect herself while some man demands his daily rights, then takes them no matter how sick she feels. Who tries to comfort a crying infant while her winter husband bitches about not getting a new winter wife and takes it out on her, one way or another. So yes, really, some women don’t want to get pregnant.”

  Kathlyn felt chaotic inside, which she was beginning to associate with these things she wasn’t sure she wanted to learn. But this was the world in all its glory. This was real. This upside-down version of the palace she knew so well was as real as her life in the quiet courtyard. Maybe a little more real, come to that.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Kathlyn said again, quietly.

  “Then let me answer the most common questions for you. Yes, you can get pregnant the first time. No, his dick won’t fall off if you don’t do it when he begs you. Yes, it can be fun despite what the church says but no, you shouldn’t expect that from some humorless asshole who only wants to take what he thinks is his. Yes, you can put it in your mouth and no, it won’t make you sick or pregnant. Yes, there are herbs that will make you bleed more often to keep him off of you. Yes, there are herbs that will keep you from bleeding at all. And no, I can’t make him use oil if he likes to hurt you, because some men are little bullies that way, but there are different oils you can use that can help.” She cocked her head to one side, a little smile toying with the corners of her lips. “Did that cover it?”

  Kathlyn felt that her mouth had dropped open and closed it. Then swallowed. “That covers a great many things and I have a lot of follow-up questions, actually. But none of that is why I came here.”

  “Tell me who put his hands all over our icy, untouchably gold princess,” Biyu said, that smirk back in full control of her face, “and I’ll answer any question you have.” But on the off chance Kathlyn might have thought she had a personal interest in that answer, she kept going. “There are a lot of bets on it at the moment and I like pretty things. The money is on one of the guards because there are so many of them it makes for good odds, but I don’t believe it. You’ve been so irritatingly perfect for so long. Why would you throw it away on a palace guard?”

  “It wasn’t a palace guard.” Kathlyn found she was gripping her own interlaced fingers much too tightly and forced herself to let go. “It wasn’t anyone.” Because it hadn’t been, then. Not really. Not fully. “Apparently, you can be ruined without having to do anything to earn it.”

  “Ruin is never about what you earn, girl.” Biyu wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s about what they say, not what you know. Or did your
gold dresses go to your head?”

  “My attendant told me that it wouldn’t matter what the truth was, that they’d already decided.”

  “Your attendant is a smart lady.”

  “Then she told me that since I was already considered ruined, what I had to worry about was the pain of a mounting ceremony, and she did something to make it hurt less.”

  “Did you bleed?” Kathlyn nodded and Biyu rolled her eyes. “You compliant women. You’re like empty-headed little dolls that they move around from palace to palace. But hey, at least you get to wear pretty dresses.” She pulled on her pipe, then blew it out in a long, slow stream. “It sounds like she took care of you. Now listen to me.”

  She waited for Kathlyn’s gaze to focus on hers, as if she knew Kathlyn had been trying to get her head around the fact that a courtesan clearly thought a princess was worthy of scorn. And more, was happy to show it.

  “Never forget this,” Biyu said, quiet and direct. “Mounting ceremonies are about the pain. Virginity isn’t a big deal anywhere but here. When a girl starts bleeding, she gets rid of it. At a bonfire, at a festival in the summer, or she waits until her first winter husband and he deals with it. No ceremonies, because the point of sex is to repopulate the earth, according to the church. Except here in the western highlands, where the girls are prized for their hymens because the men think ripping through them in front of a crowd is a bit of sport. So much so, they bid for the privilege. The more they hate a girl’s father, the more fun they have hurting her, making her bleed, and fucking her right there where her father can see it. It’s about the pain, and never about you. Don’t kid yourself about this.”

  For a moment, the room was silent, nothing but soft light and deep shadows.

  “If that was meant to prepare me for my mounting ceremony,” Kathlyn said distantly, “which is in a couple of days, by the way, I think your delivery needs a little work.”

  Biyu sighed. Or maybe she was just blowing out more of her smoke. “I’m not trying to scare you. But you should know what you’re walking into. This fantasy you rich girls dream up, of white dresses and the happy feast and the idea it makes you a woman—” She shook her head. “It’s just another dick-measuring contest. It’s not about the girls at all.” But she seemed to relent after that sat there a moment. “It will probably still hurt, because men are rough, disgusting pigs, but thanks to your attendant, it will hurt less.”

  “And I’m grateful for that,” Kathlyn said softly, when she was sure she wouldn’t sound shaken. “But I have to have a mounting ceremony either way, and I’d prefer to have the one I always dreamed about. Not because I’m a cow. Or a doll. But because I should get one thing I want. Just one. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “They’re giving you to that raider.” Biyu shook her head. “Have you seen him? All of him? He’s very big and very rough and not for little girls like you.”

  “Maybe I don’t need your help after all, then. Maybe I’ll bleed well either way, if he’s so rough.”

  For a moment Biyu looked as if she pitied her, and Kathlyn wondered how this conversation would have felt if she hadn’t already experienced Wulf. If she didn’t already know that he wouldn’t hurt her. That he hadn’t. That the marks he left were of a different kind altogether.

  “Whether he hurts you or doesn’t hurt you, you bleed or don’t, you must know it makes no difference. Your father doesn’t change his mind. Ever. Unless it’s to cause more harm.”

  Kathlyn supposed that answered the question of how well Biyu knew the king.

