The woman had produced a man’s leather belt and beat Karris’s bottom raw. Like she was a recalcitrant child. She’d been caught three times, and the punishment never changed, but gradually her will to resist did. It had seemed like too small and inconsequential a rebellion to keep up.
Now she wished she had. The throbbing was already spreading to her back. Not long now for the diarrhea to start.
Love being a woman.
The other women of the Blackguard took advantage of their relative freedom from moon blood as also granting relative freedom from worrying about pregnancy. Karris just enjoyed her relative freedom from pain. It had been years since she’d had sex with anything more than her pillow. Not that she wanted to think about that right now. In fact, she thought if she even saw a man she’d tear his eyes out.
It was for men that women suffered this. As the old saw said, a woman has to bleed to fertilize man’s seed. Chronologically confused, but true enough.
They brought her the dress in the morning.
It wasn’t the kind of clothing one would expect to be asked to wear for one’s execution. It wasn’t an exact copy of the dress she’d worn when she’d finally given in to her father’s demands and joined Gavin at the head of his armies when they’d reclaimed Ru, but it was close. For one thing, it was black silk rather than green. King Garadul’s tailor had obviously been working either from memory or a painting of the day or they had simply decided to alter the dress for the changes of sixteen years of fashion.
The fit would be perfect, of course.
Karris stared at the dress with loathing all day, as cramps wracked her guts, as the inevitable diarrhea came, as she nearly passed out a couple of times. That dress symbolized more than giving in to Rask Garadul’s childish fantasy. That dress was Karris’s youth. It was the girl she’d been. It was femininity, softness, yielding. The desperate grubbing for people’s eyes, for the jealousy of the other girls, for the envy of older women, for the attention of men. Karris had been weak and petty and stupid, hopelessly dependent.
They would force her to wear the dress, of course. She could wear it now, or be beaten until she gave in and wore it. Of course, she could tear it to shreds. While satisfying, that would only delay the inevitable. Besides, they weren’t going to let her out of here without the dress. She was certain of that much. What she didn’t know was if they would let her out even with the dress. Still, it was a better chance than nothing. And how was she going to kill Rask Garadul from in here?
She put on the dress.
She wanted to hate it. She wanted to hate it with a passion. But she hadn’t worn anything that fit her so well in years. Her Blackguard garb, of course, fit like a glove, but those were work clothes. This, the whisper of fine silk on skin, was altogether different. It fit like a sheath. If it hadn’t been so perfectly tailored, she wouldn’t have been able to breathe, much less move. The dress was curve-hugging around her hips and stomach, and the more generous scalloped neckline drew attention to both the liquid dazzle of folds of fine silk and to her cleavage. Surely her old dress hadn’t been so low-cut in the back, the few thin interlaced ties only emphasizing her back’s essential nakedness. Looking down at her chest—there was no mirror in the room—she hoped she didn’t get cold. If she did, everyone was going to know it.
Had her dress been unlined when she was that stupid sixteen-year-old? Had she not even noticed? She honestly couldn’t remember. All she could remember was loving that dress. She’d felt like the goddess Atirat standing next to Gavin in it, long hair caught up in a diamond-and-emerald-encrusted tiara, people practically worshipping them. She’d convinced herself that she could love Gavin. At first, before the Luxlords’ Ball, she’d felt more attraction toward him than toward Dazen. Surely she could blow that coal back to flame.
Dazen had been perpetually in his elder brother’s shadow, and he seemed content with it. Gavin had been so confident, so masterful. She’d been drawn to him irresistibly, as everyone was. But after that night at the Luxlords’ Ball, everything had changed. After she got to know Dazen, suddenly there hadn’t seemed to be much depth to Gavin. Dazen had never understood his own strength. He had worshipped Gavin, projected all his own virtues onto his older brother, been blind to his faults and exaggerated his qualities. Gavin had fed on all the adoration and grown fat on it.
But Gavin was still gorgeous, stylish, commanding, and admired. To the sixteen-year-old Karris, other people’s regard had been very important. She’d always wanted to please her father, her mother, Koios and her other brothers, her magisters, everyone. Gavin was everything good. He was the Prism, his brother by that point a disgraced runaway and a murderer. Karris remembered convincing herself she could be content with the Prism. Content—with the most admired, feared, desired man in the Seven Satrapies. Besides, after what Dazen had done, she had to marry Gavin or what was left of her family would be ruined.
On the platform announcing their betrothal, Karris had thought she really was going to be happy. She had admired her fiancé. Gavin always cut a fine figure. She had enjoyed every minute of the attention.
At dinner that night, Gavin had made a jest to her father about taking Karris back to his rooms and not sleeping a wink. Karris’s father, ordinarily so traditional, the man who’d always sworn his daughter wouldn’t give milk until some young satrap bought the whole cow, the man who had beaten Karris for giving her virginity to Dazen, that man, that hypocrite, that coward, had chuckled nervously. Until that moment, Karris had been able to stave off her rising panic. At least I won’t have to sleep with him until we’re married, she’d thought. I’ll be able to fall in love with him in the coming months. I’ll forget Dazen. I’ll forget my shivers when he kissed the back of my neck. I’ll forget that swelling in my chest I felt every time he gave that reckless grin. Everyone else is right, Dazen isn’t half the man Gavin is. I can’t love Dazen after what he did.
But there had been no escape. Karris had chosen her own kind of cowardice and gotten roaring drunk. Her father had noticed too late—or just in time, depending on how you looked at it—and forbade the servants from giving her more wine before she could pass out at the table. She couldn’t even remember what she’d said at the table, but she did remember Gavin half-carrying her back to his room. Her father had watched her go with empty eyes; he said nothing.
She’d thought being drunk would help her be docile, quiet, malleable. It had worked, and she didn’t know why she was so bitterly disappointed about that. When she’d turned her face away from his kisses, he’d mistaken it for shyness and kissed elsewhere. When he’d pulled off her slip and she’d covered herself with her hands, he’d mistaken it for modesty. Modest? When she’d been with Dazen, she’d gloried in his eyes on her. She’d been bold, shameless. She’d felt like a woman—though now she knew she’d only been playing at being a woman in so many ways. With Dazen, she’d felt beautiful. With Gavin, she was filled with such unutterable despair it choked her cries in her own throat. She couldn’t remember if she even protested, if she’d asked him to stop. She’d wanted to, but her memory was fogged. She didn’t think she had. She’d kept thinking of her father saying, “Our family needs this. Without this marriage, we’re ruined.” And she hadn’t fought.