Hey again Gorgeous ones!

Chapter 2: Formalities

"You better not be implying-" Atemu murmured hotly as Mahado turned him about like a ship at sea under the hands of the wind.

"What's wrong with being Sultan?" He teased, soothed. "I have to abdicate to someone."

"Abdicate to Seth." He hissed. "He matches the qualifications."

"He's not as responsible," Mahado whispered, slipping his drink off to a slave. "He's never seen the outside world. He doesn't know politics like you do. He's better with Kisara managing the great lands for you."

"I'm not doing it," Atemu rasped tightly, "I'm going back to Europe."

"Your family needs you."

"You're abandoning them."

"I'm going to the gods." He clarified.

"Then don't ask me to do something against mine." Atemu tugged his jacket hard to lull them to a sudden stop before the head feasting table. Their eyes met, a flicker of recognition passed over his sibling and sighing Mahdo shook his head.

"You converted?"

"I found faith in the true God."

"Oh don't-"

"Then don't you," he grunted harshly.

"Atemu," Mahado tried to nullify the rising heat, aware of the odd glance from their father. "Be reasonable."

"We are the eldest of twenty-four. Pick a brother."

"It would be a grave insult to do that to you or Seth and I won't do it."

"What about my happiness?" Atemu snapped. "Don't give me semantics about duty either."

"You can have your woman," he hushed, squeezing the smaller elbow in his hand. "Take her as a secondary wife and no one will complain. How could they? You need international brides. You'll have the power to do it. Keep her till father dies if you must. If she loves you she'll wait."

"She believes, very strongly, that her God created marriage as the union between a man and one wife." He murmured. "I am not going to force her to compromise that."

"She'll be married to a King. Women have compromised more for less in Europe."

"Don't insult her heritage."

"Don't insult your own."

Their father beckoned, time up.

Atemu's boots dug a little too hard on the tiles and gritting they pushed in together to approach him. He had thoughts of desertion, of slipping onto the next boat out of the delta, but Easterners and Europeans alike rather disapproved of turncoats in noble households unless said act was taken for a greater good. Until Atemu's personal vendetta proved for the greater good of the nation his brother's quest for a god, even a heathen one, took greater precedence.

Yugi stayed with the wives for the evening. She held babies, read palms, sat with the younger ladies and unmarried girls who whispered up close to her to ask for advice on matters of health and spirit. She was something of a doctor. She'd received more of a training here with the Eastern texts but the basic grasp of soul and body wellbeing had been imbued in her during a childhood wandering the Romani.

She didn't fashion herself, officially, as a physician here however. Nor, actually, did she present herself formally as Qazzadara's lover or mistress because she wasn't. Whatever Atemu might assume Yugi was not, nor had she ever been, a whore on this shore or any other.

She was the Sultan's favourite lady at court and given the king's primary wife had long died, his secondaries sent to harem, Yugi replaced the queen de-facto but unofficially. She was allowed to give council and opinion among the important wives of court mainly because she'd endeared herself not for anything else. Not even Qazzadara could force Yugi's opinion to be considered among the grand wives in council after two thousand years of eastern traditions.

Yugi did however make a living with the sultan. None of this was to say she didn't. She had been hired from the delta to come here, she had been paid handsomely for her services and Qazzadara had left conditions in his will to the effect of Yugi's happy preservation. What had for Yugi once been a brief stint of adventure had become a steady life. What she meant by all of this was to qualify that she was not a doctor and she was not a whore. If she was to bang out of all of Atemu's wicked assumptions she would add she was not a witch either but the word had a gentle ring of truth to it in a childish way.

Either way, nonsense aside, Yugi made her living in private.

She came to the sultan that night to earn her keep after Atemu had left from private council with the sultan and the crown prince in a flourish. She had no doubts however that, without any payment, she would spend most of the night listening to the Sultan's thoughts on his second born son given Atemu's exit.

"He's a devil," the aging warlord hissed, "the boy's lost his soul and his great mind in those soppy, pissy, seas."

Yugi arranged herself quietly, with one of her books, in a seat across from the man by the empty hearth where incense mumbled over grey remnants of firewood.

"He's your son," Yugi murmured, "I'm sure he loves you."

