Too Late

Author's Note: This is the first chapter of a longer work, and establishes the world. It gets sticky at about the three thousand word mark. If you don't like non-consensual, forced or Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault, please move on. This starts in a dark place. This world includes telepathy and remote viewing, among other parapsychological abilities. Text within colons (like this -> :As we live, so shall we die: ) indicates telepathic speech. No other magic. Technological level is early Industrial Revolution. It also includes a McGuffin, in the form of a date-rape drug. This story is entirely fantasy, and its author does not condone any form of non-consensual activity.

********

This is a social occasion to be enjoyed, I remind myself. Some forty people wander through this too large room in a too-large, too-cold building. My brother meets my gaze from across the room, where lovely, hopeful young women and equally hopeful young men bask in the glow of his potential.

:You can always change you mind, Bells,: his mental voice says in the back of my head. He tries not to plead, to sound neither commanding nor terrified, though he would command me if he thought he could. He helped me construct this insanity, but he likes this scheme no more than I.

:Too late, Vo. It was too late the moment we thought of it.:

I smile at the cluster of hopeful courtiers clustered around me and remind myself to pay attention. Tomorrow will be formal. Tonight should be light.

"May I be of any service, ma'am?" my prey says. He stands -- I have not gestured him into a chair and he is not quite certain enough of himself to trust that he may abridge formal protocol. I do not let my eyes look anywhere but at his face. He has a good face, though sun-scorched. Lovely dark eyes, the color of burnt sandalwood under a square brow, topped with almost cropped dark hair of the same color. He has a firm, shaved jaw, a wide, expressive mouth, a strong nose that has been broken once, but also well-set once. It does not detract. He has good teeth, straight and clean. One has been Healed, but it is a front tooth, so probably the result of battle, not weakness.

"None, now, Captain," I say, and startle myself that my voice is soft and steady and does not betray my trembling nerve. He is tall, which is good because I am too tall for a woman. His winter-wool formal uniform coat hangs slightly too large on his shoulders. He was in battle all summer, and lost weight. The coat must have been tailored last winter, before the worst began. "But I would be most attentive if, when the crush has thinned, you would sit by me and speak to me of the Cavalry. I know rather too much of military financial matters and too little of the daily life."

He is confident enough to take the compliment I have offered -- a mere Captain, with only a double score under his command, asked for his opinions, and by the Prazia Royal, whom everyone knows is both beautiful and clever, and difficult and scathing. I am not beautiful, but I am the first woman in the kingdom, and therefore, I set the standard. Had I bad teeth and thin hair and a growth on my nose, those would be sought after. I will admit to the other qualities ascribed to me.

"I'm honored, ma'am," he says, and tilts his upper half towards me in a momentary bow. I catch a breath of his scent -- burnt sandalwood in his soap. Not as entirely confident perhaps of being remembered as I thought. To pair his coloring with the echoing scent is both subtle and a useful aid to memory. Or perhaps he likes the scent. I can't know, not now. Tomorrow, though, I will seek that answer from amongst the other things I shall read in his memory.

I watch him walk away, his step firm, his legs straight, his back broad, his hips narrow. He is a lean man, but I do not think that entirely natural -- he would be broader, thicker, heavier if he were not subject to the privations of the battlefield for half the year. He limps very slightly on the right, probably the result of a wound, but it does not stop him from accepting the hand of a young lady from my brother, nor from dancing with her.

Vo comes to me, offers his hand, and we lead out the rest of this cadre who hope to form marriages and other alliances before the year turns. They must, everyone in this room. The men will return to the war, and half will return here damaged or as ash. We women must marry them and give the Pantheon a quarter-year's chance to kindle life in our bellies so there may be some hope for the future. There is no love in this room, nor can there be. There is lust, and avarice, and passion, but love is a luxury we cannot afford. Every man in the room is the son of a man who holds his lands by my father's will. Every woman's dowry will feed hundreds for years. That land and that money makes us breeding stock, and 'twould be more honest if the stock-breeders paired us off and told us to fuck.

