Page 14 of The Concubine King
“Then what’s tonight?”he asked after swallowing his nerves.
“The inauguration feast.”Gionan nodded to the two women and, with deep bows, they left as well.With only two of them in it, the room felt even bigger.The attendant guided him back to the mirror-table and Ethyr sat, staring at his own face again.“You will be introduced to the officials of your administration and the patricians.”
Ethyr scratched his scalp, wondering if he was speaking a new language.“Who?”
Gionan pulled Ethyr’s hand from his head and rested it in his lap, then started mussing with his hair.“Unfortunate it’s so short,” he mumbled to himself.He lifted a white ribbon and looped it under Ethyr’s hair, behind his ears, and tied it at his forehead.
“Those who govern the kingdom and influential civilians,” he finally answered Ethyr’s question, adjusting the ribbon so it pushed his hair back.
Pulling open a little box built into the side of the table, Gionan took out what looked like tiny brooms with bristles made of fur instead of straw, and several gold-and-pearl containers.He opened one to a circle of blue.When he swept the soft bristles across it, blue dust plumed into the air.
He crouched beside the chair.“Close your eyes, please, Divine Ethyr.”
He eyed the man warily, but closed his eyes.A tickle swept across his eyelid and he jerked back, scowling at Gionan still crouched and holding the tiny broom close to his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Painting your face.”
“What?Why?”
“For the same reason one dyes their clothes or wears jewelry.Please try to keep still, Divine Ethyr, and close your eyes again.”
“I thought I was supposed to be clean,” he said, face scrunched as the powder was brushed onto his skin.
“You are clean,” Gionan replied, surprised.
“But you’re covering my face in dust.”
“It’s not dust, Divine Ethyr, it is cosmetics.”
“It feels like dust,” he muttered.Gionan didn’t reply.
Ethyr sat still for so long his skin began to itch.The tickling of the soft hairs against his face didn’t help.He tried to bounce his leg to relieve some of the restlessness but Gionan told him to stop.Well, asked him to stop, but Ethyr was quickly learning that the polite requests were non-negotiable.
“I’ve finished, Divine Ethyr.”
He blinked open his eyes and startled at the face in the mirror.Blue glittering with flecks of gold streaked across his eyelids, ending in a swoop to his hairline.Bright orange was in the inner corner of his eyes and coloring his lower lids.It made his eyes look larger and the greens and browns in them stand out.Some ointment had been brushed on his lips that made them shine.He hardly looked human.
“Was this necessary?”he asked, tilting his head different ways to make sure it was really his face.He liked his bare face much better.
“Yes, Divine Ethyr.Everyone puts on cosmetics for special events like these.”
Ethyr sighed, resigned to it.“Will you be there?”
“Me?”He huffed what sounded like a laugh before he reined it in.“No, Divine Ethyr, I have no place in an event like this.”
Ethyr frowned at his knees.
Gionan took the ribbon off Ethyr and fussed with his hair a little more, picking at it with deep concentration.Finally he shook his head.“It is too short to style, I think, but its form is not bad on its own.I suppose we can leave it as-is.”He set to work putting away everything he had taken out.
A man entered the room carrying a garment, trailed behind by a girl holding a smooth wooden box.The man laid what he carried onto the bed and turned expectantly to Ethyr.
“Can you try this on, Divine Ethyr?”Gionan prompted.Realizing that getting naked under the gaze of random strangers might just be part of his life now, he wearily stood to undress.
He was not given the choice of putting the clothes on himself, though he wouldn’t have quite known how, anyway.It was not a simple tunic that slipped over his head and tied with a belt.The bottom half, the “pants,” went on first.They were wide and swishy and tied around his waist and ankles with gold-silk ribbons, the fabric of it a translucent purple-y blue that shifted from one color to the other depending on how the light hit it.Over that was a long top of similar color, though at least not see-through.It resembled a sleeveless tunic, except it went well below his knees and was split up the sides to the top of his legs.A belt of interlocking gold rings, each one further decorated with a dangling pearl, was draped around his hips.It did not cinch the tunic to his body, so it seemed the only purpose for it was decoration.A delicate ivory band slid up his left arm to rest above his bicep, and the look was completed with ivory-colored silk slippers and a gold circlet that rested over his hair.
Gionan and the other man stood back, studying Ethyr with hands to their chins in thought.
