Harmin was bending over her naked, and as she watched in drowsy astonishment he grasped her shoulder and hip and turned her onto her back.
“Your mother …” she began, but he lowered himself beside her and stopped her mouth with his own.
“I can provide a better treatment than she,” he whispered, “and do not worry about Bakmut. She will sleep for another hour.”
“You drugged her?” Sheritra whispered back urgently. “But Harmin …” He put a hand over her mouth and the gesture filled her with excitement.
“I want this and so do you,” he said. “Do not worry about your servant. She will wake believing she has never slept, and will not be harmed.”
I should worry, Sheritra told herself dimly. I should get up and run away. But her hand found his belly and began to trail downwards as though it had a will of its own, and he grunted and buried his face in her neck.
Sheritra saw nothing of Harmin for the rest of the day. “Turn from love as though from disease,” her horoscope had said, and yet she had given herself gladly, almost wildly, to the young man who now had her heart, and already she was looking forward to the night, when surely he would come to her and they would make love again. She avoided the family, lying on her couch with hands behind her head and pondering what she had done, her body still responding to Harmin’s every move as her mind played back to her their joyful struggle.
Behind the full-blown desire that had taken command of her once again, not long after he had kissed her and glided away, were the moral precepts under which she had been raised. A princess cannot risk giving birth to the child of a commoner. A princess may not confer even the suspicion of godhead on a commoner without permission. And a princess, she thought with a pang of anxiety, can be severely punished for giving up her virginity idly. But it is not as though I had a fling with a sailor behind a bazaar stall, she told herself. Harmin and I are as good as betrothed, and he is the son of a nobleman. There is no going back for me now, no hiding. If I am to enjoy his body again I must take Bakmut into my confidence and probably Father will know all within days.
Tbubui arranged my capitulation, that is clear, and that is what shocks me most of all. Is she not, then, as moral as she says? Or does she regard her son and me as already betrothed? Or is she seeking my support in her own negotiations with my father, a support that now will feel very like coercion?
She abhorred what Tbubui had done, and shrank from the image of mother and son calmly discussing her fall over a cup of wine in the garden, as though she were a commodity, something with no will of her own. Well, what will did you exhibit? she asked herself wryly. You wanted him desperately and you knew that the longer you stayed here the more inevitable your downfall would be. You were a silently acquiescent partner in their plan, and you have no one to blame but yourself. I shall have to brazen it out, she thought. Father will have no choice now but to announce our betrothal. Poor Father. Will he care so very much?
“Bakmut,” she called and the servant rose from the floor where she had been polishing jewellery and came to stand by the couch. “Are you the one who sends reports on my behaviour to my father?”
Bakmut’s eyebrows lifted. “No, Highness, I am not,” she said firmly.
“Then who is it?” Sheritra said thoughtfully. “Do you know?”
“I am not sure, but I fancy it is the scribe who wanders about with nothing much to do,” Bakmut responded tartly. “The sooner we return to the Prince’s house the sooner the idle members of your retinue can earn their keep.”
Sheritra unlocked her fingers and sat up. “You are my friend, are you not, Bakmut?” she began. The girl bowed. “You have been with me since the days when you and I played string games on the nursery floor, and you have always understood me. You would not betray me, would you?”
Bakmut met her eyes squarely. “I am in your exclusive service,” she said, “and I am answerable to no one but yourself, Princess. Of course I would not betray you. But along with my loyalty goes the right to tell without equivocation what is on my mind.”
Sheritra laughed. “You have always done that!” she retorted. Then she sobered. “I have never been one for many girlish attachments,” she went on. “Even though you are only a servant, you are the closest thing to a friend I have. What do you think of Harmin?”
Bakmut pursed her lips. “I know that your Highness cares for him, therefore he must have much worth,” she answered.
“But you do not like him.”
“Highness, it is not my place to pass judgment on my betters.”