We will fool ourselves into believing in love, or mistake passion and pleasure for it. And in five or ten years, when we have come to know one another's true natures, we who have paired off will hate those to whom we are bound. The men will seek companionship in the arms of our friends and in expensively hired beds. The other women in the room will flirt with the unhappily married men and sneak and skulk so that we might again mistake the fire of passion and excitement for love. It will be nothing more than a breaking of boredom and fear and grief.

I will not be afforded the luxury of an affair. Not the Prazia. I must be better, irreproachable. Nor can I afford one now. There is no foreign prince seeking my hand, though there have been. The treaties never worked. My father will get either a good price or a good alliance for me. He is my pimp, and I am his whore.

I am too young to be this bitter, this angry, this cold. There is no love in my future, but I need the warmth of passion and lust to sustain me, and that too, is denied me. A sharp tongue and a sharp wit are all that is left to me, and the lords of this kingdom would take those if they could. I discomfit them because they know that I know that I am a whore and they set it up that way.

I will not tell my brother how much I dislike this notion we have concocted. It is as bad as what is demanded of me, and I consider that slavery and rape dressed in fine clothes. It is worse in some ways -- a slave, a whore knows she is a slave and a whore.

My young Captain is not so young -- my age exactly. The dance has ended, the musicians play quietly. My servitors bring pitchers and elegant bites of exquisite food to the scattered groups of people. Some have left -- to talk to fathers and lawyers about potential settlements. To sleep. To drink. To numb the pain with hemp and poppy and passion flower. To tumble into rented beds, sometimes with rented women, and sometimes with bodies stolen from their fathers before the marriage settlement is made.

I pretend surprise that my prey is quartered here in our marble fortress. I tell him I will be pleased to see him at breakfast, when we all gather again. Not all of the guests tonight were invited to luxuriate in the emptiness of the north and east wings, but enough were, and Vohan did the inviting. I can maintain that I knew nothing, and locked in my rooms, my virtue is safe.

We share a fine, pale wine from nearly perfect blown glass bowls. He does not realize that his is painted with the drug that damns me as a rapist, a thief. He does not taste it, or does, but accepts my comment about the terroir of the winery. After the first glass, he does not realize that I pour the other three glasses in the pitcher into him, and drink but a half-glass myself, and that only half-empty. I must be clear-headed for this.

He is healthy. He is kind and sympathetic. He will be wise, someday, when he is not a young man with hot blood. He's been at war for too few years to have lost his idealism. His adventures have not yet touched his soul -- when a violist thweets a string like an incoming flight of arrows, he does not flinch. The dull roar of a low drum does not sound like charging horses to him. He is clever.

I find myself surprised that he has not been proposed to me. The reasons he is my prey are the same reasons he would make a good Prenceps-Consort. His family is recently raised to my father's gift of land, but were the stock breeders given charge of my whoredom, that would make him more eligible. He is new blood, and we share none -- a rarity in this incestuous family we call a court. He is not wealthy, but his father influences the north districts, and they will grow their fortune. He has a younger brother who can rise to take the land once I have claimed the elder son. Perhaps, they planned to place the younger before me instead.

Should I be caught committing my crime against this acceptable man, we will marry, and with no more haste than the other girls in the room. It won't be unseemly, nobody except us will know of my shameful crime against him. My father won't like it in some of his moods, but he will accept it as better than having my price lowered. This crime will eat into this Captain and me, and more quickly frost whatever passion we might have had, but this Captain understands duty and responsibility.

Vohan offers his hand, and turns me to my guard to be escorted to my room and locked in for the night. He takes the unsteady captain by the shoulders and offers to show him personally to his small rooms on the far side. I go, as I should. :You can change your mind,: he reminds me as they walk away. The drug has worked, my prey is unsteady and will soon be delighted with his place in the world, in love with all of it, desperate for another body to slide and stroke and sigh with him. If this works, if this vile test I have made for myself works, he will remember... nothing. Not tonight, not this dancing and chatter, perhaps not today's breakfast. A rapist violates the body. I have already violated his mind.

:Too late,: I tell my brother.

