[040] Nirett (Original Fic)
Aug. 20th, 2011 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helenorvanaTitle: Nirett
Wordcount: ~ 5,200
Rating: PG-13 to mild-R
Warning(s): mentions of under-aged sex, dub-con
Summary: The queen has an unusual petitioner.
~ : NIRETT : ~
______________
It was rare that the king and queen were able to snatch a half-hour or more of privacy, ignoring the duties that awaited them in the corridors of the palace, and they treasured their few moments of quiet and each other’s company. Their usual retreat was the expansive garden in the rear of the palace, where they could enjoy the tang of the sea breeze without so much the smell of the harbor, unpleasant even in the 35th century, and could bask unashamed in the sun.
But they had only just settled down to a small luncheon laid out on the wrought iron table in the gazebo that was the centerpiece of the garden when they heard the distant boom of the doors of the palace shutting, and shortly thereafter the crunch of boots on the gravel path that led to them. Raenel put down his glass with a little more force than was strictly necessary and huffed out a displeased sigh, mouth twisting in a sour expression. Corine empathized, but she turned to greet the manservant making his way up the steps with a pleasant expression.
He paused halfway up and dipped into a bow that was almost too low. He, it seemed, appreciated that his presence was unwanted. “If it pleases you, Sire,” he addressed her, “there is a petitioner who wishes to see you.”
Corine frowned, baffled. “They cannot wait until tomorrow’s session?” Every prince held Petitioner’s Court twice weekly; Monday and Thursday mornings were those Prince Yabae Lynfressa had set aside for the citizens of Charelo. Corine, however, held Petitioner’s Court only twice a month, as those cases she reviewed had nearly always been presented first to a prince, and then deemed necessary for the queen to review but not urgently so. As far as she knew, there were no real surprises waiting for her tomorrow.
“She described it as a matter of some urgency, Sire – and privacy. Her ship put into port this morning, and she came directly here.”
Her ship? If it put into port, then it was a sea-ship, which made her a citizen of one of the other Orvaen islands, not Charelan, who comprised most of the few cases she heard which had not first been presented to a prince. While no unheard of for an islander to take their grievance directly to the Crown for resolution, it was rare, and always a matter of “some urgency,” indeed.
“Very well,” she instructed, pushing her plate away from her. The food smelled delicious, and her stomach rumbled rebelliously, but it would have to wait. “Direct her to the east receiving room. We will be with her presently.”
“Directly, Sire.” The manservant dipped low again, murmured “Your Majesty,” to the king, and retreated swiftly from the royal presence.
Raenel was scowling down at Corine’s mostly untouched plate when she turned back to him, but it was a resigned scowl. He poked at his own plate morosely, knowing full well their escape was never going to be long in the first place but resenting its end nonetheless. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked her plate.
She smiled at him, reached out and swept her thumb over his cheekbone fondly. “Thank you, but no. I’d rather you go over the second quarter figures with Counselor Anarette when you’ve finished here. You can brief me over lunch.”
The scowl was replaced with a pair of rolling eyes. “Only if you actually eat the food while I brief you,” he conditioned. She nodded in agreement. “All right. Calm seas to you.”
“And you.” Corine leaned over the table to drop a quick, chaste kiss on his still-pouting mouth and then pushed back from the table, dropping her napkin beside her plate and leaving the gazebo. Major Staedip, her bodyguard of nearly twenty years now, fell in behind her as they made their way to the palace. It wasn’t as populated in the rear quarters, and it was a quick journey to the informal receiving room where she dealt with more delicate petitions.
There were only two other occupants in the room when the queen arrived, bodyguard in tow; the manservant whom had first attended on her, and the petitioner. Both rose at her arrival and dipped into bows, one more awkward than the other.
“If it pleases you, Sire,” said the manservant, “Ms. Asenulin-Taelid.”
The girl dipped into another awkward bow as Corine gestured for the manservant to withdraw – and she was a girl, couldn’t possibly be more than fifteen, mousy brown hair falling somewhat messily around her thin shoulders when she rose up again. Corine lowered her estimation of the girl’s age a few years when she got a good look at her soft face and huge brown eyes. She was tiny, draped in a simple white blouse that left her tanned arms bare and a pair of Capri’s that ended just below her knees; plain, simple sandals adorned her feet. First-marriage cords dangled at her sides, knot at her right hip, and the queen felt a twinge of unease.
“It does please Us to welcome you to Our court, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid,” Corine responded formally, shifting easily into the royal plural. “We hope your journey was pleasant?”
“Yes, Sire, it was,” Nirett squeaked.
“Good,” Corine nodded. She gestured to the armchairs arrayed in a cozy circle. “Please sit.” The girl waited until Corine had settled into a seat herself before dropping somewhat gracelessly back into the chair she’d occupied before the queen’s arrival. “We are told you come with a matter of some urgency?”
Nirett flushed and grasped her hands in her lap. “I do, Sire. It’s about my first-husband?” She sounded so hesitant, and Corine’s mood soured. Of course it was about a first-marriage. Why else would a girl so young travel so far without said first-husband, or parents?
First-marriage was a uniquely Orvaen tradition of betrothal, originating long before even the arrival of Corine’s ancestors to the islands, when the islands fought amongst themselves so frequently and violently that children were often left parentless. Girls at five were betrothed to a preteen boy, and they were bound in “first-marriage” from her tenth birthday until she came of age at nineteen. The couple could then choose to either continue in a full marriage, as Corine and Raenel had, or part ways to seek their own spouses.
It had grown from a need to keep up the population while it was busy killing itself off, just as much a need to provide the girls with a safe place in the event of their parents’ death and to provide the boys with some form of responsibility, to mature them swiftly. It was illegal for either spouse to engage in sexual relations with anyone else while bound in first-marriage – their entire purpose was to produce children from within themselves. It was the only infidelity law remaining not only in Orvana, but the world as a whole, and for that and several other reasons Corine had been debating its necessity for nearly five years with Raenel. Three thousand years ought to be more than long enough time for such an archaic tradition to fade away.
She carefully kept any trace of her displeasure from her face and voice. Nirett likely knew nothing of the queen’s dislike of the tradition, and she didn’t want to color the girl’s accounting. “Tell Us your petition, then.”
