POV: siri
Summary
Siri steps from her carriage at the foot of the black palace and is immediately swarmed by dozens of palace servants in blue and silver who pull her away from her Idrian honour guard. Treledees holds up a hand to stop her men from following — the Vessel goes alone — and she finds the breath to dismiss them home to Bevalis before the serving women close her behind a corner. A long, lamplit black corridor through unfamiliar twists leaves her hopelessly lost. The women keep their eyes downcast, hair loose under blue caps, their shimmering loose-fronted gowns cut lower across the bust than anything an Idrian woman would wear.
The corridor opens on a maroon-draped chamber centred on three tiled tubs. The serving women undress her without ceremony, measure her — bust, waist, hips, shoulders — for a gown still being stitched, and motion her into the steaming bath. Soft splashes behind her: a second crew in brown wades in fully clothed with cloths and soap and goes to work on her body and hair while she submits with whatever dignity she can manage.
A voice over her shoulder — male, cheerful — gives her name and a man steps into view with a ledger and a serving boy. She screams and covers herself; the man, oblivious, asks what is wrong. Idrian sensibilities, he remembers, and politely instructs the women to splash up enough foam to obscure her. He introduces himself: Havarseth, universally Bluefingers for the ink that stains his hands; head scribe and steward of Susebron, manager of the palace attendants, keeper of the schedule.
The schedule, he tells her, is tight, and the God King must not be kept waiting on his wedding day. He lays out what she needs to know between rinses. The God King's will is law; he needs no justification for anything. He does not speak with people such as themselves, and she must not speak with him on pain of execution. Mundane judgments fall to the Council of Gods; when the God King communicates at all, he speaks through his priests. She is permitted, exceptionally, to touch him; fathering a child is a necessary encumbrance, and the Hallandren have spent decades arranging it. The steward has studied her temperament; he urges her, with what sounds almost like worry, not to provoke.
A second rinse in cold water, a third in floral perfume so thick she breathes through her mouth, towels, and a deep blue robe. She is led into a yellow chamber, sat in a stuffed chair, and the women take her nails and snarled hair in hand. Siri tells them to cut the hair off; they hesitate, Bluefingers gives the nod, and her Locks fall in a pile on the floor. She closes her eyes and grows the hair back out to her shoulders while the women gasp; the steward watches with frank curiosity, asks whether she can change the colour at will, and tells her long hair is a beauty among the goddesses. She extends the hair again, past her waist, then surrenders to makeup.
Bluefingers returns with an elderly man in blue and silver — a palace healer, here to confirm she is a maiden and free of disease before she goes to her husband. She bears the inspection silently; only at the end, when the man mentions that her Breath is strong, does she realise the yellow floor around him is a shade too bright. He is an Awakener. She has been touched, in this one of the most private moments of her life, by someone who steals the Breath from peasants to brighten the air around himself. The shock is worse than the nakedness. Worse, she thinks: her husband will be the same. He will not just have bought Breath; he will need it weekly. He will, surely, leave hers alone at least until she has given him an heir.
The gown is brought in: deep blue and silver velvet, laced up the side rather than the back, with a long train and sleeves that hang a foot past her hands. She allows herself to be dressed, sees herself in the mirror — painted cheeks, darkened eyes, red lips, almost glowing — and whispers thanks; the women smile. They lead her by the hand into the deepest of the palace's black corridors and leave her. Bluefingers waits, ledger in hand, before a great gold-plated door.
He repeats the final instructions in the corridor. Enter the chamber; remove the dress and underclothing; kneel and touch her forehead to the floor before the bed; do not move until the God King knocks the bedpost; when finished, take the bed linens and burn them in the hearth. *Just try not to touch him too much*, he adds, and when she asks, with a flash of her old impertinence, how she is meant to manage that when they are going to have sex, he flushes; even he has not done this before. Do not kiss, do not caress, do nothing he might find offensive; let him do what he wishes and she will be safe. She nods. Bluefingers pushes the gold door open and, gently, pushes her through it.