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rainbowfic2025-05-04 02:48 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-05-04 02:48 pm
Fresh Thyme #4 [The Year Universe]
Name: Naming Day
Story: The Year Universe
Colors: Fresh Thyme #4: Countdown
Styles and Supplies: Panorama, Life Drawing, Gift Wrap, Parchment, Resin (Three weeks for Dreamwidth), Watercolors ("In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2019, guest editor Anthony Doerr lists several dos and don’ts one often hears about writing short stories and describes his love for reading and writing stories that break those very rules. Some of the rules Doerr mentions are: “Don’t start with a character waking up. Jump right into the action. Exposition is boring. Backstory slows you down. Stick with a single protagonist. Make sure he or she is likable. Don’t break up chronology.” This week, think carefully about the reasoning behind one of these oft-cited rules, then write a story that explicitly goes against it. How can the incorporation of an aspect of experimentation or innovation effectively push against the possibly clichéd rationale behind the original rule?" - This breaks both "Backstory slows you down" and "Don't break up chronology.")
Word Count: 3847
Rating: T
Warnings: Brief discussion of sex/sexuality
Characters: Ghefairh, Zheinnau, Dhashtu, Kheosaid, King Izalla, Vozkhunh
In-Universe Date: I haven't decided on exact dates for this one, but this takes place a couple decades after Qhoroali's time in the Fulcrum.
Summary: Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi attends a Naming Day.
Notes: Slight break from the Fulcrum for a couple posts. Since I think we just got all the Tharse worldbuilding we're going to get in the Fulcrum, and I need to use up this prompt that doesn't really work well with a time travel story, I'm posting this now. This is the first part of a story in the same universe as the Fulcrum that takes place in Tharse and Meandhshen and is (eventually) going to be about the Cothas religion that was mentioned at the very beginning of the Fulcrum. I haven't outlined it anywhere near as thoroughly, and I don't know exactly how everything here will tie into the rest of the plot, but I had a very clear idea about how the story was going to begin. There will probably not be more of this until I finish the Fulcrum, however.
A note about the spellings: In the Fulcrum, I was using an apostrophe for the retroflex consonants, but for this story I am switching to using h, because it looks way less cursed when there are multiple of them in the same word (imagine if I had written "D'as'tu" up there, for example). Kh and gh are actually velar fricatives here, but all other h indicate retroflexes. I'll continue to use the apostrophe in the Fulcrum, since there are only two Tharsi names there and one of them is actually a fake name invented by Mázghwent.
Gift Wrap here is for the Naming Day, the wedding, and the two wedding anniversaries, and Parchment because I actually did write something for this story fifteen years ago when I first got the idea for it. The worldbuilding has changed so much now that it's almost completely unrecognizable, but it was the same basic story idea. I might rewrite that particular piece later for Reimagining credit here.
The day before the planned dinner with his first wife, Zheinnau, Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi received a summons to the Palace of the Will of Tharse.
Zheinnau was cross about it, but Ghefairh didn’t blame her. “I just finished all the shopping,” she complained. “How long did you say it would be? I’ll have to see what can be preserved.”
“It’s just one day for the naming ceremony, but there’s a week afterwards for all of the partying. To be honest, I’d much rather be here.”
Zheinnau sighed. “Does any woman suffer as much as one who shares her husband with the Will? If she were any other woman, she could not demand your presence, and you could stay with whichever wife you wanted to, unless you were banned from her house.”
“She is the Will of God,” Ghefairh said. “If you could say no to her, what would that say about God, about Tharse, about all of us?”
“You’re right, of course. I’m sorry, I’m just disappointed.”
“Well, there’s no need to waste the food. Your other husbands can help you eat it, can’t they?”
“No. I will not eat the anniversary dinner that’s for our anniversary, for you and me, with my other husbands and not you. That would be wrong.”
Regardless, Ghefairh packed his bags that evening. There was not much that he took with him when visiting the Will — other men might pack a larger bag when traveling from one wife’s house to the next, but his presence at the Palace was unnecessary for the most part, and when he did go there, it was often a short stay. Having no third wife yet, he had the relative luxury of still being able to keep most of his things at Zheinnau’s house on a permanent basis, something most men in their 30s could not count on.
Zheinnau’s children were curious, as always. For most children, the departure of a true father or matrilineal father for another wife’s house was unremarkable, but he spent so much time at this house that they always wanted to know where he was going when he left. His own child with Zheinnau, a girl of seven named Dhashtu, surnamed Felha Zheinnau using the matronymic, was the most curious. As he folded his clothing, he explained to her that the Will had given birth to a baby.
“Your baby?” Dhashtu asked.
Ghefairh laughed at that idea. “Definitely not,” he said. Just like any woman, the Will had the unimpeachable right to declare who the baby’s father was, and she would almost certainly pick one of the fifteen northern princes she was married to instead. He was not really going to the Palace because there was a chance he would become a father for a second time, but simply because it was expected of him.
