Author's Note: This is being written for the February Challenge over at the Tamora Pierce Writing Experiment Forum, and is based upon the story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. I will try to keep Kalasin and Kaddar as in character as possible and events as in canon as possible, while also remaining true to the ethos of courtly love and betrayal that defines the tale of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot.
Please be aware that this story will contain adultery, contraceptive/abortifcent potion, and references to suicide, so if reading about any of those topics will cause you excessive stress, hit the back button on your screen now.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that belongs to Tamora Pierce or folklore.
First Sight
"But I say to you whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart."—Matthew 5:28.
The midday sun was burning into Kaddar's (he refused to become the sort of ruler who constantly thought of himself with one of his many titles; it was enough to hear them constantly pouring from everybody's lips) eyes as, once again, he waited under a pavilion that did little to diminish the fierce rays of sun to greet a Tortallan girl.
His best friend Rijaal, who had studied with him and stayed beside him throughout his years at the university, seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for he stepped closer to Kaddar's golden throne to whisper, "Times sure change, don't they? A few years ago you were broiling in the sun awaiting the madwoman who would jump into crocodile-infested waters to rescue a marmoset and who would destroy our palace with dinosaur skeletons. Now you are waiting for the woman mad enough to agree to be your wife."
"We all had a part to play in our palace's destruction, and my dearly departed uncle had the biggest role, as befits his megalomania." Kaddar offered a slight smile poised between wry amusement and vinegar bitterness. As if to wash out the taste of the latter from his mouth, he took a sip from the ruby-encrusted golden goblet of spiced wine resting on his throne. "Anyway, it's a madwoman who wouldn't want to marry me, so the fact that Princess Kalasin is coming to be wed to me is no strong argument for or against her wits."
"If you say so, Your Imperial Majesty," replied Rijaal in the condescending tone he adopted whenever he was humoring Kaddar. "I, however, would have suggested that any woman who would marry you has lost any wits she once possessed."
"You're just jealous of my future marital happiness," Kaddar countered in a voice soft enough that the surrounding courtiers and officials could not overhear. "We'll have to find you a woman, because you've been a bachelor for too long."
"Says the man who is only going to meet his wife today." Rijaal snorted. "Anyway, if Your Imperial Majesty intends to find me a woman, you should know that I have very high standards. She must be intelligent, or it wouldn't be fun to outsmart her. She must be graceful, or I couldn't dance, walk, or ride with her. She must be beautiful, or I wouldn't look upon her. She must be a musician or singer, or I couldn't abide listening to her. She must be virtuous, or else I would never stoop to profane her. Find me a woman with all those qualities, and I won't care what color her hair or skin is."
"I'll organize a search through all of Carthak, and we'll find just such a woman for you, no matter how hard she tries to hide herself." Kaddar chuckled quietly, but before Rijaal could respond, Kaddar's mother Fazia, garbed from head to toe in purple silk, glided over to the throne.
"Move aside, young buffoon," she ordered, tapping Rijaal sharply on the elbow with her fan. "I wish to speak with my son, His Imperial Majesty."
"Of course, Princess and Revered Mother of His Imperial Majesty." After a bow that balanced precariously on the line between comical and insolent, Rijaal sauntered off to inflict his tongue upon other members of Princess Kalasin's welcoming committee.
"That man is insufferable," said Fazia merrily, as if she were issuing a compliment instead of an insult, so that anyone who overheard her tone but not her words would be misled. As she spoke, she spread out her fan, which was decorated with lavender blossoms, so that nobody could read her lips. These, Kaddar knew, were two of the millions of tricks his mother had learned during her desperate struggle to keep herself and her son alive in a country where assassination was as brutal a reality as the oppressive opulence and heat. "I don't know why you keep him as a friend."
"Because he makes me laugh and think, Revered Mother," Kaddar told her bluntly. "Because he is an honest man, and he would die for me. A friend like him is worth a hundred sycophants."
"I don't understand male friendships." His mother's blackberry eyes narrowed, so that the lilac paint she had dusted her eyelids with was all the more noticeable. "Female friendships are filled with laughter, gossip, and backstabbing, but male friendships are filled with so much serious and playful dueling that I can scarce tell the difference."
"That's as good a description of male friendships as any, Revered Mother," Kaddar answered, deadpan.
