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I woke to the lovely sensation of Mireia’s lips on mine while her tongue explored my mouth. I could sense her aura, so I knew from the very start that it wasn’t the goddess still messing with me. Thus reassured, I simply contented myself with enjoying the flavor of the real Mir and returning her attention. The morning sun was warm on my skin and the bed was comfy, after all. Why not enjoy it for a bit?
“Good morning, My Ladies,” came a familiar voice, with a barely suppressed giggle threatening to escape.
The presence in my [Fairy Sense] of Genette beside the bed finally entered my awareness, and I blushed deep scarlet. After breaking away from Mireia, I pouted at her dimpled smirk.
“You knew she was there!” I accused.
Mireia burst out in merry laughter, then captured my mouth for one more kiss before rolling out of bed. One of my husband’s chambermaids hurried to intercept the nude girl with a house robe that concealed considerably more than what she arrived in last night.
She and I had been alone in my husband’s bed when I woke, so she, originally in the middle, had been able to roll off on his side. The Royal Prince had already risen and started his day, it seemed.
“May I help you dress, My Lady?” Mireia asked as I also slipped out from under the sheets.
As Genette put a similar robe on me, she answered Mir in disapproving tones, “You need to stop thinking of yourself as one of the maids, Lady Mireia. You are a royal concubine now. The chambermaids will dress you, and I will take care of My Lady.”
“Not for another three weeks. And I’m not ‘Lady’ Mireia until then, either,” she muttered. Both statements were technically true, although everyone was already adding the honorific for her for good reason.
Or to be more accurate, deliberate goodwill. In strictly factual terms, her current identity was, ‘the slave girl sleeping with both the Royal Prince and his wife’. It was better for them to not get used to thinking of her that way, when she would be the equivalent of nobility soon, but they were mostly doing it because she was a very popular girl in the Castle.
Maybe I should quietly tell her that it was better for her to just accept it.
<She’s a slave?> a voice I was still becoming accustomed to wondered inside my head.
I discovered last night that she could read my thoughts. Sometimes I could pick up on hers. I had spent what seemed like days, and was at least several hours, learning from Rhea how to commune inside my head with this voice who was apparently one of my many previous lifetimes. She was a woman named Lydia, from a polis, a city-state, called Athenai, in the land of Attica. She was apparently only a bit older than me when she was murdered, and now, she was living in my head.
This was the part I had the most trouble comprehending. If she and I were the same person, how could we be separate? Rhea’s explanation, that I had enough ‘spiritual capacity’ to allow her mind and memories to become aware separate from mine, was very difficult to accept or understand.
I still wasn’t used to this talking-inside-my-head thing, but it would be alarming for Genette if I began to speak to an imaginary friend during our walk. I answered cautiously as Genette led me back to my own suite to bathe and dress.
<She’s in a legal limbo. We don’t want to free her, because it would have the effect of legitimizing her enslavement, which was illegal in the first place. But it was done in a duchy on the other side of the civil war we are fighting. We have to beat that duchy before we can get their records and officially have her enslavement ruled illegal and annulled. In the meantime, Rod commandeered her through royal privilege, so she’s his slave.>
There was nothing in either Temple law or Royal law prohibiting a woman of marriageable age of any status from becoming a concubine, so we could legally finalize the concubinage without mentioning her status, and then quietly erase her bondage later.
I didn’t just have to comprehend and accept Lydia’s existence and identity. I had to work with this woman. Somehow, the gods had given her the knowledge I didn’t have concerning how to control these things inside of me that I had somehow developed during my missing three months. They couldn’t give that knowledge directly to me without triggering all the connections that would supposedly cause everything else to flood in and kill me. I had to learn everything anew. So, they had tasked her to manage it and teach me.
<Can you really stop my need to feed all the time?> I wondered as I stood in my dressing room, the center of attention for Genette and a pair of chambermaids whose names I didn’t yet know. Lilsa and Ena were off today.
Lydia corrected, <I can only release blood from the core as you need it. You aren’t supposed to be using the blood that way, and it doesn’t work well, so you need to learn the right way. You’re supposed to be using the pneuma in the blood core directly without releasing it, not taking excess amounts into your bloodstream which then dissolve and go to waste.>
<So when I have an attack like during dinner, you can’t help me?>
<No, I can help you, but you have to be aware of the blood I release so you can take it in, or it’s useless. Last night, I tried to send you blood but you couldn’t hear me and you didn’t absorb it. That’s why Rhea decided to step in and change our strategy.>
It bothered me that ‘goddesses’ were apparently so prone to ineffective solutions. This wasn’t the first time I heard about them having to change tactics. They seemed to be guessing at the answers.
<That’s because we are unique, My Lady. They’ve never seen a case like ours.>
“My Lady?” the chambermaid called, and I jolted slightly. I guess she’d been speaking without me responding.
“I’m sorry,” I smiled. “Did you ask something?”
“You should raise your arm again,” Genette stated, her voice a little dark.
I realized they were done putting on the under layers of the kimono on me. Genette was holding the outer garment, waiting for me to give my arm so she could slide it on.
Now that I was paying attention, the process went smoothly. The three maids quickly swaddled me in finest fabric, turning me into an exquisite example of a highly traditional upper-class Dorian lady.
