Okay guys ended up writing more of this this week (blame my Medieval Europe major being due today) so tis "In The East" for you tonight. I'm still playing "Tale of Two Apartments" by ear and we'll see when that starts to go up! Enjoy the courtly back-stabbing~ Atemu's in his element tonight!
Chapter 6: Espousal
Yugi woke almost upside-down in her bed. She'd fallen asleep mostly dressed and on her stomach, under her hand the bookmarked pages hadn't gone astray all night though her legs had kicked out. Yawning she patted her face, fondled the book, and pulling it up in one weak had regarded the page. What had she been reading at the tail end of last night? She'd forgotten.
There once was a brave hero called Jenzar who lived on the edge of a star-
Right, of course, Yugi put the book down to one side and rolling onto her stomach splayed her arms straight before her on the bedding. Atemu had not moved her in the past fortnight since Mahado's grand exit from court but Yugi wondered still if Atemu even knew yet where she slept. The Sultan had been particularly quiet with himself since the exodus.
Yugi sighed, shoulders heaving, all her tension settled into the mattress. Should she have been up yet? Raising her head she found the misted, high set, stained glass panels along the domed ceiling were just lit. There was some grey glow there yet but nothing substantial. It couldn't be nay on dawn yet.
She traipsed, legs tangled, onto her side one arm lulling on her hip.
Why was she awake?
She felt late for something in a peculiar way. She had been sure before opening her aching eyes that there had been a knock on the door or the window. A ratta-tat-tat had come from somewhere very purposefully when she was mostly asleep. Her mother used to say that fay folk knocked to wake you for the festivities. She used to say they so often wanted Yugi's kin for something or another. Yugi didn't quite believe there were fay here in the East though.
Yawning, too tired to yawn again, she found the air was bitterly cold and the sour scent from the ashen fireplace particularly thick. Drawing up the blankets she slumped onto her back.
Her hand fumbled dumbly for the book she had again rolled into, she lifted it;
-so they were wed in secret, telling not a soul, and they held their wedding feast in peace until in the morning-
Yugi's eyes were too heavy, she abandoned the book not quite sure why she'd picked up given her gaze lazed into a blur after a moment of attempted focus.
She settled her cheek into the sheets, her feet on his pillows, all tangled and sweated and cold and fell back to sleep.
They'd tried to warn her.
The day was lazy really, quite enjoyably, and though their new sovereign neglected breakfast with them no one was any the fouler for it.
On a high veranda, overlooking the wall and spying the river, Yugi laid out the cards for another game.
Someone was pregnant this morning, a new bride to an earl of theirs, and Lurek had the girl sitting with them on the bench braiding her hair as she shot off a million unassuming questions. She asked about the pains to expect, the specifics, the course of it all… they were taught a great deal as children by their mothers here but no one assisted in births until they had had their own first child. Yugi was a rare exception.
A boy, a eunuch, had just brought them cold stones from under the house to take the chill off the heat of the rising sun in the sky.
Briga, Atemu's fifth sister, emerged just at that moment as Yugi lay down the king of hearts. They didn't often use European cards given Yugi's multiple sets. Briga, paler than many of her siblings coming from Qazzadara and one of his foreign secondaries, looked sick about the mouth and red about the cheeks.
"Hmm? What now little spit?" Mana chortled affectionately, sighing to her approach.
"The Sultan's left council with the lords," she began to rush into it, "he's married the harlot in the night with a priest snuck in from Nusfar."
"What?" Kisara hissed, eyes flashing as they abandoned their game.
"Go! Shoo child!" Lurek pushed suddenly at their newly impregnated bride who had been the subject of much of the morning. The girl stumbled, gathered up her things, her contented face falling to horrors as she peaked over her shoulder in her fleeing.
"Go back spit," Mana grabbed her sibling, "he's done what? How? Who told you?"
"Lord Seth grabbed from the niche and told me to come find Kisara," Briga recounted with the same briskness. "He said the Sultan's told the menfolk that he married the Lady last night before today's dawn with witnesses and a priest! He wants to order a coronation for her!"
Kisara, Sesset, Yasil, Lurek, Mana'jet, Kuli… a whole sprawl of familiar faces began to rankle unattractively as Yugi caught her own stunned lips falling asunder. No... Surely not?
