Firstly let me just say thank you for the outpouring of love and support I received during my last post. It was amazing.

Please find below the first update of what I hope is many more to come. This chapter was written at the time the original fic was posted. I have done little more than edit it for posting. I wanted to preserve the original intent/direction I was headed in.


Chapter 12: Fairy Tales

The Sacrene didn't attempt a raid again after Atemu hung their corpses on pikes along the border.

None of the candidates the lesser council discerned were good enough when he returned however. Not that Yugi minded to any great degree given that sooner or later Atemu would be forced to marry again but, for the next year, she stalled.

They found, continued really, a policy of general avoidance in the running of the country. State events seemed the only thing which could force Atemu to touch which the witch felt was fitting.

The Europeans were increasingly interested in trading with them and there was an increased influx of foreign courtiers given that but all in all everything stayed rather much like it had been before even poor Anzu's death.

Timaeus didn't marry though and Yugi had one eye stationed warily on him. So long as no one of any import became miraculously pregnant however…


Atemu had, for the first time in a long time, a very strange look about him. Yugi couldn't remedy any wounds or moods of his like she had once managed to with Qazzadara. Her interruptions to the Sultan's thoughts were more abrasive than soothing even when she, occasionally, found herself with genuinely kind intentions. Still Yugi was aware of those changing moods however; of the passing fancies and the courtiers Atemu eyed sometimes. In the same way fish became wary of boats Yugi watched his frowns.

Atemu had danced that evening but he'd sat back to smoke with a few of his brothers along the dais as Yugi went about the very typical business of dinner and festivity.

A nephew to the Sultan, a strapping little babe of five, had just begun to act like a gentleman in his tiny suit. Yugi had laughed, good humouredly, when the little lad demanded a dance. She had the child in her arms, on her hip, and she'd spun round through another turn of a short dance holding the tiny little black hands as she whispered into the boy's nose.

She'd turned, hefted the child a little higher on her hip, half whimsical. Sighing to a stop she'd scanned for the boy's mother and…

Yugi's eyes caught Atemu's and there was something dark there. Not unnatural, not cruel, but bitter. Yugi swallowed, looked away, and despite herself travelled instantly to the tiny almost white babe of Atemu and Anzu that had withered up without ever really starting. She squeezed the child in her arms, ducking her head, hating that look of Atemu's when it turned so pensive and cradling the boy went looking for his mother. Vicious or not, witch or not, Yugi had such a softness for children it was perhaps the only virtue of her sex she actually retained.

She kissed the boy's temple, passed him to his mother whom Yugi had now known for more than seven years, and found that her fingers shook as she drew them back to pat aside her own half pinned hair.

It was natural, in a way, for Atemu to sigh over little boys and seem dark. Yugi consoled that idea. The problem was how Atemu's sadness could- and was under constant threat of- turning into some violence against Yugi's life or reputation. They could have a tumultuous reasonably steady year of marriage but Yugi would not forget Atemu's active witch hunt after her for another ten.

Men had much longer memories than they were sometimes given credit for. Yugi's feelings might dart back and forth, mingled with moments of impulse, but she knew very acutely that marriage was no guarantee of anything. Queens had often gotten too comfortable supposing their wily husbands couldn't find a way to annex them.

What Yugi did next was more for herself then than Atemu.

Slinking up along the outside of the hall she slipped up behind the dais where the head table was and shrugged herself very quietly into her principal seat beside the Sultan. Atemu didn't appear to notice her coming till Yugi pushed between the backs of the two chairs and settled in hers.

"Back to whisper sweet nothings at me?" Atemu snorted absently, cheek slumping into his knuckles.

"For once," Yugi heaved quietly, hooking her legs over each other as she slouched back hands folding over her stomach. "You look…distant tonight."

"Hmm," came the unhelpful grumble.

"There are new candidates," Yugi murmured trying not to push, "the French are even offering duchesses. You should think about, perhaps, marrying again soon. We could have a babe by the new year. It might be nice."

