by P. J. Fox
Leaning back, she closed her eyes. She hadn’t seen her husband for most of the past week and they hadn’t had a real conversation since the night he’d promised to teach her how to shoot. Which he had, taking her out of the compound and—with a guard—into the hills.
God, husband. She still couldn’t believe that she was married. She hated the shooting lessons themselves, but she craved the feeling of having escaped if only for a short while. It was beyond wonderful to breathe fresh air and look around and not see walls. Halstead was a beautiful province, and so sparsely populated that sometimes she felt like they were alone in the world. Sometimes, she would have given anything not to have to go back.
Kisten was a thorough and patient teacher, although his mind was often on other matters. He looked tense, but she knew him well enough by now to know that there was no point in asking questions. He’d tell her, or not.
At least now she could load a gun without shooting off her own foot. She thought. She’d even hit the target a few times. Kisten had given her one of his pistols, and although it was made for a larger hand she’d done fairly well with it and he’d been impressed. Which had both pleased and irked her. Did he honestly not think that women could do anything?
They’d gone out, for the most part, in the early mornings. And then he’d gone to work and she’d returned to the doldrums that were a woman’s lot in the colonies. She was beginning to understand something of Pasha’s resentment, which at first had only horrified her. It still horrified her, but now disgust was mixed with sympathy; not so much because Aria cherished romantic notions of love and standing by one’s husband, but because Pasha had to learn to take responsibility for her own happiness. They all did. If Aria could make the best of a bad lot—she, after all, had been married against her will to a man who terrified her—then so could Pasha.
Part of her realized, of course, how ridiculous that sounded; no one, least of all the vaunted daughter of the House of Singh, owed Aria anything. She’d made her own bed, as it were, and now she had to lie in it. This was her life now and she wasn’t getting another one, so there was no point in giving herself up to despair. Moreover, over the past month of interminable poetry readings, inedible food and shampoo shortages, she’d discovered something that Pasha had not: there was more to life than what one’s husband thought and did.
Her life might not be what she’d imagined but it wasn’t awful, either. There had been difficult moments, true, but she’d also made friends and learned to laugh again and, between teaching those friends to be self-sufficient and advising Alice on affairs of the heart and teaching Garja about civil rights and even spending some time on herself, doing a little writing, she felt like she had a purpose—possibly for the first time in her life.
Kisten often returned late, sometimes only an hour or two before the sun rose; this past week, she hadn’t had dinner with him at all, or even seen him before she fell asleep in his oversized, pillow-covered bed. She didn’t think of it as her bed; it wasn’t her bed. He’d woken her, hands cool and mouth insistent, making love to her with an urgency that frightened her—as if he was trying to fix the experience in his mind so, later, he could remember what it felt like.
Kisten, too, knew that there was a storm on the horizon.
Perhaps, Aria thought listlessly, enervated by air that felt like sweat, the two storms would hit together. Part of her was terrified, and part of her was too exhausted and overwhelmed to care. It was ridiculous, really, eating biscuits and playing at housekeeping while death waited just outside the gates—and inside, as well, if the rumors of another possible mutiny could be believed. Except what else could they do? And at this point, much as she hated to admit such a terrible thing, some sort of action would be a relief. Anything was better than this endless, grating tension.
She turned her head and stared out at the small walled garden without seeing it. Sometimes, lately, she caught herself checking the sky, as though the brooding danger in the capital should carry some sort of outward sign. Even now, anxiety gave the laughter around her a brittle, hysterical edge. Everyone was talking about the party, now; they needed a distraction.
Aria wasn’t interested, even though the party was in her honor. She hated being the center of attention, and hated even more the idea of drawing attention to the fact that she’d slept with her husband. Although she couldn’t imagine this news coming as much of a shock to anyone.
Then again, Lei and her husband hadn’t had sex for some time, so….
Pasha called her by name, breaking her reverie. “Aria, this is perhaps an overly personal question, but why have you waited so long to celebrate the wedding?”
Aria was considering her answer when she happened to glimpse Naomi out of the corner of her eye. The other girl looked smug. Aria flashed her a small smile and turned back to Pasha. “Well,” she began, careful to keep her tone casual, “first, Kisten has been so busy. His grandfather and I finally set the date, because, you know, the last thing we want is for people to think we’re not thrilled to be married. But,” she said apologetically, “in terms of celebrations, nothing much has changed.”
The other women had joined them in the small sitting room, and were all listening with rapt attention. On hearing this last admission, the barest flicker of triumph crossed Naomi’s face.
“I was staying in his cabin aboard the ship.” Aria winked.
There were several rather envious exclamations of disbelief. Deliah congratulated her outright. “More women should have the courage of their convictions,” she assured Aria with a smile.
Aria felt a small stab of guilt, which she ignored. Everything she’d said was, after all, true—in the strictest sense. She smiled back. “He asked me to marry him almost the night we met. We had dinner with Setji to celebrate.” Or so Setji thought. “After that, well….” She shrugged. “One thing I can assure you, is that his great-grandfather’s map table is quite uncomfortable.”
This admission was met with scandalized—and entirely genuine—laughter.