"A coronation!" Mana boomed.
"No, worse, go back," Kisara laughed slamming the hard outside of her fist against the table, "he's made to marry the trollop without us. He's disrespected the clans! His clan!"
"Unforgivable!" Lurek grunted. "He'll be lucky if the menfolk don't tend to war for this!"
"Oh to hell with them!" Mana spat again. "I'll go to war with him! I'll cut this fat infant out and leave it with their father to bash his head against the rocks! The damn fool!"
"Bastard!" Kuli raged, unable quite yet to form proper words.
The concept here was inconceivable. Atemu must've learnt this new trick from his ambassadorial work across the continent. The West had taught him this. Yugi well enough recognized this stripe of male delirium from her youngest days in the back of a covered caravan with her father's goats. In the days before Yugi wore jewels she'd heard a multiplicity of such madness recounted over camp fires in musted forests.
"Up! All of you up!" Mana'jet was inflamed, still squeezing the girl's arm, hobbling up however fat she stood with her babe. "Else you consent to let me sever his head!"
"Lords above!" Yugi gasped, wrenching up to take her side in assistance.
Anzu was wringing her fingers as she paced. Atemu had shuffled her from a council room into an isolated office. In the council room, even through the thick ornate wood, she could hear women screeching at her new, messily organized, husband of a few hours. Screeching was the wrong word however. These tiny forms here could boom and holler and shout as strongly as any man Anzu had ever met. It was astounding.
She paced.
She hadn't slept all night in preparation for the whole sticky affair. Now at noon she felt sick in the head and the gut about the whole thing. Her mother would've been ashamed; no ivory dress, no maids, no father, no happy family in attendance… that was all Anzu's mother would've expected of a generalized wedding let alone a royal affair. By the same token Anzu's mother would've not at all approved of her marrying a Moor converted or not.
She swallowed. The screaming continued. Atemu had insisted fast action was necessary and that once it was done it would be difficult to undo. She had little option really in griping. Her reputation was ruined if she backed away. She lost this man who wanted her so and loved her so if she let go of the fight. If she sat back and did the proper thing now she'd never make anything of herself let alone a queen. To be a queen was quite an aspiration for a third daughter of anybody, heiresses took preference in most cases of marriage, and…
She would've like to be a good, kind, queen. Sincerely she would've loved that chance to give generous alms, to make people happy, to have sons, daughters and honor but this was a strange country, an unconverted country, and she hardly knew if they'd all turn savage and eat her for this latest insult. She understood however how civilized their grievance was even if they expressed it so outrageously.
The coronation furiously rushed through though the citizens seemed confused by her presence in the carriage and the gentler members of court expected to take part in the proceedings did so with very apparent dislike reading their lines dully. The whole thing lacked the glitter of passion which these folk thrust into everything and they were so evident, so obvious, in their disdain she could hardly escape notice of it.
She had a crown now and a set of chambers gifted to her as she returned from the pagan temple in which she'd been anointed within. She had stood, meekly disturbed, under the jackal headed statues of grotesque god she didn't know and now in the rooms which were to be hers she found herself disturbed by the grandeur. She had never had anything of the sort which opened onto her when she entered with a trail of courtiers in waiting.
"These be your Majesty's rooms," one of Atemu's in-laws informed genteelly as Anzu tried to hold herself from gasping. "Through there is the bedchamber which adjoins to his Majesty's quarters."
"A shared bedchamber you say?" Anzu pivoted on her feet. She attempted the words as cordially as possible though her diction was still clumsy and she was sure she had misunderstood.
"Aye," was the curt, unelaborated, response. They had no patience for her just contempt they felt she must've returned them from her actions.
Wringing her fingers she was too confused to be settled, too put off to press.
"Your Majesty," Yugi raised two delicate fingers just behind, "perhaps I can assist?"
Her British was clear, clearer than anything Anzu had heard all day, a clear light in a sea of gibberish but Anzu didn't know if she should waver from it. Atemu hated this individual brazenly and held the frail woman responsible for half a dozen atrocities. The Sultan had attempted to keep Yugi from her coronation proceedings and a stead as one of the queen's ladies but had been unable to push the already irate councils so far.
