Numenera--The Poison Eater

by Shanna Germain

  The orness waved the bee off her finger with a sharp snap of her hand. It fell for a brief second before its wings whirred, and then it lazily caught itself and lifted off into the air. Then, abruptly, its wings stopped and it began to fall.

  “It stung me,” she said simply. “As it was supposed to. And then it died. Also as it was supposed to.

  “Now,” the orness continued, as she flicked the small dead body off the table. She wiped her hands on one of the folded cloths beside the pitcher. “Tell me: what do you know of your role?”

  “I know you chose me to be the poison eater over your own son. And that you didn’t teach me anything.” She didn’t know why she suddenly felt the need to lash out. Perhaps because the orness had implied she was a bee, and if a bee’s job was to sting, then she would do so.

  “The Eye didn’t expect you to live,” the orness said matter-of-factly. “Thus, I didn’t either. What else do you know?”

  “I know that the Eye makes poisons. Which are supposed to connect me… connect the poison eater… to the datasphere, some machine or something in the sky, which can see the future or danger or something.” She was still fuzzy on that part. She assumed true poison eaters had a better sense of how it worked. If the machine actually talked to them.

  “And,” Talia took a deep breath, dove in with all she had. “I know you have a weapon. Something dangerous. Something only you can use.”

  “The aria,” the orness said. “You can say its name.”

  “I want that device. The aria,” Talia said. “I need it.”

  The orness’ laugh was as bitter as a nyryn petal. It made Talia’s skin itch. “Then you had better get on with being the orness, hadn’t you?”

  The orness twisted her lips to the side, saying nothing. She was laughing at her. Toying with her like one of her guards, one of her bees.

  “I want to ask a different question,” Talia said. She felt like she’d been taking lessons from Isera in onas. At least in the “hides nothing” part. She wasn’t anywhere even close to seeing all. “How did you know? That I knew I was false?”

  The orness glanced up at the edge of the garden. For the first time, Talia noticed the air was swarming with the mirrored orbs. There were no lights here, and the things seemed lost, unmoored. One wafted through the air between the two of them, landing briefly on the table before it lifted back up, rising toward the makeshift ceiling.

  Something in the orness’ demeanor changed. She leaned back, and Talia could see that even her arms seemed older, more worn. Veins rivered up the backs of her hands. The ripples in her knuckles were deeper. More illusions. More deception. Was it so that Talia would feel sorry for her, give her the upper hand somehow? Not likely. She didn’t understand the orness’ game – not yet – but she would. And until then, there was no softness.

  The orness sucked air in through her teeth. It was the sound of wind over old bone. It was the sound of disappointment. “That is the wrong question,” she said. “But the answer is that I always know. I knew from the moment you were chosen.”

  Talia let that slide over her, through her. The orness had known from the beginning, and had let her keep putting herself in danger, putting the city in danger. To what end? And at what cost?

  “I asked how you knew,” she said.

  “Oh,” the orness said. Talia expected her to laugh, and when she didn’t this time, it was somehow worse than when she did. “You don’t know how it works. Not at all. I knew because there is no such thing as the true poison eater. There never was, never will be. The poison eater is a lie. A lie told by the city to itself, carried by the voices all around it, buoyed by belief.”

  Every time Talia thought she had all of this figured out, and every time, it slipped through her fingers. Like water. No, thinner. Like poison dreams. She took another sip of the tea so she didn’t have to reply, and it caught in her throat, choking her.

  * * *

  If there was no true poison eater, then there was no true orness. And that meant there was no device. No aria. Everything she had worked for, had nearly died for, did not exist.

  Wait. Be silent. Be still. It was the mantra of her sisters, hiding in the shadows when the vordcha had slumped down into the blackweave and begun to wail for them.

  If she could just keep herself steady, maybe the orness would tell her everything she needed to know. Of course, there was a chance that she was telling her all of this only because she was planning to kill her. Talia hadn’t ruled it out. She thought of her blue-black blade back in the room, regretted her choices.

  “Usually, the chosen don’t figure it out,” the orness said. “Or, rather, by the time they’re beginning to figure it out, they’re already dead. And we’re on to the next one. Belief. It keeps the system healthy. Like your heart. You believe it keeps pumping, and so it pumps.” She squeezed her fist. “Pumping.”

  Talia was no chiurgeon, but she didn’t think that was how it worked.

