A few of the women go quiet for one beat too long.
Then Oshara says, “And the women.”
The words land straight in the center of my chest. There is nothing mocking in them. Nothing especially pointed. That is what makes them worse. Oshara says it the way someone on Mars might say rain comes in winter or food has to be stored before the cold. A fact. A rhythm. A practical piece of life.
The younger woman, perhaps trying to be useful, adds, “Three women carry now. One hopes for a daughter. Another says son. Oshara says healthy is better than both.”
One or two of the women make sounds of agreement.
I look back down at the roots in my hands because suddenly I can feel all of myself too clearly. My hips against the low stool. The softness beneath the dress. The shoulder where Kaiven bit me. The simple fact of my body sitting there among womenspeaking of children and pregnancy and future births as though they are discussing weather, meat stores, or pack repairs.
No one says anything to me directly. No one needs to.
I am the king’s new wife. The human female matched for pheromones, fertility, and biology. The body already discussed in offices, files, and private conversations before I ever set foot in this camp.
That thought makes the root in my hand blur for one ugly second.
Oshara notices before anyone else.
“You scrape slower when your mind runs foolish,” she says.
I blink and force my focus back to the knife. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Oshara’s voice stays even. “You are distracted. Sorry does not clean roots.”
Heat rises into my face. I return to the task and keep my mouth shut.
The work goes on. Water is brought. More baskets appear. One woman rises to nurse the baby that had been sleeping against her chest and keeps talking through it without breaking the rhythm of the conversation. Another sends a boy off to fetch something from a supply cart with one sharp phrase. Life here does not pause for softness. It folds everything into itself and keeps moving.
That may be what frightens me most. How practical it all is. How little room there seems to be for a woman to break apart if she is scared or uncertain. How quickly even the most intimate things become work, duty, expectation, and season.
At midday, Oshara takes me with two of the other women to a storage tent where dried goods, cloth, herbs, and preserved food are kept. I am shown how things are stacked. What stays dry. What is sealed against pests. What is used first. What is saved. The instructions come in pieces, some from Oshara, some from the younger women, all of it delivered with the calm expectationthat I will remember because forgetting in this world has consequences.
As we work, one of the women asks in English, “Did the king like the mating?”
The question is so blunt I almost drop the wrapped bundle in my hands.
The woman asking it does not look malicious. Only curious in the open practical way of the horde.
Another woman, younger and bolder, says before I can answer, “He marked you quickly. That says enough.”
Oshara does not stop them. That may be the worst part. Because it tells me this is not indecent here. Not private in the same way. Not something women whisper about behind closed doors with embarrassed faces. It is part of life. Part of marriage. Part of household expectation.
My throat goes dry. “I don’t know what to say.”
The bolder younger woman shrugs. “You need not say much. We see.”
See what.
The mark. The scent. The fact that Kaiven took me to bed the first night before the horde.
One of the older women ties off a storage bundle and says, almost absently, “If the bond settles strong, maybe a child comes fast.”
No one laughs. No one hushes her. No one acts as though she crossed a line.
I stand very still with the folded cloth in my hands.
That old cold feeling comes back. The one that started in the testing room on Mars. The one that sharpened in the shuttle when Marat said children are expected. The one that grew teeth in the night when Kaiven spoke of mate and scent and body truth.
