Saruka's potential staffing problems

The terrace still held them when another step sounded from the gallery.

Winston knew it before he turned. A month of mornings had taught him the difference between a guard’s tread and the lighter one that usually meant his clothes, his bath, or his next meal were about to become someone else’s concern. Saruka came out of the western rooms with the white band still bound through her blonde hair and the red-and-cream gown gathered at the gold discs on her shoulders. She did not come out of those rooms as a woman finished with work.

Winston knew it before he turned. A month of mornings had taught him the difference between a guard’s tread and the lighter one that usually meant his clothes, his bath, or his next meal were about to become someone else’s concern. Saruka came out of the western rooms the way she always did when she wanted him watching, the white band still bound through her blonde hair, the red-and-cream gown gathered at the gold discs on her shoulders.

Saruka came along the gallery with the unhurried sway Winston had learned to distrust, the red-and-cream cloth sliding over the full roll of her hips and catching between her thighs in a way that made looking elsewhere increasingly theoretical. Somewhere near the middle of the walk, one arm lifted behind her head in a stretch that pulled the neckline down across the heavy swell of her breasts and held it there just long enough to make innocence difficult to believe. She kept going as though none of it concerned him, but by the time she reached the parapet the satisfaction already gathering at her mouth gave away how closely she had been following his attention. A month ago he might have wondered whether she knew what she was doing. By now the question would have insulted them both.

“My king.” Saruka bowed, though the inspection had plainly left her with more pressing concerns than ceremony. “I have been through your chamber, the baths, the kitchens, the guest rooms, the linen stores, and most of the places Tektonia has arranged for water to collect where someone will eventually have to clean it.”

Tektonia looked far too pleased with herself.

“The house is excellent,” Saruka allowed, giving her that much before fixing Winston with a look. “It is also considerably more house than one woman can keep while bathing you, dressing you, feeding you, keeping your clothes in order and preventing you from discovering how long you can ignore a meal before someone intervenes.”

That brought a laugh from Hippolyta.

Winston looked from the terrace to the western rooms and the court below. “I had understood having more house to be one of the advantages of kingship.”

“For you,” Saruka said. “You are not the one scrubbing it.”

The answer came dryly enough to make Hippolyta smile, but Saruka was already moving past the joke. “I can still see to you, and I intend to. Your clothes, your bath, your chamber, your meals when you forget them, and whatever condition you manage to put yourself into between morning and night remain my concern. What I cannot do is all of that while keeping two floors, guest rooms, linen, a kitchen feeding the watch, and enough running water to encourage half this household to spend unnecessary amounts of time naked.”

Aurascyra made a pleased sound somewhere behind them. Saruka let it pass without surrendering so much as a glance.

“The channels need tending, the baths need cleaning, linen needs washing, and food still has to appear whether or not you remember to ask for it. If I try to do everything myself, I will spend my days polishing stone and chasing laundry instead of attending you. I have no intention of becoming less useful to you merely so I can claim I did all of it alone.”

That shifted something in Hippolyta’s amusement. She had heard enough to recognize that Saruka was not complaining about the work so much as protecting the part of it she considered important.

“How many?”

“Eleven. Three for the western wing, three for the kitchens, three for the rest of the residence, and two for the baths, channels and waterworks. The last two can help elsewhere when the water allows it.”

Winston looked at her more closely. “You have already organized them.”

“The positions,” Saruka corrected. “I have not chosen the women.”

That part, apparently, required considerably more care. She rested one hand against the parapet and looked back toward the western wing as though the rooms had already begun arranging themselves under her authority. “I will run the household. The others can keep rooms, prepare meals, carry linen and develop opinions about how much water a king ought to use. Your person remains my responsibility unless you tell me otherwise.”

Hippolyta’s smile deepened at that. “You used to say much the same thing to me.”

“You required supervision.”

“I was Queen of Themyscira.”

The answer finally drew Saruka’s attention back to Hippolyta, affection from years of service sitting comfortably beside the complete absence of apology. “Yes.”

Hippolyta laughed, and Winston could suddenly see the older version of what had become familiar to him over the past month: a handmaiden deciding what her queen needed, arranging it before being asked, then treating objections as useful information rather than final instructions. Kingship had redirected that attention more than it had changed the woman giving it.

The mention of who would serve in the western wing brought a different concern from farther along the terrace. Penthascara had shown little interest in linen or kitchens, but access to Winston’s private rooms belonged squarely within her domain. “Those three will be passing through his chamber whenever they are on duty.”

“Of course.”

“And sleeping close enough to reach him before the outer watch does.”

Saruka gave her full attention now. There was no irritation in it. On this point, at least, they understood one another immediately.