“Yes, Sire,” she said, and drew a deep, fortifying breath. Corine hid a smile at her nervousness. “I was betrothed to Lynarik – Lynarik Taelid, Sire, my first-husband – when I was five. Obviously. But my parents died when I was seven, so we donned the cords then, and I went into his household…”
Nirett’s tale sounded disturbingly like a recounting of first-marriages in those early centuries. Her first-husband and his family became responsible for the girl with her own parents’ death, but as soon as Lynarik was berthed on a fishing boat and drawing a steady income, he was deemed capable of providing for his first-wife in a satisfactory manner, and thus left to his own devices, his parents not intruding or mentoring.
Lynarik had begun to fancy one of the other girls who worked in the harbor, an Estaya, and had grown increasingly frustrated with the constraints of his first-marriage. And, typically, he had taken out his sexual frustrations on his first-wife. At first, it had simply been mouth or hand-play, but Nirett was too small to do much good that way, and thus he’d “encouraged” them to move on to more involved acts.
“Do you know if Lynarik and Estaya have consummated anything?” Corine interjected gently.
“I don’t … think so?” Nirett blushed again, but Corine had no inclination to smile. “He calls me her name usually, but I don’t think they’ve done anything. It’s just … it hurts. I didn’t think it was supposed to be that way. My mother never said anything about it hurting.”
“She was right – after the first time, sex isn’t supposed to be painful,” Corine confirmed. “Does he listen to you at all when you tell him to stop, that it hurts?”
She made a face, looking worried. “Well, I haven’t ever outright refused him. He’s my husband. Isn’t he entitled?”
“Only to what you permit,” the queen corrected quickly. “Refusing to acknowledge a ‘no’ is rape, regardless of marital status. And that, by law, is always illegal.”
“Oh,” said Nirett. She looked stunned. Corine wasn’t encouraged.
Nirett had gone to her in-laws when Lynarik had first started initiating painful sex, but they had told her Lynarik was her husband and responsible for her, and had refused to hear anything more. So she’d gone to the priest a year later, but he (and Corine took careful note of his name, so she could bring it to the attention of the High Priest in her own temple) told her that first-marriage was “a secular convention, not a matter of concern to the gods, so you must apply to your secular authorities.” Frustrated, Nirett had applied to the village mayor, but had received essentially the same response as she’d gotten from her in-laws. The chieftain, Orr Tafal, hadn’t been any more sympathetic.
“Where are you from, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid?” Corine enquired following this.
“Biduya, Sire, on Kaikaili,” Nirett answered. Corine recognized the name only vaguely as the seat of a minor fief on the southernmost and most provincial of the five islands, which would explain why the mayor and chieftain were in accord.
“If your mayor and chieftain have refused you, why have you not applied to your duke?”
“Duke Amris is Orr Tafal’s cousin, Sire,” Nirett answered. Well, that wouldn’t be very helpful, then.
“Why then not apply to your prince?”
“Prince Arryl is at court Sire,” Nirett said, tone clearly indicating that was obvious, and shouldn’t she already know, being the queen? “I didn’t want to wait for her to come back, and I figured, if I was going to make the trip anyway, why not go straight to the top?”
“There is a certain amount of protocol involved,” Corine demurred, “but I admire your initiative.” She waited for Nirett to continue, but it seemed the girl was finished, twisting her hands nervously in her lap. Corine leaned back in her chair slightly and eyed Nirett carefully, making no effort to disguise her perusal. The girl noticed, and twitched, but bore up under it without comment.
“As you know,” Corine finally said, slipping back into the more formal language of the court, “the Crown and Her deputies reserve the right to dissolve any marriage, first or full, should it be deemed necessary for the safety and well-being of a spouse or child. Are you asking Us to dissolve your marriage, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid?”
“I … no? Not really?” Nirett was clearly flustered. “I mean, I’m not old enough to work, and I can’t live on my own. I just want something to be done that isn’t being done in Biduya. I’m sorry; I don’t know what that is.” She was going to rub her fingers raw, she was griping and twisting them so hard. She chewed on her lip, brows furrowed in distress.
“And that is why you have applied to a higher authority,” Corine hastened to reassure her. “It is for Us to know, and decide.” Nirett didn’t look very reassured. “Thank you for bringing Us your petition, Ms. Asenulin. We will hold Petitioner’s Court tomorrow morning. Please return; We will have an answer for you then.”
“Yes, Sire,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
Corine gave her a nod and gestured for Major Staedip to summon the manservant once more. When he had slipped quietly back into the room, Corine instructed, “Please direct Ms. Asenulin to the main hall for the lunch meal, and arrange for rooms to be prepared for her in the south wing.”
“Directly, Sire.” He bowed as the queen rose. Nirett scrambled to her feet in order to dip into her own bow, and had not risen from it before Corine had departed.
~ : : : ~
Corine settled into the seat behind her desk with an unhappy sigh, sparing a moment to glare blankly at the closed door opposite the desk before leaning forward to tap the intercom. “Build a dossier on Biduya’s Taelid family, please, with a particular focus on their first-marriages over the last few generations. Bring it to me by the end of business today,” she directed the aide who answered. That much done, she allowed herself to slouch back in the chair. Her mouth twisted in a grimace, her fingers tapped an impatient rhythm on the arms of the chair, and she contemplated twirling in a circle even as she chided herself for behaving childishly.
First-marriage disputes always brought out this behavior in her, the few times they made it as far as her desk. They were perhaps the most difficult cases for her to judge fairly, and she knew that was entirely due to her own bias. Her instinctive, knee-jerk reaction would always be the dissolution of the first-marriage, whether or not that was indeed the best course for the couple, and she strove to see this case more objectively. Not every dispute stemmed from a first-marriage as disastrous as her mother’s.
Alysonne Stevan’s first-marriage had been one of admittedly few betrothals that backfired in every possible way other than the production of heirs, and even that was debatable. The Abada family had an inherited streak of functional clinical paranoia a mile wide, which they had gone to great lengths to hide. Such lengths, in fact, that the Royal Intelligence Agency had failed to discover it during their extensive background checks the first time around when the Abada family had applied to Corine’s grandparents to betroth Princess Alysonne to their youngest scion, Stafen Abada. Alysonne had loved and adored Stafen, and hadn’t hesitated to continue in full marriage with him when she came of age.
