Matriarch’s Journal: 1st Landsday of the Month of Beginnings, 3618
I’ve spent most of the past two days in bed with Suibhne. We’ve been let alone, basically because people are afraid of him. It’s fine with me. I’m tired of everything: the Fenntians, the aristos, the Combine of Sentients, the running of the state. I died, goddamn it. You think I could get some leave time because of that.
The only trouble is that there’s something wrong, something you won’t share with me, Ash. Suibhne is here for two reasons. He was here to cut that root stock. But he’s also here because he’s incapable of coherently explaining why, right?
We lie in the herb garden, naked. The kitchen staff is pretending to ignore us. We’re on Dolparessa. When did people get so prudish?
I feel old.
The herbs are edged with tiny white flossflowers. I’ve picked some, and I’m braiding them into Suibhne’s thick, beautiful hair.
“I don’t think that Admiral Nelson ever wore this style,” he says. “It’s not really authentic.”
“It’s okay,” I reply. “You’re out of uniform.”
He nods. “Everything is okay. Just as long as you don’t have to die ever again.”
*****
Once we’re back in the house, Suibhne wants to check the pot. The bit of root sprouted almost immediately. “Thirty-nine centimeters,” he announces. “Pretty good, using the Staff of the Matriarch as a grow-stick.”
I crouch next to the tender young plant. “I don’t mean to complain, but why did you leave some areas of the glaze unfinished?”
“Oh! I forgot! We’re supposed to go to the lab and get crystals. They fit into the declivities. I couldn’t make them myself when I made the pot. Once we put the crystals in, you can have the staff back.”
“Crystals?” I muse. “You’re trying to hook this thing into the power grid.”
“Yeah. The sprout can’t stick out a taproot through the porcelain.”
“But it’s growing fast. Shouldn’t we transplant it soon?”
“Dunno.” Suibhne shrugs and smiles.
*****
Lord Danak is at the lab. He’s still playing around with the teleport. It’s his new toy.
He sees Suibhne and gets a little nervous. “You aren’t going to change my clothes to see-through synthetics again, are you?”
“Again?” I ask.
Suibhne scratches his head, looking sheepish. “Oh yeah, I kinda did do that, didn’t I?”
“During a meeting of the High Council,” Danak says. “It was when he was Archon, and I made the mistake of asking him to address them.”
“That was before I started messing with the gravity generators. Then they got really upset.”
“Of course they did. That was dangerous.”
“It’s not like I would’ve let anything happen to you. It’s not like you’re larches or squirrels or something.”
“We just came to get some Skarsium crystals,” I explain, changing the subject. “We need them for…”
“…a horticultural experiment,” Suibhne finishes.
Lord Danak looks at me dubiously, but it isn’t like he has the power to stop me. “I can think up all sorts of applications for this teleport,” he says. “Some of them are pretty disturbing.”
“Such as?”
“A racial purity test,” he says. “No one with Cu’enashti sap will be able to use it. It’s much more reliable than eye color. You have Cu’enashti ancestry, but you’ve got brown eyes.”
“The days of Guinnebar are over.”
“Tell that to the Fenntians. If they found out about this, they’d be likely to use it to find devil-spawn.”
“Do you thing that if we ask nicely, we could get the SongLuminants to erase the Fenntians for us?”
“That’s a really good idea,” Suibhne says.
“I was joking.”
“I knew that,” he says. “I’ve got the crystals. Let’s go back to the palace.”
Back in the hovercar, I lean against Suibhne, but I can’t stop thinking about what Lord Danak said. Of all the things I’ve ever done as Matriarch, the most difficult one, the one I’m proudest of, is to keep the Domha’vei from plunging into a race war. It’s bad enough that we are steeped in gender and class conflicts. Wynne was right about joining the Combine. Aliens inevitably attract nutcases howling about human purity. That’s the last thing we need in the Domha’vei, where at the last census, 39.27% of the human population of Dolparessa had a Cu’endhari heritage.
“You’re upset,” Suibhne says dejectedly. He points out the windshield. “Look! A bloobird!”
I look. “It looks like every other bloobird,” I reply. “I must’ve seen a million of them in my life. I never noticed the mites that infest their scales before, though. Come to think of it, I never noticed a lot of things about them. The stuff wedged between their teeth. They must have horribly bad breath.” There were definite disadvantages to an improved acuity of the senses. There’s no way I was going to try that wretched plankton. Poor Valentin looked like he was going to choke.
“I don’t think getting close enough to smell it is a good idea,” says Suibhne. “Bloobirds are mean motherfuckers. Smell me instead. What do I smell like?”
