Shadowed By Wings (25 page)

The women lethargically formed a semicircle before me. The smell of venom pervasive throughout the place increased as they drew close. There were five women, all dressed in pale bitoos, and they all looked identical.

“I’m Sutkabdevia,” murmured one of the women. Sixty-seven Girl.

“Kabdekazonvia.” Seventy-two Girl.

“Misutvia.” Eighty-six Girl.

“Prinrutvia.” Ninety-three Girl. “But please, call me Prinrut, as the others do. It’s shorter.”

I stared at them in horror.

The eunuch clucked beside me. “Can you remember what your name is?”

He talked nonsense.

“Najivia,” he said gently. “One Hundred Girl. Remember that, hey-o?” He turned back to the gathered women. “You’ll orient her, won’t you, girls? I’ve got noon feast to prepare. Wait until you see the delights in store for you today!” He licked his lips and rubbed his soft hands together in anticipation.

One of those hands landed heavily on my shoulder. “You listen to Greatmother and the girls closely, hey-o? Greatmother’s been here a long time; she knows what’s best for you. Don’t you, Greatmother?”

Moving his hips like a cur with dysplasia, he departed through the solitary door.

One of the women standing before me sighed. “Let’s sit. It’s tiresome standing.”

A murmur of agreement. The women drifted to the various cushions and divans scattered about the room and melted atop them, boneless.

“Come, child,” the gray-haired woman called Greatmother said, pointing to a worn carpet across from the tattered cushion she sat upon. “You haven’t had the pleasure of sitting upon a cushion for a long time.”

Stiffly, I approached her and tried to sit. I found myself unable to, without a wall to slide down as support. I was astonished by my body’s inability to perform what should have been a natural motion.

“Give her aid,” Greatmother instructed, gesturing at the two women seated closest to where I stood.

With sighs of exhaustion, the two women helped me lay upon a wine red carpet, their touch gentle, their words soft. A kiss brushed my brow. The scent of venom was momentarily as strong as if breathed from the throat of an uncut dragon.

“Your flexibility and strength will return to you soon enough, Naji,” Greatmother said. “Eat well, stretch your limbs, rest.”

Five bloodshot pairs of overlarge, unblinking eyes stared at me.

“Listen closely to me and you won’t return to Prelude, not unless you wish to. Understand?”

She required an answer of me.

“Yes,” I breathed, wanting only to close my eyes and hide.

“Twelve of us currently live in the viagand. You are the thirteenth.” Greatmother’s motionless eyes grew roots into mine. “Some of us are not present. They’re either in the stables or a recovery berth. You’ll meet them if they all return. I’ll warrant
your
chances are good for surviving the stables; your eyes speak of prior experience with venom.”

“I—”

“You’ll not talk about the life you had before here; you won’t so much as tell us your old name. If you do, your transgression will be reported to the Retainers and you’ll be punished accordingly. Each one of us here will do that, understand, inform on each other. It keeps us pure. And it garners respect from the Retainers and thereby increases one’s longevity. You’ll learn to do such, too, in varying degrees.”

Her tone was that used by an elder sister instructing a younger on how to cook paak for the first time.

“But we must know your age,” said another woman, someone who, in different circumstances, might have looked not that much older than me.

“Patience, Misutvia, I was coming to that,” Greatmother chided, though her tone was almost flat. She stared at me, waiting.

“Seventeen,” I said hoarsely. “I’m seventeen.”

A brief silence as everyone absorbed this seemingly relevant information. Then Greatmother continued.

“As the eunuch informed you, I’ve been here the longest. You’d be wise not to think of me as your friend. I won’t ever think of you in that manner. Understand?”

I gave a small nod, head rasping along the worn carpet beneath me.

“Your survival here depends upon three things. The first of these: your ability to please an authoritative Retainer, that he prefer your attentions and prevent other Retainers from receiving your services. The second: your ability to survive the touch of venom. The third: your ability to interpret what you hear in the stables, and your willingness to divulge such in a useful manner in the recovery berths. This, of the three, is the most crucial.”

I didn’t understand.

“You haven’t explained her purpose here, Greatmother.” Again from the younger woman called Misutvia. “You haven’t explained that this is no ordinary prison for women.”

Greatmother tilted her head to one side as if listening for a worm turning beneath the stone floor. “Did I forget?”

Murmurs in disaffected tones all about us.

