So we're getting very close to the end here. Or at least the end of what I have written from my original run. I want to assure you you'll get a resolved character arc if not a resolved story. I hope that gives some comfort? We've honestly only got about two or three more chapters left.
Chapter 17: Lioness
"You are a woman but you don't have the heart of one- No, that's wrong, you do but to me I never see it. When I do see it it frightens me or delights me. I…" He laughed weakly, sad. "You have been everything I wished to be. When my father presented you to us he already approved of you. My brother still thinks you wise. My family respects you, your authority, your judgement and they seek you out. You highlight my failures. You hold an uncomfortable mirror to myself."
The fire crackled, the smell of something dark and sweet carried on the smoke but the Sultana did not speak. Swallowing Atemu found courage at least to spy her face but… there was nothing there but a kind of expectant patience. Yugi wanted something more or, rather, perhaps Atemu wanted something more from himself.
"When you are a woman with me," he continued, "when you cry at me or when you glow like you did over my son…" he couldn't speak for a moment, hand curling to a fist as he caught his air and the taste in the back of his throat. "How much I desire you, how much I repulse myself, all frightens me. Yet…when…when I treat you like one," he shrugged loosely, "you seem to dislike me more but with half the passion."
Yugi took a deep, complacent, breath and sighing out glanced to the book limp in her hand before tracing Atemu's cheek bones with some mercy. "I confess," she sighed, "I didn't expect anything much but its more than I guessed you'd get."
"And what does that mean?" Atemu rankled.
"Hush that look," Yugi flicked her wrist tiredly. "Would you like another epiphany or not?"
He stiffened, eyes darting. "Is it worse?" He swallowed.
"For you I suspect so," the Sultana sighed.
Atemu nodded, curtly, eyes skipping to the fire.
"I love men like your father and your bother. They're some of the few men I've ever loved." Yugi folded the book shut between her fingers, resting it in her palms. "There aren't many men like them in Europe. Which is why you love it there and we can't possibly get along as is. I appreciate your kindness, your effort, but I still don't like you."
"Why?" Atemu rasped watching the blades of heat in the hearth. "I can't understand you. I don't know how they could."
"They didn't." Yugi snorted. "They didn't care to. They didn't have your crippling sensitivity and they directed their stubbornness to better ends."
"Then what?" He groaned.
"Men in Europe, men like you, call women like me witches because we frighten them. I will stand on my own two feet, I will look you in the eye and I will not apologize for thinking or feeling with independence. I am not a possession and if I am I am a weapon." Yugi's fingers flexed round the book. "You're attracted to strength I think, sometimes, but I can't tell with you… I hate that.
That's why I loved Qazzadara and Mahado. They were honest. They were not perfect but they were honest. For good or bad, whatever they thought or felt, they held it and they showed it and they would argue for it. They were comfortable enough in themselves, in their strength, to not be afraid of me or anything I felt or thought. They could argue without calling their opponents witches." Yugi sighed, shoulders slumping tiredly. "You're not a bad man Atemu. You can be kind, you love, you do good but… You don't face me. You don't face yourself."
Se laughed, groaning gently as she shook her head;
"I liked you better when you were angry. I like you now sometimes when you own yourself. You are a good king, a good brother, a terrible fool and a god-awful romantic. There are much worse qualities to have than passion in everything like you do. You would like to beat me at everything, you would like to be perfect, but I would like you better if you were honest. Qazzadara had a thousand vices but no shame. When you tell me you have a flaw you don't care to get fixed I can enjoy your insight and your decision. When you play games, terrified of losing, I think you're a fool."
Atemu laughed, brokenly, bitterly stuck with the fire.
"I can do nothing right with you…"
"You can stop cowering." Yugi spat. "You are sorry, I can see that and I'm glad but…" she sighed, "pull yourself together. This isn't you. I can't stand you treating me with so much fear. Say whatever you want to say and say it knowing in yourself you're proud of it. When men are confident enough not to give a rat's what other people think of them it means they have nothing to be ashamed of."
