The Boy-Toy Wife (nsfw)

[Skippy]

 

[CyberFemme]

Hmmm. I wonder if the concept of Want extends beyond carnal desire and forms one of the bases of infernal imperialism.

 

[Gargulec]

Hmmm. I wonder if the concept of Want extends beyond carnal desire and forms one of the bases of infernal imperialism.

Click to shrink...

Kind of! Want is a notoriously slippery concept even among its supposed adherents, and a some of its more popular interpretations end up feeding the expansionist spirit that drives Her Infernal Majesty's pursuits. Luna, however, and other people who take it very seriously, would scoff at that. For them, meditations on Want are not meant to bring about self-actualisation, as much as to reveal its impossibility.

 

[Shadell]

I'm intellectualizing Want in social roles and philosophical logic, Luna severs herself from Want, and thus, is undoubtedly further from the ideal than Miria here.

 

[Gargulec]

Chapter Four: In Which the Fifth Wife's Secret is Revealed

The seat at the top of the dining table stood empty.

So too did the one to its right.

So, too, did the one to its left.

The absences stood out all the more for the cold silence that gripped the room—white-liveried servants shuffled around, setting dishes to prepare a dinner just for four, and Miria could hear their each and every step. The quiet, culled of any idle chatter that once might have filled it, set so vastly across her ears that even the delicate ring of plate-on-wood or the sweet slosh of wine-into-glass became an unexpected reprieve.

Above it all, the heavy fragrances of infernal spices—the real ones, too, not the mild imitations that some burghers pretended to enjoy—wafted around the hall. They should have roused her stomach and reminded her of the hunger that had been plaguing her since the morning. They did not.

She tried to swallow, only to discover her throat had clenched so tight she wondered, for a moment, how she was even able to draw a breath.

Up the table from Miria, Mażin kept glancing at the empty chairs. The eyes of all the remaining wives were fixed on her, expectant. It had been a long time since they had to sit down to eat without either Asha or Visza to say the blessings, whether infernal or divine.

The third wife waited for the first course to arrive, and stood up.

"Let us eat," she said simply.

Across the table from her, Czewa bent her head forward, hiding a quick movement of her lips between folded fingers. Miria could hardly blame her; it would not do to speak a temple grace with Visza's body just a few flights of stairs away. She looked down into the bowl of rich sesame soup before her, and dipped a spoon in. It took some effort to bring it back to her mouth.

It was only the thought of her little, budding defiance that kept Miria from getting crushed under the suffocating weight of wifely grief. Her mind kept racing out of the palace grounds, down the hill and into the city proper, to a luxuriously modest house by the Lesser City Square. It was not difficult at all to imagine her family sitting together, terrified of what would become of their sole remaining son. A part of her wished she could be there to console them; a part of her worried her presence would only make it worse.

The taste of sesame and spices bloomed on her tongue, intense enough to undo the knot in her stomach. She moved to take another sip, but slowed down; around her, the remaining wives continued to struggle to eat. Mażin did not so much as touch her bowl before a servant quietly took it away. Czewa took a few sips, but mostly focused on unabashedly tearing strips of bread and pushing them to Stava, not unlike a lowland husband would be expected to. The fifth wife accepted them, only to take hardly a bite and lay them down by her plate. Miria tried to not make her appetite overly conspicuous.

It was not just for sympathy that she kept mentally reaching out towards her family. If her father had been the one to arrange Visza's security, then it held that he ought to know something about its absence. Or, at least, the reason why his son had somehow managed to find himself a part of a noble mob. That alone should make for a good starting point for Miria's little truth-finding exercise.

Assuming, of course, she could manage to get that far in the first place; she had not yet done anything, and second thoughts were already worming their way into her mind—especially in the face of what she was going to do next. But first, she needed the dinner to be over, and a chance to get a moment alone with Stava.

"I used to have a seat in the Overwhelming Grace too," Mażin muttered, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

Still, the sound was enough to break the spell of silence. The third wife sighed heavily, reached for the flat-breads, and broke one loudly in half. Czewa took the remaining half, and dripped the end of it in soup. They ate.

"I keep forgetting that you are a Kaszabi," the fourth wife said after a moment.

It was not something Miria had heard about before; Mażin loved to talk about others, but rarely herself. It did make sense, however; the House of Kaszabi was one of those aristocratic families that had most readily embraced Her Infernal Majesty's scepter. For Miria's brother that had made them traitors; for her father, it marked them as reasonable.

"If I could forget about that myself," the third wife replied, "I would."

Czewa frowned at the response, but said nothing. The second course was served, and for a time only the scraping of cutlery broke the dining room's quiet.

"I do envy you sometimes, Mażin," Czewa set her fork and knife down. "You and your giving up on everything that you were. Name. Faith. Even family."

Stava reached above the table, her hand landing over the fourth wife's wrist and gently holding it down. Miria instead pretended to focus entirely on boning the bream on her plate. The conversation pulled her back into the present, and into the unfixed tangle of her emotions, too flushed with shame over how she had felt towards Visza earlier to make much sense in the now.

"And I thought you had given up on your little provocations." The third wife's voice did not budge. She put a small bite of the fish in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "You could have chosen a better day to return to that habit."

Miria glanced up from her fish, and allowed herself to look at the arguing wives. How different they were, seated across from each other. Mażin's body had grown soft and round after years of wife-medicine, which to Miria's eyes seemed to render her less feminine so much as beyond such terms altogether. Or maybe that was not the matter of appearance, but rather of the absence of pride, of that famed haughtiness of lowland wives which Visza had sought to embody. Then again, the third wife was all gentle lights and quiet words, with nary a suggestion of masculine hardness left in her.

In contrast, Czewa—tall and gaunt—seemed mostly immune to the results of the medicine she was supposed to be taking, the old contours of her body only marginally softened. It did not detract from her beauty. If anything, it highlighted it further. Masculinity had left little bite on her, in any case; Miria's eyes surveyed the fourth's hairline, producing little stabs of envy in the process. Even with Czewa's unwifely's gestures, she still wore the mourning white better than Miria could. Some bodies, it seemed, were just more fortunately born—and tended to attract more attention, as the fifth wife's tight hold on the fourth's wrist attested.

"If you want to talk about provocations," the fourth wife growled, the faint veneer of voice training giving way to the basso beneath. Miria scowled; it was not something she should have noticed, even if Czewa made little effort to hide it, "consider how happy the First has to be, now that our wife has a reason to burn the Overwhelming Grace to the ground."

The third wife raised a hand; a servant rushed in to pour her a glass of ruby-red wine. She sipped quickly, seeking something else than taste, and said nothing.

"But that is not something you care about anymore," Czewa pushed on. "Is it?"

All that she managed to get out of Mażin was an extended, whistling sigh, and a very pale and unhappy smile.

"What do you want me to say, 'Wa?" she said finally. "Visza's corpse is still warm. She died because she refused to stop caring. She died because the pious temple-going folk you are so concerned about hate us."

It was not the first time Miria had heard such arguments at the table, especially when the Lady Governor was not present; but in evenings past, Visza would be already intervening. She had never had much patience for others questioning her choices; pointedly, this had applied to Czewa as much as to Mażin.

"They hate what's been done to us," the fourth wife snapped back.

"You know that you do not have to stay if you hate it so." Mażin shook her head, and took another bite of the bream. "Ask for a divorce. Put the pants on again. You are a wife, not a slave."

The fourth wife's only response was a bitter, brittle laugh.

Mażin was not wrong; the infernal marriage vows under which they had all been wed were renounceable. Want, Luna was fond of reminding them, was not meant to be a prison. The Lady Governor herself had made it explicit that she would not bar her consent from any wife seeking a dissolution of their union. But there were also good reasons for why none of them would ever seek a divorce.

Miria looked more closely at Czewa, trying to divine from the contortions of her face if she too had been sacrificed by her family at the altar of political exigency. The idea that one could be sentenced to such a fate without having Miria's desire made the boy-toy wife shudder.

Desserts and fragrant coffee arrived, breaking up the argument for a time. Stava leaned over towards Czewa, quickly whispering something into her ears, still refusing to release her grip on the fourth wife's hand. A servant tried to offer a slice of cake to Miria; she refused politely.

It was not the infernal way to mark mourning with restraint, but the idea of having sweets on the day of her fellow wife's murder still made her queasy, no matter how much they made her mouth water. She was not the only one at the table to display such sentiment—though, of course, no wife turned the coffee back.

"I am sorry," Czewa announced at last, slackening in her chair.

The fifth wife smiled imperceptibly at her and finally let go of the hand. It was to be expected. No lowlander wished to stand up from a meal in anger; it never boded well. Those who apologize over bread do not die over swords, the saying went, harkening back to darker times of blood-feuds and barely restrained violence.

"Apology accepted," Mażin nodded, not ungratefully.

"I am just afraid," the fourth wife continued quietly. "If our lady wife does not…"

She left her voice hanging on a minor, stifled note.

"She will," the third wife reassured. "She always does. And even if, by some miracle, she does not, the matter is far beyond our reach anyway. Like it or not, we are wives now, and there is nothing that we can do but wait. Let us not add to our grief by pretending otherwise."

There was no reason for Mażin to look at Miria as she said that, and she did not. The admonition was for Czewa, and evoked a pained wince that the fourth wife ineptly tried to hide behind a sideways glance. None of them could count on being able to change the Lady Governor's mind—but it was Czewa alone who had never had her wife's ear, for reasons only indirectly alluded to in conversations and gossip. Still, the boy-toy wife could not help but to feel her cheeks flush at Mażin's words, as if they were aimed at the plans she had been quietly nursing.

"Is this really what being a wife means?" she caught herself asking, before she had the good sense to bite down on her own tongue. The unease she felt at the notion came as a surprise.

"Yes," Mażin said softly, a motherly smile on her face.

"Especially for you," Czewa added, earning a sharp stare from Stava.

"It also means you don't have to worry so much," Mażin added. "It's not in your hands, anyway."

Miria did not respond. A part of her wanted to—maybe needed to—feel a sharper kind of guilt, because what the other wives said was indisputably true. After all, had she not entertained the dreams of being so stripped of choice and responsibility, back in those nether days of failing to live the life a son should? Now, not half a year had passed since she had managed to win her chance to be held in hand, and she was already starting to turn her back on it? And out of what—a lingering sense of filial duty?

Czewa was right; the way Mażin cut herself from her past was worthy of envy.

The conversation moved, and promptly floundered, without ever reaching the usual rounds of gossip and small, quotidian complaints. Mażin—who on any other day would love nothing but to lead the wives in their casual chit-chat—left first, excusing herself with exhaustion.

Surprisingly, Czewa followed moments later; in response to Stava's puzzled look, she claimed she needed to be alone for the night. The fifth wife did not protest, as saddened as she clearly was—but for Miria, it offered a slight, lucky break. She had not been looking forward to the embarrassment of having to knock on Stava's door later, only to find her occupied with someone else.

"Would you mind," she asked, finishing her coffee, "if I visited you after?"

Stava, as usual reluctant to make a use of her voice, gave her a curious look.

"There is something I need to borrow," Miria explained.

***

The fifth wife's rooms were just next door to Miria's. If there was a difference between them, it lay not in size, nor luxury, but in how lived-in Stava's seemed in comparison. She came from the far west, and had brought the distant ocean with her to the lowlands. Nautical maps of the warm seas adorned her walls, alongside sentimental but capable paintings of ships sailing the spice routes. Most of it had been her dowry; the rest the Lady Governor's generous gifts, including a spectacular panorama of the Bay of Dis, its waters turned red by the fluttering sails of Her Infernal Majesty's grand war fleet.