The Sultan moaned.

"If only…" he sighed, bitter and tired into the palm of his hand. Something about the gesture made him seem dreadfully weak and Yugi's heart twisted.

"You'll make something of it in the morning," Yugi promised, hand reaching for the man's lap. She didn't like the briefness of the touch.

Still resting his aging face into his palm Qazzadara's second hand came to rest tightly on Yugi's. He sat hunched in his seat and, unable to pull her hand away with her chest so tight, Yugi surrendered to slip from her seat and settle on her knees by the sultan's feet.

"It'll all be well," Yugi whispered up towards his face, "it will be."

"Oh child…" he mumbled absently, fingers drifting up to stroke Yugi's head delicately.

Atemu could insult her, a dozen men could do likewise, but Yugi was no whore. She had never kissed the sultan, had been quite disgusted by him upon their first meeting as a matter of fact and all the love that sat between them now was filial, paternal, if perhaps intimate. Yugi was a voice to whisper to, a confessor, these days. She was a fake wife, a fake baby girl, but she had never, ever, been improper or vile or coital with the Sultan. To suggest they had something so bitterly disgusting hurt Yugi.

"He will not see sense, he'll drag the whole wicked world down with him," Qazzadara bemoaned.

"No," Yugi hushed, "he's a smart man. He loves his family. Not even he's selfish enough to leave you all abandoned."

"He refuses to do anything unless he can marry his harlot, he wants to take only one wife," the old man scoffed. "It's wretched and weak. He doesn't understand or he does and…"

"Let him marry her then, let him have his bit of love," the smaller pleaded. "What does it matter? He'll be a wise, frugal, king. We'll make up for an uneducated queen with your daughters. If this is all the payment he wants it's hardly the most selfish thing to ask for."

"I can't imagine it," the Sultan murmured exhausted, "I can't imagine letting him… consorting in this transformation of… he's changed. He's not my boy anymore. He's foreign. He's filthy. He's a disgrace to the house of my fathers-"

"No, no," Yugi pressed, "shh, hush. You'll regret it in the morning. Don't say that Love."

"If you'd heard what he said to me tonight," the man hissed, "if he had… By the gods what he said to you this afternoon! Before me! I-"

"Shh, shh, please," Yugi pestered rising up on her knees to reach tight, desperate, for both of the man's hands. "He's young. His blood's hot with all this romance. It'll pass. You were wild once too. Ignore him for now. Let Mahado help you make sense of it in the morning. Sit with me for now. Love…"

The man sighed, slumping, and hunched so he looked every bit his age. Poor, withered, like he was it… Yugi could hardly stand it.

"Let me go on like we usually do," she begged softly, "it'll be alright. Let's have our night."

"Yes," the Sultan patted her cheek weakly. "Read then little one. Go on. Let me have that much."

"Should I stay here?"

"Yes," the arm folded round Yugi's shoulders at the man's feet, "stay near me tonight. My old heart's weak. I might need the clerics."

"Always," Yugi kissed his forearm in passing, "always darling."

He was such a sweet man, a strong man. Yugi had never seen better than this king or his family. Yugi had never known greater kindness than in this country. The very destruction of this oasis ached her, burned her, like the lining of her inner stomach was being branded.

She fetched her book, tucked her hair, and turning so she could lay the old European thing across her lap rested her side into the Sultan's leg and her head into the man's knee. She swallowed, her throat caught, and tried to find that steady mother's voice of hers-

"There once was a wood in a very dense land that was populated solely by a species of creatures called the Old-Oaks…"

Atemu hardly slept. He'd returned to their rooms at the inn by the docks, the rooms that cost him a crown a night, and sighing through his collar had shrugged everything off in the uncomfortable heat of the mud brick room. The sheets in a shambles, sweaty, Anzu rolled over upon his whispering entrance to the bed and reached for him.

He could taste the softness of the court drinks, smell the musk of his own sweat and the sweeter tang of her peeling off perfume as he slid his arms round her. She pressed plush into him, soft bosomed out of her trappings, and hair unpinned it fell delicately scented and thick under his mouth. He held her, too tired to speak, and her hands settled about his waist as she dozed aware of him yet barely conscious.

