[Fiction] The Palace on the Beach

[Runesmith]

Gundik Rachel was a Filipina, and at 19, she was the youngest of the concubines. Born out of wedlock to a single mother, she came from a background of poverty and misery, but had managed to study until junior high school, when her mother's finances mysteriously dried up, and she couldn't afford to study anymore. That was when she had got the first break in life - at 15 years old she was crowned Miss Cebu at a local fashion contest. Rachel was tall for a Filipina, had very fair and unblemished skin (unlike most Cebuanas), and had a rare, delicate, highly coveted Mestiza look. It was rumoured in the village that her mother had been impregnated by the American manager of the resort in Bohol where she worked as a masseuse, and it was around the time that the manager met an untimely death in a boating accident that her mother's finances dried up, lending credence to the rumour.

"Just after the pageant I got a call from the organizer, saying a foreign official wanted to meet me," said Rachel with just a barely perceptible hint of regret in her voice, sipping her iced watermelon juice. Her P and F defect made the word "foreign" sound "poreign", and, coupled with the sing-song way of Filipino speech, Zaheera found it adorable. The official turned out to be an associate of the prince, assigned as a cultural attache at the embassy. Rachel was offered a large sum of money to make an appearance at an event in the country, and the amount was far more than what her mother would make in a year.

Zaheera could already imagine how this story would go. The naive young girl would have been easy to manipulate. She was amazed that Gundik Rachel had come to trust her enough within the short time she had been in her service, to even open up to her about this. It had only been three short weeks since she moved in to Gundik Rachel's apartments in the main building. Maybe Rachel simply trusted her because she wasn't Asian. Or maybe she was simply tired of holding everything in, and wanted a friend to confide in. Zaheera had come to like this very young, down-to-earth woman... which made what she was doing behind Rachel's back all the more reprehensible.

"Well, as I expected, you did everything wrong," Madam Li had said, after the test, which Zaheera had thought she had aced. "For one, you never touch the Gundik without her permission. The preparation of the bath was wrong, and you didn't check the temperature of the tea... among many other things." Zaheera's heart had sunk - not because she had feared the barracks duty (after all, after what she had gone through, how much lower could she sink), but due to that ingrained German fear of failure. That was when Madam Li had given her an alternative (well, not so much an alternative, but more an imperative - consequences for refusing could have been extreme) - Zaheera would be given the position, and given a crash course in what she needed to know. However, she was to report back to Madam Li anything and everything she heard or saw in the Gundik's company. "If you ever breathe a word of this arrangement to anyone, or keep information from me, I will personally make sure that your downfall will be quick and painful," Madam Li had added, the threat being almost redundant due to the sheer imbalance of power. Zaheera had dutifully reported back to Madam Li every few days, giving a full account of whom the Gundik met with, what she did and talked about... which was mostly boring and monotonous. Zaheera could not understand what secrets Madam Li was looking for, from the most junior of the Gundiks.

"I was so excited to get that opportunity. It was like a dream come true. I thanked God for giving me that break. I thought I was going to be famous, traveling the world, and getting enough money to build a nice house for my mother," continued Rachel, staring off to the distance. "I never expected it would end up in something like this."

Rachel had to get her ID and her passport done, and the foreign dignitary sent her money to get the paperwork done (and for the bribes to get things expedited), and to fly to Manila to board the first international flight of her life. She was flown first class - something she had never imagined in her life before. As soon as the flight landed, she was whisked off in a luxurious limousine, and was brought to the palace on the beach.

The purpose of her trip, the "event", was never well defined, and to the inexperienced 15-year old, it had never occurred to ask or get anything in writing. Not that it would have changed anything.