"Humph." Fazia's fan fluttered in a way that suggested she would have enjoyed rapping him over the head with it if he wasn't the emperor. "I haven't come over here to chide you for your poor choice in friends."
"What a relief, Revered Mother." Kaddar smirked, but the words had barely emerged from his mouth when he felt his mother wrap him in a swift hug and a vial of something slide smoothly into his pocket before she pulled away.
Wearing a grin reminiscent of an indulgent mother on a son's wedding day, she hissed under her breath, "In that bottle is an herbal mixture from a trusted mage. If you ever catch your wife being unfaithful to you—as women of noble birth are far too used to doing—make her drink it. It will destroy any life that takes to her womb within a few days of the time that she has been unfaithful to you. That way you can be sure that you aren't raising another man's son as your heir."
"It's not poison?" he asked, even though the bracelet that alerted him to poison hadn't reacted to the vial, keeping his face blank and his tone light.
"Of course not, dear." His mother waved her fan dismissively, so that the flowers on it appeared to blow in a gentle wind. "A dead wife would ruin all the political contacts with Tortall that were the point of this marriage, and we can trust the mage who made this potion. He's the same one who made your bracelet."
"Very well." Kaddar nodded, and devoted himself to trying to forget about the bottle weighing heavily in his pocket with its nasty implication of his becoming a cuckold. He was a handsome, wealthy, reasonably intelligent, and quite powerful man. No wife in her right mind would ever commit adultery against him and risk him dissolving their marriage, sending her home in disgrace. His mother, he decided, was as paranoid as his uncle had been. "I'll hold onto it and use it if necessary."
"Wonderful." Briskly, Fazia snapped her fan shut. "Be all smiles with Princess Kalasin. You must not let her know, unless she betrays you, that you suspect her of being as weak and inconstant as most women are, and that, as with all people, you don't trust her as far as you can throw her in a monsoon. She'll be less likely to conceive if she doesn't feel a rapport with you."
"I want a happy, respectful marriage for more reasons than that, Revered Mother," Kaddar commented dryly, "but will you ever stop scheming?"
"No, son, I won't stop scheming until I die, but I do all my plotting on your behalf, remember." Curtsying, she spun away from him in a twirl of purple.
She had barely left his side when Rijaal returned, saying, "I assume you'll want me next to in order to provide honest commentary about your bride."
"That would be nice," Kaddar murmured. "I know that you are never motivated by pity or manners when evaluating the fairer sex."
At that moment, the Tortallan ship, bearing Kalasin and much of her dowry, finally sailed up to the dock. For the next few minutes, regulated chaos dominated the wharf, as seamen tied the boat to the dock, and then the gangplank was finally lowered with a bang that echoed over the heads of the assembled lords and ladies.
A young woman who could only be described as stunningly beautiful stepped onto the gangplank. Her hair, black as a raven's wing, was twisted in an elegant knot at the top of her head, and several wisps curled around her ears. Bluebird satin emphasized her piercing azure eyes, and a robin blush brought color to her pale, porcelain skin. Smiling graciously so that her white teeth glistened in the bright sunlight, she walked, head held high, down the ramp.
"Well, she isn't as hideous as a kraken, but she's nowhere near as attractive as her mother is rumored to be," remarked Rijaal, but his almost breathless tone made Kaddar think that Rijaal, who had never told a lie in his life, had finally spoken a falsehood.
Kaddar could sympathize. After all, looking at Princess Kalasin made him feel rather short of air and wobbly-kneed himself. Even though he had seen the oldest Tortallan princess in a portrait shipped to him during the marriage negotiations, no artist could ever hope to accurately reproduce the exact curve of her lips when she smiled, the precise glimmer in her eyes, or the way her hair fell about her head. Nor could any artist hope to convey the reality of what it was like to watch her stride gracefully when portraits were only meant to establish the illusion of beauty and motion.
"His Most Serene and Imperial Majesty, Kaddar Gazanoi Illiniat, Emperor of Carthak," shouted the herald stationed nearest Kaddar, thumping the deck impressively with his staff. "Her Royal Highness, Kalasin of Conte, Princess of Tortall."
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, Your Imperial Majesty." Princess Kalasin swept into a curtsy that was just the proper degree for a princess greeting an emperor.
