twenty-seven
“It’s really quite fascinating, if not utterly vexing,” Joiya paced in Jacelah’s salon, which she, Mira, and Kema had commandeered for their late morning cageh as brewed by the nicest chef in the kitchen.
Joiya looked through her latest report about the veil between the mortal world and the Void, giggling that the upcoming nitrous storm would probably be a good chance to see if it affected the measurements.
I still don’t quite get how you measure such a thing.
Was it really that tangible? Or was her mother full of shit?
No, she doesn’t lie about her research. Even when she paced like she was on a mission to wear a hole in the floor.
“There are spots that are so thin that I swear I can see into the Void. Then I return the next day and… poof. It’s gone.”
Mira chose to humor her mother. “Unlike in the Sanctuary, I’m sure.”
She referenced the innermost chamber of the High Temple, where her mother, the Keeper, maintained the thinnest veil to the Void.
Legend tells it’s the origin of all life.
The Temple had been built around it, and around the Temple was built Garlahza, the first known settlement of sentient life in the universe.
Not much else was known about its history, though, since it predated the current epoch.
But if anybody knew about this sort of thing, it was Joiya—and if she were excited, then so was her daughter.
Mira glanced at Kema, who shrugged. Joiya had a thought and darted out of the salon.
“She’s really like this all the time, isn’t she?” Kema quipped. “I mean, I’ve been traveling with you two for a couple of years now, and—”
“Yes,” Mira interrupted. “When my mother is like one of Uncle Ramaron’s dogs on a bone, she doesn’t let go until it’s turned into pulp. Or a zatbah stone, I guess.”
Mira clutched the stone on her chest. When it was apparent that Joiya wasn’t coming back anytime soon, Kema suggested that she and Mira go for a walk outside.
With Sulim busy minding the house, Mira agreed, if only to have something to do.
They wandered out the back door, lingered on the porch for a moment, and eventually made their way toward one of the corrals. Many of the ranch hands—and Sonall, for that matter—were gathered around a few foals who scurried around as if it were branding day. Oh, no. Something more fun. Gelding day.
“I’ve learned that it’s best to geld a horse in the early spring or late fall,” Kema excitedly said, as if Mira were interested in the ins and outs of running a horse ranch.
She figured that geldings were a big crop for the Gardiahs, but didn’t care beyond that.
“Otherwise, there could be complications. These must be younglings that weren’t quite the right age until now.”
Mira focused her hearing on the nearest ranch hands, two middle-aged men who seemed to have been working on Gardiah Estate half their lives.
They quipped that it was “crazy” of Lord Vern to leave the final gelds of the year to Marco and Sonall, since the latter did not quite have as much experience as he should. They took bets on how it would go.
Of course, they wouldn’t be doing it here. There was a clean room built nearby for the operations, but Mira understood that it was still done by the ranchers themselves. Lord Vern seems the type to have gelded a colt or two. Hey, maybe Mira’s father would be into that, too!
“They gather the colts here,” Kema continued to explain, as if she were the expert on all things horse husbandry, “to give them a final inspection before they’re taken one by one into the clean room for gelding. Then they recover in the small stable in the back.”
“Fascinating,” Mira muttered. “How do you know this?” That tidbit was far more interesting than the information itself. “That bored around here?”
Kema slightly blushed, but kept her straight spine and shoulders. “Sonall told me.”
“He did?” Mira wasn’t even aware that they knew each other that well.
“Sure. I go for walks out here all the time when they’re coming in from the fields. I’ve asked questions, and he’s kindly answered. You can find out a lot just by asking questions about what you see.”
“You sound like an introductory instructor at the Academy.”
“How did you know what they sound like in the College of Hybrid Studies?”
Mira laughed. “Fancy equines, do you?”
“I never really rode one before coming here. He also showed me how to ‘tack up’ a horse and mount one without sorcery.”
“My goodness. Without sorcery! Really tapping into your human side, Kema.”
“Yes, my mother was a human.” Kema gazed wistfully into the corral, her dark Lerenan hair wisping around her face.
