Heir of Beasts

Ch. 2.2- Sharp Objects

The carriage glitters gaudily in the bright noonday light. It's painted gold and adorned with sheets of red silk that dance in the desert breeze, blood red banners that belong on a battle field, not at a wedding. It's just the sort of thing a Vasayaste lord would choose, opulent to the point of being tasteless. If it was a true Dimaraste wedding the carriage would be simple, white, elegant without screaming effort.

Well, if it was a true Dimaraste wedding, there wouldn't be a carriage. For centuries Amarin brides have walked with bare feet from the gate of the palace to the door of the Goddess-House. They call it Aramizsa's Walk, after the path our matriarch took from the spot where she kneeled in prayer after conquering Shikkah to the ground where she declared her palace would be built.

Still, I can't expect a gutter-lord like Sholu Verlaina to have any knowledge, or any respect, for our traditions. What does he care how I get to the Goddess-House, so long as it reflects well on his regime? Maybe it's better this way, I think as Kaza hands me into the carriage. Maybe it's better all the traditions be obliterated, if it makes the marriage seem less real to me.

Kaza and Manit climb in with me and shut the doors, then the horses begin their slow promenade through the streets.

People are lined up in front of every building, waving brightly colored pieces of silk. They flutter in the wind like birds arrested mid-flight. They're awful things, garishly bright and frenetic. The longer I watch them, the more I feel like screaming.

I look down, to the wrists waving the wedding banners. Most are bare, but some are decorated with bracelets made of red string. Small packets of sugar dangle from the string, a superstitious charm meant to bless my marriage with sweetness. I know without looking that their husbands wear the dried core of the mavva, or marriage, fruit in their pockets to bring my union fertility.

I want to stop the carriage and go into that crowd and tear the sugar packets from those slender white wrists, letting their saccharine wishes fall to the sand where they belong. I want to throw those dried mavva fruits beneath the horses so they're ground into a leathery pulp. I want to steal those garish banners and use them to choke each and every Arzsan who dares to celebrate my so-called wedding day.

"They deserve whatever he does to them," I growl, letting the curtain separating me from the crowd fall. "Not one of them is worth the sand they stand on."

Kaza frowns. "You'd damn the entire population of Arzsa for daring to celebrate your wedding?"

I glare at him. "You wouldn't? Look at them, Kaza!" I pull back the curtain, revealing a sea of sound and color. "They're tying sugar to their wrists and tucking fruit into their pockets and throwing flowers, just like they did for my mother and her mother before her! They're acting like this is a real royal wedding. They're even singing the old songs!"

"What else can they do?" He asks. "You're not the only one who's suffered because of this revolution, and I'd bet most of them were suffering long before that, O'otani. These people are beaten down. They're hungry. They're afraid. Don't they have a right to sing and dance? Don't they have a right to wring hope from whatever soiled rag they choose?"

"No, they don't," I reply coldly. "They do not have a right to these traditions, these old songs. They forfeited that right the moment Sholu murdered the dynasty that founded those traditions and they did nothing!"

"What could they have done?" Manit asks, joining the conversation without looking at us. His face, as always, is as indecipherable as the dusty old poems Shira used to spend months translating from Old Shikkan into Alyezsani.

"Fought," I answer, "they could have fought."

"Some did," the older soldier answers, his jet black hair falling forward to obscure his already unreadable eyes. "You saw one who did, that man they strung up beside you on the gallows." I flinch, the image of Yeri Lazar's manic, hungry eyes flashing before me so brightly I almost believe him a specter in our carriage. I almost open my mouth to speak to those eyes, to tell them that all they heard was a lie, that all they see now is a lie, that I never have and never will betray Shira Amarin. Not for my life or anyone else's. Not even for my dignity, my pride, my voice. They might have it all before I let them have him.