"I…" She nodded firmly, trying to find some poise. "If you could help me to understand, your Grace, it would be most appreciated. The ladies say the Sultan and I are to have a shared bedchamber?"
"Yes Majesty," Yugi folded her arms before her taking a few meandering steps towards Anzu so she could lower her tone in a way that that assured it wouldn't ring around the room. "These dressing rooms and sitting rooms and so on are yours. The King has his own through an opposing door in the bedroom you shall share. It's custom."
"But surely the king has his own bed so he need not always be burdened with me?" Anzu supposed. It was another curiosity unheard of at home.
"Not so Milady," was the patient response, "here it is expected that the Sultan share always a bed with one of his wives. If you were, say, ill or… indisposed," she tiptoed about the issue, "then he would be, it is assumed, occupied with another wife of the harem. As queen your rooms lock with his as a sign of your utmost status within his life."
"Surely though…" Anzu's voice died. Another savage custom she tried to sympathize with but couldn't see good reason for. In her country a shared bed was a sign of a lowered status, an inability to afford more rooms. "Yes, I understand, but what of currently as the Sultan has no other wives?"
"Then I am sure they will make arrangements in his offices," Yugi shrugged, "if you are ever unwell or such. It should be no great feat."
"Yes, of course," she nodded. "Thank you."
"Majesty," she dipped into that elegant bow as if grateful to assist her.
It was at least a happy wedding night. Atemu took to another bed out of sight for her comfort occasionally or out of his own exhaustion and poor temper. Still nevertheless it was…
The court was not warming to her.
She'd had new clothes ordered; the finest fabrics she'd ever worn but in a more European style to preserve her virtue. The saris and like here she found too flirtatious, unladylike, but they were cooler so adaptations of a sort had to be made to her wardrobe within strict bounds of chasteness. The end product left her exhaustedly hot most days while still feeling hardly dressed from the absence of reliable weight.
She'd been sent to a court in Deutschland for part of her youth. She'd seen women of all nations flock under the queen's elegant knowledge of all subjects and her style. Anzu was no Margaret the Noble it seemed however. Her courtiers quietly rather scoffed at her apparel and seemed to find nothing in her to admire.
In the next weeks Anzu took to sewing a great deal given there was little conversation to be had. The great wives spoke to her infrequently and only when necessary. They seemed to pretend they could not understand her or her grasp of Atemu's tongue truly was so laughably childish that they could not.
She was…
There was a compacting, crushing, kind of weight in her diaphragm. Back across the seas her family was overjoyed and here she sat horribly isolated, unwanted. Her father wanted to send a younger sibling to court for Anzu to attempt to marry to someone of value but she had not yet answered his letter. Atemu was a good Christian but…
Discomfort, she pressed her legs, resumed sewing as the great lesser chatted round her still in a woven net of much stronger alliances and amicable heart. They were stuck fused to her though they did not approve. Anzu had been grafted to an existing organism, a gaudy extension, not connected truly to the pulsing lifeblood of the greater form. She did not understand them, they did not understand her.
Yugi glanced to her, she spotted the other. Yugi smiled sincerely but briefly before glancing away.
She would not speak to Anzu unless called upon but she tended to speak with warmth. Anzu had begun to sense Yugi's utter reluctance to being an engagement came not from lack of sentiment or desire but from a deserved caution about what her husband might do. Yet…
Anzu wanted her help and yet all at once she repulsed it.
Yugi had the kind of face, the kind of effortless charm among this queer savage place, that she expected of a witch. All she had managed to construe from Atemu was bizarre too. Women as doctors was absurd, gypsies as such was even more sacrilegious, and the way with which Atemu tried to illustrate Yugi's duties, of which the Sultan only had a vague knowledge, was likewise unnerving.
Anzu sensed vaguely, or worried, that while she offered alms Yugi had been very close by during Anzu's wretched string of bad luck. Yugi did as well hold very much to gain from her misfortune. Why should she hold for the queen any genuine sympathy then?
Neither did the details of Yugi's story align to her. She knew this place, the customs of this people, she had their respect and their affection in a way that seemed impossible or unsolicited. It confused Anzu and her youth on the isles had taught her to fear confusion.
Mana'jet moaned, as if hit, from the window where she'd been laughing. The grand Eastern princess buckled.
