Yes, they're engaged, and heaven help everyone concerned. -- L. M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

No matter where you were in the Carann Empire, all the papers were filled with news of Emperor Tinuviel's engagement to Princess Qihadal. Entire magazines were devoted to speculating on when the royal couple had met, whether or not they had fallen in love, what the bride would wear, who would be the bridesmaids, who would be best man, how soon they would have a child, what they would call it...

Nadriet was beginning to understand why there were times when her brother seemed to hate being Emperor.

"Listen to this!" she exclaimed over breakfast one morning, pushing away her bowl so she could hold up a newspaper. "According to this article -- and this is in the supposedly-respectable Kósong Herald, no less! -- you met Qihadal at a ball in Malish, were struck by her beauty and immediately fell in love with her, and begged the Iqui for her hand."

Kilan burst out laughing. "Someone tell that journalist that he'd make an excellent comedian," he said when he'd recovered enough to speak. "There were no balls in Malish, I've met Qihadal exactly once -- and she was wearing a veil, so I don't know what she looks like -- and I certainly didn't beg for her hand."

Nadriet turned the page and scanned the next article. "And according to this one, you and Qihadal hate each other, and eventually the two of you will either fall madly in love, or you'll kill each other."

Kilan laughed again. There was a strange edge to his laugh nowadays. Something about it made Nadriet think of the fairy-tale of Drusmat[1], who had been cursed to laugh even when she was miserable. Sometimes she worried for her brother's sanity, and then she regretted ever thinking such a horrible thing. Kilan wasn't going mad. He was just under a lot of stress, and his wedding was in five days' time. Who could blame him for slightly odd behaviour?

~~~~

Never before in her life had Qihadal been the centre of such attention. In the space of mere months, she had gone from being the fifth daughter of one of the Iqui's chlursargo[2] to being "an accursed whore", to quote one of her brothers. And then, when she was preparing to be executed for damaging the family honour, her father changed his mind. Now she was to marry a foreign Emperor and start a war -- though, of course, no one explicitly said that was the point of this.

Thinking about the whole sorry business made her head ache.

Regardless of whether or not the Iqui had pardoned her, her family and servants treated her exactly as they had since they learnt of her rape: with loathing, as if she was some vile insect.

Qihadal had never been considered an attractive woman. Her shoulders were too broad; her waist non-existent even before her... even before; her nose too reminiscent of a hawk's beak. She was too tall, too graceless, her voice was too deep. And it seemed that her dressmakers were going out of their way to emphasise her flaws.

They had designed a dress for her. They said it was a mixture of Carannish and Malishese styles. It looked like a shapeless mass of fabric, in her eyes. It didn't fit her properly. It was too tight around the arms and shoulders, too loose -- for obvious reasons -- around the stomach, too long for her to walk without tripping over it. The veil and train were approximately a yard long.

It had been designed to make her look foolish, she knew. A final insult added to a litany of injuries.

A week ago she had been shipped out of Malish with very little fanfare. Her father had graciously granted her a veritable army of maidservants, none of whom made any attempt to conceal their disgust at serving such a "tainted" woman. She had been provided with a tutor to teach her the Carannish language and customs, and housed on her future husband's orders in a palace somewhere in the Carann Empire. Gankolzasqes was the name of the province, if her tutor was to be believed, and the palace was called Vírkainth.

Looked at objectively, there was nothing wrong with the palace. It was smaller than many palaces in Malish, but no one expected her to live here long.

Or to live long at all, she thought grimly.

The palace had a very pretty garden, and a greenhouse filled with trees bearing strange fruit. She had asked her tutor if the fruit was safe to eat.

"Of course," Eroan, her tutor, had replied, looking at her as if she was stupid. "Those are vulluin trees. Their fruit is a staple of food in this province."

So Qihadal spent much of her time in the greenhouse, picking fruit when she felt hungry and poring over a Carannish-Malishese dictionary, trying to make sense of the lines and circles that formed the Carannish alphabet.

Every day she obsessively checked her reflection. Her pregnancy wasn't obvious yet, but soon...

~~~~

"Varan told me to tell you that there are far worse fates than marriage," Death said, drumming her fingers against the windowpane in time with the falling rain. "Ranoryin said that you must make an effort to befriend your wife if nothing else, and threatened me with enough horrible fates to fill a library if I don't "leave well enough alone". Some of the sillier Reapers have a bet on how long your marriage will last."

Kilan looked up from the letter he was trying to read. He raised an eyebrow. "Are you betting on it too?"

Death gave him an exaggerated look of shock. "How can you suggest such a thing? I'm far more sensible than they are, and I have some knowledge of the future. It wouldn't be fair for me to bet."

"Thank you," Kilan said with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. He wasn't sure if he believed her or not, but the idea of Reapers betting on his marriage was so odd -- even by the standards of his life -- that it was almost amusing. "Why are you here?"

"I came to see you, of course! Why else would I be in your office?"

Kilan felt the beginnings of a headache creeping up on him. "No, I mean, why are you here now? It's the middle of the day."