In the morning his toes were damp under hers as she rolled away and he pulled himself from the creaking bed. He glanced over her shoulder. The women here weren't as sweet as Anzu, weren't as shy, and there was something very honourable about being a man trusted to lie asleep with a cautious woman.

The boy from downstairs brought up breakfast on a tray and Atemu shrugged him towards the table with the curtains still pulled round the bed.

When the child vanished Anzu eased her toes onto the floor and, peaking out, yawned into her open palm carefully.

"Sleep well dear?" Atemu offered, stirring the milk.

"I think I shall have to adjust to the air here," she shrugged with a lazy kind of smile, trudging towards the seats. "You love?"

"I think," he sighed, "I can't remember if I slept or not. It's a haze to me."

"The streets and the buildings make different, queer, noises in the night." She sympathised reaching for something off the tray. Her hand paused, drew back, as she seemed to realize she knew not where to start or what was what.

Taking pity Atemu spread something mild on a chunk of flattened, mealy, bread and passed it her. She noticed a second later that his hand was aloft and snorting thanked him gently before attempting it.

"How was dinner with your kinsfolk at court?" She asked without a shadow of resentment. She was a patient woman thank God.

"Not so well unfortunately, my brother gave me rather unexpected news," he muttered.

"Is he alright?"

"Oh he's fine," Atemu chortled though the sound caught in his throat. "He's abdicating to become a shaman in one of the desert sanctuaries of Juras. The Sultan intends to make me next in line."

"That's…" Anzu seemed caught. By all ordinary reason it was marvellous and yet not here. "What do you think?"

"It gives him and the court a much greater say in whom I marry," Atemu heaved miserably, "and unfortunately it means I would have to stay here. Mahado will leave soon and my father is getting on in years. He'll want me here to teach me the ropes and the specifics."

"Perhaps it's a good thing," she supposed. "You'd make a marvellous king. It might just be what this country needs. I'm sure it and the people are lovely but, if they're as you've always said, then they're innocently unconverted. You could make a great Christian nation."

"It complicates everything," he sighed.

"Just the marriage," she muttered as if the thought didn't terrify her, "and a whole nation is more important than one minor wedding."

She would be destitute, they were both aware, if Atemu didn't marry her. He had her father's permission and she had travelled unchaperoned with him now. Unless they married, soon at that, the assumption alone that she was no longer a virgin would utterly devastate any continued attempts to betroth her elsewhere. If she left Atemu now she would return to the Brits to spend her life living off the charity of her brothers.

Atemu could bear the image no more than he could stand the concept of her marrying anyone else.

"We will be married," he decided, "damn my father. You will make a beautiful queen."

She smiled but still, in the soul, seemed afraid.

"Oh well, I hope so," she held the tiny moulded cup in her hands tightly. "Besides, I imagine, that… well you did say your people believe a man should have several wives…"

"No, no," he strained stomach twisting. "I wouldn't ask you to do that. Never. That's entirely against your scruples, your heart, I couldn't. I won't. I won't negotiate that with father."

"Then what…?"

"Well one of us has to give," Atemu shrugged. "Eventually."

Anzu really had very little better to do than embroider, however dull the prospect, because frankly what else could she do? She hardly knew the city or its dangers as she spied the streets from her windows. It was dangerous anywhere for a woman to go around unattended she imagined.

Then too there was nothing pressing for her to do until Atemu's father put his foot down or waned. It was all waiting, like she was about to lay an egg, which was dreadfully uncomfortable. She was a creature of nerves though she hoped she held them well. Either way it would do no good to look worried because Atemu, worse, was a dreadful creature of nerves himself. Her panic would feed his panic would feed his anxious temper. He was rather sensitive in his own strong way.

Then again if she started down that trail of thought she'd be day dreaming away her morning.

Atemu paced, she sewed. Atemu flipped through one of the great books he'd brought with them on the papacy, she sewed. Atemu sighed, she sewed. Atemu slumped into a seat, she sewed.

Men were so impatient.

"Milord?"

Atemu buckled up, awkward and rushed, to reach the door. Anzu was coy enough from years of etiquette not to raise her head until the door was shut and Atemu turned back with the note. It crinkled, wax crackling onto the thick Assyrian rugs, as he broke the breast of it under his fingers.

