two #2
That’s the tradeoff, isn’t it? All the comforts a Lady could ask for…
except friendship. “You know my sister, Prissy?”
That can’t actually be her name. “She volunteers at the Temple during the week. Anyway, she told me right before we left that everyone except for Priest Kay was banned from the upstairs quarters where the priest lives… and their guests, of course. Apparently, some Premier is visiting?
But why would a Premier need to take a space cruiser? They can all teleport, as Priest Kay loves to show off whenever it is convenient to him.”
Sulim mulled on that while Graella asked, “What’s a Premier?”
“Dear daughter of my dearest friend, how do you not know?”
That was Sulim’s cue to actually answer the question. “They’re the top brass in the High Temple. They advise the High Priest and probably actually run the place for him.”
“Oh, you are knowledgeable about the Temple, are you, Sulim?”
“Well, yeah, I used to volunteer there.”
“It’s how we met!” Graella interjected. “And how my brother met Sulim.”
Meri glanced at Sulim again. What’s her deal?
For a cosmopolitan girl, this teenager acted as if she had never left the house.
“Right,” Sulim said while looking away. “I got into a program for young women run by the new priestess.”
The young priestess had been the perfect mix of pious and clever, instigating several programs from higher-up after taking over for the late priest who had one too many scandals under his robes.
“One of those was an exchange program. I got to go to Terra III and study at one of the Temples there for a while.”
“Sulim is well-traveled for someone so young,” Jacelah said, as if she had to defend anyone in front of her best friends.
“Terra III! How lovely for a young lady, as I’m sure you were,” Cera said. “So, you learned quite a bit about the Temple hierarchy, I suppose?”
“Yes!” Once again, Graella interjected as if her mother wouldn’t be mortified. “She tutored me in so much when I went on exchange to Qahrain. Sulim came back a few months after I arrived, you see. It was all so serendipitous.”
Graella offered her sister-in-law a friendly smile.
Sulim returned a timid grin. Sometimes, if their gazes lingered for too long, Sulim forgot which sibling she was supposedly married to.
Just what I need in this house. A mild crush on my husband’s sister.
It would never go anywhere, though. Especially with Graella so fervently devoted to Sonall, who was her little brother.
Yet they were born so close together that one often mistook the birth order for quite the opposite.
“My, it does sound like you get along quite well with the family.” Cera glanced at Jacelah the moment she said that. Jacelah, to her credit, maintained a perfect poker face. “So, you think it could be a Premier?”
“But, as you say,” Sulim replied, “why would he fly in something that takes as long as a space cruiser when he could teleport? I don’t think you make it to Premiership if you’re, as they say, untalented.”
Jacelah shot Sulim a look. The one that told her to back out of the conversation before she dominated it.
Fine with me. She would space out while Cera and Jacelah gossiped about the goings-on in the capital, and Graella occasionally confirmed that, yes, she was still engaged to a lordling on Qahrain.
For after Sonall’s marriage, Jacelah went into overdrive attempting to marry off Graella.
Yet for all of her matchmaking with other noble families of their station around the Federation, it was a young man Graella had met in Yarensport that she gravitated toward when they began a pen-pal relationship.
Dating wasn’t easy when two people lived on different planets, but Graella claimed to have “made it count” the first week she spent with the Corarias for the sole purpose of deciding if she wanted to be courted by the heir, Lowin.
Naturally, that dominated the conversation once Cera discovered the wedding was only a few months away.
Did Graella have a dress? Where were they marrying?
Oh, two ceremonies! One on Arrah, then another immediately on Qahrain?
Wasn’t that something? She must be one of the luckiest girls in the Federation!
Now, she did know that life as a noble on Qahrain wasn’t as glamorous as on Arrah, right? They didn’t even have nitrous storms!
Sulim kept her mouth shut, but was grateful to unload on Graella once they were dismissed to check in on the late afternoon chores.
“She acts like neither of us has been to Qahrain before.” Sulim removed her jewelry as they ascended the stairs back up to her room. “I’m from there! I grew up shoveling horse shit and breaking my back in the sarrah fields, and…” She stopped, catching Graella’s dubious countenance. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I know how protective you are of where you’re from. I’ll be the same way when I…”
Graella inhaled a deep breath as she entered Sulim’s room with her.
“When I move there to start my married life.”
She held onto Sulim’s hand as jewelry returned to its boxes. “You and Sonall will visit, right?”
