Three
It was late in the morning when servants arrived with a change of clothes, food, tea, and hot water for bathing. Directing them was a young woman with dark hair pinned in two braided loops on either side of her head. She wore a green inner robe, an outer robe decorated with willow leaves in a darker green, and a gray divided skirt. She carried a small wash basin and a satchel on one shoulder. Draped over one arm were clean, folded towels. The young woman studied him for a moment in clear judgment before speaking. “Your Highness, my name is Sira Aona, I’m one of Lord Nemar’s students. Please allow me to assist you in cleaning up and treating your injuries before your bath.”
As she spoke, the guard wandered over to stand beside the young woman. He fixed Caris with a hard look. “Try something, I dare you,” the man’s look seemed to say.
“Ah–of course,” Caris said, feeling intimidated and off-kilter. He held still as the young woman carefully cleaned the makeup off his face, and then painted over his cuts and bruises with some kind of medicine that smelled of alcohol and stung. Her touch is cool and gently impersonal. “Could you possibly remove these bindings?” he asks.
“Oh, I possibly could,” Sira Aona says, looking briefly amused. “But you might be better kept out of trouble if you’re still tied up. Atang and Churuk will assist you in the bath, and help you dress.” She indicates two of the nearest servants, who come over and immediately lift him to his feet. He struggles reflexively and gets a hard shake for his troubles.
The young woman supervises with no hint of embarrassment as the two servants undress him–essentially cutting him out of the torn dress–and half guide, half carry him to the bathing room. They immerse him in a large wooden tub full of hot water that was nearly a tisane of medicinal smelling herbs. The combination of herbs and hot water relaxes his muscles, soothes his aches and stiffness, and even seems to help to ease the nausea he’d been experiencing off and on for the entire morning.
He’s made to rest in the water for at least an hour before he’s hauled back out, dried off, and then dressed in loose pants and a long, loose tunic that reaches his knees. To get the clothes on over his bindings, long slits are made along the hems, and then the hems are sewn shut. “No shoes?” Caris asks, looking down at his bare feet.
“No shoes,” Sira Aona says, sounding amused. “It isn’t as if you’re going anywhere.”
The food provided is steamed buns filled with meat, little cakes, and some cut fruit. One of the servants–Atang–helps him to eat and drink. It is both extremely embarrassing and extremely awkward. He wondered what was going to happen next, but didn’t quite dare to ask just yet. He’d been fed, and given clothes, and his injuries had been treated–so it didn’t seem like he might be dragged off to execution.
Given that the clothes he’d been given were rather simple and plain, imprisonment seemed a more likely option. (From what the Lord Warden had said, it didn’t sound like he was going to be simply sent home in disgrace.) Was he going to be confined to these rooms permanently? Sent to a different location–a prison for political prisoners perhaps? He tried to remember if there were a Five Cities equivalent to the Western Tower in Anwer.
“Lord Nemar and the Archon went to speak to the envoy earlier this morning,” Sira Aona offers toward the end of the meal, almost as if she heard his unspoken questions. “He’ll attend upon you when he returns. Is there anything you require, your highness?” She asks as she rises to her feet.
Caris shook his head. “No, thank you for your assistance.”
The young woman bows, and leaves the room. The servants linger for a few minutes to clean up the bathroom and clear away the breakfast dishes. Caris is alone again, except for the guard. Feeling restless, Caris wanders the rooms of the suite and ends up in the study. The books were mostly in Dosai, translations of Joa and Tosa works, as well as books by Seweni authors. The subject matter ranged from history and the sciences to literature and mythology. There were also manuals on hunting, falconry, swordplay, and the breeding of horses.
The literature section trended toward adventure tales and travelogues, with a few scattered romances. Caris did not recognize many of the authors. The poetry selection wasn’t very large, and he found, they were mostly in Joa, though a few of them had been translated by hand into Dosai in the margins. (Usually with a few editorial comments, or historical notes.) The translated poems were mostly descriptions of nature or autobiographical, though there were one or two collections of long narrative poems. It looked as if someone had attempted to plan this collection with his sister in mind. There was a certain thoughtfulness to this collection, a sense that whoever had selected the books had wanted his sister to have a comfortable place to read, with subjects that she would be interested in.
It was a level of care that Caris had not thought of, nor expected in the context of this marriage. He’d only met Nemar Joris indirectly. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk to the sorcerer beyond what was necessary for courtesy’s sake.