**********

I am dressed now in a plain, servitor's gown, the mask is in my hand. Tonight, I wear drawers because tonight is a test. The dress, however, is not. I have worn it before, to move about this brilliant white prison. My father's mind is dying, the result of old age and dissipation and the bad character I've inherited. In another man, his degeneration would matter little; in a monarch, it is disaster.

In the nights, in this gown, I forge his seal, and re-write his worst decisions so that instead of all the men dying in battle, only a quarter die and only a quarter are permanently harmed. I change budgets so that children don't starve and support our innovation and infrastructure so that we might survive until Father returns to ash and Vohan is crowned. I am a thief and a forger and a whore for the good of people who don't think of me often, and when they do, think me cold and harsh.

I am curt because I lack time to be otherwise. I am cold because I must often be cruel -- money that will improve a soldier's arms could feed a child. If Vohan and I don't make these decisions, no one will and we will all end. The strange people in the west will overrun us, and no country fares well under occupation.

The dress is deceptively simple. It's long, full skirt is dark cloth -- it blends into shadows, but also stands out against this white marble fortress. The servitors are unnoticed by us, or our guests. They don't even notice themselves, frequently. They're invisible. The skirt is soft enough to not swish when its wearer moves, full enough to allow movement, short enough to not hamper the wearer, long enough for modesty. The bodice is plain and cut close, but not tight, the neckline right to the collarbone. It buttons down the front -- no time-wasting laces up the back. The sleeves are long, but can be rolled. The kerchief is simple -- folds over the crown, ties under the nape of the neck, falls to the shoulders. It keeps the hair clean, neat and invisible. It looks nothing like the elaborate gowns of the women on the block this evening.

The shoes, too, are deceptive -- as thin as dance slippers, with soft suede soles so the servitors make no noise as they walk. I have laced them on, tied my stockings to the undershift's waist ribbons. I wear no corset -- I don't need one and a servitor binds her breasts.

And the mask. A mute, a woman's mask. It is a blank black circle made of fine silk mesh, with a button sewn to one side where the lips go. It has no ribbons or sticks to keep it before the face. The wearer -- always a woman -- holds the button between her teeth. Concealment and silencing in one. There will be another ball, a masked one, day after tomorrow, after the ceremony. Some of the ladies of the court prefer mutes to more elaborate masks. They better preserve anonymity. If I am stopped by another servitor, the mute mask is my excuse. I will keep my face turned down, my spine drooped, my shoulders slumped. I've been approached and questioned and ignored before. If I am caught... I shall say it was a test of security. I won't be caught because Vohan will help.

:I need not unlock your door,: my brother says as if I have summoned him, and perhaps I have. We live mind to mind every moment of nearly every day. When we are within three miles of each other, we speak as if we were in the same room, except that no one else may overhear us. I sometimes forget what his voice sounds like in my ears because it is safer to conceal everything from others and nothing from him.

:Vo, we agree, this is the least of the evils, and since this is such a great evil... :

My door opened, and my brother acquiesced. :I hate this. Just marry him. Quirin is a good man, you'd be proud of him, and I'd be proud of you for -- : He mentally bit that off. I might eventually marry, could I choose, were I not coerced and sold. But I'd rather be a thief and a rapist than a whore and a slave. The thief and rapist have awful autonomy, evil agency, but they have it.

I shrugged.

:Keep to the secondary, not tertiary passages, and avoid third floor north. I'll watch till you're at the door, and tell you if anyone close is awake. Tell me when you're finished so I can guide you back.: Vohan could see the shapes of the living over several square milliae, if he concentrates the appropriate way. We are both Talented in this way, but I will need my eyes to navigate -- we do not see walls or furniture or anything not alive in those images.

This mad necessity, this crime is the fault of our brother, the little shit-stain weasel, and our father. Vohan is my father's heir, and my father will soon die. Vohan is not married yet. His intended marriage seals a treaty we desperately need to reinforce our western border and that happy day is a year in the future -- at least. Vohan, too, whores for our kingdom, though his price is fixed and one time only. I am a woman, I cannot be Vohan's heir except in the worst extremity. But the goat-fucking, piss-drinking son of a whore that is our younger brother can be. And Mathes has assured his heir already.