Sighing, fingers quaking, Atemu bought his exhausted hand to his face and turned into it. He couldn't stand the suffocating pressure of fear. Almost gnawing his tongue he wanted to say something, he ached but he couldn't stand to push it out.
"Go to bed," Yugi ordered mercifully. "Be yourself in the morning. This withering man act doesn't suit you. You've got too much fire to be watery."
He nodded, painfully, into his hand and swearing to himself turned.
It hurt, terribly, like everything Yugi did because it was true. It was her rightness, her unrelenting presentation of that that fascinated, horrified and weakened him.
At breakfast in her chambers Yugi was carving a strawberry, slicing off a bruise. The ladies were dismissed for the morning to eat in the hall. The French having resolved to give Yugi a constant, throbbing, headache pushed her to enjoy whatever hour of peace she could steal under a ruse of prayer or illness.
The steward by the door jolting drew Yugi's attention before the opening of the door itself. The noise was from the wrong direction and striding in from the adjoining bedroom neither of them seemed to sleep in Atemu…
"Well," Yugi glanced over his fresh face, "morning to you Sir."
"Milady," Atemu approached lazily, hand coming to fasten across the back of her seat stabilizing him as he leant. "May I have a kiss?" He supposed quietly.
Yugi…
She'd asked for boldness, honesty, and she'd expected the insults back (had quite looked forward to them actually). Not this plain eyed requesting that suited his memories of Qazzadara better than they did virile Atemu. Yugi stuttered silently into a pause. There was no one here to play the act for, no Frenchmen, no courtiers, just the two of them and the guard who knew they hated each other.
"Heh," she laughed dismissively, "will you take one on the cheek?"
"Can I do better?"
"What will you trade me for it?" Yugi teased stiffly.
"Hmm," he considered, "I'd rather a gift than a trade."
Qazzadara made this banter when Yugi was fresh and friendless at court. It must've been…what seven years ago? She laughed weakly, disturbed. The stubbornness that made Atemu's likeness to the Sultan evident was all Yugi had ever planned on seeing or investing. She pondered, briefly, that the stiff masculine playfulness of men here was something…. Mahado's letters lessened the impact, Seth was not so physical… She was out of practice. Nodding, stumped stupidly, Yugi reached with her empty hand to Atemu's nearby jaw that dipped to greet her.
The kiss Yugi gave his lips, plucking them down like an apple, was brief and sexless. So had been the ones she gave Qazzadara but they had a tenderness that made them linger almost till improper. Still it was given, not grabbed, something bizarre for them. Atemu seemed surprised he'd gotten it so easily by asking and Yugi honestly was surprised she'd given it.
Lingering, uncertainly considering, Atemu pecked above Yugi's brow before standing;
"Ruskuyla," he snorted.
Yugi nearly coloured, turning in her seat to watch him go slapping his hand good humouredly at the side of the nervous, pink, steward who never seen them outside sourness.
Ruskuyla…
Yugi collected herself, turning back to the plates with the forgotten strawberry in her other hand, the knife where she'd left it. She'd been called that before by women at court. Only those she knew intimately mind, close family; Kisara, Mana'jet, Sesset, Kuli… direct in-laws. It was humiliating for a woman to call another, with whom she was not close, Ruskuyla. It was gravelly improper for a man to call a woman not his mother, sister or wife such.
It was a respected title. It denoted respect. In simple terms it was a derivative of lioness. They kept lions here in the East. Men modelled themselves off them, women did the same. Lions were polygamists technically speaking; one male to a pride of effective, productive, females. Ruskuyla meant essentially head-lioness, it was synonymous with authority, denoted a woman was successful, and thought of as such. It was something men said when they were proud, doting, and something they pointedly ceased to use when they were livid.