“So it was love at first sight,” Alice sighed, a dreamy expression on her face.
“Yes,” Aria agreed. It had been—for someone. She didn’t know what she felt, now, for Kisten. Surely the rush of hostility she felt whenever Naomi dared to mention him wasn’t love. It wasn’t even jealousy, really; it was affront that this girl, who she’d given up so much to help, would dare to encroach on her territory. She’d joked about the situation later, but when Naomi had simpered up at Kisten and asked him about his gun—and in front of five other people!—Aria had wanted to leap across the table and rip Naomi’s throat out. She could see herself doing it; she could actually feel Naomi’s flesh under her fingers.
Fighting her way free of that blank, unreasoning rage was getting harder, and Aria found herself saying things—like she had this afternoon—that astonished her. She glanced at Naomi, who looked like she’d bitten into a kumquat. She’d finally put Naomi in her place, but she felt no triumph; only a hollow sense of loss. What were they even doing?
Naomi excused herself, complaining of a headache from the humidity.
Deliah announced that she was going to check on the soap, and Alice volunteered to help. Garja had disappeared altogether, but Aria had seen her eyeing the gardener and suspected she knew where Garja was. The gardener in question had been young, fit, and shirtless. Pasha, remembering the time, had gone to collect her children from a friend’s house, and so Aria had found herself alone with Lei and Sachi.
The silence was perfect, broken only by the hiss and pop of breaking ice cubes in the lemonade. Lei sipped hers thoughtfully. Aria was still staring out the window, lost in thought. A few drops of rain had fallen earlier, but the hoped-for storm had failed to materialize and all they’d done was leave the air more oppressive than ever. Even in the best of circumstances, air conditioning could only do so much; and with the new power rationing rules in effect, they’d been left with a feeble breeze that was almost worse than nothing at all.
Aria reached for her own drink, the palm of her hand as slick as the condensation-covered glass she held, and drank the sugary mixture without tasting it. Sachi spoke first. “You’re lucky,” she said. “There was nothing romantic about my wedding.” She smiled, a little shamefacedly. “And as for my wedding night…I had no idea what was going to happen. I mean really. None at all.”
“Did you know him, beforehand?” Aria asked.
“A little. Not well. Our parents were friends.”
“When my husband first tried to touch me,” Lei confided, “I ran screaming out of the room.”
“We played together, when we were children,” Sachi explained. “When I was a child. He was older, but very indulgent. I trailed around after him like a lost kitten and he put up with me well enough, although I can’t imagine what his friends thought. Then, of course, it became inappropriate for us to see each other and I lost touch with him entirely. He went away to school, and university, and I assumed that he’d forgotten about me altogether—which he probably had! But our parents….” She shrugged. “The first time he called on me, I hid in my room and refused to come out. I was too embarrassed.”
Outside, something hooted in the mist.
The women exchanged a glance.
SIXTY-FOUR
Lei and Aria walked side by side through the compound, enjoying what fresh air they could before the rain returned. Fresh, of course, being a relative term; anything was better than being cooped up indoors, breathing the same stale air and not feeling even a whisper of breeze.
Ground mist was coalescing into fog, and spectral shapes loomed out at them. A raptor called out, its scream like rending sheet metal. Further in the distance, its fellows answered it. Aria still didn’t know the creatures’ proper names, and the locals weren’t much for taking photographs. There was some local superstition about how seeing one brought bad luck, evidently.
Storehouses, munitions depots, the parade ground, even the most mundane things were starting to take on a sinister aspect. Aria half expected someone to jump out at her from behind every wall. Boots crunched on gravel and she started, but it was just a pair of enlisted men. Aria stopped to let them pass and Lei, beside her, did the same. Neither man appeared to notice them.
She glanced about, grateful for the path; without some sort of marker, she’d be lost within minutes. Another screech filtered through the fog, setting her teeth on edge. She’d been assured that the creatures couldn’t get in, had never tried to get in, but…she’d been assured of a lot of things, over the years.
“So, anxious to avoid the party or your husband?”
Aria shrugged. “Both.” Aria was in a foul humor. Pasha had been unbearable all morning, but it was more than that. Aria was sick to death of spoiled brats. She’d seen that look of resentful incomprehension before—on Jamsetji Tata’s face, as well as on her husband’s. Kisten had reached almost thirty-three years of age before anyone told him no. Perhaps Pasha, too, had been raised to believe that if she wanted something, she had only to hold out her hand and ask for it; and she hadn’t had the benefit of serving in the navy. Pasha, being a woman, couldn’t do anything except get married. Aria tried to be understanding, but….
“What was his name?”
She stopped. “What?”
“Come to my house,” Lei said, “the coffee’s better. And we can talk.”
Ten minutes later, Aria was stretched out on a chaise, grateful for the shade of the covered verandah. Lei had ultimately plied her with iced chocolate instead of coffee; Aria had been delighted to learn that the Braxi were almost as fond of chocolate as Aria’s own people and used it in dishes both savory and sweet. Sipping the concoction, Aria closed her eyes in pure bliss and concluded that she might like Braxis.
