seven
In truth, Sulim didn’t have much of a routine that day.
Everything had been thrown to hell with the arrival of the julah party that had tossed the likes of Lady Jacelah into a tizzy.
And with no emergencies nearby to call her attention, Sulim could easily keep her head down around the house and not be called upon for chores.
Normally, she’d still put herself to some use, since she did not care to lie to her mother-in-law about what she had been up to. But there was enough fervor at Gardiah Estate for her to slip into her bedroom and stare at the kind of monitor that only existed in Lord Vern’s office.
Sulim became adept at computing and mild digital security features when she was on exchange on Terra III, where the local Temple had been high-tech enough to warrant training on machines that both julah and humans used.
Sulim had been a quick study and progressed to the point that she was coding her own programs and poking holes into the local Temple’s digital security systems—something that the priest encouraged her to further study in university.
Except I ended up getting married, instead.
She didn’t get a lot of her own personal money as a lower-ranking member of the Gardiah clan, but what she had scrounged together bought her a decent computer that allowed her to integrate with the family business,
where she kept an eye on backdoor security and often pursued new avenues of marketing, in case anything interesting popped up.
That afternoon, she sat with a cup of tea and brought up a private search browser that was enough to get what she wanted out of—if she knew the right search terms to use. (And she did.)
After all, Mira Dunsman did not give her juicy details.
Just what the Temple allowed to be published about the child of their star couple.
If I wanted to know how she did at the Academy or how she abruptly stopped being a priestess, I’d search no further.
Except Sulim wasn’t satisfied with Mira’s impossibly long-ago birth year or pictures of her when she was younger—although some of those were certainly cute, since julah only spent a small portion of their millennia-long lives as children.
No, what Sulim hunted were the facts that only other julah knew.
Which was why she had also invested in one of the best automatic online translators on the market, in case she ever read a digital text in Julah.
When she expanded her search to that, she found quite a mountain of data.
Julah were not known for their online lives.
Unlike humans, they did not rely on technology to communicate, research, and preserve their history.
After all, with long lives and sorcery, it was common courtesy to handwrite letters and pore over ancient tomes that were older than humanity.
Yet they don’t know where humans came from. Go figure.
But there were definitely some things to find. Entire gossip communities centered on the more famous julah Houses, and there were the gossiping julah themselves. As much as Sulim did not care much for gossip, she knew that such communities were imperative for data harvesting.
She typed Mira’s name into a translator for the Julah alphabet. Once she had the phonetic spelling for “Mira Dunsman,” she cross-searched it across every Julah-based gossip community she could find that didn’t require a password. I should have gone into hacking.
Sure enough, someone as famous as Mira exploded across the screen.
“Who the hell here hasn’t dated her?” That was one of the first posts Sulim discovered, and it didn’t surprise her.
What did was the community it was in: Women’s Issues.
A journalistic identity for something that was nothing but tawdry gossip.
“Is there anyone who didn’t end up in bed with her at one point?”
“She rebels against her parents… it’s so obvious,” said another comment that seemingly went off on its own tangent. “Her father is the High Priest, and her mother one of the most beloved priestesses in the universe. It’s like she can’t help herself.”
“She’s screwed no matter what she does,” said another. “Any trade or art she goes into will get cries of nepotism. But if she fades into obscurity, everyone will say it was because the pressure got to her. She can’t be normal, even by our twisted sense.”
“I dated her,” replied someone to the first comment.
“It was great for a few years. Even got to meet the upper echelons of House Lerenan during academic breaks. Never thought it would go anywhere meaningful, and it didn’t. She dumped me. No love lost, but you ask me, it was because her mother talked her into doing it.”
“I never got the impression that Lady Dunsman is against same-sex pairings. Her best friend is a known queer, and there are so many rumors about him and the High Priest.”
“No, no, it wasn’t like that. She was nothing but lovely and gracious. Almost nauseatingly so, but it wasn’t fake or anything. I think it was some kind of other internal pressure. Maybe from Great Dame Dunsman,
who is a prudish crone and would marry Mira off to the Grand Chancellor’s son if given the chance.”
“Definitely family politics, then. Don’t we all know about that.”
“Okay, but was she good in bed? That’s all I care about.”