Anzu would never had gotten it, never have wanted it given the Eastern connotations with a kind of female power she found unbecoming to the sex but Yugi was a traditionalist. Atemu knew that, he…
Yugi forgot eating, forgot…
Flustered stupidly she turned back to the meal.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
The men spent the day out hunting, spar Timaeus who was consumed in writing letters in the great hall amongst the ladies and lay about children. The boys on their apprenticeships had come in from their training in the classrooms and fields to eat, the younger babes were dallying about their mothers for the hour they had them, clinging at their skirts, and with the French out everyone was at peace from playing pretend.
Sesset lifted the newest babe over her head, Briga's first child, and leaning into the window panes trapped in a grand European gown Yugi glanced to Timaeus.
"Who are you writing too milord?" She murmured.
"Uh," Timaeus startled, buckish and shy round Yugi now though he was unable to stop smiling. "Simply keeping the Tsar informed Majesty."
"Do you have a large family in Ryussia?" Yugi folded her hands tucking them in her lap. "I haven't heard you speak of them my friend."
"Elder brothers and a married sister," Timaeus shrugged lazily. "I have the fortune of coming from a good house."
"A good inheritance set aside?" Yugi assumed not and, agreeing, Timaeus shook his head.
"No, alas; I considered the church for a long while, given it would defend me in my old age, but military service and chivalry grasped my heart."
"It suits you better," Yugi chuckled brushing the man's wrist. "I wish I could make you stay here with us rather than retiring back to Ryussia."
"I would like that myself," he murmured holding Yugi's glance tenderly, "this is a beautiful country it strikes me, but I fear it may be impractical milady."
"Nonsense; I order marriages and you, Sir, are so fine a man I don't know if I have a woman worth you."
Timaeus chuckled, shoulders seeming to ease as if, at last, in a quiet moment they'd fallen back to being friends after that disastrous kiss. The ambassador consented at last to squeeze Yugi's hand. "I would like that if I could have the honour of your Majesty's liaison."
"I promised you I would give my blessing upon any union of ours," Yugi alluded hesitantly watching Timaeus' face for tension, "and that still stands."
The Ryussia kissed the back of her palm daintily, Yugi's fingers in his thicker, more brutalized, set and sighing the Sultana eased. In the mulled warmth of the midday court, the visitors away, she remembered pungently why she loved this place and why she would die and be buried on this shore rather than any other she could escape to.
"Milady," Timaeus lowered her hand, "may I ask you if you have any family?"
"I did," Yugi nodded nonchalantly, "but I confess sir I don't know if they are still living or if they have multiplied or if they bother to remember me. There's nowhere for me to send any letters."
"No one you can ask for guidance?" The man seemed unsettled.
"Oh I have Mahado for that," a twinkle settled into Yugi's eyes.
"Do your kinsfolk know your rank? Your fortunes?"
"No," Yugi confessed, "though doubtlessly they'd be pleased."
"Do you not miss them?"
"Of course," she shrugged offhandedly, "but there's no way to reach them."
"Oh Milady…" Timaeus withered. "If I could…"
"I know," Yugi smiled, "I know you would but I have so much family here I hardly miss them. I have goddaughters and godsons by the multitudes, brothers in-law, sisters in-law, aunts and uncles…"
"And we love you."
In the afternoon, the garden lush but stagnant with thick heat, the slaves fanned them in the shade of the veranda while Sesset passed about cold drinks fresh from the kitchen maids. With the girls and the drinks the old house steward, the crone, shuffled up to Yugi's side.
"Majesty."
"Dear," Yugi smiled, one of her goddaughters cross-legged on the tiles between her knees having her hair brushed while she fondled a doll and chattered at the cats hugging close to the women in hope of scraps.
Shuffling closer the crone arched towards Yugi's ear and murmuring began to recount the last few days from the microscopic details of the servants. A letter from the king of France to his wife, to his ministers, to the king of Brittany-
"What did it say?" Yugi whispered.
"Asking about a possible betrothal between his new daughter and the crown prince of Brittany," the crone dissuaded her fears. "We resealed it and sent it off."
"Thank you," Yugi nodded, "continue please Dear."
