“Trophy Wives” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman From
Fellowship Fantastic (DAW Books)
Alanna and I have been together most of our lives. She is the beautiful one, and I am the worker; at least, that’s how it looks to people who see us now. It is not how we began. I was a princess in a tower, and she was a drudge who worked for my father, tending all the machinery that kept me imprisoned and alive, and trained me in my terrible purpose.
All that changed when we found and ate the bondfruit.
We live more than half our lives beneath the surface now. Inside, we are all sorts of different people, and outside, we have tried on many different roles, but we also meld into one another as we share eyes and thoughts and conversation. Still, I am the one who doesn’t mind work and is driven mad by music, and she is the one who makes plans and minds details.
Alanna laughs and thinks, Tell them your name, Ylva. You always forget the important things!
Very well. My name is Ylva Sif.
Gwelf Kinnowar, currently married to Alanna, is the fourth husband we have had between us, and when we first met him, we thought he was the best. He didn’t argue when Alanna told him that to marry her, he had to accept me into his household. He has plenty of money, and let us use it; and, though we live with him in various residences on planets where oppressive social conditions hold, he gives us freedom from the prevailing mores in the privacy of his house, so long as Alanna acts the perfect ornamental wife in public.
The first time Gwelf slept with another woman after the wedding, we lost faith in him. He didn’t betray us in any other way, though, so we stayed, even though in his travels he often slept with other women. The benefits of the marriage still outweigh the troubles, so we adjusted our hopes and attitudes and went on with our real job, which is rescuing people, as we ourselves have been rescued.
Alanna was in the balcony room looking out over Haladion, the planet where Gwelf’s main residence was. Alanna and I loved the balcony room. The mansion was built into the side of a cliff, among a cluster of others, and below the cliff lay all the world: at the base, the market town, Risen, and beyond it, farmlands, with the spaceport to the west, ringed by businesses that catered to offworld travelers. Near the spaceport was the technomall for people who liked to shop for factory-made things in person.
Out beyond the farmlands lay the forest, with the Fang Mountains rising in the distance.
Alanna dialed controls on the focusing window and peered down at the central market square, where the servants of cliffside mansions bought fresh produce from the farmers. “Ripe sakal,” she thought.
I was in the kitchen, a level below, checking our stores and making a list. I paused and styled sakal on my list. “Much?”
“Going fast,” she thought. “Oh! Perberries! Only three pints left! At the SunGlo booth.”
“On my way.” I shut the list, grabbed a carrybag, and headed for the door. In the purification room, I dipped into the amber scent bowl and dabbed it at my wrists. I pulled on an outer robe and hooked my veil across my lower face, then coded through the privacy portal and entered the communal elevator bank. My pod opened a moment later onto the public access foyer to the outdoors at the base of the cliff. Others came and went in various pods.
Outdoors, the heat and scents and sounds were intense. Meat cooking, bread baking, the faint taint of scoot fuel, though no mechanized transport was allowed in the city core except float carts to carry home one’s purchases. Voices called as people spoke to each other in person or at a distance.
I headed to the market. At the SunGlo booth, all the perberries the vendor had on display were gone, but she saw the sigil on my hood and smiled at me. As a farm worker, she wore no veil nor head covering; she was outside the life lived in houses, and only another farmer would look at her as a wife. So the people professed to believe, anyway. One heard stories.
“I knew you’d be by, Ser Sif,” the vendor, Vigil, said, and reached under the table for a whole flat of perberries.
“Thank you, Vigil.” I pressed my thumb to her pay pad without even discussing price. Sometimes it was worth paying extra.
“Oh, no! I wanted some of those,” said a low voice to my left. I turned to see a stranger, her hood unmarked by house. Her eyes were large, dark, liquid, under narrow black brows, and she wore a very plain outer robe, dusty light blue with one line of white at the hem. Her veil was opaque, giving no hint of who she was beneath. “Someone at the clay booth said you had them,” she said to Vigil, “and I so hoped.”