(“He’s very courteous,” Teren had said after meeting her betrothed. Her tone had been neutral, with a bit of underlying anxiety. “He asked about my interests, and we talked about Joa falconry. They use eagles to hunt wild goats and even antelopes.”)
He had expected…he hadn’t known what to expect. Nemar Joris was supposedly a thousand years old. He might seem friendly or thoughtful or even distantly kind–but how could any of that be trusted? Could a being preserved in an ageless state by unnatural forces be anything other than corrupted by those same forces? Could he be trusted to treat his wife with consideration or kindness when that wife was a mortal with a mayfly lifespan that would vanish from his perspective? Could he be trusted to be a good husband when the fact of that frozen agelessness pointed toward a kind of grasping selfishness that would seek to drain vitality from the living and use it to preserve one’s existence? Could such a being be said to be good or kind when they had sought–and apparently gained–immortality?
But here, seeing this collection, some of his certainty about the nature of the man crumbled a bit. Caris didn’t think it was likely that this collection was created by the necromancer himself. He had most likely had one of his servants do it–yet at the same time, it was clear that the servants had selected books that Teren would probably have liked. Caris could easily imagine Nemar Joris saying something like, “These are her interests, find books on these topics,” and handing over a list.
Caris was beginning to feel…very guilty, and very stupid. (He already felt stupid considering how badly his plans had gone.) He’d been taken down and tied up with very little effort on Nemar Joris’ part. And afterward, he’d been treated by Nemar Joris with a sort of exasperated, patient amusement as if he were a badly behaved puppy. The necromancer’s people seemed to think he was a very stupid, obviously vicious dog that needed to be kept confined for the good of everyone concerned. (This was not a comfortable thought to have; you put down vicious dogs.)
To distract himself from his grim thoughts, Caris ended up with a poetry collection, an adventure tale, and two travelogues. (One travelogue was by a Sarmateon missionary journeying among Joa villages in the mountains along the Sewen-Five Cities border–the book seemed as if it would be informative, and he thought it might tell him something about his “husband,” who was Joa. The other travelogue was about a pilgrimage undertaken by a Tosa artist of pagan shrines that he picked up despite the subject matter because the author was eloquent and engaging. The adventure tale was about a young noble who falls from his horse during a hunt and finds himself in a cave that leads to a vast underground world populated by strange animals and stranger peoples.)
Caris reached a point in the adventure tale where the noble encountered a band of monkey demons when the guard stuck his head in the room. “The Lord Warden has arrived,” the guard says.
Caris sets the book aside and rises to his feet as the Lord Warden enters. He bows. “My Lord.” When he looks up, he could see that the necromancer was studying him with that same exasperated amusement of the previous night. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Apologize? He wasn’t sure there was an apology that would cover actively trying to assassinate someone. He felt any brave defiance he might make on any particular would probably get him laughed at.
“Have a seat,” the Lord Warden says after a moment of silence, and Caris obeys nervously. The necromancer remains standing. “You didn’t answer my question concerning last night,” Nemar Joris says evenly. “What exactly do you think you were you doing?”
Caris felt a very brief, firmly quashed urge to be flippant. Words have completely fled his mind; all the reasons and justification behind his plotting vanish like smoke in the wind. Unfortunately, Nemar Joris seemed quite content to stand there, patiently waiting for a response.
“Protecting my sister,” Caris manages. “She doesn’t want to marry you. You’re a pagan, and a necromancer, and your powers were bartered from Ashten.” The last was probably a step too far, but it spilled out anyway.
“Is that what the Seweni say about me?” Nemar Joris asks, amused. “I somehow made a deal with a god I wouldn’t have known anything about a thousand years ago? Or was this alliance supposed to have happened when the Dosai first migrated to Xichun?”
It was of course predictable that the Lord Warden would say something like this. He was a pagan. He wouldn’t understand or believe that the entities he worshipped were the servants of the god of night. “The god’s machinations are far-reaching and subtle,” Caris says in response. “How do you know you haven’t?”
“So, your god decided to make a deal with me for whatever reason. I, who had no knowledge of this deal, or who I made it with, use my powers to protect my people and later to protect and aid my adopted people. Then the Five Cities are approached by your kingdom, and your kingdom wants an alliance with the Assembly because of the Aldane encroaching on both our lands. Your kingdom offers a marriage alliance–with a man they believe is in league with their evil moon god.
