Chapter II Humanity’s Other Inheritance
II
Humanity’s Other Inheritance
In the east wing of the castle, there was no silence that could not, at any moment, be broken by a howl or a scream.
These were the discordant, ear-piercing sounds of a child of great need and even greater greed.
If she was not attended to at once, her pink-cheeked, cherubic face cracked open with sobs, and tears rushed to the corners of her limpid blue eyes, brightening them further, like the ocean in the blistering midday sun.
And if she could not muffle her cries in her mother’s skirts, she grasped handfuls of her own golden hair and bit them, masticating the curls until they were ragged and soaked with spittle.
Her name was Meriope, and she was to be married in sixty-six days.
It was not clear, at least to Ninian, whether the small girl understood what fate awaited her.
Certainly her mother did not speak of it, at least in so many words.
Once, the castle’s tailor had come to their chamber with orders to measure the child for her gown, and the princess Marozia had slammed the door so hard in his face that bits of the wooden frame had splintered.
Then without even a glance at Ninian, she returned, expression pale and impassive, to her daughter’s side. They had been in the middle of a story.
This was no dull tale from a book, bloated with noble knights and virtuous maidens, dragons and romances and quests for grails.
This was a story that came rolling off Marozia’s tongue, and though she had told it more times than Ninian could count, it was always the same, down to the number of breaths she drew at each pause and which syllables she stressed. The story never, never changed.
Marozia took her daughter onto her lap and kissed her three times: once on each of her soft temples, and then on the top of her head.
Meriope wriggled with happiness and anticipation.
And Ninian busied herself with the ordinary chores of a handmaiden, but all the while she had her ears pricked, listening.
“The House of Teeth was not always the House of Teeth.” To her daughter, Marozia always spoke quietly, in a voice so sweet it almost tinged the air with the scent of flowers.
Ninian breathed deeply of it. “Our ancestors had another name, though it has been lost now. And when the plague came, they were wise enough to shut themselves up in their castle, remote in Drepane’s dark mountains.
While the other houses suffered and some ancient lineages were struck wholly from the earth, our venerable and noble house remained such—potent, preeminent. ”
Surely Meriope could not really understand such adult words; what did a child even know of mortality? While her mother spoke, Meriope sucked vigorously and noisily on her thumb.
“And then, when the plague had spent itself, there came another age, when the remaining noble houses of the island seized heretofore unknown power for themselves,” Marozia went on.
“The conquerors claim this was the magic of death, but really, it was the magic of life. Bodies rose from their graves and walked the earth again. Mothers were reunited with their children; sisters with their brothers; lovers with their lovers. The conquerors will tell you this was a time of darkness. But it was a time of joy.”
Ninian, who was cleaning out a chamber pot, paused in her ministrations to listen more closely.
“And of all the houses, it was ours who made greatest profit from this magic,” said Marozia.
“My great-grandfather, your great-great-grandfather, raised whole armies of the dead. Bravely he fought against the conqueror’s cruel blades.
We were stronger than the rest. And we were the very last to submit to Berengar, the last sword to crumble. ”
At this, Ninian shivered. Meriope gnawed on her thumbnail.
“This is your inheritance, my sweet one,” Marozia said, and stroked her daughter’s hair.
“Such power. Such glory. It is said that even the conqueror’s knees trembled.
Berengar the Boneless, they should have called him.
For while he was mighty on the field of battle, he was a dastard in the feasting hall.
He had to trick the lords of the island into acquiescence.
And then he killed them, in the traitorous manner of a coward, slitting their throats over their goblets of wine. ”
Marozia let out a breath that was shuddery with fury. For the briefest moment, silence reigned in the princess’s chamber. Ninian held the heavy pot aloft, afraid to interrupt this rare interlude of quiet with her scrubbing.
“What do you think of that, my dearest?” Marozia asked, dipping her head to look her daughter in the eye.
