My resolution was put to the test almost immediately.
The new concubines were asked to dance for the first time as a group for the Emperor and some visiting royals from Corellia and Ka-Zook. We all knew he was going to choose one of us to spend the night with (spend the night being a loosely applied expression here- he never actually spent more than an hour or so with anyone), and that made us all very nervous, Hana especially.
Her uncle, the High Commander Ciutabak of Ka-Zook, who had been a bosom friend of the Emperor's deceased father, was to be present at this banquet.
"Ohh," she moaned, "I don't know what I would do if I were to be picked. I don't know what I would do if I were to be passed over! Which would be the more disgraceful? Oh! I don't know what to do!"
"Just dance and don't make a mess of it!" I hissed. I wasn't feeling charitable towards her because I was sure that she was the one behind all those pesky rumours about me, and besides, something else was happening to make me uneasy only I couldn't tell what, which made the uneasiness deepen.
Hana moaned some more and fretted about the dance, but I was getting into position and thankfully positioned nowhere near her, so I didn't have to listen.
After one of the concubines had finished playing some sad song on her flute, we came out dancing.
The Emperor and his guests- all men, were dining. Their faces were awhirl as I whirled. The Emperor had stopped eating to watch us. He was watching us very carefully, his chin lightly resting on his fingers.
The feeling of unease grew. I didn't dare tap into the forces, so I had not a clue as to whether they were still around or if he had sucked them up again, but I saw his gaze passing methodically from one dancer to another, and my skin crawled at the thought of his terrible thirsty eyes on me.
I whirled again. I imagined myself as a spinning bug as I whirled, spinning myself into some invisible, hidden state.
The music changed. His eyes were now moving onto Meiraq, ashen-haired Meiraq with her easy, perpetual smile.
We turned and flipped our fans into the air and caught them. We tilted our heads to look over our opposite shoulders, reaching long with our arms as we did so. Over the tips of my outstretched fingers, I watched the Emperor.
Now his eyes had passed to Xian. Xian was on my immediate right. I would be the next.
I looked away. I tried to make myself invisible.
I tried to quiet my heart, but for some reason I couldn't stop picturing the Emperor as a voracious mouth, like a sarlacc, that rare and dangerous desert beast composed of mouth and stomach. Indiscriminately sucking all life in the vicinity into their waiting mouths, they could grow unchecked under the sand for decades. Often, by the time any of them were reported to or discovered by the bounty hunters, they were grown into nightmarish proportions.
With that awful representation of the Emperor as a sarlacc in my head, I was getting to be more afraid by the moment.
He was no longer looking at Xian. He was distracted. He had felt the tangible stream of fear. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew, and I knew that he didn't know yet who was in such fear.
And such a stream of fear. So much fear it seemed impossible that it was all mine.
Any moment now, he would begin to trace it back to me. Any moment now, I would feel that forceful pulling. Any moment now-
Someone hit the floor.
My head shot up. The Emperor was looking at someone else: at a dancer who had fallen.
I followed his gaze.
Hana.
He raised his hand. The music stopped.
The Emperor leaned forward slightly. "Why, Ciutabak, that's Hana, your favourite niece," he said casually, pointing the fallen dancer out to a large beefy man with a voluptuous moustache attired in a stiff uniform covered in medals.
The man, Ciutubak, presumably, glowered. He didn't respond. Hana was picking herself up.
The Emperor continued, "Cousin Jon wrote to me a year ago, did you know, demanding that I send him back Hana. Until I received his message, I'd fully forgotten that his daughter was in my palace!"
The High Commander Ciutabak looked as angry as a volcano.
The Emperor Kylo smiled with delight as if he felt his story was being very well received. "I forgot to send him my response," he said, "and your sister sent me a letter of her own pleading that I not keep Hana in the Capitol, for the sake of the family. Hana had already been promised to someone. Hana was her only surviving child. Hana wasn't doing well in the Capitol. And so on and so forth. Pages and pages. You can imagine the rest of it. I'd forgotten about Hana again, truth be told. But I was glad to have been reminded. I like having my family close to me."
"Family? We all know you mean to say toy," Hana's uncle finally spoke up to say. His voice was rumbling like a bear's. Or a volcano's. "You never liked having your toys taken away from you when you were a boy. I remember you chose to damage them rather than share them. These young women aren't toys, Kylo."
All the other men at the table fidgeted slightly.
"Oh, don't be dour," replied the Emperor. "Who speaks of these women as toys here but you? Who speaks of damaging here but you? I cherish all these young women. I send them back with spoils when I'm done spoiling them. I send them back none the worse for wear, to whoever wants to with them play next. One could even remark that I'm learning to share." He waved languidly in our direction. "Thank you, my lovely companions, you may retire. Except you, Cousin Hana. You stay. Sing us something."
I glanced pityingly at Hana as we left. Her face was flushed pink and she was shaking. She moved to the centre and began to warble. Her voice was thick with tears.
"She's a terrible dancer and a terrible songstress," we heard the Emperor drawl. "Tomorrow morning, I'll let you know whether she's equally terrible in bed."
