Concerning Tauhrelil’s Finery
“It certainly suits you,” Asaau said as he slowly circled Virenina yet again. “But…”
“But?”
Asaau stopped in front of his understudy and gave her new-made regalia another long, critical look. It did suit her; even he could admit that the Tauhrelil family’s blue-shining black and glowing teal looked far better on Virenina than her mother’s red-violet and gold ever had. And it suited her every bit as well in form as in color: the full-leg boots took her appearance from tall to impossibly tall, while the chitin-polymer heavy plate armoring her upper body made her look even more powerfully built than she was on her own. If Asaau hadn’t already dreaded the thought of one day fighting Virenina, seeing her in her spear regalia would have made him start.
That Virenina knew how to craft an image was beyond question. The problem was that she’d only crafted one.
“It’s not too late to have another set made, you know.”
“Seket.” Virenina’s paired spirit, Ai Naa, had anchored himself to their world through a prayer spear nearly as long as Virenina was tall, with a butcher-heavy blade and a crossguard ornamented by half a dozen metal rings. Now those rings clinked softly together, though Virenina hadn’t touched her partner’s anchor. “You have a problem with my regalia. Tell me.”
Asaau finally looked at Virenina instead of her clothing. “It is, perhaps, overly...forward.”
“Forward.”
“No one will be able to see you in it without thinking of combat.”
Virenina stared at him.
“We kill people and duel each other for a living.”
“And this regalia is perfect for arena wear, truly,” Asaau said. “But the red work isn’t the only kind a Spear does, Tauhrelil. Those we meet with outside of the arena don’t always wish to be reminded of what we do within it – ”
“Well, that makes them fucking idiots.”
“Tauhrelil – ” Asaau’s hand moved to his brow in a momentary, self-steadying gesture. “Your contempt is – understandable, but for the love of every long-departed god, do not say things like that where your audience can hear you.”
“I know that much,” Virenina said, and the rings adorning Ai Naa’s anchor clinked again. “They’re the idiots, not me, I just said. Do I need to explain to you why I thought I could get away with calling them that when it’s the two of us alone, or were you going to finish telling me why it’s bad for someone who kills for a living to dress like it?”
Asaau inhaled slowly and willed his expression not to change. The more he reacted, the more she’d needle.
“The arena may be a Spear's domain,” he tried again, “but those you deal with outside it will have certain expectations. And anyone of sufficient status to meet a Spear – to meet you – will have especially rigid expectations. Expectations for behavior.” He gave Virenina a pointed look. “For speech.” He gave her a second look. “And for appearance. Especially in the Opaline City. I mean it, Tauhrelil, it’s not too late to commission a set of distaff regalia. You carry two houses bloodroyal in your veins – surely you must realize that people of our station expect a Spear to receive them in finery, not combat armor – ”
“Hey!” Virenina said, as if protesting. As if overprotesting. Her teal-black lips twitched in a way Asaau knew meant she was trying not to grin.
“What,” said Asaau, in spite of himself.
“The dress is silk.”
Asaau stared at her. Virenina stared back and flicked the long skirt panel at her front. It barely moved.
“Durata silk,” Asaau said at last, “does not count. It stops being finery when it can stop a knife blade, Tauhrelil.”
“See, that's fucking stupid, too, ’cause with how often we murder each other up here – ”
“Tauhrelil!”
Virenina grinned. Her teeth gleamed under the lights – triangular razors. Asaau wanted to groan and rest his head in his hands at having given her the satisfaction of snapping, but at least she might listen for the next few minutes, now that she felt she’d won this one-sided game she constantly played with him –
“Here’s the thing, Seket,” she was saying.
– He should be so lucky.
“Sometimes the best way to use a rule is to break it. You’re my sponsor, you’ve been watching my numbers – so you know I’m fucking crushing the other finalists, in the arena and out of it. You know me, Seket. You think I’d be doing anywhere near as good as I am if I stuck to pure tradition?”
“As well as I am.”
Virenina snorted. “I know I’m right when all you can criticize is my grammar. Now listen. You say my regalia is too forward. Say it reminds people too much of what we do. I say: look at this.” She drew Ai Naa’s anchor from its usual place, mind-pinned against her back, and slammed it upright on the ground before her. This time the rings struck one another with a long, metallic keening that seemed to linger in Asaau’s ears long after it should have faded away.
“The shape of my soul,” she said to him. “Look at it, Seket. Try to tell me it was made for anything but spilling blood.”
Asaau felt too strangely, suddenly unbalanced to try telling her anything. He was no longer certain what was going on, only that it was no longer about the outfit.
“Spears of Justice, they call us. Did you ever know a spear to dress itself in silk? Does a spear pretend it isn’t made for killing?”
That ghostly metal-on-metal ringing was in his ears again, had maybe never left. Asaau swallowed thickly; his spine felt at once terribly hot and cold as ice.
