They don’t care about their daughters, and frankly, neither does he. The fathers marry their daughters off to him in exchange for a chance to get in his good graces. All they want is to bolster their own business and political interests. Once she’s traded hands, they never even think to question her whereabouts. They never ask why she’s nowhere to be found after the wedding.
“She’s done,” he says to me as he exited the marital bedroom, “clean her up”.
This happens on every ‘wedding night.’ I do a little prayer to myself, hoping it’s not so bad this time. Something in this world hates me, because I never get what I ask for.
I step inside the room and she’s strewn all over the bed. I hope for her sake she passed out from the shock early on. I look at the largest chunk of her remains and despair. Her left arm as been twisted clean off her shoulder and barely hangs onto her torso by a string of crumbling sinew. The master managed to take her right arm completely off – I don’t even want to begin thinking about the acts he performed with that limb. I try to parse the cause of death – her bruises tell the story of a beating, but the odd angle of her neck tells me he strangled her. For a second I wonder if she expired before or after the master completed his horrific act of congress, but I quickly expel the question from my mind.
I take her remains and roll them into the bed sheet. I request one of the maids to help me carry the bundle to the furnace. Every bit of blood-soaked fabric on the marital bed is burned to hide the master’s actions. The only evidence remaining is my witness – might the orange flicker one day claim me as well?
I sometimes think about coming forward – telling the girl’s families or the royal guard or the townspeople, but what would become of it? They don’t care. The families just want to be in his good graces, the royal guard would dismiss me outright, and the townspeople do not want to make enemies of a noble. I am stuck cleaning up the remains of this man’s wives.
The next day the girl’s father is in the mansion, negotiating a business deal. The master is going to let him handle the shipping for a new expedition. Last night my master brutalized this man’s daughter, and yet the two stand together as partners. I hold in the urge to vomit.