Chapter 2
The plane lands as smoothly as it took off, and we are all met by delegations. My name is engraved on a silver plate held by the head of a small group of people who are waiting for me.
“Good luck!” Elizabeth squeezes my hand and dances off to the people who are waiting for her. I notice that many of the brides are being met by their new husbands. At least, I assume they are, judging by the way they are falling into the arms of various well-dressed and/or handsome men.
I am met by a tall, stern-looking woman with long dark hair twisted up into a bun. Her eyes are a unique shade of blue, closer to violet. She towers over me, standing at least six foot. Her features are hard and I’d say ruthless. She is not a woman to be crossed. She has a natural authority and dominance that I have only seen in one woman before this moment—a governess my sister and I had when we were younger. Maraline was forever falling afoul of her, but she quite liked me. She is flanked by two silent men who are clearly guards. It takes me a moment to realize she is also a guard of sorts, and that is because I am not used to seeing women in uniform.
I take the same approach to her as I did to our governess back when I was young. I smile very sweetly and I try to be as pleasant as possible.
“Hello,” I say. “I am Mila. Thank you for meeting me.”
I expect some kind of smile in return, but I don’t get one. Her eyes narrow at me slightly, running up and down my body. She’s finding me wanting. I wonder if she is going to comment on my attire.
“Lady Mila Darken,” she says, using a name I hardly recognize, let alone identify with. “I am Lydia, sworn to protect you. Where are your bags? The boys will carry them.”
“I don’t have any.”
“I see,” she says, not raising so much as an eyebrow at that news. “If you would care to come with me, a vehicle awaits to take you to your husband.”
My husband. I have a husband .
The term feels foreign to me. The concept seems like something that was meant for someone else. Because it is. Maraline should be here, not me.
I am led through the airport and out to a vehicle. It is armored, which surprises me at first, but when I think about it, I suppose a general would have to have an armored mode of transport. I have become a general’s wife; does that make me a target too?
I don’t want to think about it, and I don’t have to, because I am far too busy marveling at the city I find myself in. It is built of glass spires that erupt from the ground and go on to pierce the heavens. The cloud layers are lower than the tops of the buildings, and when I look up, I can see some of them appearing through the clouds from time to time. There are so many of them, the effect is like being in a crystal jungle, surrounded by overly large shards of engineered material.
The roads that run between them are pristine blue. They look icy as well.
“What are these roads?” I ask the question with a sense of true wonder.
“They are made with solar and motion panels,” Lydia explains. “Energy from the sun and from vehicles traveling along them is collected and fed back into the main power grid. It makes things much more efficient.”
“Wow,” I say, somewhat understanding her explanation.
This is a much more advanced part of the Artifice’s civilization. I notice that there are no trees, no grass, no birds, and no bugs. The only living things here are the people getting in and out of vehicles and looking very impressive one way or another. The dress here is very different. Even if Maraline were to have arrived in her finest hand-sewn gown, she would have appeared somehow dowdy, I think. The fabrics and textures on display look like they come from some fashionable future. They are shiny and sleek, and they are cut in angles and curves that flatter the body more tightly than anything worn back home.
I stare out at this world, which seems to have replaced nature with endless construction. Even the rocks here are smooth and used to create buildings or pavements seamlessly. There are no cobbles or bricks, just great expanses of smooth terrain. Everything is set out on a grid, not a square one, but a geometry of a sharper kind that makes many of the buildings appear like razors slicing the sky.
Lydia does not speak to me in the vehicle, though she sits right next to me, with the other two in the front. I could almost forget that they were there entirely.
“We have arrived, Lady Darken,” she says.
That really does not feel like my name, but I cannot very well tell her not to call me that. Or maybe I can.
“Please,” I say. “Call me Mila.”
“That would be very inappropriate, Lady Darken.”
I am crestfallen for a moment. “Would it not be more inappropriate to address me in a manner that does not please me?”