“Of course.” Sulim sat at the end of the bed and patted the space beside her.
Graella plopped down, shoes falling off her feet as she and Sulim were now nose-to-nose.
“It’s my home, too. And you know how your brother is. If I’m visiting you, well, as he says, ‘I want to go where my two favorite women are.’”
“You almost sound like him. A little.”
“I have to hear him every day, so I hope so. Besides,” Sulim rubbed her shoulder against Graella’s, “you’ll visit here, too. I know you can’t resist. Especially if you have kids. What kind of mother would you be if you didn’t bring them here as often as possible to get some fresh,
nitrous-infused air?”
Graella blushed. “You know I can’t travel via space cruiser if I’m pregnant or have just given birth. Void, that’s a whole year right there! Same for you.”
“What is?”
“If you ever have a baby.”
It was Sulim’s turn to blush, and not because she shared her sister-in-law’s sense of embarrassment.
“That’s not happening anytime soon,” she said.
“Your brother and I agree it’s not the right time.”
Ever. It wouldn’t be the right time ever, but Graella wasn’t privy to that information.
It was kept between Sulim and Sonall, who knew it couldn’t get back to Jacelah, who signed off on the marriage under the pretense that Sulim would bear the next generation of Gardiahs like a good future Lady.
“I mean, we’re talking even a decade out, Sul.”
“Yeah, so never mind about that. Come on.”
Sulim got up, offering her hand to Graella.
“Let’s go. Before your mother loses it because we didn’t make sure dinner was up to her standards for her guests. Or, Void forbid, they’re in the wrong rooms for the next couple of days.”
Unfortunately, they lived so far out in the countryside that Cera and Meri would be staying over until it was time for them to move on.
It was one of those ladies that they bumped into out in the hallway.
“Oh!” Graella expressed surprise that she almost knocked into Meri, who carried a bag through the second-floor hallway. “Sorry about that!”
Meri’s eyes grew large as she beheld both—taller, grown—women before her. “Wow,” she whispered. Then, louder. “Sorry! Mama told me to take the last of our bags up to our room, but I’m not sure where it is. Do you know where the maids took our luggage earlier?”
While Graella guessed out loud, Sulim stepped forward, looming over the teenager who looked like she hadn’t seen any other women in her life.
“Why do you keep staring at us?” Sulim asked.
Graella gasped. Meri, however, tucked away her shyness as she said, “You two are so pretty. I just…” She pushed forward, almost headbutting Sulim in the chest. “I’ve never seen someone who looks like you up close before.”
Sulim was taken aback by Meri’s young and excitable candor. Was it what she expected to hear after catching so many wayward looks that afternoon? No. Was she somewhat flattered?
I’ll get back to you on that later. Right now, Sulim had to graciously accept the compliment while continuing her chores. Preferably, away from the young and impressionable Meri from Dassil.
She was utterly exhausted after dinner, where she had to continue giving Mrs. Cera her undivided attention.
To add further annoyance, her father-in-law Vern had returned from the stables, anxious about something Marco had said.
When Vern is like this, he’s incorrigible.
He was the one Sulim got along with the least, mostly because Vern wanted nothing to do with a person unless they worked directly beneath him.
To hear her own husband tell it, Vern wouldn’t even give Sonall the time of day if he weren’t the heir to the title, estate, and family business.
At least I’m not married to him. Sulim shut herself up in her room once she was free for the evening. She then further ensconced herself in the en suite bathroom, where she filled the bath with hot water and stripped as quickly as physics allowed.
She brought with her a copy of Pride of the City, a recent classic from Terra III that had taken the Federation book charts by storm.
Here in the main house, Sulim only kept religious texts, non-fiction, and stories that neither of her in-laws would faint seeing her read.
Especially Jacelah. Even heterosexual romance novels were off-limits, since Jacelah was the type to pretend sex didn’t exist—and Sulim wasn’t interested, anyway.
Pride of the City it was. The literary tale of a woman who went from street urchin to courtesan to mayor—all while fighting off mercenaries, stopping assassination attempts, and navigating natural disasters—was the stuff of legend, if one didn’t know their history.
Even Sulim, who had never achieved a university degree, knew that the main character was an amalgamation of different historical figures.
“Tamira looked westward,” Sulim read, one leg dangling over the side of the tub as she leaned back with the book hovering over her face, “breathing in the fresh country air. Yet while she licked her wounds in the fields far from home, she knew that the City was westward, toward the setting sun.