Alea’s misgivings about being led back across the waters of Lake Durak and into the compound of House d’Wyr only intensified once she was actually within its walls.
She had worried what sort of reception she might receive from the house rank-and-file… what stories might have sprung up around her abrupt departure. No one challenged her, though, not while she was in the company of a lieutenant of the guard. Darek escorted her past the security checkpoints at the boat dock, through the receiving area and into the house proper.
The custom in most houses was to throw back hoods, relax faces, and lower emotional shields, but the d’Wyri held personal privacy in a higher regard than most houses… in a house with so much telepathic potential, they hid themselves more completely when among their own than they did when abroad in the city. Alea felt laid doubly bare, with her head and face uncovered as she walked the halls of what she had once thought of as her home.
And still did, she realized as her eyes flickered around the elaborate murals carved into the walls, their details still vividly familiar to her.
The act of shaving her head had been meant to symbolically separate her from that part of her life. She’d cast off her follicles and scrubbed her skin vigorously, then purged and fasted until she could be certain that not a particle of the house’s substance remained upon or within her body… and yet she might as well have done her ablutions in the same bath she’d one shared with Dee, for all it had accomplished in making her feel disconnected.
“You are taking me to Delia Daella’s chamber,” she said when she realized one reason why the halls seemed so very familiar.
“It would be inefficient to leave it empty while she is away,” Darek said.
“You cannot be thinking of housing me there,” Alea said. “I am nobody.”
“You were nobody when you slept there,” Darek said. “But our Dehsah is maintaining it, and if you are going to be tasked to cer, you will sleep there, too.”
“A halfkind with a private room? It is no wonder we find such bold behavior in the marketplace,” Alea said.
“It only makes sense,” Darek said. “Anyone who merited a private chamber of that size would not be anyone who could be dislodged upon Dee’s return, so we could not reassign it lightly… but neither could we let it stand empty and completely useless. There are legitimate security issues surrounding Dehsah…”
“That prevent cer from rejoining the other halfkind when not needed by Delia Daella?”
“I’m taking personal responsibility for cer safety,” Darek said. “If it seems I am a touch overzealous in my duties, I will happily take any criticism that comes my way, knowing that I will be able to join the hands of my two beloveds together when Dee returns from the surface.”
“Well, banish any thought of being able to reunite my hand with hers,” Alea said. “This situation with House Eyru will not persist for nearly that long, and I will not remain within these walls any longer than is necessary.”
“You might reconsider that,” Darek said. “I’m offering better employment than what you found outside.”
“A halfkind’s servant? The only reason it is not more humiliating than a market barker is that Dehsah is not allowed out in public,” Alea said.
“See? It is a better job,” Darek said. They had come to Dee’s door, which was flanked by a pair of male soldiers.
Alea noted that among the symbols which wreathed the necks of their hoods… symbols which included the house insignia, their rank indicators, and measures of personal pride… they both had included the symbol of the Altered, males who had given up their testicles.
“Are all Dehsah’s guards so unencumbered?” Alea whispered to Darek.
“You think I don’t know how to share?” he whispered back.
“I think you know how to hoard,” she replied.
The guards slid aside without a word as Darek approached. He touched the door, and it opened. He gestured for Alea to stay back a moment while he stepped forward.
“Before you ask if I found any plums, dear one, let me show you what I did find,” Darek said, and he gestured for Alea to join him, which she did.
“Oh, Alea!” Dehsah squealed, before turning cer gaze back to Darek. “So, you didn’t find any plums, then?”
Darek shut the door, then tossed cer the single apple that he’d managed to save. Dehsah caught it and looked at it as if expecting it to break open and reveal more apples. Seeing that nothing more was forthcoming, ce reclined back on the bed, laying the apple down on the top sheet.