Poor Hana was the first fair fruit to be plucked, and one by one, the rest of the new Concubines soon followed after. Within the month, he had taken and tasted all.
All except me.
I realised as soon as she fell that I had been saved by Hana.
Saved by Hana, poor pigeon-hearted Hana! Imagine that! Her fear had camouflaged mine and bought me time. Or so I felt.
Quite possibly, I was never in any danger of discovery at all.
Actually, I don't know why I was so afraid of being discovered by the Emperor- and discovered to have done what, even? I couldn't explain it. Even now I can't explain to you the logic behind my feelings. But I was genuinely afraid!
I was even more determined to quit the harem.
Before, I had not wanted to be a concubine because my prideful father had been supremely against the prospect, and I wanted to please my father in the simple way a child does, but now I had my own reasons.
Hana's uncle could not save her from the Emperor. My father would not be able to save me from the Emperor. I was going to have to save myself, via the One Year Disgrace.
Speaking of disgrace, I didn't realise until then just how profoundly I would come to agree with my father's opinions of the Emperor, nor how profoundly I would come to understand exactly what he meant when he'd said that the Emperor meant to disgrace us all by calling me to Court.
Having but ten years the day the official summons was put in my royal father's hand, I readily proscribed to his opinions without really understanding them.
I remember how he'd seethed, and how angry he'd been, and how furious at our spies for having failed to catch this, and how furious at the priests of the various religions I was symbolically head of for having failed to dissuade the Emperor against asking for me. My father never actually used the word whore when he implied that that was what I had been called to Court to be - he was far too well-bred for that - but he might as well have had.
It was very unnatural for an Alpha to keep this lifestyle of bedding multiple Omegas the way our Emperor did. That was not to say that Alphas remained virgins or sexually inexperienced until their mating. Of course, they slept around first. And nobody minded not least because it was very difficult for an Alpha to impregnate a woman that wasn't his One True Mate, regardless of whether she was an Omega or no, and even when that happened, the baby almost never made it past two months in the womb.
But the concubinage system had been in place for about ten years by the time I came to this realisation for myself, and by then, our Emperor had had three children, two of which were dead, one by his hand, and it looked very likely that he was soon to have a fourth child.
There were always pregnant concubines, which I suppose is another testament to the Emperor's virility, although most did not remain pregnant for very long. I think for each liveborn imperial child, there must have been about twenty failed pregnancies.
He did have that fourth child, incidentally, by a concubine two years my senior.
She was a lesser Dathomiri warrior princess named Talina who had a proud, sneering face, and a confident, graceful bearing. Within a month of the birth she was made Imperial Consort, and a month after that promotion, was crowned Empress.
The Emperor was truly a strange man. He allowed his new wife to sometimes hunt with his party and to train in combat with his knights (under the watchful eye of the eunuchs of course), and twice gifted her arms instead of gems, although he apparently did not tolerate her outlandish opinions, and he rudely spent their wedding night with another woman.
The new Empress had given him a girl, another Kyla, but unlike the unstable Arta or the meek Jiya, she was far from apologetic about it. Despite the father's lack of enthusiasm for the child, she was confident her Kyla would one day inherit the throne. "Girls are stronger than boys," she was often heard to say, among other things like, "A man may bleed once in war and you'll never hear the end of it, but a woman could bleed all her life long and no one would ever hear her complain about it."
I'm not sure how true that is; I complain three days a month, every month without fail, and there are even others like Hana who will also lie whining in a heated bed and swear that they are dying.
Admittedly, I have never once heard Talina complain about her bleeding, and according to the palace physicians, she made not a sound during accouchement, which I was assured is a rather impressive feat.
Everybody was very excited by the rapid ascension of Talina, and all said that if there existed a person who could persuade the Emperor to settle down with a forever-mate, it might be her. Amusingly, she did try- by making the first bite, although unfortunately, he, far from returning the bite, did not take kindly to her presumptuousness, and had her confined to her quarters until long after the mark she had given him had healed and disappeared.
Nobody could decide what to make of the whole thing because the Emperor didn't make his personal sentiments public, and nobody could get a read on him.
I thought it very admirable and very amusing, what she did, and I was very sorry that it had failed.
Lucky that I didn't bank on the slim possibility of their joining to get me out of the harem.
Towards the end of my first year, that possibility was looking more like an impossibility, and the Emperor was still sleeping noncommittally with all the young women of his harem.
Each one came shamefully (or proudly) back from his quarters in the same evening they were there summoned - sometimes in the same hour - and each one received, the next morning, some glittering token of appreciation.
He was surely not exaggerating when he'd told Hana's uncle that he sent the women home laden with spoils. Without fail, whomever the Emperor took to bed would receive a present the next morning from the eunuchs who gave the gift on behalf of His Imperial Majesty.
I watched Hana and Xian and Kira and Meiraq and all the rest of my cohort receive their gifts: rings and bangles and studded halos and painted fans and strings of pearls and loose gems, with increasing satisfaction. It felt like I was in an arena, with an opponent who believed he was playing a crude game of catch-them-all against docile, brightly coloured prey, when in reality, the game being played (and being won by me) was hide-for-the-hour.
