I didn't expect anyone to be in the library on the night of my wedding. It turned Char-Kermen upside down. By now everyone should have been drunk or sound asleep. Yet, the light spilled from under the door and pooled on the floor in front of the library.
Of course, there were young souls in my household who didn't partake in the festivities and were devious enough to use the laxity of their teachers to sneak around at night.
"Xenophonta, daughter-of-mine!" I shouted, swinging the door open. "I'm very disappointed that you're not in bed. If you're reading anything your father wouldn't approve of—"
I froze with my foot hovering over the threshold. A merry orange twinkle of a single lamp illuminated the immense oak table. It was strong enough to bask half of it and the matching high-backed chair on one side. The rest of the room hid in the shadows. Somehow, this looked far less cavernous than the library did in the daytime, when the shelves blocked the light from the windows.
The trespasser wasn't my six-year-old zealot of the forbidden knowledge. It was her father.
"K-kozima?" I asked as if I hadn't recognized my husband of thirteen years. Did Divines' providence positioned my consorts at every corner of my house? Whom would I find in the kitchen? That pretty Saffic from three years ago, when I had given into Miccola's nagging and went carousing with my officers?
"Ismar?" Kozima lifted his head from a thick tome. He rubbed his eyes. "Is this a dream?"
The gesture was so sheepish, I joined him in the cozy circle of light, instead of leaving him to his reading. Pushing the pile of papers to one side, I sat on the edge of the table. The venerable oak top didn't even creak.
With nothing better to do, I studied my first husband in the candlelight. He swapped his wedding finery for a tan kaftan open at the neck. However, his hair was still braided at the temples with a gold thread to follow this year's fashion. I noticed that it was longer again, curling at the base of his neck whenever he moved.
I didn't need to ask why he was sitting in the library, despite all the blessings he had bestowed upon Parneres. I stroked his cheek. The new stubble prickled already, reminding me that the night was growing long. "Your moods?"
His eyes hooded. A chuckle flared out his nostrils, before his face stilled again. "Moods..."
We sat in silence. I should have left, but once I stood up, heart-twisting curiosity weighed my legs. "Have you never been tempted by another woman, Kozima?"
Instinctively, he caught my hand, leaning his chair's back to keep me in full view.
"You already know of the only time I sought another woman's attention. Anastasia. On the day I had received your letter about Ondrey. Except, what I wanted was for that letter to have never arrived. So, I ran away. The rest of them..." he shrugged. "I know why they want me, and it's not love. Not even lust."
"The rest?" I lowered myself onto his lap, because my stomach lurched unpleasantly. The rest?
A sigh raised his chest, followed by a lingering exhale. "The other women are happy to dance at your wedding, but you're not well-loved. You're a mercenary who makes no secret of putting war above peace. You flaunt your humble roots, throw your blood-earned money around. The noblewomen would love nothing more than to humiliate you. And while you are away fighting, I'm here, conducting trade under a token guardianship."
My mouth gaped. "A lonely husband, left behind while Ismar gallivants around with the junior one? Is that what they say behind my back?"
He looked straight into my eyes. "Yes. And yes, I had been approached, both subtly and not so subtly."
I licked my lips. "And?"
"I'm not foolish."
"I knew you weren't since our wedding day."
His arms wrapped around my waist. Driven by an unstoppable force, my cheek pressed to his. I breathed in the almond oil in his hair. His hand rubbed my back, scrunching the silk of my house robe. He soothed me without even asking if I were troubled or why.
"It's difficult to love someone you hardly know," he whispered. So, he knew and Taffiz knew. Maybe Ondrey did too and only I was clueless. I should have been bitter with this revelation, but a feeling as warm as the light of Kozima's lamp welled inside me. For years, coming back home meant sleeping in a comfortable bed at last. Sleeping in long into the morning with Kozima's head pillowed upon my breast. But this time, thanks to the jitters of the long-awaited wedding, I had barely kissed him since my return.
Sweet guilt and the Divine's blessing of life-giving tinged my memories of our reunions in the same golden hue as the lamplight. The palpitations of his fingers, the racing of his heart, the hoarseness of his breath—I remembered all of it with growing elation. My stubborn nature rejected the truth when it was universally acknowledged. I had to figure out things for myself, despite it taking longer than just accepting things on faith. When it came to Kozima and me, tonight, I finally arrived to the conclusion that the world had reached long, long ago.
I tilted my head back, fingers spearing through the side braids—what an uptight fashion! I wanted his hair to fall free. And I wanted to voice my freshly discovered truth as freely.
"I'm sorry I don't love the way you do, or the way you want to be loved. But the way I love, I will love you to our dying day, Kozima."
What took you so long? another man might have chided, but this was Kozima. He said nothing. It was unfair for a man to have eyes as large as his. They glittered before mine, the eyelashes tickling my forehead. I was kissing him, lips brushing and withdrawing right away, the teasing game.