“Strip away all that Opaline finery, Seket, all the ritual and the tradition, all those thousands of years of gilding and filing down the teeth – strip it all away and look at what we do out there. Spilling blood, fighting, killing our own, just to keep this world from tearing itself apart.” Virenina’s voice was so soft and terrible that Asaau almost wished she would shout. “When we wrap our eyes in fine silks and pretend otherwise, we spit in the faces of the dead.”
Worse than the ringing was the feeling of Virenina’s right eye boring into him: the steel-sparking grey iris, the white-hot light of her pupil. But the heat of her right eye was nothing compared to the feeling of her left. Her left was nothing but an empty socket, covered by a patch. Her left was an empty socket, covered by a patch, and something saw him through it –
Then Virenina stepped back from him and looked away, and Asaau released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and all at once the spell was broken.
“See? I know what I’m doing, Seket.”
It was the kind of thing she usually said while grinning. Instead her lips were pressed into a thin, dark slash, and she had yet to look back at him.
“I don’t,” said Asaau. “I – Tauhrelil, you’ve never – what was that?”
The words fell unanswered into the quiet between them.
“Well, it – certainly worked, whatever it was. Some new technique? Have you been studying without me?” Asaau put a hand to his face and injected his voice with feigned wonder. “Gods be risen from their graves! My prayers, answered at last!”
Virenina remained silent, unsmiling. Her appearance had always been fullbloodedly her father’s, but never had Asaau seen Virenina resemble Vene so fully and herself so little. Something like desperation pushed Asaau a step closer to her, forced more words from his throat.
“I am – your instructor.” His hands moved quickly one over the other, as if trying to spin words from thin air. “Your mentor, if you will, and as such, I should be able to – that is – if something troubles you, you should…”
“What,” Virenina said in a low, raw voice. She still wouldn’t look at him. “Talk to you about it?”
I want to know how my daughter is doing, Orisai’s voice echoed in his mind. Even if she still refuses to see me. Give me something I might tell Orineimu – she’s never stopped asking after her elder sister.
Which had, of course, been a polite veiling of what they’d both known to be Orisai’s true orders: spy on my daughter for me. Asaau had told Virenina as much when she’d asked to become his understudy, warned her, and Virenina had laughed. Tell her everything, she’d said. Let my mother see exactly how wrong she was – and she’d said it with such blazing, open confidence that Asaau had believed her. Perhaps Virenina was young and foolish enough to have truly believed that such an arrangement could have worked…but Asaau was old enough to be her father, and an even bigger fool for agreeing with her.
And yet – she’d seemed so very certain. And gods forgive him, but Asaau trusted none of his five fellow Spears to be Virenina’s mentor; if he barely understood Virenina, the others understood her not at all. Nuremid was infatuated with her to the point of uselessness. The other four regarded her with varying combinations of amusement, incredulity, and disgust. Who else did that leave? Who but him could truly help her?
Who but him would have sponsored Vene’s daughter, when Vene had killed the very Spear whose place she now sought?
Who else did Virenina have?
“I could keep one thing from her.”
The words were out almost before Asaau knew he was saying them. Virenina’s lone eye flicked up in surprise. Stayed on him. Wary. Considering.
“You’ve never kept anything from my mother, Seket. Why change that now?”
“Because this is more important,” he said. “Orisai is one person, but a Spear has a duty to millions more. A duty that I must not - that I refuse to fail.” Not again, he nearly said, and kept it in, barely. “Part of that duty right now is to help you succeed. If there’s something I as your mentor must know, that you can only tell me if I refuse to tell your mother, then so be it.”
“Then swear,” Virenina said. “Swear to me you’ll never tell her.”
“Will a red oath do?”
“You shouldn’t spill blood around me right now.”
“What?”
“Swear on something else.”
Asaau wanted to pursue her earlier comment, but Virenina’s trust was a fragile and fleeting thing. Whatever she kept from him was eating her. If he didn’t learn it now, Asaau feared it would haunt him the rest of his life.
“I swear,” he said, “that what you tell me now, I will never tell Orisai. I swear it on the ashes of my ancestor, the Gardener King Aira. I swear it on the divine memory of Au Melai Menaitetauri-ket, mother of my line, may the moon her tomb and mirror shatter now if I lie.”
Virenina looked at him for so long and so quietly that Asaau almost wondered if she’d heard him at all.
Well,” she said at last, “I don’t hear the moon coming down. Let’s go.” She strode past him and out the room, Ai Naa’s anchor still in one hand.
“Go where?” Asaau asked.
Virenina paused in the doorframe. When she answered, she didn’t look back.
“The Shattered Lands.”
Her answer bred yet more questions; first among them was Are you insane?, followed in quick succession by Why?, Do you wish us dead?, and Are you insane?! Somehow, looking at Virenina’s back, Asaau could voice none of them. She stood too straight. Her shoulders were too set. There was no point.
It was several minutes of walking without speaking before Asaau thought of something more practical.
“How – ” His voice was an embarrassment – hesitant, unsteady. Asaau paused, breathed in, breathed out, tried again. “Tauhrelil, how are we to get there?”
“You already said it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t – ”
“I’m a Tauhrelil,” she told him. “We’ll go in through the Ring.”