Actually, I found evading the Emperor to be easier and rather more boring than I expected.
Don't let the story of the dance that Hana did make a mess of lead you to believe that we spend the better part of our court lives performing for the Emperor. We were not some basely-born troupe of entertainers; we were captives of the noblest orders.
And as exhibits of the Emperor's political power and military might, we were only very seldom called on as a group to his presence, and at that chiefly when the Emperor wanted to make an impression or to torment someone as he did that night with the High Commander Ciutabak.
Most of the time, we were left to our devices, although he would often request the presence of a favourite (or even a random) woman who would, for a short while, have the honour of being on his arm at a banquet or at a ball or any other event of that nature.
The lucky lady would receive the invitation in the form of a red scroll delivered by a eunuch-messenger. On it would be written the name of the event she was to make herself available for as his partner, as well as some additional details pertaining to the dress. If the scroll was blank, it meant simply that she was wanted in his chambers that evening.
Thanks to my having earlier secured the Chief Eunuch Malcor as an ally, I never had to worry about receiving the red scroll. While most in my position might have pressed to be given extra exposure with the Emperor, I very softly pressed him the other way.
No, the real danger lay in the harem, where the Emperor Kylo would come himself to choose a bedmate. He did that periodically, and usually without forewarning.
I learnt that this was his habit the hard way: by being caught off my guard when it first happened.
I was, in that particular evening, in the hot room, the one with all the shimmering blue tiles that were always moist to the touch from the steaming fountains, and I was recumbent by the sweating bed of ice chips.
My mind was on my pet, Beebee, who was the creature I missed most from my old life (after Silver, of course). Beebee was a sunstripe tiger, a rare long-lived breed of domesticable tiger so named for their yellow and white stripes. He was only still a cub of fourteen months when I left.
Silver, in his last letter to me some months back, had assured me that Beebee still remembered me, still slept only in my chambers, and still would not suffer any but the family to handle him.
I was dwelling sentimentally on the unwavering loyalty of my pet, and at the same time, I was also seriously contemplating rolling directly into the ice bed, because the room was swelteringly hot, and I was so lazy and sleepy, and I anticipated that the cold would feel good on my skin.
I heard the sounds of boots, and everyone in the room startled- that is to say, Xian and Kira and I startled, because we were the only ones still there. Everyone else was reading or nodding off in the gold-pillared music room, or else sitting in their own bedrooms having their hair oiled and plaited by their girl-servants in preparation for sleep.
I heard Kira's intake of breath and Xian's muffled swear. In concert, we scrambled to our feet, pulled our clothing more demurely about ourselves, and bent slightly at the knees in a curtsey.
Right away, without planning to do it, I imagined spinning myself into a cocoon of quiet invisibility.
It wasn't something I had practiced, or even given any thought to, but I just very instinctively knew I wanted to do it, and I did. I imagined myself as an insentient spinning bug.
The Emperor entered and for a moment, just before I was able to avert my gaze, I saw his eyes dragging themselves down the no doubt luscious sight of my Sisters in their wet, clinging silks.
Very intently, I imagined myself to be the bug. I quieted my mind and imagined a thick soundproof wall of woven white thread, as thick as the length of a man's arm, forming around me, and to give this vision some of my selfdom, I imagined myself to be dancing endless pirouettes as I spun this cocoon of mine.
The world had assumed a strange blurry quality. I heard the Emperor speaking with Xian and Kira, but the sound of his voice was hazy and indistinct. I heard them respond. Their voices also were echoing and garbled.
When I felt daring enough to look again, I raised my head and watched.
It was a strange and frankly, disconcerting scene. The Emperor minded me not at all, and stranger still, my friends seemed also to have forgotten me. As though I had never been in the room talking with them for the past hour and a half. As though I had been plucked out of space and memory!
I watched them, the whole while imagining myself to be the bug, and I didn't stop until after their blurry forms had departed, and I walked very slowly (still imagining myself to be the bug) until I was back in the sanctum of my own room.
I went into the inner chamber where the bed was, and I sat on the floor beside it, out of view of the doorway, and sinking down, allowed myself to recover.
It wasn't an easy recovery. I was on the floor for a while, groaning with my forehead against the fibres of the rug, and to my girl-servant's dismay, I vomited all over it very shortly after. I also got a horrendous headache that staid with me for hours.
But it was worth it! Whatever it was I had done (and I wasn't even sure what exactly I had done), it had worked. He had not even looked at me. In a room of only three women, he had passed over me. As though I had really been invisible!
As though he thought he was playing catch-them-all in a game of hide-for-the-hour!
Come to think of it, that was probably the exact moment I first came up with that analogy. What do you think of it? Not bad, eh?
From then on, I played hide-the-hour. All my evenings were spent hiding in plain sight, in the most crowded room I could find, and if I couldn't avoid being in the same room as the Emperor, I made myself the invisible bug. If I had to dance for him, if I had to eat at his table, I did so, going through all the necessary motions, while I spun, in my mind, an impenetrable cocoon around myself.
In this way, I moved, one slow and successful day at a time, closer to the end of the metaphorical hour.