“Iron oxide tastes like blood. The first time I was taken into the mine I thought it was a sanctuary full of corpses. It reminded me of the time when Duga had to hide into the cave and we killed and ate the cows. The smell of blood filled me up and helped me to forget hunger. I felt like eating corpses but we were just given some unrecognizable soup. The smell of iron was also pervasive when I arrived in the harem. I had never seen so many tones of red and orange. I had never seen so many beautiful people in the same place at once. I started recognizing beauty, because in Duga nobody ever told me about that. In the second cave, when I was captured and helpless, I had felt something similar. The sound of water, the smell of blood, the taste of iron, and the shape of beauty have remained one and the same thing for me until now.”
Tajo dropped their pencil on the sumptuous oak desk. It had taken a lot of energy to write each word of their little daily reflection. They learned to write secretly with the help of Liuben. No one in the palace knew, just as they did not know of Liuben's existence.
During the fourteen years they had shared, Tajo had tried hard to hide from Aythor that they couldn't write. For Aythor, illiteracy was deplorable. There was great competition in the harem for mastery of literature and the arts. This fact was known to everybody, and not only knowledge of the arts of pleasure was expected from the harem, but also mastery of dead knowledge. It was treated as pieces of ornament, fine carvings and precious stones, in the absence of such luxuries. If Aythor's palace was magnificent but dry and austere in its construction, it was not because of his personal taste, but because of the poverty of the kingdom. Poverty that was concealed by the fact that no one there had known any wealth. The kingdom was an invention, but Aythor compared himself to the great kings of the past, to the enlightened despots, tsars, and emperors he admired. They were his references, but apart from the knowledge that the machines kept about them, few people in Tojé had any notion of their former existence. So acquiring this scant knowledge of history through machines was a coveted lore for those who longed to become part of the harem, and thus rise above the misery that existed outside the city walls, in the hope of collecting some title of intramural property at maturity.
But Tajo had not done this tour. They had not been born in Tojé nor did they know of the role that the machines had acquired, because they had become mercenaries of their knowledge, which they sold on the black market in exchange for maintenance. Tajo, on the other hand, lived with Liuben, if not in the most harmonious way, then with familiarity. They had found a formula for survival, so Tajo always took pains to carefully hide the existence of Liuben. Thanks to this they had managed not only to increase the king's favors, which they enjoyed for other reasons, but also to shine in the harem and silence the gossip of those who envied them.
But there were certain skills that Tajo couldn't just borrow from Liuben. Liuben could take over Tajo's body, but at this time Tajo had no control over either of them (neither Liuben, nor their own body). Writing was one of them. Liuben only agreed to teach them how to write after Aythor's death.
Actually, Aythor knew that Tajo did not know how to write. He had discovered it the first night Tajo spent in the royal chamber. It was winter, it was very cold. Aythor asked Tajo if they knew the art of Chinese calligraphy, to which Tajo answered positively. He handed them a pen and paper. Tajo drew the lines with absolute perfection. At the end they told Aythor that they would not reveal the meaning of what they had written. Liuben did not know.
But what was valid for the rest of the harem was not valid for Tajo. Tajo knew it and had always taken advantage of that margin of difference. Tajo did not try to look like those who stood out in the harem. They always remained far from everyone, speaking little and interacting even less, always showing a certain air of superiority. Many people hated Tajo for it, but at the same time they knew that they had Aythor's favor, so they didn't attack them. People were afraid of them.