“Pseudocedar, and some kind of resin – maybe myrrh. It’s a good smell. Also, you’re sexually aroused.”
“I’m always sexually aroused.”
“Not always. Most of the time. When we get home, let’s go back to bed.”
*****
Later that afternoon, Suibhne gets out of bed. He looks uncomfortable. Finally, he says, “Well, I guess that since we’ve been married for almost eighteen years now, I can let you see me naked.”
“I’ve seen you naked a dozen times,” I say, but then he changes into the mothman.
The man standing before me with arms folded is Davy. “I wish you’d give me time to say goodbye,” I complain. “I wish Ash would let me back inside. I have too many husbands to see them one by one.”
“More on the way,” Davy says, yawning.
“I wish you would tell me what’s going on.”
And then he pitches forward, slumping over the pot. I rush to his side.
There’s nothing wrong – but there’s everything wrong. He’s asleep.
Just then, Lady Madonna comes into the foyer of our suite. She sees Davy slumped next to the plant pot and almost cries out in alarm. I shush her.
“I think it’s best to let him rest,” I whisper.
“On the floor?” Lady Magdelaine hisses back. “That’s not proper for a gentleman of the aristocratic class. You should have enough sense to take him to bed.”
Davy isn’t all that heavy. Together, we move him into the bedroom without much trouble. She doesn’t seem terribly concerned that a Cu’enashti is sleeping – something that they never do. Maybe she doesn’t want to pry.
She shuts the door to the bedroom and turns to me. “I came in to tell you that Lord Danak wants an audience. He’ll be ecstatic to see Prince Davy. I’m afraid that his Holiness Suibhne Ennis is a bit…um…scattered…”
“Suibhne’s eccentricities are well-known,” I reply. “No need to beat around the shrubbery.”
“Speaking of shrubbery,” she says, gesturing at the planter. “Are you trying to grow a tree indoors? Should we perhaps take it to the conservatory? Honestly, I don’t know how many times I reprimanded you as a child. Do not bring gardening equipment into your chambers, Tara, I would say. It never stopped you. There was always mud and soil everywhere. And who do you think had to clean it up?”
“You?”
Lady Magdelaine looks scandalized. “I was born to the aristocratic class, Mistress of the Bedchamber to the Marquesa of Dolparessa, then Empress of Sideria and now Matriarch of Skarsia. The most cleaning I’ve ever done was washing my hands. I meant to say that Deen’ni Vashtok, Sublime Housekeeper of the Realm, had to call the imperial rug cleaner herself.”
“I’m sure that it was a strain on the rug cleaner.”
“Ah, what did he care? He just hired common laborers to run the equipment. Anyway, no plants in the Ipsissimal Suite.”
“Lady Madonna, you seem to have missed a very vital point about the prince consorts.”
Lady Magdelaine flips open her fan. “Well,” she blusters, “I suppose it’s different for the plants milady has married.”
“Then you’ll have to give this one a pass. This is a sapling grown from the root stock of the Atlas Tree.”
Lady Magdelaine’s eyes grow wide. “You’ve planted more husbands?” she whispers. “But whatever could you want with more?”
“I’m sure I’ll find a use. I’m a highly creative woman.”
“Your Eminence, I don’t mean to speak out of turn…”
That means she’s gearing up for a lecture. I can remember the whole panoply from my childhood: the ‘it isn’t proper for an aristocratic lady’ lecture, the ‘you have to learn to take your duties seriously’ lecture, the ‘it’s important to be a good example to the people by going to church lecture’…
“But don’t you think it’s a little scandalous? How many husbands do you have now?”
“Forty-two. Well, the last three haven’t been appended to the disclosure yet. The next time Ross is around, he’ll do the paperwork.”
“Personally, I can’t imagine why a woman would need more than three husbands.”
“Three?” That isn’t exactly what I expected her to say.
“Well, men don’t have as much…how should a lady put it? Staying power as the average woman, and it generally takes about half an hour to recover, so three in ten minute shifts…” Lady Madonna beats her fan rapidly.
“I had no idea you were so much of a sensualist.”
“Although I came from Skarsia with your mother, I’ve lived on Dolparessa almost seven decades. One can’t help but adapt.”
“You’ve gone native. Shame on you.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that forty-two is rather gilding the lily.”
“Davy gilded a lily once, so I think we’re basically in agreement. But what’s done is done. Perhaps more than three husbands is excessive, but by the time I knew the truth, there were already nine emanations. And as long as I already have too many, what can a few more hurt?”
“I suppose…”
“Why don’t you tell Lord Danak that we’ll meet him for dinner? Let’s allow Davy to finish his nap.”
I hope. Cu’enashti never sleep – so who knows when they wake up?