"I do," Atemu rumbled back, his baritone was disparaged but not vengeful. "I do think about it…"

Tenuous silence passed and pursing her lips Yugi, not for the first time, could almost feel the cold, heavy, ghost of the dead Sultanan hanging over Atemu's shoulder like a weight.

"I'll not bother you any longer," Yugi whispered gently, moving to rise.


As the night dragged on the Sultan dissipated off to his rooms but unable to quite console herself to the idea of sleep Yugi lingered up in the hall with the last of the revellers. In the far corner of the hall, by the windows, under a particularly beautiful patch of mandala etched ceiling where a cool breeze was rolling in from the doors Yugi rested till Timaeus found her.

"Majesty," the Ambassador tipped his chin deeply before settling into an easy, welcomed, seat beside Yugi. "Might I entertain you for a moment?"

"Always Excellency," Yugi smiled, arms folded. "Any exciting gossip for me?"

"None I'm sure you don't already known," he chuckled, "you, your Majesty?"

"Hmm, no," she sighed. In a passing nugget of thought something occurred to her suddenly and laughing she leant a little more towards the man. "I am sorry Timaeus I don't think we ever sat down to discuss translations did we?"

"No, I don't believe we did," there was something wistful in the man's eyes.

"Did anyone ever tell you what Gem-Faher meant?"

"Yes, actually," he smiled. "May I check my answer against yours?"

"Always Sir."

"Well I have been told that it is word meaning something to the effect of Foreign Star, Mysterious Answer, or some such connecting the ideas of the alien unknown and education." He began making himself comfortable. "Though I hear it's not a traditional title of any sort. I suspected it might be religious, like we might call a cardinal who passes on wisdom, but I'm told it has more to do with children's stories here?"

"Hmm," Yugi nodded gently, "here they often have tales about questing heroes and great riddles and princes. Often the heroes find themselves lost in the wilds and encounter a character of some sort who tells them something important they need to continue. That character is called the Gem-Faher I suppose in the same way we use Hero and Villain or Wizard."

"So I've managed to make out," he perked, "though, actually, did your Majesty know there is a specific Gem-Faher in a traditional story here?"

"Ah yes," Yugi grinned, "there's a story about a witch who kidnaps a young man isn't there? They call the witch Gem-Faher. I do believe that's where it comes from very, very, originally."

"It's a delightful little tale," Timaeus chuckled, "she whisks him off to a special world on a snowy star. When his sweetheart comes looking for him he has utterly forgotten her."

"Hmm," she savoured it, "and hasn't the witch done away with certain things? There's no purple in her world, I think I remember, and so the sweet maiden uses it to spark her sweetheart's memory back."

"Beautiful, beautiful, story," Timaeus nodded whimsically.

"Can you see now what I said when I meant it was something of a joke?" Yugi rearranged herself a little closer. "They don't believe much here in doctors and without religious anointment I can't be called a Shaman. I wasn't the old Sultan's mistress either so when the people of court found they liked me and wanted to give me a title… I think the very nature of my being so foreign put it in their heads to use that. It's silly really."

"I think it's quite sweet."

"Yes well his Majesty certainly thought it was fitting," Yugi scoffed, leaving it decidedly vague as to which sultan she was referring to. Qazzadara always said it so sweetly, amusedly, but before leaving for his ambassadorial duties in Britannia Atemu had more than once made a veiled connection to Yugi and the fairy tale witch.

"For something of an imaginary social status," Timaeus chuckled, "they say it very reverently now."

"Oh, yes, please don't misunderstand me," she hushed, "I am very fond of it. It's kind. It's simply not as if I slayed a dragon or anything of the sort."

"May I ask, and perhaps this is being much, much, to bold, but what exactly did your Majesty do to find yourself so far from home?"

