Numenera--The Poison Eater

by Shanna Germain

  Keeping her distance, she walked around the square bottom of the skar, blowing into the star every so often, seeing if it would respond in a new way. When it was clear that was as far as the star was going to get her, she pulled her hood up and moved closer to the building.

  Like so many skars, this one was a long curved blade made of some kind of metal set atop a square stone structure. The base alone was three times as wide as she was tall. She’d always assumed that the stone structures were solid – shoring up the tall blades. But now she wondered if that assumption had been correct.

  No one seemed to be near. In fact, the entire area was weirdly deserted. There were buildings clustered around, but most of them looked long unused and cared for. They stood – nothing was broken or defaced, but they had the steady sad sag of buildings that no one cared for.

  It was growing into late morning, the day already heated and windless, the sun nearly to full on its rise. Khee was settled into a sunless spot, stretched out and panting, eyes closed against the bright. She almost wished she could do the same.

  Leaning in, she traced the walls. They were black stone, with a grey material packed between them. There didn’t seem to be any doors or divides that she could see. No places for recessed buttons or keys. On the final wall, she noticed a pattern on the ground. Scuffs, maybe from footprints or something being dragged. She followed it to the wall, testing all of the elements with her fingers. Nothing.

  She brought the star up against the stone. Still nothing. She was out of ideas.

  Leaning in, she said, “Mihil.” Please.

  As her words moved through the star, the material, solid just moments before under her fingertips, became insubstantial. Her hand moved through it, almost easier than through air. She had to rock back on her heels to keep her balance, to keep herself from falling forward.

  Steeling herself, she stuck her hand through again. The air on the other side was cold, and a little damp.

  “I think I figured it out, Khee. I’ll be right back.”

  He flopped his long tail, once, twice, but gave no other notice that he heard.

  “Lazy beast.”

  stayed

  came his smug response.

  On the other hand, it was probably a good thing he wasn’t human, with a voice box and the capacity for more than one word at a time. She didn’t think she’d find him so amusing all the time.

  She turned back toward the place where the wall had softened. She held her breath as she stepped through. She didn’t know why. A sudden fear overwhelmed her that the material wasn’t air or that it wouldn’t allow her to breathe. And then she was through, into the dark, and there was nothing beneath her feet. She was falling, the sound of the star whistling as the air rushed by them both. She closed her eyes and tucked her body in on itself, bracing for the fall.

  II. iisrad

  SHADES

  “Finally.”

  At the sound of the orness’ voice, Talia opened her eyes. She was standing on a metal platform. She wasn’t sure when she had stopped moving or how she had ended up here. All around her was green and green and green. Trees and flowers and herbs. The scent was one of clean dirt and lush growth, flowers and fruit. Walls rose up on either side of her, covered with pale green vines that twined up long poles and the sides of ladders.

  She was under the Green Road.

  She didn’t say anything; she didn’t trust her mouth to open. Her stomach was convinced she was still falling or going to fall or going to die. All, maybe.

  Before her stood the orness, wrapped in a green outfit that hugged her perfectly. Much like the sky wrap she’d worn the night before, this too echoed the landscape, a dappled fabric, various shades of green. Unlike the other outfits Talia had seen her in, this showed the orness as she truly was. Lean and muscular, with a sense of ferocity in the width of her shoulders. She could see, then, Burrin in her. Or her in him.

  Thick metal bracelets ran up her dark arms, from her wrists to her shoulders. Her fingers were covered in similar metals. Her skin was woven round and round with pale tattoos, shapes that echoed those of the pit, of the skars.

  She wore no hood this time. Her ebony hair, the same color as her skin, was tightly braided strands that wound and wound around her head, reminding Talia of the nests she’d seen in the forest around the blackweave. The birdlike sensibility was furthered by the actual feathers wound in her hair. Her hair was feathers, or covered in feathers. No, wings. Her head was covered over in black wings, each stretched out as if to capture the very moment of leaving the ground.

  Although nothing physical covered it, Talia still couldn’t make out the orness’ face. It was muddled and muted, pushed her gaze to the edges of it as if some unseen force was physically turning her head.

  A boy, not much older than Seild, approached along the path that led off into the green, putting both fists to his eyes as he stopped. He was dressed in the greens of the forest. “The taf is ready, Orness.” Without waiting for a response, he headed back the way he had come, and disappeared.

  Talia, still mute, shook her head. She suddenly felt like Seild, manners forgotten. Whatever she thought about the orness, she needed to play the part of the poison eater. Needed the orness on her side. At least for now. Lifting her thumb to one eye, she began, “Moon meld you–”

  “Mihil, no. None of that.” The orness waved her hand. Gods, she sounded just like Talia, talking to Seild before the poisoning. “That’s for them.”

  The way she said them, Talia understood she was talking about the citizens of Enthait.

  “But we know better, don’t we?” the orness said.

  Talia didn’t know what she knew, and so she didn’t answer. She’d come here with no real plan, no weapon, no leverage. Only the faintest sense of what she wanted.

  She found she was clutching the star so hard the points were digging into her flesh. She took a deep breath, forced herself to relax her fingers. She dropped the star into a pocket, cleared her throat.