The courtiers and ladies alike sharpened their gaze towards her like trained hunting dogs. The eldest were immediately cocked in her direction, instantaneously, upon the slightest sound.
They were up and beside Mana'jet as, utterly unashamed, the princess groaned and hefted up her skirts to dip her fingers underneath. Anzu must've darkened sixteen shades before she managed to flounder away covering her eyes.
There was a sudden clucking, excitement that distilled to something warm and calm, that pulled Yugi from her seat to venture towards the princess. Peaking her eyes back through her fingers Anzu saw them helping the laden lady up and laughing as Mana seemed to swear with her eyes rolling back in mock exasperation or perhaps relief. Anzu could not fathom what exactly-
"We must leave your Majesty, I apologize," cawed Lurek to her; "Mana is to give birth."
"Birth?" Anzu paled, concerned at once for the state of Atemu's kin half within her care. "We must call the physicians!"
"Eh," Lurek huffed, swatting her hand. "We shall be her doctors Majesty. We of the gentler sex know better of the business of birth, do we not? Tis the only medical service they let us undertake. Leave all to us. We shall see her to her rooms. Little Hurii if off to warn her husband. You need not worry after anything my Liege."
"I…" she mumbled, lost once more like a raft, like refuse, tossed afloat at sea. "Yes, then… yes."
She sighed, she watched.
She was left alone with the courtiers of less noble birth though a few of the great lesser council still sat about oddly though she could see no rhyme or reason for it. The division seemed strange but who could she ask when the little ones laughed and played dumb to her?
They gave Mana chewing tobacco, things to lighten her head as well as ease the pain, and laughing fetched her treats and cool ornaments in-between the contractions. It would've been blasphemous to give her anything for the pain in the West, where the Church called the pain of childbirth a punishment for original sin, but in the East there was no such restriction. Pain was not some glorious rite of passage for a woman, it was not something she deserved, by the inherent flaws of her sex, to be subjected to. No, instead Mana was not expected to be at all lucid by the end of the labour. If anything the wives expected to get her drunk. She was even rather amicable to conversation for a little while before she broke totally into a sweat and the presses came on quicker.
Yugi held her hands, they stroked back her hair, and laid about the room helping themselves to the mead it was all a very calm, familial, affair. Birth was painful, agonized and grizzly but it was meant to be joyous and given the East had no objection to drugging their mothers things were much giddier.
Mana'jet was healthy from a life of good food and heat. She dilated well.
She swore viciously however, just like her warlord father, but no one thought less of her or told her not to. Kuli just laughed, amused, and squeezing her hand helped the woman slump back.
"Babe's wedged snug in there!" Mana panted angrily. "Lazy cad must be a boy!"
Her kin, her friends, all close by snorted. Laughing, sighing, Yugi and Sesset exchanged nods knowingly though, in the end, a girl actually arrived garlanded in foul congealed fluids.
Much to Anzu's surprise Mana would be up and about within the next eight days without great restriction.
By the end of the subservient month Atemu had little progress but he assumed to his comfort there had likewise been meagre backlash. The council of men and the lesser council were displeased but let them be. He had his wife, his one wife, and the rest would untangle. His family loved him too much to raid or thrust off into a proper, swords drawn, feud.
With a few sons between Anzu and himself they'd have ease at last and Atemu intended to spend his last years on earth focused to greater things while his princes got fat. For now that was the long term goal. His father had taught him to have prophecies of grandness. That said Qazzadara was an avid believer that kingship involved, for the most part, sticking your nose in the shit of other people's messes.
The main sticking point of discussion for his morning had been repairs to the grand temple within the city. After discussions about architecture and finishing out costs it was a matter of mathematics. Atemu was practical in most senses, outside love and religion, so to him the decision of what could and could not be done rested solely on the matter of what could afford to be done. Call him frugal but his father, a warlord for large swathes of his childhood with no house or walled palace and a swarm of enemies fighting for land, had always advised upon it. Debt made one man another's slave.
"How are we in taxes?"
It was Atemu's first question. He tallied it up next against army costs, foreign income, and a dozen lesser things before he landed upon the next crucial point; "and what of the household costs, how fairs my exchequer?"
"Your Majesty I can't say with any certainty."