"Oh nothing dark," Yugi laughed trying to soothe the Ryussian worried about offending her. "Sultan Qazzadara was very sick. I was here in the country travelling for amusement and I was offered a reward if I could improve his health. He thought I was ludicrous at first. I think his Majesty only kept me around on account of my being young and sweet in the face but eventually we got him very on the mend."

"A doctor then?"

"Not quite so much," Yugi diverted vaguely, "but to an extent. It was a little science and prayer mashed together. Nothing extraordinary bar a few theories about air and sunshine and preserves that are much more controversial in Europe. Really after he mended that first time he only kept me on hand to amuse him."

"You have your talents I am sure," Timaeus flattered with a kind of deep sincerity that stopped Yugi from being at all insulted by a phrase that, if it had come from any other man, would've sent her hissing.

"Mostly," she whispered nostalgic and suddenly very honest, "I read him stories. He'd never heard any of the children's fables from Europe. He liked them and I brought books of them with me. He was old by then, he rather just liked to sit comfortably after a long day and have me read to him."

"I think many men would," Timaeus murmured. "I think that all men remember their mothers doing such things and when they are tired they, secretly, would like someone to pat their head and do so again. Just to relax the mind if not the soul…"

"I agree thoroughly," Yugi smiled.

"Would you be Ryussian your Majesty?" Timaeus suggested trying to perk them both back to something lighter as he saw the woman's eyes begin to trail off into memories. "I have never quite construed your accent."

"That is because it is a bastard one," Yugi laughed, "I promise your Excellency that no one has lied to you about my being a gypsy in a past life. I was raised one on the continent and we had family in with the Gauls. I am sure I sound like a little of everything."

"Well for anyone to live such an adventurous life is quite exciting," he flattered again, "especially a woman who manages to do so while maintaining their dignity and virtue."

"I think I've been very lucky," she shrugged, "I wouldn't go so far as to say I've been very smart."

"You always seem it."

Yugi laughed, happy for a moment and fleetingly squeezed Timaeus hand.

"Oh you are a sweet man," she praised, "you truly are Milord. I am so glad to have you with us."

Timaeus, too proper to take her hand, simply raised his glass and smiled.


Yugi did not, even now, like to see Atemu waiting on the top step or striding towards her in all his glittering vestments as Yugi came back from riding with her string of attending courtiers. There was however no polite way to toss off one's husband especially not when said man was sultan across the greater part of the continent.

Had it been a quieter day, had Atemu shouted something at him from the pillar, Yugi would've flicked her wrist and spitting turned the horse to the stables. Today however the solemn quality that played across his face was entrancingly unnerving. Every dark mood of this man was a spark against Yugi's wicker life. A bloodless marriage, an empty bed and empty nest marriage, promised annulment in Europe and divorce was not entirely unheard of in the East. The lesser sex were fully entitled to divorce their husbands and vice-versa but infertility was hardly considered good enough a reason. However witchcraft was as good a reason on any continent.

Atemu was greeted warmly as he strode through the riders fluttering down like tops around him and nodding his head the Sultan passed eventually to where Yugi stood grasping her reigns as her own slave waited for her to dismount. Yugi's knuckles tightened, palms gritted from the sand, and face utterly impassive Atemu held up his hands.

Yugi straightened at the unnatural show of affection but Atemu waited expectantly nonetheless. Even as Yugi glanced, covertly, to her companions with a kind of lost fear the Sultan stayed smooth cheeked beside the horse.

Yugi frowned, was forced to give the reigns to the slave of sixteen, and unhooking her boots from the stirrups slid side-saddle into Atemu's confident hands. He was a tall man, a strong man, and he had darkened since returning to the East back to that thicker caramel of his early youth. He caught Yugi just under the ribs as if she weighed nothing and, easily, slid the Sultana down his front till on her toes Yugi stood before him with her hands flickering from the man's shoulders as if they burnt.

Atemu's palms rested, fingertips flaking off the binding garments of Yugi's downy sides, and very cordially the King kissed the tip of her temple as an excuse to rest his nose there. Yugi had to refuse the impulse to slap him given the gesture was traditionally mocking and the touch so very, very, irregular.