  “I would know your face, orness.” Talia hadn’t meant it to sound like a threat, and yet it hung in the air that way. The orness’ posture tightened, every muscle seeming to pull in as she decided on her response. Her shoulders shook themselves out beneath her outfit, and she made a sound. It was, it took Talia a moment to realize, laughter. Rusted and resistant as an unused door, but laughter still.

  “And I would know why you don’t carry a weapon,” the orness said. It was her opportunity to return the threat, and yet there wasn’t one. Or it was so soft as to be invisible. A well-baited snare. Talia took it, sure of her ability to sidestep.

  Who says I don’t? was her first answer, and why don’t you? was her second, but she swallowed them both back. If she wanted something out of this, she would have to give.

  So, why not indeed?

  “I forget,” she said, momentarily surprised at her own honesty. “And I have Khee.”

  She often tried to forget that he, too, was a weapon. That he was built, created, twisted to be nothing but a weapon. One that had been sent to kill her. And yet had not. What did a weapon become when it chose to help rather than hurt?

  “Ah,” the orness said. “Your creature. My turn then.”

  The orness lifted a hand and did something to the shining loops that ran up her ear. A moment later, her face shimmered and rearranged itself. One red-hued eye came into focus, then swam away. The top of a mouth, painted the color of coal, disappeared and then returned. A thin dark snake slithered across the top of her nose, disappeared behind her ear.

  Watching her face appear was like watching birds gather in preparation for flight. As soon as one feature settled in, another was off. It made Talia’s eyes hurt, trying to see everything in one glance, to gather all of her features up in her gaze and force them together.

  She wants you to get tired and give up. Focus.

  She focused on one of the orness’ eyes. Smaller than that, the black pupil in the middle, the way that a sliver of lig
ht caught itself in the shadow. That and that alone. She could feel the other pieces of the orness’ face starting to click into place at the edges of her vision, their settling in nearly audible. She didn’t allow herself to look at them. Forced her gaze to stare at nothing but that curved sliver of a moon. The moon’s sliver widened until it seemed about to suck her into its light.

  She was looking at the orness’ face for a few moments before she even realized it. The woman in front of her was younger than she’d expected. How was she old enough to have Burrin as her son?

  From the center of that unlined face, red irises shone with silvered pupils, sharp against the white of her eyes. A braided cord ran across the bridge of her nose, through her earrings, and trailed up into the hidden nest of her hair. Tiny charms hung from it, resting against her cheekbones. The whole thing bore Ganeth’s aesthetic, and she wondered, not for the first time, how many layers there truly were to the man she thought of as something close to a friend.

  The orness seemed to know that something had happened, that Talia could see her clearly for the first time, for she smiled. It was the kind of smile that made you feel so welcome you forgot the dangers all around. Serpent smile.

  “Come,” the orness – Talia didn’t know what else to call her – beckoned and then stepped down a long winding path built of mossy rocks. “I’m far too ill and old to be standing here.”

  Talia felt like she’d been kicked in the pit of her stomach. Ill? Old? The woman who’d been standing in front of her, the one who was now leading the way quickly along a slippery, curving path, appeared in every way to be the exact opposite of those things. She wondered for a moment if she’d misheard. If those words had another meaning here, as so many did.

  “Come,” the orness said again, already far ahead. It was quickly becoming harder to see her, other than the shock of dark hair. Her outfit flowed and blended in among the plants with surprising ease.

  Talia followed her down the path. Now that her body had stopped its downward fall, she could see and hear. She tried to take in the whole thing as she followed the orness, but there was too much. Far off, the trickle of water. More than a trickle, now that she listened to it. Beneath her feet, the mossy rocks were damp, as were the leaves she brushed against as she passed. Here and there, she spotted someone working, tending the plants or picking fruit. It wasn’t as hot as she’d expected. In fact, at times it was oddly cool, despite the lack of breeze.

  They made their way through what seemed like a maze of paths, and perhaps it was. Talia tried to keep it straight, to pay attention, but mostly she couldn’t stop looking at the back of the orness.

  “Here,” the orness said finally, with a gesture.

  It was a garden inside the garden. The walls were woven of trees, still living, braided together and bent inward to form a kind of egg-shaped room. Vines braided loosely across the top created the sense of a roof without blocking the light. At the door stood two tall zaffre. Bodyguards? Although she couldn’t see the need for them down here. Unless there was another way in that she hadn’t found yet. Which was entirely possible. Leave it to the orness to make her eat a fruit, blow in a pit, and find a secret nonexistent door while there was probably another real door in the city, one that people just walked in and out of.

  The men stepped aside as they approached, touching their thumbs to their eyes.

  Inside was a table, already set for taf. Two empty glasses and a small pot shaped like a leaf. Spoons, a knife sheathed in the tabletop, what looked like a bowl of honey that was glassine and amber, even a plate of sweet rolls with tiny yellow seeds on top. Beneath the flowers and the honey, Talia caught the scent of saltpetals, even though she didn’t see them.

  “Mihil,” the orness gestured.