The baby cries in the nursery between my rooms and Vohan's, and his nurse is there at once. I pass the door and Vohan turns in. He is an excellent father to his nephew, which is good, because Mathes is worse than no father at all. I am doing my best to be a substitute mother -- the baby's mother is sent away because my father dislikes the reminder of his youngest son's manipulation.

Mathes is just fifteen, to my nineteen and Vo's twenty. Mathes' marriage is legal and must be recognized, so the baby is legitimate, but the marriage, and the circumstances, and Mathes' manipulation of the circumstances means that my father has excluded Mathes from the succession. This is a mercy for the nation -- for selfishness, manipulation and cruelty, Mathes makes me look angelic -- but Vohan fears nothing so much as a long regency with Mathes in control of the child. We're wealthy, powerful, but we can sicken and die, and our ships can sink. Mathes as regent would destroy us. Vohan's first potential child is a least a year and a half away, likely more. Mine is not so far in the future, and Vohan can designate my child, with me as regent, as his heir. We must have more babies, there is no choice.

I don't want to be sold. I will be a barely adequate mother to a wanted child of a liked husband. I lack that maternal grace that my own mother had. If I'm sold into marriage, every coupling would be rape, and I would hate the child. I have thought this long and hard, and Vo has thought it beside me.

We have a friend who would share my bed and never my body. He prefers his male companions, and I could live with him as friends for a while. He is acceptable to my father as a husband for me, and if this test works, Vo will ask, and we will lie, and all pretend.

There is nobody I trust enough to father my child. A lover would eventually gossip, or have his mind read in some other context and we cannot afford scandal. Even my most trusted guards cannot be trusted with this, because their minds are periodically read to ensure security. I like many of our friends, but all are ambitious. I would remain a pawn, utterly powerless save for my body and I cannot bear that.

I cannot bear the thought of being raped in my marriage bed, and so I will rape. Vo believes he needs my mind to rule, and the job is too large for one person. To preserve my mind, we steal someone else's.

Vo's directions are perfect, so is my stealth. The door is here, and Vohan drops entirely from my mind. He does not want to know what I will do. I don't want to know it.

My prey does not notice me open the door. He lies in his bed with his back to me, the blankets drawn to his hips, his sculpted back a triangle of darkness against the firelight. He stares at his fingers between his eyes and the dancing light, and conducts an orchestra only he hears. This is the drug. The mute button is between my teeth. I am an awful figure, one I hope does not terrify him -- a blank, black hole where a face should be, no visible hair or face, a bit of throat, a dark figure, hands. All he may see in the firelight is my hands, if the drug is as strong as I think.

I cross the room to his bed. From my pocket comes the first sash, to tie his lower hand to the bedpost. He cannot be allowed to touch me. Tomorrow, tomorrow... I won't think about that. Vo and I practiced this, always telling ourselves rehearsal didn't mean commitment. I can yank the loops in a fraction of a second, and the silk is strong and soft, so it will leave neither marks nor alarm my prey. He need not be bound, just secured, and he is deeply enough gone that he only notices for a moment that I have touched his hand.

I have taken his mind, the thing I like best about him. I am worse than a thief and a rapist -- I believe I can trust this man in time, and he would cooperate with me, in marriage or in a falsely legitimate child. But I lack the time to earn his cooperation and for him to gain my trust.

I stroke his soft skin between nipple and hip, and he rolls into my caress. His skin is a heavier silk than the one binding him -- slightly pebbled under my fingers and smooth and lush. The fingers that fascinated him are free to be bound, too, and again, he accepts the bond from moment to moment. His memory is gone, he lives in a perpetual now.

I place my hands on his chest, on the thin dark hair there, and know that I am correct -- he is thinner than he should be. He is all muscle beneath the skin, no fat, and those muscles stand like a miniature, worn mountain range in relief. The fire gilds him and my belly flutters. I have never seen a man unclothed, save my brother, and him only in the interest of practice. This man is beautiful.