His the great hand closed around her, she felt it ringing like a crystal, a deep, shuddering vibration that had nothing to do with her, but which ran through that monstrous hand like a blood pulse, as if she were bound to a temple bell big as a mountain. The impossibly vast shape lifted her and although she could not see its face—it stood in the center of some kind of fog, light-shot but still deeply shadowed, as if a lightning storm raged inside the earth— she could see the greater darkness that was its mouth as it brought her nearer, nearer…
She shrieked, or tried to, but there was only silence in that damp, empty place, silence and mist and the dark maw that grew ever larger, spreading above her like a rolling thundercloud. The titanic thing was going to swallow her, she knew, and she was frightened almost to death… but it was also somehow exciting too, like the shrieking, terrified childhood joy of being whirled in the air by her father or wrestling with her brothers until she was pinned and helpless…
Qinnitan awakened wet with perspiration, heart galloping. Her wits were utterly jangled and her skin twitched as though she lay in the middle of one of the great hives in the temple covered in a slow-buzzing blanket of sacred bees. She felt used by something—by her dream, perhaps—even defiled, and yet as her heart slowed a languid warmth began to spread through her limbs, a feeling almost of pleasure, or at least of release.
Qinnitan slumped back in her bed, breathing shallowly, overwhelmed Her hand strayed down to her breasts and she discovered the tips had grown achingly hard beneath the fabric of her nightdress. She sat up again, shocked and disturbed. The idea of that dark, all-swallowing mouth still hung over her thoughts as it had hung over her dream. She leaped to her feet and went to the washing tub. The water had been sitting since the previous night and was quite cold, but instead of calling for the servants to bring her hot water, she squatted in it gladly and pulled her nightdress up to her neck, then splashed herself all over until she began to shiver. She sank down into the shallow bath, still trembling, and put her chin on her knees, letting the water wick up the linen nightdress until it clung to her like a clammy second skin.
The rest of the day was quieter and more mundane, although the torments of the endlessly droning prayers and the drinking of the Sun’s Blood were as bad as ever If Panhyssir or the autarch were trying to kill her with that potion, they were taking a ridiculously long time about it, she had to admit, but whatever they intended, they were certainly making her miserable.
Just after Qinnitan’s evening meal the hairdressing servant came to dye her red streak—her witch streak, as her childhood friends had named it— which was beginning to show at the roots again- Luian and the other Favored had decreed within days of her arrival that such a mongrel mark had no place on one of the autarch’s queens. The hairdresser also dried her hair and arranged it into a pleasing style, on the one-in-a-thousand chance the autarch should finally call for her that very evening Qinnitan tried to sit quietly, this hairdresser had a way of poking you with a hairpin—and then apologizing profusely, of course—when you moved too much.
I doubt she pulls that trick with Arimone.
But Qinnitan didn’t like thinking about the Paramount Wife Since the day Qinnitan had gone to her palace, there had been no further invitations and no outward sign of hostility, but it was not hard to see the way those wives and wives-to-be who considered themselves friends of the Evening Star watched Qinnitan and made clear their dislike of her Well, they might think themselves friends of the great woman, but she doubted Arimone looked on them the same way; Qinnitan felt sure there was little room for friends or equals of any kind in the world of the Paramount Wife.
The hairdresser was finishing up just as the soldiers on the walls outside began to call out the old ritual words for the sunset change of the guard— “Hawks return! To the glove! To the glove!” Qinnitan, reasonably certain that the autarch was not going to break his nearly year-long habit and summon her tonight, was looking forward to an hour or two of time to herself before sleep and whatever unsettling dreams might come with it. She thought she might say her evening orisons, then read. One of the other brides, youngest daughter of the king of some tiny desert land on the southern edge of Xis, had loaned her a beautifully illustrated book of poetry by the famous Baz’u Jev Qinnitan had read some of it and enjoyed it very much—his descriptions of sheepherders in the and mountains who lived so close to the sky they called themselves “Cloud People” spoke of a freedom and simplicity that seemed achingly attractive to her. The young desert princess seemed quite nice, really, and Qinnitan entertained a hope that one day they might become friends, since they were two of the youngest in the Seclusion This did not mean she had abandoned all sense, of course. She never touched the book without wearing gloves. The tale of a Paramount Wife from a century or so before who had dispatched a rival by having poison painted on the edges of a book’s pages was one of the first cautionary stories Qinnitan had heard upon coming to her new home.
That tale spoke much of the Seclusion, not just the murderousness of the place, but the fact that the older wife had been willing to wait weeks or even months for the autarch’s new favorite to cut her finger in such a way that the poison could enter when she turned the pages. Whatever men might say about women and their reputed fickleness, the Seclusion was a place of immense patience and subtlety, especially when the stakes were high. And what stakes could be higher than to be certain it was your own child who would one day sit on the throne of the most powerful empire in the world between the seas’
Gloves or no, Qinnitan was looking forward to a little time with the epic simplicity of Baz’u Jev, so it was disappointing—and, as always in the Seclusion, a little frightening—when a messenger came just as the hairdresser was leaving.
She was startled to recognize the mute boy who had come into her room not a fortnight before. He was wearing a loose tunic tonight, so she could not see how his wound had healed, although he seemed perfectly well. He would hardly meet her eyes as he handed her the roll of parchment, but although that saddened her, it was not as though she was surprised that he didn’t want to be her friend; she had almost stabbed him to death with a dressing pin, after all.
Strangely, the message was not tied or sealed in any way, although she could tell from the strong violet perfume that the paper was Luian’s. She waited until the hairdresser had gone out into the passageway before unrolling it. The letters had been made in a great hurry. It read:
Come now.
There was nothing else.
Qinnitan did her best to be calm Perhaps this was just an example of Luian in a bad mood They had spoken only occasionally in the last weeks, and had taken tea together in their old way just once, an awkward occasion in which the subject of Jeddin was in the air the entire time but never acknowledged. The two of them had labored through a conversation of what should have been interesting gossip, but which had instead seemed like wearying labor. Yes, it was unusual for Luian to write in this hurried, informal way, but it might be evidence of some great swing of feeling—after all, Favored Luian was prone to moments of heightened emotion that might have come out of a folktale, or even from a book of love poetry Perhaps she planned to shame Qinnitan for being a bad friend. Perhaps she planned a weeping renunciation of her own rights to Jeddin—if even Luian could be that self-deceiving. Or perhaps she just wished them to be on good terms again.
All the same, Qinnitan found herself following the mute boy across the Seclusion with a heavy, untrusting heart.