Snakesick
Orialu had never especially liked her chambers, but at least there she had some semblance of privacy, and a few personal touches all her own. In her bedroom was the vanity before which Orialu stood on days when she could do her makeup as she wished instead of submitting to House Ilisaf’s stylists. Across the room, on the other side of her bed, the wall was taken up by shelves full of holotapes: stageplays, reenacted myths, duels and executions from years past, lectures on anatomy and theater-craft and channeling and combat, all of them seventy-seven times more interesting than the lessons Orialu was forced to sit through during the day. In the back, next to her bed, was an archway, beyond which lay her solitarium, with its mirrored wall for her to check her form when she moved through spear drills alone, and a figure-stand upon which she could set training dummies made of false bone and gelflesh to practice her cuts.
But even with those touches, the bones of Orialu’s rooms were still ilisaafi, made of the same kind of stone carved into the same kind of shapes as the rest of her mother’s court. Your court too, one day, don’t forget, she thought, and immediately felt like throwing something.
Still, there was one thing to be said for her chambers: they were one of the only places other than Syata Kuur’s lesson room where she needn’t confine Ai Naa’s anchor to its case.
The first thing Orialu had done upon reaching her rooms was call a servant to bring her a set of cold compresses. The second thing she’d done was start thinking about what she might say at court tomorrow; most reporters would be focused on her mother, but someone was bound to point a microphone at the heir to House Ilisaf as well. That had set her pacing, as thinking so often did. Even the soreness in her muscles couldn’t override her need for movement. By the time a servant showed up with the cold compresses she’d called for, asking where she’d like them, Orialu was so deeply buried in thought that all she could do was thank them distractedly while pointing at her vanity. As soon as the servant laid down the compresses and left, Orialu forgot them entirely.
She paced back and forth, and forth and back, and back and forth some more, her feet padding silently against the marbled pink-and-violet floors. Orialu already knew what she should say: that she didn’t want her royal father to die, but he had to answer for his sins. That she didn’t want to believe him capable of what he’d done, but the evidence was undeniable. That the high jurists’ verdict and the votes of the venarchs’ panel and the voice of the crowd all outweighed whatever she felt. That her heart bled for her father’s house as they reeled from this blow to their family name, and that she trusted the greater blood of House Tauhrelil to prevail in her veins over whatever madness had infected her father.
All of it was true, yet none of it felt like enough. Was there nothing more between them? Orialu rifled through her memories of her father, back and back with increasing desperation, and found only silence.
It wasn’t as if she wanted him to die. If someone had given Orialu a choice between having her father dead or alive, she would have chosen the latter without hesitation. She wanted to watch him be killed even less. But the longer she thought about it, the more Orialu realized that that was all the further it went. It didn’t seem right. A daughter about to lose her father should be saddened; she should be fighting not to weep like a son. She should be furious at whatever was taking her parent from her. She should feel hollow, as if half the living blood were being drained from her body.
Weep for a father who never so much as smiled at you, Orialu thought, and instead felt her lips peel back reflexively into a grin. Rage at the loss of your father, never mind that you remember his absences more than anything else. Her hand tightened around Ai Naa’s spearshaft. When had she picked it up? How long had she been holding it? Mourn the death of your father, who gave you these tauhreliili features and then disappeared into his lab full-time – except for when Mother dragged him out. Guess she should have done that more often, but it’s a little late to course-correct now, isn’t it?
Vene’s death wouldn’t be much different from Vene’s living absence. She would watch her father die upon the Court, and perhaps some people would speak to her differently afterwards, but her daily life would barely change. That made Orialu want to weep, or laugh wildly, or maybe just scream.
To one side of Orialu’s rooms stood a set of glass doors, and beyond them a balcony of pale stone, half-glowing under the moonlight. Orialu threw the doors open, though she felt more like just smashing through them, and stalked out onto the balcony.
It was a beautiful, still night. Below the balcony, her mother’s court spread out in a splendor of colored lanterns and captive light. What was it Mother said? In House Ilisaf, dawn reigns eternal, no matter how black the night. I think she was quoting someone. Orialu shook her head sharply and looked up, breathed deep. Maybe the Ilisaf court was all dawnlight forever, but the sky above it was as dark as the night sky anywhere else on Tei Ura. The split moon hanging over her head hung just the same over the rest of the world; the same glittering sea of stars would look down on her no matter where on the planet she stood.
