Geldry

Geldry tossed and turned restlessly in her bed. It was a hot summer night, and beads of sweat lay on her neck and face. She wiped them off with the back of her hand, accidentally jostling her eyeband. One side of the band shifted, allowing some light to shine into her left eye.

Without meaning to, she opened the eye to see where the light could be coming from at this late hour. It was moonlight shining directly onto her face from the sky above the open balcony. Her side of the large bed was closest to the verandah, and from her position she could see the night sky glittering with stars.

The moon was full and red, larger, brighter, and redder than she had ever seen it before. What did they call that kind of moon—a blood moon? Yes, that was it. She had heard the phrase often but had never seen a blood moon so large. It loomed like a living thing in the night sky, hanging over her verandah and painting the entire bedchamber crimson. It called to her, powerfully compelling. She felt like throwing off the bedcovers and walking out. But she could tell by Adri’s breathing that he was deeply asleep; soon, he would begin to snore lightly. She reached up to pull the eyeband back over her eye, thinking she would return to sleep, but paused.

She turned her head slowly, far enough that she could see Adri. He was turned away from her, facing into the bedchamber. The moonlight only touched his back and his curled feet. Not that it would disturb him anyway: unlike some blind persons who could sense light and shapes, Adri was completely, totally unsighted. He could raise his eyes to stare up at the sun and see nothing. And now that he was in that breathing pattern, he would sleep deeply through till morning.

She exhaled soundlessly, releasing the breath through slightly parted lips to avoid making the sound that usually accompanied a sigh. She had learned to do that in the first months after her marriage. Back when she had first come to live with Adri, she would sigh often, and each time he would turn his head and ask, “Are you well, Geldry?” And so she had learned to sigh without making any sound, to cry noiselessly, to laugh silently, to live in darkness.

She reached up, touching the displaced eyeband. She had taken to wearing it since just before her wedding rituals. It had been entirely her decision, even though Jilana, Vrath, Shvate, even Adri himself had all tried to talk her out of doing it. At the time, she had been naive, adolescent, proud, idealistic; she had thought it unjust to be the wife of a blind prince and be able to see when he was deprived of sight. A good wife should share the circumstances of her husband, be they as they may. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health . . . in sight as well as blindness. The last was a logical corollary. How unfair of a wife to be able to enjoy the sights and sounds, colors, and lights of the world when her husband was deprived of those pleasures. She had vowed to wear the eyeband for the rest of her life, to share her husband’s circumstances and enjoy only that which he was able to enjoy.

But she had been only sixteen when she made the vow, and the rest of one’s life is a long, long time. Now, several years later, she was no longer an adolescent, nowhere near as proud and idealistic, and anything but naive.

She had accepted her life with Adri, limitations and all. She was even content, in a manner of speaking. She was the daughter-in-law of the richest family in the known world, after all. A princess of the great Burnt Empire. Tying a band over her eyes to feign blindness was not as great a disability as many people thought: unlike Adri, she could see lights, shapes, silhouettes, even through the eyeband. She could tell the difference between day and night, morning and noon. And, if she wished, she could always remove the band and simply see with her own eyes. She had taken to doing that more often lately, not always on purpose: she would wake at night and find that the band had been pushed off, either deliberately or accidentally, while she was sleeping. At such times, if Adri was still sleeping, she often left the band off till morning, always making sure to slip it on the next morning before waking up to meet the new day. At first she had felt guilty at being able to enjoy the sighted world, even for these few stolen moments, when Adri could never see anything, ever.

But as the years had passed and the reality of her situation had finally sunk into her bones, she had begun to feel resentful of that guilt. What was wrong with being able to enjoy a gift she had been born with? Even the most devoted of wives was entitled to some time off, wasn’t she? Even the most dedicated workers deserved a little downtime from their day jobs. What harm was there in enjoying a few moments of sighted pleasure? She would never dream of doing it in public, or even in the presence of anyone else, most of all Adri himself. But alone in the privacy of her bedchamber late at night, where nobody could see her or know what she did, surely there was no harm in it.