Worse still, she had felt him very wise and trusted his judgment. At the behest of his family and his own growing paranoia, Stafen had abused that trust to counsel Alysonne into a foreign policy of isolationism and stand-offishness Corine was still trying to break them out of seven years after coming of age and assuming the throne herself. As far as the RIA could determine after the fact, it had been an intensive effort of at least two generations to protect the Abada family’s secret, and later their source of power and influence.
And protecting it needed, for in seven cases out of ten, the Abada family’s paranoia mutated into insanity, and Stafen was one of those seven.
Stafen had never really been comfortable with his son, Corine’s older brother Lanroe. From what little she remembered of him, Corine suspected it was because Lanroe was stubborn and honest, and nearly impossible to manipulate even at fourteen. When he declared his intention to inherit from his mother, rather than abdicate in favor of Corine as was tradition, it proved to be the spark that transformed the king’s paranoia to insanity.
Believing that with Lanroe’s ascension to the throne he would never again have the same degree of authority and influence, Stafen murdered his son and fled the palace. Corine had been five, and newly betrothed to Raenel.
Raenel Traep had been a typical thirteen-year-old boy, good friends with Lanroe even before the betrothal and not happy in the least to be saddled with a five-year-old fiancé. Evens o, he was as kind-hearted then as his still was today, and had reluctantly taken the stricken child Corine had been under his wing, keeping her entertained and out from underfoot even while enduring his own, far more intrusive second round of background checks. But their match had been made by Alysonne, and Corine’s aunt Gadrianne vouched for his family, and the RIA begrudgingly passed him again.
Corine had been ten years older when Alysonne died under mysterious circumstances. While all the evidence gleaned from the wreckage of the royal yacht had ultimately been deemed inconclusive, it was the privately held belief of both Corine and the Royal Intelligence Agency that Stafen, whom had never been found after Lanroe’s murder, was responsible for the late queen’s death. Given that and her firm belief that it was only Stafen’s proximity to Alysonne during her formative and most impressionable years that gave him such a degree of influence over her mother, was it any wonder Corine had come to view first-marriage with an unnatural distaste?
“If you really and truly believe first-marriage lets the husband unduly influence the wife, then why did you fully marry me?” was Raenel’s usual retort whenever the debate came up, and Corine hadn’t yet been able to come up with an answer that wasn’t “Because I knew you and I loved you, and I was terrified at the thought of trying to find a husband while I was ruling a kingdom. Also, it’s tradition.” But she wasn’t willing to come out and say that, so he always won that argument.
Tradition, she was slowly coming to realize, was the bane of her existence as Queen of Orvana. Tradition was why “sire” always referred to the ruling royal, whereas the royal consort was simply “your majesty.” It was why the royal family wore the courting sashes – a traditional component of any Orvaen’s wardrobe – that replaced first-marriage cords knotted impartially at the spine, rather than on the right – heterosexual – or left – homosexual – hip, or centered beneath the navel – bisexual.
More relevant to today’s case, tradition was why Orvana didn’t have a more sophisticated foster care system. For better or worse, first-marriage tended to function as a catch-all where familial tragedies were concerned. A boy was just as able to be taken in by his first-wife’s family as vice versa, and in the cases where the child in question was too young to be betrothed, he or she was taken in by the family of a sibling’s first-spouse. It was rare to find a child with no family related by law or blood able to take them in. Crown Wardship was technically always a possibility, but usually one of last resort as more often than not, the Crown didn’t have the first clue what to do with a Ward.
Corine levered herself out of her chair and wandered out the glass doors behind her onto the balcony. The salt of the Atlantic Ocean – and the unmistakable scent of a working harbor – was more noticeable on this side of the palace, and functioned nearly as well as smelling salts to clear her mind.
In Nirett’s case, dissolution was absolutely paramount, but what came after was a little more difficult to discern. She was troubled that the girl had found it necessary to travel so far from home in order to find a court that would hear her petition and lend it proper weight. It was understandable that the mayor and chieftain would be in accord given the fact that Biduya was the fief’s seat of power. But it wasn’t often a chieftain and a duke were related and belonging to the same chain of command, usually for this very reason. A petition should not need to skip straight to a prince’s court before it could be given a proper hearing. Certainly not straight to the queen unless it were a major – and usually private – petition, indeed. Not without being presented in Petitioner’s Court first.
There was also the matter of the priest. Corine went back to her desk and made a note in her calendar to speak with the High Priest tomorrow after Petitioner’s Court. Technically, the priest had been in the right when he said first-marriage was a secular convention. But if anyone, much less an underage child, came to him to report sexual abuse, that most certainly fell under the purview of the gods, and it was the responsibility of the priesthood to make certain it was also reported to the secular authorities, even if they did nothing else. To turn up his nose and send Nirett back to the courts that had denied her once already was a gross violation of his oaths, and Corine found herself almost curious to see how he would justify himself to Harufaun’s Tribunal.
But first-marriage disputes, however messy, were nothing compared to religious disputes, particularly when it came to the separation of church and state. The priest would have to wait.
The intercom blatted at her before she could think further, and she huffed even as she recognized Raenel’s tone. She glanced at the clock on the far side of the desk as she reached for the intercom, and winced. “I’ve been busy,” she said, hoping to cut him off at the pass.
“Not so busy you can’t get away for lunch,” the king retorted, more cheerfully than she had expected. “Kaytle’s ship set down about an hour ago, and I’ve managed to keep him entertained, but the only reason he agreed to fly out here in the first place was because you promised you’d eat a full meal with him that didn’t involve any other dignitaries, and we have a formal dinner tonight. And you promised you’d eat.”
“Kaytle’s here?” She wracked her brain for the date Madorian’s younger brother had given her for his arrival. Kaytle Stevan was notorious for both his intense dislike for the capitol city and his willingness to do almost anything for his only cousin. Hadn’t he been planning to come out next week?
“Don’t tell me you forgot.” Raenel sounded affronted. “How is it that you had to take three more years of history in school than I did, and yet I have a better head for dates than you do?”
“Past dates and future dates are two very different fish,” she shot back instantly. It was a long-running joke between them, and it was sadly very true. “I’ll be right there. And I’ll eat, too!”
~ : : : ~
In her office again later that evening, Corine reflected that she needed to get out of Raldegan more often. She hadn’t visited Kaytle in person for nearly a year, and she always forgot how rewarding an experience it was. He had amicably dissolved his own first-marriage with Yronyevett Rockthorn earlier in the month, and now sported the courting sash knotted on the right hip.