Looking at the moon was better than pacing the floors of her rooms, letting her brain chew itself to bloody shreds. Maybe if she was lucky and looked hard enough, she’d see a shooting star, or a lunar relay rocketing up the transit tethers that linked Tei Ura to its moon. Orialu sank a mental nail through Ai Naa’s anchor, pinning it in midair, and perched atop it, face tipped skyward. A warm breeze washed over her, scented with night-blooming flowers and the leftover rain-smell of that afternoon’s storm.
Perfect night for flying, part of her whispered, and Ai Naa responded with a flare of excitement. She could feel the spear-shaft all but thrumming under her thighs. Stop that, she ought to have said, and then followed it up by wrestling Ai Naa back into silence, but instead Orialu let the spear bob a little higher in the air. Then a little more. The night wind smelled so fresh, so free…the spear rose a little higher, and if she glided forward just a little she would clear the parapet…
The sound of glass chimes broke into her thoughts. Orialu swore, hopped back down to the balcony, and pulled Ai Naa’s anchor down to her side. Who the scabbing fuck is trying to get into my rooms at this hour?
“Can I come in?” Orineimu asked when Orialu opened the door. “Please? I can’t sleep.”
“Of course you can,” Orialu said, her irritation evaporating like morning dew. She leaned Ai Naa’s anchor against the wall and stood aside so her sister could enter. “You alright, Neimu? You look upset.”
Orineimu waited until Orialu had closed the door. As soon as it hissed shut, Orineimu’s face crumpled into a frown, and tears began to bead in her gray eyes.
“I don’t want to go to court tomorrow,” she said, her voice trembling. Orialu’s heart cramped at the sound of it, and she fought to keep a frown to match Orineimu’s off her face. At nineteen, Orialu had already begun her second growth phase, but Orineimu had yet to hit hers, and so barely came up to Orialu’s chest. Orialu had to go to her knees before she could hug her sister. As soon as she did, Orineimu threw her arms around her in return and pressed her face against Orialu’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Orialu said, and had to keep her own voice from trembling. “You need to cry? Go ahead. It’s just us in here.” She tried to smile, even though Orineimu wouldn’t see it. “As future head of House Ilisaf, I hereby decree that my baby sister can cry in my personal chambers as much as she wants.”
Orineimu’s shoulders hitched in what could have been a sob or a giggle. Then she was crying in earnest, leaking hot silent tears against Orialu’s shirt.
“It’s not just about court, is it,” said Orialu after her sister’s sobs had tapered off.
Orineimu pushed back from her, damp-eyed and sniffling. “Do you have any tissues?”
“Oh, take this, you’ve already been using it,” Orialu said, and pulled off her shirt. “What’s a few more wet patches, am I right? Just throw it in the laundry chute when you’re done.”
“That’s gross,” said Orineimu, but took it anyway, and as Orialu was putting on a fresh shirt, she heard Orineimu blow her nose.
“So,” Orialu said as she returned to her sister’s side, clean-shirted, “do you want to talk about it? Or do you want a distraction, instead?”
“I…” Orineimu looked at the floor and bit her lip.
“You don’t have to answer me,” Orialu cut in. “Let’s not even think about it right now. Want to watch something?” She gestured at her wall of holotapes before another thought struck her. “When was dinner – like six hours ago, right? You hungry?”
Orineimu looked up at her sister, clearly wanting to say yes, and clearly worried all the same. “It’s so late,” she said. “We really shouldn’t…”
“Sure, we shouldn’t,” said Orialu, “but doesn’t eating spicy snakemeat and watching Phantoms of the Shadowed Sea with your sister sound better than going back to your room?”
Orineimu stuck out her tongue at that. “You like spicy snake,” she said.
“And you like seared sweetbelly ants and melon rice, want me to order those too?”
“Well…” Orineimu glanced up at her sister and picked at a seam on her linen nightdress.
“Do it, come on,” Orialu said, and grinned. “Be bad with me.”
“…Can we get some nectar ice, too?”
“You can.” It was Orialu’s turn to stick out her tongue, which finally got a smile out of Orineimu. Nectar ice wasn’t truly made of nectar, only flavored with it, but it was still sweet enough that the thought of eating it made Orialu want to gag.
Orialu picked out Phantoms from the wall of holotapes and handed it to her sister. Then she picked up her cellband from where it had indeed being lying abandoned by her bedside all day, tapped it awake, and found thirteen messages from Rahelai, each one containing more question marks and desperation than the last. Orialu cursed internally and keyed off a quick reply – I didn’t lose my band and I know about court tomorrow, don’t worry – before sending another message to the kitchens for the food. Behind her, she heard the holocaster hum to life, and then a swelling of waves and a shiver of strings as Phantoms began to play.
