“I know you’re trustworthy,” said Atehatsqe, “but the king…”
Varoshtej looked away, into the dust. “I know,” he said, when he turned his gaze back to Atehatsqe.
We rode on in silence.
“My prince,” said Varoshtej after a while.
“My friend,” said Atehatsqe, and put a hand on his shoulder, briefly.
“I know your reason for doing this, but…”
“Doing what?”
“This marriage.” The way Varoshtej said marriage made it clear that he was no more in favor of it than I was.
“Do you have any arguments I haven’t heard before?” It was clear that both of them thought I couldn’t understand Theretan. I hung my head under the folds of silk and listened.
“The arguments I’ve already given should be enough!”
Atehatsqe took this outburst with equanimity, which told me everything I wanted to know about their friendship.
“Did your father lie?”
“No!”
“What must I do then?” Atehatsqe’s voice was still even, but tense. “Tell me what will keep me obedient to both my father and the Lord of the Sky?” Varoshtej didn’t answer. “The king said I would have the daughter of Ysas for my wife. The god says so as well.”
“That is not the daughter of Ysas. You’ve castrated him and put him in a dress but that hasn’t changed what he is. Do you think he’ll submit to the insult?”
“Women do.”
“It’s different with women. Yrej is a man, with a man’s pride.” He was arguing my side, but I felt a sickening shame. “By all means provide for him,” Varoshtej continued. “Gratify your lust if you like, he’s good looking enough. But don’t put this eunuch beside you on the throne. Don’t make the mistake your father made.”
“Varoshtej!” The prince’s voice was sharp and warning.
“My friendship is of no value to you if I withhold the truth. Your father the king has assumed he knows the god’s will, no matter what the priests have said. You’re doing the same. Wait for the new priest.”
“I am placing my trust in your father’s report of the god’s will. Do you advise me not to do that?” Varoshtej didn’t answer. “Are you jealous?”
“If the day ever comes that I am jealous, my prince, you will be past my help.” It might have been my tenuous grasp of the language, but it seemed to me that Varoshtej’s answer was no answer at all.
In all the weeks that we were on the road, it never rained. I didn’t even see a single cloud. Atehatsqe told me that it rained relentlessly in the winter, and never at any other time. Every house had a cistern, and the streets of every town and city drained into underground tanks. For the rest of the year this water would be carefully portioned out. The winter rains, due soon, were the gift of Artau Ehat; without them the whole plain would be utterly desert except for the narrow strips of land on either side of the country’s rivers.
Between towns all was perfectly flat and hazed with hot, sunlit dust, dotted with farms and orchards — the only trees I’d seen — and stone pillars that marked accesses to cisterns that ran the length of the road. The land stretched farther than I’d ever believed the earth could, and it was beautiful if only because of its extent. Evenings were cool, the skies vast and thick with stars, Atehatsqe was courteous and obliging, and I ate and slept in the prince’s tent.
The walls of Therete were twice as high as any I’d ever seen, even discounting the huge mound the city was built on. Under the sun the blocks of white stone shone bright enough to make me shade my eyes. In the center of the city rose two huge heaps of the same stone — the higher one, a stepped pyramid surmounted by a tower, was the home of the Lord of the Sky. The other — lower, but wider — was the palace.
The palace was larger than the town I’d come from. Once I dismounted it was a walk of some ten minutes to my quarters. I had a bath, a dressing room, a sitting room, and a bedroom. The walls were swathed in brocaded silk, every door and window was hung with black and purple curtains embroidered with gold. All the rooms but the bath looked out onto a balcony, where steps led down to a courtyard planted with trees and flowering vines and lined with tiled paths. Off to one side was a fountain with a wide base in which blue and orange fish swam. Brilliant green and yellow birds flitted from branch to branch. Other rooms around the court were for my servants, nearly a dozen of them, women in fluttering dresses and silk shawls.
They bathed me and shaved me and dressed me in a brown and blue dress sewn with tiny sparkling beads. Then they loaded me down with half my weight in gold necklaces and bracelets. One girl brushed antimony around my eyes and tried to put a mirror into my hands, but I refused, and was thereafter presented for the head servant’s inspection.
“My lady is beautiful,” said the girl who had combed my hair, in an encouraging voice.
The head servant cast a critical eye over me. Her name was Qes. “It will do for now. I’m sure we’ll hear soon that Prince Atehatsqe is too busy to visit you tonight, Princess. There’s no need to spend a great deal of time dressing.”
I closed my eyes. I was tired, and I was losing my grip on the tenuous settlement I had reached with my circumstances. It hadn’t been any sort of acceptance, I realized, as much as a flat refusal to think about my future.
“Oh, Princess, don’t worry. I’m sure the prince will visit you soon,” said one of the women.
I opened my eyes, hoping I could at least look as though I was in possession of myself. Qes looked at me shrewdly. “My lady will have supper,” she said, “and then she will rest.” Her tone brooked no opposition.
In the morning, after more bathing and dressing, I was shepherded to a bench in the courtyard, beside the fountain. Two servants sat at my feet with needles and thread and lengths of linen, and another stood behind me with a fan.
The two sitting on the ground embroidered and made pointless remarks about the beauty of the fish and the liveliness of the birds, who tried to steal sweets from a tray beside me. It was hot even in the shade with the woman fanning me, and I was sweating under the silk.
The conversation turned to gossip. To hear the servants talk, it would seem that the palace was occupied entirely by women, and every visit or conversation was a move in a game that everyone but me seemed to understand.
I didn’t know any of the people they referred to, didn’t understand the game they were playing, and didn’t care. A bird swooped down onto the bench next to me and eyed me, head cocked. “Pretty lady,” it squawked.
“Yes, she is,” said the servant fanning me. “Hello.”
“Hello,” said the bird. “Hello.”
The servant laughed, and took a sweet from the tray, held it out on her hand, still fanning with the other. The bird stepped onto her fingers and pecked at the treat.
The embroidering women chattered on, and it occurred to me that the gossip meant something to them, something they expected me to understand too, or wanted me to understand. But I didn’t care. I was bored and hot and I was stuck on this bench and nothing I did mattered.
“Pretty lady!” squawked the bird again, and the fanning servant looked at me and her smile disappeared.
“Princess! Are you all right?”
“No,” I said, more faintly than I intended.
The other two jumped to their feet, needlework forgotten. They led me indoors and removed a layer or two of jewelry and then laid me on the bed and fanned me vehemently.
The doctor came. He’d changed his military tunic and trousers for a long skirt of red fabric and no shirt. “It’s the heat,” he said in his high voice. I found it hard to believe I’d ever taken him for a woman. “It’s never this hot where she comes from.”