  “There’s nothing I can do about him.” She lifted one shoulder, then dropped it, and wished she could feel as nonchalant about all this as she was pretending she did. “This is about me. It’s about what I want, and I spent my whole life dreaming about this. I don’t care if it’s a lie. My father is going to take every other thing I ever dreamed about. I don’t want to give him this, too.”

  “You can’t want the whole show. Bloody sheets to prove how innocent you are, no matter what they think of you already. Can you?”

  “A white dress stained with blood is how good daughters show their love,” Kathlyn said softly, repeating the old nursery rhyme all the highborn girls in the western highlands were taught in their cradles.

  Biyu studied her for a moment, and Kathlyn was taken aback by the weary, almost rueful look she saw in the other woman’s face. As if she’d seen everything before, even this.

  Maybe especially this, if all those old whispers were true.

  “If bloody sheets are the hill you want to die on, girl, I can help you with that,” Biyu said after a moment, and that smirk was back in the corner of her mouth, somehow making it clear that she was as formidable as she was pretty. “But I don’t hand out favors like candy from the good of my bitter little heart. It’s going to cost you.”

  12.

  The night of her mounting ceremony, Kathlyn dressed in the white dress she’d had made specially, years ago, when she’d first bled and had imagined her mounting would be imminent. She sat on the little bench in her dressing room and watched through the large, oval mirror as her attendant Harissa tended to her hair, using a sharp-scented concoction to straighten her very thick, short curls and a heavier cream to slick it back into its usual sleek look once it was straight. Her trademark.

  “There you are,” the attendant murmured when she was finished. She caught Kathlyn’s gaze in the mirror as she tidied up her instruments. “Would you like anything? Perhaps some tea? I have a special herbal blend that’s very relaxing.”

  “No, thank you,” Kathlyn said as serenely as possible. She was practicing for the night ahead. Serene. Composed. As if she could combat her ruin with the expression she wore on her face. “I’m fine.”

  “Many girls find that relaxing a little bit before such a big night is very helpful,” Harissa said, still holding her gaze.

  “Really, I’m fine,” Kathlyn assured her. “Thank you again.”

  And it wasn’t until the attendant left, a concerned look on her warm gold face, that Kathlyn realized what she’d been offering and more, why so many highborn girls managed to make it through their ceremonies so calmly. Even in those cases where the women in the audience winced in sympathy with each hard thrust.

  There was a tea to numb them.

  “Of course there’s a tea,” Kathlyn muttered to herself as she stood.

  Harissa wasn’t one of her long-term attendants. She’d been cycled over to Kathlyn from one of her father’s permanent wives only this winter. And unlike some, she wasn’t chatty, which meant Kathlyn knew very little about her. But that hadn’t prevented this woman, who only knew Kathlyn as a distant, quiet princess, from trying to help her. And not the way Biyu had helped her—for a price.

  No, no, Biyu had said with a laugh when Kathlyn had tried to talk about more traditional forms of payment. Just remember that you owe me a favor, girl. Someday, I’ll collect.

  That wasn’t ominous at all, Kathlyn thought darkly now, but it was done. And she had what she wanted. The girl she saw in her mirror before her was the girl she’d had in her head all her life. She looked the way she’d always imagined she would on this night. Innocent. Excited. Ready to start the rest of her life once she made it through this most important of transitions.

  And she didn’t care that maybe this particular transition wasn’t what she’d always imagined it was. What mattered was what it represented to her.

  Her mother might not be here to see this night, but if Kathlyn closed her eyes, she could imagine that she was. And that Lady Gertrix was proud that, no matter what else happened, Kathlyn was honoring this significant moment that had meant so much to her mother.

  You go into the ceremony a girl and come out a woman, Lady Gertrix had told her. And you are the daughter of a very powerful man, sweet. You will be a queen someday. When your time comes, I know you’ll make me proud.

  Kathlyn had every intention of doing just that. In spite of—or may
be because of—what had happened these past weeks. Even if every other person at the ceremony jeered and whispered about her behind their hands, it didn’t matter. She would give her mother the perfect ceremony anyway, just as she’d always planned.

  She brushed the faint bit of moisture away from her eyes and then went into the toilet to insert the little poultice wrapped in a bit of that same gauzy material that Biyu had given her. She felt silly and hot with embarrassment as she fumbled her way to that place only Wulf had touched with any thoroughness, and then pushed the little package inside.

  It will do the trick, Biyu had promised, with that smirk of hers at full force, her canny gaze amused. Or something like amused, anyway, only sharper. Instant blood. You can sing yourself to sleep with that creepy lullaby for the rest of your life.

  When it was done, Kathlyn let her gleaming white dress drop back down and took a shaky breath. She took a few steps across the bath suite, trying to see if she could feel the little packet inside of her. She didn’t know if she was relieved or a little disturbed by the fact she couldn’t, but there was nothing more she could do on her own to make her ceremony perfect now. All that was left was public part.

  The Wulf part.

  But her mind reeled around without purchase when she thought about him and the fact she’d be expected to perform for the whole palace what she’d hardly managed to survive here, alone, in her rooms. In the forgiving, firelit dark.

  She ordered herself to breathe. And to settle down. The trouble with that was, once she’d managed to get herself under control again, she didn’t know what to do with herself, all alone in her bathroom suite.

  This wasn’t how the night was supposed to go. She was supposed to be surrounded by her friends, relatives. The other women in the courtyard. The night a girl became a woman wasn’t meant to happen in solitude. What she would do to look up now and see her mother standing there, with a smile on her face. Or even concern. What she would do for a kind word and her mother’s arm around her shoulders one more time.