Prisoner of the Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Then the dreams came, replaying the events of my wedding night, throwing me awake again and again. Every time I awoke, flailing to escape, sometimes on a scream, Kaia would be there offering me the gryth tea. Changing the compresses on my bruises.

  This time, though, Kaia slept on the pillows beside me, a damp cloth still clutched in her crooked fingers, her face slack with exhaustion. She’d stayed awake all night to tend me. A burst of feeling made tears leak from my eyes. Kaia had always been so good to me. Perhaps I could arrange for her to retire as Old Mara had, once I left.

  My stomach curdled and I nearly vomited at the thought. Rodolf might have to keep me alive, but I had no doubt I’d come to sorely regret that I’d have no recourse into death. Those other wives…perhaps he hadn’t killed them, after all. They might have found a way to suicide.

  Who could blame them?

  The room remained dim, the light and heavy curtains all drawn, but sound filtered in from the seraglio. Music and clattering of dishes. The party. To celebrate my wedding.

  I stared up at the silk-draped ceiling, the one I’d been looking at all my life—or at least since I was five and old enough to rate my own apartments. It seemed impossible to consider moving, to lever myself out of bed, much less face any of them. I ached in every pore, and with screamingly acute pain in some places I didn’t want to think about. Places that Rodolf had… Don’t think about it.

  My wrists hurt, throbbing with it, the wedding bracelets cutting in painfully, so I lifted my hands to look. Kaia must have been the one to bandage them, carefully wrapping the skin beneath the bracelets, but she hadn’t been able to remove the locked-on bracelets themselves, of course. Nor could she have cleaned all the blood that caked in and around the sparkling gems. Not that the jewels cared. They caught and scattered the scant light regardless, coldly uncaring about the woman who wore them.

  If my mother had offered me a draught of poison at that moment, I would have taken it.

  As if on cue, the curtains thrust open, and the empress stood there, staring down at us. Kaia awoke with a squeak and a start, cowering off the bed by pure instinct. Only the second time my mother had come to my bedchamber, and I didn’t miss the parallel. Both times I’d been sick, weak, and terrorized. My mother heaved an exasperated sigh. “Get up,” she snapped. “Get her up and bathed,” she instructed her girls and mine, who hovered behind her, eyes wide and faces pale. “You’re late for your wedding celebration.”

  “I can’t—” I barely managed, my voice hoarse from the screaming and weeping I’d eventually succumbed to.

  “You can and you will. You’re an imperial princess, Queen of Arynherk. Show some dignity. Do you want everyone to know how weak you are?”

  They knew already. They had to know. No secrets in the seraglio. Women talked, particularly about the cruel men, the sadistic ones and those with odd bents. The rekjabrel traded with each other when they could, those who could extract sexual pleasure from pain more willing to go to those types. But it seemed a truth that the truly cruel men preferred women who hated it, taking as much pleasure in forcing them to suffer as in their own sexual excitement.

  I’d seen it in Rodolf. Once I’d stopped trying to submit gracefully, he’d begun to truly enjoy himself. A lesson there, I supposed. No sense in withholding my tears and cries of pain, as he’d keep going until he broke them out of me.

  The girls helped me to sit, hurting me despite how carefully they placed their hands, while another turned on the hot tap in my bathing chamber. I was still naked, as Rodolf had only given me a cloak to wrap up in for the journey back to the seraglio. The male guards had even been kind to me, so I must have looked horrible. One from the third set of doors picked me up and carried me as far as he could, before he turned me over to the women guards.

  And Hede, of all people, she’d met me at the top of the stairs to the seraglio with a litter, settling me on it and helping to carry it, along with her strongest ladies, so I didn’t have to descend on my own power. She’d known before the fact, and I didn’t question how. Hede might be our enforcer, but she also looked after the rekjabrel. She’d know which men created the most damage.

  I yelped as the hot water stung in a hundred places, most of all between my legs. My mother didn’t watch as the girls helped me, unwinding the bandages so I could be cleaned. Instead she perused my closet, returning with a klút and several complimentary and contrasting scarves. Not the festive klút I’d planned to wear for my party, but a much longer one, more sedate.