Atemu tended to mumble while he read. It wasn't unattractive. Actually it gave him the appearance of focusing very hard.

"It's from the King," Atemu announced, "he's seen some sense."

"Oh?" Anzu perked into an expectant smile.

"He's invited us both to court," the prince grinned under his own restraint, "he's consented to meet you today. There are going to be festivities along the river. We're to spend the afternoon and the evening with them."

"That's marvellous," she folded down the frame and the needle, "should I change?"

"No," he hummed, sweeping over her. "That'll be perfect. Anything more and he'll accuse you of being pretentious. Can you be ready to leave in a moment?"

"Of course Milord," she promised, teasing; "you?"

"This'll do too," he nodded, tugging down his vestments. Something about his glance suggested he was trying to think what else they would need. "You best take the parasol and the fan. The heat is consuming out there. Drink often. You understand yes dear?"

"Of course," she soothed, slipping to her feet. "What should I say? What should I do? I don't know quite how to make a man like your father like me."

"You're charming," Atemu dismissed, "he'll love you. If he doesn't he's senile. I'll translate."

"Whatever you say Darling."

The wives, the children, the men, the princes…had all woken late that morning and yawning still fresh from the baths Yugi tugged the slip of the sari over her shoulder as she trudged.

Mana'jet was on the litter beside the Sultan in Yugi's place. She was too heavy to walk the entire stretch of riverside from the Palace interior to the festivities along the field. So Kisara and her husband Seth, Qazzadara's third son, walked with Yugi in the trail of princes and lords following the sultan.

Seth had a smugness about his face, a boy-child really, with Yugi on one arm and Kisara on the other. His younger brother, Qazzadara's fifth son, walked with Sesset and cat calling between themselves the men made worse gossip than the wives along the procession. Mahado too, as the eldest, was in a ceremonial litter ahead of the Sultan though Yugi was sure given the choice the crown prince would've strolled with them. It more amicable, more pleasant, to have the company of others and Yugi in particular quite enjoyed Mahado as much as she did his father.

"Did you hear anything of Atemu?" Seth asked Yugi with the woman's hand folded against the crux of his elbow.

"Why do you ask?" Yugi teased.

"Because if anyone knows anything it's you Gem Faher," he frowned. Yugi chortled but was unable to cease smiling in the face of Seth's very boyish displeasure. The third born prince had an exceptionally young face.

"I don't know this morning sadly," Yugi admitted. "I do know however that Mahado did petition the Sultan to invite Atemu to this afternoon's farewell."

"Given it's the last great celebration we'll have with his Majesty the crown prince," Kisara idled beside her husband never afraid to voice her opinion, "I can only assume his Majesty would consider it. If only for Mahado's sake."

"I hope so," Seth grunted, "it's been so long since all three of us have had cause to drink together and it may be the last time I can prove my endurance against Mahado."

"Ha," Kisara snorted. "Always such a romantic, aren't you?"

"Tis important that a man has the pleasure of out preforming his superiors," Seth defended tartly, "you shouldn't understand but to myself it's practically politics."

"And this," Yugi laughed, "is why we don't allow men to choose their own marriages. You'd pick women for their asses over their assets and throw them out in the morning."

"Oh if only they were that wise," Kisara teased, "we might let them run households instead of play fighting and farming all day like they do."

"You are both cruel," Seth scoffed, "and that is all I shall say on the matter."

"Why? Because there is two of us and one of you?" Yugi winked.

"Normally that would be quite a joyous thing for a man, wouldn't it be?" Kisara added.

"Unless those pretty things are a man's primary wife and his kin," Seth agreed, "both of whom shall eat me alive if I question their ages or their assets."

"Well aren't you coy," Kisara snorted.

"He's wise enough not to get involved, you must give him that," Yugi smiled.

Anzu hadn't exactly underestimated the heat she just hadn't comprehended, couldn't in her history, that anything could be so impossibly hot, tepid, as the molten sun over the East. Atemu helped keep her upright and she knew, trying to hold the parasol and fan at the same time, that she'd look a red-faced wreck before she laid eyes on the Sultan.

