Counterweave

16. A MEASURE OF ESCAPE

Salettin threw off the heavy ornamented veil and waited for Raeta to style Chala's hair and arrange it around the lighter headdress. Not for the first time he found himself overwhelmed with her beauty. She indeed enthralled him. The past days, with her sleeping beside him, it took all his resolve not to take her before the wedding. But he refused to consign her to a life of slavery. He wanted more for her, and for himself, than either one of them being enslaved by his father.

As he watched Raeta leave the ballroom, he recalled her request. After Mother consigned Chala to be her slaves' slave, Raeta and Emree wanted to be the slaves who owned the former princess, "since she is no longer of any use to you," Raeta had added. They even had a pet name picked out for her, Naughty Babydoll, and found the thought of punishing her funny.

They would not find their next assignment so humorous. He had already made arrangements for a bordello to take them in the morning. Since they were so conditioned to being slaves, they would never consider running away. He chuckled internally when he thought of them receiving regular wages, a concept they could not understand. He imagined them not spending a single coin of their wages unless the bordello owner gave his permission, and not knowing what to buy unless he told them.

As soon as Raeta left the gathering, he gazed at his wife, wishing he could let her know that he still loved her, but out of necessity he kept his love for her behind a very tough shield. It was not strong enough to keep his father out, but his father no longer seemed interested in her. Salettin considered that a small blessing, and hoped it was permanent.

Mother, he discovered late that evening, had spent the hour after the doctor left with Chala, time enough not only to erase everything, but to place anything she wanted into his wife's mind. Mother was very good at this. When she finished, the slave knew he or she faced death, or something worse, at the slightest infraction. Salettin wondered what his mother had placed, or removed, from Chala's memory.

"Raise your hands," the priest said.

He held up his left hand and she her right, and they were bound with silk cords, her hand clasping his, palms and inner arms together, to the elbow. This was to symbolize he ruled her absolutely, which on Chala's very first meeting with her, Mother had conditioned her to accept. He had loved that sassy, slightly disrespectful side of her he had met on their first day. He had wanted a wife and a partner, not a concubine. He wondered if that determined girl still existed.

The bells on her right wrist dug into his skin. He wished they had not been needed, but Chala was a Null. Even though Mother had taken away the memory of her being a Null, no erasure was perfect when it was an integral part of the person. He needed to know where she was, especially if she disappeared into Null.

Even though Salettin resisted, but Mother oversaw the process during her last hour with Chala.

"She needs to be punished," Alrenn told him afterwards. "Not even a slave would have been so detestable as to incite people against their Faj rulers."

When he saw what she had done, her wrists and ankles blistered and bleeding, he had been unable to keep a grimace out of his expression.

"Do not worry so much about any pain she suffered. When I explained that as long as she wore the bells, you would not throw her away, she didn't even cry out."

Salettin wanted to apply an ointment, but he wasn't allowed to see her today until after the celebration was over.

He pulled his wife to him and kissed her with excessive physical passion. His right hand, the only one free from the binding, explored her skin through the sheer cloth in a vulgar display of affection. His witnesses, as expected, sighed in envy.