She never told Adri about these stolen glimpses. She had almost told him once, when they had been in one of their rare tender moments of togetherness, but at the last instant, she had stopped herself. She decided that it was something best kept to herself.

Besides, she resented the idea that she might be expected to ask his permission to enjoy the natural pleasures of sight. It enraged her when she met someone for the first time and they expressed sympathy for her condition, assuming, as some often did, that the Krushan had insisted on her blinding her eyes in order to serve as their daughter-in-law. What nonsense! No one told Geldry what to do! She had chosen to blind her eyes of her own accord. It was her decision and hers alone. Such people would always say, Of course, of course, and nod sympathetically, as if they knew the truth and were only commiserating with her. So infuriating!

Why was it so difficult for people to believe that a woman would choose to live sightless in order to share her husband’s condition? It was not as if she had plucked out her eyes, rendering herself permanently and totally blind. The very thought of such a thing made her squirm uncomfortably. Imagine actually putting out her own eyes! That was grotesque, monstrous. Surely not even Adri would want her to disfigure herself.

But Mother Jilana might.

The old lady was so upright and ironclad about everything, so full of Krushan pride—“Krushan this” and “Krushan that” all day long—as if the Krushan had created the whole world and built everything in it with their own hands. Geldry was a princess in her own right, and her homeland was a place to be proud of too: Geldran was a great nation, Geera a great city. Sure, they weren’t Hastinaga, but in their own way, they were looked up to and admired by many nations in that part of the world.

Life was much tougher in the northwest. There was no time or resources to build great palaces and monuments to ancestors on such a scale as Hastinaga had. The City of Elephants and Snakes was truly awe-inspiring, but the Krushan had access to many more resources and governed far, far more people and kingdoms than Geldran or any other nation. Though no nation could compete with the might of the Burnt Empire, she was nonetheless proud to be a Geldran, and her name, Geldry, proclaimed that she was the first of her people, the First Spear of Geera. Yet Mother Jilana looked down at her over her long hooked nose as if she were a goat-eating, mule-riding mountain girl who knew nothing about royal etiquette and politics. It made her so mad sometimes, she wanted to scream.

But what really infuriated her was the fact that she couldn’t talk to Adri about these things. That was something that was completely untenable. Adri worshipped the ground his grandmother walked on. The same went for Prince Regent Vrath. He wouldn’t hear a whisper of criticism about either of them. Even when Jilana was being a big bee, buzzing and stinging Geldry’s ego, Adri would refuse to discuss her. This attitude extended to almost all things Krushan, with one exception: his mother. On that one topic he was sensitive in a different way. He wanted to talk about her—even tolerated criticism of her—but only up to a point. If Geldry went so far as to call Princess Ember a “bad mother” or anything else that could be construed as an outright insult, he would grow very quiet, then walk away. Offended.

He, on the other hand, could speak poorly of Ember for hours, endlessly asking the same old questions, all of which amounted to just one really: Why? Why? Why? Why had she turned her back on him when he needed her most? Why wouldn’t she show him any affection? Why was she still so cold and distant, even now? Why did he feel as if it was his fault that he had been born blind?

She was so tired of hearing about Ember, and of comforting Adri when he broke down and cried, as he almost always did during these confessional sessions.

She was tired of Adri. Of this life, their marriage, her minuscule role in the vast enterprise of the Burnt Empire.

Tired of being relegated to an insignificant decorative role: the dutiful wife of one of two princes in the line of succession, the one that was least likely to ascend the throne.

Tired of Adri’s continuing descent into inactivity. When they had married, he had seemed so strong, confident, capable despite his sightlessness. The story of his exploits in the Battle of the Rebels had thrilled and inspired her. A blind prince winning a battle! Fighting and killing enemies despite his inability to see! She had imagined him leading the Krushan armies to victory across a hundred foreign kingdoms, crushing the enemies of Hastinaga, and silencing all those who dared to assume that a blind prince could not fight.

