Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
4
The Bluestocking
Lady Silence Mattson
Study Corridor, First Floor, Bower Manor, The Arbor
WODELL
I walked down the corridor, my feet in their slippers silent on the carpets.
I’d felt it in the night, the tremor. It brought a chill of fear and foreboding, as it had done now for months.
Even as the sensation of the earth moving was getting stronger, these feelings normally receded, perhaps slowly, but they did.
This time, they grew. So much, I was not able to regain sleep.
Now it was early evening of the next day and my father’s house had seen much activity.
Including a visit from a royal messenger, straight from the king, which caused a flurry of activity not only from the servants, but from my mother and father as well.
As usual, I had not been a part of it.
So, as usual, I had to use certain means to discover what was happening.
This I did, wending my way toward my father’s study, where I heard his voice, always loud and thus it traveled, as well as my mother’s, which was neither.
I heard this long before anyone I knew would hear it.
It was an oddity of mine, one of many, this unnatural hearing.
I’d long since learned to hide it, just as I had long since learned to do what I did once I’d stolen even closer.
Shifting into a recess in that corridor of my father’s castle, one that held a table with a bust of some proud, puffed out, male ancestor of mine that for some reason commissioned a sculptor to sculpt him while his lips sneered, I focused my mind, experienced the tingle up my spine, and I drew my cloak over me.
It shimmered just a moment before I felt the ethereal shadow overtake me, warm and snug.
Truth, I would live shrouded by my precious shadow if I could.
Not to be seen.
Not to be known.
Naught to be expected of me.
Naught for others to be disappointed about in me.
And mostly, naught for me to be disappointed about in others.
“Johan, we simply cannot ask this of Silence,” my mother said shakily, taking me from my thoughts, and I focused my attention on their conversation.
“We won’t be asking anything,” my father retorted. “It is her duty to her king, her father, her title, this very house. And Vanka, it cannot be borne that you don’t realize how bloody opportune this is. The chit has demonstrated we’d never find her a match, until now, and not surprisingly, it isn’t her who made it.”
My breath snagged.
A match?
My father continued.
“Now she’ll be wed to a king.”
Oh, by the goddesses, no.
Was King Gallienus looking for another wife?
He seemed to collect them at an alarming frequency, each one younger than the last.
Could he—?
My mother interrupted my rampant thoughts.
“It’s only in his father’s reign before him that land has even become a degree of civilized. They’re still barbarians.”
But…what?
The Airenzian could indeed be considered barbarians, if pressed. Their treatment of females left quite a bit to be desired. If history told it true, it was actually worse now after the Night of the Fallen Masters those centuries ago, when the Nadirii Sisterhood was born.
But mostly, it was civilized. They had laws (however, not reasonable ones for women). They had taxes. Schools. Hospitals. And they had the best engineers and architects in Triton, so they even had running water in their abodes, and in some, you could turn a lever, and it would run hot.
I couldn’t say in my several journeys there that it was not austere (though the countryside was lovely, the vineyards, olive groves, vast fields of grain, and the lovely, large Cairngorms Lake was astonishingly beautiful).
However, Sky Bay was actually quite terrifying, the whole city built from that glinting black stone. Of course, the buildings were beautiful, in their way, considering the talent of the architects that designed them. They were still frightening.
And the severe citadel carved into the side of the highest peak overlooking the bay was definitely terrifying (though also quite lovely, in a daunting manner).
But for all intents and purposes, Airen was even more civilized than Wodell.
Unless you were female.
Though, even females in Wodell (and, I’d heard, in Firenze) didn’t have it like the Nadirii.
Ah, to be a Nadirii.
I’d often thought I’d do quite well with the Sisterhood.
Though I didn’t reckon I’d be very good with a sword.
Or a bow.
Or a staff.
Or daggers.
Alas, perhaps the Nadirii was not for me.
“They’re also the richest nation in Triton,” my father said, interrupting my thoughts.
I blinked into my shadow.
The richest nation in Triton was…
“The Firenz don’t practice fidelity to their mates,” my mother remarked sharply.
…Firenze!
“Not the men, nor the women,” she went on. “And they have those retched communal baths where they all, women and men, bathe naked…together. They freely engage in that terrible smoke. And the violence practiced there is irrational. They fight amongst themselves, liberally. Since his ascendance, the king himself has quelled three coup attempts. These happening in the first two years after he assumed the throne. But even if in the last three there have been no rebellions, there still has been fighting. Their clans regularly—”