Sometimes he still could not believe he was really the husband of the Will, and yet, he had been married to her for four years now. His first marriage, to Zheinnau, had been a traditional arranged one, made to the child of one of his father’s other wives and another of her husbands, a first dhemgh relation, as was normally recommended. First spouses were not normally expected to consummate the marriage so young, but even as they had entered their early 20s, it became clear their marriage would be a sexless one. He had told her why one night, as they lay together in bed, and as always, she had a ready solution for him.
“I’ve heard how people deal with this,” she’d said, with the exuberant confidence of the young. “If you see a man you take a fancy to, introduce us, and I can get married to him. Then I’ll have a room installed here for you two to share.”
“What if you don’t like him?”
“What does that matter? He wouldn’t be for me.”
“I’ve also heard of this strategy,” he said, carefully, “but usually what happens is that we meet both of them, this man and also his first wife, and if we all hit it off, me with him and you with his wife, then we make two marriages, you to him, and me to the wife, and then we swap. That way you get something, too.”
“Yes, but I don’t need a relationship like that with a woman. This would just be for you.”
“You shouldn’t throw away your second marriage just to give me something,” he said. “You are not the Will of Tharse to marry as many men as you want, more than three and there would talk. Your first marriage is already—”
“Hush,” she’d said. “Our marriage is fine.” But there’d been no more talk of it since.
In the ensuing years, she’d married again, and happily this time, he thought, and definitely not sexlessly. But he’d dragged his feet through his 20s, occasionally checking in places he thought were likely, the taverns he’d heard were frequented by certain clientèle, looking for someone who might be willing to pull off some sort of marital trick that didn’t involve Zheinnau wasting another of her marriages. But he hadn’t looked hard enough, or maybe not in the right places, and age 29 had snuck up on him like an assassin in the dark.
In the meantime, he’d put his efforts into the Academy, rising through the ranks until somehow he had become the Eye of the Department of Historical Studies, roundly respected and cited more than almost anyone else. They praised his writings, and they praised his youth, for the greats he was replacing were old and had fallen out of fashion. Not long after his last promotion, the elderly Will of the time had died suddenly, in her sleep, and all of Tharse had gone into mourning. The day after the mourning period had ended, the Department had held a dinner where a great number of people had all wanted to know if he was going to write a biography, and the new Will, recently crowned, wearing a wig braided with the circlet of her office and a great many other intricate patterns and designs that came down to her ankles, had arrived at the dinner uninvited and served him a summons for the following day. He had assumed it would be about the biography, but it was for something else entirely.
The summons had told him to enter by the servant’s door, which had already struck him as odd, but when he’d arrived in the throne room, she’d retired with him to a small study, keeping only one guard to stand watch over her. “He is completely deaf,” she had told him, for no apparent reason. She’d proved it by picking up a hammer and striking a nearby gong which seemed to be in that room for precisely this purpose, and the sound of it had made him jump, but the guard had not moved an inch, or reacted in any way. “I am the Will of Tharse now, and as such, I need one native Tharsi husband, to tie me into the vast marriage network of our country, our people, our God. I would ask you to be that husband. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, may her soul become one with us all, chose to marry a fisherman as a symbol of closeness to the common people of the northern coasts, and for this they called her the Will of Trout for thirty years. I wish to marry a prestigious man, a Eye of the Academy, who makes the study and the history of Tharse and our forebears his profession and his area of expertise, and then may they call me the Will of Tharse, instead.
“I know you are yet 29 and still have no second wife. In a few months, you will turn 30 and it will start to become unseemly. I understand; I know some desire only one spouse and find it hard to make time for a second. I have no need of a sexual partner, or a man to make romantic gestures or whisper sweet nothings in my ears, I have a very large number of foreign princes who are all standing in line to do that.” She raised her right arm, and her fifteen silver marriage bracelets clanked their way down to her elbow. “I won’t demand much of your time, just an occasional week or so for the necessary ceremonies.”
“Of course,” he’d said. “Your Will is our Will.”
“Please,” she’d replied, “we are to be married. You may of course call me Kheosaid.”
Even if she hadn’t been the Will of God, he wouldn’t have been able to say no to her offer. He hadn’t been in any position to turn down any woman who would offer to marry him, no strings attached, no questions asked, no marital duties required. They had been married a month later in a lavish ceremony that lasted four days to which she’d worn the most extravagant and expensive marriage wig he had ever seen in his life, and the Department had held their own, more subdued party for him when he’d returned, after which point he’d been thoroughly sick of it all and had spent several days just lazing around Zheinnau’s house and cherishing what solitude she and children could spare him.
He’d still written the biography, of course. For two years, he’d poured all of his time and energy into it, the researching, the drafting, interviews with foreign princes and kings and the old fisherman alike, the editing and polishing and editing some more, and on their second anniversary he had presented the very first copy to be printed to Kheosaid as a gift, its cover embossed in a gold leaf rendition of the best-known portrait of the late Will of Tharse. It had been an entirely expected gift, and therefore theoretically unremarkable, but for him it was also deeply personal; a thank you for saving him, for rescuing him from certain social and professional doom. The smile she’d given him when she’d accepted it told him she’d understood, and he’d felt the strangeness then of having been personally pardoned and spared by the most powerful person in the world.