“Maybe we can arrange something.” I opened the compartment in the carrybag for fragile perishables and slid the flat in, activating the stasis field that would hold my berries safe.
Ask her who she works for, Alanna thought-whispered; she was present behind my eyes, as I was behind hers.
“Whose house are you affiliated with?” I asked.
The stranger’s eyes looked frightened. “I can’t say,” she whispered.
“Come with me for coffee and I’ll sell you some of my berries. Thanks again, Vigil.”
“I have other shopping,” said the stranger as I tugged her toward Kalenki’s Tea House. They had rooms in the back where women could unveil.
“I’ll help you with it when we’ve finished our talk. I can see you’re a stranger here. I can show you all the best bargains.” I raised my voice. “Kalenki!”
“Ser Sif.” He smiled at me and twirled his waxed mustache. “The sandalwood room?”
“Please.”
He gestured us toward the back, and I led the stranger to my favorite room, its walls fretted with carved wood, its scent warm and spicy. It had a heavy curtain that almost muffled outside sound and kept those within private enough to speak in low voices without fear. I took the bug zapper from the pouch at my waist and scanned the room for hidden ears. None today.
I settled onto the pile of cushions covered in white and red satin stripes, leaving the blue and green cushions for my guest, with the low inlaid-wood table between us. She looked at me, and then at the cushions, and then at her slippered feet.
She doesn’t know how to sit! Alanna thought. Who is she?
“Sister, hold your skirts gently and sink down onto your rear,” I said.
She grasped her outer robe in both hands and let herself sit, teetering. Then she straightened and looked at me with great intensity.
“If you are here stealthily,” I said, or Alanna said, “what is it you intend? How did you even find a sigilless robe?”
“I escaped from a ship,” she whispered. “I was sold into marriage, and the ship was carrying me to my husband in all luxury. I had a library. I knew Haladion was our only stop, and I studied everything in memory about it. I made this robe myself.” She straightened, glanced around the room, fixed on me, as though realizing she was being too direct. “You aren’t police?”
Just then, Kalenki whistled a warning and came in to take our order. “A big pot of spiced coffee, Ser, if you please,” I said, “with all shades of color for it. Some of the lace biscuits as well.”
“Your wish, Ser,” he said, with a head bob, and dropped the curtain again.
I turned to the stranger.
“No, assuredly I am not police, just curious. I will not betray you.”
“How can I know that? Have I given too much of myself away already?” She pressed the heels of her palms to the sides of her head and groaned. “I am so stupid.”
Kalenki whistled again. His assistant brought the tray of purification, with its two basins of warm water, two cloths, a bowl of powdered soap, and a second basin for rinsing; also the censer with its fragrant smoke, redolent of roses, through which we could pass our hands before we drank. Kalenki himself carried in the coffee tray and set it on the table.
“Thank you. You are gracious,” I said, and pressed my thumb into the pay pad he presented, tapped a tip into the options screen.
“Always a pleasure to have you visit, Ser,” he said and followed his assistant out.
After he left, I tied the curtain closed, then settled on my cushions. “There, they have gone and we may unveil without fear of men’s eyes on us.” I unhooked my veil. The stranger stared at my face as though it were a lifesaving liquid she could drink with her eyes. I wondered why. I had been to many worlds, and on most of them, I was considered ordinary. “I am Ylva Sif,” I said.
She did not drop her veil or offer a name. Rudeness, but perhaps she did not realize.
I showed her how to cleanse her hands, then poured coffee for both of us. “Have you tried our coffee before?” I asked. She shook her head. I handed her a cup with room left for colors. “Here is cream. This is cinnamon. This is pepper, and this, clarified butter. This is caramel syrup, and this holds serenity, and here is agitation. This — “ I lifted a small spoonful of pale powder — “is clear-eye.” I sprinkled it over my own drink, added a dollop of cream and two lumps of dark sugar, stirred with ...