  “Why did you choose me? I’m not from here. I have no belief.”

  The orness looked pained at that. The first real emotion Talia had seen from her, and it was no more than the push of her lips tight. Half a heartbeat. So easily missed. But it gave her hope.

  “What I can’t figure out is how you’re surviving the poisons,” the orness went on, as if Talia had not asked. “Each time, I think, ‘this is the one where you go down,’ and yet. Here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Talia said, because the orness had paused long enough that she had to say something.

  “So tell me your secret,” the orness said. “I know how I survived, and the one before me. Are you just going on rote instinct and faith? Is Ganeth helping you? Plays both sides, that one.” She touched the charm devices that lined her face, smirking beneath them. “But I’m guessing you know that already by now. How we love our Aeon Priest.”

  Talia forced her trembling hand around her glass, waiting until it stilled before she attempted to pick the drink off the table. She sipped the tea, letting its frost flow over her tongue, a clean palate for the words she needed to speak.

  Because she had no answer to the questions the orness had left lying on the table between them twice now, she asked instead.

  “If it’s false, why not fake the poison? Make it so that people don’t have to die.”

  “Because no one can carry that all the way to the tenth poison. How long can you carry that secret? That what you do is false? Everything about it is a lie?”

  Oh, you have no idea, Talia thought. And right there, the power shifted. Just a bit.

  “How long can you keep sending the ones you care about out into danger for no reason?” the orness asked, and the power shifted back like fickle wind. She waved away another bee. “Do you think you won’t go up there right now and spread that news if I don’t stop you?”

  The orness did mean to try to kill her, then. There was a sudden, aching relief in that. They would fight, and Talia would be free. One way or another.

  “You did,” Talia said. “You carried it.”

  “Yes,” the orness mused. “Yes, I did.”

  “So you just…” Talia made sure she had the words she wanted. “Just want me to keep pretending, keep taking the poison, keep sending out the greyes…” Your son. Your only son. “Until I die? Why would I do that? I don’t care about your city.”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” A smug sip, lips tight to the glass, watching her.

  “There is no aria.” It wasn’t a question, but resignation. All she’d worked for, lost. She would go away, leave or take Khee as he chose, find a new way to fulfill her promise to Maeryl.

  “There are still those you care for who live within these walls.”

  Isera. Oh, such a stinging hatred for this woman. It rose in her and made her nose prickle on the edges, her eyes water. Wait. Be silent. Be still.

  She waited. She was silent. She was still.

  “There have only been a few times when the Eye has chosen
one so young,” the orness said at last. She spoke so softly it was hard for Talia to parse whether she was saying I or the Eye.

  “So vulnerable. They never make it through the first poisoning. Such a shame.”

  Talia thought of Khee saying Softness, and her chest filled with heat. Another failure to see what was coming. Not the poison eater’s this time. But her own.

  “I’ll take her away.” Even as she said it, knowing how it sounded. Futile. Grasping. She was only just now beginning to understand the power the orness held. And, more importantly, all the ways in which she would choose to use that power.

  “We all have a role,” the orness said. “It is up to each of us to decide whether to fulfill that role. Or whether to allow that role to be given to someone else.”

  Silence. Not even the bees. Above them, the city went on and on. She wondered if it was singing.

  “How did you survive the poisons?” Talia tried to add a bit of coy, a bit of reverence. Not too much. The orness was smart – she could see that part of her in Burrin as well. A change too sudden, and she would laugh that bitter laugh and Talia would learn nothing.

  The orness glanced at the globules floating nearby – there were two large ones and a small one, hanging in the air. She beckoned to her guards. Both came toward the table, quick strides.

  “Could you bring us some more sweet breads?” she said, although neither of them had touched the rolls. As the guards left, their movement caught the globules, swirling them away through the air. Quickly, the orness leaned in. For one half second, her entire visage changed. She was everything she’d said she was. Old. Ill. Her eyes were half-blind with white, the seams in her face deep and heavy. Her cheeks gaunt. Her hair had thinned, gone an off yellow.

  “I didn’t,” she said simply. Honestly. Even her voice was different. Exhausted. “Don’t eat the tenth one.”

  And then she leaned back and a moment later, she was as she’d been. Red-eyed. Vibrant. Her hair raven and swirling around her head.