Those gifts did not limit themselves to decorations, however. A great bed of exotic redwood took up most of the chamber, easily twice, if not thrice as big as the one Miria slept in. The purpose behind its size was not hard to divine; in stifled moans and cries of pleasure, it penetrated into the sixth wife's room every time Czewa visited Stava for the night. The fifth wife had received it for her anniversary, and Miria recalled being puzzled at why Czewa, usually so reserved and reluctant, was the one to offer the Lady Governor effusive thanks for it. Then again, those were the first weeks of her marriage, and back then, she'd barely understood what the relationship between the wives was supposed to be like.

"If it is what I think you mean," Stava whispered, sitting down before her dresser, and starting to clean her makeup, "it'll be in the wardrobe. Lowest shelf."

Miria envied the fifth wife a little for her bed, but mostly for her voice. In a twist of cruel irony, Stava never seemed to fully realize just how beautiful her slightly husky, but nonetheless soft and sweet whisper sounded. In fact, she spoke up only rarely when surrounded by others, out of concern for the supposedly unwifely tenor. This little shame was one of the many reasons why of all the Lady Governor's wives, Miria had ended up liking Stava the best and desiring her the least: she could recognize herself in her, for better or worse.

Admittedly, it was usually the latter.

The fifth wife removed her silver earring loops, then the crystal-studded choker; her gestures were slight, as was her frame. When fingers brushed her body, they did so overly carefully, as if she was a fragile thing, likely to crack under pressure. It was this grace that made Miria, a poor reflection; they were both lean, they were both sharp-featured, but unlike the boy-toy wife, Stava inhabited her flesh without any mannish impetus.

Miria looked away from the fifth wife before the sight started to hurt too deeply, turning to the paneled wardrobe doors and what hid behind them. For all her fondness for jewels and precious metals, Stava's tastes ran plain and modest when it came to dress. Though Miria had never had a good opportunity to ask, she suspected that whatever family Stava had left behind had to be of those pious burghers who matched a deep suspicion of opulence with a subtle taste for luxury.

The package Miria was looking for lay hidden under layers of folded kerchiefs in autumnal reds and yellows. It was a bag made out of brown, waxed paper; when the boy-toy wife reached inside she was rewarded with the overly familiar touch of rough fabric and old leather. She did not need to see to know what her hands found: a white shirt, and a black vest. A sword-belt, riding trousers of the kind that had been fashionable a few years ago, and boots to match. In other words, a complete outfit of the kind one would expect to see worn by a young burgher man in Karsz's streets.

A month and a half into her marriage, Miria had experienced the misfortune of running into the Hofmeisterin while returning from a visit in her family's home back in the town below. The clothes she'd worn then were not unlike the ones in the brown bag; the boy-toy wife had not yet had a chance to change back into a dress. The old servant did not receive it well; she had Miria dragged before the other wives and viciously scolded for her refusal of wifely obedience. Then, the Hofmeisterin ordered Mariś to go through all of Miria's wardrobe, pack anything in it which could pass for boy's clothing, and burn it all in the palace's central furnace.

If Miria had been braver, she would have tried to argue: maybe explain that it was not a refusal of femininity—not that she could refuse something she barely held, anyway—but rather a familial matter, and one of personal comfort. After all, she had no intention to try to offend the Lady Governor by wearing men's clothes inside the palace, and in fact relished the opportunity to not do so. But to mount such a defense would be difficult for her even today, let alone in her first, confusing, lonesome weeks.

A few days later, Stava had found a private moment alone with Miria and offered the boy-toy wife that, if she ever needed to again, she should feel free to make use of her old outfits. They were, after all, similar in size, and should fit well. Miria's next few jaunts into the city had confirmed that theory, even if hurriedly changing inside a carriage climbing back the palace hill was always a sharp shot of stress.

"Can you even leave?" Stava asked upon hearing the rustle of paper. "The Lady Governor forbade it."

The sixth wife nodded. Somewhere in the back of her head, an idea percolated that she should just try to sneak out, but truth be told, she had no idea how she was going to accomplish that. She pursed her lips at the thought that she had concerned herself more with what to wear in front of her family than with how to get to them in the first place, but eventually decided that, in any case, now was not the time to get wound up over that.

She tugged at the bag to free it from its hiding place. As the package came out, it was followed by a slender, metal tube which had apparently been tucked on top of it. It tumbled quietly to the floor, resting in the thick, southern carpet covering the floor. Mindful of how curiosity was a bad habit in girls, Miria carefully picked it up.

Husband-medicine poultice, the label read. Strong formula! Produced in Dis, for use infernal & mortal. Not for sale to wives. A ragged tear marked where the paper seal holding the cap in place had been torn. It took Miria a second to understand what it was exactly that she was holding. Did Stava really hate being made a wife so much?

She glanced up at the woman in front of the mirror, finishing with wipe the rouge from her cheeks; there seemed to be no rush in her gestures, no desperate need to come clean. Nothing in her suggested that femininity was a mask she loathed to wear. The boy-toy wife turned the tube in her fingers. So if it was not defiance against the Lady Governor, then what? And, more importantly, how had the fifth wife managed to smuggle this highly illicit medicine past the Hofmeisterin? That question contained within itself a kernel of an idea.

Miria swallowed, bracing herself for the thing she had to do next.

"Hey," she asked, looking up. "Where did you get that?"

Stava's reaction was gracefully temperate. She followed the boy-toy wife's look, and upon noticing the tube in her hand, rewarded Miria with a disapproving look. Immediately, the boy-toy wife had to suppress an urge to apologize.

"It just fell out," she mumbled, withering under the gaze. "It was an accident."

The embarrassment had to be plainly visible, because Stava exhaled lightly and tempered her scowl.

"Look," she said, "if you want to try it, feel free. But it won't make the changes go away. It doesn't work like that."

At first, Miria raised her hand to protest the notion; but she had a bag of illicit men's clothing sitting on her lap, and so it was difficult to blame Stava for the assumption.

"No, that's not…" she started, half-heartedly. "Why do you even have it, then?"

Stava turned away, looking back into the mirror. With most of the makeup gone, Miria could clearly see the dark lines marking where she still had not had her facial hair burned off.

"It," she began, turning faintly red, "is for me and Czewa. For when we're together. Right?"

The sixth-wife blinked, then quickly stashed the tube back in its hiding place. For a moment, all she could feel was that disastrously stupid and horrendously embarrassing surprise at finding out that it was the fifth wife who was the husband between her and the fourth.

"Right," she murmured instead.

"It's an old wife trick. I learned it from Visza."

The fact that it was Visza, that supremely beautiful ideal of femininity, who had taught Stava how to use the husband-medicine briefly registered as a little bit odd. But thinking about the late second wife was not something Miria particularly wanted to do. She shook the notion away, and focused on the thing that mattered the most in the moment.

"But how did you even manage to get it? Isn't it forbidden?"

The tension—and the blush—left Stava. Whatever she had been briefly worried about ceased to weigh on her. She put down her wipes, and turned around to face Miria, a bit curious, a bit pensive.

"What are you up to, Miria?"

The only response that the sixth wife managed was a slightly anxious twitch. It was not just that she did not want others to know about her planned escapades—she herself was not entirely sure of what her intentions really were. Thankfully, Stava did not push.

"Fine," she said, a delicate tension building somewhere in her slight voice. "None of my business. But you have to promise me something first."

She paused. Miria waited.

"Be kind to Czewa," she said, a raw note bleeding through her words. "Even if she isn't always too kind to you. Or others. She has given up on much for the sake of others. Much more," she hesitated before continuing, "than she should have had to."

If Miria could be sure of the meaning behind those words, she would love nothing more than to share that she understood such a sacrifice, having made one herself. But it would also have to be a lie; if Czewa resented her marriage, then her fate was nothing like the boy-toy's wife, no matter how similar their histories could be made to look. She nodded, and received a pale smile in return.

"Well then. Do you know Mihasz? The groundskeeper?"

***

Only a few quick steps separated Stava's door from the one to Miria's own room. Still, the boy-toy wife held her breath the entire way, crossing the distance in lunges as long as her dress would allow. This time, however, the Hofmeisterin did not lurk in an ambush; as the familiar dark of her bed-chamber welcomed her, Miria finally allowed herself an exhale—but not to put the light on. Not yet.

Stumbling around, she found her bed by touch and memory alone, and knelt down by it to push the bag of men's clothing deep underneath. A cursory search would not find it there, and as long as she did not give the Hofmeisterin any reason to investigate more thoroughly, she should be safe. She could only hope no one would notice her planned visit to the groundskeeper's hut, or find it suspicious.

It was not hard to believe that, of all the servants, it was the wrinkled, cantankerous Mihasz who specialized in supplying the household with everything that should not cross the front gate. It was not hard to believe, just as it was not obvious to suspect; the man had been tending to the palace grounds for as long as anyone could remember, his presence long since faded into the scenery. It did, however, sting a little that no other wife had thought it appropriate to tell Miria about the groundskeeper's trade.

As the excitement of her little transgression against the household's order faded away, the sixth-wife found herself swamped with a sticky wave of exhaustion. It had been a long day, and she preferred not to think too much about a lot of what had happened. In its own small way, the plans she was drawing for tomorrow, the plans that would maybe let her find out what it was, exactly, that felt so out of joint about Visza's murder, helped her to think less of the murder itself, of the body beginning to rot under the snow-white shroud, and of the formless, suffocating grief even she was not immune to.

Grudgingly, she removed the blinds from the hellfire lamp at her bed-stand. Orange and gold light flooded the dark room, taking her briefly back to the shrine of Want, and those bitter-sweet moments in the pillory there, before things had gotten so sour and so complicated. It was with that thought on her mind that she noticed the little surprise waiting for her.

Someone had left it on her bed, just so that she would not miss it, and still she'd been too caught up in her own head to notice it immediately—even though it was obviously meant to draw her attention. It was a small, wooden box, minimally carved with the simplest fire motifs. Miria's heart skipped a beat: this was how the Lady Governor preferred to offer gifts to her wives.

With her fingers shaking ever so slightly, she popped the lid open, revealing a card written in the familiar, sharp hand.

Dear Miria, it read, my beloved boy-toy wife.

The letter was a hand that wrapped itself around her throat, and held tight. Of all the things she had taught herself to expect, this was not one of them. She read on, stumbling over each word.

Please forgive me for the absence of my attention. If you must, put the blame on me, not Visza, and accept this gift as an apology and a promise.

That was all; no more writing, nothing. There was no mention of grief, of death, of mourning. The Lady Governor must have had this sent in those few hours between Miria being sized and Visza's murder.

Underneath the card, a sardonyx cameo waited for Miria on a velvet bed. Reverently, she picked it up by its silver setting, and brought it closer to the flame. The scene cut into the stone was not hard to recognize: a hydra of braided limbs, all reaching to bury a pilloried body standing atop a mountain of coin.

And on the other side, the one that would be always pressed into Miria's throat, should she ever wear the jewel, a single-word waited:

Mine.

 

[NemoMarx]

"It," she began, turning faintly red, "is for me and Czewa. For when we're together. Right?"

The sixth-wife blinked, then quickly stashed the tube back in its hiding place. For a moment, all she could feel was that disastrously stupid and horrendously embarrassing surprise at finding out that it was the fifth wife who was the husband between her and the fourth.

"Right," she murmured instead.

"It's an old wife trick. I learned it from Visza."

Click to shrink...

Miria gets gender a bit bitter than the Hofmeisterin and stuff, but she's still pretty silly about it. It's also fun to have people be doing classically trans tricks like slathering T on your thigh before you top

 

[maybem]

Miria: You top? Disgusting. Unrelatable. Blocked.

 

[Squirtodyle]

if you're coming here to report this story Please be aware that this is not prima facie against Rule 6: Acceptable Content on SV.