  “You’ll learn to cover the marks,” my mother informed me, not unkindly. Maybe even with a sort of sympathy, under it all. “Longer klúts that you can drape to both cover yourself and to be loose enough not to bind you uncomfortably. The scarves will assist to cover what the klút won’t. Did he at least spill his seed in your woman’s passage?”

  I nodded wearily, unwilling to revisit the implements he’d gleefully used to insert the seed he spilled elsewhere.

  “Good. Once you’re with child, you can refuse him. If you pay attention to your cycles, that can give you eight months of respite.”

  It made sense, all of a sudden, why Jilliya kept conceiving babies. Though each pregnancy, each miscarriage weakened her, she always sought to conceive again. Could that be why? Was it possible that our father also treated his wives as… With a shudder that became a wracking convulsion, I thrust that image away also, tears suddenly pouring down my face.

  “Give her my tea,” my mother said, and her favorite girl, Petra, was there, holding the mug to my lips, cupping my head to steady it, crooning encouragement, her dark eyes kind. I drank, nearly choking on the strength of the mjed combined with the much stronger than usual gryth tea. She kept feeding it to me in sips, the languid numbing of the liquor and analgesic combining to make me float in the hot water. It finally penetrated to my bones, and I stopped shivering.

  The girls emptied the tub, the pink-tinged water sluicing away, and they added more while I sat in it. Had it only been two days before that I showed Ada how the tub worked? I thought I’d been afraid then. Do you need to be rescued? Maybe if I’d known then what I know now…

  But nothing had truly changed, not in my chances of escaping this fate. My mother studied my every bruise, swelling, and laceration, instructing the girls in how to treat them—how to best numb and conceal my injuries. She set one to soaking my wedding bracelets in a bowl of water, meticulously working with a small brush to liberate the sparkling gems of my blood and other more unseemly substances. Another was tasked to sew padding to fit inside the bracelets, to be ready for that evening.

  “If he’s going to string you up by the wrists,” my mother commented to me, “some padding will help to reduce the damage to your skin. But smarter for you not to make him do it.”

  I didn’t reply to that and for once she didn’t require an answer. She might have known how empty that advice was. When they finally had me as clean as possible, and I drifted on a cloud of delightful nothingness, they wrapped my hair in a towel and helped me out of the tub, and into a cushioned chair. At my mother’s detailed instruction, they used makeup to cover any of the wounds that might show beyond the concealing klút and scarves. My face received most of her attention.

  Though they’d put a cold compress on the swelling around my eye and on my cheekbone, it had only helped so much. My mother studied it, frowning. “I’m going to have to speak to the emperor to caution your husband to stay clear of your face. It won’t do for you to leave the Imperial Palace looking as if you’ve been beaten.”

  I laughed, the pitch rising into hysterical, and she gave me her coldest, meanest stare. It slid off of me. My mother no longer frightened me, as I’d met a far worse monster.

  “Get a handle on yourself,” she commanded. “You’re stronger than this. Better than this. Sure, he beat you a little. Welcome to being a woman. It’s only flesh. You’ll heal. And one
day he’ll be dead and you can dance on his grave all you like. Now pay attention to your makeup. Before long you’ll have to teach your new servant girls how to do this.” She glared at her girl. “Or, as it appears Rodolf loses all sense in his lust, I might have to send Petra with you.”

  Petra facing away from my mother, widened her eyes slightly. Hope? I’m sure serving the empress would be no leisure day, but could Petra actually wish to leave the Imperial Palace? I dug some words out of my sluggish brain. “That might be helpful if she came with me.”

  Dabbing the makeup around my tender eye, so gentle it barely stung, Petra gave me a slight smile. Well then.