She was a beautiful child, Meriope, with the best features of both her parents—Liuprand’s azure eyes and hair of gold, her mother’s curls and dimpled chin and pearlescent skin.
Her beauty might one day surpass that of Marozia, Drepane’s bright-blooming rose.
Every nobleman in the kingdom would clamor and humble himself for her hand—that is, if she were not already promised to another.
If her fate had not been fixed before she was even a dream in her mother’s mind.
Meriope removed her thumb from between her lips and wiped the spittle on the front of her blouse. “I’m hungry,” she said.
So Marozia unlaced the front of her gown, baring her breasts to her daughter’s waiting mouth. The room filled with the sound of suckling. And Ninian returned to her task.
Ninian finished with the chamber pot as Marozia tucked her daughter into bed.
The single bed was large enough to fit the three of them, though just barely—when Meriope grew into her girlhood, there would not be room.
Except Meriope would not grow into her girlhood here in Castle Crudele.
Her time within these cold walls was nearly through.
Marozia perched on the other end of the bed as Ninian undressed her, first unlacing her slippers and sneaking a feel of her soft, supple calves.
These past years had not drained even a drop of her mistress’s beauty.
The bitterness in her heart did not show on her face.
The rage within her was kept fettered, invisible to the errant eye.
Only Ninian was able to see when it raised its fierce, blood-red head.
As Ninian slid the princess’s gown from her shoulders, Marozia said, “Go to the leeches’ bay. Fetch me the potion.”
Ninian stilled, the gown held limply in her hands.
Her mistress’s linens were stained with milk, sticky and translucent.
For six years they had been such, her breasts full and heavy, her nipples bitten and sore.
It pained Ninian to see. She remained silent for yet a moment more, and then said, softly, “Perhaps it can be deferred for tonight.”
At that, the sanguine maw of Marozia’s fury reared. The princess jolted to her feet and seized Ninian by the front of her dress.
“Do not defy me,” she rasped, “else I will banish you to the kennel to sleep with the dogs.”
Ninian flinched. “Yes, my princess. I am sorry.”
“Go now. I will finish disrobing myself.”
Marozia released her, and Ninian—so in love, even now—shivered at the loss of her touch.
Brusque as it was, Ninian longed for it, suffused to the brim with need.
She tried to quash this desire as she left the princess’s chamber and walked the halls, footsteps nearly soundless, a seizing, throbbing sensation between her thighs.
Later, she would tend to herself later, after she had serviced her mistress.
It was evening, and most of the leeches in the bay were resting on their cots.
The stench of herbs and poultices was so strong that it made Ninian’s eyes water and her nose itch.
She traveled between the cots, most of the beige-robed men not even bothering to lift their gazes as she passed, until she reached the very back of the chamber, which was mostly cloaked in shadow.
There, Truss and Mordaunt sat. Even in the half-light, she knew them, if not for their faces, then for the ever-present rattling of dice. They scattered across the upturned barrel they were using as a table and showed on one Seraph’s winged lion, and on the other a skull and crossbones.
“I’m here for the potion,” Ninian said, lifting her chin. “For the princess.”
It was Mordaunt who leaned forward, into the light. The years did not show on his face. He had looked gaunt when Ninian had met him, and looked gaunt still now. And Truss was still flabby above the belt.
“Here again,” Mordaunt said, shaking his head. “When will your mistress abandon this ghoulish practice?”
Ninian’s spine straightened with a jolt of anger. “It is the custom of her house. The most noble and most ancient house in Drepane.”
Truss wheezed a laugh. “The most noble house in Drepane is the House of Berengar.”
“Quiet, you,” Ninian bit out.
The years might not have changed these leeches, but Ninian had grown both bitter and bold with time.
Almost beautiful, too, she thought modestly.
The princess had her robed in fine gowns of pale violet, lavender, and gray, and her hair, though still the dull shade of muddy straw, was done up in a crown of gleaming braids.