We have received several reports for this story with the concern that it is running afoul of Rule 6, and we've decided to make an informational post specifically to cut down on the number of those reports.

While this is not to say that the story cannot be reported now or in the future, please be aware that any report made with a generic, non-specific reporting reason of "Rule 6" or "obscenity" and the like will be rejected.

 

[Gargulec]

I do find it extremely amusing that years have passed since I've written a prison, a body, and those conversations still happen. Or concerns.

 

[ancusohm]

Huh. This is such a neat setting. I've read your a prison, a body. I've described it as 'button-mashing the keyboard of my mind', and I am looking forward to experiencing that again. 👍

 

[Gargulec]

Huh. This is such a neat setting. I've read your a prison, a body. I've described it as 'button-mashing the keyboard of my mind', and I am looking forward to experiencing that again. 👍

Click to shrink...

Thank you! I have also written another (now complete) story between finishing apab and starting this, so check this out if you are interested!

 

[Shane_357]

Weird, erotic and somehow deeply uncomfortable in a way I cannot truly define.

 

[Gargulec]

Chapter Five: In Which There are Memories

A nagging fear of being followed dragged behind Miria. There was little reason why she should be; as a boy-toy wife the only time anyone in the household would pay any close attention to her was the Hofmeisterin's morning inspection. Once she was put into the correct dress, made up, and fed the wife-medicine, she usually was left alone to drift through the hours, unless an improbable whim struck the Lady Governor to request her use and presence. On most days, Miria felt invisible—and yet today, her eyes kept darting around the palace gardens' budding greenery, as if expecting to see some Mariś or Kaś watching and reporting on her.

But of course, no white splash of mourning livery interrupted the drab brown of leafless trees and barren flowerbeds. Only occasionally would a patrolling soldier in his red jacket pass her by, gravel crunching under the steel-toed boots; but even then, his eyes would be turned away from Miria, scanning the palace fence for signs of a breach or an assault. The sixth wife was no intruder, and was not doing anything untoward: merely taking an opportunity in the end of the last week's incessant drizzles to finally enjoy a morning walk through the winding garden paths. The worst she could be accused of was getting mud on her lacquered boots and the spotless white of her dress' hem. Which, granted, would be a waste: it was a very nice dress.

She paused her stroll, and let her gloved hand wander up the row of silver buttons running all the way up to her neck, coming to a rest at the sardonyx cameo clasped around it. The stone was indisputably still there, remaining as a tangible proof of the Lady Governor's attention that Miria still could not entirely believe in. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, little warning noises rose like tin trumpets, poisoning the pleasure with the cold awareness that if the Lady Governor had decided to reward her with such an unexpected gift—such a welcome promise—then something had to be wrong, had to be headed towards a catastrophe.

It was around that sense of imminent danger that Miria's guilt coiled. It only made sense that she would receive a token of the Lady Governor's want—even if only as an afterthought of a consolation—just as she was getting ready to break with her trust. If she had really been deserving of the stone and the word carved into it, she would be staying in the palace, being as a boy-toy wife should be: an unnoticed, unheard piece of the scenery.

The groundskeeper made himself heard before he could be seen. His voice reached Miria over a thick hedge, not so much in individual words, but rather in a general melody of a frustrated tirade. She followed after it, until it led her to opening in the hedge, and into a small, secluded clearing hiding behind.

Mihasz lived in one of the old king's follies—a rather fanciful recreation of a highland shepherd's hut, built back in that brief period of time when pastoral motifs were the height of fashion. The fad had lasted but a few years, and aristocrats quickly got bored of putting embroidered highlanders' pants and pretending to tend to a handful of confused sheep. A few mutton-laden feasts dispensed with the flock, but the hut itself remained, eventually passing to the groundskeeper to serve as his new home and tool-shed. And now, the old man stood under the garlands of holly carved into the door-frame and jabbed his crooked finger at the overcast sky. A pair of contrite gardeners stood before him, receiving a berating oratory with bent heads.

What the verbal lashing was all about, Miria could scarcely understand. Insults rained from Mihasz's mouth at a rapid-fire pace, delivered in curling, country dialect too thick for the sixth wife to understand. Thankfully, she did not have to wait long. With a furious sweep of his arm, the groundskeeper sent the gardeners away. The moment he noticed Miria lurking at the entrance to his little glade, the furious expression contorting his wrinkled face dissolved immediately into a look of warm delight.

"Oh, what joyful surprise!" he exclaimed.

He swiped the feathered hat from his head, and went into a deep bow, sweeping the ground at his feet. No hint of dialect remained in his voice; he spoke clearly, as if he had been born and raised in a burgher's home.

"To what does the old man owe the pleasure? What can he do for you?"

Tentatively, Miria navigated closer, careful to step between the many puddles where the gravel had grown sparse. By the time she reached the door, Mihasz had already invited her inside, into a dusky chamber lit only by an orange glow from a low-burning stove.

"Please, sit, sit," he implored, dusting off a fireside stool for her.

A heavy smell of burnt resin permeated the air; tongues of smoke curled around bundles of sage, parsley, and wild garlic dangled from every beam. More and stranger herbs slowly infused in rows of glass jars stacked by the chamber's lone window. Mihasz picked one, seemingly at random, and poured a generous serving for his guest, releasing a sharp, alcoholic tang.

"For your constitution," he offered, pressing the stoneware cup into Miria's hands and waiting expectantly.

She drank out of reflex more than desire, and immediately regretted it. A minty coolness spread through her mouth before igniting into a cold firestorm rolling all the way down into her stomach. She coughed, barely holding onto the cup.

"Th-thank you," she managed to mutter, hoping to not sound too insincere.

Mihasz poured for himself, too, just as generously—but where Miria had merely wetted her lips in the liquor, he downed his entire glass in two quick gulps. He wiped his mouth with the flat of his hand and tossed the hat onto a nearby table, but did not sit down himself.

"First time you visit," he noted, "young lady."

There was something in the way he said those words that made Miria's shoulders instinctively pull closer together, though it took her a second to realize why: the old man sounded as if they were both in on a joke. Without wanting to, the sixth wife found herself looking away from him, a sour, familiar feeling building up somewhere from the back of her throat.

"Don't be coy," he continued, holding back a dry chuckle, "and just tell the old man what is that you need. You wives don't come to this geezer for nothing."

In a way, she appreciated his candor. It spared her from having to ask. And yet, when she tried to speak, she found her throat dry, the cameo clamping it down like a vice. There were still so many ways she could pull out of this plan, withdraw back to her room, and validate the gift. What need was for her to play the grand inquisitor, out for the truth, if the entire purpose of her life—the purpose she had begged for—was to be an irrelevant boy-toy wife?

"So…" the man leaned in, "what it is that you need old Mihasz to fix you? Holy books? Poultices? A cutlass or a pistol, maybe? Do you need a love letter delivered? You can trust those wizened hands. They have never broken with a man's trust," he paused to shrug, "or a woman's."

The list sobered her up. Of course, she was not the only wife to betray the Lady Governor like that. She winced at the mention of love letters, and for a moment faces of the third, the fourth, and the fifth danced before her eyes, to the tune of a mean doubt: so which was the unfaithful one? At least her crime would not be out of the errancies of her heart, but rather down to obligations older than her marriage, or her sex. For courage, she took another sip of the icy fire, and found it opening her throat.

"I need to sneak out," she announced, louder than she would have wanted to. "For the night."

"Ah," Mihasz wheezed. "That's simply arranged!"
From a hook by the door, the groundskeeper picked up a cane, and with its crooked end reached into the bundles of herbs, drawing from them a clinking ring of bent and blackened keys. They rang like a series of tin bells as his gnarled fingers picked through them, before finally picking one: a simple, single-bitted chunk of soot-stained iron.

"You know the belcher's cave?"

Miria nodded: he was referring to a pile of pink granite built around a one-armed statue, supposedly of the city's eponymous hero Karsz. With his mouth wide open and sole remaining hand pressed to his belly, he was meant to seem as if uttering a great war-shout, but everyone called him 'the belcher' instead, or more uncouth terms.

"Past it," the groundskeeper explained, "there's that dwarf pine thicket. You make it all the way through it to the fence, and you find a gate. No one remembers it's there anymore. The path outside is overgrown and too steep for an old fart like me, but for a young… lady like you? It'll take you to the town no problem, and with none the wiser."

He extended the key towards her, only to pull it out of her reach the moment she moved to grab it.

"Now, now," he smiled at her, a row of gold teeth at proud display, "young lady, don't be hasty. Don't you have a thaler to spare for old Mihasz?"

Of course. How foolish it had been of Miria to assume that the groundskeeper helped the wives out of the goodness of his heart. She closed herself even further, because in truth, she did not have a single thaler to her name; she was a wife, and all her possessions were the Lady Governor's, and she had never felt the need to ask for purse money.

"The demons, you see, are not like the good old king," Mihasz added, pouring himself another round, "may his soul be hallowed. The old Mihasz may not be going hungry, but would the demons build him a home like that?"

He raised a toast to the rafters to the shepherd's hut.

"It's not out of greed, young lady," he mused, "but a man thinks to himself: you wish to go out into the city. Have some fun with a girl maybe, so what they've done to you stings less? Old Mihasz won't judge, but he teeter's at a tomb's brink, and wouldn't it be just if your fun sweetened his final days too, don't you think?"

Miria did not notice the moment when her fingers closed around the jewel on her neck, as if to protect it. True enough, his stare locked onto the gem, too, and an encouraging nod followed her gesture. Was he really expecting her to toss it away like a petty bauble? A frustrated exhale left her chest. He knew so little about her, and already she could tell he was assuming much. So many people did. Maybe there was a use in it.

"Groundskeeper," she whispered, gritting her teeth at what she was about to say next. "My father is waiting for his son."

Her voice had never been properly trained; every week, the Hofmeisterin would give her a few lessons to make it more wifely, but the progress she was making felt, at best, torturous. Now, as she spoke, she strove to forget even the few basic principles she had managed to pick up, speaking from the bottom of her chest, in a man's grating grumble.

"But the son can't come. The red-coated soldiers won't let him leave the Overwhelming Grace. And his other child?" she spoke, watching for signs of pity in Mihasz's face. "They put his other child in this…"

Instead of finishing, she let her voice hang, and her hand awkwardly point at her dress. She made sure that the groundskeeper's eyes would follow her gesture towards the bulge between her legs, and all the implications it carried. It made for an unhappy surprise to find out just how easily those lies came to her—and how smoothly they seemed to reel Mihasz in. Biting her lip, she pressed on.

"I'm just a wife," she tried to give the word the same poisonous weight she could recall from when her brother spat it into the air, "but I still want to just be a good…"

The groundskeeper shook his head slowly. He put the key into Miria's hand, and closed her fingers around it.

"Son, yes," he said, without any of his previous cheer. "Bless your heart."

She left his hut not long thereafter, the cool metal of the key digging into her flesh where she hid it under her dress. On her way back to the palace, she could only think of everything others expected her to be, and how much she was disappointing all of them.

***

Stava's old clothes fit Miria unpleasantly well. The short span of her marriage was not nearly enough to shake the coarse fabric's familiarity from her skin. She hid her dress among the dwarf pines, and unlocked the gate, careful not to let the rusted hinges scream too loudly.

Above, the southern winds were blowing, scattering the clouds to reveal a crescent moon set against a bed of cold, blue stars. Under their dubious light, Miria followed a steep path down the overgrown hillside, through the messy, tangled brush that surrounded the palace. By the time she'd slid all the way down, she had managed to get dark streaks of mud all over her trousers and shirt. And maybe for the better: there was a certain rough-and-tumble look to it, as if she had just returned from a long horse ride. If she could only grow her hair out a bit longer, she could almost play for that fey highwayman's look that the young rakes so cherished.

