“And what profit for me?” asked my father.
The king of Therete made the smallest of gestures. The slaves came forward and set the chests before us, and threw the lids open. There in the torchlight gleamed gold and silver, rubies and pearls, sapphires and diamonds. “The betrothal gift,” said the king. “For the wedding I am prepared to offer a great deal more.”
“A reduction of the salt tariff?”
“Unquestionably.” The king’s jaw relaxed just the smallest bit. He thought, perhaps, that he had found the source of my father’s truculence.
My father gestured to a slave. “Send the girl,” he said. We didn’t wait long — my sister was ready, had been for some time, most likely. She came in a side door, my mother behind her.
She was beautiful. Skin the color of honey, hair like polished wood. She wore a green dress, embroidered with darker green, and gold had been braided into her hair. Her face was flushed — she, or more likely my mother, had guessed what brought the king here. Prince Atehatsqe smiled when he saw her. My breath grew tight, and I wanted to stand and run, be out in the trees and the rain, anywhere but the hall. I must have realized what my father was planning but not been willing to believe it.
“Girl,” said my father, “the prince of Therete wants to marry you.”
She flushed even deeper, which I hadn’t thought possible, and knelt. “My father, I will obey you in all things.”
“Will you, then?”
“Yes, Father.”
He stood, and drew his sword and swung the edge with all his strength into her neck. Blood spattered his legs, and my sister fell dead on the floor. I was frozen for an instant, unable to think or feel, and then I looked at my mother. She was immobile, as though carved from wood. She didn’t blink or breathe.
“The feud between Artau Ehat and Vosei is ancient,” my father said into a silence so deep that his words seemed muffled and absorbed. “The god Vosei has been our protector and benefactor ever since we have existed. If Vosei doesn’t see fit to remove the curse, we will have no part in lifting it. Take your worthless gifts and go.”
The king made as if to step forward, but checked himself. “It was an honorable offer,” the prince said.
“Your offer was refused,” said my father.
The king gestured again to the slaves, who closed the chests and hefted them, and the whole party turned and walked out of the hall.
When they had gone, my father sat again, and as though released from a spell those seated along the sides of the hall rose and began talking and shouting. I looked over to my mother, but she was gone.
My father leaned close so that we could hear him. “He would have taken her by force otherwise. Now our future is assured.”
It was. That same day my mother packed her belongings and returned to her tribe. We three sons stayed. No matter what he had done, our place was with our father.
Eight weeks later, Therete marched an army into our territory. It took three days just for their archers to arrive, there were so many. The cavalry took less time, but with them were engineers who had availed themselves of the plentiful timber, building frameworks for engines we had heard of but never seen.
They had loudly announced that their argument was with Ysas, and not with the tribes of Vos Inei. A great number of families simply walked out of the town at Therete’s invitation. My mother’s tribe refused to come fight for us, as did many others. No doubt their headmen imagined themselves taking my father’s place once Therete left.
By the time they breached the wall and set fire to my father’s house both my brothers were dead, and when the house was smoking ashes both I and my father were brought bound before the king and the prince. We weren’t the only captives. Four other men were already there — Theretan priests, who the king had relied on to bring him the god’s words. They had clearly lied. The king killed them with his own sword, and then turned to my father. “We asked you for your daughter.” Soldiers stepped forward, bearing the same chests we had seen before. “Here is the payment.”
“I have no daughter,” said my father, defiant.
“You will,” said the king, and then soldiers threw me to the ground and stripped me. It took eight of them to hold me down, and a ninth to wield the knife, and when they were done, so I am told, they buried my father alive with the treasure he had refused.
I remember very little of the first few days of the trip to Therete except for a vague hope that I might bleed to death, and pain at every misstep of the slaves who carried the litter I rode in. There were sometimes muffled voices, and sometimes water was poured down my throat. I wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, or anything but waiting to die.
Eventually a doctor came — a tall woman dressed like the soldiers, in trousers and a long tunic — and examined me. “Healing quickly and cleanly,” she said. “Some god looking out for you.” She looked at me oddly as she said it. Then she made me get up and walk back and forth.
I had known there were plains to the south, but I had never imagined land like this. In one direction were distant hills, but otherwise all around was grass. Flat, not the least trace of even a hillock. The only relief from the plain was the camp — horses, soldiers, brightly colored tents — and the road. The sky stretched blue and endless overhead.
The doctor led me out into the waist-high grass, where we startled a cloud of small yellow birds that flew squawking into the sky and then settled again as we passed. Once we were a decent distance away from the camp she showed me how to urinate squatting so that I didn’t foul myself, and explained about the nail that was supposed to keep my urethra from sealing shut while I healed.
My thoughts must have reached my face, because she told me, with some acerbity, that I was very lucky.
Four nights later I was summoned to the prince’s tent, a splendid affair of silk brocade, gold and blue. Inside was bright with lamps, and a patterned carpet covered the ground. Atehatsqe sat in a carved wooden chair next to a table of wood and ivory. The green snakeskin along his neck and face seemed almost an extension of the embroidered silk he wore. I discovered later that beneath his neck it became long, banded belly scales, which reached to just below his ribcage.
“My wife,” Atehatsqe said. I did speak some Theretan, but he spoke in my own language. “Yrej, is it?” It wasn’t, but no Theretan had pronounced my name correctly so far. “You should kneel, and put your forehead on the ground.” I didn’t move. “The one single thing one can do to ensure right action is one’s duty. If one fulfills one’s duty, one can never do wrong. And besides,” he added, not unkindly, “you have very little choice. Have you eaten?”
I took a breath. “No.” Another breath. “My lord.” I was cold under the silk dress I was wearing. It was a garish red and yellow, and so loose and thin that I felt naked.
Atehatsqe had the grace not to smile. “Sit,” he said, and I did, in a cushioned chair across from him. Food appeared, meat braised with beer and dried fruit, and more beer in cups of fluted gold. “I haven’t meant to neglect you, my wife,” he said as he ate, and I wet my mouth with the beer and barely tasted the meat. “When I questioned the doctor, he said you were recovering satisfactorily but weren’t yet well enough to visit.”
He. It should have been obvious.
“I’m sorry for the lack of appropriate servants,” Atehatsqe continued. “I didn’t know what the king planned. By the time I realized it was too late to prepare.” He took a drink of his beer. “Or dissuade him. Though of course,” he said, his expression bland, “his most royal majesty’s action was, as always, entirely right and proper.”
“Of course.” I ventured another bite of meat. It stuck in my throat. “Your Highness would just have had me killed.”