But as the years passed, the Adri she had married seemed to slip away, to shrink into a shadow of his former self. His confidence had ebbed, his strength diminished, his capacity reduced to the point where he could barely function some days. While his brother Shvate did everything that she had thought Adri himself would do: lead the Krushan armies to victory after victory, conquering the unconquerable Reygar, then going on to equally spectacular victories in Virdhh, Serapi, Anga, Trigarta, Kanunga, and a number of smaller territories.

Shvate had returned to Hastinaga with enormous wagon trains loaded with treasure, enough wealth to build a whole new empire, and to add insult and injury, he had offered all that bounty to his brother Adri. Geldry knew very well why he had done that: to show that he was the superior one. He had claimed he was offering it to Adri as a sign of respect but she took it as an insult nonetheless. Shvate was reminding Adri that he had done what Adri could never do: conquer a half dozen enemy nations and bring back five thousand wagonloads of treasure. He was asserting his superiority over his disabled shut-in brother.

Even so, Geldry’s mind had leaped at the thought of so much wealth. She had swallowed the insult and been willing to accept the gift. She had already begun imagining what she could do with so much wealth at her command. This would be her personal treasure after all, unlike the burgeoning coffers of Hastinaga, which remained just out of reach to her so long as she was only the wife of a prince-in-waiting. With that much wealth, she could support her brother, Kune, in his campaign against their enemies, pay off their father’s debts, rebuild the palace at Geldran that had been destroyed in the last rebellion, and fund a hundred good causes in her home nation. She had smiled at that moment, thinking that this was it, her moment of glory, when her years of patience and self-enforced blindness would come finally to fruition, when she would come into her own, a rich powerful benefactress dispensing gold to whom she pleased, when she pleased. She had even pictured herself riding in a great white carriage in the hills of Geera, overseeing the building of great monuments to her ancestors, using her wealth to benefit her people—and punish her enemies.

But even that dream had come crashing to a halt.

Adri had refused Shvate’s offering, had joined his palms and told his brother that he could not accept the treasure as it rightly belonged to Vrath, the elder of the house. He had asked Shvate to take it to Vrath and offer it to him with humility and grace.

Geldry had been so shocked at hearing Adri speak those words to his brother she had wanted to grab her husband’s arm and say, What are you doing? Take the treasure! She had not actually said those words—or anything—aloud, for Adri had already spoken, and his brother was already agreeing with him, saying that Adri was a true Krushan, respectful of his elders and adhering to Krushan law.

To hell with Krushan law! To hell with respecting elders! Geldry thought. She had wanted to tear off her eyeband right then and there and give her husband and her brother-in-law a piece of her mind.

But she didn’t—she had somehow restrained herself. Even so, Mother Jilana had seen her trembling and misunderstood her condition.

“Daughter, are you well?” she had asked, then told the maids to accompany Geldry to her chambers as she appeared to be fainting.

Geldry had gone with the maids, not because she was fainting or ill, but because she had been sick with rage. How could Adri have made such a decision without even discussing it with her first? How could he refuse a fortune of that magnitude without even asking her opinion? What would Vrath do with all that wealth? He already had a hundred times, no, a thousand times that much in the coffers of Hastinaga. He was the true emperor of Krushan in all but name, and he didn’t even use his power for his own needs. What a waste!

The Krushan didn’t need more treasure; they were already the richest family in the world. But to Geldran, those five thousand wagonloads would have meant a historic change of fortune. Geldry could have done so much with it, for the Geldrans, for Geera, for her father, her brother, her sisters . . . and yes, for herself too. So what if she used some of the gold for her own purposes? She had equal right to it, did she not? Wasn’t Krushan property supposed to be matriarchally owned and held? And she was the matriarch of Adri’s house, and thus should have received that treasure.

After that day, her relationship with Adri had soured. She had never completely forgiven him. She had confronted him afterward, and he had seemed shocked by her anger, her outburst. That had enraged her even more. How could he not understand her emotions? She had a right. She had a claim to that wealth. Yet he had treated her like she didn’t even matter. And so it was then that she saw it was true what they said of the Krushan, that they were totally male-dominated, women-suppressing . . . just like so many other nations, despite their claims to the contrary.

“Geldry . . .”