“You know you’re not supposed to declare like that, being my cousin and all,” Corine had teased.
“I can’t inherit – what’s the point?” was his quick response. “Besides, I don’t like having a knot digging into my back whenever I’m dragged to a formal dinner.”
Already wriggling away from the knot that was slowly but steadily grinding a hole in her own spine, regardless how slender a knot or broach she forced her sash into, Corine couldn’t really argue.
Corine had been as good as her word and obediently eaten her food as Raenel briefed her on his meeting with Councilor Anarette. She’d have to review the numbers more thoroughly later, but she doubted they’d changed all that drastically from last week. Then both men had listened attentively as she explained Nirett’s petition and her current dilemma.
Raenel’s response had been immediate and expected: “Dissolve the first-marriage, yes, but get her in another one as soon as possible. She’s too young not to be in one.”
“Does she have any other living family?” Kaytle asked.
“No,” Corine answered, having looked up that information herself on her way to her office. “Only child of an only child of an only child on both sides. The closest family she has is at a fourth removal on an entirely different island.”
“A change of scenery might do her good,” Raenel murmured.
“I was thinking about Crown Wardship, in all honesty,” Corine admitted. “Her whole story leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t want her associated with Biduya any more than necessary.”
“If you’re going to slap them on the wrist with her case,” Raenel cautioned, “Crown Wardship won’t be very effective. Everyone knows it’s a last resort, and they’ll think you don’t have any better idea what to do with her than they did.”
“I hope to know a little more about Biduya and the Taelids in particular later this evening, though that won’t change my decision very much at this point as far as Ms. Asenulin herself is concerned.”
“I think it should.” Kaytle had leaned back from the table. “I agree with Raenel on this one, Lena, Wardship won’t be doing you or her any favors. A new first-marriage is what she and they both need. A respectable first-husband and family, preferably a younger son with an older brother already involved in a first-marriage so he’s seen up close and second-hand how it should be done. And so they see how they should have done by her in the first place.”
“Or, if you really want someone who knows what they’re doing, betroth her to someone who already has a successful first-marriage under his belt,” Raenel suggested diffidently.
Kaytle and Corine had both stared at him. “You’re not supposed to have more than one first-marriage,” Corine told him in tones that clearly conveyed the sentiment of duh. “That’s why it’s called first-marriage.”
“It’s not without precedent!” Raenel said defensively, looking wide-eyed at them and raising his hands before himself. “In the early 1800s, when the small pox epidemic swept through Orvana, there were a whole slew of girls who had lost their first-husbands and had no other family, so the priests declared that the male members of the first-husband’s family should don cords – several of whom had already traded in their cords for sashes.”
“That was two thousand years ago.”
“Still a legal precedent!”
Corine scoffed. “Not any sort of one that would hold up in court! And even if it weren’t the case, where exactly to you expect me to find a respectable single man in this day and age willing to don cords again with a thirteen-year-old?”
“Oh, well,” Kaytle had said, and puffed up his chest. “If you’re so desperate for vic – I mean, volunteers – I’ll don cords with her.”
Corine gave him a very flat glare. “Thank you, Kaytle. I’ll bear that in mind.”
The chime of the doorbell brought her out of her memories, and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair as the door slid open to reveal a young man in palace teal robes with an electronic tablet in his hands. “The Taelid dossier, Sire,” he murmured, bowed, and brought the tablet forward.
“Thank you for your promptness,” she waved a dismissal, already waking the tablet to peruse its contents.
They weren’t nearly as pleasant as she’d hoped they might be.
The Taelid family, it seemed, had a long history of first-marriage abuse. The aide had been very thorough – over the last seven generations, there had been three first-wives who had complained openly of mistreatment by their first-husbands, one of whom had actually made it to the court. And been promptly dismissed by the sitting judge, an ancestor, the aide had noted, of the current mayor. That was an interesting discovery. The aide had noted that in the last twelve generations, there had been a total of three first-marriage disputes that made it into court – all promptly dismissed, all with the notation “personal issues to be resolved between spouses – not the business of the Queen’s Justice” – which was an alarming number in a single family when most went their entire lineage without a single dispute requiring the settlement of a judge beyond dissolution.
The Taelids were a powerful family in Biduya. In a village that relied on the sea and the gods to provide nearly everything, they owned the largest fishing fleet comprised of the largest and nicest boats, and employed the majority of not only Biduya’s working class, but that of two neighboring villages as well. At least one Taelid in the last seven generations had served as the local priest, and two had been elected mayor. Neither, she noted, had earned the duke’s support for re-election.
Remarrying Nirett to another Biduyan boy was clearly out of the question. The Taelids would be embarrassed by the Crown’s direct interference in their little empire and family. But it wouldn’t do Nirett any favors to keep her in a village largely controlled by the very family that had put her in this situation, and the whole point of dissolution in the first place was for the safety of a spouse. Leaving her in Biduya, with a Biduyan first-husband, would simply be leaving her in ideal range for retaliation. A Biduyan would feel the weight of the Taelid family’s displeasure moreso that the Crown’s.
And Corine did want to embarrass them, but at this point, once Nirett’s safety was assured, she wanted them – the Taelids and Biduya – to feel Her Royal displeasure most thoroughly. Ignoring a first-marriage dispute once was criminal negligence. Not simply ignoring but dismissing three separate disputes for one single family was a serial pattern. Wardship wouldn’t satisfy; Raenel was right about that. Once first-marriage became optional and less common, and Crown Wardship more common, then it would be an effective slap on the wrist. Until then, however, when Wardship was seen by all as a last resort measure when there was no better alternative, the embarrassment would be the Crown’s, not the Taelids’.
She set the tablet gently on her desk and indulged in a little side-swinging. First-marriage it would have to be, then. She would also be requiring Her Servant Prince Arryl to arbitrate the Taelid family’s future first-marriage negotiations until further notice, and to look in on Duke Amris and Orr Tafal. It could very well be that Nirett had assumed she’d get a similar answer from a family member – after all, she had seen nothing to suggest otherwise in her own life – and the duke would in fact had given her petition a fair hearing, but it was always best to be certain.
In the meantime – she tapped her intercom for what she hoped would be the last time tonight, and grinned at the groggy response. “Kaytle? How serious were you at lunch earlier?”
