“More or less, Highness.”
“You must call me Anmone—as I said, we are all sisters here. I have heard much about you, and you are just as charming as I imagined.” She raised an eyebrow that had been plucked into a line as delicate as a spider’s leg. “I hear you are great friends with Favored Luian. The two of you are cousins, are you not?”
“Oh, no, High… Arimone We are merely from the same neighborhood.” The first wife frowned prettily. “Am I so foolish, then? Why did I think she and you…?”
“Perhaps because Luian is a cousin of Jeddin, the chief of the Leopards.” Arimone was watching her closely, Qinnitan suddenly wished she had kept her mouth shut. She was even more disturbed to realize that she was still babbling about it. “Luian talks of him much, of course. She is… she is very proud of him.”
“Ah, yes, Jeddin. I know him. He’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” The Evening Star was still looking at Qinnitan in a way that made her very, very uncomfortable. “A fine, firm piece of manflesh. Don’t you think so?”
Qinnitan did not know what she was supposed to say. The women of the Secluded talked very frankly about men, in a way that virginal Qinnitan often found embarrassingly informative, but this seemed somehow different, as though she were being tested in some way. A chill ran over her. Had the paramount wife heard rumors? “I have scarcely seen him, Arimone, at least since we were all children together. Certainly he could not be as handsome as our lord the autarch, all praise to his name, could he?”
Her hostess smiled as if at a well-played gambit. Qinnitan thought she heard a few of the slave girls giggle behind her. “Oh, that is different, little sister Sulepis is a god on earth, and thus not to be judged as other men. Still, he is very taken by you, it seems.”
The footing was again unsteady. “Taken by me? You mean the autarch?”
“Of course, dear. Has he not had you given special instruction? I hear that you are with that wheezing priest Panhyssir almost every day. That there are prayers and . . rituals of preparation. Arcane practices.”
Qinnitan was confused again. Hadn’t this happened with all the wives? “I did not know that was unusual, Mistress.”
“Arimone, remember! Ah, I suppose it is not surprising that the autarch has become interested in something new. He knows more than the priests, has read more of the ancient texts than they have themselves. He knows everything, my oh-so-clever husband—what the gods whisper to each. other in dreams and why they live forever, the old, forgotten places and cities, the secret history of all of Xand and beyond When he speaks to me, I can scarcely understand him sometimes. But his interests are so widespread that they do not last for long, of course. Like a great golden bee, he moves from flower to flower as his mighty heart leads him. I am sure whatever has taken his interest this time will be… short-lived.”
Qinnitan flinched, but she was puzzled and determined to find out why the other wives seemed to think of her as different. “How… how were you prepared, Arimone? For marriage, I mean. If you will forgive an impertinent question. This is all very new to me.”
“I imagine it is You may not know, but of course I was married before.” My current husband murdered my only child, then killed my first husband, too, and made his death last for weeks, she did not say, nor did she have to—Qinnitan already knew it, as did everyone else in the Seclusion. “So my circumstances were a bit different. I came to our lord and master’s bed already a woman.” She smiled again. “We are quite intrigued by you, many of us here in the Seclusion. Did you know that?”
“You… you are?”
“Ah, yes, of course. A very young girl—a child, really—” Arimone’s smile was a bit cold, “from, let us be frank, an undistinguished family. None of us can quite imagine what it was that lifted you to the Golden One’s eye.” She spread her hands, which glittered with rings. The nails were half the length of her long, slender fingers. “Other than the beauty of your innocence, little sister, which is of course charming and formidable.”
Never in her life, even standing before Autarch Sulepis, had Qinnitan felt less significant.
“Come, will you have a little more tea? I have prepared a surprise for you. I hope it will be a pleasant one. Will you promise not to tell on me if I do something that is a little naughty?”
Qinnitan could only nod.
“Good.That is how it should be between sisters. So you will not be too shocked if I tell you that I have brought a man into my house today—a true man, not one of the Favored. You are not afraid to meet a true man, are you? You have not been so long away from the streets of your childhood that you view them all as monsters and rapists, do you?”
Qinnitan shook her head, confused and frightened. Did the first wife know about Jeddin? Why else all this taunting?
“Good, good. In truth, he is very harmless, this man. So old that I do not think he could mount a mouse.” She laughed between her teeth and her serving girls echoed her. “He is a storyteller. Shall I summon him?” The question was not meant to be answered: Arimone lifted her hands and clapped. A moment later a bent figure in colorful clothes stepped through one of the curtained doors and into the receiving room.
“Hasuris,” she said, “I apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“I would rather wait for you in a dark alcove than be served honeyed figs by any other woman, Mistress.” The old man bowed low to Arimone, then gave Qinnitan a look so saucy and self-satisfied that he might as well have winked at her. “And this must be the young wife you told me of. Greetings, little Mistress.”
“You are a shameless flirt, Hasuris,” said Arimone, laughing. “None of your nonsense or the Golden One’s guards will come and you will join the Favored.”
“My stones and I adventure together only in memory, Great Queen,” he said, “so it makes little difference. But I suppose their departure could be painful, so I will stay silent and behave well.”
“No, to behave well you must not stay silent at all. Instead you must tell us a story. Why else would I have brought you here?”
“To admire the turn of my calf?”
“Wretched old fool. Tell us a tale. Perhaps…” Pondering, or pretending to, the paramount wife put a ringer to her red, red lips. Even Qinnitan could not help staring at her like a lovesick boy. “Perhaps the story of the Foolish Hen.”
“Very well, Great Queen.” The old man bowed Now that he was closer, Qinnitan could see that his white whiskers were stained yellow around his mouth. “Here is the tale, although it is a rather simple one, without any good jokes but the last one:
“Once there was a very foolish hen, who preened and preened herself, certain that she was the most beautiful of her kind in all creation,” he began.
“The other hens grew weary of her posturing and began to talk behind her back, but the foolish hen paid no attention at all. ‘Jealous, that is all they are,’ she told herself. ‘Who cares what they think? They are of no importance compared to the man who feeds us. That is someone whose opinion matters, and who will recognize my quality.’ So she set out to gain the attention of the man who came every day to spread corn on the ground.
“Every time he arrived, she would push her way out from the midst of the other hens and strut back and forth before the man, head held high, breast shoved forward. When he looked away, she would call to him—’Ga-gaw! Ga-gaw!’—until he looked her way again. But still he treated her no differently from any of the others. The foolish hen became very angry and resolved to do whatever it took to be noticed.”
Qinnitan was feeling a chill again. Was there a point to this story? Was Arimone suggesting that the younger wife had gone out of her way somehow to attract attention? The autarch’s? Or someone else’s? It was all too difficult to understand, but the penalties would be no less mortal because the crimes weren’t altogether clear. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to be back in the Temple of the Hive, surrounded by the sweet hum of the sacred bees.