It was how she once used to fit into the city of Karsz that sprawled ahead of her, dark, but never asleep.

Maybe she could do it again.

Ever since Her Infernal Majesty had demanded the city's walls be demolished—long before she formally put the kingdom of Leshia under the imperial scepter—Karsz had chosen to spill its old bounds, spreading over both banks of the Neuma River into an ever-expanding patchwork of winding streets and eclectic architecture, overlooked by the hilltop palaces and their vast gardens. In the spring, the city's air grew thick with pollen and the scent of flowers. Thus they called it the Orchard of the Lowlands and the Flower of Neuma. Even while Leshia withered, even while surrounding powers devoured it one small bite after another, its capital never ceased to bloom.

Or so they said.

Spring rains had turned the unpaved streets into a swamp, only traversable with the help of rickety wooden walkways, shifting under the weight of many bodies stepping across at once. Already slippery, they were all the more treacherous in the dark; the episcopacy continued to refuse to let hellfire lanterns be installed, and so the only light remained a handful of flickering lanterns hanging from burgher's windows. And yet, the night scarcely seemed to trouble the drivers of collection carts, their vehicle careening through the narrow streets, racing to dump the city's gathered filth foaming into the Neuma.

Someone bumped shoulders with Miria, and she almost lost her footing.

"Don't slip," they called after her, their voice already disappearing into the dark.

"I won't!" she shouted back the traditional hail of Karsz's nightcrawlers.

With the sun down, no room remained on the streets for stately burghers or the black-cassoked episcopal priests; ornamented aristocratic carriages retreated into the carriage houses, and women of good morals tucked themselves to sleep. Instead, a tribe of rowdy youth took the city into possession with their shouts and laughter, and for the time being, Miria was just one of them, again. No one paid any attention to her, offering her an invisibility far greater than just the dark of the night could afford; she moved freely towards the Lesser City Square, yet another errant man in the streets out there to enjoy the spring of his life. Every so often, a keen-eyed prostitute would call after her in a hoarse voice, adding to the nightlife melody of Karsz she knew so well.

And yet, not all was she had remembered; though the melody stayed the same, it had been shifted in pitch. The call-and-response of rakes and harlots came in sharp bursts and barks; nighttime greets were uttered in a hurry, and prayers to the Holy, once unheard past sundown, now cut in between laughs and shouts. There was a new rush on the streets of Karsz, at once hungry and fearful, unfolding under a sign yet inchoate, but already dreadful. She picked up her pace, an uncertain sense of threat driving her to a half-jog.

When the wood under her soles gave way to smoothed stone, Miria knew she had reached her destination. She let herself breathe out, and looked up to see the Lesser City square opening ahead of her, so much more vast in the dark than it would appear under the light of the sun. A bright light burned high above, at the top of the Enduring Virtue's spire, the black outline of the temple looming over the surrounding townhouses. In the past it alone had claimed dominion over the night, but those days were long gone.

A new theater had opened alongside the square's edge, a massive brazier filled with hellfire illuminating its front. Sharp music from drunk violins flooded out of its open doors, spilling into the plaza in an open challenge to high spire. Colourful, unquiet folk congregated in the light, enjoying a break in their festivities, their dress and shouts intoxicatingly foreign. Only a pair of red-jacketed soldiers posted at the door seemed distant from the revelry, instead squinting at the night, and the dangers it may present. Against her better judgement, the boy-toy let herself be lured closer.

She stopped just outside the ring of light, close enough to read the colored letters on the great posters advertising tonight's play: Prince Miko's Desires Unrewarded: A Comedy in Three Acts. The names underneath were decidedly infernal, as were the faces of the two actresses leaning out of the theater's balcony and smoking from their long, wooden pipes. They shimmered in the hellfire's orange-and-red glow, for they wore more gold and silver than cloth. Twisting white tattoos crossed their dark skin, and whenever a sliver of their flesh emerged from under cascading velvets and silks, Miria felt her heart clench. One of them noticed the boy-toy wife lurking in the dark, and with a shrill laugh, blew a circle of smoke her way.

"Leshite brother," she called in an icy voice, "you here to cause trouble?"

Before the soldiers took notice, Miria ran. The infernal theater was a spectacle of flesh, its players little more than objects of the audience's want. She remembered the first time a troupe like that had made its way into Karsz, remembered the fury that seized the respectable people of the city that such things were being allowed, and most of all, remembered the image of a demonic girl in chains, waving to men crowding to behold the display of her humiliation. Even now, years hence, the image was still burned into her mind, stirring a desperate, impossible hunger. She expected the image of the two actresses to join it, and remain with her for days, or maybe forever.

The townhouse her family had moved into was just on the opposite side of the square, hidden behind the bulk of the Enduring Virtue. Lights flickered in its windows; burghers seldom slept early. Still chased by the actress' laugh, Miria found the sculpted door-knocker, and banged it a few times, the sound louder than she would have wanted.

One of her father's apprentices—a tired-eyed youth with a mop of red hair and purple ink-stains under his fingernails—opened for her. He had been at the workshop for years now, and recognized her promptly. Without a word, he led her among the quiet printing presses, and upstairs, to her parent's rooms. Miria felt bad for the boy. Back in the old workshop by the northern riverside, they'd all lived side by side, apprentices sharing the master's home and table. But different rules controlled a townhouse opposite of the Enduring Virtue, large enough to have a cellar where the apprentices could sleep without having to worry about disturbing the master printer and his wife.

"Son!"

Her mother's voice was hoarse and small; Miria startled at the sound, but followed it, entering into a brightly lit drawing room. Gone were the days of counting every candle; now Petrasz Benedek, master printer, was the sole provider of services to the Lady Governor's household, and as such, beyond the need for petty savings.

"Has something happened?"

Evidence of new wealth surrounded Miria on all sides. The paintings of western masters lined the walls, the stately eyes of burghers from the Marine Republics all turned towards the center of the room. Miria liked to imagine that they disapproved of the expensive furniture, of those gilded oak chairs and tables cluttered around, imported from workshops as far east as Drinzo, where snakes hold court. Or perhaps instead they did not scowl, but rather admired, however pensively, the collection of porcelain tiles in the cupboards around, blue paint on white shell depicting ships at full sail and grain-heavy fields. Some of the specimens Miria's mother had brought from the west were no less valuable than the oils above.

"Is it about Ambros?"

She had to look at her parents eventually; they were the reason why she came. Still, she delayed, taking in the decor, letting her eyes linger and catch on each and every proof of fresh success. When she was little, her father taught her modesty above all, a good burgher's frugality and distaste for aristocratic ostentatiousness. She balked at those lessons then, her dreams reveling instead in the cautionary tales of infernal splendour and the seductive flames of Dis. It was bittersweet to find out, finally and beyond dispute, that she had not been the only one hungering for more.

"Yes, mother," she replied, finally forcing herself to face the center of the room. "It's about Ambros."

Her parents had changed less than their home did. For all of Petrasz's need to prove, before the world and himself, that he had made it, he continued to wear solely black and white, the fashion of the portraits he adorned the walls with. Old severity became him. Even now, she struggled to see his face for anything but the look of concern and disapproval. And how could she blame him for it? Death awaited his son; loss plagued his family.

And then, there was her mother, eyes glazed over with tears. She sat by her husband's side, hands clasped tightly together, as if for prayer. A book of litanies lay open on the table before her, one that the sixth wife knew intimately. She had been read from it often as a child, receiving from her mother's lips a plea after plea that the Holy would bring consolation, reprieve, and absolution. Then as now, it struck her how much her mother made herself look as one of those doleful old ladies, whose wooden sculptures adorned the wings of episcopal temples, polychromy peeling away year after year, leaving behind a harsh and bare face of petrified wood.

"Please tell me she'll have mercy," the older woman sobbed, bloodshot eyes drilling straight through Miria. "Please tell me you'll make her!"

Careful not to make too much noise, Miria pulled back a chair and sat down, trying to decide whether folding her hands on her lap would not be seen as too feminine for the circumstances.

"I will try," she said. "But he—"

"He did nothing," her father cut in, fingers snapping against the table. "Ambros is a victim."

The usually quiescent part of Miria, the one she had spent years restraining and burying, jolted at those words, and reminded the sixth wife of the body under the pristine white shroud. But Visza's murder was not the matter of contention here, if it mattered for her father at all. She tried to shake the thought away, but it resisted, persisting as a small pinprick of anger somewhere under the layers of old guilt.

"I believe you," she lied. "But the Lady Governor is…" she hesitated on the choice of the next word; none that came to her mind seemed to fit what her father wanted to hear. "She is furious. She will ignore sanctuary, if she needs to."

The book of litanies snapped shut, the sound ringing off like a musket-shot.

"She wouldn't!" her mother whispered, pale on the face. "Even she wouldn't dare."

Petrasz's hand clasped over his wife's wrist.

"Marina," he said, "you should rest. Let the men talk this over."

Miria avoided looking at the older woman as she nodded and left. She had never been the one to offer her mother consolation, and especially not in her wedding's wake. But it was not just the guilt that made her eyes turn away; she did not want to see just how heavy the look of expectation was in Marina's face as she put all her hopes again on her child's shoulders.

"Tell me how bad it is," Petrasz asked when the bedroom doors closed.

She obliged, leaving out only the part where she had been forbidden from leaving the palace grounds. It was better that he did not know she'd disobeyed her wife to be here; he had enough worries already without having to add to them the risks his child was taking.

Somewhere towards the end of her explanation, as she moved from the facts of the matter to her own suspicions, he rang for a servant, and spoke again only after a pair of steaming mint infusions landed on the table between them. The sharp smell drilled into Miria's nostrils with the strength of a hundred half-entombed memories.

"You were right to be suspicious about the security," he sighed, waving off a puff of fragrant steam. "They've been paid off."

The story her father proceeded to tell was familiar in places, and entirely new in others. It started in the weeks after Miria's marriage, when Ambros, distraught over his brother being peddled like a demon's whore, started to turn his back on the family, and instead sought new company. He found it among young, pious men who called themselves the Veznian Sodality, after the third king of Leshia, Vezna the Saintly, famed for fighting his way out of a devil's den with nothing but a broken spear and a prayer on his lips. There was scarcely a young boy to be found in the lowlands who had not, at some point, fancied himself a future Vezna. Most grew out of it; as it turned out, Ambros did not.

"This nonsense," Petrasz exhaled, drained and disappointed, "reeled him in. Thoroughly."

In the end, Miria's brother barely made appearances at their parents' home, and when he did, he was even worse. He clad himself in zealotry, denouncing all who dealt with demons, who trampled over the legacy of the faith and kingdom. Eventually, they only saw him across the pews, during the weekly services at the Enduring Virtue—until, one fateful afternoon, he failed to make an appearance there, too.

Before Petrasz could get properly worried about his son's absence, the city's bells exploded in alarm, soon followed by the bloody news. The first thing Miria's father did after hearing of the events at the Overwhelming Grace was to send a runner for the man responsible for Visza's protection. He was not hard to find; while the Veznian Sodality massacred the Lady Governor's wife, he and his comrades celebrated their new payout with drinks and music, laughing uproariously at how easy their work had become.

"Do you know who bribed them?" Miria asked into the quiet that followed.

"How would I?" her father shrugged. "I haven't had a chance to ask, or find out. But…"

He made this almost apologetic face that Miria immediately recognized as a sign of him being about to add to her burdens. She leaned into her chair, as if by making herself smaller she could avoid whatever idea he was about to propose.

"I'm told they're still there, partying at the Three Crowns."