Her mother was Cachayan, right? That human subtype was known for their dark skin, much like House Lerenan.
The fact that she can do as much sorcery as she does is quite a testament to her genetics.
Usually, hybrids with human mothers were talentless or could only do the bare minimum. “They have a lot of horses on Cachaya.”
Mira was suddenly hit with a hundred questions to ask her distant cousin, who had traveled with her for almost three years.
Who are you, really? Why did my mother choose you to come with us?
How did your parents meet? Did you even know your mother?
It wasn’t unusual for julah fathers to show up one day with a baby in their arms and drop it off for raising in the Yahzenian way.
That was assuming the human mother could not take care of the baby or otherwise agreed that it was better for the child to grow up among their cousins.
There were plenty of rumors that the troubadours of House Lerenan, of which Kema’s father was one, frequented pleasure houses wherever they toured. Was her mother a courtesan?
“Isn’t he something?”
It took Mira a moment to realize that her cousin referred to Sonall, who hopped the inner fence to help usher the colts through the gate.
He didn’t need his own mount, but everyone was supervised by Marco, who remained atop his steed.
Some other man took notes on a holographic clipboard, but it was Sonall and two others who got their hands dirty as they ran ahead to the clean room and coaxed the first inside to be castrated.
“What?”
Kema shook her head. “Sorry. Was just thinking out loud.”
“With your ullah? Girl.”
Gasping, Kema couldn’t get redder than if she cut herself open and bled. Probably preferable to what I just did. Which was calling her out for her wandering eyes. “How dare you.”
“You’re the one lusting after a married man.”
“But isn’t he fetching?”
“Married. Man.”
Kema said the only thing she could have. “So is his wife. Married, I mean.”
“Uh-huh…” Everyone among the julah knew, didn’t they?
Well, it was probably obvious, especially since everyone knew that Mira was queer with an unquenchable thirst for women.
“This isn’t about me. This is about you looking like a lovesick initiate at the Academy. Boy, you sure have your sights set on a catch, huh?”
“Shut up!”
“Does Ma know?”
Kema pushed her hair behind her shoulders and sniffed as she said, “As a matter of fact, Lady Joiya was telling me the other day that my aura is quite similar to the Gardiah clan. Meaning Sonall and Sulim.”
“Of all the men, Kema.”
“What’s wrong with him? I’m only forty! There’s nothing weird about it! We’re basically the same age, developmentally.”
“Married!”
“And that didn’t stop you.”
Although Kema had a point, Mira wasn’t about to get entangled with this.
“You can’t tell anyone. Please.” Kema took Mira by the arm and brought her closer. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not like anything has happened. Please don’t tell Sulim. I know you two are having an affair, but I just… I just don’t want it getting back to him.”
Mira laid a gentle hand on Kema’s shoulder. “It’s all your business. I’m staying out of it.”
Relief spread across Kema’s glowing face. “Oh, thank you. I would die of embarrassment and have to request to go back to Yahzen if he found out. I just… feel bad for him, you know?”
Okay, I’ll bite. “Why’s that?”
Here came that blush, mostly returning to the tip of Kema’s nose. “There’s a loneliness to him, especially now that his sister is gone. I know that he and his wife are friends, but… I can’t imagine it’s easy being married to someone who doesn’t want you that way.”
Mira had to be pragmatic with her response. “We julah have spent millennia in sexless marriages with arranged spouses. At least he knew what he was getting into.”
“That is true. It’s just… you must know how it is, as an heir, Lady Mira. When a lot is riding on your shoulders, and you need people in your life who will help take care of you.”
“Of course, I know what it’s like,” Mira kindly said. “I’ve spent my whole life contemplating that very thing, ever since I realized who my parents were.”
“I’m sorry. I know you have. It’s just…”
Mira glanced back at Sonall, who had mounted his mare and helped the others lead the future geldings to their fates. He’s just… a guy. Not a terrible guy. Not an ugly guy. Not a rude, crass, or violent guy. Just a guy. Mira would never get it. But she did know what this was about.