Death shrugged. "I had nothing better to do, and Ranoryin was being especially irritating, so here I am."

Kilan felt a strange mixture of fondness and exasperation. Only you, he thought, would openly admit to visiting anyone because you had "nothing better to do".

He set down the letter and turned to face her fully. "Death, I need your advice." Some petty part of his brain urged him to add, "Well, I need someone's advice, and yours will do."

Death stopped tapping at the windowpane. "About what?"

There was no use in dancing around the issue, so Kilan went straight to the point. "Is there any way I can call off this marriage?"

Death turned so she was sitting on the edge of the windowsill with one leg crossed over the other.

"There is always a way," she said in one of her curiously toneless voices. "You can send an ambassador to the Iqui and tell him you don't wish to marry his daughter. Or you can refuse to go through with the ceremony. You can even abdicate and run away, if you feel desperate enough. But all those actions would have consequences."

Kilan groaned and buried his head in his hands. He had known there was no way out of this, but to hear it confirmed so bluntly...

"I don't know if I can do this," he whispered, more to himself than Death.

He didn't hear her get up, so it was a shock when her hands landed on his shoulders.

"There are far worse fates than marriage, Tinuviel," she said quietly. "Even marriage to someone you don't know."

A thought struck him suddenly. "Do you know her?"

Death's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his shoulders. "I wouldn't say I know her. I have met her once[3], though she doesn't know it."

That was odd. But then, given Death's job, maybe it wasn't so odd at all.

"Do you know what she's like?"

Death made a low noise somewhere between a hum and a laugh. "We did not meet under the most favourable circumstances, so neither of us got a good impression of the other. I had just collected the victims' souls from a shipwreck, and she..."

She broke off. Kilan craned his neck to catch a glimpse of her face. There was a look in her eyes that he'd never seen before. Something dark and unspeakably ancient. He didn't understand it, but it sent a cold chill down his spine. He remembered, suddenly, that Death was something he would never truly understand, could never truly understand.

Then Death smiled, and the something was gone from her eyes. "Well, let's just say she had reason to be angry."

Kilan decided not to ask any more questions. By piecing together what he knew of Malishese politics (the words connive, cheat or kill sprang to mind once more) with Death's job, he could make a reasonable guess at why Qihadal had been angry.

"Anyway," Death said in a more cheerful tone, "Varan has developed a new-found enthusiasm for architecture. Do you want to come and see some of her weird and wonderful creations tonight?"

~~~~

It was while she was in the greenhouse that Qihadal had an Idea. This was not just any old idea; it was an idea that might just ruin her father's plans.

She would tell Emperor Tinuviel the truth before the wedding. Then he would have the freedom to send her back to Malish and politely inform the Iqui that some mistake had very nearly resulted in him marrying a defiled woman. The Iqui would curse and rage and order her execution, but under Malishese law he would be the one at fault for not keeping his daughter pure. He would have no grounds to declare war. And his reputation would be irreparably damaged among his subjects.

She could face her death quite calmly, she thought, if she could damage her father in the process.

Qihadal stood up and walked back to the palace. She was so deeply absorbed in her thoughts that she didn't notice the Carannish gardener sweeping the garden paths, and didn't return his greeting when he bowed to her and bade her good morning. Later that gardener would go home and tell his wife that the wife chosen for their Emperor was a very proud, disagreeable woman who wouldn't even look at you, and she would bring nothing but trouble if you asked him.

Qihadal entered her rooms to find some of her servants sweeping the floor.

"Leave me," she ordered.

They bowed to her stiffly and filed out of the room.

She crossed the cold marble floor of the antechamber and went into her bedroom. She had very few belongings brought with her, but she had a pen, ink and sheets of paper. That was all she needed right now.

The paper used in Malish was a stiff, thick material made from the stems of mirqee[4] ground up and boiled in animal fat. Before being sold it was hung over sticks of incense made from zalbro[5] sap to disguise the smell of the fat. The incense could not completely remove the scent of death and decay, however. All it did was hide it behind a more pleasant mask.

Qihadal raised her pen. She halted, the pen hovering over the paper. Instinctively she had been about to write in the curving, looping letters of the Malishese alphabet. But Emperor Tinuviel would probably not be able to read those letters, and even if he could she had heard he didn't speak Malishese. But she did not speak enough Carannish to say what she wanted to, and she couldn't write that alphabet. Could she trust a servant to write what she told them to?

She had no choice. She had to arrange a meeting with Tinuviel somehow, and it had to be before the wedding.

Qihadal got up and went in search of a servant.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] fairy-tale of Drusmat = A fairy-tale in Zjurkyu, about a princess who laughed at a witch and was cursed to laugh for the rest of her life.

[2] chlursargo = Literally means "not-blessed". Malishese name for a woman who only has daughters and no sons.

[3] I have met her once = This meeting is described in the side-story Lantern in the Night.

[4] mirqee = A sort of crop similar to wheat.

[5] zalbro = A tree with sweet-smelling sap used to make incense and scented candles.