Chapter 16:
Listening to Mayah, Sukren could feel his respect for Lady Nari’s foresight growing. It was marvelous. Sukren hadn’t even bothered to teach Mayah about marriage, figuring that she would pick up on what was normal from the way the serfs in the village lived. And Mayah had. She’d often mentioned, in that prepubescent girl way, how Vishti or maybe Karun could one day, when she was older, marry her and be adopted into her line, and then move into her grandmother hut too, just like Wex had done with Xyha. So of course the Rajas way of breeding and cross-breeding seemed alien to her! She’d been brought up, at Lady Nari’s insistence, in a serf village, with village ways.
“It’s gross. It’s just gross. I don’t want to do it.”
“It is gross,” Sukren said. He gestured for Mayah to sit on a wooden bench inside the butterfly balcony. “It makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it?”
Relief rushed through him when Mayah nodded. Good. He would keep to this tack, focusing on how weird the Rajas sexual system was in comparison to serf marriages. He definitely would not emphasize the necessity of Rajas breeding. It wouldn’t help his cause, after all, if he nattered on and on about how the Rajas had to breed with as many of each other as possible to even have a chance at producing a queen per generation. And anyway, the system was absurd! Not that Sukren had realized so at first. He too had thought it was normal, but he’d learned better after entering Lady Nari’s patronage – after taking her tests.
Lady Nari, like most patrons, had methods to identify and promote the most talented of her patronees to leadership positions. What the other patrons did Sukren didn’t know, but Lady Nari used tests. Any one of her patronees could sit for them; in fact, every one of them was encouraged to. If you got a decent score, you could become a squad leader, responsible for a squad of ten castle serfs. If you got a good score, you could become a magistrate, responsible in a castle alone for forty squads.
Sukren still remembered his answer to the question about Rajas reproductive norms. The Eternal Queen Sarana was not the loving, magnanimous queen depicted in Rajas art. She created the Dome Ring because she wanted to establish a dynasty of her own lineage, and she knew nobody would go along with being serfs to her descendants unless they were forced to. That was why she gene-locked the Dome Ring so that only her female descendants who inherited her chromosomal DNA could activate the Ring.
Now the Eternal Queen was knowingly a carrier for an X-linked recessive disorder. So when I say the Eternal Queen gene-locked the Dome Ring, I mean that she created it to power the bio-dome only if the person wearing it was an affected female descendant. But because we don’t know who among the Rajas has the chromosome and who doesn’t, princesses are required to breed as much as possible. The more the Rajas mate, the higher the chances are that one of the princesses will give birth to a baby girl with the X-linked mutated chromosome needed to wield the Dome Ring.
Top marks, that was what he’d gotten for that response. And for his others too. Sukren had done well on Lady Nari’s tests. He’d scored the highest anyone ever had, in fact. That was why Lady Nari had selected him to raise Mayah, back when she’d rescued him from his apprenticeship. She’d seen his heart then, she’d known what he wanted…
Do you want to live like this always, under the rule of the Rajas? You didn’t when I first met you.
Sukren swallowed. Lady Nari was right. He had to remember the point. No more agony, no more waddling. He owed it to Lady Nari to see Mayah through the next stage of her programming.
“I just feel confused,” Mayah was saying. “Everything is so pretty here.” Sukren watched her look around at the trees and plants of the butterfly balcony. Unlike most balconies in the castle, this one was enclosed, like a greenhouse, with fresh fruit put out every day for the butterflies who lived in it. It was also tiny, with everything in view, which was why Sukren liked it. Even if Ganithe and Ul followed him here, they couldn’t enter the balcony without him knowing it. “Even this place,” Mayah continued. “Although it’s kind of hot in here. It’s like… it’s like it’s lying. It’s pretty but it’s a lie. But it’s so pretty!”
Sukren felt a jolt of excitement. The ambivalence in Mayah’s voice had given him an idea. Maybe he could convince Mayah to be uninterested both in Rajas social norms, and in defying them. After all, if she didn’t care about anything, she couldn’t be accused of caring about the wrong things. Wouldn’t that be the best way to keep Mayah distant from the Rajas while still avoiding their disapproval?
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“It may be pretty,” he said slowly, “but it’s still a lie, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Sukren glanced over his shoulder. Ul and Ganithe were turning him into a paranoid wreck. The balcony’s humidity was also making him sweat like crazy, which didn’t help. “Listen,” he said aloud, turning back to Mayah. “I know you, it bothers you a lot when you do something wrong.” Mayah nodded vigorously. “And it’s wrong to lie, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s also wrong to like a lie, right?”
Mayah looked thoughtful. Then she smiled. “So we can go back to the village?”
By Sarana, the hope in Mayah’s eyes was killing him. “We can’t do that,” Sukren said, as gently as possible. “But we can still dislike the lie. Let’s call it… the Golden Castle.”
“Huh?”
The Golden Castle was a Free Serf metonym for Rajas power and privilege, but Sukren didn’t think he needed to explain that part to Mayah just right then. “The way the Rajas live, the way they think it’s right to live, let’s call that the Golden Castle. The Golden Castle wants you to like a lie, so it dresses it up really pretty, see? The Golden Castle says you need to be friends with all the other Rajas – because then you’ll be happy. The Golden Castle says you need to breed and cross-breed with princes – because then you’ll be doing the right thing. But those are all lies. The Golden Castle is lying.”
Mayah looked confused. Sukren didn’t blame her. Most people went through life unthinkingly accepting the standards handed down to them. You’re a serf? Well, you have to labor with all your strength for the sake of the Rajas, whether in a greenhouse village or in a castle. You’re a doctor-priest? Well, you have to perform all the reproductive rituals just right, from birthing to gynecological exams.
It was Lady Nari who had taught Sukren, and all her patronees, different. Test question #1: What does it mean to be a serf? The Rajas say that being a serf means sacrificing your body and soul to the Golden Castle. But revolution, not slavery, is our destiny. How well I fight for the Free Serfs is what really counts, not how well I labor for the Rajas.
Sukren leaned forward. “All I’m saying is, you don’t have to do what the Golden Castle says you have to do.”
Mayah still looked blank. “But then no one will like me.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
Mayah was too deep into needing friends to give Sukren a real answer, but that wasn’t a surprise, she’d been that way in the village too. Despite that, he was feeling excited. He was getting somewhere with her, he could feel it. “Do you want friends who do gross things like the Rajas do?”
At that, Mayah went quiet. “I… I guess not.”
Good. Now Sukren had to reel her in, keep her from exposing herself to their judgment. “You don’t have to do the opposite of what the Golden Castle says. But maybe you don’t have to care what the Golden Castle says, either.”
“But then what do I do?”
“Just live. Day to day. Don’t think too hard about it.”
Mayah made a face. Sukren understood. She was a curious soul by nature; it would be hard for her to let go and float through life the way he was suggesting. “Just for now,” he amended. “Can you do it just for a little while? I mean, you don’t want to do anything gross, do you?”
“No.”
Her emphatic response made Sukren smile. “So you’ll give it a try?”
She sighed. “Can’t we just go back to the village?”
“I really wish we could.”
He did. Didn’t he? Sukren definitely wanted to go back to the village. But when Mayah sighed again and said that she supposed she could try not caring while still remaining in the castle, Sukren found himself feeling something new. Maybe he could actually pull this off. Maybe Mayah could be indifferent to the Golden Castle, neither seeking its approval nor defying it. Maybe he could actually convince Mayah to walk that line.
“Let’s go look around,” Sukren said. He stood and took a deep breath, feeling like it was the first time he’d been able to breathe since coming to the castle. “The butterflies here are famous for their beauty.”