Her skin had lost its rough, peasant ruddiness and was nearly as pale as her mistress’s now, for she, too, spent all her days in the east wing of the castle, never stepping, even by accident, into the light of the sun.
“Come now, girl,” said Mordaunt, in a pitying tone that only made Ninian hate him all the more.
“You are doing your mistress no favors by maintaining this charade. In sixty-six days, Meriope will be wed. She will be taken to the marshes and tumbled into the Master of Blood’s bed.
The princess would be better off preparing her for this fate than pretending she is still an infant in need of her mother’s milk. ”
Fury seared through Ninian. She would have smashed the leech’s face into the barrel if she could.
“You are a leech,” she hissed. “You are lower than a worm. You have no right to question the will of the princess.” Her face was as hot as an open flame.
“And besides—you give this tonic to Waltrude without trouble.”
“We have not given it to Waltrude in years,” Truss broke in. “The princeling is far past the need for a wet nurse. And it is her only task in this world to wring out her breasts in service of the Crown. A princess has greater purpose. She should not debase herself in this vulgar way.”
“The only thing my mistress wishes to be is a mother,” Ninian said. Her voice had grown soft against her will.
Truss lifted a shoulder. “Pity, then, that her daughter will be taken from her so soon.”
“Give me the potion,” Ninian whispered blackly. “Else I will make mincemeat of you.”
Her threat was idle, a shout flung down an empty hall with no returning echo.
But the leeches had no convictions and little strength of character.
It was why they had joined this order of rote tasks and banal labors.
They moved through the world like fish carried through a current, never so much as flicking their silver tails or turning their open-mouthed faces toward the sky.
They mostly grumbled over their little game of luck being interrupted.
After several moments of sulky preparation, Mordaunt handed Ninian the tonic in a glass vial. She took it and left the leeches’ bay without another word.
Back in the princess’s chambers, Marozia was already undressed and tucked under the covers, but she was not sleeping. Her eyes were wide open and stiff in a manner that suggested she had not blinked in quite some time. When she heard Ninian enter, she lifted her head arduously from the pillow.
“Bring it here,” she whispered.
On the other side of the bed, Meriope was sleeping, limbs flung out to her sides, except for her left arm, which was laid over her chest so that her thumb could remain in her mouth. Dried spittle crusted the front of her nightgown. But her sleep looked consummate and dreamless. Ninian approached.
Marozia pushed herself up onto her elbows as Ninian lowered herself carefully onto the bed. The princess parted her lips. Ninian uncapped the vial and poured the potion in. She watched, with a tremulous heartbeat, her mistress’s throat pulsing and bobbing as she swallowed.
Ninian’s gaze lowered to the collar of Marozia’s sheer nightdress, and then lower still. She could see the way her mistress’s breasts swelled and stiffened, the tonic taking hold at once. Her own stomach clenched, desperate with desire.
“Go on, then,” Marozia said quietly.
Ninian tried to restrain her eagerness as she bore her mistress down on the mattress. She climbed upon her and straddled her hips. With shaking fingers, she pushed up Marozia’s nightgown, baring her round and aching breasts to the air. A strangled moan escaped Ninian’s lips.
She was mindful, however, not to drink too much, for there needed to remain enough to feed Meriope when she stirred from slumber and demanded her mother’s milk.
Even as pleasure rolled headily through her, Ninian took care not to scrape Marozia’s nipples with her teeth, and to save some of her strength.
It was not long before her mistress shoved her head beneath the covers and made her taste the sweet juice that ran between her thighs.
Marozia whimpered and keened, but never loud enough to wake her daughter, who, though mere inches away, slept obliviously through it every night.
Ninian was in love. Wretchedly, torridly—with her mistress, and with that small girl who shared their bed.
And yet she hated the savage and unjust world that pained the princess so, and that would tear them apart, as vicious as a wolf feasting on its fresh kill, when these sixty-six days were through.
Time fell mercilessly past them. Ninian, for all her love and all her hate, could not arrest it.