"The pleasure is all mine, Your Royal Highness." Gently, Kaddar took her hand and kissed it, gazing into her eyes, and feeling not so much love at first sight, but the hope and promise of love at first sight. "No portrait could have done justice to your beauty."
"And no portrait could have effectively reproduced your handsomeness." Inclining her head politely, the princess returned the compliment in a lilting voice. "I thank you for the volumes of Carthaki poetry you sent me in recent months. They were quite touching, Your Majesty."
"I'm glad that you enjoyed them, Your Highness." Kaddar decided not to mention that his mother had been the one making the poetry selections to ship to Kalasin as betrothal gifts. Clearing his throat, he rose from his throne. After linking his arm in hers, he escorted her to a procession of horses waiting at the far end of the dock, explaining as the various dignitaries trailed behind them in a sea of satins and silks, "We'll be riding back to the palace today. It should take less than half a day, but it will give people in the city and the surrounding country a chance to wave and cheer at you in welcome. Tomorrow, dear lady, we'll have our beautiful wedding in the Mithran temple, which has been mostly restored to its former glory after my uncle regime of neglecting the gods."
As he extended a hand to help her onto her camel, he added, "If you would prefer to ride a palfrey, we have one for you."
"I can ride a camel just fine, thank you, Your Majesty." Without accepting his hand, Kalasin swung onto the saddle, where she arranged her skirts and reins as though she had been riding camels all her life. "I've been practicing on the one you sent to my parents as a token of good will between Carthak and Tortall."
"Of course, Your Highness." Trying to conceal how wrong-footed he felt at having a bride who mounted a camel without assistance in public instead of accepting a helpful hand from her fiancé, Kaddar climbed onto his own camel. He was no stranger to strong woman, since his own mother was as tough as a Stormwing, but he still couldn't wrap his mind around the average Tortallan female's lack of manners and tendency to be aggravated by basic acts of chivalry. Daine, he remembered, had gotten all persnickety with him when he tried to save her the humiliation of attempting to shoot with a bow that should have been too big for her. Tortallan women probably also thought that they should hold doors open for men instead of men holding open doors for them. Deciding that now wasn't the time to detail the basics of Carthaki etiquette to his apparently independent-minded wife, he smiled at her as the entourage behind them mounted their camels. "What poems did you find particularly moving?"
"Jecha's poem to his wife was very touching," Kalasin responded, her lips quirking, as the procession moved down the cobbled street away from the dock. "It was really powerful and original when he compared his wife's skin to roses, her lips to coral, and her eyes to jet."
"About as original as when flatterers tell you that your eyes are as blue as the summer sky, I imagine," Kaddar observed. "The Carthaki court loves repetitive redundancies and hackneyed clichés. People here believe such styles of speaking and writing make them appear honest and wise, rather than insincere and foolish."
"Thank you for your kind warning." Kalasin's nose wrinkled in a way that somehow didn't make her any less gorgeous. "I will admit that I didn't find the poetry books very touching at all."
"And I'll admit that my mother picked them out," Kaddar replied. "What, my dear lady, would you have preferred to read?"
"Books about all the Carthaki animals and plants." Kalasin's eyes sparkled at him. "Daine told me about the hyenas, monkeys, and crocodiles, which all sounded so interesting. I always wanted to see them, and I look forward to having the chance to do so now that I'm here."
"In the future, I'll be sure to bore you about the anatomy of plants and animals," he told her, grinning. "I'll have to take you over to the university soon, too, so that you can see the research the masters are doing on the relations between animals, plants, and humans. If you are interested in animals or plants, their research is truly fascinating."
"I enjoy visiting learning institutions." Kalasin drew herself up proudly. "My mother and father take education very seriously. That is why they have set up schools for the commoner children."
"In Carthak, Your Highness, people will need to be freed before they can be educated," Kaddar informed her crisply, wondering if she was already planning a thousand expensive reforms copied from her insanely progressive parents. Perhaps the northern nobles thought that he was too progressive, but, compared to King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, he was very moderate if not extremely conservative. "People need to be able to walk before they can be asked to run."
"I was talking about Tortall and my parents' policies." Kalasin shot him a sidelong glance. "Not about Carthak and what I hope our policies will be."
It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that Carthaki empresses determined policies, not fashions, but, remembering that empresses had always influenced politics from the bedroom if not from the throne room, he decided to remain silent for the sake of their not-yet-begun marriage.