Aria didn’t know much about the Braxi, other than what Lei had told her in their few conversations on the subject. Lei found it difficult to talk about her home, because she missed it. The Braxi and the Bronte had an odd relationship, each seeing themselves as the true cultural force in the galaxy and their fellows as savages. While the Braxi were mapping complex astrological charts and staging elaborate operas, the Bronte were—at least according to the Braxi—too busy killing each other to learn more than the rudiments of any subject. Academic subjects that didn’t bear directly on conquest held little interest for them.
Aria thought she might side with the Braxi, on this; the Bronte idea of opera, for one, was simply not music. The Bronte, in turn, thought the Braxi were a bunch of charlatans; astrology, like many traditional Braxi pursuits, was forbidden by the True Faith.
But as unsure as she felt about her adopted culture, Aria couldn’t agree that the Bronte valued nothing but conquest. They thrived on beauty, in all forms, and Kisten did read her poetry. He also gave her perfumes, and slippers, and yards of expensive silk. Part of her loved getting presents, and part of her resented the feeling of being dressed up like a doll.
If only he weren’t so confusing, she thought, staring into her glass; if only she knew how she felt. Was it alright to let a man take care of her, or did that make her a whore?
Sometimes she hated him, and sometimes she felt overwhelmed by fear of what might happen and wanted him to hold her. She’d lie awake at night, staring out into the darkness and wondering if they’d all be murdered in their beds. She felt better with her head against his chest, molded to the curve of his body and listening to the slow beating of his heart.
She’d thought—something—had happened the other night, and she’d welcomed his embrace even though he’d hurt her. But then he’d apologized and she’d no longer been sure. She’d almost asked him, and then stopped, holding back at the last minute. It wasn’t safe to trust people, to let them have so much of you. Which was why it scared her to find herself sitting here, now, with Lei. Lei, who’d inexplicably known that there was—had been—someone else. How could she have? Aria had never breathed a word about Aiden to anyone except Kisten. Even Naomi and Alice knew next to nothing about her former fiancé.
She looked up to find Lei studying her. “Can I ask you a question?”
Lei nodded. She had a great deal to say on many topics, but she never indulged in meaningless retorts like you just did. Aria liked that about her.
“What do you think about this Bronte idea of separate but equal?—between men and women, I mean.”
Lei considered her answer for several long minutes, and then she began to speak. Aria listened, stunned, as Lei told a story too depressing and bizarre to be true—and yet was. In ancient times, she explained, the Braxi believed that women had no souls. Their salvation, therefore, depended on their husbands. A satisfied husband might generously allow his consort to serve him in the afterlife as a sort of high-ranking slave. Otherwise, having no soul, she ceased to exist. And although there were a number of religions on Braxis, and philosophical schools of thought, all of them taught roughly the same thing: that a woman’s sole purpose in life was to please her husband. If he died before she did, then she was expected to commit suicide—not so she could join him in the afterlife, of course, but to atone for failing to keep him alive.
Widows were reviled and treated as outcasts. Daughters were usually betrothed at a very young age, and rarely to men they knew. That last practice still continued, as Lei pointed out, although now there were rules surrounding how it could be done and a match could be refused.
The Bronte and the Braxi, thrust together as unwilling allies during the revolution, taught each other a great deal. The Braxi shared the wealth of their vast learning, and the Bronte shared the concept of women’s rights. Their Prophet, whom they revered as the founder of the so-called True Faith, had during his own lifetime encountered a number of abuses against women and was, judging from the writings he left behind, something of a feminist.
He’d taught, as the Bronte would later teach the Braxi, that a woman had the right to life. One could not murder one’s daughter, simply because one would have preferred a son.
Burying unwanted infants alive, or leaving them exposed to the elements had been common practice on Braxis then and many Braxi fought doggedly against even the suggestion of change. Who were these ill-educated upstarts, to tell them how to live their lives?
But slowly, as the Bronte began to make inroads, resistance began to wane. Laws were enacted or, in some cases, repealed. It became possible to commit a crime against a woman, and for a woman to testify in court. Eventually, after many years, women gained the right to vote.
The Prophet, Bronte missionaries taught, credited much to his consort. It was her support, intellectual, emotional, and financial that allowed him to seek revelation, receive the Scriptures and, ultimately, found the True Faith. She, herself, was accorded an expert in the True Faith and her advice was sought on many issues. What might seem backward to Aria—that men and women each had a defined role—was revolutionary to the Braxi; up until then, women had had no role and no importance. The Prophet’s teaching, that a man should treat his consort with love, compassion and respect and would be judged for not doing so, went against literally everything that most Braxi had ever been taught.
The True Faith taught that men and women were equal before God. According to scripture, each was the natural counterpart of the other. “Like clothing,” explained Lei, “each covers up the other’s faults, protects them and, of course, is an adornment.” She flashed a small smile.
“But how are men and women equal,” insisted Aria, “if a man, simply by being a man, can tell a woman what to do?”
“What is it your husband has asked you to do, that you do not wish to do?”
Aria bit her lip, frustrated. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Oh.” Lei made a diffident gesture. “Well, the fact that a man’s rights are greater over his consort has to do with the fact that his obligations are greater; he must provide food, shelter—”
