Cohost Sapphic September 2024 writing prompt: 27 — Girls who are a master
Avillia da Quine dips her pen and crabs another line of dense, slanted, illegible handwriting, scowling at the half-dozen books open on her carousel reading stand, and the intemperate sky’s buffeting — a faintly perceptible judder, even through the great mass and powerful station-keeping engines of the aeroduchy — then curses aloud at a knock on her study’s door.
“Enter!” she yells sharply, throwing down the pen.
Two of the house squires trundle in; one with the proper deference — bowed head, muttered apologies for entering her sight, a clumsy yet respectful bob in the direction of a bow or curtsey or some genuflection; the other, conspicuously, without. Giordana Castello, chief undersquire to the flying steed wing, and general dogsbody, as all squires are: a mobile face as given to expressive sulkiness as smiles, brawn, braggadocio.
Avillia takes them in at a glance; at the covert sideways look of awe that the more-junior squire gives Giordana, at her lack of decorum; and wishes she’d retained her pen to throw it now.
“The castellan would like to see you at your convenience,” Giordana says sunnily, and Avillia stares at her with the expressionless expectation of a dog trainer who knows a dog knows how to behave, and is waiting for it to display some shame and get itself in line.
The smile slowly melts off Giordana’s face.
Avillia waits.
“Your pardon for disturbing you,” the squire rephrases, finally. “The castellan asked for it to be conveyed to you, respectfully, that at your convenience, he’d like a moment of your valuable time.”
Avillia waits. Giordana’s eyes, slowy falling from her face, light on the polished emblem of her professional mastery, pinned to her blouse.
”…Maestro,” Giordana appends, almost muttering. Avillia could make issue of that.
“Thank you,” she says instead, a little chilly. “I will seek him shortly.”
Thus dismissed, the squires trail back out. If Giordana spares her another look, Avillia does not see — determinedly so — eyes back on her papers.
In the darkest watch of the night, Avillia very softly raps a coded knock on a particular door, low in the aeroduchy’s windowless belly, far from the fresh wind of the decks, every surface thrumming constantly with engine-noise. A carefully quiet hand unlatches it from within, and leaves her to open it herself.
She steels herself. Waits — one! two! three! — and opens it, head hanging, penitent. Steps inside, quietly dogs the door, steps out of her shoes, climbs stiffly to her knees.
“I’m sorry, Onorato,” she says, lashes already wet.
Giordana look at her, perched on the edge of her hard bunk, in a sleeveless nightshift and long, much-darned socks. She is sternly expressionless, or so it seems to Avillia’s quick glance up, not raising her head an iota.
“If they find out,” Avillia says, “when they find out, there will be consequences, you know this. There will be a scandal. I will weather it — the disapproval, the gossip, the loss of face — but there is nothing they can do to the maestro who designs and oversees the constant running of the engines. But you—” her voice cracks, and she screws her eyes shut for a moment. “There is so much they can do to you.”
“Diza doesn’t know anything,” Giordana says. “And she wouldn’t say.”
“She doesn’t have to!” Avillia wrings at the hem of her blouse with aggravated hands. “You know how the court is. It’s enough for her to know that you treat me familiarly; there are more than enough vipers who can infer that if she sees it, she’s not seen me correct you. And that way lies downfall, Onorato. I spoke to you—” her throat jams. She coughs it miserably clear. “Whip me. Scorn me. Demand I grovel to you. I owe you all this. I give you all this, my moon, my muse, my punishing angel. Know that I will do it a thousand times more, and suffer whatever consequences you see fit, a thousand times more. I must. I must, for your sake.”
“You are going to suffer the consequences,” Giordana says levelly. “There is no circumstance you escape disrespecting me without punishment. But you know that, and I know you’re sorry. Look at me.”
Avillia fills her lungs and looks up. Giordana smiles.
“You honour me, also, by caring for my safety,” the squire says softly. “Whose are you?”
“Yours,” Avillia says. “Always.”
“They can part us,” Giordana says. “I know they’ll try. But you’re mine always.”
Avillia begins, then, to weep a little.
“Bring me a shoe, and come here, over my lap,” Giordana says kindly; and Avillia pauses, eyes filled with tears, hand hovering over the shoes lined up neatly by the door. Butter-soft and age-thinned squire’s shoes; still a considerable thing to have applied to one’s behind, but forgiving, in their way. And her own; court shoes, brilliantly polished leather in this spring’s fashion. Sturdily made, unyielding, liable to bite deep enough to leave her snot-faced and heaving for breath and sitting unhappily on bruises for a week.
Giordana is watching her back as she hesitates. Could say something. Could tell her which to choose.
Giordana does not.
Haltingly, she picks up her selection.