My personal guard gives me a long, hard stare that transmits a lot of information without a word being said. Listen here, you little shit , it says. I will call you Lady Darken, because that is your formal title, and I don’t intend to be improper in the eyes of society in order to pander to the whims of a country brat who just got here.
It’s an impressive tirade, and it comes in absolute silence.
“Or Lady Darken is fine too,” I mumble. “Where is the house?”
“Here.”
I turn to look at the building she gestures to, noticing that her rather large hand is festooned in rings with various protuberances that would absolutely decimate someone if she were to, say, punch them in the face.
“This?”
I thought my family home was large. I thought we had extensive grounds. I thought I knew what it was to be rich and powerful. But this is a building that not only covers an entire city block, but rises many dozens of floors above my head, so tall that I cannot see the top of it. Unlike the many shimmering towers in the city, this one is fronted by obsidian black, giving the impression of having no windows whatsoever. It is not so much a building as it is a monolith.
“How many people live here?”
“This is the Archon-General’s home, as well as the garrison for those under his command. The first twenty floors are occupied by soldiers. Above that is personal family space,” she explains.
“Twenty floors of soldiers? There must be… hundreds?”
“Thousands,” she confirms.
“Thousands,” I repeat.
“There is a private elevator to your floors. You will not come into contact with the rank and file, and when you leave the property, you will do so either in the company and custody of the Archon-General, or myself.”
Custody. Makes me sound like a prisoner.
I have to wonder if that is not the case. I was taken away by officers of the Artifice in my hometown, subjected to a frankly humiliating inspection, then conducted to a guarded plane, then met by a guard here… if it weren’t for Mother and Maraline framing this entire experience as desirable, I might have started to panic a long time before this.
I have not been brought to a home. I have been brought to a vertical military encampment. My husband is somewhere in there, a man I do not know, and yet who I now belong to, legally.
I start to breathe more shallowly, my eyes running up the length of the building. The height of the thing makes me feel dizzy. I stumble back, attempting to regain balance, and am steadied by my guard. If pity were a person, it would be incarnate in this woman.
Mila
Lydia guides me into the house through thick, reinforced, and heavily guarded doors. There are two elevators in front of us. One appears to be for the rank and file, the other has a gold emblem on the doors. That’s the one we go through.
“You will need to be chipped,” Lydia says. “The doors will open for you then without my presence. For the moment, you will need me.”
“Oh, okay.” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what being chipped means. At home, chips are tasty fried potatoes. I don’t think that’s what she means, not at all.
We are swept upward for what feels like miles. The other two guards are left outside the elevator, so it is just Lydia in this space with me. I wish I could ask her questions now, but there are too many and her expression is taciturn and closed. She is a guard, not a guide.
The elevator doors open into a grand obsidian foyer lit with red lights. It is not quite dim, but it is also not quite bright either. I can see, but in the way one can see at night. Colors are muted, and I almost feel as though I am underground even though I know I am miles in the air. Life has become very strange very quickly. This place does not smell like home. It is impeccably clean, and has little in the way of homy touches. The house I grew up in was bursting with character, every shelf and sill packed with stories. There were pictures festooning the walls, some photographs, and many portraits of our ancestors. People we still look like, though they lived hundreds of years before us. I was surrounded by not only family, but family resemblance and family culture.
There is none of that here. There is not a single item of decoration besides a sword that hangs on the wall. It is as long as I am tall, and it is backlit in red. There’s nothing else. No welcome mat. Nobody to welcome me, either. It’s just a big empty space that is clearly designed to hold people who are coming and going, and to make them uncomfortable.
“The Lord Darken sustained an injury that makes bright white lighting untenable,” Lydia offers the explanation generously. “He is able to operate with medication, but when he is at home, he prefers not to take it.”
I notice that she knows this about him, not just his medication, but his preferences. I suppose everyone who works for him would know. It only serves to highlight how little I know. I have come to meet a complete stranger who will determine the course of the rest of my life.
I look toward Lydia for some indication of what I am supposed to do.
“Does he know I am here?”
“He does,” she says. “But he is a very busy man, with a great deal of important…”
“Business?” I finish her sentence.
