Acceptance
They were the only two people in the audience chamber. Orisai didn’t believe for a second that it meant they were alone. Vene’s weren’t the only tauhreliili eyes and ears she had to contend with; his relations no doubt had more of their own scattered through this room, the better to see what kind of person had come to court their precious direct-line descendant. Let them watch - let them listen. Orisai had always so enjoyed giving a performance. Besides, she was no fool; she knew full well that arranging a marriage meant courting her intended’s family as much as her intended himself. This was but another chance to win them over.
If the chamber they’d shown her to was anything to go by, she’d already partly won - it had to have been one of their best. The floors were black mirrors; the plants grew in flawless profusion; the fountains ran silent-smooth as a freshly slit throat; and the anatomical architecture that Vene’s family so loved was some of the finest she’d ever beheld. Vene himself sat before her on a slim nightwood couch with blood-colored cushions, head faintly inclined, eyes and hands on his lap. Opposite him, a matching couch awaited her, separated from its counterpart by a long, low black-glass table that rose in fluid veins from the floor itself. The measured glass-on-glass clicking of Orisai’s footsteps rang softly through the room as she closed the distance between them, but Vene didn’t so much as shift his gaze towards her. Shyness? Modesty? Apathy? It was too soon to tell.
“Thank you,” Orisai said to him, “for receiving me today.” Only then did Vene finally raise his eyes to her. She rested one hand on the back of the couch, tilted her head in question, put on an understated smile. “May I sit?”
“Please,” Vene said, so softly that Orisai might have struggled to hear him, had she not been standing so close. By the time Orisai had seated herself across from him, Vene’s gaze had drifted back to his lap.
“Won’t you look my way?” Orisai asked. “It’s true that you photograph beautifully, but this is the first time we’ve met in the flesh. I’d like to truly see you.”
She thought he might keep his head inclined and simply continue half-looking at her, but after a moment, Vene raised his head and finally looked her full in the face. What she’d said a moment ago might have been intended as indirect flattery for his listening family, but she hadn’t been lying; Orisai had always found him pretty. Looking at him like this, though, Vene really was beautiful. His eyes were grey, lovely in their coldness, their red pupils bright and arresting. His father was a Terremaut; perhaps that was where Vene had gotten a certain underlying fragility to his otherwise decidedly Tauhrelil features. Though he was too thin, the bones that showed under his skin were fine and beautiful. On anyone else, undereye circles that dark might have looked like a symptom of some sort of disease; on Vene, somehow, they looked like they belonged there.
“That’s better,” Orisai said to him. “If two people are thinking of marrying, they should at least be able to look one another in the eye, don’t you agree?”
“Why.”
Not I’m afraid I don’t understand; not may I ask why you think so; not so much as a question mark to soften his shamelessly blunt response.
“Why?” Orisai repeated. “A partnership where two people cannot even look at one another strikes me as a poor one. Marriages should be between equals, should they not?”
Vene looked at her in silence for a moment. Then:
“Marriages are not equal.”
“Oh?” Orisai leaned forward slightly in spite of herself. “Might you be so kind as to elaborate?” She knew he was right, but she wanted to hear how he’d phrase it. If Vene was always this blunt, he might be worth marrying for entertainment value alone.
“Your name will not change. Mine will. You will not leave your home. I will. You will not subordinate your career to your partner’s. It is expected that I will.” Orisai thought some kind of emotion might color his voice as he went on, at least faintly, but none did. “Was that enough.”
Oh, she hoped his parents were listening to this. If their conversation hadn’t been so important, Orisai might have laughed aloud.
“Quite, thank you,,” she said instead. “You’ve made your point most...concisely. You certainly aren’t wrong. And I don’t believe I would be wrong to say that you sound as if you’d rather not marry at all.”
Again, Vene only looked at her. Orisai looked back. The silence stretched on, and on.
“If I’m wrong, deny me,” Orisai said, softly, and Vene said nothing.
“I won’t pretend I understand your feelings completely,” she went on, “but I believe they may share some similarity to mine.” Here was where anyone with the slightest sense of decorum would have asked her how so, if she cared to explain - anything. Not Vene. “It’s true that marriage does not make the same demands of me that it does of you. Even so...if I could fulfill my duty to my family without marrying at all, I would. The prospect of having to share my life so intimately with another - I have accepted it. That does not mean I enjoy it.”
Vene opened his mouth slightly. Orisai watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he took a silent breath inward.
“Then why are you here.”
“Why are you?” Orisai let the question hang a moment before continuing. “Perhaps if you were a third or fourth son, you wouldn’t have to be here at all. Instead, you are your family’s firstborn male...and I am my mother’s heir.” The slight, bitter turn to her smile was not feigned, not entirely. “We may have a say in who we marry, but the choice that truly matters has been taken from us both. Is it not so?” When Vene didn’t respond, she pressed on, her voice gentle. “You’re too valuable for your family to waste.” Orisai moved as if to reach for his hand, and then pulled back, as if she’d thought better of it. Let his family see her reach out; let Vene see that she wouldn’t touch him unasked. “And you’re too intelligent not to realize that yourself,” she went on, refolding her hands on her knees. “I know what you’re capable of, Vene. Should we marry, I don’t intend to hold you back.”
“What do you mean.”
“How would you like your own research facility?”
Vene’s eyebrows rose the barest fraction of an inch. It was the first time Orisai had seen him express with anything but his eyes.
“My wedding gift to you,” she said, “should you choose me.”
Vene was looking at her with a focus that hadn’t been there a moment ago. If she’d thought his eyes sharp before...a weaker person might have been transfixed. Even Orisai found herself suppressing a light shiver. Eyes like that would serve any daughter of hers well. Her rivals wouldn’t just look away first - they’d check to see if they bled.
“There would be times when I’d need you to appear with me in public,” Orisai told him. “If you marry me, you have my word that I will ask it of you only when truly necessary. We can make a contract each year, if you like. Always knowing exactly when and how often you’d have to appear with me - would that not make it at least a little more bearable? If I had to estimate, I might ask you for ten to fifteen nights a year...but even if I asked you for twenty, it would still amount to roughly five percent of your time. How much more work do you think you could accomplish with your own facility? Five percent of your time in exchange for - well, now we’ve entered your area of expertise, not mine. If you were to put it in percentage points, based on your current productivity...?”
“More than five.”
It was Orisai’s turn to look at him.
“Much more. But.” He swallowed, silently; Orisai only knew he had by the faint motion of his throat. “What about children.”
“I have no desire to carry them myself,” Orisai said, “and I doubt you do, either. Between the two of us and our families, we have access to the best amniotic gardens in the world. Would this be acceptable to you?”
“Acceptable,” Vene said. The word lingered in his mouth like none he’d spoken before, as if he were tasting it. “Yes.”
Then there was only one thing left to do. Orisai rose from her seat opposite Vene and crossed over to him.
“Vene.” She went to her knees, her head lowered, her descent slow and flawless. “Living blood of the most ancient house of Tawret-lil and fifth in the legacy of your name,” she said. Without looking up, she lifted her open palms to him. “Will you share your blood with mine? Will you join me in the house of my mothers? Will you stand by me on the day I make it my own?”
With her head lowered, Orisai’s hair fell between herself and Vene, his family’s cameras, the world. She watched her reflection in the black-glass floor, and waited, until at last Vene’s fingers touched her palms, so light and cool that Orisai barely felt them.
Behind the curtain of her hair, alone with her reflection, Orisai gave her first true smile.