Shirley Meier's Blog, page 117

Chapter 3 The start of Jitzmithra

Next morning I was up early with the Beginning of Jitzmithra, the days that didn’t exist officially in the calendar. I loved it because it seemed as if the whole city went bugfikken crazy just for my birthday. I knew it really wasn’t true but I still loved everyone being naughty and unconventional. I could count all of Jitzmithra my birthday because they were all the same. Diem 0. Today was Relinquishment of Conventional Decorum.

This morning I slid out of bed before any of my servants

Chapter 3 Part 2 Raikas's First Fight

I decided I wanted to see his first fight anyway and was in the colonnade with the oddsmen, the scribblers from The Watcher of the Ring, and other gladiators and hangers-on. The low-chainers with their thin wreaths of gold gleaming sparse around their necks, showing their teeth at each other like a pack of barely restrained dogs. The high-chainers were quieter, lone wolves staying out of the dominance scrum, only snarling quietly when the dogs showed too much fang too close.

The scribblers had

Chapter 3 Part 1 Morning Routine

Chapter Three:

Before I could empty my bladder I had to wait till the Servant of the Footstool brought the step for the Servant of the Slippers to place them on. And I had to stand in the slippers and put my arms out for the Draper On of the Morning Robe and wait for the Official Tie Servant secured the belt. After that I could go to the garderobe and hope the Servant of the door wasn’t slow that day. I disliked losing control of my bladder and with all the milk and water during the night my

Chapter 2 Part 3 Food Tasters and Poisons

I slept badly and repeatedly hurled my white silk pillows onto the floor and kicked my golden sheets off the bed. I called the sleeping attendant a dozen times to fetch me my pillows back or get me a glass of water, or milk, or light some incense. The insect netting floated in the slightest breeze from the open windows facing the wood and the lake. The gold satin curtains and the netting made shadows I startled at and called to have them tied back. The waterfall on the other side of the Pala

Chapter 2 part 2 Talking to my Non-living Friend

“Sinim,” I was sitting in the Hall of Ancestors on the tomb of my best non-living friend. The Hall was built like everything else in the Marble Palace. Big. My whisper echoed into the lofty, gem-inlaid vaults over me, the statues of the Imperators, and some of the niches emptied by other Imperators. The sound of my words came back in broken pieces like a rain of glass, glittering and bouncing, completely unintelligible even if a servant should come in to either clean or to get me.

Not that i

Chapter 2 Part 1 Seeing the world differently

I found a rental chair on the street outside the Mezem and because I didn’t want to be going away from the arena I didn’t insist the carriers run. It was very strange, as if I had somehow changed profoundly inside less than the fall of a single bead in the clock and could see the city through new eyes. I would have to go talk it over with my other best friend, the no longer living one, just to make sense of it. The chair bearers trotted up toward the Lion Bridge taking me home to the Marble P

Chapter 1, End

But the time he actually came to like me, and I him, was only a day later, when I went down to the Mezem to visit. I’d gone down the same evening but was told he’d been flogged, so I made some mess to distract them. When I came back I was so confident that Karas Raikas's door would open that I bruised a knuckle when it proved to be... well, not opening. I couldn't conceive of a door locked against me. "What's wrong with this door! It’s stuck!"

His slightly hoarse voice came through the wood

First Meeting Chapter 1 part 2

The first time I had ever laid eyes on the man was in the Hall of Judgment in the Mezem, where the judges speculate whether the slaves brought in would make good gladiators and whether they should be acquired. I watched from the gallery door while the testers and the slaver tried to make the man chained to the post do something other than throw the sword on the floor, saying, in Enchian, “I won’t fight for a crowd.”

The slaver got more and more angry and upset watching his investment

Chapter One:I was rushed out of the City of Arko, bundled...

Chapter One:

I was rushed out of the City of Arko, bundled into one end of my betrothed’s litter, surrounded by an entourage of thirty, every one a member of clan Mahid. That many ‘Black Dogs of the Imperator’ in one place made people scatter in stark terror, even if they had clear consciences. My escort made themselves a screen of black and gold, their onyxine uniforms a dark enough black to remind people of the smothering pits of Hayel, and their golden hair flowing down their backs like rays o