“Now, if I’m guessing correctly, you believe that this marriage alliance is some action on the part of Ashten against Sewen–or maybe just your twin sister.” The Lord Warden frowns thoughtfully. “Though perhaps ‘just your twin sister’ is a poor turn of phrase. It’s clear you are devoted to her and willing to walk into what you thought might mean your death if you failed to murder me or failed to escape. In either case, you decided that the only thing you could do is murder me. Not try to help your sister flee the marriage, not try to warn me of this terrifying and mysterious divine plot to dissuade me from the marriage and incidentally the alliance because apparently, we couldn’t have one without the other. Not trying to find some other way to stop the wedding. You went right for murder.” A pause. “You and your sister must have been very frightened to find yourself in such a situation.”
The nausea that had faded after breakfast was starting to come back. Nemar Joris’ tone had been absolutely neutral, nothing in it to convey disbelief or mockery…Caris still feels mocked. He feels like a fool, and if he was angry at anyone, it was himself. There was nothing Caris could argue with, or deny about what the necromancer said. Nemar Joris had simply stated the facts with some speculations concerning motive…and he had for the most part correctly understood the reasoning behind Caris and his sister’s actions. There was nothing to argue about, as much as Caris wanted to protest reflexively.
“What’s going to happen now?” Caris asks after a long moment of silence as his thoughts turned and twisted along unpleasant routes.
“First, you are going to speak to the envoy. He wants to be able to tell your parents he last saw you alive and in one piece,” Nemar Joris says. “Then the envoy and your escort will be sent back to Sewen, along with your sister’s servants. Then we send an envoy to Sewen and we hopefully renegotiate the alliance and your parents offer restitution for your assassination attempt.”
“And then what?” Caris asks. “If I’m not being sent home as well. Do I face imprisonment or–” he pauses, feeling his heart lurch. “Execution?”
“It would be hard to negotiate if you were dead,” Nemar Joris points out. “And if your sister disliked me before, she would truly have reason to if you were executed. As for the former, that depends on you.”
“What do you mean?” Caris asks.
“Legally, we’re married,” Nemar Joris. “These are your quarters in my house. You have certain responsibilities and obligations in the direction of the household, the same as your sister would have had. There are several opportunities available for you to learn more about the Five Cities and those who live here, either via tutors or by attending Tuan.”
The Tuan School was well known even in Sewen. The school taught magic as if it were any other subject, and there were a few Sewen court mages who could boast that they had studied at the school. “I’m not a mage,” Caris protests reflexively.
“Tuan isn’t a dedicated mage school,” Nemar Joris says. “Magic is taught, but our students are primarily studying for the ministerial examinations, studying to become magistrates and scholars, and most don’t learn more than the very basic spells anyone can pick up.”
“You teach there?” Caris asks, focusing briefly on the “our students.”
“History,” Nemar Joris says. “I also have several mage students I teach privately. You met one of them earlier.” The necromancer looked amused. “You have two options. One of them is to act as my spouse and take advantage of this opportunity to learn. You’d have to promise not to attempt escape, or try to attack me or members of my household. The second option is that I stuff you somewhere safe and very, very boring for however long until the current situation is resolved.”
“It’s clear which one you want me to choose, Lord Warden,” Caris says. “But how could acting as-as your husband be anything other than a farce? A man married to another man? How would that even work?” There was a distinct snort of amusement from the guard, and Caris felt his face heat up. “I mean legally. Children. And inheritance. Who’s in charge of household finances. I know what two men do together.” He couldn’t help the defensive tone as he glared in embarrassment at the necromancer, who seemed to be fighting a smirk.
“You could consider it part of the learning experience,” Nemar Joris says. “You’d start out assisting my household manager, and learn how to run the household from him. Of course, you’d be in contact with your mother and sister. I’m sure they’d be glad to offer you advice.”
There seemed to be a certain implication there. A prisoner wouldn’t be allowed to contact their family. However, it seemed to Caris that a spouse who was also a prisoner would have little privacy for their correspondence. Caris’s head felt stuffed full of conflicting ideas and thoughts–he didn’t know what to answer, or how. “May I be given time to come to a decision, Lord Warden?” Caris asks.
Nemar Joris studies him for a moment before nodding.
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