Alone in the chamber that was effectively cers, Dehsah had dispensed with a veil and gauzy robe and hadn’t bothered with anything to more prominently display cer assets. Many elves found the halfkind alluring, but Alea had never grown accustomed to seeing the feminine face and breasts, with a very male presence below the waist.
There was divine symmetry in loving the same sex. Woman love was supposed to be the most perfect and pure form of sexuality. And yet Alea often felt like an outcast among her own people for harboring it to the exclusion of all other loves.
It was a silly feeling. There were woman lovers in many prominent positions throughout the city. Daella Degra would have had an equal chance with Dee at descending to the matriarchy, had she not been so touched in the head. Her exclusive love of women did not hold her back.
And yet Alea felt left out when she watched others… male and female… fawning over the halfkind.
“If you knew how much that one apple cost me, you wouldn’t dream of complaining,” Darek said. “Or actually, you probably would, and I would love you anyway.”
“You said you would look for plums,” Dehsah pouted.
“I also said I wouldn’t find any,” Darek said. “Not in the open market… and if, by some miracle, I did find any, I wouldn’t be able to afford more than one. But as you can see, I did run into our Alea…”
“I am not your Alea,” Alea said.
“I still don’t understand why you can’t simply go back to the island,” Dehsah said. “I showed the matriarch the letter from our Dee, wherein she gifted the plums to me.”
“After the plums were confiscated and I was warned off any further forays,” Darek said. “I don’t understand why you didn’t show the letter in the first place.”
“It was private,” Dehsah said. “And the plums were mine.”
“Dare I ask what this is about?” Alea asked.
“Our pretty Dehsah received a trove of fruit from the surface with one of Dee’s missives,” Darek said. “And promptly forgot everything I’ve ever told cer about the need to be discreet with such a bounty.”
“I didn’t need to be discreet because they weren’t stolen,” Dehsah said.
“But you can’t very well choose to be coy about a thing and open at the same time,” Darek said. “If you wished for Dee’s forwarded love to be private, you needed to keep it private.”
Alea could almost taste the barely restrained resentment in Darek’s words. He claimed to love Dehsah and yet it was perfectly clear to her that he couldn’t stand cer.
“But I did show the matriarch the letter eventually,” Dehsah said. “So why can’t you go back to the island?”
“Because I was warned, specifically, about that,” Darek said. “Even though we proved that the plums that were confiscated were not from the island, that doesn’t make the warning evaporate. Duala Deneira couldn’t pretend that our conversation never happened.”
“She could try,” Dehsah said. “It all seems so hideously unfair… and what are you making faces about, Alea?”
“I apologize, I did not mean for my thoughts to be so transparent,” Alea said. She had, of course, been thinking on the irony of somebody who had eaten more fruit in cer well-protected lifetime than most elves saw in theirs complaining about fairness. “I am not fully accustomed to going unhooded.”
“You’ve worn less in my presence often enough,” Dehsah said. “Oh, but you cut your beautiful hair! Why would you do that? Was it so you would match with Darek?”
“I am in a period of ritual cleansing,” Alea said, not bothering to conceal her scowl at the notion that she’d shaved her head in imitation of the swaggering lieutenant. “After all the lingering influences of House d’Wyr have passed away from me, I will be fit to petition another house for the right to train and serve in their chapel.”
“What’s wrong with our influences?” Dehsah asked.
“Nothing, but they do not belong in another family’s chapel.”
“It’s a way of keeping the non-family priestesses from jumping from one house to another,” Darek said. “And discouraging a lot of back-stabbing and espionage.”
“It’s a spiritual rite,” Alea said.
“I did not say otherwise,” Darek said. “In any event, dear Alea is going to be soaking up the influences of our poor house a little while longer… she has managed to attract the ire of House Eyru.”
“Not the house itself,” Alea said. “Merely one of its ill-mannered halfkind.”
“Oh, well so long as it wasn’t wicked Dylie that should not be a problem,” Dehsah said.
Darek looked at Alea, who sighed and sat down on the floor, carefully arranging her robe.