"We need to talk." Atemu whispered.

Yugi turned from uncomfortable boils to shivering frigidity. Her stomach turned, her hands pressed with her thumbs pushing into the finer embroidery of the golden shoulder work, to create an air of space between them.

"Something wrong?" Yugi supposed.

"Perhaps," Atemu dithered softly.

Yugi's chin tilted carefully, frowns and pouts marring her features into its most common expression; the one she donned with great frequency round the man she with some audacity and sighing called her own. Truthfully Yugi thought of the crown, the clan, the country as more hers than the man.

"Then let us talk." Yugi ordered as the courtiers dismounting dithered in languid conversation around them. The wives would be fascinated, the men bored, the foreign guests milling round for some chance to catch the Sultan's favour.

"There's no reason it needs to be now," Atemu cocked one shoulder, "later, tonight, I only meant to warn you not to disappear off too early."

"No," Yugi grasped his shoulders before he could peel away, "you have me now and you've got something to say evidently so say it to me."

She did not trust the calmness of Atemu's cheekbones, the softness his forehead, it spoke of resolution and mourning and just passed over thoughtfulness. He had been contemplating hard while they were out and coming back Yugi had missed it only to return to some fruit of that labour. Whatever egg had been laid from Atemu's mediations sat waiting, cradled, and Yugi liked to smash them fresh.

The Sultan sighed, eyes rolling sullenly, as if Yugi was too argumentative for him today.

"Come away with me then, somewhere quiet," Atemu ordered.

"Lead then," Yugi retorted with a whispered sharpness.


Yugi cupped her elbows, hip jutting out as she took another step and suspiciously eyed the walls. She did not like wandering within Atemu's private rooms. The trappings, harmless enough, took on a kind of masculine authority that always seemed to threaten upon Yugi, impress upon her, with some kind of promise. At any moment the mounted weapons and scholarly knickknacks seemed like to bound at her. She didn't like it. The condition, being within Atemu's space, was too personal.

"Oh sit down," the man huffed at Yugi's wary appraisal of the walls and general state of the sitting room.

Yugi did but hooking her legs, one over the other, arms still cupped tight together didn't settle any of her posture from the knots it was worked into. Sighing Atemu drifted, cautious in his own way, round the table and when he came within five yards Yugi made to rise on instinct but grumbling, shushing, Atemu pressed her shoulder down into the back of the seat.

He stood beside the seat and glancing up between her lashes Yugi remained unconvinced by the gentleness.

"Why do you have to look at me like that?" Atemu snapped.

"What is this about?" She shot curtly. "What are you up to?"

"Must I be up to something?"

"Always," Yugi snorted dryly, "or else you wouldn't touch me. What do you want Majesty?"

He drew a breath, looked away, and that stubborn hand of his fell from Yugi's shoulder.

"I've been considering secondary wives," he shrugged morosely.

"Good," the Gem Faher blinked curiously, tilting at the displeased nature of his frown. "Who do you want?"

If Yugi had to she was resolute she'd drag some poor maid into this. She'd make them marry. She was sure whoever it was she would either be close enough to or know kin of well enough to coerce into a marriage with Atemu who was not, by any means, an unattractive practical prospect.

"I don't want any of them," Atemu answered bitterly, "I can't. I look at every flaxen princess and beautiful native and I see her and…" he shook his head. "I can't have them. It's too bitter."

"You…" Yugi was sympathetic, more so than she expected at the childish remorse in the man's eyes, but she was equally mystified. "You need to. You need heirs."

"Heh," he heaved miserably. "I know that."

"You need sons," Yugi drove home as gently as she could, hands out to appeal upwards to the man. "Take one of them, any of them, it won't matter. Take someone who makes you burn, makes you hot for a second, that's all we need. Then it's gone and done and you don't have to like them. I can put them away. If it's a boy it'll be for you and I to bother with anyway."