He arrived at the Palace of the Will a little before the ceremony was to begin. The “regular” social upper-crust, and the Voices of Tharse, who translated God’s Will into the common Tharsi speech of God’s multitudinous parts and lead worship in the temples, would be let in just before the start to sit in the gallery, but the Will’s husbands were assembled first. The other fifteen of them were all northern princes, decked out in the most expensive garments their realms could afford, and with the metal crowns and circlets that were common north of the Sea of Tharse, and with attendants trailing at their feet. Ghefairh was permitted to wear merely his best klhuen, with the most conservative cut of the robe, and the one wig he kept for special occasions, with just a few of the more traditional braiding designs.
One of the other husbands was not merely a prince; King Izalla of Annoraka also moved among the princes, receiving many back pats and congratulations from them. The invitation had said that the new baby was a boy, and Izalla would certainly be named as his father. The northern kings did not, as a rule, like to marry themselves or their heirs to the Will of Tharse; they were unwilling to put their lines of succession so completely under Tharsi control. But Izalla had only been the King of Annoraka’s second son when he was betrothed to Kheosaid at the age of six; it was only chance that had caused his father and older brother to both be killed together in a horrific hunting accident the year before that had made him King of Annoraka himself, and now he needed a son. The Will of Tharse cared little for sons; already there were two little girls in the palace nursery, and the eldest would someday be the next Will. The Will’s sons often went back to the northern lands with their fathers, and were usually not even raised Tharsi at all.
The curtain that Ghefairh was standing next to moved, and someone bumped into him. He looked sharply at it, just in time to see Kheosaid pull it aside and whisper: “Come with me.”
He obeyed without question and ducked behind the curtain himself, into a servant’s passageway. Kheosaid was dressed in a simple household shift of the like that he had never seen her wear before, and was without a wig; her perfectly shaved head reflected the dim lights of the passage. Her eyes sparkled with the impish glee of someone who was about to break the rules. He was dumbfounded — there were no rules for her to break.
“I want to show you the baby,” she said, taking his hand.
“I’ll see him in a couple hours, won’t I? Don’t you need to get ready?” But he allowed himself to be pulled along.
She led him along the corridor, around several turns, and finally into what must be the nursery. One of the little princesses was napping on a small bed dressed with rich silks; the other one sat on the floor and held make-believe court with an assortment of 20 or so dolls and stuffed animals. An elderly nursemaid sat on a chair in the corner. She looked up as they entered, and then back to the children.
Kheosaid led him to the other end of the room, where a wet nurse sat next to a bassinet. The baby inside was asleep, for now. His skin was the color of old parchment, and his eyebrows seemed only a tiny bit darker. Ghefairh looked at him, and tried to see if there was any hint of Izalla’s features in his face, but the baby fat made the determination difficult. The northern kings were often particular about genetic inheritance, and very much desired their sons to look like them.
“What do you think of him?” asked Kheosaid. She still spoke in a whisper now, to avoid waking the children.
Ghefairh wasn’t sure why she wanted to know his opinion, but the correct answer was always a compliment, regardless. “He is beautiful,” he replied.
“His name will be Vozkhunh,” Kheosaid continued. “Vozkhunh Nhorei Kheosaid. And his father will be… you.”
“Me?” Ghefairh was momentarily thrown off-balance, and slipped in contradicting her. “It should be Izalla — he needs an heir for his throne. I don’t need a son.” It was, of course, always the woman’s choice who her children’s fathers were, but a woman who snubbed a husband who had come to the naming ceremony expecting to become a father due to some prior agreement would soon find herself abandoned by her other husbands as well, and Kheosaid’s princes could do far worse.
“Has your first wife given you a son yet?”
“No,” he admitted, “only a daughter.”
“Then you shall have a son.” She turned to him, and some of the glee left her face and resolved into a more serious expression. “The mines of Annoraka are full of slaves convicted of debts to the crown. They must work their whole lives paying off money that they supposedly owe for minor infractions, and then when they die, their debt is inherited by their sons, who must take their places. My mother would simply declare war to end it, but that only ever works for a time, and many must die for that kind of diplomacy. The men they would send to us to be killed by our soldiers would in most cases be the slaves we are trying to free. I would sacrifice the pride of one man in place of all of those lives, and hopefully achieve a better result.”
“He will surely declare war on us anyway,” Ghefairh said.
“Not if reason, or at least his advisers, prevail. He does not have anywhere near the numbers to counter us.”
Ghefairh looked at the baby again. It would have been one thing if she were to pick one of the other princes. Or maybe, if the baby had been darker-skinned, Izalla would even accept Ghefairh as the father, as he would put some weight to biological provenance. Ghefairh himself was dark, like the salt-of-the-earth farmers his mother had come from, who had lived on the southern shores of the Sea of Tharse since before Tharse had existed and the Sea had gained its name. Many Wills of Tharse had been light-skinned — Ghefairh knew all of their names and could match them to their portraits — but Kheosaid was almost as dark as he was. Although she, like almost all of her predecessors, named a northern prince as her official father, most likely her genetic heritage came from the fisherman, who by all accounts had spent more time in the late Will’s bed than all of her princely husbands put together. Izalla would revolt at the idea that this baby could be his as well as hers.