"I'm sorry," she muttered pre-emptively, feeling a bead of sweat down her back.

"Never fear," how Atemu held up so cordial and jolly in this heat she'd never know.

They made the last few steps towards the grand blue and gold tents overlooking the river and just before Anzu was hit with the wave of cooled air, perfume, and giggling conversation she was painfully aware of the blister about to bleed on the back of her heel. She had supposed, briefly and vaguely, that surely given Atemu the court of the Sultan couldn't be so different from Prussia and Britton and the like. What she found as she glanced across the carpeted earth between the poles keeping the tents aloft was nothing however like Europe.

It was enchanting and horrifying all at once like a bizarre feverish kind of dream.

She wasn't exactly sure of anything, of what she was looking at, as Atemu held her close still and took weaving steps between the assembled masses on their cushions across the rugs covering the grass. There were two dozen slave boys, black as soot, waving huge fans among the collection of smoking and eating men, women and children.

A woman, as Anzu passed, licked her fingers unapologetically tossing a newborn, unbound, child off to their father who took the child with a grumble but didn't complain and didn't discipline the woman. No one else seemed to bat an eyelash. It was such a small moment, so stupid, but the gesture was so undermining to her whole childhood it sung out like a chorus drawing her focus.

She was sure, dazed, she'd stepped off at some wonderland port where nothing was recognizable.

There was a raised pallet among the scattered cushions and as they approached Anzu was so scattered by the dazzling jewellery and the foreign shapes she hardly noticed. The women seemed to be wearing nothing fastened down. Just rolls of seemingly revealing, emblazoned, fabrics that wrapped round them and exposed whole swathes of skin to the stray eye. She'd never seen anything like it.

As they approached the pallet she finally found enough focus to shut her lips and turn herself towards the glamor she found directly before them. It was as if Atemu had brought her to the altar of some ancient new-world temple.

On the pallet, sitting scattered, were two men and a woman. They could've been the three faces of the moon, or Ammit, or some other timeless, wordless, entity from paganism. The lady stuck out to Anzu's focus only because she stuck out so generally speaking.

She was as starkly white as Anzu was though dressed entirely like the rest of them with the same casual flair of laughter in her cheeks. She had a drink in one hand, tucking her hair with the other, and she was sprawled almost across the laps of the two men.

The eldest, aging and withered viciously like a burnt bone husk and much the same for colour and consistency, must've been the Sultan. He had the white shawls, the gold and the bald headed grandeur Anzu expected and the pale, almost exposed, white legs of the little lady were thrown over his crossed lap.

The second man seemed more appealing, friendlier, in his whole dark-on-dark creamy caramel face. He was more covered than most of the women sprawled about and all of the men. Even the old man had more chest showing. Still the gentleman had a kind of greatness, spangled with gold, the side of the pale woman leaning into him as if he were a jutting support.

Anzu dropped instinctively into a curtsey that Atemu was not bound by blood to follow the motion of. He stood tall beside her, chin up, and as Anzu dipped the little white and flaxen woman in the laps stopped laughing abruptly upon noticing Atemu. Was that the witch? Anzu's head spun. With her hair in her face she waited, patiently, in perfect pose for the king to order her up but he didn't.

"Is this she?" The old man grunted over the rim of his drink.

Anzu half made it out but the tone was clear enough. He didn't like her already. She swallowed.

"Yes Majesty," Atemu answered in the rather clipped tongue of his people, "this is the Lady Anzu Mazaki."

The Sultan grunted something Anzu didn't entirely understand but she gathered, vaguely, it was about her proportions. Was she too little or too big? She wasn't sure but her sweating muscles were uncomfortable holding their position.

"How much does she speak?" The king supposed.

"A little Majesty," Atemu answered. "I can translate."

"If she can't speak for herself what good is she?" He snorted.

Anzu perceived the tension in Atemu's forearm under her hand.

"Lady Anzu," Atemu glanced to her, gesturing his permission for her to rise as it became evident the King wouldn't be forthcoming in giving it. "This is his Majesty Sultan Qazzadara."

He gestured, Anzu smiled with her eyes down.