"And why not?" Atemu rankled.
"We've heard nothing in the last month and a half from the great wives or her Majesty." His principal accountant shrugged menially. "I know the costs of the month but as I know not how fairs the house fund, given it is managed by them, I can't say how clear we stand there."
"Nothing from Kisara or…?" He felt his cocked shoulder fall.
"Nothing of the usual sort has been sent to me Sire," the portly, rough, little man sighed. "I made inquiries with the Lady Kisara but she insists to know nothing currently of the calculations."
"Nonsense," Atemu snorted, "rife nonsense. This ought to have been brought to me sooner."
"I apologise Majesty, I assumed you knew something of it from her Majesty," came the casually expectant response.
"It proves not." He shook his head to his own amusement. "I shall have to inquire into it. That's a net for another day. You shall have to come back to me with this."
He had sent them out and was to make his way over to Anzu and her harem of courtiers somewhere in the gardens, before he was caught by a new summons.
"Majesty," came the page, "his Lordship Durjah wishes to speak with you."
"Hmm?" Atemu glanced up, half upon his feet, till groaning he eventually beckon. "Right, let him in then."
The Baron of Durjah was a reasonably young man his father having only just departed leaving a house of ten children and three wives. Atemu had gathered that, remembered the name, only because that much had managed to occur since his return to the East and he had had time to surmise the effect of the story.
"Sir," Atemu spread his hand as the stern, hawkish, lad bowed. "What troubles you?"
"Your Majesty my family has oft demonstrated our affection and loyalty to your house, just in recent years your brothers could recollect that-"
"I am sure," he chortled half surprised raising his palm, "onto the crux though Sir because I assume we are both hungry given the angle of the sun beating my window. What's the strife that brings you here?"
"Sir I am not sure if you have been informed, I hope you have not, but my father's wives have for some time now been in conflict about the dividing of his fortune into our inheritances. I, seeing how the difficulties of opinion might protract the affair, partitioned the great lesser council of court for their overseeing in the matter but in a month or more I have heard nothing."
Atemu stiffened.
"My sisters need be married, I am missing opportunities to see them to good houses with no assurances of a dowry price to give their husbands, and my brothers need be provided for or sent to trades before they grow lazy from inertia." Durjah spread his hands giving view to a glimpse of his frustration and impatience. "I cannot imagine something I might've done to lead your Majesties to diverting or delaying the matter but if I am ignorant of some ill I beg your Majesty to let me right it."
"Sir you've done nothing of the sort," Atemu rallied immediately though with what he could scrape as the appearance of aloofness. "The great lesser council of the wives is simply deliberating the matter to great pains for the fairness of all. You need not worry. If the matter need be rushed then, dear Sir, you have my word I shall press them on it this very day."
"You would Majesty…?" Their came in the hawkish face a gentleness of relief kept at bay by hesitancy. "I would be most grateful for your press."
"I was to see the Queen this moment," Atemu swept his hand jovially as if nonplussed. "Give me a fortnight hence to have the issue finalized for you good Sir. These things take time and one can never rush the gentler sex to any excess you understand?"
He made a mockery of a face over the issue; a chortle and a wink. A man's joke made amongst equally put upon men and Durjah managed a wary smile at the concept.
"As any son well knows Majesty," he sighed before straightening to bow deep again. "I shall not detain you then. I'll hold you only a moment longer to express my sincerest thanks and my deepest apologies for doubting your kindness."
"Say no more kind Sir and off with you," Atemu dismissed his spine tightening like a coil.
His in-laws, sisters, and the Gem Faher no doubt had made a net for he and the Queen in their bitterness upon the marriage it seemed.
Atemu tried, in an effort to soothe himself, not to grasp Anzu away from the ladies too tightly. Anger was for lesser men, raging was for tyrants he so often tried to school himself, but this morning had, in a very short turn of hours, evaporated into an unravelling thread of disasters.
The more he glanced the more he found askew. The accounts had not been ordered for the month, the marriages of two prominent knights were in limbo, there were no festivities at hand expected for the luscious court which thrived on little more than amusements and religion. He was, as he attempted to organize inter-continental agendas, squatting in a hen house of disarray that had come out from under him. He consented it was half his own fault for having expected better of his jilted lesser council of wives. They had halted utterly everything they were supposed to be supervising.