But it was not his place to argue with the Will of God. “Your Will is our Will,” he said, unsteadily.
“Precisely.” She took his hand again, and led him back out of the nursery, and down the servant’s corridor again. “I’m glad you approve. I did not want to shock you during the ceremony.”
Back in the main throne room, Ghefairh tried his best to appear casual and picked a seat as far away from where Izalla was sitting as it was possible to be while still being located in the correct section. Servants came around with platters of hors d’oeuvres and fancy drinks, and musicians played elaborate renditions of traditional melodies. The princes talked among themselves, while Ghefairh waited tensely for the ceremony to begin.
Eventually, the other attendees filed in, the musicians left, and the bassinet was wheeled up a ramp to the dais by Kheosaid herself, now wearing another elaborate wig and a brilliant purple klhuen trimmed with gold and embroidered with a stylized rendition of the well-known scene of the very first Will of Tharse presenting her followers with her newborn eldest daughter. No trace of the glee from before remained in her expression or body language, and she strode sedately up the ramp with her most serious and official demeanor. Servants gathered on the dais after her, including the wet nurse from earlier. Down in the main chamber, Ghefairh also noted that a number of guards had assembled along the walls, silent but alert.
The chatter of the princes and of the others in the gallery behind them had ceased. “Today we welcome a new soul of God to Tharse,” Kheosaid began, without preamble. She picked the baby up out of the bassinet and held him in front her her, so that he and his light skin were clearly visible to all. “A new piece of Us, a new fragment of Tharse. May he work in harmony with the rest of God, and may he be revered and respected as any piece of God merits, and may he revere and respect every other part of God in return. The name of this newest, smallest piece of God shall be: Vozkhunh! Vozkhunh Nhorei Kheosaid, he shall be called.” She placed the baby back in the bassinet; there was general applause from those gathered. “A man has also helped to bring this new piece of God into the world,” she continued. She hesitated, and he imagined that a flicker of delight must have manifested somewhere under her mask. “His name is Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi.”
Nothing happened immediately. The princes began to whisper among each other, and Ghefairh realized that they probably did not recognize his name. He could not see Izalla’s expression clearly from where he sat near the front of the husbands’ section; eventually Ghefairh saw him turn to speak with his neighbor and his face betrayed a mask of concern and panic. Some of the princes, seemingly, had begun to understand, and fingers were pointing in his direction. Ghefairh adopted a carefully neutral expression. Through it all, Kheosaid waited patiently on the dais, as if nothing were remarkable or out of place, the picture of regal serenity.
Eventually, the explanation for what had happened reached Izalla. He stood abruptly, heedless of the stillness and silence of those on the dais, and the long lines of guards at the edges of the chamber. He pointed, not at Ghefairh, as Ghefairh had feared he might, but at the baby and Kheosaid. “How dare you!” he roared. “You deny me my child, my son, my heir! My flesh and blood! How dare you take my son from me! He belongs to Annoraka!”
“My son is God, as We all are,” said Kheosaid, unruffled. “Annoraka does not treat its sons as God deserves to be treated. They are enslaved, and forced into hard labor to please the whims of their king.”
“My heir would have the best of everything!” retorted Izalla. “He would have whatever he desired! He is not God, he is my son! The crown prince of the realm! My heir, my son…” he seemed to have run out of Tharsi words to express himself, and regressed to shouting in his own strange tongue.
On the dais, the baby began to cry. The wet nurse responded like a dog to a whistle and retrieved him from the bassinet.
“Enough,” said Kheosaid. Along the walls of the chamber, the guards sprung into action. They quickly converged on Izalla, subduing him and all of his aides, and forcibly removed all of them from the chamber, and out the front of the grand palace steps. The whole process was swift and effortless; they had obviously practiced and prepared for this. Izalla himself was not even given the opportunity to leave on his own two feet, but was instead carried off immobilized between three guards.
The rest of the day’s events were carried out as expected: officials took the dais and listed out the baby’s long line of maternal ancestors, all the way back to the very first one who had founded Tharse, and even spared a few minutes to talk about Ghefairh, his accomplishments as an Eye of the Academy, and his mother. There were multiple courses of food and drink, and more musicians. Some of the princes congratulated him; some cautiously, some very formally, and others very rudely. Ghefairh thought about what it might mean for this child to be his, and for him to be raised in Tharse. He thought about what would happen, ten or twelve years from now, when primary guardianship would traditionally switch to the father. Would he bring this child with him to Zheinnau’s house? Could you bring the son of the Will of Tharse to a ordinary house full of ordinary people and introduce them to him as his first dhemgh family? It seemed unthinkable.
The rest of the week passed very slowly.