Wordcount: ~ 5,200
Rating: PG-13 to mild-R
Warning(s): mentions of under-aged sex, dub-con
Summary: The queen has an unusual petitioner.
______________
It was rare that the king and queen were able to snatch a half-hour or more of privacy, ignoring the duties that awaited them in the corridors of the palace, and they treasured their few moments of quiet and each other’s company. Their usual retreat was the expansive garden in the rear of the palace, where they could enjoy the tang of the sea breeze without so much the smell of the harbor, unpleasant even in the 35th century, and could bask unashamed in the sun.
But they had only just settled down to a small luncheon laid out on the wrought iron table in the gazebo that was the centerpiece of the garden when they heard the distant boom of the doors of the palace shutting, and shortly thereafter the crunch of boots on the gravel path that led to them. Raenel put down his glass with a little more force than was strictly necessary and huffed out a displeased sigh, mouth twisting in a sour expression. Corine empathized, but she turned to greet the manservant making his way up the steps with a pleasant expression.
He paused halfway up and dipped into a bow that was almost too low. He, it seemed, appreciated that his presence was unwanted. “If it pleases you, Sire,” he addressed her, “there is a petitioner who wishes to see you.”
Corine frowned, baffled. “They cannot wait until tomorrow’s session?” Every prince held Petitioner’s Court twice weekly; Monday and Thursday mornings were those Prince Yabae Lynfressa had set aside for the citizens of Charelo. Corine, however, held Petitioner’s Court only twice a month, as those cases she reviewed had nearly always been presented first to a prince, and then deemed necessary for the queen to review but not urgently so. As far as she knew, there were no real surprises waiting for her tomorrow.
“She described it as a matter of some urgency, Sire – and privacy. Her ship put into port this morning, and she came directly here.”
Her ship? If it put into port, then it was a sea-ship, which made her a citizen of one of the other Orvaen islands, not Charelan, who comprised most of the few cases she heard which had not first been presented to a prince. While no unheard of for an islander to take their grievance directly to the Crown for resolution, it was rare, and always a matter of “some urgency,” indeed.
“Very well,” she instructed, pushing her plate away from her. The food smelled delicious, and her stomach rumbled rebelliously, but it would have to wait. “Direct her to the east receiving room. We will be with her presently.”
“Directly, Sire.” The manservant dipped low again, murmured “Your Majesty,” to the king, and retreated swiftly from the royal presence.
Raenel was scowling down at Corine’s mostly untouched plate when she turned back to him, but it was a resigned scowl. He poked at his own plate morosely, knowing full well their escape was never going to be long in the first place but resenting its end nonetheless. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked her plate.
She smiled at him, reached out and swept her thumb over his cheekbone fondly. “Thank you, but no. I’d rather you go over the second quarter figures with Counselor Anarette when you’ve finished here. You can brief me over lunch.”
The scowl was replaced with a pair of rolling eyes. “Only if you actually eat the food while I brief you,” he conditioned. She nodded in agreement. “All right. Calm seas to you.”
“And you.” Corine leaned over the table to drop a quick, chaste kiss on his still-pouting mouth and then pushed back from the table, dropping her napkin beside her plate and leaving the gazebo. Major Staedip, her bodyguard of nearly twenty years now, fell in behind her as they made their way to the palace. It wasn’t as populated in the rear quarters, and it was a quick journey to the informal receiving room where she dealt with more delicate petitions.
There were only two other occupants in the room when the queen arrived, bodyguard in tow; the manservant whom had first attended on her, and the petitioner. Both rose at her arrival and dipped into bows, one more awkward than the other.
“If it pleases you, Sire,” said the manservant, “Ms. Asenulin-Taelid.”
The girl dipped into another awkward bow as Corine gestured for the manservant to withdraw – and she was a girl, couldn’t possibly be more than fifteen, mousy brown hair falling somewhat messily around her thin shoulders when she rose up again. Corine lowered her estimation of the girl’s age a few years when she got a good look at her soft face and huge brown eyes. She was tiny, draped in a simple white blouse that left her tanned arms bare and a pair of Capri’s that ended just below her knees; plain, simple sandals adorned her feet. First-marriage cords dangled at her sides, knot at her right hip, and the queen felt a twinge of unease.
“It does please Us to welcome you to Our court, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid,” Corine responded formally, shifting easily into the royal plural. “We hope your journey was pleasant?”
“Yes, Sire, it was,” Nirett squeaked.
“Good,” Corine nodded. She gestured to the armchairs arrayed in a cozy circle. “Please sit.” The girl waited until Corine had settled into a seat herself before dropping somewhat gracelessly back into the chair she’d occupied before the queen’s arrival. “We are told you come with a matter of some urgency?”
Nirett flushed and grasped her hands in her lap. “I do, Sire. It’s about my first-husband?” She sounded so hesitant, and Corine’s mood soured. Of course it was about a first-marriage. Why else would a girl so young travel so far without said first-husband, or parents?
First-marriage was a uniquely Orvaen tradition of betrothal, originating long before even the arrival of Corine’s ancestors to the islands, when the islands fought amongst themselves so frequently and violently that children were often left parentless. Girls at five were betrothed to a preteen boy, and they were bound in “first-marriage” from her tenth birthday until she came of age at nineteen. The couple could then choose to either continue in a full marriage, as Corine and Raenel had, or part ways to seek their own spouses.
It had grown from a need to keep up the population while it was busy killing itself off, just as much a need to provide the girls with a safe place in the event of their parents’ death and to provide the boys with some form of responsibility, to mature them swiftly. It was illegal for either spouse to engage in sexual relations with anyone else while bound in first-marriage – their entire purpose was to produce children from within themselves. It was the only infidelity law remaining not only in Orvana, but the world as a whole, and for that and several other reasons Corine had been debating its necessity for nearly five years with Raenel. Three thousand years ought to be more than long enough time for such an archaic tradition to fade away.
She carefully kept any trace of her displeasure from her face and voice. Nirett likely knew nothing of the queen’s dislike of the tradition, and she didn’t want to color the girl’s accounting. “Tell Us your petition, then.”
