Born a Monster

235 Servant of the Axe – Now You May Speak

Chapter Type: Character Development

Bathing, and in fact general cleanliness, is important in Daurian society. You bathe when you wake up, before you go to sleep, and whenever you arrive after a long journey.

To complement this, one takes efforts, such as taking off one’s outdoor shoes, to ensure that as little of the outside gets inside as possible.

But, back to bathing. It is done in scalding hot water, with scented soaps, and care needs to be taken for those of us who have scales or fur. And, I learned, those of us who shed are not allowed to speak to others while the process is going on.

Supposedly because of the sheer hideousness of seeing dead skin peeling off.

Seriously, for a culture that venerated their ancestors... but that got clarified later.

So, for two days, I learned second-hand, by the encounters the women had with the Daurians. Apparently, Dauria was a woman-dominant culture, which made it even odder to me that the sailing crews (and for that matter, most of the citadel) was male.

We had three maidservants (two maido and one mako), but only one of them spoke halting Furdish. It turned out that there were a dozen official languages in Dauria and about five times that in regional dialects and “uncultured” tongues. The sheer rate at which they talked to each other kept me from learning their tongues, of which it seemed they rotated between five or so.

Maido Imiji was of the merchant class, which if you recall from earlier was the least of the four. She tried talking to me the first day of romance and poetry and the flowering bushes and trees. I tried to talk back to her about learning Daurian language and customs, and suggested Kismet for her romantic conversations. She pronounced me “bakemono no baka”, and would not talk to me further except to ask about her cleaning duties.

.....

Word had gotten around that Gamilla was merchant class, so she was shown a secret network of hallways on the second floor, and taught how to move about the castle with minimal visibility to the warriors who were, apparently, just as abusive as our own warriors.

Which didn’t keep them from making way for Kismet and Madonna, who had clothed themselves in the finest of silks and done their daily devotional prayers and other things that had clearly marked them as being of the noble caste. The Daurians were having trouble figuring out which was the “main” noblewoman, and which the secondary, and they were making a game out of making it even more confusing.

The servants had told others of my long hours of training and interest in weapons; it seemed that other than being a horrible, possibly diseased, SHORT PERSON, I was a warrior. Someone who may or may not have draconic ancestry, but likely not, as I had no notable martial arts.

Oh, yes, I suppose I should cover that. Daurians practice martial arts, especially combination moves such as the pirate attack that had introduced me to that new and deadly world. Or ancient and deadly world, depending upon your viewpoint.

There are countless schools and styles, enough to confuse and confound the Daurians themselves. Add to that the mystic cultivation of chi magic in overlapping cults and societies, and it became just a horrible mess. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about said mess; as a non-Daurian, let alone not a member of the families in said organizations, meant that dragon-blood or not, I would never be invited to attend their meetings.

Honestly, their beliefs seemed to vary from person to person, region to region, bloodline to bloodline, profession to profession, and so on. They were all fiercely devoted to their culture, history, and religion, but no two people seemed to agree except in the most general way about what those things meant.

I think I’ve already mentioned that there were five different honors: to family, to caste, to the celestial (divine) order, to empress (always empress, never emperor), and to the land. A balance needed to be maintained between these, and that balance would differ from person to person. It was something that maho (sorcerers, also called wushu or wu-jen) or jisi (priestesses, also called miko) made a living off of advising people on.

And then there was face, which apparently all of my companions had in abundance but which I did not. Face was a mixture of confidence and competence, integrity and honesty, sincerity and empathy... and the sorts of things that people said about you. Literally, having my skin peeling off, which was a sign of old age and disease, predisposed my image toward all manner of ill-luck and poor face.

Which is another part of their culture that mystified me; fate was the will of the gods, and showed your honor or lack thereof. There was no facing down difficulties to improve oneself; encountering difficulties at all was a sign that the heavens disfavored you, or that one of your honors was lacking. Whether you triumphed over them wasn’t considered; the fact that something bad had happened (or publicly happened) was a sign that destiny itself was punishing you for SOMETHING.

So, to the Daurian mind, dishonor led to misfortune, which in turn diminished your honor. Also, there is a belief that honor can only be regained by ritual suicide, which is blatantly false. That said, there was a whole process about committing suicide properly and for the correct reasons that I just don’t have time to go into right now.

Suffice that in spite of my status as one cursed by ill luck and doomed to a tragic ending, I was still expected to live for my companions, whom Daurian society presumed were more friendly toward me than I felt was actually the case. Of course, Daurian society also seemed to expect a lot of things from me, such as foot rubs, that were poppycock.

Or at least, mostly poppycock. I was expected to massage my wife’s feet on request, as she was female, and not from two or more castes below me.

Don’t ask me how Maido Imiji blamed me for my wife’s sore feet; if I couldn’t leave our quarters, there wasn’t an awful lot that I could do about it, was there? Besides, as none of my companions (nor the Daurian women themselves) were as sessile as noblewomen were supposed to be, and hadn’t seemed to suffer unduly from sore feet before.

Oh, and their society was more sexually charged than ours was in the Tidelands. It was immediately presumed that we were all members of a harem; the only debate was about whether it was Kismet’s or Madonna’s. Well, that and there were rumors that Gamilla was a hermaphrodite. Don’t ask; I don’t know WHO started those rumors.

Honestly, I don’t even care to speculate. There were rumors dancing around all of us; this, at least, our maids did well and without reservation, keeping the thousands of prying eyes in the castle OUTSIDE our rooms.

It also meant that I got to see an awful lot of well-dressed people across the threshold of our rooms.

But when the day for me to emerge came, new scales green like polished ivy, my companions had conspired to deck me out in a ridiculous array of leathers, silks, and even furs. I may not sweat as much as other species, but I could and did sweat.

I rapidly decided that I would take a bath as part of my mid-day meal. I had associated such with the wealthy rather than as a part of everyday life, but... Dauria was different.

And their diet! If it lived, it was edible. Any creature that could be caught, hunted, fished, or fought ended up as part of the cuisine. In counterpoint was the idea that Gluttony, and the other six sins, were all frowned upon by the Celestial Emperor (why a matriarchy has a male divine head is something I may go into later) and thus punished by dishonor and misfortune.

The proper way to eat was to take a small part of each dish, and then eat what you had placed on your plate. There were no seconds; it was better to eat small snacks throughout the day than eat large meals. Given my metabolism, I rapidly learned where the cooks plied their trade and was consistently chased away from there.

At any case, the baths were a series of metal drums, heated from fires in the basement that were kept burning constantly. Although everyone knew that they were emptied at night, I noticed wet areas in the courtyard that suggested there were watchful servants, dumping and somehow refilling them at any opportune moment.

I found them refreshing, soothing even. And the fact they overlooked the ocean was a bonus.

There were six tubs, so I was surprised when a couple (male and female) came up and the woman asked (in passable Neonen), “May my consort and I join you?”

“I personally have no objection, there is plenty of room.” What WAS the expected etiquette?

They disrobed and joined my bath. Both were well muscled, and hardly dirty.

“My consort would like to meet with you.” She said.

“I am so sorry.” I said. “But I know that to meet with your consort before meeting Admiral Kwan would cause him much loss of face.”

She told her companion this, and he laughed, nearly dropping the soap.

In Manoran, he said “Then it is a good thing that I am Admiral Kwan Lun, officially in charge of this madhouse.”

As one might expect, the other maido and mako were also merchant class, which technically meant I was supposed to ignore them.