"My brother, his Majesty the Crown Prince; Mahado," Atemu swept his hand. The second, friendlier, man tilted his head amicably towards her smile. "Lady Yugi, the court's Gem Faher, assistant to his Majesty."

Something in Atemu's voice left upon starting the final introduction and Anzu's smile too almost faltered as she made contact with the rather curious eyes of the white witch she had heard so much about. Yugi smiled, cautiously, and Anzu wracked her mind trying to translate exactly what 'Gem Faher' meant.

The Sultan's ringed hand rested on the pale knee, Mahado's arm was slung lazily round the waist as Yugi leant into him, and after a whole twenty years in Britton Anzu had never seen something so… obscene.

"It's a pleasure," Mahado greeted eventually as Atemu and the Sultan exchanged looks. "You are as beautiful as I expected milady."

"Thank you Majesty," she dropped again like a top, "it's an honour to meet Atemu's family."

Unimpressed evidently the King gestured, batting, with the back of his hand, chin raised. Atemu's hand tightened round her and evidently dismissed Anzu held her face down as the prince led her away.

The European woman, Lady Anzu, whispered to Atemu as they turned to follow the tracks upon the carpets under the tent. She looked concerned, reasonably so, and uncomfortable at the turn of events she had been unprepared for Yugi straightened in her seat or attempted to. As she moved Mahado's arm tightened subconsciously round her waist, cuddling like a nesting foal, just as his father's hand flexed with equal unawareness on Yugi's legs. Trapped in place she sighed back into her position.

What a way for a grand miss from the continent to catch her… The Sultan and the Crown Prince might've seen no trouble in it but Yugi was sure Lady Anzu would've drawn very European conclusions from her splay on the pallet. Understandably of course. Everything here in the East was so different to the whole continent what was she to think except what Yugi was certain she now did?

She rather wished she'd noticed them coming sooner, or that they'd been announced, but nothing was quite so formal here when the court was revelling.

"She didn't seem so bad," Mahado declared lazily. "Pretty wee thing, I can explain Atemu's attraction for certain."

"She looks like a coward," Qazzadara scoffed, "you see her hanging her head like that? Ashamed, weak, apologetic… Hardly the stature of a Sultana."

"Things are very different in her country," Yugi attempted absently swiping her fingers over Mahado's forearm, "she was trying to show you only the upmost respect Majesty."

"A real woman, a real lady," Qazzadara extended his index finger tutting, "can give her father honour while demonstrating her own great strength. I am not impressed."

"Oh give her time," Mahado chuckled, "let her relax. I'm sure she's masterful in her own space or else why would she enchant Atemu?"

"I doubt she does," the King huffed, "he's just too viciously stubborn to repent now."

"Easy Father," the Prince sighed, "give her time. What was the point inviting her if you shant give her a hair of a chance to woo you too?"

He wouldn't though, not unless the Sultan could see the Lady Anzu wooing the others. If she showed herself as friendly, confident enough to stride up to the great wives and take a seat with them then Qazzarada might consider her. He would never communicate as much though and Yugi feared, knew almost, that a Lady so courteous wouldn't know instinctively to do as much. To the Lady Anzu such a thing might seem rude, too bold, and perhaps rightly so but if she was to stay…

If Anzu could speak with Qazzadara she might win the old king but Yugi didn't know if Miss Anzu would have the chance. She would warn the Lady herself, she would try, but Atemu was so close to her Yugi would never have the chance. The Prince would spy it and grasping Yugi no doubt make hell for her. She could ask another but again if Atemu caught wind of it he'd call Yugi a schemer and none of the others in their cohort knew much or her language while the Lady evidently knew very little of their tongue.

Yugi would've helped, simply out of sympathy for another woman's predicament, given it was one of the few things which could inspire might heat in Yugi. However left no option by Atemu she would simply sup her drink in the loving arms of his kin and pity the Lady Anzu absently. She would've felt guilty but, alas, she didn't.

Atemu should've made better friends.

000

1 Yugi's kind of a cold, hard bitch on occasion.
2 update next week as usual

Next Time: while Anzu gets a taste of the culture the Lesser Council of Great Wives get a taste of her, Yugi makes a move, Atemu makes a declaration, and as the sun sets everything unravels into chaos.