My lord has many tails, nine all told, each more beautiful than the last. At the end of every burning day of conquest, she returns to me breathless and radiant, her tread painting crimson shapes upon the rug, her perfect teeth red and shining. When the worst of the welter has sloughed off in her bath - and I do not envy those who bathe her - I am tasked with the finer points of care.
She reclines beneath the scarlet canopy of her war tent, sating her appetites in liquor, flesh, and smoke, and as she feasts and talks and laughs her ringing laugh I do my work quietly, in her shadow. The long-fingered comb, polished amber coral, was a queen’s dowry once, and one night’s worth of her perfumed coat-oil could buy a duchy. I will speak not of the cost of the chiming ornaments I hang upon my lord; to see them is to understand, and if you are lucky you will not see her.
It slickens my hands to the elbows, the coat-oil. I smell of her, always.
It isn’t just the tails, of course - the great cascading mane of her hair, the fine particularities of her ears, these are my charges too - but her tails are my favourite, and their silken magnificence demands the lion’s share of my attentions. They trail behind her like the wake of a ship on a red-gold sea; I could plunge my arm into kingly fur to the elbow without touching flesh.
I will not speak at length of the resulting mess when one so resplendently endowed sallies forth upon the field of war and personally unmakes two-to-three-score men (on average). To see it is to understand, and et cetera.
Sometimes my lord speaks to me, about this or about that, snatches and barbs of little consequence murmured over her shoulder - the quality of the harpist, the ill habits of a general, isn’t that courtesan pretty. I think it pleases her to have someone unimportant to confide in, this crimson prince, this churner of men into their constituent parts. She knows her secrets are safe with me; I, who was once a prince myself, and am now a serving-girl of no consequence. To take what I know, someone would first have to assume that I know anything at all - and, ah, they never will.
Most often it falls to me conduct my duties in silence, listening to the art of the harpists or to the sussuration of advisors, combing blood from the pelt of my conqueror. The scented oil clings to my skin; I will never be free of the smell of it.