Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
And she had not told a lie. It was not just the guests in the palace, the barons, clansmen, chieftains, tribes.
There were wealthy merchants (and their wives). High-ranking warriors (and their wives). Esteemed teachers and healers. Philosophers. Priests. Poets. Artists. Writers. Even (I was shocked to learn, not to mention meet) respected madams and traders in smoke, ashesh and koekah.
The front and back gardens and the entryway of the palace were opened up, decorated in red blooms, red ribbons and glowing lanterns with many tables laden with food and dozens of servants bearing heavy trays filled with drink.
It had long since grown loud and even rowdy. The din in the palace rivaling that which could be heard pitching ever and ever higher coming from the city.
The people of Firenze were celebrating.
And I saw, in the gardens of the palace, as the baths (and even some of the bigger fountains) got more and more crowded with naked bodies, and men and women (or men and men or women and women) disappeared behind shrub or tree or frond, that the tales of just how thoroughly the Firenz enjoyed a celebration were not exaggerated.
Aunt Mercy and King Wilmer had gone to their chamber ages ago.
As had my mother, and I assumed, my father.
As for me…
I had to stay.
But I needed escape.
At least for a moment.
Not due to all that was going on around me, I found that fascinating.
No.
I was tired. I was overwhelmed.
And I was queen.
Queen.
Although I could never know I would need to do so, I was seeing then I should long ago have paid more attention to Aunt Mercy.
This was because, that day, I felt the shift toward me by the barons and chieftains.
Apparently, if you wear a blood-soaked nightgown, witness your very soon-to-be husband and his men emotionlessly causing pain to screaming prisoners, watching those condemned die in more than one way, then be wed, all of this on top of what had happened the night before (all of it)…
Then wear a gown they approve of at your wedding…
And demonstrate you can ride a horse…
That was all the men needed.
The shift in attitude was almost entirely complete.
Add how they favored my taking in of smoke with Elpis (the best part of the evening so far, outside how proud and charming Mars was being, however, the smoke I’d taken in had sadly worn off). Or laughing at something bawdy Jasmine said. Or allowing my new husband to touch me, kiss me, clutch me, swing me around, all at whim.
And the men were won.
The women, however.
There were, I was realizing, two kinds.
The first, like my mother, who could be won by wedding gowns and accepting very public affection from my new husband as that was his wont, so it should be mine.
And the others, I suspected the ones like Aunt Mercy, who absolutely were not won by these things.
I would need to work much harder and much longer to turn them.
And I would need to do this, for even if the male approved Mars bending me over his arm and smiling wolfishly in my face before he claimed my mouth for all to see, that male’s wife might have his ear only five minutes later, and with whatever she said, that would be the end of that.
I did not know for I had not paid attention to how Aunt Mercy handled these things.
But I was wishing I had.
And from there on, I would.
In that moment, however, I knew the last thing I should do was escape.
I should stay until the bitter end, even if I was dead on my feet and often, if I didn’t keep close control of it, visions would enter my head, words would be remembered, and I’d feel my hands shaking or my lips quivering.
So I needed a moment to gather my wits and pull myself together.
A moment to find somewhere private, pull forth my shadow, and find some peace.
On this thought, I ran into something.
“My daughter.”
I turned to what I’d run into and saw my father standing there.
He had not gone up with Mother, then.
Surprising.
“My beautiful Silence,” he murmured, looking at me like a mourner at a funeral staring at the body on the pyre.
I did not have to ask when I became his “beautiful Silence,” something he’d never called me.
I was queen now. Queen to a very powerful, very wealthy, exceptionally violent and apparently pitiless king.
This made me powerful.
This made me wealthy.
And this made me beautiful to my father.
“Father,” I murmured in reply.
“You need to be abed,” he declared. “How much sleep have you had? But thirty minutes? And this only on the ride back from those appalling pits.”
“I am quite fine,” I lied.
He shook his head. “You cannot be. The air is rife with that dreadful smoke. I’m getting fuzzy-headed just breathing it in. And how on earth can these people not only breathe through it, but also that shocking incense? They can’t possibly think it smells good. It’s heavy and cloying. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I walked up that mountain path to that ‘altar.’ If one can call such an altar. The view was stunning, of course, but my daughter wasn’t wed in a bloody temple. Instead she was wed on a bloody mountain. Do their gods even sanctify such a thing?”