“Is it true that it always rains there?” asked one woman, still fanning.
“Not always,” said the doctor. “But a great deal more than here. Did she eat her breakfast?”
“I wasn’t hungry,” I said.
The doctor frowned. “You haven’t been hungry for more than a month. You need to eat. And you need to drink more than you think you do.”
“I need for everyone to stop pretending! And I need to go h—” Home was what I meant to say, but as I said it I realized that there was no home. Everyone in the town had seen what had happened to me and knew what I was now, and there was no place for me there anymore. I wasn’t sure my own mother would want me back.
“You need something to do.”
“Something to do.” I was dubious.
“Grown men who are castrated have their own particular problems,” the doctor said, level-voiced. The women seemed to have frozen solid, all looking in any direction besides mine. “Some take to their beds and stay there. Some stop eating and can’t sleep, can’t enjoy anything at all. It’s the blow to their pride, of course. But I don’t think that’s all it is.”
“That would be enough,” I said.
“You’re luckier than you could have been, given the circumstances,” said the doctor. I looked away. “Find something to do. Weave, embroider, spin. Paint. I hesitate to suggest dancing or singing, but if that interests you…”
“I’d rather take to my bed and stay there.” The doctor didn’t answer, I saw in the corner of my vision that he had crossed his arms. “What about riding? Or hunting?” Dice was probably out of the question. Sex with the servant girls certainly was.
“I’ll make you a deal.”
I looked up. “Deal?”
“You walk in your garden every morning. You eat. You pick one thing to do, it doesn’t matter which. Do that for one month, and I’ll talk to the prince about riding. Maybe hawking, but no promises there.” I didn’t answer. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get. I advise you to take it.”
I walked and I ate. I sat in the garden with a needle and fine thread and filled in a square with uneven stitches while the servants punctuated their gossip with compliments on my progress. I didn’t understand them — they called me princess when they themselves bathed and dressed me and knew just exactly what I was. There were moments that I doubted not only their sanity, but my own.
I missed not only the riding, but Atehatsqe’s company — I had grown used to the prince. When Atehatsqe finally did come to me, three days after I arrived at the palace, I rose and made my obeisance out of sheer gratitude, I was so relieved to see him. He sat beside me in the courtyard and ate the sweets, and threw some to the birds, laughing at their chorus of hello and pretty lady. He had heard about the doctor’s visit. “Have you been eating well?” I shrugged. “No, you won’t evade me so easily. Does the food not appeal to you?”
The food was too salty, and the sweets cloying. “The doctor says it’s the heat. My servants tell me it will be better when the rains come.”
Atehatsqe frowned. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you sooner,” he said, as though it followed from what I had just said. “We’ve been very busy.” He stood and walked a few paces away, and looked up at the sky.
“My servants say the rains should be here in a few weeks.” He said nothing. “You’re worried?”
He sighed and came back and sat beside me again. “We haven’t been able to find a priest,” he said. “The Lord of the Sky isn’t like other gods.”
“He seems fastidious.”
“Holy and pure,” Atehatsqe corrected. “Profanation offends him.”
It offended most other gods, but their standards weren’t so elevated. “So the priests make it their business to be pure at all times, so you don’t have to.”
“Before the curse the kings of Therete did as well,” Atehatsqe said. “Ordinary people have always gone to the priests. Or to the smaller gods.”
Four men had died that day, in the ruins of my father’s house. “Surely you had more than four priests?”
“There are agreements.” There always were, with gods. “The king of Therete speaks to the god directly, though substitutes are allowed. But that substitute must be a descendant of Therete’s first king.”
“So the priest has to be your cousin.” And that meant that the pool of candidates was limited. I began to see just how damaging the king’s actions had been. “The noble Varoshtej is a candidate.”
He looked at me sharply. “Do you speak Theretan, my love?”
I tried to ignore the endearment. “Do any of my servants speak my language?”
“Ah. It hadn’t occurred to me that you might.”
“We had traders, at home. I had investments. It was easier to keep track of them if I didn’t have to use a translator.”
“I knew that.” He took my hand. “About the investments, I mean. I should have realized. You still have them, by the way. No one is defaulting on money they owe you if I have anything to say about it.” I blinked twice, not sure what to say. “Varoshtej and I have been friends since we could crawl.”
“His concern for you is evident.” I kept my voice neutral.
“Things will be easier when the curse is ended.” It was the same tone my servants used for when the rains come. I looked up at the cloudless sky, and Atehatsqe put his arm around my waist. “Come, let’s go inside.”
In bed with him that night was the first moment since I’d arrived at the palace that I felt on familiar ground, secure in territory I knew.
Atehatsqe’s relationship with his cousin Varoshtej was unremarkable in Therete. It was something boys did, especially close friends. To continue into adulthood, after marriage, was disreputable but not scandalous. And of course Atehatsqe could largely do as he pleased.
But Varoshtej couldn’t. His father was king’s priest, and Varoshtej was expected to be the same. On his seventeenth birthday he began a course of fasting and purification that would prepare him for priestly office. This completed, he would be expected to pray daily, practice self-discipline, and avoid contamination. When he married, sexual contact with his wives would require purification afterwards. Sexual contact with other men was out of the question.
Five days into the ritual, Varoshtej’s nerve failed. He got up from his place at the entrance to the temple precinct, where he was supposed to recite a lengthy catalogue of prayers but instead was thinking of Atehatsqe, and walked unchallenged to the prince’s rooms. Once admitted, he threw himself at Atehatsqe’s feet and declared that he couldn’t possibly give him up.
When I heard this story, I knew before I was told what Atehatsqe’s response had been. The prince knew his duty, and that duty didn’t include depriving the king — at some time in the future, himself — of a priest. He sent Varoshtej away, to start the whole ritual over again.
Three weeks later, Qes approached me while I was eating breakfast, bread and fruit and honey. She knelt beside my chair. “I beg pardon of my princess.”
I frowned, in some alarm. Qes was the one person in the household whose sanity I had never questioned. “I don’t understand.”
“The first morning my lady was here, the senior wife of the noble Varoshtej arrived, begging audience. I told her you were unwell, and sent her away.”
“I still don’t understand.” I set down the piece of fruit I was holding. “I was unwell that day.”