I sensed that Lydia had been holding back from saying anything further until they could finish, aware that she was distracting me. I also had the feeling she had been watching through my eyes with fascination as I stood before the mirror.
<This is amazing cloth,> she observed at last, as I turned to check the completed ensemble. <What is it made of?>
<It’s a very high quality weave,> I confirmed, <but it’s just ordinary silk.>
Actually, I was a little surprised this wasn’t obvious. Rhea had told me that Lydia benefited from all of my senses, unless she chose to shut them out on purpose, so she should surely be able to feel the unmistakable texture of silk on my skin.
Instead, she echoed, <Silk?> with a distant tone, as if the word itself were unfamiliar.
It was hard to believe, but… <Did you not have silk in your country?>
<I don’t believe so,> she said, after a moment of thought. <It seems rather like linen, but it’s surely too soft to be that. The softness is like wool, but it’s too light for that. Although I wonder if it’s perhaps the wool of India I’ve read about?>
<All I know is, it’s a common fabric here,> I answered. <It’s costlier than wool, linen or cotton, but it has many purposes. And quality textiles such as this are the number one export of my duchy.>
I said it proudly, even though I can hardly claim personal credit for the silk trade, which goes back to prehistory.
Mireia and I had a very late breakfast without Rod, who had left the Main Keep at dawn. The news of a great battle that broke out near the crossroads town of Gattes on the Parnese front had necessitated a large-scale meeting in the Tower Keep. Because of the emergency, and because Rod’s order to let Mireia and me sleep, throwing my morning schedule into complete disarray, Colonel Morgas came in to brief me during my meal.
I tried and failed to get her to sit down and eat with us. Before I could override her hesitation, Lady Benedetta politely scolded me for troubling her, and I gave up with a sigh. She stood there as if reporting to me in Mother’s office, as Mireia dined on soup and steamed buns and I toyed with my salmon, which I was too self-conscious to actually eat in front of the gray-haired military woman.
The reason for my husband’s surprise meeting was not bad news in the sense of the war turning against us, but it was very bad news in the human sense. I was relieved to hear that our side had withstood the sudden, well-executed counter-attack, but I was troubled by the heavy losses on both sides.
Not as troubled as Lydia, though. Once Morgas left, she unloaded on me.
<Six thousand soldiers killed, just on your side,> Lydia quailed. <And ten thousand on the other? How many phalanxes were wiped out?>
My mind boggled briefly when she mentioned a tactical unit that grew obsolete before the Imperial era. Phalanxes were a tactic from nearly three thousand years ago, when wars involved smaller nations and smaller numbers. Such a thing would never work on any modern battlefield in the presence of air forces or wide-scale magic attacks. And while I had studied the tactic in knight training, the number of spear-wielding soldiers per unit didn’t seem to be part of my knowledge. Or rather, I think it might have varied through history.
<Casualties are both killed and too injured to fight,> I corrected instead. <Hopefully less than half of those casualties are fatalities, if Heaven was merciful. The rest should be in field hospitals.>
<Even so!> she still fretted. <I don’t know if the entire League lost that many at Plataea, one of the greatest battles of all time!>
I had no idea about the wars of her land, but if they fought in phalanxes, they surely weren’t fighting a war involving a vast land like ours.
<It’s still too many!> she insisted.
<Certainly,> I agreed. <I am shocked as well. This was a terrible battle, and the only positive is that our soldiers prevailed. And the strength I must show as their leader requires that I bear it without recoiling.>
“My Lady,” Mireia stated after some thought, “I would like to help with the injuries.”
“You can’t. Gattes is several hundred miles north of here, Mir,” I answered. “And it’s inside Parna proper. Neither I nor Rod are going to allow you to travel that close to the front, and especially not in that place.”
“I know,” she persisted. “But she mentioned them flying the seriously wounded here for treatment.”
Of course, she was just trying to find some way she could make the terrible news less awful. But as she said, Morgas had mentioned that General Baiset found a novel use for the unusual number of air transport beasts he had on hand, as a consequence of them having just moved into the area.
The enemy had tried to catch them off-guard before they were dug in, after probably having made a tactical retreat to lure them into position, or they would never have been there in numbers. The general’s stroke of genius, to relieve the field hospitals of their more challenging cases by shuttling them by air to the Capital, wasn’t a use of flying beasts I had heard of before, but it had been inspired. The military hospitals here in Narses were mostly emptying of all the casualties they’d taken in the demonic attack, but still operating. They could take as many as he could get to them.
The idea had impressed me a lot. Of course, it hadn’t been all or even most of the seriously wounded, but the numbers Baiset managed were still very meaningful. I told Morgas I wanted to direct the military to prepare plans to be able to put such forces into action this way in the future when the situation called for it. Something told me it was sure to make a difference.
But, “It wouldn’t be enough to overwhelm the healers on hand here, Mir. I’m sure you could help, but my husband doesn’t want us leaving the Castle if at all possible.”
<Ask him to permit it, My Lady,> Lydia suddenly said.
That caught me off-guard. I may have shown it on my face, because Mireia looked puzzled. But Lydia repeated the request.
<Persuade your husband, My Lady. I believe it will be useful to you.>