"Are you pregnant?" he whispered.
"No," I told him. More revelations blazed in my mind. I let them spill. "No, but I've prayed for the Divines' blessing. Let Them decide whose child will quicken my womb tonight."
Kozima's back stiffened worse than the wood of his chair.
One racing heartbeat passed. Then another.
His mouth opened up like a flower to the sun. I cradled him in a mad kiss, tasting the way he laughed. The Knowable World softened around us. One who says they don't like breaking rules, lies. Or, at least, Kozima did. He quivered, he liked it so much.
I swept the table clean of everything, leaving ink stains and flyaway papers for manservants to clean in the morning. The table didn't creak under our combined weight. Mindful of the hard surface, I slowed my movements once I sheathed him, but he gave up his seed so fast, it wouldn't matter.
"I didn't know you were so competitive," I said, helping to tuck him back in and straighten his crumpled kaftan. He sucked my neck into a kiss. I cried out and abandoned the search for my robe's belt.
His hands shook on my hips. "Come to my bedroom?"
"Yes."
It wasn't a sexual excitement, I decided, as I lifted the lamp to navigate the staircase leading into the man's wing. Harem's ambition drove him to the bedroom. The rumors he had mentioned annoyed me, but they must have hurt him. A daughter, or even a son emerging from my womb, a child with a mop of black curls and terracotta eyes would quell the whispers. Unlike Parneres, who was above petty jealousies, unlike Ondrey who was much like me, Kozima craved evidence of my love. And I yearned to give it.
My Char-Kermen estate wasn't a full-blown palace in size. The man's wing didn't have separate apartments for my three husbands. Kozima occupied a boudoir and a bedroom off of the common hall. He and Ondrey shared a salon. Bhutas only knew what they could do there together. When at home, Ondrey spent most of his time in the training yard with Marezhka. I noticed a chess-board and Parneres' lute, so Kozima would at least have male company in the future.
When I stepped into his bedroom, I froze. After fourteen years, he still surprised me.
Kozima's bedroom had whitewashed walls and a simple bed under a muslin canopy against mosquitoes. The only difference from our childhood cells in the Temple of Gala was the scatter of pillows and a painting taking over most of the wall. In jewel-like colors, the artist rendered all the Divines in Glory when They gazed upon the newly wrought Knowable World.
What stunned me wasn't just the extraordinary craftsmanship of this masterpiece. It was Gala's portrayal. Each of Their three human faces were identical, which wasn't a common depiction. They had the same piercing brown eyes, hooked nose and a mouth with a determined cast despite the full lips. Tears streaming down Their cheeks that canon required didn't belong on the lean face of a predator.
"Why did you ask for me to be pictured as Gala?" I asked.
Kozima's eyes darted between the painting and me. "You were born in Their domain. You need Their protection. And a merchant shouldn't worship Mythra."
"The only tears you'll see in my eyes are the tears of bliss," I promised him.
Nasturtium vine sent probing runners from its flower-box through the closed shutters and onto the windowsill. I broke off a stem full of orange flowers, plucked them one by one, to nestle them in his hair. A busy task, because most of them fell out when I pulled the kaftan over his head.
Only a few blossoms were still hanging on when I lowered him on the bed. It was snug for two people, but after years of marriage, our bodies had a perfect fit to one another even after limbs no longer had to be stacked in passion.
At the brink of the new day, the first shiver of my womb's quickening ran down my spine. I gasped in the arms of a man who wanted me since before he even knew what wanting a woman enticed. Kozima held me tight, like he held me on the day when Xenophonta joined our lives. Like he would hold me on the day we die. With the ecstasy of the conception subsiding, I unpeeled wet eyelashes.
The world revealed itself in bits. White muslin of the canopy. Warm brown skin curling with dark hair curling on Kozima's chest. A flower on the sheet. Another one on the pillow. The dawn light slanted through the shatters coloring the flowers to a glowing orange.
I lifted on an elbow to kiss him for the thousandth time. Alas, his eyes were closed so I couldn't see what shade they took. His lips moved in a special rhythm. He was chanting under his breath. Praying.
I nibbled his ear. "Sweetheart, you live in humble austerity. You do good works. You're impeccably faithful to your Wife and Mistress. You kneel by Gala's shrine at dawn, at noon and at sunset. How could the Divines not bless you with another daughter?"
His lips curled in an exhausted yet happy smile. "Ah, Ismar, don't tempt me into hubris. I'm no less a sinner than the next man. I'm envious. Greedy. Lustful."
To emphasize his points, he kissed me after each of his self-confessed failings. Those were not chaste kisses either, despite my pregnancy—he must have believed that the child was ours. Or, perhaps, there was never a rule to avoid a wife while she carried a brother-husband's child.
I didn't care. The sunrise was too sweet, joyful and swift for suspicions. I would be blissful apart from one thing: once again, I had abandoned Parneres when I should have stayed by his side.