"I can't," Atemu murmured. "I don't want any of them."

"Then…" Yugi slumped, shaking her head. "You have to."

"I have to have sons," he repeated quietly but then, glancing, specified; "we have to have sons."

He didn't linger on the word but, brows twitching to a crest, Yugi frowned.

"What?"

"I…" Atemu took another steadying breath, standing straighter. "We need sons."

"We…?" Yugi gave sharp, abrupt, laugh. "No. Oh no." She was standing quickly despite Atemu's hush. "No. None of that. No. I told you-!"

"You married me didn't you?" Atemu grunted stubbornly. "Isn't that half the duty of a wife? Isn't that the point?"

"I told you," Yugi's voice rose, "I told you that you needed to find another. I told you you would need to finish mourning. I warned you-"

"Well I can't!" Atemu snapped over her. He hissed, hands swiping over his own face and grunting round back on Yugi. "I'm not so terrible, surely? For God's sake you said yourself just now it was a simple thing, quick, done, forgettable!"

"I told you I wouldn't do it!" Yugi shot back hotly.

"And I tell you you need to!" Atemu hissed.

"And you want me?" She scoffed mockingly.

"No!" He spat, half appalled, "but I have a right to you nonetheless!"

"Heh," Yugi laughed brokenly, because he did in every church and every court in the country.

"I've tried," Atemu grunted, "I have but… I won't take another wife and I can't leave the country without a child much longer."

"I suppose you'll need two boys then?" Yugi laughed at him meanly. "Some others too to marry off? Your father had more than a dozen boys! Am I to match that for you? Hmm? What else Majesty?"

Her voice got higher, sharper, louder and groaning Atemu couldn't seem to bear to look at her.

"Be decent!"

"Oh don't you dare!" Yugi shrieked, fists suddenly very tight.

"It's my right to ask you!" Atemu boomed back, justifying. "It's the highest, most natural, calling of the lesser sex!"

"And what are we going to christen it?" Yugi barked. "Christian? A child of the gods? Should I put it in a witch's contract? Shall I go ask the Devil to make very sure it's a boy for you?"

"Don't mock me!"

Yugi's teeth clenched. Not for lack of anything to scream but rather because she had so much to say, so much venom, so much anger it clamped her up impossibly tight as if it was too powerful and she was too narrow for it all to come out.

"Without me you have no land and no home," Atemu gestured driving his index finger towards the floor, "you will do a sacred duty and you will be grateful."


"It's disgusting."

"Of course it is," Sesset snorted amusedly, "men are not innately graceful creatures."

"But he is insatiable." The new bride whined.

"One of the sexes has to be or we'd have no children," Kuli intervened just as calmly. "I assure you that while the physical body can provide pleasure coitus is rarely so enjoyable as to merit doing it twice."

"Oh well it's easier with secondaries," Mana'jet joked, "then at least the old dogs recognize some of the equipment."

There was a spluttering of cackles amongst the courtiers and snorting, to her own tight amusement, Yugi sipped. They were taking their morning meal in the Sultana's quarters. It was Yugi's way of being annoyingly underfoot as the pages attempted to move her things into the rooms on Atemu's order.

"Our husbands are fine men," Sesset sighed with some latent seriousness to the young woman agonizing towards her, "as they should be given they were chosen but marriage has many duties; none of them consistently enjoyable. Motherhood, the wifely bed… they're things you learn to endure and the better you can the better off you are."

"Aye, aye," Mana'jet praised, "men need just a much manipulating as your enemies. Men are so easily wounded."

"And so are we," Sesset argued however, "after all, if Zarzak honestly told me that I was not as beautiful today as I was when we married I would be wounded too."

"Oh but it hurts," the newlywed moaned crankily. "I can flatter the great boar all day but it's the pain I can't stand."

"Ha!" Lurek grunted.