Story: The Year Universe
Colors: Fresh Thyme #4: Countdown
Styles and Supplies: Panorama, Life Drawing, Gift Wrap, Parchment, Resin (Three weeks for Dreamwidth), Watercolors ("In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2019, guest editor Anthony Doerr lists several dos and don’ts one often hears about writing short stories and describes his love for reading and writing stories that break those very rules. Some of the rules Doerr mentions are: “Don’t start with a character waking up. Jump right into the action. Exposition is boring. Backstory slows you down. Stick with a single protagonist. Make sure he or she is likable. Don’t break up chronology.” This week, think carefully about the reasoning behind one of these oft-cited rules, then write a story that explicitly goes against it. How can the incorporation of an aspect of experimentation or innovation effectively push against the possibly clichéd rationale behind the original rule?" - This breaks both "Backstory slows you down" and "Don't break up chronology.")
Word Count: 3847
Rating: T
Warnings: Brief discussion of sex/sexuality
Characters: Ghefairh, Zheinnau, Dhashtu, Kheosaid, King Izalla, Vozkhunh
In-Universe Date: I haven't decided on exact dates for this one, but this takes place a couple decades after Qhoroali's time in the Fulcrum.
Summary: Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi attends a Naming Day.
Notes: Slight break from the Fulcrum for a couple posts. Since I think we just got all the Tharse worldbuilding we're going to get in the Fulcrum, and I need to use up this prompt that doesn't really work well with a time travel story, I'm posting this now. This is the first part of a story in the same universe as the Fulcrum that takes place in Tharse and Meandhshen and is (eventually) going to be about the Cothas religion that was mentioned at the very beginning of the Fulcrum. I haven't outlined it anywhere near as thoroughly, and I don't know exactly how everything here will tie into the rest of the plot, but I had a very clear idea about how the story was going to begin. There will probably not be more of this until I finish the Fulcrum, however.
A note about the spellings: In the Fulcrum, I was using an apostrophe for the retroflex consonants, but for this story I am switching to using h, because it looks way less cursed when there are multiple of them in the same word (imagine if I had written "D'as'tu" up there, for example). Kh and gh are actually velar fricatives here, but all other h indicate retroflexes. I'll continue to use the apostrophe in the Fulcrum, since there are only two Tharsi names there and one of them is actually a fake name invented by Mázghwent.
Gift Wrap here is for the Naming Day, the wedding, and the two wedding anniversaries, and Parchment because I actually did write something for this story fifteen years ago when I first got the idea for it. The worldbuilding has changed so much now that it's almost completely unrecognizable, but it was the same basic story idea. I might rewrite that particular piece later for Reimagining credit here.
The day before the planned dinner with his first wife, Zheinnau, Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi received a summons to the Palace of the Will of Tharse.
Zheinnau was cross about it, but Ghefairh didn’t blame her. “I just finished all the shopping,” she complained. “How long did you say it would be? I’ll have to see what can be preserved.”
“It’s just one day for the naming ceremony, but there’s a week afterwards for all of the partying. To be honest, I’d much rather be here.”
Zheinnau sighed. “Does any woman suffer as much as one who shares her husband with the Will? If she were any other woman, she could not demand your presence, and you could stay with whichever wife you wanted to, unless you were banned from her house.”
“She is the Will of God,” Ghefairh said. “If you could say no to her, what would that say about God, about Tharse, about all of us?”
“You’re right, of course. I’m sorry, I’m just disappointed.”
“Well, there’s no need to waste the food. Your other husbands can help you eat it, can’t they?”
“No. I will not eat the anniversary dinner that’s for our anniversary, for you and me, with my other husbands and not you. That would be wrong.”
Regardless, Ghefairh packed his bags that evening. There was not much that he took with him when visiting the Will — other men might pack a larger bag when traveling from one wife’s house to the next, but his presence at the Palace was unnecessary for the most part, and when he did go there, it was often a short stay. Having no third wife yet, he had the relative luxury of still being able to keep most of his things at Zheinnau’s house on a permanent basis, something most men in their 30s could not count on.
Zheinnau’s children were curious, as always. For most children, the departure of a true father or matrilineal father for another wife’s house was unremarkable, but he spent so much time at this house that they always wanted to know where he was going when he left. His own child with Zheinnau, a girl of seven named Dhashtu, surnamed Felha Zheinnau using the matronymic, was the most curious. As he folded his clothing, he explained to her that the Will had given birth to a baby.
“Your baby?” Dhashtu asked.
Ghefairh laughed at that idea. “Definitely not,” he said. Just like any woman, the Will had the unimpeachable right to declare who the baby’s father was, and she would almost certainly pick one of the fifteen northern princes she was married to instead. He was not really going to the Palace because there was a chance he would become a father for a second time, but simply because it was expected of him.
Sometimes he still could not believe he was really the husband of the Will, and yet, he had been married to her for four years now. His first marriage, to Zheinnau, had been a traditional arranged one, made to the child of one of his father’s other wives and another of her husbands, a first dhemgh relation, as was normally recommended. First spouses were not normally expected to consummate the marriage so young, but even as they had entered their early 20s, it became clear their marriage would be a sexless one. He had told her why one night, as they lay together in bed, and as always, she had a ready solution for him.