She gives me a sharp look, and I know that I have done something inappropriate.
I don’t see what could be more important business than the arrival of one’s Artifice-chosen bride. I have been taken from my homeland to be here. The least he could do is greet me. I am trapped somewhere between fear and annoyance. I am afraid to meet him, but I also expect to meet him.
“Wait here,” she says. “I will see what the Archon-General wishes to be done with you.”
Wishes to be done with me. I can hear Maraline’s voice in my head, telling me to walk out the door. Maraline was always very staunch about not allowing men to waste her time, when they attempted to court her when we were teenagers. It was allowed because the Artifice considered it important for young people to develop social skills. If a young man was so much as two minutes late, she would decline to receive him.
She would be furious if this was to be her welcome to her new life. She would expect a banner of some sort, and a coterie of new friends, servants, and nobles. She would expect her husband to have met her at the airport. Gosh, she would be so disappointed.
I have grown up looking up to Maraline. She has always been my template for what a girl and then a woman should be. I hear her voice now, strident and irritated, telling me I should make the man pay for this absolute indignity. I am being treated like a courier with an unwanted parcel.
Having been left to my own devices, I decide to explore my new home. There are several doors and archways leading off the foyer. I take my first left and find my way into a sitting room of sorts. There’s a lot of black leather and polished black granite here. It’s a sitting room for people you do not want to sit down at all. We have one of those at our home too. My mother had a specific list of people who were always to be shown into that space.
I pass through the sitting room and find myself in a little back corridor, not accessible from the main foyer, but leading to a bathroom. I go into the bathroom. It, like everything else, is sleek and black and low-lit. There is a large mirror, however, full length with an ornate floral carved frame that seems just a hair out of place for this house. I reach out and touch it with the instinct of someone who has grown up in a fine old mansion, pressing one of the rosettes that is just slightly out of place. There is a satisfying click and the mirror swings open.
I forget all about being married, being in another country, waiting to meet my husband. I’ve just found a secret passage. Short steps lead up at a sharp vertical angle. I go up them quietly, shutting the mirror behind me. I am cast in darkness, but I know that nobody puts a good secret staircase in without providing a little in the way of ambient lighting.
I can hear voices, and I can see a little light coming from further up. There is a standing platform just off the staircase, and two little holes to look through. Oh, I know what this is. My great-great-uncle Norton used to love putting these into the house. In Addle Manor there are dozens of these.
I can’t quite see much of anything. Whoever installed this must have put it in as an amusement, or perhaps the room was laid out differently before. I can hear though, the voice of a man speaking in a broad State accent. His voice is deep and full of irritated gravitas.
“They are advancing on the front again. I should be deployed. I should have been deployed six months ago.”
Someone replies. I can’t tell if they’re in the room, or speaking through some kind of distance device.
“The Artifice hasn’t allowed it. You are matched. You need to mate with your new bride, bond with her. At some point, you have to allow the others to do the work of war, Arthur.”
At that moment, there is a tap at the door.
“Come!” the first voice barks.
Lydia enters the room. I can see her standing inside the doorway, which she has left open.
“Your bride is waiting to meet you, Archon-General.”
That gravelly voice growls in surprise. “She’s here? Already? I thought she was coming next week.”
“It is next week, sir. At least with regards to her arrival. She is waiting for you in the foyer. It might be best to attend to her; she is rather timid and overwhelmed.”
I know I am timid and overwhelmed, but there is something that feels very different about having someone else say it about you when you are not in the room.
“ Eh… eh… ”
Oh, no. I’m going to sneeze.
The worst thing about sneezing is that you get almost no notice that it is going to happen before it happens.
I slap my hand over my face, but the urge to sneeze is stronger and faster than I am.
“Ehhhhh- choo !”
I sneeze a spectacular sneeze, the largest sneeze of my life, and possibly the noisiest sneeze of all time.