It was the coffeehouse of choice for thugs with coats of arms, and their countless followers. In the sour stench of wine and tobacco, they made a house there for themselves, those men who would rather live loud than long. It was a place for shouts and broken bones, for music which went right under your skin until a stray pistol-shot interrupted it, for air that always tasted of gunpowder and liquor you should not be able to afford. Miria could not say she was familiar with the place, but it would be a lie to claim she did not know it at all.

"Your old sword is in the chest," Petrasz indicated a carved box under one of the display cabinets. "If that's what you are thinking about."

She was thinking about it, yes. For all the months of the wife-medicine, for all the training that the Hofmeisterin imposed, some things were the dress she wore, and others had long set into bone. The cheap spade slipped easily into its place at her belt, the weight another memory she had not expected to be revisiting tonight. There was no need for a mirror to know the way she looked: the tall riding boots, the mud-stained trousers, the spade and unruly hair. There was no sense in denying that she would fit her old haunt well.

"They are dangerous people, no doubt," her father added, nodding slowly. "But so is your infernal wife. And if this is what Ambros' life hangs on…"

Old habits guided the motions of the body, and Miria found her hand closed lazily on the pommel, hip bent slightly with a hint of the rake's swagger her friends had once tried to coach her in. Her father's unstated plan made sense; she could easily pass among lowlands men. The image of the two girls at the theater's balcony returned, their faces twisted into a cruel leer. They needed not to call for guards to convey to Miria what she already knew: no, she would never belong among their kind. Hers was the Three Crowns crowd, the harsh stench of booze and sweat, the life she was born to, not the one she tried to escape into.

"It's worth it, isn't it?"

"Yes, father," she admitted, bowing her head in deference. "It absolutely is."

Her father finished his mint, and rang for the servant again to clean the room for the night. It was the time for Miria to go.

"I used to think you would never grow up," Petrasz mused, walking her to the door, "but you keep showing me how wrong I was. I'm proud of you, Mirion."

She rushed downstairs, through the workshop, and into Karsz's unquiet night. The dark enveloped her with its usual kindness, paying no attention to her long stride, or the banging of her heavy boots on the rain-slick pavement.

 

[CyberFemme]

Ah, Miria uses a girlified version of her male name. A classic.

 

[Gargulec]

Ah, Miria uses a girlified version of her male name. A classic.

Click to shrink...

Granted, the decision was not entirely hers.

Also, regarding the update schedule: as you might have guessed from the month-long delay, it may get erratic over the summer. The reason for this is that not only do I have a bunch of work to focus on, but I also have an actual book deal now (and am working on another proposal, though it is a long shot)! So this will sadly have to take priority.

 

[Word Bearer]

Mazel Tov on the book deal.

 

[ancusohm]

Huh, this is shaping up to be a proper conspiracy, and I have a feeling that it goes deeper than a few young (and rich) zealots. Also, oof, every (unintentional?) misgendering of Miria is a sharp little stab, but I suppose her family don't realize how consensual her situation is.

Congratulations on the book deal!

 

[Gargulec]

Chapter Six: In Which Cards are Played, and Whiskey Imbibed

A flight of worn-down granite stairs took Miria below the street level and into the hazy embrace of the Three Crowns. The air inside was naught but tobacco smoke laced with the sharp stench of exhausted bodies and expensive liquor, all settling on Miria's tongue alongside the soot from long-burning wicks. She hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and then, with a hand roguishly resting on the hilt of her sword, dove in.

Tired eyes welcomed her, reflecting pin-prick embers of sputtering candles. A writhing mass of men-shapes, bristling with weapons and muscle, surrounded her; it made Miria think of the sculpted wall of flesh in the Lady Governor's shrine, and of the first wife's ministrations. She stumbled under the weight of that memory, and the masculine expectations it was failing.

But men around her did not notice; they only saw a boy's swagger turn to a misstep.

"Careful there, braveheart," a pair of canine eyes, straight from the Lupine Republics, cheered from one of the tables.

"Don't stab yourself with that needle," the wolf-man's companion added, entirely hidden from view, but speaking with the unmistakable drawl of an upland Leshite.

They both laughed, and Miria laughed with them, the well-worn chuckle of a boy letting himself be made the punchline of the joke. It worked; attention slid off her, turning into indifference. She became just one more shape awkwardly stumbling through the discordant quiet of a party stretched long past everyone's endurance. Empty bottles of akvavit lined the old chestnut tables; a gray-haired fiddler was catching a nap in the corner, his apprentice warily guarding a chest bursting with a long day's worth of spare silver. Somewhere deeper in, voices argued, laden with long exhaustion and far too much drink.

The men she was after did not make themselves hard to find; they were the axle the night turned around. Theirs was the table of honour, by the great fireplace; even now, a servant was throwing another fat chunk of beech into the flame, sending a shower of sparks up towards the ceiling. There were four of them gathered, all pictures of Leshite brawn, with their long sabers, hair kept long on one side of the head and shaved clean on the other, and gilded pistols tucked behind wide belts of brocaded silk. A woman in immodest dress tended to them, her skin sticky with sweat; they passed her from hand to hand over spent playing cards littering the floor at their feet, a deck for each game played. From a mantlepiece portrait, the late king stared them all down, burn-marks turning his stately face into a picture of pox. Whenever a new round arrived at the table, the men toasted him with crooked smiles and barked laughs.

"Vivat rex!"

The girl laughed with the men, their strained voices braiding together into a grinding, ugly sound, as familiar and as unwelcome to Miria as the weight of the sword on her belt. She dropped onto an empty seat, right outside the fireplace's ring of orange light, unsure on how to approach the late wife's bodyguards. If the men were not shouting, it was only because their throats had been shot already; their growling voices drilled into Mira a sharp yearning to be anywhere but here. Her body had stiffened at some point—perhaps the taste of air was familiar enough to remind it of its old fears of being seen through as a fraud. Anxiously, she stared at the girl in the men's large hands and briefly, in the flash of her ruby earrings, their eyes met—but hers did not linger on Miria, sliding off her as easily as they would off any other man. The same was true for the men, to whom she was only yet another boy-shaped shape in the haze; and yet, every time they moved their hard-featured heads in her direction, she tensed, expecting their eyes to fix on her, notice her fraud and punish her for it. This too was a familiar feeling. She swallowed, pushing down the choking mass of her fear, and tried to focus; tried to think about Ambros, and her purpose here, among men.

A card slammed on the table, breaking the languid quiet. The girl jumped from the lap she was in, climbing onto the shoulder of the victor, to kiss his hoary cheek. Across the table, his comrade swore viciously, tossing the losing deal to the floor.

"What's with this silence?" he roared, jagged voice jolting a dozen tired heads from their stupor. "Drink my ruin, you fucks! Akvavit, everyone!"

A rumbling cheer rose in the dark; encouraged by the clinking of gold, ruffled servants rushed with bottles and glasses.

"Bottoms up!"

Liquor burned its way down Miria's throat; when the Three Crowns broke into the obligatory song, she found her voice leading: a slight, tinny falsetto set against a choir of spent men.

"Louts!" the victor banged the table, throwing cards and glasses an inch up into the air. "Wasted louts, all of you! Sing, fuckers, sing!"

Instinct, beaten into Miria's flesh over the years of her father's tutelage, took wholly over. She downed the glass, and freshly flushed, broke into song again, cheerful cracks opening in her voice. For better or worse, it worked: she made herself heard, and the men at the table of honour staring straight at her, idle interest playing in their eyes.

"He gets it!"

Another man, small and mousy, with a face like a chipped knife, grinned at her, beckoning her closer.

"Sit with us, kid!" he called, grinning with a row of golden teeth.

Though she tried her best to appear at ease, she still stumbled as she stepped towards the table. The men did not mind. The biggest of the three held the girl on his lap close, freeing her seat for Miria; she sat down to the tune of her small, mocking protestations, feeling her shoulders brush against the arms of the last deal's loser. With an awkward smile twitching on her lips, she felt herself close down, suddenly dwarfed by those men—less so their physical size, though they felt larger than her, and more by the sheer intensity of their sweat-and-smoke cheer. A mound of imperial thalers piled up in the middle of their table, proudly displayed for all to see. Those men had not just just been paid off: they were also proud of it.

"So what's with the cunty voice?" the loser asked, giving her a sharp slap on the back.

He used to be handsome, once, before something burned a scowl permanently onto his face. A medal for battlefield courage glinted on his chest. Oak leaves: earned in one of the interminable wars waged by the republican wolves.

"Somebody snipped your balls? That's why you cross your legs?"

He made a scissoring gesture with his fingers. The table rumbled with idle laughter. Only Miria's stomach closed on itself, as if squeezed by an invisible hand. Cursing new habits, she forced her legs apart, earning another burst of laughter from the scarred man. Fresh shame reddened her cheeks. She sought the girl on the victor's lap, but again found no recognition nor comfort in her beautiful face.

"Or they haven't dropped yet!" the knife-face croaked, slamming a glass in front of Miria, and pouring her generously. "Look at how smooth his cheeks are!"

"Like goddamn buttermilk!" the loser's hand reached towards Miria's face, as if to touch. She froze so as not to recoil. "Hey kid, are you even old enough to remember that asshole?"

He toasted the portrait again; Miria followed on reflex, desperate to show some kind of camaraderie. Whatever they were drinking was no akvavit; it left a cool, harsh after-taste, like metal, like blood.

"Vivat rex!"

Iron barley whiskey, Miria remembered; a specialty from far in the West, to keep the fey at bay. No one ever drank it for taste. The hoary man spilled half of his round; the rest paid it no mind as if it was just vodka, not an imported delicacy. Even without thalers piling on the table, it was clear the men became recently rich, and had little desire to hold onto the wealth.

"Well, at least you drink like a man!" the knife-face laughed, and finally looked away from her, content..

"But still blush like a virgin," the loser added, continuing to watch her closely.

Miria tried to match his stare, and found herself glancing away, anyway. She felt odd under the weight of his curiosity. For the first time tonight, she could not shake the feeling that she had been noticed somehow—and that notice pierced right through her, spearing her to the chair. Alcohol spread across her body, in a wave of warmth far less reassuring than she would have wanted it to be.

"Holy," the knife-face shook his head. "He really does!"

"Lay off, Koshei," the hoary victor shrugged, the girl in his arms holding on tightly so as not to slip off. "You're all scaring the kid. He hasn't even said a word yet!"

That much was true, though 'fear' was perhaps not the best word to describe the paralyzing pressure that made Miria freeze, as if the entire coffee-house was closing on her with a crushing force. Again, she tried to catch her bearing, and remember why she was here in the first place: to ask those looming masses of muscle, violence, and hunger about why they sold the life of the one they were sworn to protect.

Suddenly, her visit here no longer felt like a good idea at all.

"What's wrong with asking?" the one who lost the game and was called Koshei said, with mock indignation in his voice. "Do you know how many neutered boys I've had, back south? Wolfmen love them some…"

Again, he made the same scissoring gesture, and when the croaked laughs stopped, Miria finally recognized what it was that she felt brush over her skin as he looked at her: lust. The man ate her up as she would at those demon women on a theater's balcony, at Luna, at Asha. Or maybe not quite, she realized moments later; this was a different kind of hunger, altogether more possessive and nowhere near as careful. For a split-second, she glanced back at him, and saw the kind of want that would not hold back—nor would it be careful. Carefully, she exhaled, and fixed a smile on her face. Koshei was already pouring her another round. She thanked him by leaning into his shoulder, just shy of conspicuously. If the gesture was awkward, all the better. He seemed to fancy that. Others noticed.

"Don't let me ruin your fun," the knife-face said.