Upon finding her Atemu realized, worse, that the Queen was alone something his own mother had never been. Anzu startled up from her sewing, smiled and forcing a grimace of his own Atemu couldn't bring himself to sit.
"Is something wrong Love?" She tilted softly, disturbed by his expression. "You look pale."
"Indeed," he snorted, letting his hand slap into his side dismally. "We are in a right mess this morning."
"What's happened?" She chorded tighter. They had plagues in Europe she feared would follow into the desert.
"Have Kisara, Mana and Sesset approached you for consult yet?" He supposed. He theorized his dear relatives were washing out their pale queen.
"Yes…?" Anzu cocked one shoulder blandly. "What about Dear?"
"Marriages, accounts, festivities…" he waved his hand flippantly, "anything."
"Well…" Anzu pondered, laying the round of fabric down thoughtfully, "they did, yes."
"Well?"
"It seemed unsightly what they wanted," she sagged. "I assumed they were trying to tease me into trouble by making me meddle. I told them that marriages were for husbands and sons to organize, that accounts were the responsibility of trained house stewards and that I knew nothing enough about their religious calendar to organize anything so they best ask you."
"Anzu, love," he strained. "I swear my kin, furious or not, will not tease about business."
"But how am I…?" She floundered very elegantly, quietly, wringing open her fingers. "Those are my duties?"
"Yes," Atemu swore.
"But marriages-"
"Here those are the duties of a queen." He held up his palm gently. "I know it's not your custom and I know it concerns you but it's the nature of the country. It's so ancient I doubt I could change it if I tried. The important wives, women and carriers in court organize the marriages of all not just pose difficulties to ours. They tend to agreements over dowries, run the household expenses, the inheritances, stables, parties, feasts, births…" He gestured. "My duties are war, politics, religion, agriculture, education and trade."
"But you're King, surely if you say so-"
"The wives will never respect my authority in those matters to make a decision. I've not been raised to know any of it and the men are busy enough." He elaborated. "Likewise however the Great Lesser can't do anything without your approval now. I suspect they're playing that game to the advantage of embarrassing me. Rolling over on purpose to make a show of the mess."
She paled, squeezed her sewing between her fingers and seemed not to know what to say next.
"I'm sorry," she sighed, "I didn't know."
"It's alright," he softened, "I should've explained. It's not your custom. I've been too assuming of them and too busy with men's business. I lost my head. This is my fault."
"I worry though," Anzu tripped carefully, "that I won't make the right decisions. I don't know this country or this kind of business or history any better than a stranger. What if I cause you more trouble?"
"My sisters and my in-laws would not let you," Atemu swore pressing his palms together, "whatever they might wish they can't afford to let you stumble. Surely they promised you that?"
"They said I should speak to the Ruskuyla if I needed guidance or…" she wrung her fingers. "I didn't understand. Their translations didn't make sense."
"Heh," he scoffed, "they meant Yugi once more I'm sure of it. They took to calling hersuch trite titles under my father. It's more garble trying to raise her as something she's not. She's been acting as surrogate queen and I sure they want to drive home a comparison between you both. The wives said to go to her?"
"They said it might best help us all understand each other, that the Rus-Ruskuyla could tell me what to do and how to organize and…" she tailed off, saw no point in continuing. "But if they meant Yugi… she's a witch isn't she? You've always said and I can't imagine…"
"I won't…" Atemu sighed trailing off what escaped his mouth next pained him. "Let me speak with Yugi, in private, I'll tarry a truce or a solution somehow. We have to clean up a mess now or else… You will do as I decide won't you?"
"Anything," she swore, rising to try and reach for his hands. "I'm so sorry Love. I didn't realize. I didn't want to bother you by thinking I wasn't mingling well with your family. I should've said something, asked."
"It's alright, never fear," he squeezed her fingers. "We shall sort this."
Even if Atemu had to drag himself to the satanic altar of the only lady at court who spoke enough British for Anzu to understand just as the Great Lesser no doubt wanted…
Yugi's quarters were very grand. Atemu had seen no reason to strip them or move her just yet in all the chaos of switching sultans. He couldn't scheme how quite exactly he would do such a thing either. The little white witch was too sacred, too loved, within these walls. His brothers in the north and the south, in fact on all points of the compass, would've rallied up to her defence had Atemu attempted much against her. For now he had simply hoped to make the sinner invisible, unimportant and yet here he found himself at the gilded red doors of Babylon's own whore.