“Yes, Sire,” she said, and drew a deep, fortifying breath. Corine hid a smile at her nervousness. “I was betrothed to Lynarik – Lynarik Taelid, Sire, my first-husband – when I was five. Obviously. But my parents died when I was seven, so we donned the cords then, and I went into his household…”
Nirett’s tale sounded disturbingly like a recounting of first-marriages in those early centuries. Her first-husband and his family became responsible for the girl with her own parents’ death, but as soon as Lynarik was berthed on a fishing boat and drawing a steady income, he was deemed capable of providing for his first-wife in a satisfactory manner, and thus left to his own devices, his parents not intruding or mentoring.
Lynarik had begun to fancy one of the other girls who worked in the harbor, an Estaya, and had grown increasingly frustrated with the constraints of his first-marriage. And, typically, he had taken out his sexual frustrations on his first-wife. At first, it had simply been mouth or hand-play, but Nirett was too small to do much good that way, and thus he’d “encouraged” them to move on to more involved acts.
“Do you know if Lynarik and Estaya have consummated anything?” Corine interjected gently.
“I don’t … think so?” Nirett blushed again, but Corine had no inclination to smile. “He calls me her name usually, but I don’t think they’ve done anything. It’s just … it hurts. I didn’t think it was supposed to be that way. My mother never said anything about it hurting.”
“She was right – after the first time, sex isn’t supposed to be painful,” Corine confirmed. “Does he listen to you at all when you tell him to stop, that it hurts?”
She made a face, looking worried. “Well, I haven’t ever outright refused him. He’s my husband. Isn’t he entitled?”
“Only to what you permit,” the queen corrected quickly. “Refusing to acknowledge a ‘no’ is rape, regardless of marital status. And that, by law, is always illegal.”
“Oh,” said Nirett. She looked stunned. Corine wasn’t encouraged.
Nirett had gone to her in-laws when Lynarik had first started initiating painful sex, but they had told her Lynarik was her husband and responsible for her, and had refused to hear anything more. So she’d gone to the priest a year later, but he (and Corine took careful note of his name, so she could bring it to the attention of the High Priest in her own temple) told her that first-marriage was “a secular convention, not a matter of concern to the gods, so you must apply to your secular authorities.” Frustrated, Nirett had applied to the village mayor, but had received essentially the same response as she’d gotten from her in-laws. The chieftain, Orr Tafal, hadn’t been any more sympathetic.
“Where are you from, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid?” Corine enquired following this.
“Biduya, Sire, on Kaikaili,” Nirett answered. Corine recognized the name only vaguely as the seat of a minor fief on the southernmost and most provincial of the five islands, which would explain why the mayor and chieftain were in accord.
“If your mayor and chieftain have refused you, why have you not applied to your duke?”
“Duke Amris is Orr Tafal’s cousin, Sire,” Nirett answered. Well, that wouldn’t be very helpful, then.
“Why then not apply to your prince?”
“Prince Arryl is at court Sire,” Nirett said, tone clearly indicating that was obvious, and shouldn’t she already know, being the queen? “I didn’t want to wait for her to come back, and I figured, if I was going to make the trip anyway, why not go straight to the top?”
“There is a certain amount of protocol involved,” Corine demurred, “but I admire your initiative.” She waited for Nirett to continue, but it seemed the girl was finished, twisting her hands nervously in her lap. Corine leaned back in her chair slightly and eyed Nirett carefully, making no effort to disguise her perusal. The girl noticed, and twitched, but bore up under it without comment.
“As you know,” Corine finally said, slipping back into the more formal language of the court, “the Crown and Her deputies reserve the right to dissolve any marriage, first or full, should it be deemed necessary for the safety and well-being of a spouse or child. Are you asking Us to dissolve your marriage, Ms. Asenulin-Taelid?”
“I … no? Not really?” Nirett was clearly flustered. “I mean, I’m not old enough to work, and I can’t live on my own. I just want something to be done that isn’t being done in Biduya. I’m sorry; I don’t know what that is.” She was going to rub her fingers raw, she was griping and twisting them so hard. She chewed on her lip, brows furrowed in distress.
“And that is why you have applied to a higher authority,” Corine hastened to reassure her. “It is for Us to know, and decide.” Nirett didn’t look very reassured. “Thank you for bringing Us your petition, Ms. Asenulin. We will hold Petitioner’s Court tomorrow morning. Please return; We will have an answer for you then.”
“Yes, Sire,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
Corine gave her a nod and gestured for Major Staedip to summon the manservant once more. When he had slipped quietly back into the room, Corine instructed, “Please direct Ms. Asenulin to the main hall for the lunch meal, and arrange for rooms to be prepared for her in the south wing.”
“Directly, Sire.” He bowed as the queen rose. Nirett scrambled to her feet in order to dip into her own bow, and had not risen from it before Corine had departed.
Corine settled into the seat behind her desk with an unhappy sigh, sparing a moment to glare blankly at the closed door opposite the desk before leaning forward to tap the intercom. “Build a dossier on Biduya’s Taelid family, please, with a particular focus on their first-marriages over the last few generations. Bring it to me by the end of business today,” she directed the aide who answered. That much done, she allowed herself to slouch back in the chair. Her mouth twisted in a grimace, her fingers tapped an impatient rhythm on the arms of the chair, and she contemplated twirling in a circle even as she chided herself for behaving childishly.
First-marriage disputes always brought out this behavior in her, the few times they made it as far as her desk. They were perhaps the most difficult cases for her to judge fairly, and she knew that was entirely due to her own bias. Her instinctive, knee-jerk reaction would always be the dissolution of the first-marriage, whether or not that was indeed the best course for the couple, and she strove to see this case more objectively. Not every dispute stemmed from a first-marriage as disastrous as her mother’s.
Alysonne Stevan’s first-marriage had been one of admittedly few betrothals that backfired in every possible way other than the production of heirs, and even that was debatable. The Abada family had an inherited streak of functional clinical paranoia a mile wide, which they had gone to great lengths to hide. Such lengths, in fact, that the Royal Intelligence Agency had failed to discover it during their extensive background checks the first time around when the Abada family had applied to Corine’s grandparents to betroth Princess Alysonne to their youngest scion, Stafen Abada. Alysonne had loved and adored Stafen, and hadn’t hesitated to continue in full marriage with him when she came of age.