  They styled my hair so it fell around the injured side of my face, dressed me and decked me with scarves and jewels. I didn’t much care. I’d drunk enough of Mother’s tea that I no longer cared about anything. They carried me down in a chair bedecked with trailing flowers, a wedding celebration custom I’d never connected to the fact that the bride might be in such pain between her legs that she could barely stand, much less walk.

  I’d paid little attention to the other custom, of mothers attending their daughters the morning after losing their virginity. Even the rekjabrel had such traditions, as a virgin rekjabrel was highly sought by some men and the occasion of her transition into womanhood always a noteworthy event. Never had I expected my own mother to lower herself to such a lowbrow custom, though now I understood the purpose.

  They’d carefully tutored us in how to pleasure men and the basics of sexual interludes of all types, but they’d left out the pain and terror of it. No wonder. If we’d known, the young women would refuse to ever leave the seraglio.

  As I surveyed the crowd of women cheering my arrival as they carried me down the short flight of stairs from my apartments, I scanned the crowd of women. What would the men do, if we barricaded the doors and refused to come out? They might violate the sanctity of the seraglio, batter down the doors and drag us out again. We couldn’t fight them, with their strength and their weapons.

  But it wouldn’t take so much as that, it suddenly occurred to me. I scanned the walls, beautifully painted with their vistas that tricked the eye, and remembered how Ada had said that beyond them lay freezing water. Some fruit grew in the seraglio, under our enchanted suns, but most of it came from outside, carried in by servant girls. They could starve us out in no time.

  Ridiculous of me to entertain, even for a moment, that we could… what—rebel? Laughable.

  Still, as they situated me at the head of the feast table, I spotted Ada nearby. Not close enough to speak to me, but near enough for me to catch her uneasy pallor as she studied me, the pain in her gaze. I looked away, accepting the congratulations of Saira and Jilliya, who’d stirred themselves for this occasion—no doubt at my mother’s command.

  Inga and Helva were there, too, of course. All the women of the seraglio were, with the exception of servants needed for critical duties in the palace. They’d been given a few leisure hours to attend my party, and all who could had taken advantage of the opportunity.

  All of this makes it sound as if I were aware and observant, which I was not. That day is a blur to me, as are the ensuing days. I don’t remember any conversations. Truly I don’t remember much of the pain, except in an abstract way. I believe I never spoke directly with Ada again. If Helva and Inga said anything to me, I don’t recall it.

  I drank a great deal of Mother’s tea, and—that evening when I broke down into hysterics when they attempted to dress me for another visit to my husband—Mother had her servants carry in her pipe. She taught me how to slowly inhale the opos smoke, and to hold it deep in my lungs, until the bone-melting properties invaded deep enough that I could let it go.

  The dreaminess it created didn’t outlast my husband’s extended attentions, but it allowed me to abandon pride sooner, giving him the tears, cries, and pleas that so worked to excite his lust.

  I believe it was the fourth evening after my wedding that I broke entirely. Even I didn’t see it coming, but as I walked to the doors in my dreaming haze of pleasant numbness, I lost all control and tried to run. Hede had to chase me down and eventually tie me to the litter to be carried—gagged so the screaming wouldn’t disturb anyone else—to my husband’s chambers. A development that delighted him.

  He loved nothing so well as my fear, and my mother chastised me for being so weak as to give him that weapon against me.

  At least he never damaged my face again. Such was my father’s service in protecting me.

  ~ 12 ~

  Exactly a week after I first left the seraglio, I prepared to exit it forever. One more formal reception, to give our farewells, and I would leave the Imperial Palace for my new home.

  There, of course, had not been days of savoring time with Helva and Inga and my other friends among the ladies. When allowed to, I’d spent my time sleeping in murky kaleidoscopic dreams, or soaking in hot water with numbing and healing herbs. Rodolf had backed off somewhat in afflicting new marks on the skin he so prized. The sight of my existing lash marks and the always seeping wounds under my wedding bracelets—despite the clever padding within—served well enough to excite him.