It was humiliating.
No doubt the wives, unwilling to go to war, had expected to wreck their vengeance on Atemu in such a way. He had insulted them and now they intended to rub his face in the bed he'd made.
The guards, tall and pitch, were muscled like horses but silent as statues and only consented to allow him in because of his sacred right as their sovereign. They didn't complain, they never would, but there was the lingering unease in their eyes Atemu had picked up the ability to glean from decades living with them. The well-armed, tongueless, eunuchs could communicate in their own way without ever lingering upon a dark word.
Atemu found the room airy upon entrance, the incense cleared for the beached scent of moist sand drifting from open windows out of sight. The first meter or so was nothing but blank ivory tiles under a studded cobalt and gold doomed ceiling barricaded by a new row of thick screening curtains.
He tapped his still sheathed dagger upon the nearest wall, knocking essentially to announce himself though the sound of the great double doors opening should've been herald enough.
"Majesty?"
One pearly hand drifted, striking, into view as the witch followed after it. Alert, afraid even, she stood still half between the curtains black and coral-grey saris still glittering with golden embroidered thread. The stretch up her thighs was etched in the shape of lilies and berry heavy ferns that drew Atemu's eyes down then up; sexualised almost.
"Have you spoken with the wives?" He stowed his dagger back. "I find today nothing's been decided upon by the lot of you for the month. The whole council seems to have gone away."
"Yes," Yugi's hand fell and her shoulders with it. "They asked for my confirmation on matters several times and I told them I would not intercede over the Queen. It's not my place anymore."
"It is if I say it is."
"You haven't yet Majesty," she shrugged coyly. "Now, how can I serve you?"
"You're to resume control," Atemu ordered though it cut his teeth to even let it pass his lips, "and you're to teach her Majesty everything she requires in the meantime till she's ready to take the helm."
"Anything," the witch promised. "Provided of course, your Majesty, that you will officially grant me permission before the wives."
"Excuse me?" He lilted sharply.
"I will do anything you need," Yugi assured softly but with sternness, "but I am very aware, Majesty, that you find me…unfavourable. If I take this office up without your explicit permission then I seem to be insulting you and, worse, if I should upset you, gods forbid, you could turn my service record against me. I won't do that."
"It sounds very much as you're threatening me or, worse still, calling me deceitful. Either are treason."
"I wouldn't dream of it Sire." Yugi murmured. "I would love the opportunity to help her Majesty in any way possible. I was once a stranger in a strange land. All I ask is that you assuage my foolish concerns. I couldn't bear to be seen as going against you and I won't shame the house so."
"And if I won't?"
"Then I will wear whatever you think is deserving," the witch offered temptingly, spreading those coy hands docilely, "of course Sire."
"Then I will give you permission before Kisara, Mana and Sesset." He decided tight as nails.
"Thank you for your graciousness Majesty." She bowed low.
"You're very lucky." He murmured. Not even a stumble, a stutter, on the flow of the words.
"I appreciate that." Yugi kept her head down.
1 Jenzar~ *wiggles eyebrows at the oldies*
2 Women can't be doctors in the East (although Yugi fights the tradition) but they do proceed over births. However, as Yugi mentioned, only women who have already had their first child can watch and assist in the births of other women.
3 It wasn't actually legal to give mothers pain relief until the reign of Queen Victoria who, as the mother of a good dozen kids and the Queen of bloody England, demanded it. As well she should've!
4 Well the women told Atemu Anzu couldn't do it but after he married her anyway the wives decided to demonstrate who could do the duties~
5 I promise this is a puzzleshipping/blindshipping story. I promise. Yes, marrying Atemu and Anzu is step one of my evil plan to get Yugi and Atemu together. I know that sounds insane but damn it kids work with me here!
Next Time: Atemu stews, Anzu wishes, Yugi provides the queen a service free of charge, and a lovely new ambassador arrives in the East, while the Gem Faher and the Sultan share a few choice words on the matter of marriage.