Worse still, she had felt him very wise and trusted his judgment. At the behest of his family and his own growing paranoia, Stafen had abused that trust to counsel Alysonne into a foreign policy of isolationism and stand-offishness Corine was still trying to break them out of seven years after coming of age and assuming the throne herself. As far as the RIA could determine after the fact, it had been an intensive effort of at least two generations to protect the Abada family’s secret, and later their source of power and influence.
And protecting it needed, for in seven cases out of ten, the Abada family’s paranoia mutated into insanity, and Stafen was one of those seven.
Stafen had never really been comfortable with his son, Corine’s older brother Lanroe. From what little she remembered of him, Corine suspected it was because Lanroe was stubborn and honest, and nearly impossible to manipulate even at fourteen. When he declared his intention to inherit from his mother, rather than abdicate in favor of Corine as was tradition, it proved to be the spark that transformed the king’s paranoia to insanity.
Believing that with Lanroe’s ascension to the throne he would never again have the same degree of authority and influence, Stafen murdered his son and fled the palace. Corine had been five, and newly betrothed to Raenel.
Raenel Traep had been a typical thirteen-year-old boy, good friends with Lanroe even before the betrothal and not happy in the least to be saddled with a five-year-old fiancé. Evens o, he was as kind-hearted then as his still was today, and had reluctantly taken the stricken child Corine had been under his wing, keeping her entertained and out from underfoot even while enduring his own, far more intrusive second round of background checks. But their match had been made by Alysonne, and Corine’s aunt Gadrianne vouched for his family, and the RIA begrudgingly passed him again.
Corine had been ten years older when Alysonne died under mysterious circumstances. While all the evidence gleaned from the wreckage of the royal yacht had ultimately been deemed inconclusive, it was the privately held belief of both Corine and the Royal Intelligence Agency that Stafen, whom had never been found after Lanroe’s murder, was responsible for the late queen’s death. Given that and her firm belief that it was only Stafen’s proximity to Alysonne during her formative and most impressionable years that gave him such a degree of influence over her mother, was it any wonder Corine had come to view first-marriage with an unnatural distaste?
“If you really and truly believe first-marriage lets the husband unduly influence the wife, then why did you fully marry me?” was Raenel’s usual retort whenever the debate came up, and Corine hadn’t yet been able to come up with an answer that wasn’t “Because I knew you and I loved you, and I was terrified at the thought of trying to find a husband while I was ruling a kingdom. Also, it’s tradition.” But she wasn’t willing to come out and say that, so he always won that argument.
Tradition, she was slowly coming to realize, was the bane of her existence as Queen of Orvana. Tradition was why “sire” always referred to the ruling royal, whereas the royal consort was simply “your majesty.” It was why the royal family wore the courting sashes – a traditional component of any Orvaen’s wardrobe – that replaced first-marriage cords knotted impartially at the spine, rather than on the right – heterosexual – or left – homosexual – hip, or centered beneath the navel – bisexual.
More relevant to today’s case, tradition was why Orvana didn’t have a more sophisticated foster care system. For better or worse, first-marriage tended to function as a catch-all where familial tragedies were concerned. A boy was just as able to be taken in by his first-wife’s family as vice versa, and in the cases where the child in question was too young to be betrothed, he or she was taken in by the family of a sibling’s first-spouse. It was rare to find a child with no family related by law or blood able to take them in. Crown Wardship was technically always a possibility, but usually one of last resort as more often than not, the Crown didn’t have the first clue what to do with a Ward.
Corine levered herself out of her chair and wandered out the glass doors behind her onto the balcony. The salt of the Atlantic Ocean – and the unmistakable scent of a working harbor – was more noticeable on this side of the palace, and functioned nearly as well as smelling salts to clear her mind.
In Nirett’s case, dissolution was absolutely paramount, but what came after was a little more difficult to discern. She was troubled that the girl had found it necessary to travel so far from home in order to find a court that would hear her petition and lend it proper weight. It was understandable that the mayor and chieftain would be in accord given the fact that Biduya was the fief’s seat of power. But it wasn’t often a chieftain and a duke were related and belonging to the same chain of command, usually for this very reason. A petition should not need to skip straight to a prince’s court before it could be given a proper hearing. Certainly not straight to the queen unless it were a major – and usually private – petition, indeed. Not without being presented in Petitioner’s Court first.
There was also the matter of the priest. Corine went back to her desk and made a note in her calendar to speak with the High Priest tomorrow after Petitioner’s Court. Technically, the priest had been in the right when he said first-marriage was a secular convention. But if anyone, much less an underage child, came to him to report sexual abuse, that most certainly fell under the purview of the gods, and it was the responsibility of the priesthood to make certain it was also reported to the secular authorities, even if they did nothing else. To turn up his nose and send Nirett back to the courts that had denied her once already was a gross violation of his oaths, and Corine found herself almost curious to see how he would justify himself to Harufaun’s Tribunal.
But first-marriage disputes, however messy, were nothing compared to religious disputes, particularly when it came to the separation of church and state. The priest would have to wait.
The intercom blatted at her before she could think further, and she huffed even as she recognized Raenel’s tone. She glanced at the clock on the far side of the desk as she reached for the intercom, and winced. “I’ve been busy,” she said, hoping to cut him off at the pass.
“Not so busy you can’t get away for lunch,” the king retorted, more cheerfully than she had expected. “Kaytle’s ship set down about an hour ago, and I’ve managed to keep him entertained, but the only reason he agreed to fly out here in the first place was because you promised you’d eat a full meal with him that didn’t involve any other dignitaries, and we have a formal dinner tonight. And you promised you’d eat.”
“Kaytle’s here?” She wracked her brain for the date Madorian’s younger brother had given her for his arrival. Kaytle Stevan was notorious for both his intense dislike for the capitol city and his willingness to do almost anything for his only cousin. Hadn’t he been planning to come out next week?
“Don’t tell me you forgot.” Raenel sounded affronted. “How is it that you had to take three more years of history in school than I did, and yet I have a better head for dates than you do?”
“Past dates and future dates are two very different fish,” she shot back instantly. It was a long-running joke between them, and it was sadly very true. “I’ll be right there. And I’ll eat, too!”
In her office again later that evening, Corine reflected that she needed to get out of Raldegan more often. She hadn’t visited Kaytle in person for nearly a year, and she always forgot how rewarding an experience it was. He had amicably dissolved his own first-marriage with Yronyevett Rockthorn earlier in the month, and now sported the courting sash knotted on the right hip.
