Duny looked at her sternly. “You’re teasing me, Qin-ya. I can’t believe all that. These women have been chosen by the autarch himself! He wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them, praise to his name.”
“He scarcely ever comes, and there are hundreds of us, anyway. I doubt he remembers more than a few. Most of the brides are chosen for political alliances—you know, important families in other countries—but some of them are like me. Nobody knows why we’ve been chosen.”
“We know why! Because he fell in love with you.”
Qinnitan snorted. “I thought I asked you not to make up stories about me, Duny. Fell in love with me? He scarcely noticed me, even when he was making the arrangements with my parents, such as they were.” She made a sour face. “Not that they could have said no, I suppose, but they sold me.”
“To the autarch! That is not being sold, that is a great honor!” Duny’s face suddenly froze. “Won’t you be in trouble for saying such things?” she whispered.
“Now you know why I brought you out here, where there are no walls or high hedges for spies to hide behind.” Qinnitan felt as though she had aged ten years since leaving the Hive, felt very much the older sister now. “Do you see that gardener over there, over by that pavilion?”
“Him in the baggy clothes?”
“Yes, but not a him, and the gods save you if you ever said that in front of her. That’s Tanyssa, one of the Favored. Most of them go by women’s names here. Anyway, it’s her job to watch me, although I don’t know who’s given the job to her. Everywhere I go, there she is—for a gardener, she seems to travel from one part of the Seclusion to another very freely. She was in the baths yesterday morning, pretending to have some errand with the young Favored boy who heats the water.” Qinnitan looked at the well-muscled gardener with distaste as Tanyssa pretended to examine the leaves of a monkeyfruit tree. “They say she killed that young Akarisian princess who died last month. Threw her out of a window, but of course they say she fell.”
“But, Qin, that’s terrible!”
She shrugged. “It’s how things are here. I have some friends, too—not friends like you and I are friends, of course, although I may make some of those too someday. The kind of friends you have to have if you want to stay alive, if you don’t want to fall over dead after drinking your tea some evening.”
Duny looked at her without saying anything for a long time—a long time for Duny, anyway. “You seem different, Qinnitan. You seem hard, like one of those traveler girls that dance in Sun’s Progress Square.”
Qinnitan s laugh was a little harsh, but something about Duny’s innocence made her angry. It was the fact that Duny could still afford to be innocent, more than anything else. “Well, I probably am. Everyone talks nicely here—oh, they do talk nicely. And other than the occasional hissing catfight, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable. Do you like my dress?” She lifted her arm and let the pleated sleeve fall, graceful and translucent as a dragonfly s wing.
“It’s lovely.”
“Yes, it is. As I said, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable… on the surface. But underneath, it is a pit full of scorpions.”
“Don’t talk like that, Qin.You’re scaring me.” Duny took her hand. “You are a queen! That must be wonderful, even if the people here are tiresome. What is the autarch like? Have you… did you… ?” She colored.
Qinnitan could not resist rolling her eyes—after all, it was a self-indulgence she could not allow herself most of the time. “Duny! Don’t you listen? I already told you the autarch almost never comes here. When he wants to see one of his wives, he has her brought to his palace. Well, I suppose this is all his palace, but you know what I mean. He has never spoken to me since he bought me from my parents, let alone made love to me! So, yes, since you are wondering, I am still a virgin. As you may remember from listening to the older girls, in most cases a deflowerment requires the man and the woman to be in the same room.”
“Qin-ya, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Duny said, but whether because she was embarrassed or because she did not want to suffer further damage to her flowery illusions wasn’t clear. After a moment, she asked, “But if he didn’t fall in love with you, and you’re not a princess of somewhere—you’re not, are you?—then… then why did he marry you?”
“First off, he hasn’t married me yet,” Qinnitan told her. “At least I don’t think so. I’ve had some religious instruction from the priests—some very strange rituals—so maybe that’s why, to prepare me for the marriage ceremony. Some of the women here went through ceremonies, but some others were…well, just taken. But as to why he chose me… well, Duny, I don’t know. And nobody else in this poisonous place seems to know quite why either.”
“I have such a nice treat for you, darling,” Luian announced when Qinnitan arrived, a little breathless, in the Favored’s chambers. “We must primp and prepare, both of us. We don’t have much time.” She snapped her fingers and her pair of silent Tuani slave women came into the room like shadows.
“But … but, Luian. Thank you. What are we…”
“We are going to the palace, my sweet. Out of the Seclusion, yes! Someone very special wants to see you.” For a moment Qmnitan found it hard to breathe. “The… the autarch?”
“Oh, no!” Luian threw up her hands and laughed. The Tuani girl with the curling iron, who had come within an eyelash of burning her mistress on the arm, paled a little. “Oh, no, if it was the autarch himself they’d be preparing you for days. No, we are going to see my cousin.”
It took a moment for Qinnitan to understand. “Jeddin? Of the Leopards?”
“Yes, my dearest, we are invited to see handsome Jeddin. He wishes to speak with you, to hear stories of the old neighborhood. I am going along as chaperone, lucky girl that I am. I do so admire that young man.” “But… am I allowed to meet with any men at all?”
A look of annoyance creased Luian s powdered forehead. “He is not any man, he is chief of the Leopards, chosen by our autarch himself, praise to his name. Besides, I will be with you, child, I told you. If that is not respectable, what is?” But the Favored’s eyes darted briefly to the Tuani slave beside her, and Qinnitan could not help wondering if it was truly all as obvious and ordinary as Luian made it out to be.
When they were both ready, Favored Luian, rigged like a festival ship in a fringed-and-beaded robe, and Qinnitan in a less ostentatious and properly virginal white robe with a hood, different only in quality from something she might have worn in a Hive procession, they set out. Despite her misgivings, Qinnitan could not help being excited: it was the first time in three months she had been outside of the Seclusion’s walls, even if it was only to another part of the great Orchard Palace. Other than Duny, and Qinnitan’s mother, (who had spent most of her visit weeping over their family’s good fortune) this would be her first chance to see anyone from outside. And, needless to say, Jeddin would be the first natural man she had seen since he and his soldiers had brought her here, to this invincible prison of beautiful blossoms, splashing fountains, and cool stone arcades.
The Favored who guarded the Seclusion’s outer gate did not dress a bit like women. They were the largest people Qinnitan had ever seen, a half dozen hulking creatures with ceremonial swords whose flat, curved blades were almost wide enough to use as tea trays. They engaged in a long whispered discussion among themselves before Luian, Qinnitan, and the two silent Tuani servants were at last allowed to pass out of the Seclusion and into the greater palace, but only with one of the guards bringing up the rear of the small procession like an enormous dog guiding a herd of sheep. The little company continued on for a good portion of an hour, through lush but empty gardens and unused corridors and courtyards so opulent that they seemed to have been prepared for some royal princeling who had not yet moved into them.