“Yes, you did, Greatmother.”

“You forgot.”

“Yes.”

Consternation flickered over Greatmother’s glossy face, though no emotion was revealed in her blood-bathed eyes, in her white-flecked irises. “That’s not a good sign. Not at all. I should be punished accordingly.”

A concurring murmur here and there.

“Well. Let me continue where I should have begun. Your purpose here, Naji: to lay, on a rotational basis, before one of the four venom-intact dragons housed in the brooder stalls. There you will permit the dragon to insert her tongue into your womb, whereupon you will become privy to her divine thoughts. After the dragon withdraws from you, you will be carried by Retainers to a recovery berth, whereupon you will in great detail divulge to the waiting daronpuis everything that you learned during the divine exchange. If you claim that you did not understand what you heard, the daronpuis will employ various methods to encourage you to refrain from hoarding the information to yourself. Understand?”

I stared at her in mounting horror. I looked at the other women draped here and there about me, their red-rimmed, expressionless eyes glittering in their dough-glossy faces.

“But the dragons’ thoughts are incomprehensible!” I gasped.

“You’ve undergone the divine experience before. That explains your eyes, hey-o.”

“I can’t understand what the dragons are saying; I can’t!”

“You must. Your life depends upon it.”

“Interpret the images you see, connect them with the emotions they provoke,” Misutvia said, interrupting Greatmother for the third time.

“Do not color the way she might translate the dragons’ thoughts by informing her of your own methods of interpretation, Misutvia,” Greatmother said, a subtle urgency behind her flat tone. “That’s a transgression. I claim the responsibility to report it. You’ll be punished accordingly.”

Misutvia dropped her eyes to her hands and I saw then that her hair was not as thin and oily as that of the other women about her.

“You’re correct, of course,” Misutvia murmured. “And I claim the responsibility of reporting your forgetfulness, Greatmother, which you moments ago defined as a transgression.”

“No one else has claimed the responsibility to do so before you, so certainly the right is yours. I should have claimed the responsibility myself. Clearly, my mental faculties are weakening. I will discuss this with the eunuchs and my Retainer. Perhaps my execution is warranted.”

A moment of silence about us while I stared in disbelief at Greatmother. She’d spoken in a sensible, unhurried manner, as reasonably as if discussing the merits of a bitoo she might purchase.

“You strive admirably toward purity, Greatmother,” Misutvia finally murmured, without looking up from her hands.

“Yes. I do,” Greatmother said.

At that moment, the door behind us sighed open. The women languidly turned, as did I from where I lay on the floor, to watch the eunuch reappear bearing a platter of food. Behind him walked another man bearing a platter, also clearly a eunuch. He walked in a peculiar, mincing manner, as if thorns stabbed the soles of his feet. A third eunuch followed, a mere boy, bearing two buckets slung over either end of a pole, balanced across his shoulders and the back of his neck. He kicked the door closed behind him and set his burden down with a groan.

“Noon feast, girls,” sang the plump eunuch, the one who had bathed me. “Pastries and nerwon, and I want you all to eat more than you did at breakfast, hey-o.”

The women about me sighed or closed their eyes wearily.

I, on the other hand, was gripped with an immediate, shuddering hunger, and if my body had been able to obey my wild need, I would have leapt pantherlike upon the eunuch and mauled the contents of his platter. As it was, I watched with a territorial intensity as he set the platter upon a worn rug not far from me. I didn’t want anyone touching the food upon that tray. I wanted it all to myself.

Cubes of nerwon—breaded and fried egg yolk glazed with hot fat and bittersweet crushed plums—steamed in a chipped crock. In another bowl alongside it, white strips of paak lay like islands in a sea of yolk yellow sauce delicately laced with minced muay leaves. A third bowl gave off a vinegarish scent. Neat stacks of quanis formed a steaming pyramid within a large bowl, the vinegar-soaked muay leaves rolled around a traditional stuffing of crushed coranuts, diced dried oranges, and slivers of fiery chilies. Tarnished spoons lay haphazardly about the three large bowls, as if tossed upon the platter as an afterthought.

The eunuch who walked as if upon thorns placed his platter alongside the first: pastries the hues of a splendid sunset—wine red, tangerine, old-gold yellow—sat artfully arranged in a sunburst display, all oozing amber honey.

I whimpered.