Yugi wondered, planning, scheming, assuring herself against the possibility of a crusade, what kind of life this sweet little girl between her knees would have. She had been raised in the back of a caravan to rise as Sultana across the seas. She had never imagined such a thing. What of this girl? Daughter of a princess, daughter of a duke, in the exotic East, godchild to a queen, her earliest memories of being seen too by royals in palaces… Where would she go? Who did she dream she would be? Yugi would see her grow but the concept of what would happen to her frightened the Sultana given how far Yugi's own life had shifted.
She pulled the goddaughter back by her shoulders, wrapped her arms around her, kissed her dotingly and laughing the child squirmed giggling over the crone.
"Will that be all your highness?"
"Yes, I think so," Yugi smiled up from the blackened curls. "Thank you again for your loyalty, I'll have one of the stewards send payment."
Watching her shuffle away with the tray and the kitchen maids Yugi murmured to Lurek beside her.
"What do you tell yourself at night my friend?" Yugi sat up from the babe.
"About what in particular Majesty?" The older woman supposed offering Yugi a chilled drink.
"How do you bear sending your tiny babies out in the world? How do you stand knowing that one day your girls will face men, unarmed, in the most private arena known to man fighting for their very pride?"
She chuckled. "You raise wolves, not lambs. You fashion girls that can make men swoon with a flick of their lashes and you harden sons whose name's strike fear in the hearts of all other men."
Yugi wondered why she asked it but, it occurred to her, she had no comparison, she had no mother's perspective. She was a grown woman with no children of her own and, seriously, no intention to have them.
When the drums boomed from the outer wall the ladies were just on their way in from the gardens. Upon realizing the men had returned Yugi… Yugi wasn't quite sure how she felt. The immediate rush was one of moaning disappointment; the French. As for Atemu… This morning had scrambled her. She expected to lure Atemu back to their natural, comfortable, dislike of each other but she wondered now, leaning into the sandstone pillars, if she'd encouraged something else. She supposed perhaps, tentatively, that that lost hope that they could one day get along with half the good humour Yugi had found with Qazzadara or Mahado occurred to him. There were similarities between the three men but…
During her first months within the palace Yugi had found Qazzadara unsettling. She enjoyed his company, his complete brutal honesty, but she had been unnerved by the fact she never quite knew what the Sultan would say or how he would react. Once Yugi knew his moods, his preferences, she could put herself at peace with them even if they didn't agree. With Atemu she found, in a flush, she suddenly had much the same problem. It wasn't so much she was familiar with Atemu's way of thinking it was, rather, Yugi had never attempted to have a civil conversation with him and she had absolutely no concept of what that would look like.
Pressing her hands to her stomach, Yugi inhaled deeply waiting for the wave to come and whatever it may bring when the men found them. God…
Seth, Abraxas and Atemu came through the curtains, the children burst into exuberance, and slipping round the stone into the sunlight Yugi slid out of immediate sight.
"You're filthy!" Kisara cawed boisterously, clapping her husband.
"Should've seen it!" Seth cackled. "Got a whole hoard of catches!"
"Did you dig for them?" She scoffed, "because you've brought back half the riverbank! I'll have to have the servants wash you with the children!"
Abraxas broke into hysterics, cutting off everyone else with that booming cackle he'd inherited from his father's youth. To hear Abraxas laugh was to hear Qazzadara laugh, to hear Atemu rage was to hear Qazzadara rage, to hear Seth fluster, turning up his nose, was to hear Qazzadara bustle… Yugi smiled, closing her eyes and turning her face up to the sun.
"There you are."
Yugi startled.
She couldn't hold the scoff that popped out of her.
Atemu wiped a clod of dirt from his ruined cheek, grasping the pillar he was leant round.
"What did you do?"
"Taught the French how to wrestle."
"Did you beat them?"
"Pft," Atemu scoffed, "of course."
Yugi almost laughed, raising her knuckles to her mouth as resting into the stone Atemu peeled off his sodden riding gloves.
"I have to get changed before dinner."
"Of course," Yugi shot back almost tartly.
"Come with me?" Atemu proposed.