“I’ve heard how people deal with this,” she’d said, with the exuberant confidence of the young. “If you see a man you take a fancy to, introduce us, and I can get married to him. Then I’ll have a room installed here for you two to share.”
“What if you don’t like him?”
“What does that matter? He wouldn’t be for me.”
“I’ve also heard of this strategy,” he said, carefully, “but usually what happens is that we meet both of them, this man and also his first wife, and if we all hit it off, me with him and you with his wife, then we make two marriages, you to him, and me to the wife, and then we swap. That way you get something, too.”
“Yes, but I don’t need a relationship like that with a woman. This would just be for you.”
“You shouldn’t throw away your second marriage just to give me something,” he said. “You are not the Will of Tharse to marry as many men as you want, more than three and there would talk. Your first marriage is already—”
“Hush,” she’d said. “Our marriage is fine.” But there’d been no more talk of it since.
In the ensuing years, she’d married again, and happily this time, he thought, and definitely not sexlessly. But he’d dragged his feet through his 20s, occasionally checking in places he thought were likely, the taverns he’d heard were frequented by certain clientèle, looking for someone who might be willing to pull off some sort of marital trick that didn’t involve Zheinnau wasting another of her marriages. But he hadn’t looked hard enough, or maybe not in the right places, and age 29 had snuck up on him like an assassin in the dark.
In the meantime, he’d put his efforts into the Academy, rising through the ranks until somehow he had become the Eye of the Department of Historical Studies, roundly respected and cited more than almost anyone else. They praised his writings, and they praised his youth, for the greats he was replacing were old and had fallen out of fashion. Not long after his last promotion, the elderly Will of the time had died suddenly, in her sleep, and all of Tharse had gone into mourning. The day after the mourning period had ended, the Department had held a dinner where a great number of people had all wanted to know if he was going to write a biography, and the new Will, recently crowned, wearing a wig braided with the circlet of her office and a great many other intricate patterns and designs that came down to her ankles, had arrived at the dinner uninvited and served him a summons for the following day. He had assumed it would be about the biography, but it was for something else entirely.
The summons had told him to enter by the servant’s door, which had already struck him as odd, but when he’d arrived in the throne room, she’d retired with him to a small study, keeping only one guard to stand watch over her. “He is completely deaf,” she had told him, for no apparent reason. She’d proved it by picking up a hammer and striking a nearby gong which seemed to be in that room for precisely this purpose, and the sound of it had made him jump, but the guard had not moved an inch, or reacted in any way. “I am the Will of Tharse now, and as such, I need one native Tharsi husband, to tie me into the vast marriage network of our country, our people, our God. I would ask you to be that husband. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, may her soul become one with us all, chose to marry a fisherman as a symbol of closeness to the common people of the northern coasts, and for this they called her the Will of Trout for thirty years. I wish to marry a prestigious man, a Eye of the Academy, who makes the study and the history of Tharse and our forebears his profession and his area of expertise, and then may they call me the Will of Tharse, instead.
“I know you are yet 29 and still have no second wife. In a few months, you will turn 30 and it will start to become unseemly. I understand; I know some desire only one spouse and find it hard to make time for a second. I have no need of a sexual partner, or a man to make romantic gestures or whisper sweet nothings in my ears, I have a very large number of foreign princes who are all standing in line to do that.” She raised her right arm, and her fifteen silver marriage bracelets clanked their way down to her elbow. “I won’t demand much of your time, just an occasional week or so for the necessary ceremonies.”
“Of course,” he’d said. “Your Will is our Will.”
“Please,” she’d replied, “we are to be married. You may of course call me Kheosaid.”
Even if she hadn’t been the Will of God, he wouldn’t have been able to say no to her offer. He hadn’t been in any position to turn down any woman who would offer to marry him, no strings attached, no questions asked, no marital duties required. They had been married a month later in a lavish ceremony that lasted four days to which she’d worn the most extravagant and expensive marriage wig he had ever seen in his life, and the Department had held their own, more subdued party for him when he’d returned, after which point he’d been thoroughly sick of it all and had spent several days just lazing around Zheinnau’s house and cherishing what solitude she and children could spare him.
He’d still written the biography, of course. For two years, he’d poured all of his time and energy into it, the researching, the drafting, interviews with foreign princes and kings and the old fisherman alike, the editing and polishing and editing some more, and on their second anniversary he had presented the very first copy to be printed to Kheosaid as a gift, its cover embossed in a gold leaf rendition of the best-known portrait of the late Will of Tharse. It had been an entirely expected gift, and therefore theoretically unremarkable, but for him it was also deeply personal; a thank you for saving him, for rescuing him from certain social and professional doom. The smile she’d given him when she’d accepted it told him she’d understood, and he’d felt the strangeness then of having been personally pardoned and spared by the most powerful person in the world.
