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“You’re trembling,” the king stated as we exited the stairwell and stepped into view of the main hall. It had gotten much busier since I’d left it. The tables were packed with people. Those that couldn’t sit stood. Laughter, talk, the clank of mugs. The cacophony of it more than I’d ever experienced all at once. I recoiled slightly. The King quickly placed a hand to my back to steady me. “It’s not too late to run,” he offered.
All the eyes turned our way had me shaking my head. “If we leave now, I’ll be your whore the moment we’re out of sight. Pregnant with your child before they’re done with dinner.”
“That’s specific. Especially since I’ve never impregnated anyone.”
“That you know of.”
He laughed, and people stopped talking to stare. My skin crawled at all the eyes trained on me. The King. I kept my expression serene as I muttered through stiff lips, “Let’s escape.”
“Too late.” He held up a hand and waved as he led me to his table. It held a few councilors I’d seen before and their wives. The seat on either side of the King’s remained empty. Apparently, he chose who got his ear when he ate.
He placed me in one of them. I kept my eyes downcast. I could already hear the whispers—Why is he eating with the foreigner?
Why was he doing this? A glance surreptitiously from side to side showed the veiled daughters who’d come to meet the King. They were easy to spot. And behind their veils I wondered how many plotted to bring me down.
“Is the meal not to your liking?” the King asked, and I glanced at my full plate.
“Sorry, just taking it all in. I never realized there were so many nobles in the city.” It showed me just how little I knew. My world was a small ecosystem of people. But here in the King’s court, I realized just how many never crossed my threshold. I saw the wives I’d never given a second thought to when I tricked their husbands. Shame at what I did was a new emotion, and I gulped some wine to chase it down.
“There are too many. Most of them useless,” the King confided. “Many of them think themselves clever, but they’re not.”
“So why not fire them?”
“Not worth the headache in some cases.” A wry reply.
I knew my conversation with the King had people’s attention, but I couldn’t help it. He teased my senses, drew out the wittiest parts of me. He was wicked in his humor, dropping soft comments about those in attendance, some of them mean but all very astute.
By the time the dessert platters emerged, I was thoroughly charmed and a little drunk. Perhaps he was, too, because as I laughed at something, he murmured, “You have a beautiful smile.”
The compliment startled even through my drunken haze. No one ever got to see my smile but my friends, and they never remarked on it. It took me a second to stutter, “Thank you.” Then because a curious Weztrogian could ask, “Why do unmarried women have to veil?”
“It’s based on an old law.”
“That makes no sense.” Drunk me managed to spew decades of rumination in a blur of words. “Why take a woman’s face away until she marries? Like, yes, it’s a nice gift to give her husband, but at the same time, it seems odd. And archaic.”
“It is. Which is why I had the law struck down.”
“What?”
“One of the things I did in my first year of rule. Yet, despite saying they no longer had to, women kept doing it.”
I couldn’t call him a liar. Not without giving away my cover. But surely even a stranger could get away with saying, “Why would they wear it if they don’t have to?” I veiled only because my position as tizana made it necessary. It was for our safety. If I had a choice, I would never wear one again. Especially now that I’d gotten a taste of being free in public again.
“Tradition is strong among many. You haven’t been here long enough to realize that some of the women you see without face coverings are single because there’s still quite a few who do veil.”
It never occurred to me to wonder otherwise. Blame my detachment from the world outside the gradeena.
“Seems to me like a good number of the women applying to be your wife are veiled.”
“Because they assume I want someone traditional.”
“Do you?”
“I want someone who sees me.”
“You’re hard to ignore.”
His lips quirked. “I could say the same.”