Their reactions are incredibly fast, and an absolute credit to them. The portrait I am standing behind is whipped open like a door. I must have been leaning against it, using it to balance, because the moment it swings open, I tumble out, head over heels, my skirts getting tangled up over my head for a brief moment.
“Hold, Lydia!” The gruff voice barks a command.
I was almost skewered by my own guard. She is perched over me in an instant, the tip of her blade a half-inch from my nose. She was going to stab me through the face, apparently, which is an incredibly savage instinct to follow.
A tall man steps over to me, appearing mostly as a shadow at this moment of inopportune introduction.
“Who are you?”
Lydia lowers her blade and mutters to me beneath her breath, “Lady Darken, meet your husband.”
My husband is tall, broad shouldered, and has handsome, but cruel features. His eyes are a dark gray hue and his hair is raven. It is glossy and it curls thickly over his forehead and down to his shoulders where it hangs long and now slightly wild. It might have been tied back behind his head at some stage, but it is not now. There are signs of his age in the silvering at his temples, and in the rougher condition of his skin. He is a man who has seen life, and fought it.
There is a scar running from his hairline near his right temple, all the way down over the bridge of his nose, to the left side of his mouth. It does not make him any less attractive, but it does make him look much more dangerous.
I thought men of his rank sat in plush offices and commanded others to die. Clearly he has risked death himself on more than one occasion. That means he must have taken life as well. I do not get the impression he is a nice person. He is not looking at me with a kind eye. His gaze runs up and down my body, finding me wanting in some fundamental way.
His lips are full, and they curl into a sneer when he looks at me. I know I am not dressed properly for such an introduction. Even if I had been, the manner of my arrival is dubious at best.
“Where is your mistress?”
He snaps the question at me, glowering as if I have offended him personally with my presence. I swallow my reaction and blink back tears of exhaustion. The flight was long and I am tired and already missing my home. It may be large, but it feels much smaller on the inside than this palatial expanse of a house does.
“I do not have a mistress.”
“I was expecting my bride, not a stray common girl. Though, you do have the speech of a noble, if not the bearing, or the dress.”
I made myself look as plain as possible for Maraline’s wedding. The problem is that now I look plain as possible as well as travel-weary. I need a nap. I need a hug. I need to go home.
He looks around, as if waiting for someone to provide an explanation. But there is nobody who cares to offer one right now. I am here on my own, so far away from where I come from that there is literally no way back. I am trapped by obligation, and so is this increasingly irritable-looking man.
“Lydia explained. I’m your bride,” I stammer.
“I know what she said,” he snarks. “But there must be some mistake. My bride should not look like an orphan from a Charles Dickens novel.”
He has a knowledge of ancient literature. That is interesting. He must be intelligent, as well as very annoyed.
“How did you come to end up behind that portrait?”
“I went into the bathroom and found the door,” I babble.
“You immediately found the secret door?”
“It’s not that well hidden.”
His brows head for his hairline at great speed. “Oh, is it not? How fascinating.”
“Well, obviously. I found it within minutes of getting here.” I am confused. How can he think it was well hidden if I found it so easily? It’s just logical.
“Why have you arrived in this…” his gaze runs up and down me, “…attire?” He says that word with a kind of derisive contempt for my clothing that cuts deep.
“I wore a simple dress because I was trying not to upstage my sister,” I explain. “We thought she had been selected to be your match. I wasn’t the one prepared to come today. It was never meant to be me.”
“Of course it was meant to be you,” he says impatiently. “The Artifice does not make mistakes.”
I do not reply to that. I know a verbal trap when I hear one. My sister caught me in them often enough, and I watched my very own mother fall into one just before I left. One cannot question the Artifice in any way, shape, or form.
“Do you not have anything to say?”
“I was taught not to speak back to my elders.”
He snorts with what must be laughter. “Sassy little thing, aren’t you.”
“Not that I have noticed, sir. It has never been remarked upon before.” I am still sitting on the floor, wondering if I should get up.
“Then you are simply blunt, which implies truthfulness—an admirable quality. I am pleased with this. As for your age, well, I suppose that will change with time. Where are your things?”