He arrived at the Palace of the Will a little before the ceremony was to begin. The “regular” social upper-crust, and the Voices of Tharse, who translated God’s Will into the common Tharsi speech of God’s multitudinous parts and lead worship in the temples, would be let in just before the start to sit in the gallery, but the Will’s husbands were assembled first. The other fifteen of them were all northern princes, decked out in the most expensive garments their realms could afford, and with the metal crowns and circlets that were common north of the Sea of Tharse, and with attendants trailing at their feet. Ghefairh was permitted to wear merely his best klhuen, with the most conservative cut of the robe, and the one wig he kept for special occasions, with just a few of the more traditional braiding designs.
One of the other husbands was not merely a prince; King Izalla of Annoraka also moved among the princes, receiving many back pats and congratulations from them. The invitation had said that the new baby was a boy, and Izalla would certainly be named as his father. The northern kings did not, as a rule, like to marry themselves or their heirs to the Will of Tharse; they were unwilling to put their lines of succession so completely under Tharsi control. But Izalla had only been the King of Annoraka’s second son when he was betrothed to Kheosaid at the age of six; it was only chance that had caused his father and older brother to both be killed together in a horrific hunting accident the year before that had made him King of Annoraka himself, and now he needed a son. The Will of Tharse cared little for sons; already there were two little girls in the palace nursery, and the eldest would someday be the next Will. The Will’s sons often went back to the northern lands with their fathers, and were usually not even raised Tharsi at all.
The curtain that Ghefairh was standing next to moved, and someone bumped into him. He looked sharply at it, just in time to see Kheosaid pull it aside and whisper: “Come with me.”
He obeyed without question and ducked behind the curtain himself, into a servant’s passageway. Kheosaid was dressed in a simple household shift of the like that he had never seen her wear before, and was without a wig; her perfectly shaved head reflected the dim lights of the passage. Her eyes sparkled with the impish glee of someone who was about to break the rules. He was dumbfounded — there were no rules for her to break.
“I want to show you the baby,” she said, taking his hand.
“I’ll see him in a couple hours, won’t I? Don’t you need to get ready?” But he allowed himself to be pulled along.
She led him along the corridor, around several turns, and finally into what must be the nursery. One of the little princesses was napping on a small bed dressed with rich silks; the other one sat on the floor and held make-believe court with an assortment of 20 or so dolls and stuffed animals. An elderly nursemaid sat on a chair in the corner. She looked up as they entered, and then back to the children.
Kheosaid led him to the other end of the room, where a wet nurse sat next to a bassinet. The baby inside was asleep, for now. His skin was the color of old parchment, and his eyebrows seemed only a tiny bit darker. Ghefairh looked at him, and tried to see if there was any hint of Izalla’s features in his face, but the baby fat made the determination difficult. The northern kings were often particular about genetic inheritance, and very much desired their sons to look like them.
“What do you think of him?” asked Kheosaid. She still spoke in a whisper now, to avoid waking the children.
Ghefairh wasn’t sure why she wanted to know his opinion, but the correct answer was always a compliment, regardless. “He is beautiful,” he replied.
“His name will be Vozkhunh,” Kheosaid continued. “Vozkhunh Nhorei Kheosaid. And his father will be… you.”
“Me?” Ghefairh was momentarily thrown off-balance, and slipped in contradicting her. “It should be Izalla — he needs an heir for his throne. I don’t need a son.” It was, of course, always the woman’s choice who her children’s fathers were, but a woman who snubbed a husband who had come to the naming ceremony expecting to become a father due to some prior agreement would soon find herself abandoned by her other husbands as well, and Kheosaid’s princes could do far worse.
“Has your first wife given you a son yet?”
“No,” he admitted, “only a daughter.”
“Then you shall have a son.” She turned to him, and some of the glee left her face and resolved into a more serious expression. “The mines of Annoraka are full of slaves convicted of debts to the crown. They must work their whole lives paying off money that they supposedly owe for minor infractions, and then when they die, their debt is inherited by their sons, who must take their places. My mother would simply declare war to end it, but that only ever works for a time, and many must die for that kind of diplomacy. The men they would send to us to be killed by our soldiers would in most cases be the slaves we are trying to free. I would sacrifice the pride of one man in place of all of those lives, and hopefully achieve a better result.”
“He will surely declare war on us anyway,” Ghefairh said.
“Not if reason, or at least his advisers, prevail. He does not have anywhere near the numbers to counter us.”
Ghefairh looked at the baby again. It would have been one thing if she were to pick one of the other princes. Or maybe, if the baby had been darker-skinned, Izalla would even accept Ghefairh as the father, as he would put some weight to biological provenance. Ghefairh himself was dark, like the salt-of-the-earth farmers his mother had come from, who had lived on the southern shores of the Sea of Tharse since before Tharse had existed and the Sea had gained its name. Many Wills of Tharse had been light-skinned — Ghefairh knew all of their names and could match them to their portraits — but Kheosaid was almost as dark as he was. Although she, like almost all of her predecessors, named a northern prince as her official father, most likely her genetic heritage came from the fisherman, who by all accounts had spent more time in the late Will’s bed than all of her princely husbands put together. Izalla would revolt at the idea that this baby could be his as well as hers.
But it was not his place to argue with the Will of God. “Your Will is our Will,” he said, unsteadily.