Orineimu was already seated on the bed, but her gaze was focused on the holocast display. While her sister’s back was turned, Orialu retrieved Ai Naa’s anchor from where she’d leaned it against the wall, then slid it under the bed; her beloved would have to go without her touch for the next few hours, but the closer she kept him, the easier it was to bear. And now that that’s taken care of…
“WATCH OUT!” Orialu yelled, and then threw herself belly-first onto the bed hard enough to make Orineimu tip over, which finally got her to laugh aloud. Satisfied, Orialu propped herself up on her elbows to watch the cast. Beside her, she felt Orineimu adopt the same pose.
Orialu had always liked holocasts better than two-dimensional recordings. With a flat screening, you could really only sit and look. With a cast, it was like having a theater right there in your room, as long as you ignored the part where everything was a captive light projection instead of flesh-and-blood actors. You could get up and walk right into the picture to get a closer look, or rotate the display and watch everything from a different angle, and there was something about the depth of a three-dimensional cast that held Orialu’s attention better than screens ever could.
“Now I must take sail, sister mine,” Captain Arevai Renenn, the heroine of Phantoms, was saying, “and return what was stolen to its rightful place. You must head the family in my absence. When you see my sails again, you will know the curse is lifted…”
The food came just as Captain Renenn and her seventy-seven sailors were facing the Harrowing Cliffs, the first of the many disasters that plagued their journey. Orialu took the platters from the servant who’d brought them and bore the steaming trays straight to her bed, the foot of which was carved stone and broad enough to use as a table, as long as they were careful. Orialu lifted one cover and exposed Orineimu’s food: fried river rice dotted with bits of charred melon, fresh-cooked and still steaming; ants with crispy bodies and bellies fat with honey; a lacquered bowl of shaved ice drizzled with nectar syrup and garnished with edible flowers.
“Your sweets, sweet sister,” she said, and pushed the tray a little ways towards Orineimu before opening her own. Chunks of snakemeat glistened up at her, stewed in a spicy-salty red sauce made with dragonbreath peppers and a touch of culinary venom. The cooks had sent up a little jar of pepper oil along with the meat, in case for some reason the sauce wasn’t searing-hot enough on its own. There were vegetables, too, but Orialu ignored them. Ai Naa had tastes, specific tastes; her beloved fed on pain and flesh, and the food of humans sickened him.
Sometimes, though, he’d take burning spices and red-dripping meat in place of – but thinking of what Ai Naa wanted would only worsen Orialu’s chances of keeping the food down. Instead of thinking, Orialu speared a long strip of snakemeat, dropped it into her mouth, and felt her tongue take flame. She swallowed and reached for another. The more she ate now, the better her odds of actually getting some of it digested before Ai Naa made her throw it back up. If he did, Orialu reminded herself; he didn’t always make her. Sometimes, she got to keep everything she ate.
But the older she got, the less often it happened.
Please. Thinking it made Orialu feel dirty, weak, but she couldn’t stop the thoughts any more than she could stop her own heartbeat. Please, I’m having such a nice time with Neimu right now, let me keep it down, tonight at least…
Her beloved didn’t answer; he was too busy basking in the capsaicin blaze that filled Orialu’s mouth and savoring the feeling of flesh sliding down her throat. Maybe she would get to keep what she ate tonight, maybe the spiceburn and the meat dripping red would satisfy him enough, but there was no way for her to find out except to count down the hours – after four, it was usually safe – and wait.
Half an hour passed; Orialu finished her dish of snake as Captain Renenn’s first mate dueled the first mate of the pirate vessel Serpent Star. “Oh, I hate this part,” Orineimu whispered as Renenn’s woman fell, and Renenn and her crew lined up and submitted to capture. Orineimu put down her spoon and watched the next part through her fingers: Captain Renenn violating the verdict of the duel by killing the pirate captain with a hidden knife. Her sailors wavering a moment, before joining her and killing off the rest of the Serpent Star’s crew. It was too choreographed and story-stylized to hit Orialu in the gut, but she couldn’t blame Orineimu for hiding her face; her sister had never shared her stomach for blood.
You don’t fucking say, Orialu thought, and had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing wildly.
An hour gone. Renenn and her crew were making their way through the hazards of the Seaborne Forest. Orineimu’s food was half-gone and her eyes were half-closed; she seemed to be drowsing in between bites of nectar ice. Half an hour later, she was asleep. Orialu debated waking her up – they were coming up on Renenn’s interlude in the unseen world, and she knew it was Orineimu’s favorite part – but with court tomorrow, her sister needed the sleep. And if Orialu did lose her food later, it would be best if Orineimu were too busy dreaming to hear the vomit.
