“You’ll need to make some noise,” I hiss to her. “Something to encourage anyone eavesdropping that we are doing things according to plan.” I don’t see her face, though I hear a sharp intake of breath. I continue to creak the bed, and even manage to slip out a moan of my own. After the moment, she does the same, a few times, and I stop the creaking. “Okay. If you were a virgin, they’d want blood. But obviously you’re not.”
“Obviously,” Pearl whispers behind me, and there’s something extra there that makes me shiver. “Is this enough?” Her breath paints against my neck, and I realize, with a jolt, that she’s a lot closer than I thought she would be. I assumed she’d be perched at the very end of the bed, wanting to keep as much distance between me and her as possible.
“It’ll have to be. I assume you don’t want to touch me as much as I you.”
A short silence. “Yeah.”
I nod, because I expected it, though there is a lingering tone to her that I can’t place. “I know this is probably the worse position for you right now,” I say, grudgingly, because I’m not in the mood for giving any kind of compliment to a Hartson – even a very pretty one currently in my bed, assigned as my wife. “But thank you for taking that step. If you hadn’t, maybe we would all be corpses in that hall.”
I stare at my faded guitar on the wall. A relic of a bygone time, back when we had enough people in the world to spare specialists for guitar construction. Music instruments nowadays are more stripped down compared to the records we have of the past. I wait for Pearl’s answer, trying not to think about our first meeting. Trying to forget how I regarded her then.
“Someone had to,” she answers. “Lord knows I didn’t want it to be me. My father, he would spit in your father’s eye, rather than concede any ground. His brother was murdered by your kind, after all. You’ve slaughtered so many of us. And I – well, this current mess is mine, anyway. I’m not about to let everyone die because I messed up.”
“Is this about when we met?”
Anger colors her voice as she answers, “The rumors spread from that encounter wrecked my family’s reputation.”
“Shouldn’t have done something to wreck it, then.”
“Bah. Like it was all my fault. That I’m some slutty temptress out to sleep with someone I’d never want to sleep with in a million years. I was tricked by you.”
Some of the anger infects me, too, and I turn on her, glaring. “You did trick me.” My anger cools when I see hers, however. “I didn’t spread the rumors, though. My men did. I know I said things… but I was humiliated. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see who you were before.”
“Funny,” she snarls, “because we were both hiding, weren’t we?”
I swallow thickly. Yes. We were. That was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? So that identity didn’t matter. So that we could talk to people from other clans without worrying about classic prejudices. I even when to a bar that had a chance of containing Hartsons. And Claymores, too. Perhaps we had associated with each other before without any knowledge of our true identities. Perhaps I had spoken with Hartsons before in Graves territory, and thought they were normal.
The thought makes me shiver in disgust. They’re not normal.
“I was furious. My family wanted to lock me up until they’d arranged a suitable marriage for me, so I could be sold like cattle. They thought no one decent would want a woman defiled by the enemy. Your people are loathed, Claymore.”
I let out a small, derisive laugh, again feeling that heat, and also something else. “You know how many Claymores have died to your monsters? You know how many of our ancestors were married and buried in the church grounds that your people demolished? I know people who lost husbands, wives, children to you. You rape our women, you –”
“You do all that,” Pearl stammers, her eyes bugging out in what I can only presume is sheer indignation. Though I’m the one who is indignant. She has no right to be. She’s of them. She’s a monster, just faking. For a second, a brief second, I imagine wrapping my hands around her throat, and squeezing until that accusation in her eyes dies out. My fingers twitch towards her, before I curb that impulse. Horrified by it. “You’re the murderers! The killers! You kill babies in their cribs, rape our women.” She splutters to a standstill, unable to articulate any further.
A coldness now replaces my heat, and it feels like something is scratching at my soul. She thinks the same things; the exact same things I’ve always thought. When I let go of my anger, I realize, aghast, that everything I’ve assumed, everything I know – it’s not the same for Pearl.
“Who do you think started the murders?” I say, and she blinks at me, confused. “What started the feud between our families?”
“You did, obviously,” she says, a scowl pasting her face. “Your ancestor, Cohen, he was a bloodthirsty killer. He took advantage of the disease plaguing our communities at the time – he and his cronies raped an entire village of women and killed them, along with the men and children.”
“That’s a lie,” I say, stung. “Your ancestor started it. Mulciber lined up Claymores and executed them for the simple crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accusing them of thievery when they had done nothing! He took the women, and seized lands. That was his real reason to do so.”
“What?” She frowns. “What the hell? They feed you that bullshit?”
I repeat her words back at her. Her bullshit. “You’re the ones who have been lying.”
“Someone started it,” she replies, incensed, voice shaking. “And the Hartsons are far more virtuous and honorable than your lot –”
“Enough,” I snap at her, noting how she flinches from my tone. “I tire of this, woman.” She falls into a sullen silence. I turn my back to her again once more, so she can’t see the erection prodding through my boxers, which is mortifying, to say the least.
The coldness still lies within my heart. I’m ashamed of the effect she seems to have on my physical body, ashamed that I would even dare to feel like that towards her. Especially as we yell about the atrocities of our ancestors.
It’s nonsense, her version, of course. To think that the Hartsons have been feeding their children these falsehoods, raising them up to believe that we’re the killers, when anyone sane knows that’s not the case. She’s so brainwashed. How the hell will I deal with someone like that?
Sleep doesn’t come. I lie in the bed for a good hour or two, until I’m certain she’s asleep. I felt her adjust her position more than once. She clearly didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the same bed, but unfortunately, we are going to have to keep up appearances. The Graves need to believe that we are determined to go through with this. We have to pretend harmony, and somehow, I’m going to have to hope that my own kinsmen and women don’t end up deciding to take matters into their own hands. I know our head servant, Ethel, has several bones to pick with the Hartsons, given that her two oldest sons died in a raid over ten years ago. I hope to god she doesn’t fuck that up for the rest of us. It’s entirely possible that she or one of the two dozen others we employ to help run the household will give into their own grief and justified rage.