She started. In an instant, she removed the eyeband and looked around the room, seeking the source of the whisper. No conscious thought went into it; her hand simply snatched the band off her head. Her right eye was blurry from being shut for so long, and so she rubbed it with her knuckle, trying to clear her vision. Despite the bright moonlight streaming in from the verandah, there were pools of darkness across the large bedchamber. The lavish furnishings, mirrors, statuary, art, and pillars produced multiple reflections, shadows, dark corners. A dozen people could be lurking in those shadows, and it would be impossible to see them unless one walked right into them—or they walked right out.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly as dry as old leather. The palace was strongly guarded, the princely chambers formidably so. There were a hundred thousand of Krushan’s finest permanently garrisoned in the city precincts. Only a handful of assassins had ever dared attempt ingress to the royal chambers: none had survived beyond the entrance. Those blackguard efforts had all come decades ago, long before Vrath’s time. Under his reign, there had never been any such attempt; the rumor was that those who even spoke of such things were executed on the spot. Hastinaga had a no-tolerance policy when it came to treason and assassination: simply discussing it was grounds for execution. Even the kusalavya bards who composed and sang epic ballads to entertain the populace sang of Hastinaga being “anashya,” literally unconquerable, or unassailable.

“Geldry . . .”

She gasped. She had heard it distinctly this time. A whisper calling her name.

She rose from the edge of the bed where she had been sitting and looked around the large chamber. There was no sign of movement, no sign of life. The air was so still, so humid, sweat beads continued to form on her forehead, face, and neck. She felt a trickle of sweat roll down her back. She took a step forward, her vision finally clearing sufficiently for her to see normally. There! Over by the far window, a movement. She took another step forward and saw the shadow make a corresponding move.

She gritted her teeth in frustration.

It was her own reflection, visible in the polished metal surface of the mirror she used to examine herself after her bath each day: the eyeband always got wet and slipped off anyway, so she had taken to removing it before her bath and then replacing it with a fresh one afterward. Sometimes, she was slow to replace it, taking her time examining her own reflection in the mirror, before and after dressing herself: slender, tall, shapely, strong. A fine Geldran figure. A warrior’s figure, but also a queen’s. Words like “stately,” “elegant,” “sensual,” and “alluring” had been used to describe her by the fire-singers, the roving itinerants who sang for their supper in the rough hills of her homeland. Unlike the kusalavya bards of Krushan, the fire-singers used ribald, lusty language and didn’t hesitate to speculate in their songs. She had heard a song about herself that had almost made her blush once—and it was hard to make a Geldran blush, so that was saying something.

The things the fire-singers had said about her—that she was a warrior-princess who loved as lustily as she fought, that the bedroom and the battlefield were both her playgrounds, that men were her rivals and her lovers both at once . . . Those verses, so evocatively described—forcefully sung by the light of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night high in the wild mountains, with a belly full of goat mutton and liquor—came to her now. She was that Geldran. Not merely the blind wife of a blind prince of Krushan. She was a warrior and a conqueror, in a long line of warrior-conquerors. She did not fear shadows at night, or whispers in the dark.

“Geldry . . .”

She spun around. The whisper had come from behind her. She was sure of it this time. From the verandah.

She started forward, but stopped. Weapon. She needed something to defend herself with if it was an intruder.

In Geera, no one was ever without a weapon. Here, in Hastinaga, she had been dismayed to learn that princes and princesses did not arm themselves within the city’s walls. According to Mother Jilana, to do so would suggest that they were afraid. To hell with fear, Geldry thought, what about self-defense? When they had tried to remove her cache of weapons, some of them historical relics handed down over generations, she had almost thrown a fit. Her sister-in-law Karni had come up with a diplomatic solution: keep the weapons in her chambers but mount them as displays. Art. The idea was ridiculous, but there they were, her grandmother’s sword and her great-aunt’s stabbing dagger, tastefully mounted on marble stands and in velvet cases.

She stood on tiptoe and took down both the sword and the dagger. Now armed, she turned back to the verandah, ready to face whatever threat lay in wait in the moonlight.