They drank; they played cards. Their leader—the hoary one, whom they called Bej—kept his hands wandering over and under the fine blue chiffon dress of the girl on his lap. She returned the advances with empty giggles and sloppy kisses, only sometimes stealing a glance towards the pile of gold, as if to make sure it was still there. She did not talk much, and neither did Miria. At some point—it was increasingly difficult to tell in the half-drunken stupor—Koshei yanked her from her seat and squeezed right next to himself, an arm possessively wrapped around her neck, so that she barely could turn her head. From up close, she could smell the spiciness of his sweat, and the earthen musk of his favoured tobacco.

When they next dealt cards, Miria did not receive a hand. Instead, she watched Koshei play his, and then cheered as he won and squeezed her in a tight, greedy hug in celebration. Only then did the girl in Bej's hand finally look at her, and smile, however briefly, in recognition of something she and Miria were sharing.

"Great call, Sirgij," Koshei smiled at the knife-face; his fingers brushing through Miria's hair, ready to pull at a moment's notice. "Wouldn't have noticed the sweetheart myself!"

Slowly, but inexorably, something changed in the way those men towered over the boy-toy wife. It was no longer that old, familiar fear of being near what she could never fully become; when they looked at her, she no longer felt like they were seeing their failure. No, there was no more open aggression or challenge directed at her, no need to prove to others that they were better than her; in Koshei's grasp, she was not a peer to them, but a prize. With dawning horror that not even the liquor could dull, Miria realized that if she tried to leave now, it would not go well for her. The fear was strangely sweet to sample, and not too dissimilar from arousal. She did not struggle against the hand, not even as it rested inches under the small mounds of her budding breasts. Worse yet, if she tried to ask about Visza, they would not hear her; she no longer had a voice.

Around, the coffee-house gradually emptied; not even the magnetic pull of the great wealth on the table could hold the party going on forever. Tired men sneaked out into the night, candles at the tables going out one by one. But not the fireplace. Bej would not allow the fire to draw low there, demanding that the servants stoke it, and paying with gold for each log thrown in. Koshei balked at that, and briefly turning away from holding onto Miria turned to face his comrade and accuse him of wastefulness, of pissing away the money now that they were out of work. With her head propped against his shoulder, Miria looked away, and listened keenly on, the words more real than whatever it was that was happening to her body.

In a deep bellow of a man too drunk to lie, Bej said he did not care for the money, for it was splattered with blood, and that was not how it was meant to be, and that even if they could care for it, it would bring them no good to hoard, for Karsz was soon to go up in flames, and that they were the ones that made it so. With a shout, he interrupted Koshei's protestation, demanding more iron-barley whiskey.

"This is the prize for my stupidity," he snarled, grabbing a handful of coins and tossing it around, towards the empty seats, "and I decide how to spend it!"

Then, he grabbed a servant and demanded that he find him a fiddler, and put some merriment back in the air, before the infernal troops burn the city to foundations. Three thalers were enough to convince the man to go out into the night and search. There were so many questions Miria wanted to ask, all of them silenced by the push of an arm squeezing her ever tighter; she could tell each time a twitch of worry went through Koshei, winding him up even more taut. Only Sirgij felt at ease, promising them that come morning, they would board a coach that would take them west, far west, beyond the lowlands, and maybe to the island courts of the fey, or to the Lupine Republics that were gearing up for war again, and would always need more soldiers.

"Oh, not me," Koshei barked in response. "Never trust those dogs, I tell you. Never."

From above his glass, Bej pointed at the medal on Koshei's chest, and the man spat out a jagged laugh, his fingers digging into Miria's shirt and flesh. He told a story, next, in sparse, unpleasant words, about catching the attention of a lupine general during the peninsular campaigns.

"Oh, he loved me alright," he crooned, "but you know how the dogs love. He wanted to make his bitch," he spat the word with boundless contempt, shaking Miria like a puppet as he did. He needed them to see that he was the one taking hold. "I am a fucking Leshite, and he wanted me to be his fucking dog bitch!"

He then told them, his speech growing faster and more frantic, about how he shot the general dead, and put the entire camp on fire before fleeing, pointing at his scarred face as evidence of the deed. Each exclamation point in the story, he punctuated by banging the table and squishing Miria in his hold.

"I am no one's bitch!" he exclaimed at the end, the noise far too loud for how late the night was.

Miria wondered if his comrades could see his vulnerability, the fear and hurt underpinning this bravado. She was, like the medal on his chest, a proof of something to him, and every time he looked at her, she saw how much it meant to him to keep her in his hands. There was no escaping him, nor was there any denying him—and yet, she understood that she too had power over him, not so different from the spell Luna had put her under, back in the shrine to Want. Holding onto what was loveliest about his touch—on the way it made her feel bound, and appreciated, and needed—she leaned over into his ear, and whispered, not hiding the boyish twang of her voice:

"Can I?"

There was a hook in those words, in their awkward, stumbling eagerness. It slid oh-so-very-easily into the cracks of the shell of him, pulling his attention as surely as if she had him secured on a leash. But there was no force necessary; she only needed him to hear what he wanted to hear, and knew what that was because in the disfigured mess of his sadness she saw, with cold and sad certainty, a life she could have led, had she not chosen to become a wife instead.

"Can I be your bitch instead?"

It was as if he was waiting for her to ask that all night long. Ignoring Sirgij's chuckles and Bej's demands he stay and play with them, he seized Miria by the wrist and pulled her up, and through the haze, towards the quiet, dark booths in the back of the Three Crowns, that were as famous as impolite to ever mention. She struggled to keep up, not even able to grab her sword before Koshei was all over her, hands, mouth, skin. With the calls of his comrades still echoing in the dark, he pushed her against a wall, fingers slipping under the shirt and finding Miria's breasts. Her breath caught.

"I knew it," he whispered a damp swoon into her ear, "I knew you were a toy."

She tried to imagine herself as leashing him, as being the one in control; but with his hand now shooting into her trousers, and closing around her crotch, she was not. He probably expected her to moan, so she moaned slightly as he squeezed and pulled at her nethers, and truth be told, it was not altogether unpleasant, merely distant. It was also, she realized, infidelity. She tensed in the man's grasp, and with needy kisses on her neck, he understood it to be arousal.

"Why didn't you tell me," he asked, stupidly.

The question, too, was an opening. Miria stifled a moan as he squeezed her breast far too tightly for any pleasure, pinching and twisting as if juicing a lemon—but this was only her body. Her thoughts were elsewhere now, circling around how she should explain it to the Lady Governor, and remembering, obsessively over and over again, what she came into this place for. The lie came easily to her, mostly because it was not a lie.

"I was afraid," she cried. "They killed one of us. The lady's wife…"

For a moment, only his hands spoke. He did not know when to stop, or perhaps had just been too hungry for too long, and could not stop marveling at how the pliant flesh did not meld away back into a dream, at how someone wanted to be his. Each squeeze, each pinch, was a joyous confirmation of something he had long since given up on.

"Shh," he murmured, "don't worry about it. It's not because he was a toy…"

He. It stung; even through the veil of separation Miria mantled herself in, it stung. He wanted her, she finally realized—but he did not want her. The hands were asking for her body, and nothing else.

"...his wife, she set him up. She paid, so that he would die."

It was a good thing that the dark shielded them, and that her body was frozen in Koshei's hold, too still to be moved even by the shock of those words.

"That was the Lady Governor's money?" she managed.

His hands finally slid from under her clothes; his arms bumped into her back as he struggled with the belt on his pants, drunk enough that even the simple knot holding together slipped in his fingers.

"It came from the palace, so who else?"

She could name at least a few names. Unfortunately, most of them were the Lady Governor's wives. Miria's throat clenched, heart refusing to steady. Koshei could hear her ragged breath, and clearly liked the sound of it.

"It was not about being a toy," he repeated. "His wife just needed an excuse…"

A few wet, squishing noises reached her ear; Koshei's arm moved a few times, as if working something up and down, followed by a frustrated sigh. He reached around her waist, fingers closing around the buckle of her belt, fumbling to undo it.

"Come on…" he murmured.

"Excuse?" she asked.

"To put the Episcopacy down, are you thick? Just help me here!"

Anger built up in his voice and touch, and Miria had to reach down and, braiding her fingers with his, tweak at the belt, until it finally gave up, and allowed her trousers to drop. Something damp and soft wormed its way between her thighs.

"Fuck," Koshei huffed, his fist smashing the wall right next to her head, hard enough to split skin. There was a split-second when Miria could not tell if the blow had not been meant for her. "Fuck!"

A false, ugly note reverberated in his voice, turning what just moments ago was joy sour and violent. The sound of it alone was enough to make Miria's own thoughts stop, waiting for what he would do next. He tried to work his dick with his hand, to fit it between her legs; it only left a slick stain on her skin, too soft for anything more.

"Fuck!" he cried, stepping back. "Wait here. I'll get something, I'll get it working… Bej had some fly, I think."

She nodded, even if he couldn't quite see the gesture in the dark. But once his shuffling steps vanished behind her, into the grinding noise of the hurdy-gurdy playing in the main room, she did not wait. Her body moved like a puppet, but at least it was her will that pulled at the strings; she made her hands pull the trousers back up, made them buckle the belt again, and then made her legs move into the haze of the coffee-house and out towards the stairwell up. She stepped lightly, and the ragged, drunken music muffled the sound of her escape. She had what she came for, and hadn't even needed to commit infidelity for it. For all the sickness churning in her stomach, this was a success.

Koshei's touch lingered on her skin long after she emerged into the cold streets above. It was hard to shake, for it did not burn with shame and disgust only, but also something more. There were moments back below, in that thick air, when his hands felt almost good, like something she wanted. No, worse: it was something she wanted. She wanted to be held like that, with her face pressed into a brick wall, she wanted to be made a possession of; she did not want the fist right next to her head, and the cold knowledge that to those hands, she was meat, and nothing else. But still, want she did.

In some ways, thinking about how close she came to adultery seemed easier than considering the other side of the night, that is the fact of the gold on the table, infernal thalers piled high as a price for the second wife's life. If Koshei did not lie—and why would one lie to a boy-toy like Miria—then whoever planned Visza's death could be found at the palace. And the notion that it could have been the Lady Governor herself, however impossible, lodged itself thorn-like between Miria's thoughts. Could she really be so callous as to sacrifice her beloved wife, just to wage war on an already conquered land? It seemed so cruel, so pointless, so vicious—but was she not an heir to Azya the Dire Hand, whom they also called the Red River? As much as she did not want to, Miria could not help but to remember the old lessons the episcopal pamphlets held about demons: that they kill as men spit, and mourn only the loss of power.

By the time she reached the mansion hill, and climbed up the secret path, she was no longer sure, and the image of the Lady Governor counting coins that would name Visza's death played out every time she closed her eyes. So instead, she kept them open, and thanked the good fortune that the night did not put any more demands on her. She found her dress hidden as she had left it, and crossed no guards' nor servant's path as she worked her way back into the palace, and then through its cozily warm corridors, towards her room, and bed, which for a few—too few—hours would offer her a reprieve from the mess she insisted on getting herself into.

 

[Skippy]

Of all the possible Chaser Origin Stories, I suppose that "I got thrown around and used like a dog toy by six jacked wolfmen" is one of them.

Anyway, good job Miria!

 

[elarasilk]

I notice she left the sword behind; I assume that's going to be a problem at some stage!

 

[Gargulec]

What? No, nothing bad could ever come out of that!

 

[ancusohm]

Oh! The Lupine Republics have literal dog people.

Some good interactions with some bad people. A very well-written scene.

Also, there were some great realistic details here. Without modern lighting, there would be some very dark corners where you could get up to a lot (especially when the onlookers don't really care). Also, yeah, a guy who's that drunk would have trouble getting erect. I liked that he appeared to be going for intercrular (between the thighs) sex, which (I believe) was more popular than anal sex during the roughly analogous time period IRL.