“Precisely.” She took his hand again, and led him back out of the nursery, and down the servant’s corridor again. “I’m glad you approve. I did not want to shock you during the ceremony.”
Back in the main throne room, Ghefairh tried his best to appear casual and picked a seat as far away from where Izalla was sitting as it was possible to be while still being located in the correct section. Servants came around with platters of hors d’oeuvres and fancy drinks, and musicians played elaborate renditions of traditional melodies. The princes talked among themselves, while Ghefairh waited tensely for the ceremony to begin.
Eventually, the other attendees filed in, the musicians left, and the bassinet was wheeled up a ramp to the dais by Kheosaid herself, now wearing another elaborate wig and a brilliant purple klhuen trimmed with gold and embroidered with a stylized rendition of the well-known scene of the very first Will of Tharse presenting her followers with her newborn eldest daughter. No trace of the glee from before remained in her expression or body language, and she strode sedately up the ramp with her most serious and official demeanor. Servants gathered on the dais after her, including the wet nurse from earlier. Down in the main chamber, Ghefairh also noted that a number of guards had assembled along the walls, silent but alert.
The chatter of the princes and of the others in the gallery behind them had ceased. “Today we welcome a new soul of God to Tharse,” Kheosaid began, without preamble. She picked the baby up out of the bassinet and held him in front her her, so that he and his light skin were clearly visible to all. “A new piece of Us, a new fragment of Tharse. May he work in harmony with the rest of God, and may he be revered and respected as any piece of God merits, and may he revere and respect every other part of God in return. The name of this newest, smallest piece of God shall be: Vozkhunh! Vozkhunh Nhorei Kheosaid, he shall be called.” She placed the baby back in the bassinet; there was general applause from those gathered. “A man has also helped to bring this new piece of God into the world,” she continued. She hesitated, and he imagined that a flicker of delight must have manifested somewhere under her mask. “His name is Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi.”
Nothing happened immediately. The princes began to whisper among each other, and Ghefairh realized that they probably did not recognize his name. He could not see Izalla’s expression clearly from where he sat near the front of the husbands’ section; eventually Ghefairh saw him turn to speak with his neighbor and his face betrayed a mask of concern and panic. Some of the princes, seemingly, had begun to understand, and fingers were pointing in his direction. Ghefairh adopted a carefully neutral expression. Through it all, Kheosaid waited patiently on the dais, as if nothing were remarkable or out of place, the picture of regal serenity.
Eventually, the explanation for what had happened reached Izalla. He stood abruptly, heedless of the stillness and silence of those on the dais, and the long lines of guards at the edges of the chamber. He pointed, not at Ghefairh, as Ghefairh had feared he might, but at the baby and Kheosaid. “How dare you!” he roared. “You deny me my child, my son, my heir! My flesh and blood! How dare you take my son from me! He belongs to Annoraka!”
“My son is God, as We all are,” said Kheosaid, unruffled. “Annoraka does not treat its sons as God deserves to be treated. They are enslaved, and forced into hard labor to please the whims of their king.”
“My heir would have the best of everything!” retorted Izalla. “He would have whatever he desired! He is not God, he is my son! The crown prince of the realm! My heir, my son…” he seemed to have run out of Tharsi words to express himself, and regressed to shouting in his own strange tongue.
On the dais, the baby began to cry. The wet nurse responded like a dog to a whistle and retrieved him from the bassinet.
“Enough,” said Kheosaid. Along the walls of the chamber, the guards sprung into action. They quickly converged on Izalla, subduing him and all of his aides, and forcibly removed all of them from the chamber, and out the front of the grand palace steps. The whole process was swift and effortless; they had obviously practiced and prepared for this. Izalla himself was not even given the opportunity to leave on his own two feet, but was instead carried off immobilized between three guards.
The rest of the day’s events were carried out as expected: officials took the dais and listed out the baby’s long line of maternal ancestors, all the way back to the very first one who had founded Tharse, and even spared a few minutes to talk about Ghefairh, his accomplishments as an Eye of the Academy, and his mother. There were multiple courses of food and drink, and more musicians. Some of the princes congratulated him; some cautiously, some very formally, and others very rudely. Ghefairh thought about what it might mean for this child to be his, and for him to be raised in Tharse. He thought about what would happen, ten or twelve years from now, when primary guardianship would traditionally switch to the father. Would he bring this child with him to Zheinnau’s house? Could you bring the son of the Will of Tharse to a ordinary house full of ordinary people and introduce them to him as his first dhemgh family? It seemed unthinkable.
The rest of the week passed very slowly.
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This just needs a tag for the story name.
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and for this they called her the Will of Trout for thirty years.
LOL!
I'll be very intrigued to see more of this, too.
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Haha, thank you! There is just one worldbuilding post and then there won't be more of this for a while, though. I have planned out all of my current lists and then four other lists just for finishing the Fulcrum and posting a few miscellaneous other things, and this story won't continue until I finish most of those lists, I don't think.
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Thank you! If I ever sit down and get this one actually outlined, I intend for there to be a lot more political maneuverings going on here than in the Fulcrum.