Queensmen

Chapter 34

~Angel Of Mercy~

Oris exited the hall behind seventeen other bride candidates and their entourage of maids. Keziah and Mayree clutched her hands like she was their lifeline. Andrea and Seline skulked behind the two maids, whispering to each other as they glanced at the women in front of and behind them.

She could only hear snippets of their conversation, but that was only because her attention wasn't really on them. She wasn't expecting to be stabbed from behind, she was anticipating the snide comments that would come from right before her eyes.

Keeping her strides short had gotten her placed in the middle of every conversation. Her fellow candidates seemed to forget that they were still under the scrutiny of the Empress Dowager, the guards and the eunuchs; the high priestess and her scribes.

She had no doubt that everything said now would somehow be reported back to Hermes. What mattered was what type of light was shed on such conversations when they were eventually relayed.

For instance, if she suddenly started talking about the weather, who knew what sort of traitorous acts she would be accused of come the next morning. Messengers still curried favor by relaying what their masters wanted to hear. As long as the information wasn't too distorted, they could get away with anything.

Enough people here were aware of this fact, resulting in the atmosphere hanging over the procession being calm at best, frizzled at worst. Still, she could hear quiet outbursts from some of the heavily perfumed women who seemed to think that the ears in the palace walls had gone deaf.

"How can we be competing with commoners?"

"Aren't the results already obvious?"

"What did that white-haired witch mean when she said some of us might be maids?"

"My father paid a hefty some to have me here, I cannot be a servant!"

When Oris had first entered, she hadn't really noticed any maids among the throng of women and now she knew why. The maids were more elaborately dressed than she was with layered gowns, rouge on their lips and cheeks and glitter framing their eyes. Though they were not included in the selection, they were still dressed in their finest and made up enough to look like the daughters of low-class aristocrats.

At first Oris thought that they had been candidates themselves. It was only the fact that they stood a few steps behind a more elegantly dressed woman that she knew that their place was to serve.

Maybe they wanted to catch the eye of the Emperor and rise from the muddy road of day-to-day life to golden streets and luxury. Maybe their mistresses pushed them to do it, thinking that they'll look magnanimous by doing so.

Whatever the motive, Oris slowly came to the realization that any female that happened to be in the same proximity as her was a competitor. It didn't matter what they wore, as long as they had the intention to enter the harem they would naturally see her as an enemy.

Still on this train of thought, her gaze shifted from Mayree's worried expression to Andrea's look of unrestrained wonder, then back. Somehow she found herself wondering if Hermes preferred younger girls.

She would be two and twenty by the end of this Earth Cycle. That was considered old in some places and absolutely shameful in some others.