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That had not gone—badly. It had not gone as well as Thea had desperately hoped for, jolting along the long road from the coast to the Sun’s Rest, but it had not gone as badly as her most anxious fears either. It looked like her life as a war prize would contain neither violence nor friendship with the man who controlled her life, but struggling to comply fast enough for someone who seemed mostly indifferent to her was not the worst fate possible. He’d been gentle enough, when he hadn’t gotten impatient and physically manhandled her where he wanted. The impatience when she hasn’t understood him had been—stressful—but she would be able to learn what he wanted, she had faith. And honestly in the afterwards she’d rather be ordered to gather her clothes and leave. She hadn’t been in the mood to stay in that incense-reeking space full of soldiers.
She’d escaped into the sprawling series of rooms that made up the Conqueror's living quarters, sneaking from area to area until she found a place to bathe. Thea tried to hold her slippery gauze skirts out of the way and wipe at the inside of her thighs with a rag she’d found. This room with a stepped pool of blue water probably expected her to disrobe entirely, but there were no doors on the arched entrances. Anyone could come in. She wasn’t—she wasn’t quite that ready for that. A month ago she had been a princess, but that was over now. She scrubbed harder at her leg, the skin reddening.
A hand touched her shoulder and Thea jumped. She whirled, eyes widening as she took in a woman in a sumptuous green dress, crown of jeweled sunflowers and wheat on her head.
Thea flushed scarlet. This had to be the queen, the actual bride of the Sun, and Thea was in a dress with no back, shoulders uncovered and transparent skirts slit up to her thigh. Wrinkled and messy. With her new status, there was no way Thea would be allowed to look at her face. “I am sorry,” she managed, in that new language she had begged instruction in from the knights riding alongside her cart on the ride here, begged and feverishly hoped. “I did not hear you.”
The Sun’s Bride used a cane, Thea noted, a tinge of despair in her thoughts as she heard the faint mumble that meant that someone was speaking lower than she could make out. She wondered if the cane was used everywhere, or just in the private rooms. Probably not out in public, not with the Sun Conqueror's emphasis on strength. She didn’t know if she was allowed to look up and lip read, to stare at the queen—not when she was dressed like this, not when her role was entertainment for this woman’s husband.
“I am sorry,” Thea carefully enunciated again. “I cannot hear you.”
A hand gripped her chin, tilting her face up. Thea looked up in shock, first into the queen’s face—she had deep brown eyes with laughter in the creases—and then at her mouth when she spoke. Lips moving, bafflingly, in familiar shapes.
“You are from Rivergate, are you not?” The queen spoke in the language of Thea’s home. Still required concentration to understand, as lip reading always did, but worlds easier—“And you do not hear well?”
“Your Highness.” Thea’s fist balled around the damp rag. Oh, and she’d forgotten honorifics in the language of this place, she was going to earn punishment for that—“Yes I am of Rivergate, and yes I do not hear.” She swallowed. “I am sorry, it is from childhood.”
The queen waved a hand. “There is no need for titles, we are all people who have been brought here. I am from Dawnsford.” The nation up the river from Thea’s home, the direction the armies had come from. “I have been here many years.” The queen’s cheeks went pink, and she cautiously moved her two fists close to the body, like she was moving a scrubbing cloth between them. “Do you want a real bath?”
Thea’s eyes darted between the sign for “bath” and the queen’s lips. She was aware that she was staring, but—“I do not want to bother,” she said, cautiously signing along with her words. Did the Sun’s Bride know Thea’s language and also know Thea’s language? Here, where she had expected to be so alone? “You are very busy, I am sure.”
There was a furrow of concentration between the queen’s eyebrows, and her hands moved carefully through the key words of her sentence. “I am not busy. There is a bath in my—in my room. Private. My maid at home was Deaf, and I knew a little. Is it the same—your signs?”
“It is not quite the same signs, but—“ Thea saw panic enter the queen’s eyes and slowed down, signing it over again. “We can understand each other, yes.” She couldn’t keep a grin off her face. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“I am sorry, I am slow,” the queen signed and spoke. “Hard to not have a person to talk to.”
Thea laughed through the tears that threatened to well up, and gestured no as broadly as she could. That she was being apologized to in the Sun’s Rest, what a thing to happen. “No, this is good, this is good.”
The queen gestured over her shoulder. “Come, a bath, food, medicine. I will take care of you, after the Sun.” Her head tilted to the side in question, the light from the skylight reflecting off her crown and filling the room with bright spots. “You can teach me your signs, and I will teach you how they speak here? It will be good to talk.”
There was a lump in Thea’s throat. She gave up on speech. “Yes, it will be good,” she signed. “It will be good to talk.”