Diandra had a husband, a daughter and a cham to see to and I wasn’t her only friend so although I spent time with her every day, as the days went by, I opened my eyes and saw cham, it seemed I was settling into this world and doing it on a permanent basis. This meant I actually had to find some way to settle into this world and I couldn’t have Diandra by my side every second.
The same with Narinda who had a very attentive savage on her hands and he didn’t have a legion to command. So she was tied up a lot of time (hopefully not literally, or, maybe, if he was sweet about it, then hopefully literally).
Nahka, the same with cham, husband and two kids.
And my girls seemed to be always busy pounding rugs, rinsing out baths, cleaning my sarongs, polishing candlesticks, baking flatbread in a clay oven, roasting meat on a spit over the fire and the like. I tried to help (more than once) but Teetru had a fit when she saw me laughing with Jacanda and Beetus while pulling my tops and sarongs off a drying line and she lost her mind (in her quiet,
solicitous Teetru way) when she caught me rinsing breakfast dishes at the creek with Packa so I stopped doing it.
I was a queen. I needed to do queen things. And queen things clearly didn’t include doing the dishes.
The thing was, I knew no other queens of primitive, savage hordes to tell me what queen things I should be doing and although Diandra was a great advisor, she’d never been a queen. My husband wasn’t around to advise me, I wasn’t sure he’d be good at it and his advice might be scary.
So I decided the best queen thing I could do was to get out amongst my people, smile, nod, talk (as best I could), get to know them and let them see me. Therefore, every day I took walks through the Daxshee followed by whoever was guarding me that day.
Today it was Bain, or the grinning warrior, who was friendly, unlike Zahnin, the other warrior who kept watch over me (and the one who had plucked me off my horse twice that day we were riding). Bain walked with me and talked with me all the while scanning the people and chams. Zahnin walked two feet behind me and never looked at me. However, he did look like he was in a perpetual bad mood. The first time he was with me, I tried to engage him in conversation. This was so unsuccessful, I didn’t try again.
And talking with Bain was fun. He had no clue when it came to English so I was forced to try out my Korwahk on him. This made him laugh (a lot, my Korwahk was really bad) but after he quit laughing, he was a patient teacher. He would correct me and as we walked he would point things out and tell me what they were called (for instance, firepit, pahkah, torch, pahkan and just fire, pahk). He also intervened when I chatted with my people, often miming what they were saying which made me laugh.
But today, I was in my head and Bain sensed it so although he walked close and often spoke softly to me; he was letting me have my thoughts.
Bain doing this made me think that perhaps somewhere his new bride was grinning too.
I was in my head mainly because the day seemed weird. I couldn’t put my finger on why but it was weird. I woke up feeling it in the air and it hadn’t gone away.
But also, I was thinking about what Lahn said about how I came into the possession of a Korwahk scout. He clearly knew, thus must have asked, how that came about. This was not surprising; curiosity about your new mate, and that didn’t bother me. What disturbed me about this was that there was a story to tell. I thought I’d woken in a pen filled with women.
How could I be on a pirate ship?
That didn’t make any sense in a situation that made no sense. I was here, I’d been here nearly three weeks and it seemed I wasn’t going home.
But how did I get here?
And who was the Circe (or whoever) who was on a pirate ship?
I needed answers but I didn’t know how to go about finding them and I wasn’t sure I wanted them. The knowledge might be more frightening than the reality.
That said, Diandra had said something I hadn’t paid attention to at the time because I felt crap, was shaking uncontrollably and Lahn was extremely pissed, so I had other things on my mind, but when I had sunstroke, she told me the medicine was natural, not
“witchcraft”.
If you could hear animals in this world (and Ghost spoke to me, she was a baby, she didn’t have a lot of words and all of them were Korwahk so I didn’t know what she was saying half the time, but I still understood her mews and purrs and growls like human language), if horses could be so white they shone ice blue, if innocent women could go to bed in Seattle and be transported to an alternate universe – then there could be magic.
And perhaps someone here practiced it.
And perhaps that someone knew what the fuck was going on with me.
And, if I knew what that was, then maybe I could figure out what I should do.
“Dahksahna Circe,” Bain muttered and I belatedly noticed that he’d tensed at my side.
I came to myself, looked up at him then looked where his eyes were aimed.
The Eunuch was headed our way and his eyes were on me.
“Tee lapay lee Xacme,”* Bain said under his breath to me.
I looked back up at Bain and before he rearranged his features, I saw distaste in them.
Oh man.
“Kah Dahksahna,” The Eunuch murmured, bowing his head as he stopped before me.
Hmm. He called me “kah Dahksahna”. Most everyone called me
“rahna Dahksahna” or “rahna Dahksahna hahla” or “Dahksahna Circe” if they knew me pretty well.
No one simply called me their queen.
How weird.
“Poyah,” I greeted and his head came up, his face masked.
Oh man.
“I am The Eunuch,” he stated and I blinked.
“You know Eng… I mean, Valearian?” I asked.