“You know you’re not supposed to declare like that, being my cousin and all,” Corine had teased.
“I can’t inherit – what’s the point?” was his quick response. “Besides, I don’t like having a knot digging into my back whenever I’m dragged to a formal dinner.”
Already wriggling away from the knot that was slowly but steadily grinding a hole in her own spine, regardless how slender a knot or broach she forced her sash into, Corine couldn’t really argue.
Corine had been as good as her word and obediently eaten her food as Raenel briefed her on his meeting with Councilor Anarette. She’d have to review the numbers more thoroughly later, but she doubted they’d changed all that drastically from last week. Then both men had listened attentively as she explained Nirett’s petition and her current dilemma.
Raenel’s response had been immediate and expected: “Dissolve the first-marriage, yes, but get her in another one as soon as possible. She’s too young not to be in one.”
“Does she have any other living family?” Kaytle asked.
“No,” Corine answered, having looked up that information herself on her way to her office. “Only child of an only child of an only child on both sides. The closest family she has is at a fourth removal on an entirely different island.”
“A change of scenery might do her good,” Raenel murmured.
“I was thinking about Crown Wardship, in all honesty,” Corine admitted. “Her whole story leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t want her associated with Biduya any more than necessary.”
“If you’re going to slap them on the wrist with her case,” Raenel cautioned, “Crown Wardship won’t be very effective. Everyone knows it’s a last resort, and they’ll think you don’t have any better idea what to do with her than they did.”
“I hope to know a little more about Biduya and the Taelids in particular later this evening, though that won’t change my decision very much at this point as far as Ms. Asenulin herself is concerned.”
“I think it should.” Kaytle had leaned back from the table. “I agree with Raenel on this one, Lena, Wardship won’t be doing you or her any favors. A new first-marriage is what she and they both need. A respectable first-husband and family, preferably a younger son with an older brother already involved in a first-marriage so he’s seen up close and second-hand how it should be done. And so they see how they should have done by her in the first place.”
“Or, if you really want someone who knows what they’re doing, betroth her to someone who already has a successful first-marriage under his belt,” Raenel suggested diffidently.
Kaytle and Corine had both stared at him. “You’re not supposed to have more than one first-marriage,” Corine told him in tones that clearly conveyed the sentiment of duh. “That’s why it’s called first-marriage.”
“It’s not without precedent!” Raenel said defensively, looking wide-eyed at them and raising his hands before himself. “In the early 1800s, when the small pox epidemic swept through Orvana, there were a whole slew of girls who had lost their first-husbands and had no other family, so the priests declared that the male members of the first-husband’s family should don cords – several of whom had already traded in their cords for sashes.”
“That was two thousand years ago.”
“Still a legal precedent!”
Corine scoffed. “Not any sort of one that would hold up in court! And even if it weren’t the case, where exactly to you expect me to find a respectable single man in this day and age willing to don cords again with a thirteen-year-old?”
“Oh, well,” Kaytle had said, and puffed up his chest. “If you’re so desperate for vic – I mean, volunteers – I’ll don cords with her.”
Corine gave him a very flat glare. “Thank you, Kaytle. I’ll bear that in mind.”
The chime of the doorbell brought her out of her memories, and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair as the door slid open to reveal a young man in palace teal robes with an electronic tablet in his hands. “The Taelid dossier, Sire,” he murmured, bowed, and brought the tablet forward.
“Thank you for your promptness,” she waved a dismissal, already waking the tablet to peruse its contents.
They weren’t nearly as pleasant as she’d hoped they might be.
The Taelid family, it seemed, had a long history of first-marriage abuse. The aide had been very thorough – over the last seven generations, there had been three first-wives who had complained openly of mistreatment by their first-husbands, one of whom had actually made it to the court. And been promptly dismissed by the sitting judge, an ancestor, the aide had noted, of the current mayor. That was an interesting discovery. The aide had noted that in the last twelve generations, there had been a total of three first-marriage disputes that made it into court – all promptly dismissed, all with the notation “personal issues to be resolved between spouses – not the business of the Queen’s Justice” – which was an alarming number in a single family when most went their entire lineage without a single dispute requiring the settlement of a judge beyond dissolution.
The Taelids were a powerful family in Biduya. In a village that relied on the sea and the gods to provide nearly everything, they owned the largest fishing fleet comprised of the largest and nicest boats, and employed the majority of not only Biduya’s working class, but that of two neighboring villages as well. At least one Taelid in the last seven generations had served as the local priest, and two had been elected mayor. Neither, she noted, had earned the duke’s support for re-election.
Remarrying Nirett to another Biduyan boy was clearly out of the question. The Taelids would be embarrassed by the Crown’s direct interference in their little empire and family. But it wouldn’t do Nirett any favors to keep her in a village largely controlled by the very family that had put her in this situation, and the whole point of dissolution in the first place was for the safety of a spouse. Leaving her in Biduya, with a Biduyan first-husband, would simply be leaving her in ideal range for retaliation. A Biduyan would feel the weight of the Taelid family’s displeasure moreso that the Crown’s.
And Corine did want to embarrass them, but at this point, once Nirett’s safety was assured, she wanted them – the Taelids and Biduya – to feel Her Royal displeasure most thoroughly. Ignoring a first-marriage dispute once was criminal negligence. Not simply ignoring but dismissing three separate disputes for one single family was a serial pattern. Wardship wouldn’t satisfy; Raenel was right about that. Once first-marriage became optional and less common, and Crown Wardship more common, then it would be an effective slap on the wrist. Until then, however, when Wardship was seen by all as a last resort measure when there was no better alternative, the embarrassment would be the Crown’s, not the Taelids’.
She set the tablet gently on her desk and indulged in a little side-swinging. First-marriage it would have to be, then. She would also be requiring Her Servant Prince Arryl to arbitrate the Taelid family’s future first-marriage negotiations until further notice, and to look in on Duke Amris and Orr Tafal. It could very well be that Nirett had assumed she’d get a similar answer from a family member – after all, she had seen nothing to suggest otherwise in her own life – and the duke would in fact had given her petition a fair hearing, but it was always best to be certain.
In the meantime – she tapped her intercom for what she hoped would be the last time tonight, and grinned at the groggy response. “Kaytle? How serious were you at lunch earlier?”