“She was incredible, ehew.”
The onomatopoeia at the end wasn’t translated into Basic, but Sulim got the gist. It was laughter. The kind that implied well-known scandal baked into everyday conversation.
Sulim stared at the translated chat for a while, attempting to understand everything she had read about Young Lady Dunsman.
So, she’s like that. Sulim’s faint ability to pick a queer girl out of a crowd hadn’t been lying to her when she double-took Mira’s haughty confidence around other women and, dare she believe it, laced flirtations.
She probably flirts with everyone, human or julah.
Sulim had encountered such women before and had even dated one for a short time in Yarensport.
Technically, my first girlfriend. The one whose death led her here.
Well, it wasn’t a straight line. That was for sure.
“What are you looking at?”
Sulim nearly leaped out of her clothes as Sonall approached from behind, his voice somehow beating out the smell of working out in the pastures.
He was already stripping off some of his clothes on his way to the bathroom, but Sulim was so flustered that she quickly switched her screen to something completely innocuous.
“Sorry,” her husband quipped when he noticed how startled she was.
“You’re back early,” she quickly said.
He shrugged, both in reaction and out of his shirt.
Once it was in the hamper with all of his other smelly work clothes, to be collected later that evening by one of the maids, he came up behind her again and kissed the top of her head.
Yet Sulim was so stiff from surprise that she did not even pretend to return the favor, leaving Sonall hanging. Eventually, he backed away.
“Didn’t have much to do today. Marco took care of most of it already.
“Marco?” At least Sonall brought a distraction. “He’s been up awfully early lately.”
“Probably not as early as you usually are.”
Was that supposed to mean something? “Anyway,” she said, clearing her throat, “I was researching the background of one of our guests.”
“Oh? Which one? Surely, you don’t mean Lady Joiya.” Sonall said her name with reverent inflection.
“No. Her daughter.”
Sonall hesitated before going into the bathroom, where he left the door ajar while fully undressing. Occasionally, he reached through the doorway to drop more clothing into the hamper. “What about her?”
“I just realized I know nothing about her, despite her parents being so famous.”
“Isn’t that how their lot likes it?” Naked, her husband leaned in the doorframe, the door concealing his entire left side but not much else.
Honestly, if he still didn’t smell like horse shit and sweat, he wouldn’t have been terrible to look at, even if his young and fit physique did little for his wife’s imagination.
“The less we humans know about them, the better. They spend thousands of years bickering with each other and controlling the universe while we live and die as quickly as they breathe. I don’t doubt they want little about them at our fingertips.”
“Well, I’m mostly interested in why they’re out on penance. She must have done something to be so serious about it.”
Sonall left the doorframe. The bathtub turned on in the background, water loudly splashing against the tub while Sulim turned her attention back to her screen.
Still, she heard his voice as it carried over the water.
“I’m guessing that’s also not for us to know. She might have angered her family somehow. I dunno. Well, you know more about julah than I do.”
“Not much!”
“Maybe I should say you know how to find out that stuff better than I do!”
“What do you think I’m doing, then?”
His eyes peered at her from around the door. “Anyway, do you want to join me, or not?”
“What?” There were about five things deplorable about that thought. “You’re rank, despite claiming not to have done much out there!”
“It’ll take about five minutes to get it off. I’ve got to wash my hair, anyway.”
“So, why would I join you? So we can smell like shit together?”
“I will refill the tub and add extra soap, if that’s what you want, your highness.”
Please! He couldn’t be serious. Sulim didn’t like sharing her baths with anyone, even if the other person was squeaky clean at the start. “I’ll take one later. After dinner.”
“As you wish. But…” The door almost closed. “Maybe I just like seeing my fair wife naked sometimes.”
Uh-huh. Sulim pretended it didn’t fluster her to have anyone, let alone her own husband, whom she had been sharing a bed with for over two years, find her attractive at any state of undress.
She wasn’t one for flowery words or other audible expressions of desire—if Sulim were to indulge in carnal escapades, she preferred to get right down to it…
before the mood left her as easily as it entered.
Especially with men. Especially with her husband.
It’s not his fault… He tried. He kept his hygiene up, which wasn’t something Sulim had to school him on when they married, thank the Void.