  For my first appearance outside the seraglio since my wedding, my mother had caused the ladies to fashion me long silk gloves to slide on under the bracelets. Fingerless, they allowed my diamond ring to show, and fastened with a hook under the chains that attached the ring to my bracelet. Studded with pearls in swirling designs, the gloves covered my arms up to the drape of my klút in clever concealment.

  Inga was allowed to come with me again, but Helva didn’t even make a token protest about wanting to attend. She’d taken to watching me with wild, horrified eyes, then avoiding me altogether. I saw Saira counseling her in quiet nooks several times. They would have a challenge there, in getting Helva to joyfully greet whatever husband the emperor chose for her. Not that her joy, or lack thereof, would matter in the least so far as changing her fate. Perhaps she’d get luckier than I.

  Mother wouldn’t let me have the opos smoke before the reception, as she declared it unseemly for me to have it on my breath. I thought she worried what I might say, in my uncaring haze. She actually bribed me with it, in exchange for my good behavior, that I might have it that evening when I returned to the seraglio, and take a pipe with me in my trousseau, along with a goodly supply of opos for future use. Petra would go with me—another wedding gift—and she knew how to keep me supplied.

  We’d come to a strange new rearrangement, that my mother bribed instead of bullied me. She likely recognized how she’d been so thoroughly supplanted in commanding me through suffering.

  I didn’t even question how Petra, a servant girl in a kingdom that would be completely foreign to us both, would arrange to supply me with opos. At that point I only cared that she would. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I cared about nothing at all as long as I could hide behind the smoke haze.

  Maybe not even then.

  When we emerged from the final door, Hestar appeared to escort Inga this time, and my husband to escort me. It seemed so odd to see Rodolf clothed and wearing a mask of civility. He kissed my hand, admiring my gloves, and tucked my arm through his, speaking genially of my beauty and grace, and how I’d enjoy the journey to Arynherk on the morrow.

  Though I cowered internally at his least movement, I found myself studying him from the corners of my lowered gaze. It disturbed me deeply, to reconcile this king with his fine clothing, iron crown, and perfect manners, with the brute who took savage delight in debasing me. I felt as if I’d entered some other realm I didn’t understand. Not surprising, as even without the opos smoke fogging my mind, it left a dreamy residue behind.

  Sometimes I thought I might be dreaming, that I’d awaken from some feverish nightmare, having concocted all of it.

  The reception was smaller, more intimate, the visitors from both near a
nd far having returned to their homes. This last evening was for family and our intimates. The emperor, Hestar at his side, gave a speech and a toast, wishing me happiness in my new life. I had to be nudged to drink from my glass of light wine. A special treat for me and Inga, and the few other noble ladies present, to indulge in it. Something that amused me greatly, having been initiated into the far stronger alcohol and numbing drugs the ladies used to ease the pain of wifely existence.

  Neither my father nor Hestar paid me any attention beyond that toast. I’d already ceased to exist in their minds, like a piece of land sold for a tidy profit. Their minds and conversations turned to other matters. Rodolf excused himself to go speak with them, explaining to me that he should employ all his remaining time in the Imperial Palace bending the emperor’s ear. Wary of his pretty manners, I only heard that he would not summon me that night, in order to spend the most time solidifying certain commitments. And so that I could rest for the journey.

  After which I’d be isolated from even the meager protection my family had afforded me.

  Wanting only to excuse myself to return to the seraglio, so I could sleep and savor the sweet reprieve of these last few hours, I considered my options for leaving. Inga, however, would not want to go, and she had fallen into fast conversation with Kral.

  Though it seemed they spoke about me, as he looked over her head at me with narrowed eyes. He shook his head at her—then shrugged off her staying hand, though he didn’t step away, instead bending to say something to her in rapid, hissed words. Our other brothers ringed behind him, not paying attention to their conversation at all, if they could even have overheard amid the general hubub. Leo, Loke and Mykal laughed over some joke. And Harlan’s serious gray eyes rested on me.

  I lowered my gaze quickly, but before I could duck away, he came over, bowing deeply. “We have the same salon set aside, Sister,” he said gravely, “if you’d like to join us for some conversation, as before.”