"What for?" She stiffened, stomach coiling as her arms folded. "You're a man; you've mastered buttons."
"I want to talk." The Sultan grunted unapologetically. "I'll be exhausted after dinner, it'll be the middle of the night. You can bear me for an hour can't you?"
"If you're civil," she shot brazenly, testing.
"Never," Atemu smirked. "I'll throw you over my shoulder and force you into polite conversation."
"I'd believe it."
"Then you better come of your own free will or in dragging you I'll plaster everything with mud." He challenged.
Yugi paused, forgot what year it was for a second, and chortled, sighing, as she pushed her hair away from her face lifting her shoulders from the stone. Atemu's expression buckled in then spread out, surprised but pleased.
"Why this then?" Yugi lay herself down in a strapping dark chair by the dead hearth as Atemu's shadow filled behind the screen, the slave boys rushing underfoot with fresh clothes and their heads down as if they were scurrying creatures who didn't exist.
"You ordered me to be brave didn't you woman?" Atemu called without any fury. "I swear, if you change your mind upon me again…"
"Ha!" She sniggered. "So you've got nothing in particular to say then?"
"Not a damn thing," the Sultan confessed, "but I want to ask."
"Ask what?"
"Anything I can think of," he tossed his upper vestments sodden to the floor for the slave to gather up, almost audibly expanding his broad chest with air. "Can we both concur to barely know each other?"
"Aye," Yugi permitted, folding her hands and crossing her legs, "but do we want to?"
"If I can't stand to fight with you anymore and as I've sold my soul in confessing you're admirable in one way or another," Atemu elaborated in illustration, "then I have to find something else to do, don't I? I can't hate you. I find my reasons are all peeling off and, well, anyway…"
"No, go on," Yugi encouraged placidly. "What were you going to say?"
"I have a dozen nieces and nephews now who know you as their adored aunt. There's a whole generation coming up, alongside my kin, and if I don't understand it soon I fear my world's going to get a tad colder."
"They glorify you," she slid in, "women are only good to boys for so long. They aspire desperately after other men in the end."
"All the same," he dismissed. "I go out of my mind trying to walk the line of civility without familiarity. I have no concept of how not to offend you and the days on eggshells are earnestly painful."
"You earned a while of that," Yugi slouched back folding her skirt to one side. "You can and have been cruel."
"Aye," Atemu consented, though he shuffled slightly uncomfortable, breath heavier, at having to be so blunt about himself. Christian men didn't like admitting they had flaws. They'd rather have ten thousand sins than one stupidity. Still; he tried, valiantly. "But do I have to bear that forever or have I done enough penance yet?"
"Hmm…" a hum of consideration rang out. The Sultan had apologized, he had been trying in this ridiculous shrinking way to be civil, had tried to avoid Yugi altogether, was trying still to be honest, had made himself expressly vulnerable now twice by confessing things… "No," Yugi decided, "I think I've been cruel enough to you already. I am sorry."
Atemu seemed to pause at that, for quite a long time, but with the screen between them Yugi couldn't know if he was tickled with a victory or embarrassed like a school boy or casting the flippancy of Yugi's voice off with a grimace.
"We really ought to start over," Yugi murmured eventually, laying her head back to regard the painted mandalas of the domed ceiling. "You're not a dreadful man, not at all really. You're actually quite a chivalrous one when you're not hard set on being intolerable. You love who you love admirably, I've never faulted you that, and you keep your word even when you give it to witches." Yugi didn't linger the thought however pondering to the air. "Would be nice to get along."
The rag in the washbasin behind the screen, scrubbing off the mud before Atemu changed, thumped into the water sopping keenly, glugged with weight.
Yugi waited a moment.
"Are you dead behind there?" She called eventually, drolly, to the ceiling. "Should I call a physician?"
"No," Atemu rasped eventually, in that hoarse grumble of a grown man. "Just give me a moment to recover."
"From what?" Yugi cawed, eyes rolling.
