birthrightgreen | Write about your father

My father? He had no right to such a name. She denied it, and I never called him so. But all right, sugar. If that's what you want. Let's talk about the man who sired me.

Women rule in Terreille, and the whole concept of Protocol has been perverted. It used to be a balance. District Queens served Province Queens who served Territory Queens--the strongest and the best, chosen by the dark Jeweled Blood of the Territory. Males served the Queen their heart led them to. The Blood looked after the landen, and the land flourished and it was good. Caste, social standing and Jewel rank worked together, a triumvirate of power and position that kept our people always in a dance of power and protocol and in balance. The strong protected the weak.

Or so I have been told. It is not so, now. Males, even privileged ones, are no more than slaves. Frightened, weak males strip any weaker female of all her power and frightened females ring strong males before they can become a threat. A strong Queen could challenge and change this, but males bed them too young and they rise from their Virgin Night broken and useless. No threat to the SaDiablo reign.

Kartane SaDiablo. Only son of Dorothea SaDiablo, Red-Jeweled High Priestess of the Black Widow Coven and ruler of Hayll. Most of Terreille has fallen into Hayll's shadow, into Dorothea's shadow. She perverts everything she touches, and her son is no exception. Weak-willed, cowardly bastard, he took his ire out on the weak, the helpless. Darkness forbid that a Queen could rise, strong enough to challenge Dorothea's rule. Any such she saw broken, and her son soon became one of her favorite instruments.

He was a pretty boy, I've heard tell. A broken man when I finally saw him, caught in the web that Jaenelle wove around Briarwood, but a pretty boy. His mother thought so as well. He was naught more than a child when she took him to her bed to pleasure her. They say that sort of thing can break a man. He couldn't stop her, so he took it out on those weaker. Servant girls speared so viciously they had to send him away because the other men complained they couldn't use the girls. He hated whores. The gossip in the houses was that he could only rise to the occasion if he caused pain, and only the lower houses allowed the games he wanted to play. He was banned from houses before he found ways to just dominate the young girls without marking the goods. But houses had rules, and he didn't have absolute power.

So he took to playing his mother's game. Find a witch, young, still a girl. Spear her, hard and vicious. Break her web of power and drive her beyond herself. He'd keep them sometimes. Make them play his game until he seeded them. Sometimes they aborted spontaneously. Sometimes he gave them a brew to drink. When the child was gone, he tossed them out to go back to their families or a Red Moon House or the gutter.

My mother escaped his depraved games. She'd worn the Green when he broke her past herself. She couldn't use more than basic Craft when he was done the first night. She escaped and she whored for her keep so Kartane couldn't find her and destroy the child she gave birth to. His child.

Me.

His mother's pawn found her while I was at school. Slit her throat. I ran, so they wouldn't find me.

And then I trained. I killed. Planned men's deaths carefully and cruelly and sent them to it.

Dress rehearsal, sugar. For the right place. The right time. For my meeting with my father.

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She studied him, then traced his forehead and cheek with her fingers.

"What do you want?"

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He laughed again. Enjoyed the scent of her skin.

"Ladies first."

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She scowled. "I asked first."

Besides, she didn't know. If she knew what he wanted from her, it would be easier. Could she give it? Could she not? Did she want it too?

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He knew his answer, both simple and complex, would frustrate her.

"I want to Serve."

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She narrowed her eyes, frustrated as he'd predicted.

"Meaning?"

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"Doesn't that mean something already?"

He was proceeding with the studied caution he used so frequently, but had so rarely shown her.

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She sighed. "I'm learning what it means in society in Kaeleer. What it was supposed to be, but...this. In more...intimate attachments..."

She sat up, watching him, wary again. "Falonar said he served. Then he...he didn't want anything more than a whore to warm his bed. He didn't want..." Her. The attachment had been based on sex and he'd wanted someone softer and gentler and...

She had studiously avoided talking about Falonar before, but his betrayal had stung, and made her more cautious than she was wont to be. It showed in her eyes, in the way she distanced herself a little from him.

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"I want to Serve, Surreal," he repeated, sitting up as well. "You are a strong, intelligent, powerful witch, with plenty of all the really interesting things mized in for measure. Something speaks in me to Serve that. To be near her. You."

He watched her carefully.

"But you are also very much a female. Something seperate from all that. It may be intentional. I don't know. I've stayed up many a night trying to work just that out. I want to be near her too. To --" He brushed a shoulder. "To touch her."

Rainier reached to her left, and handed Surreal her robe for no reason but to establish his point.

"So what does that mean? It means I feel, but only up until you want me to guard those feelings. I touch, but only until you tell me stop. If getting to Serve you means controling that part of myself? Then that is what I am to do."

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She took her robe, but just placed it in her lap, pushing her hair back behind her ears, watching him just as carefully as he was watching her.

"I...don't want you to. To stop." And that took a lot to admit. Her hands trembled a little bit at the gravity of it, fleeting fear in her eyes.

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He reached out and brushed her cheek, then held out one hand for her own.

"I do not want to stop, either."

His eyes met hers again. Mother Night. He wasn't sure if he would have been able to anyway.