All at once, gossiping as they did, the wives were twittering with old tricks and sneaks for enduring the duties of marriage, things about self-slicking and all manner of other crass subjects. None of this was, Yugi felt, to suggest that they were anymore obscene then their European cousins. It was simply that here in the East such educations were more highly thought of. The lesser sex galvanized together with all their knowledge to try and spend every new generation more comfortably.

She pulled the second knuckle of her index finger between her teeth and regarding the window knew, certainly, that this would be the sort of wisdom and lecturing she would have to endure if she complained.


Yugi's thighs were almost naked. When she pushed her feet up onto her toes under the desk they pressed through the dressing gown into the cold wood. Her head went back while the book lay under her hand expectant and lonely but she was more distracted by the weight of the pendant round her neck. Comfortable, shoulders slackening back into the seat, she plucked the cold off her clavicle and let it slump back down with a slapping-thwack on to thin skin covered bone.

The candles reached odd corners of the Queen's rooms- Anzu's rooms, Ayesha's rooms before that (as Atemu's mother was called)- and it was much too spacious for the girl from the back of the caravan. When she was a baby, barely weened, she spent hours in the back of hand painted and family made vehicles of the sort. She used to squash her knees up between goats in the milky, gamey, smell of them. Human sweat infused. The wet air from the forest working its way through the open shutters…

The high mountains, the sparse grey ones, that sliced the skyline and shuddered over the valleys like ancient guards had the same kind of shadows Yugi found now here in the glamorous East. She found strange repetitions in her life in those tiny, tiny, moments like shadows and reflections.

The door to the adjoining bedroom clanked, chunkily, open and the brassy corners creaked over the slap of Atemu's feet on the tiles.

"So," the Sultan sank into the purchase of the doorway, "will you come to bed?"

"Not if it's just to work," Yugi answered with a yawning crassness.

"To sleep," Atemu cut.

"Hmm," she grunted, "no."

Atemu sighed, loudly, almost moaning and Yugi made out the motion of his limbs contracting in as the tense arm holding the door open fell back against his side.

"Eventually…" He warned.

"You took a year to not make up your mind," Yugi teased in a nasty contrast, just to set him off.

"Oh for God's sake-"

"Go to bed."

"Do I have to invite you formally?" Atemu snapped.

"Yes," Yugi rolled over the word unapologetically, "because I'm not playing this game with you."

"What game?"

"That game." The Queen snorted. "You know; I come to bed, we sleep, your hands wander, fogginess makes for gentleness and next thing you think it counts as wooing. They have that in Europe too. It's for men who want the easy way out of the screaming and the glaring and I won't give you that."

"In the name of Christ Almighty," Atemu agonized hissing, "I could understand you a little better if you didn't so often like to make yourself miserable."

"If you want me," Yugi drawled lifting the pendant in her fingers lazily to her inspection because she hadn't once yet bothered to look back at the Sultan, "make an appointment and we'll duel. I kept my end of the bargain. Don't expect me to pat your back about your losses."

"Fine," he spat, "then tomorrow."

"Tomorrow it is," she scoffed amusedly more to himself, "should I bring a sword? High noon? I should send everyone else to the temple so they don't hear the atrocities I'll call you."

"Oh to hell with you! You do this all just to spite me!"

"Wasn't that the point of marrying me?" Yugi laughed. "I'm utterly boring if I'm nice to your Majesty."

"Could at least do your sex the honour of acting with dignity."

"Ha!" She chuckled.

The door slammed. Yugi yawned, laughing, and let her arms slump back against the arms of the seat.

"Can take your olive branch back to diddle some bitch that cares," she grumbled though she knew the man and the shadow were all gone stomped angrily off and picking back up her book she was alone.


Next time: the foretold night arrives and the battle begins in earnest but who will win the war? More importantly who will win Yugi's heart?

(IMPROTANT NOTE: I just wanted to clarify for anyone who is concerned that there will be NO rape in this story. Atemu's a jerk but he's not a rapist. So please come enjoy next week's update without any concerns.)