Orialu looked down at her sister. She’d fallen asleep with her head at the foot of Orialu’s bed, her hair in her face, the nectar ice spoon still in her hand and drooling a little sticky-sweet puddle onto Orialu’s sheets. Orialu tucked the blanket over Orineimu, then reached under the bed with one hand. Ai Naa’s anchor was there, not on the floor, but pressed to the underside of the bedframe, as if trying to force its way through so that they could reunite.
Orialu shifted so that she lay on her stomach. So that it was easier to reach the spear. She put her hand under the bed again and found the spear shaft. Curled her fingers around it. It would have been easier to just pull the spear up onto the bed with her. Orineimu was fast asleep and wouldn’t have noticed…but something about the thought of having Ai Naa’s anchor in her bed while her little sister was in it made Orialu’s skin crawl.
Be easier to just get out of the bed. Only she’d put on the cast to watch with Orineimu, and getting up before it was over felt like abandonment. Neimu’s asleep, Orialu reminded herself, she won’t know if you get up. Even so, Orialu waited until the cast had ended before carefully extricating herself from the bed. As soon as she was up and standing, Ai Naa’s anchor fairly flew into her hand. The rings adorning the crossguard jangled as the spear’s shaft smacked against her palm, making Orialu freeze momentarily. Only when she was sure that the noise hadn’t woken Orineimu did she step away.
It had been over two hours since Orialu had eaten her snakemeat, over two hours without even a flicker of nausea, and she’d begun to hope, faintly, cautiously, that she’d get to keep it after all. But she’d scarcely taken two steps from her bed with the spear in hand before her stomach began to churn in a way that Orialu recognized only too well. Perhaps the motion of getting up had set it off, or perhaps reuniting with the anchor let her beloved impose his hunger upon her more easily. Or maybe he was never going to let you have it in the first place. She supposed she should be grateful that Ai Naa had waited until after Orineimu was asleep to reject the food. Orialu hooked two fingers through the rings of the spear to keep them silenced, then half-ran for the bathroom, her other hand pressed to her mouth, desperately swallowing to keep the vomit at bay until she’d closed the door behind her. Then she knelt in front of the toilet, still holding the spear with one hand, pulling back her hair with the other, and retched up all she’d eaten. Tears stood out in her right eye, and behind her eye patch, a hot needle of pain stabbed at the ruined tear duct of her empty socket. Orialu told herself it was only because of the pain, for, mixed as it now was with stomach acid, the searing pepper sauce burned twice as much coming up as it had going down. Soon the food was all out of her; soon she was bringing up acid alone. Only then did Ai Naa let it end.
Orialu sat back and stared into the porcelain bowl, her stomach empty, her throat burning. The snakemeat glistened back up at her, half-digested, swimming in red.
“Fuck you,” she said hoarsely, and spat into the bowl. “I’m still not feeding you for another two weeks.”
The spear-rings twitched under her fingers. Orialu clenched her hand and forced them into stillness. She stared at the pulped meat, at the red sauce mixed with water and bile. In the dim half-light of the bathroom, it looked like a pool of blood; and because Orialu’s eye and mind saw it as blood, Ai Naa saw it the same way.
And so Orialu’s stomach clenched again, this time in hunger.
Orialu waited for it to pass. Then she gathered her legs under her and stood, flushed away the vomit, and went back to her bedroom. Orineimu was still deep asleep, motionless save for the soft up-and-down of her breathing, which Orialu could see even from across the room. She pulled her eye away before Ai Naa could make her start hearing her sister’s heartbeat, too.
With her beloved’s hunger still haunting her, it was safer to leave the room entirely, but if Orialu stepped out of her chambers, someone might see, and then word might make it back to her mother. Up night-walking, when I should be resting up for tomorrow’s session at court. Another mark against me, no matter how good of an excuse I can think up. Orialu sighed and turned to the balcony doors. She slid one open as quietly as she could, peeked over to make sure the sound hadn’t disturbed Orineimu, and then stepped out onto the balcony.
She sat there, alone save for Ai Naa and his spear in her lap, and stared at the sky, waiting for the hunger to fade. She watched as the moon sank; as the horizon lightened; as sunlight began to bleach the stars from the sky one by one.
When the sun was up and the hunger had faded, she went in to wake Orineimu, so that the two of them could prepare for court.
Well, I’ll get her some breakfast first, Orialu thought. And if she asks why I’m not getting anything…I woke up first. I ate already.
She told herself that it wasn’t fully a lie.