I don't think the governor did it (or if she did have the wife killed, then the governor will probably revealed to have a good reason). But I've been wrong before.

 

[Gargulec]

I liked that he appeared to be going for intercrular (between the thighs) sex, which (I believe) was more popular than anal sex during the roughly analogous time period IRL.

Click to shrink...

I am so happy that someone caught this detail - it's one of those little tidbits from the history of sexuality that people often don't realize, and which I find deeply interesting!

 

[Skippy]

Also, there were some great realistic details here. Without modern lighting, there would be some very dark corners where you could get up to a lot (especially when the onlookers don't really care). Also, yeah, a guy who's that drunk would have trouble getting erect. I liked that he appeared to be going for intercrular (between the thighs) sex, which (I believe) was more popular than anal sex during the roughly analogous time period IRL.

Click to shrink...

I am so happy that someone caught this detail - it's one of those little tidbits from the history of sexuality that people often don't realize, and which I find deeply interesting!

Click to shrink...

Oh man, this is a really cool detail which I'm not sure I caught when I was proofreading!

Honestly I think intercrural sex is neat and should be featured a lot more in historical fiction. We have a lot of sources for it being the primary way that gay men and various queer and gender-nonconforming peeps had sex for large stretches of history. Also it seems to have been a fairly common practice amongst straight couples, partly for obvious contraceptive reasons; perhaps the dominant form of "safe sex" for large swathes of human history. It's still practiced commonly today in many parts of the world, yet is sadly obscure in the West.

So yeah, that's my hot take for the day, we need more thigh-fucking on SV.

(This will be added to the dossier of material which will eventually be used to get me cancelled and removed from my position.)

 

[Gargulec]

Chapter Seven: In Which a Warning is Issued

"What is this stench, young lady?"

Headache smashed on the inside of Miria's skull, coming in waves set to the rhythm of pulsating nausea. She curled under the covers, straining to keep her eyes shut, even as the cold voice thundered above her.

"Whiskey?"

She mumbled something incoherent. The voice drilling into her ears was the Hofmeisterin, and there was no avoiding facing her, not when her words trembled with disappointment. In a futile gesture, she pushed her head deeper into the warm pillow. She did not feel awake, anyway, but more as if the short sleep had vomited her out.

"You reek like a distillery!"

Someone abruptly pulled the sheets from above Miria. Cool air smashed into her, jolting her back into a semblance of lucidity, right into gloved hands grabbing her by her shoulders and forcing her into an upright position. She heaved, buffeted by another crash of nausea, the taste of bile and rust filling her mouth. Another pair of hands fixed a pillow behind her to help her sit. Tentatively, she managed a lousy kind of steadiness.

"Look at me."

Reluctantly, she obeyed. The room was mercifully dark, the dull morning outside gingerly filtering through half-covered windows. In the dim light, the Hofmeisterin loomed positively spectral: a gaunt figure in funeral white, flanked by a pair of lesser, subservient wraiths. But she did not come to claim Miria's soul; rather, she took one look in the boy-toy wife's face and sighed like a hissing serpent.

"Mariś," she commanded, "find Doctor Iżek and ask him to fix up a dose of the morning cure."

She did not turn as she spoke, continuing to scourge Miria with her eyes the entire time. The maid hurried out of the room, each click of her polished shoes like a hammer banging right next to the boy-toy wife's ear. She winced, and tried to rub the headache away. It did not help. What had even happened to her? She tried to count the drinks she'd had last night, but her memory only served her choppy impressions of hands digging into her skin, and of a dangerously sweet sense of shame.

"I should have a word with the cellar master. He should know better than that."

Miria rubbed her eyes, trying to get the hazy images out. What was the Hofmeisterin even talking about? Her face pursed into a deep frown in an effort to recall the last time she had crossed her paths with the bony, liver-spotted gnome of a man who served as the Lady Governor's wine keeper, but nothing came up. Only more headache.

"Do not even think of giving me that look! Did you think your little escapade would go unnoticed?"

Fear lanced through the hangover haze. Miria bolted upright, the Hofmeisterin's disapproving glare filling her vision, tiny tendrils of panic creeping at the edges. She had been seen. She had been seen. Her stomach knotted on itself, squeezing out a fresh serving of bile right into her mouth.

"Shit," she mouthed.

"Language!"

The slap that followed barely even stung, nor was it supposed to. Even the Hofmeisterin was not allowed to dispense that kind of discipline to one of the Lady Governor's wives, sixth or not. The hand on Miria's cheek was merely meant to get her attention for the inevitable tirade. She looked away, bracing for the worst.

"You disappoint me, young lady. You stink and speak like a dockworker. Do you not know that nights are for sleep, not for rambling about the palace, looking for a bottle? Like a lout!"

The head servant punctuated the last point with a finger jab right at the middle of Miria's chest. But when the boy-toy wife reeled, it was not from the blow, but rather sheer relief. Her muscles went slack, tension releasing at once: they had no idea she had sneaked out. She slumped back onto the bed, only now feeling the cold sweat gluing her nightgown to her skin.

"And whiskey?" the Hofmeisterin continued. "It is a men's drink! Can you imagine the Lady Governor asking for her wife, and having her," she delivered that word with enough stress to crack stone, "stinking like some common thug? How many times do I have to say it? You are no longer a boy, and you will stop behaving like one!"

Her tone dropped into a cadence that was well familiar to Miria: the impatiently slow delivery of a frustrated teacher, one demanding attention, but no longer expecting results. But unlike before, the words found a fresh sort of purchase in Miria; she listened on, her thoughts wandering back to memories of the night prior that were finally starting to coalesce into something solid. She had not been a boy last night, or at least not the kind that the Hofmeisterin was trying to breed out of her. Agnes the beautician, hunched to the head servant's side, offered her a sympathetic smile; but really, there was no need.

The reprimand continued in its usual pace until interrupted by the creaking of the door, and an overpowering, earthen smell. Mariś returned, cradling in her hands a steaming, clay mug. When its contents rolled down Miria's throat, she almost choked on their rotten sickness. For a moment the world went dark, but the maid was ready: she caught her before slid off the bed, and helped her wash the medicine down with half a jug of water. Within a few pained breaths, something unknotted inside Miria; colour returned to the world, seeping into the empty space where the ache resided. She inhaled, no longer sick—merely tired.

"Now," the Hofmeisterin declared after Miria pulled herself back up, "it is only natural to mourn, and I cannot fault you for that. However, a lady would not become drunk with grief…"

With lucidity returning, so came the rest of the last night: blood money among spent playing cards, and the smug streak in Koshei's voice, accusing the Lady Governor of selling her own wife. Soon after the desperate hope for this to be a lie exploded back, followed by doubt, crawling like an insect up her skin.

"...and furthermore, a boy-toy especially must not allow herself to be incapacitated…"

But what if? The thought, unbidden, unwanted, nonetheless refused to leave, clamping down on Miria's mind like a pair of steel tongs. What if? What if the Lady Governor, the beautiful demonic woman she wanted nothing more but to be with—whom she wanted to belong to, heart, body, and soul—could throw her beloved to Veznian brutes just to excuse a bloody purge? She tried not to consider it, but all her thoughts spiraled irresistibly towards that one question, and the horrifying absence of an answer behind it. What if Ambros was marked to die, just so that countless other Leshite men could be made to hang, in the name of the demonic law? What—

The slap—again gentle, again only a reminder—came as a reprieve. Miria blinked to see the Hofmeisterin leaning over her, preparing for yet another tirade.

"I asked you a question," she stated coldly.

"I am sorry," she lied back on reflex. "I am still a bit sick."

The head servant seized her with suspicion in her eye, and with a pained sigh, decided to accept the excuse.

"I want you," she repeated, uttering each word very carefully, as if talking to a slow child or a cow, "to tell me why a boy-toy such as you must never allow herself to be indisposed without her lady wife's explicit permission?"

Such questions usually had the same answer, so Miria bent herself in contrition and tried it out.

"Because it is unladylike?"

The Hofmeisterin sighed again, and something in her gave up.

"That as well," she explained, stepping back. "But also because your role is to be always available for the Lady Governor's service. What if she called for you this morning, while you were stewing in the stench of booze, and barely able to walk? You must remember what you are here for!"

Miria nodded, brushing aside yet another pair of consoling glances from the maids. Truth be told, even now, even through her worry and exhaustion, the image that the Hofmeisterin painted spread a hungry kind of warmth inside her; the places where Koshei's hands had grabbed her burned with want for different fingers on them, brick-red, black-tipped. And this desire meant something else, something as absolute as the fact that she could not allow Ambros to die: she needed to know if Visza's blood stained the touch she so longed for. She needed to know, and fast. But how? How was she to ask, to find out?

The idea that came to her peeled off the ornate cover of a book left by her bed, red and orange with painted infernal flames. A Complete Catechism of Want for Human Wives, the title read. For a split-second, she hesitated; but she had already defied the Lady Governor's express orders. In no world could what she was about to suggest be more damning. In fact, it could even pass as pious. If only it did not also expose her to the risk of refusal.

"I hope you will remember it this time," the Hofmeisterin said. "Are you ready for your toilettes?"

"Yes," Miria nodded again, eyes still on the Catechism. She swallowed, and tried to speak, stumbling over the first word—but after that cleared from her mouth, the rest fell out like a bursting dam. "Please—please relay to my lady wife that I wish for nothing more but to show her my devotion tonight, by helping her mourn as the Want demands!"

The grey line of the Hofmeisterin's eyebrow rose a full inch, quickly followed by a suspicious frown. Miria's heart sank instantly, the boy-toy wife utterly terrified of the thing she had just proposed. She watched the old servant's frown deepen, flanked by expressions of shock on Mariś and Agnes' faces.

"Lady Governor has requested the Third Wife's presence in her bedchamber tonight, and it is unlikely they will want a spare…"

Miria followed after her heart, sagging instantly. Of course, another wife had the bed. Of course, another had the ear. Of course…

"...however…"

She looked up, the word the first time something said by the Hofmeisterin had given her a genuine shot of hope.

"...this is the time to be wanton. I will bring this plea to the Lady Governor's ear shortly. And on the off-chance there is a need, Agnes, please make the young lady presentable."

What washed over Miria as the beautician ferried her off to the washroom was not exactly happiness—but it was a kind of a hope, underpinned with an eerie sense that the boy-toy wife could not exactly name, but which felt like it mattered. And sure enough, it did not last: as on every morning, it did not survive the sight of her naked reflection in the bathroom's mirror, dissolving instead into the sticky, familiar vulnerability. Dark thoughts followed, only sometimes interrupted by the physical unpleasantries of Agnes and Mariś' hands trying to make something out of her body. It helped that they handled her like a rag-doll, to be washed, wrung, and prepared for play; she could go limp and still be carried through to the end, when the beautician slid a size three plug up her back, and then moved to apply a delicate rouge to her cheeks, to hide the exhausted pallor.

At the end, she found herself back in her room, smelling lightly of soap and a drip of lilac perfume rubbed behind the ear. The maids left, with the unspoken, but clear expectation that Miria would not; that instead of heading for breakfast, she should sit in her modest, white dress, and wait for the Hofmeisterin to return with the Lady Governor's decision. This meant that she was, for the time being, alone with her thoughts: the bitter mixture of being certain that she was going to be refused and desperately hopeful that she was going to be wanted.