“They will be women I choose and he approves,” she said. “No one enters his chamber merely because the household happens to need another pair of hands. If she cannot be trusted near him when he is asleep, bathing, ill, distracted, or otherwise incapable of watching her every moment, she can scrub the eastern steps instead.”

That satisfied something in Penthascara. Her eyes moved once toward Winston’s rooms, then back to Saruka. “That will do.”

The security question had been settled easily. What remained was harder for Saruka to disguise as administration. Her hand stayed on the parapet while she looked toward the western wing, and when she spoke again the certainty had quietened.

“I need help keeping the house. I do not need someone else becoming your handmaiden.”

A month of small intimacies lay behind the distinction. Baths drawn before he asked for them. Clothes kept in order. Meals appearing when he had forgotten them. Knots worked from his shoulders while she ignored his claim that he was perfectly comfortable. Saruka had made herself responsible for the private inconveniences of his body and his days, and somewhere along the way the work had become a claim she valued for reasons that had little to do with laundry.

Eleven additional women did not threaten her authority over the residence. They threatened the possibility that pieces of that closeness might quietly become ordinary household duties anyone could perform.

The understanding softened Hippolyta’s amusement, though what followed was practical rather than consoling. “There are women in my former household who already know this work. Chamber attendants, laundresses, kitchen women, bath attendants. Most are still serving in the palace.”

Saruka’s attention sharpened immediately.

“You know them better than anyone,” Hippolyta continued. “You know who can be trusted in private rooms, who works without being watched, and who will spend half the day talking when she should be carrying linen.”

“I know exactly which ones do that.”

That earned a small laugh from Hippolyta before her gaze moved to Winston. The choice was his now.

“Then take eleven,” he said. “Choose them from the former Queen’s household if they are willing to enter mine. You have leave to go to the palace, speak to whoever you need to speak to, and bring back the women you trust for the work.”

Something in Saruka’s face changed before he had quite finished. The problem was no longer an unwanted surrender of territory. It had become an arrangement she could control.

Hippolyta added, “Use my name where you need it. Anyone still under the palace household may be released to you without argument.”

“And anyone serving in the western wing comes on your recommendation and with my approval,” Winston said. “You remain first in the household. They work under your direction.”

Relief loosened Saruka’s shoulders, but satisfaction overtook it quickly. “Thank you, my king.”

Her bow carried considerably more composure than the request had, and when she straightened there was already calculation behind the gold-brown eyes. Eleven places had been granted, and somewhere in the palace a number of women who did not yet know their lives were about to change were being sorted in Saruka’s mind by competence, discretion, loyalty, and exactly how much access to Winston she was prepared to tolerate.

Hippolyta watched the calculation gather behind Saruka’s eyes. “I suspect you already have names.”

“More than eleven.”

Winston glanced at her.

Saruka’s mouth curved. “Some will be disappointed. They can survive until the palace gives me somewhere to put them.”

That drew another laugh from Hippolyta, though her attention did not remain with Saruka for long. The question of servants had been settled, and when she looked back to Winston the amusement stayed with her, altered now by something more private.

“Well,” she stated. “The household is yours. The rooms are yours. Do you want to make your claim?”

Winston looked at her. “What does that mean?”

The smirk that answered him was small, fond, and entirely unhelpful. It belonged to a woman who had already decided what the afternoon was for and meant to enjoy watching him catch up. Her eyes moved once toward the open gallery and the western rooms beyond it, then came back to his face and stayed there, waiting.

Heat found him a beat later. The master chamber. The broad bed Tektonia had put at the end of the wing. Hippolyta asking, in front of the terrace, whether he intended to take her there and put the first use of those rooms into something no inventory of linen or water could argue with.

“Ah,” he stated.

“Yes,” Hippolyta said, and the smirk was still on her mouth when she used it.

She stepped into him, one hand catching his jaw, and kissed him there on the terrace with the same unhurried certainty she had shown in the tent, lingering long enough that the meaning needed no further translation. Warm, unashamed, and thoroughly public. When she drew back, her lips still brushed his.

“Ah,” she repeated, quieter now, and entirely pleased with herself.

Saruka’s mouth had gone very still. Tektonia looked as if this were the most reasonable inspection of the house anyone had proposed all morning. Along the terrace, the guard had the good sense of women who knew when a conversation had stopped belonging to them.

Hippolyta’s hand stayed at his arm, light and certain.

“The house is finished,” she stated, still close enough that the words were for him first. “A king does not simply walk through his chamber and call it his. You take it. You take me or one of the others here in it. Unless you would rather keep discussing linen.”

Winston looked from her mouth to the gallery and felt the old pull of her standing this close, diadem, gold, the white of her gown, the particular patience of a woman offering him the room she had already decided they would share.