“Sometimes, your human side comes out.” Mira cocked her head. “You were raised on Yahzen with my mother’s family, but between having a human mother and enduring the julah world… ah, well. I guess it’s natural to want a human husband, unless you want children.”
“You are kind to relate to me,” Kema said with more blush. “Yes, I suppose I’ve never fancied having myself a julah husband. I’ve seen too many treat their hybrid wives as passing interests. And since we can’t bear their children, we are of no use to either julah or humans.”
“What do you mean, no use? I get why a human might look more fetching to a hybrid, but you always have a use. Sometimes, they want you for your parlor tricks!”
It took Kema a moment to realize what Mira meant. She laughed.
“My parlor tricks are hardly entertaining!” Kema said when she collected herself. “All of my sorcery is despite my human mother!”
“Hey, you helped Graella get her shit to Qahrain without dying, so there’s that.”
“Yes, I did it because Lady Joiya asked me to help, and…” She sighed. “I wanted to help Sonall’s sister. They’ve both been very kind to me.”
“Suppose one of the reasons you’re thinking about your lot as a hybrid is because you think this family needs babies.”
Mira turned away, gesturing that they should continue their walk toward the woods.
“Well, let me tell you—as someone who would rather die than be a mother, to any kind of kid, what you offer in that department means shit. Especially in this family. Sulim married that boy without any intention of bearing the next heir. Ask him yourself.”
“We’re not quite that close.” Kema followed her, hands clasped before her and head slightly bowed. “It’s tough, Mira. I’ve rarely heard a call to romance in my forty years. Maybe it’s my age. Am I too old for an inkep?”
Mira halted her steps. “I’m sorry, did you never have your inkep?”
“Well… yes, I did. It was the depression kind. I was holed up in my room, unable to engage with the world in any way. I would have given anything to be angry. I had friends whose inkep were so destructive that they blew up huts and even hurt some of the people around them before they were subdued.
Then, of course, the ones who couldn’t stop… merrymaking…”
“You can say ‘fuck,’ Kema.”
“Julah have theirs before going into the Academy, right?”
Mira waited for her to catch up again. “Yes.”
This conversation wasn’t exactly where Mira thought things were heading.
After all, while inkep was treated as a medical condition on Yahzen, embarrassing tales were common.
When you have a second puberty, when the Void decides you’re old enough to get pregnant, shit gets weird.
There were whole cottage industries around helping young women mitigate the worst of their symptoms, be it going to a moon where they could destroy a field’s worth of crap, plenty of drugs to make them feel something, anything, or arranging for a professional escort to keep them in bed for a month,
anything was possible, and whole families, even the Academy, bent to the whim of female hormones.
“Most of us hybrids have ours afterward, around thirty. Though some are much later. One of my hybrid cousins didn’t have hers until sixty!”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh, it was a big mess. She was the one seducing her full-blooded cousins because she knew she couldn’t get pregnant.”
“Oh, her.” Mira refrained from laughing.
Yes, Cousin Lyki’s incestuous appetite had been a big problem in House Lerenan a few years ago.
The fact that so many of Mira’s cousins indulged in it…
well! Another problem for Lady Yariah to sort out.
Can’t wait until I’m the Head of House Dunsman and I’ve got incest to deal with. Would be a real whoop.
“Then, when Lady Yariah intervened and booted her to Sah Zenlit, she ended up pregnant! Apparently, a few hybrid escorts slipped in there!”
“As long as she wasn’t related to them.”
“But they didn’t know who the father was until the baby was born!”
“Well? Who was it?”
Kema shrugged. “I forget. It wasn’t that interesting, I guess.”
“Pikki.” Mira laid down a common nickname given to close female friends, if only to make Kema feel more comfortable around her. I mean, we’re cousins. We’re stuck together. Why not? “If something is going on, you should let my mother know.”
“Ah, I know…”
“Besides, it sounds like you’re already long on the other side of certain matters.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s kinda fun to assign blame to things beyond our control.”
“Is it really blame?”
Mira laughed again. “Don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
The next time she saw Sulim, she said not a thing about Kema’s crush on somebody’s husband. I’ve got my own crush to deal with. Starting with somebody’s wife.