"I'm not accustomed to your compliments woman!" He cawed back without missing a beat, quite startling Yugi up in her seat. "You might as well have shown me a unicorn! I'm trying to decide if I should call it a hoax or not. Now let me soak in you being reasonable and manageable for a moment will you! Before you ruin the illusion by yanking me round again."
He didn't sound quite as bitter as he should've, Yugi wondered actually if she heard amusement and damn it all if she did or didn't because she laughed.
"Sir," Yugi managed eventually, easing from the amusement. "Ah…" her voiced died suddenly and she let it.
"What?" Atemu bemoaned snatching up the clean hose finally.
"Nothing," she tutted weakly, "something erroneous passed me."
"No, tis your turn now," he forced. "Out with it; what?"
"When you have yourself decent," Yugi clarified, "I mean to ask about this morning."
"What can't you ask now? It's all so much easier when I'm not trying to read your face as well as untangle syllables."
"Things not for little ears," she answered with a sing-song reference to the slave darting with Atemu's vestments to present him with a new jewelled mantle for across his clavicle.
"Fine, fine, a moment…"
Yugi closed her eyes, patiently, and a second later, true enough, Atemu emerged shooing the boys with the dirty clothes looking more himself and less a filthy rascal.
"My god your complexion lightened three whole shades," Yugi teased.
"What were you going to say then?" Atemu pressed coming to stand closer, though Yugi never quite liked the way of having a man standing over her.
"This morning you called me Ruskuyla," she slid her elbows off the rests of the seat and more into her lap.
"What of it?"
"Why?"
"Why did you give me Anzu's handkerchief?"
"To be kind," Yugi shrugged quite uncomfortable talking about it, "why would you want mine? I felt like doing something decent for you."
"Then," Atemu raised his palms and let them slap into his sides with a shrug as if that explained everything. Yugi frowned, the Sultan sighed. "I might not get on with you at the best of times but I can't call you an incompetent Sultana, annoyingly. I wanted to start the morning on a better foot."
"But…" Yugi twisted her fingers sceptically. "Do you mean that sort of thing?"
"You yelled at me to say what I meant last night." He challenged exasperatedly. "You mean do I respect you? Yes, unfortunately, I have to. If you were less competent I'd revel in having a superior foot to stand on but damn it all I don't."
Yugi chuckled mildly into her knuckles propping one elbow on the opposing armrest from Atemu.
"We should go," she decided, relenting the chance to rub it in.
"Fair enough," he allowed offering his hand to help her up.
With it they came to stand, a moment later, eye to eye or what would've been eye to eye had Atemu not a superior inch upon Yugi.
"May I?"
"Another one?" Yugi pursed her brow. "You're going to expect a kiss daily if I keep letting you."
"Can't I?"
"No," she challenged.
He huffed.
"Give me a good reason," she ordered.
"What if I want one?"
"That's not a reason."
"I'm your husband."
"That's not a good one."
He moaned and slipping her hand out of his she laughed. He grasped her wrist back however, abruptly, refusing to let the play end and let them dissipate off to face the French.
"What's a good reason?" He entreated.
"There isn't one I know of," Yugi confessed, unwilling to fold.
"I'll steal one," he threatened.
"You'll regret it."
Atemu groaned, buckling forwards. "Damn it woman, for god's sake, do I have to beg?"
"You can but I won't kiss you."
"You did this morning!"
"It's not this morning."
"What possibly-Argh," Atemu hissed. "You're intolerable for no reason!"
Yugi laughed, utterly unperturbed by his temper, as if to agree and hauling her in by her elbow he stole himself a kiss before forcing her back and turning to throw his hands up. Yugi didn't stop laughing but the fever lessened lips rumpled by the harsh, brief, bite of a man insistent upon getting something she wasn't sure she liked giving. To Mahado, to Seth, to all the kinsmen but… there was a difference. With Atemu there was not history of familial kissing.
Yet Yugi didn't feel…
She wasn't upset, she found, if anything? She might've been flushed.
Next time: Yugi and Atemu talk gods, Dartz has no reverence towards any such things, and the moment comes which changes everything forever.