  Talia sat. It was much hotter in here. Wetter too. She couldn’t get used to the sensation of the wet heat on her skin. It was damp enough that she felt like she was breathing in water. She brushed at her arms, even though she could see there was no visible water on her skin.

  “It does take some getting used to,” the orness said. Who didn’t look like she was having any trouble getting used to it at all. “Supposedly, it is good for my health.” Her voice showed just how very little stock she put in whoever had passed that information along.

  The orness made a gesture with her hand, so small that Talia was surprised to see one of the men came forth and poured the tea into the glasses. They must just stand and watch her every move, every twitch. Talia didn’t know how she could stand it, to be scrutinized so, at every moment. If she became the orness, she was glad that her stint would be short enough that she wouldn’t have to do that part. Get the aria, kill the vordcha. So simple, and yet so hard.

  She still didn’t have a clue what she was going to say to the orness.

  The orness picked up her full drink with both hands and nodded. Talia used a single hand, cupped it against the crook of her other elbow. She wondered if she would ever get used to this, the way the liquid went from hot to cold against her skin. She’d only taken the taf a few times, but by the time the recitation of the orison was completed and she could put the glass down, her palm often felt like ice, frozen to the glass. Thankfully, the orness’ prayer was efficient, and plain to the point of banality. She blessed the city, asked for her citizens to be in good health, and slipped through the rest so fast that Talia had to scramble to echo her “Mihil, awos” at the end of it.

  There was a moment of silence as they both took their first sip of the taf.

  Now, Talia. Tell her the truth now. Tell her that you’re not the true poison eater. Ask for her help. She felt the conversation slipping from her grasp. Or perhaps it had never been hers in the first place.

  Talia opened her mouth to speak.

  “Now…” The orness took a sip of her tea, eyeing Talia over the drink. “Tell me how long you’ve known that you were not the poison eater.”

  * * *

  In the silence, bees hummed nearer, enticed by the table laden with sweets. One, striped gold and blue, fat and fuzzy, landed on the edge of the taf pot, whipping its wings. A brown and silver spider dropped down on an invisible thread, plucked the bee tight against its abdomen, and lifted itself back into the air.

  Talia was too stunned to lie. So she did the very thing she’d planned to do, even if she hadn’t planned to do it quite this way. She told the truth.

  “Since the very first one.” The words had no taste on her tongue, and she was surprised at the ease of them.

  The orness sipped her tea. She barely moved, and yet gave every indication that she had just leaned in. “How?”

  “Because I saw nothing.” Talia shook her head. Put the glass carefully on the table. It was so cold the water had beaded up all along it, making it slippery to the touch. “Nothing about Enthait anyway. Just my own memories.”

  “And yet you survived.”

  “Yet,” Talia said. She hadn’t known just what she would find here, with the orness. An adversary, likely. A full-out enemy perhaps. Not a friend. And yet, she was falling somewhere in between. Like someone who thought to be all of those things, but didn’t quite know what any of them meant.

  “And you continue to survive.”

  It was not a question, but it was spoken like one. A single word rippling beneath it. Why?

  Talia found herself answering as if it had been asked out loud. “I don’t know.”

  Liar.

  Not Khee’s voice in her chest, from so far away. But one she knew just the same. The vordcha’s mech had changed her – something residual, something lasting. Even after she’d removed it all from her body, her body knew what it had carried. Had adapted, altered, reshaped itself into something more, or less, than human.

  The orness raised her cup, but didn’t drink from it. “Are you so sure?”

  For this, Talia had no answer she wanted to give. It seemed the longer they sat there, the more the orness’ face was changing. Her eyes were not as crimson as Talia had first
thought. More reddish-brown, the color of sun-burnished wood. Her skin was more lined than it had seemed at first glance, echoes of lives etched at the sides of her mouth, the corners of her eyes, the center of her brow. A trick of the light. But a dazzling one.

  “Do you know how this all works?” the orness asked. She waved a single hand around her, enveloping the garden, the table, the city above, even Talia. One of the zaffre stepped forward at the gesture, and she stopped him with a stay of her finger. He settled back to his post near the doorway, unmoving.

  “Yes,” Talia said, even though she wasn’t sure what this the orness meant.

  “You’re a bad liar.” Talia felt her brow lift involuntarily at that. Just how much did the orness know, or suspect? “I am surprised that Greyes Isera has not seen through you. Nor her daughter. They must be truly enamored of you.”

  Her cheeks, already warm with the heat, flared and pulsed.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” the orness said. “I know everything that happens in Enthait’s walls. It’s my job.”

  Not everything, Talia thought. But then she wasn’t so sure.

  “Why am I here?”

  “Because you do not yet understand.” Everything the orness said seemed to have a thread of something else carefully woven beneath, something she wasn’t saying. Talia kept trying to pluck those threads out, but it was like catching spider strands against the wind.

  “Here.” The orness put her finger out to lean it against the pot. Another bee had landed on the rim, fanning its wings. Now it stepped from the pot to her skin, where it stopped on the tip of her finger to clean its feet. “Everything has a role to play. This bee, even.

  “You, it seems, were planning to leave Enthait, planning to pass your role to someone else.” She wagged her finger. The bee hissed, a low buzzing whine, but didn’t dislodge.