Beneath the Veil Read online

  "My lord, please! I meant no harm!"

  "And I mean you none. I only want to ask you about what life was like here long ago."

  Trembling, the haberdasher sat down and wiped at his forehead. "'Tis a complicated question. And one you yourself said could get me into trouble."

  "I don't want to get you into trouble. I just want to learn from you."

  He sighed, then reached behind the tall counter and pulled out a flask. He took a long swallow and offered me the bottle, but I shook my head. He drank again, then recapped the flask and cradled it to him.

  "Rosten would have you believe life in Alyria has always been this way," he said. "But when I was a lad, women were not treated like slaves."

  He looked around, fearful, his old eyes wide. He drank again. "They were not equal to men, oh no. They had to dress plainly, and their place was in the home while their men went out hunting and carousing. But they did not have to cover their faces at home, only in the streets. I can still remember my mother's face."

  He looked at me a trifle defiantly, then, as though waiting for me to take issue with him.

  "I remember my mother's face, too," I whispered. I took the seat next to him and reached for his withered but still strong hand. "Tell me more."

  "Alyria's borders were closed, even then, because of the plague that took boy children and spared the girls. Many, many male infants died in the womb, or at birth. Many more were sickly, didn't thrive, died before they weaned from the teat. When I was a young laddie, I had seven sisters. I was the only boy of my mother and father who lived, as my father had been the only son of his mother and father. By the time I was born, there were three women for every man. My great grandfather told me how he'd joined himself with only one woman in his household. My father had five women of his house. In my time, with the successful haberdashery and tailoring business, I had eight."

  "The history books –"

  "History is only what is retold," the man interrupted. "When nobody is around who remembers first-hand, history is dead."

  "I know of the plague, and of the closing of the borders. I know why boys are so much more desired than girls. But how did we get from what you remember to what it's like today?"

  "How does anyone get anywhere?" The old man threw up his hands, then swigged again from his liquor. "Time. Trends. Men had always had the power. They used it badly. Fear made them pass the rules and the laws. Fear made them scan the Law of the Book to find ways to bend it to their needs. That's all."

  "Men like Rosten."

  "Like Rosten, yes. But normal men, too, who held their lifeless sons and could not figure out how to save them. Nobody ever has figured out why the disease struck only boys and not girls. Nobody ever found a cure. The priests of the temple said 'twas Kedalya's revenge upon Sinder."

  "I don't understand how nobody can recall how once life was different," I said, exasperated.

  "Anything beyond one generation is as easily forgotten as lion's mane fluff tossed on the wind. All that's important is the now."

  He leaned forward, close enough to me I could hear the whisper of his breath. "What the priests won't tell you and you'll not find in any book, is that the women almost won, once."

  "What?" I couldn't fathom what he was talking about.

  He leaned yet closer, so close his cheek pressed mine. "Do you think it happened overnight? Before they were forced to wear the kedalya all the time, before they were stripped of their last rights, the women rose up and fought."

  I thought of Carinda's daggers flashing in the moonlight, and of my own training with Lir on the fight field. I thought of slippered, silent feet and women whose faces were never seen, not even by the men who got children with them. "Tell me."

  The old man's whisper caressed my face. "There was a woman. She called herself Firynza. She spoke out about the way females were treated, how they were not allowed to belong to the councils, or to run shops. She spoke in the squares because she wasn't allowed in the poetry houses. She wrote essays and gave them out to the women in the marketplace. She refused to wear the veil, and dressed in the clothes of men. She refused to become a part of any man's household. Some women began to believe her, and she gathered a small but fierce following. They lived together on the edge of town and subsisted mostly by begging and charity, since they couldn't work and they had no men to provide for them.

  The King of the time, Parsen Avigdor, believed in punishing the whole for the sins of the few. He threatened to take away the children from the women who followed Firynza. The boys would have been sent to nurseries or other households to be raised."

  "And the girls?"

  His silence told me the answer.

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Who knows? Because though men might wish to control the females, they don't want to have to change diapers and clean up shite? Because the surest way to control women is by overpowering them, by forcing them to fear?"

  My lip curled. "So he threatened to take away their babies? To kill them?"

  "Parsen Avigdor, some said, was mad. He pissed blue and shat orange, and his face ran with pustules. 'Twas said he had contracted the fucking disease. From a woman. Some said from Firynza herself."

  "And all this happened within your lifetime?"

  "I was a wee lad when the women rose up. Took arms, they did, against the men who came to take away the children. Killed a lot of them, too. The women made their stand, but in the end they lost. 'Twas after that Avigdor made the laws that no female should learn to read or write, be allowed to raise a hand against a man, that they all must wear the kedalya at all times. I was only small, but I remember it. Firynza was wrong in her own way, though," said the old man suddenly. "Forcing women to live without men who would care for them is just as bad as forcing them to live with men who do not."

  "How can you be the only one who remembers this?" I paced the narrow room. "Surely there must be others!"

  "Sure, and there must, though few they are. But what man would stand against the might of so many others? Who would risk the privilege of being superior when the punishments for speaking out are so severe? Women have their shackles, 'tis true enough, lad, but I venture the men are just as imprisoned. When loving one's children and the person who gave them to you is a crime...." He trailed away and gave a great sigh. "All that 'twas long ago, lad. There have been four kings since then, and now the Prince Regent."

  "And in all that time...?"

  He shrugged again. "Some things has been better, some's been worse."

  "You risk much by telling me this tale, old man. How do you know I won't turn you in to Rosten as being part of the rebellion?"

  He took my hand and clasped my fingers to his. He brought them to his wrinkled lips and kissed the back of my hand softly. "Because you reminded me of my Sondrina."

  I'd known a mother's love, but not a father's. The old man's sentiment moved me. I thought of what he'd said, about the women rising up, and knew what I had to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Daelyn was well-pleased with the hat I brought him, but not so pleased with what I proposed. He scowled and turned from the mirror where he'd been admiring his reflection. I settled the other packages I'd brought for him on the table.

  "How much longer can you keep smuggling them out?" I kept my voice, low, respectful. "The risks are too great."

  "You don't need to tell me about the risks."

  I was going to lose him if I wasn't careful. Daelyn and I had shared much – but he was still the Prince Regent and I was not. I softened my tone and kept my gaze averted. Non-threatening.

  "Wouldn't it be better to teach them how to take care of themselves?" I asked him. "Train them to fight? Teach them to read and write, to do sums?"

  "And what would they do with those skills?"

  "They might not be so complacent." I took his new hat and brushed the feathers, then hung it on the rack. Finally, I turned to meet his eyes. "If you give them knowledge, they'll be able to take care o