“You could sit on the bed, dear Alea,” Dehsah said, shifting cerself to make room.
“The floor suits me,” Alea said.
“Dehsah, dear, pretty Dehsah… I need to know everything you know about this Dylie,” Darek said. “Ce is the amakan of Eyru’s matriarch, then?”
“Ce was the last time I was allowed to hear any gossip,” Dehsah said. “And what they say about cer… ce is allowed to say what ce likes to anyone, male or female.”
“That is certainly true in the marketplace, if not within House Eyru,” Alea said.
“They say that no one is allowed to punish Dylie,” Dehsah said, cer voice growing low and husky. “They say that her amikal tried to slap cer once, and ce shined her eye.”
“I… fear I do not follow,” Alea said, though in fact, what she feared was that she did.
“Ce punched her right in the eye,” Dehsah said.
“The matriarch of House Eyru allowed a halfkind to strike her in the eye?” Alea said. “I do not believe it. Not for a moment.”
“It’s true! Dania Allena, the matriarch of House Eyru, had her eye shined by wicked Dylie. Her mother leads the family chapel, so she couldn’t even get it healed or else everybody would know,” Dehsah said. “So she covered it up with glamour until it went away on its own.”
“Then how do you know about it, you pretty little liar?” Alea asked.
“Halvsies talk,” Dehsah said. “Dylie is called wicked for a reason. Ce even demanded a seat on the house council… ‘representing the interests of halfkind’, if you can believe that… and expected Dania Allena to give cer one.”
“I cannot believe that,” Alea said. “Even after hearing with my own ears how ce addresses women… that is too much to be credited.”
“But it’s true!” Dehsah said.
“So Dania Allena does not give in to every demand of her Dylie?” Darek asked.
“Maybe not those she lacks the power to supply,” Dehsah said. “But she fears Dylie’s temper and greatly loves to please cer. Dylie controls most of the other Eyrui halfkind, and so wields more influence over the house soldiers than is seemly. I hope for our Alea’s sake that she did not pick a fight with Dylie.”
“I am not yours,” Alea said.
“She did a little bit more than ‘picking a fight’,” Darek said. “She kicked Dylie right in the wicked balls.”
Dehsah’s mouth went into an O of shock that had little to do with a sympathetic reaction to the physical insult, cer opinion of such physical attention being quite a bit different from Dylie’s.
“That was not a very good idea,” Dehsah said.
“It’s unlikely that House Eyru will pursue this through official channels,” Darek said. “No matter how much they pride themselves on the freedoms given their halfkind, their matriarch is not likely to wish to draw scrutiny to the extent to which she’s ruled by her lover.”
“I agree, or else I would depart immediately,” Alea said. “With a private vendetta against me, the walls of the house will protect me… but were the matter made public, my presence here would tarnish the house.”
“And yet you claim no attachment,” Darek said.
“I do,” Alea said. “And thus I have no right to let it be tarnished on my behalf.”
“Well, I do not care what the Eyrui do,” Dehsah said. “I am not going to let you out of my sight again.”
“That is not your choice to make!” Alea said.
“I care not whose choice it is,” Dehsah said. “But you left without saying goodbye, and I will not let you do so again.”
“You will not let me?” Alea repeated. “By the forsaken, there is a plague in this city!”
“Since you two are getting on so well, I think I will leave you to continue the reunion without me,” Darek said, bowing and backing towards the door. “Dehsah, it is Alea’s first shift, so do not work her too hard.”
“Work her?” Dehsah repeated.
“Oh, yes,” Darek said. “I must go now and get the details sorted out with our dear matriarch, but for the duration of her stay, our dear friend Alea is going to be making herself useful on your behalf.”
“Oh!” Dehsah said.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Alea said. “It is an arrangement of convenience, nothing more.”
“I’ll say,” Dehsah said. “It will make it so much more convenient for me to keep track of you.”