“Yes, we’ll feed you first, Naji,” the plump eunuch clucked indulgently. “Watch how well she eats, girls, hey-o? Think how much it pleases the Retainers when a woman has a little flesh upon her hips. Think of how popular Naji will be.”

He shuffled toward me. The yolk sauce slopped over the sides of its bowl.

“A little of the jalen for you; no nerwon or quanis. Too rich. Tomorrow maybe, yes?” He picked up the crock of paak slices floating in the yolk and minced muay sauce. Jalen, he’d called the dish. I’d never tasted such rich food, not even during my youth in the pottery clan, for the dishes required ingredients and preparation time rishi could ill afford. With one of the spoons from the tray, the eunuch began feeding me.

He did it in an odd way, carefully placing each spoonful in my mouth and, after I’d swallowed, sucking the spoon clean. I was revolted but too hungry to care.

Before my hunger was anywhere near appeased, the eunuch licked the spoon one last time, sighed, and beamed at the women draped about us.

“Didn’t she do well? She’d eat more if I let her, wouldn’t you?” He clucked. “Tomorrow. Small amounts only today, hey-o. Now, who’s next? Greatmother?”

Incredibly, he then fed Greatmother in the exact same manner, with the same spoon, sucking it clean each time after she swallowed. He also coaxed her to nibble part of a quani, to swallow two cubes of nerwon. When she closed her eyes in protest and weakly waved away further offerings, the eunuch clucked and moved on to another woman.

The mincing eunuch likewise began feeding those about me, wheedling and cooing as if he were feeding fussy toddlers and not grown women. The boy at the door squatted on his haunches and dozed.

A few of the women wept, helplessly, as the eunuchs badgered and coaxed them to eat.

“You’re skin and bones; no wonder the Retainers use you roughly,” the plump eunuch snapped. “They hanker for some softness, some flesh! Eat, eat, you’ll live longer; they’ll hurt you less. Eat!”

I closed my eyes to the tyranny, wished I could close my ears, too.

At last the eunuchs stopped, then woke the boy dozing near the door, and the three finished the remainder of the noon feast themselves. They ate melodramatically, loudly sucking the dripping juices from their fingers, rolling their eyes as they popped cakes into their sticky mouths and licked grease from their chins. I watched it, fascinated and detached both, as if I were living a strange dream from which I’d soon awake. The women about me watched with their huge, unblinking eyes, their faces expressionless.

Torpidity began descending upon me, bringing the threat of deep, long sleep.

“Hey-o, girls, on your feet. Come, come,” the plump eunuch sang, clapping his hands briskly. The mincing eunuch tiptoed to the door. The young boy now held a whisk and dustpan in his hands; as the women listlessly rose and shuffled toward the door, the boy darted about the rugs and cushions, carelessly sweeping up crumbs.

The plump eunuch lifted me to my feet brusquely, almost impatiently.

“You can sleep later, Naji. Walk now. I know you can walk.”

But my legs didn’t want to obey.
I
didn’t want to obey. Nor, really, did I wish to sleep, for then Mother’s haunt would pulse strong within me, its angry necrotic presence, which had been growing stronger as of late, bulging and sweating in my body, trying to burst from its cocoon within me and infest me with its will, control my mind and limbs, and eradicate all I truly was.

The eunuch took my wrist and pulled me forward. I stumbled and almost fell. Clucking irritably, he gestured for the boy to leave his crumb-sweeping and instead act as a crutch for me. The boy darted forward and slid one of my arms over his narrow little shoulders with practiced ease. His toenails were painted henna orange too.

The mincing eunuch opened the door and gestured the women forward. Before each woman shuffled out, he dipped a ladle into one of the two buckets of water the young boy had carried in. Each woman drank greedily and requested more. The mincing eunuch either granted or denied their requests, according to the dictates of the plump eunuch.

“You ate well today, Greatmother; drink your fill. Good girl. No, no, Prinrut, no more for you. You ate very poorly; I’m very disappointed in you. And you, Kabdekazon, only half a ladle of water for you. You’ll be dead in a clawful of days, I’ll warrant.”

When it came time for me to shuffle out the door, the mincing eunuch held the ladle to my lips, too. The water tasted like it had been filtered through moss, slightly muddy, but I drank gratefully anyway. I didn’t ask for more, for I didn’t crave water the way the venom-saturated women did, and the eunuch didn’t offer it.