Game of Queens by India Edghill

I? Do you dare say I am ugly?” He looked ugly, as I stared at him, and I had always before this thought him as fine-looking as a king.
    â€”but it would not have mattered had the Abyssinian been short and ugly. For he was kind. And the girl and the slave took comfort from each other, and the fruit of their love was a beautiful boy. But one day her husband learned of her betrayal. And he killed the slave …
    â€œâ€”and sentenced his unfaithful wife to death.” My mother bent and kissed my forehead as I stared, barely comprehending her words. And then she said, “Remember that I am guilty. My husband could have slain me the moment he found me with your father. But he let me live to bear you, and to nurse you, and to see you grow. Seven years. He gave me seven years with you, my son. He let you live. He promised he would not kill you. For that, I will bless his name in—”
    â€œIn Hell,” my father said. “Now set the boy aside and come to me.”
    My mother bent to kiss me once more, then gently pried my hands from her skirts. “Good-bye, my son. Live well. Be happy.” Then, to my horror, she walked over to him, her head high and her steps steady.
    He grasped her arm and made her turn so that she faced me, pulled her close so that her back pressed against him. She stood there quietly, made no move to escape, or to resist. He pulled his knife from the sash around his waist and lifted it slowly to her throat. He laid the long blade against her slender neck, the keen edge just touching her smooth skin.
    And just before he slit her throat, the man I had called my father displayed the cruel heart my mother had spoken of. “Yes, he will live, and he may even be happy as a eunuch.” He pressed the knife’s blade harder against her skin. “Your son will be a eunuch and a slave. Think of that, as you beg Daena the Lady Guardian for mercy in the afterlife.”
    My mother did not answer him, either to beg mercy or to curse him. She looked straight at me. “Close your eyes,” she said.
    Those were the last words she spoke to me. I did not even have time to obey her command before the man I had always called “father” yanked the blade across her throat. He let her body fall into the blood pooling scarlet at their feet and dropped the knife upon her body. Then he looked at me and I no longer saw my father. I saw a man who hated, who hated so greatly that even slaying his unfaithful wife did not ease that hatred. Now he would try to slake his anger by tormenting me.
    And there was no one and nothing to stand between me and Lord Haman’s thirst for vengeance.
    *   *   *
    But Haman did not make a eunuch of me then. No, with true cruelty, he waited another seven years to fulfill his last vow to my mother. Seven years during which I was treated in all ways as if I were Haman’s true son.
    Seven years in which I was in fact a prisoner in the most opulent and gilded of cages.
    I thought of nothing but escape. I tried, and I failed, and with each failure Haman’s grasp upon me tightened. By the time I turned fourteen, I had been confined to my rooms—rooms with barred windows and barred doors—for two years. Even the gardens had been forbidden to me.
    The day I turned fourteen, Haman hired the most expensive, most sought-after prostitute in the city. “She will be yours—for one night. One night, so that you will know what you have lost,” my father said. Mad hatred glittered in his eyes. “Your life will be my revenge on that whore, your mother.”
    He took me to the room he had prepared for this occasion. A feast had been spread over a low mirrored table, and the smell of honeyed wine lay heavy upon the air. Beyond the table I saw a bed covered in extravagantly embroidered coverings. A woman sat upon the bed. She smiled when she saw me and rose to her feet, graceful as a willow in the wind. Slowly, she