The gifted cameo waited on the night-stand, polished sardonyx gleaming even in the morning's dim light. It rested heavily in Miria's hands; she turned it around a few times, letting her fingers trace out the shape of the scene impressed on one side, and the word carved into the other. Mine. How much she wanted it to be true—unless, of course, this did not mean love. Not even the ratcheting tension of waiting could keep her mind from that notion for long. The second wife was also the Lady Governor's, dearly beloved—and fully possessed. Miria's mother had cried when the marriage contract was signed, cried over a son she thought she was losing—and Miria resented her for that. But what if she knew better than her what that ink on parchment really meant: a life given away whole, to be dispensed with as one wishes?

She put the jewel back, and instead reached for the Catechism, starting again to thumb through its pages. The book was beautiful, printed on silken paper, and with hand-painted illustrations to demonstrate each point of the infernal teachings. It was the First Wife's gift to the newly-weds, and one that Miria had always been grateful for. Its rich descriptions of the wifely hierarchies and their duties—the first, the priestess; the second, the consort; the third, the arms-bearer—brought a feeling of belonging and order. She could find herself inside, painted as this deliciously slender figure with her crotch enclosed in a gilded chastity cage, and read about the boy-toy, the amusement wife, the one taken for pleasure. She distinctly remembered how aroused it made her to take in the details of her role for the first time, how she lay in bed, stroking herself to those words and the fantasies they carried. The charm had barely worn off since, only the wife-medicine making such play markedly more difficult. Now, however, something changed; she flipped from page to page, wondering about where the need for this book came from. The title stressed that it was For Humans, not the old blood of Dis, but those coming under Her Infernal Majesty's scepter. Like the kingdom once known as Leshia, now the Lowlands Province. A wife, be her first, second, or fifth, the page she was on read, right next to an image of three women keenly before their devil wife, backs bent in full submission, owes her lady wife absolute respect, and absolute surrender.

Perhaps, Miria thought, she was too quick to ignore the warnings that the episcopacy issued regarding the nature of demons and their desires. She shut the book, no longer trying to shake the image of the Lady Governor arranging Visza's brutal death. It should terrify her, to the full extent that the word allowed: the idea that she could belong—that she could owe her all—to a monster like that. But if there was fear, it still was not enough to sever the bonds of wanting. She could let her mind linger on the notion that the human wives to the Lady Governor were nothing but tools to be used to the breaking point, if so needed—and still long for her hands, still long to be hers.

No, if there was a fear in her right now it was that the door to her room would stay closed, that no one would come to fetch her, that once again she would prove to be the less wanted one. And was it not a virtue? Had the same priests that preached against the temptations of the infernal Want not asserted, time after time, that love heedless of one's life is the font of overwhelming grace? Maybe she learned from them better than either of them had ever suspected. With a smile at the edge of defeat, she pinned the cameo to her dress' high collar.

She only needed to make sure that Ambros was going to make it out safely.

In a small blessing, the agonizing uncertainty of her wait did not last much longer. A few short knocks on the door announced the news, and before she could even open, a servant that Miria did not recognize entered, head politely bowed. The sixth wife's body tensed, already bracing itself for the refusal.

"The Lady Governor," the servant announced, her sulfuric yellow eyes hinting at more than just a drop of infernal blood, "conveys her gratitude for your eagerness, and requests that you join her in her study…"

Miria slackened, the tension in her releasing to a sense of stunned, but joyous disbelief. She looked at the servant as if she could kiss her right there, and found her smiling impishly back.

"…as soon as you are properly fitted."

The tugging in Miria's groin, and the pink flushing her cheeks, were anything but innocent. She had only been taken to the fitting room once before, for her wedding night. Excitement, only barely tinged with anxiety, filled her as she followed the half-demon servant through the white-draped corridors. For a few sweet moments, the thought of the murder, and her brother's peril was purged from her mind, replaced by the memories that smelled of leather and caoutchouc, and emerged from black cupboards ornamented with scenes of infernal revelry.

The room waited for her right opposite to the Lady Governor's study, the door concealed flush in the hardwood boiseries. It was an ingenious little trick, really, one more of the costly wonders that the last king of Leshia had so favoured. The servant pushed at a carved peacock's tail and gave it a quarter-turn; in response, the entire panel folded inwards, opening a narrow passage into a hellfire-lit room, and closing quietly behind them.

The first thing Miria saw when stepping inside was the colourful fresco decorating the vaulted ceiling: satyrs lurched in a chase after a throng of nymphs, a reminder from the time the room served to conceal the old king's trysts from the queen consort's prying eyes. The second was the familiar, broad back and chestnut curls of the fourth wife. The servant in front of Miria paused in apprehensive surprise; for her own, Czewa remained fully focused on a cabinet full of heirloom whips.

"Do not mind me," she waved them off.

Seated in a small chair in the center of the room, Miria nonetheless could not help herself but to keep trying to steal a peek at whatever it was that the fourth wife was up to. She rocked to the sides, trying to get a better angle to see whatever Czewa was trying to find among the Lady Governor's collection. One of those glances had to finally catch her attention; she looked briefly over her shoulders, her eyes settling on the small pile of gear being readied next to Miria, and then on the blush still lingering on the boy-toy wife's cheeks.

"Oh, it's you," she said cooly, and shut the cabinet. "I'll take it from here, Noa. You can leave."

The servant hesitated; Czewa made a shooing gesture.

"I will get her fitted," she declared, glancing at the pile. "Don't worry, I know what she likes."

Noa bowed, and withdrew with only a quiet acknowledgment on her way out. For a moment, the fitting room remained silent but for the wet crackle of the hellfire lamp. Miria shifted nervously, suddenly uncomfortable under the tall woman's heavy gaze. Of all the wives, she knew her the least, and understood even less. But then, Czewa smiled, and some of that distance closed.

"So," she asked, "how was your night out in the city?"

Of course Stava told her. They were close, after all. Miria sighed slightly, lips pursed, trying to to think up an answer without getting too worried—or revealing too much.

"Oh, don't fret," the fourth wife shrugged, "I'm not telling anyone. Just curious. I actually do admire the chutzpah, sneaking out like that. Wouldn't have expected it out of you."

If this was a compliment, it sure did not feel as one. There was something unpleasant in Czewa's voice, a barb that Miria could not fully locate, only get caught on. Still, she remembered the promise she had traded to the fifth wife. She swallowed, and tried for a measure of honesty.

"I wanted to see my family," she said meekly, in the same tone that had worked such wonders with the groundskeeper Mihasz. "I'm worried about them."

"Really?" Czewa's eyebrow arched, giving her face an even sharper, angular look.

She gave doubt time to drill into the boy-toy wife, instead turning to the gear Noa prepared before leaving, and starting to slowly flip through its unfamiliar, enticing leather shapes. However sour the sudden nervousness was, Miria could not shake the deeper arousal still waiting under its surface, and the sweet expectation that she would be seeing the Lady Governor soon. Probably—unless it turned out that Czewa had some other ideas. But she would not deign to defy her lady wife, would she?

"You know, I would have never guessed you care so much about them," the fourth wife finally broke the uncomfortable silence. She let her voice go completely here, down to an utterly unfeminine rumble. "You never talk about them."

"I don't talk much in general."

Czewa laughed, the sound strangely warm for all of her cool.

"True, true," she lifted her hands palms out in an universal gesture of yielding the point. "But didn't your dad sell you here for, what was it, trade concessions?"

The question fell from her mouth with false lightness, and at first it almost slipped past Miria's defenses. She sagged briefly, a bitter taste in her mouth—but one that quickly gave way to a mounting frustration. Everybody, it seemed, kept assuming she went into the infernal embrace out of coercion and violence; so much so that some nights, she could not help but start doubting her own desire. And yet, right now, all she wanted was to be free from this conversation, and in the Lady Governor's embrace. Her face hardened.

"I wanted to be here," she said, quietly, but as firmly as she could manage.

Czewa's other eyebrow joined the arch, a look of bemused incredulity plain in her harsh features.

"Is that so? Let's get you ready for your wish, then."

Neither of them said anything for a while. The fourth wife picked through the readied gear, and knelt in front of Miria. She hiked her skirt above the knee, and carefully began to attach soft, leather pads to her shins, strapping them tightly on the inside of the boy-toy's legs. She had cold fingers, though far from clammy; still, they were enough to make Miria shiver. The sensation was not entirely unpleasant, however, and after the initial shudder, she found herself breathing deeply at each buckled strap, the pressure and softness at her flesh reassuring in ways she did not need to fully understand. She closed her eyes, and imagined herself on her knees; the woman towering above her had features that were at once the Lady Governor's, Luna's, and Czewa's.

She did not see, then, but rather felt when the fourth wife finished with the pads, and next grabbed her by the wrist. Sternly, but not painfully, she made her close her hand into a fist, and then started to wrap it up with long strips of fabric, until instead of fingers, Miria had a balled-up stump, ready to be encased in a tight, leather mitt. The shape of what was to be expected of her started to solidify, and she yielded to the sweetness of the idea, smiling; she offered her other hand to Czewa, eager to have it bound too.

Finally, the fourth wife reached for her foot, bending it straight, as to climb on the tip of her toe. Miria held it that way, letting Czewa work a tall boot up her leg; it was less high-heeled as much as heel-only, and when it was laced up, it left her foot locked extended into a knife-point, leaving the boy-toy to doubt whether she could stand on it, let alone walk. She lifted her other leg, exhaling a wistful breath every time Czewa tightened the laces up.

"You're leaning into it," she heard the fourth wife speak, ice melting from her voice.

Miria opened her eyes, to admire her now-stubby arms and useless legs. In a way, it was powerlessness; in another, she saw the edge taken off Czewa's face, replaced by unexpected softness. For a fleeting second, she could almost imagine herself as beautiful. Buoyed by the pleasure of the moment, she broke out of her own thoughts, and realized what the fourth wife was attempting to do. She let her explain, however, instead fixing her eyes on Czewa's large hands. She had been powerful, once, and the strength continued even through the changes wrought by the wife-medicine.

"I thought you were simply pliant," she continued, in the same thawing puzzlement. "But you're offering yourself up. How your body yields under touch… And your smile!"

She stood up, and retreated to one of the cabinets, only to return with a polished, silver collar in her hand, a small brass ring in front catching all the orange and old reflections of the soaring hellfire.

"You want it," she stated, as if amazed she had not noticed it sooner.

"I do," Miria hushed, short on breath. "Her, too."

Something dark flashed through the fourth wife's face, but she said nothing. The collar cinched around Miria's neck, Czewa tightening the nut fastening it until it sat flush against the skin, its presence deliciously unyielding every time she breathed or swallowed. The fourth wife's hand lingered for a moment longer, brushing alongside the surface of the cameo, now sitting right in the middle of the collar's ring.

"That's a very pretty stone," she muttered, grabbing a short leash. "Let's get you to her."

She helped Mira stand up, her arm wrapped around the sixth wife's arms so that she could balance on the knife-points of her boots and carefully, step by precarious step, make her way out of the fitting room and into the empty corridor in front of the Lady Governor's study. Even then, by the time she made it there, her feet were already aching and legs beginning to shake; but as Czewa guided her slowly down to the floor, and onto her padded knees, she noted with elation how this was not going to be a problem. She was not meant to walk. She lifted her bound hands up, imagining them to be some animal's paws; Czewa shook her head.

"Incredible," she whistled, finally clipping the leash to the collar—and then, bringing its handle to Miria's mouth.

The boy-toy wife realized instantly what she was expected to do, grabbing the lead between her teeth. The taste of leather filled her mouth, and the world shrunk to the sheer, focused pull of desire.

"She'll love it," Czewa whispered into her ear. "But, Miria?"

She turned her head away from the door, leash firmly in mouth; in the moment, she could not care less about how silly this had to look.

"Be careful. You would not be the first wife to suffer for wanting from demons what they never give to men."

Before Miria could ask, or even consider what those words meant, Czewa opened the door for her, and then it was too late to think.