  She was trying to tell Talia something, but it was in some deep code that she couldn’t read.

  Talia was still trying to figure it out when the guards returned. As they placed the basket of unnecessary breads on the table, the orness pulled a long knife out of the slit in the table where it had been sheathed. She opened one of the sweet rolls with just the metal tip, spreading the bread on a small silver plate. She didn’t eat it. Merely folded it back over on itself with tight fingers, as if trying to undo the break.

  “I will do as you ask, but when the poison takes me, you will not choose her.” She needed to have one thing to keep hold of.

  The orness nodded, almost imperceptible.

  “Not good enough,” Talia said. “Promise it.”

  “I am the orness.”

  Talia pushed her chair back, scraping it across the ground, wishing it made more noise than the soft whoosh of dirt. “No, you’re not. Not anymore. Not to me. Promise it on this city you profess to love so dearly.”

  “The moon shall meld me,” the woman before her said as she steepled her fingers together. “And I shall shine.”

  A few of the silver orbs returned, sliding through the air with directness. The old woman ticked her head to the side, looking so much like a predator listening to prey that Talia had to quell her startled response. After a moment, she nodded, and turned those burnished eyes up to meet Talia’s own.

  “The greyes have returned.”

  * * *

  The greyes came home – Isera came home – and Talia missed it. She was being escorted out of the heat and green by the same boy who’d announced the taf. He was light on his feet through the maze. She was ashamed to admit she had a hard time not gasping for breath as she strode after him.

  “How do people get in and out? The workers? The orness?” she asked, but he was already far ahead of her and every word gave her a little less air. So she quieted and tried to meet his stride and soon he was opening a door for her in the wall that she hadn’t even seen and she was stepping out into the tunnels.

  She stood, silent and lost in the blackness, yelling all the swear words she’d ever learned until she was pretty sure she’d used up her quota of angry words for the rest of her whole life. Then she breathed in the darkness until she felt like she could walk again.

  At first, she tried to find her way through the tunnels by logic. Guessing she had entered somewhere along the western curve of the Green Road and going left each time to see if it would bring her to somewhere near the gate where the greyes would enter.

  But then she missed a turn and gave up, and just started walking. Instinct would lead her out somewhere. It was the best she could hope for. She’d never, not once, run into someone else in the tunnels, so finding a guide out was hopeless.

  She was filled to overflowing with all that the orness had laid on her. The orness’ words were buzzing around in her brain like bees, and she needed to settle some of them down so she could think. She should have asked so many things. Usually she was decent with people, but for whatever reason, the orness set her on edge and she hadn’t asked anything more.

  Some of what the orness said had seemed true. To the bone, to the core. And other parts? Less so. But she couldn’t yet tell the difference. It couldn’t all be true, because that made no sense. What she did know was mostly what she didn’t know.

  Either way, she couldn’t leave Enthait now.

  You could. The voice sounded, oddly, like Maeryl’s. For a moment, it was a relief to be given that permission. To hear someone else – even if that someone was dead – say that she was not bound here. That she had a choice. Not like the orness had implied, but a real and true choice.

  The problem was that both of her choices involved stay.

  It took her a long time to find her way out of the tunnels. By the time she emerged, it was so far into the night that even the noise of the Eternal Market was dimmed. The moon too, waning. The sweat of the green had coated her skin in saltsea, and the night air froze it into thin rivulets. Somewhere, an entire day had slipped by without her. How long since she’d slept? Days. Two? Three? She didn’t even recognize what part of the city she was in, whether from lack of knowing or from exhaustion, she couldn’t say.

  Every bone in her body pointed her toward Isera’s, but she could not. The orness’ words swam through her body like a pill filled with poison. She dared not be in Isera’s presence, dared not look at her in those mismatched eyes. If she was going to keep this secret, she had to keep it herself. At least for a little while. At least until she could wrap it up inside a casing that Isera would not see through. Another lie to stack on top of all the lies.

  Talia knew that it would come, when Isera finally saw through her, into her. She also knew that part of the reason she hadn’t so far was because of whatever it was she felt for Talia. Since that first day, she’d never used the mechanics in her grey eye to study Talia’s face when she talked. It was only a matter of time – It’s my job to see true. But now, there was so much more at stake. She couldn’t risk it.

  With no small amount of shame, she hailed a cart pulled by a tall, fidgeting aneen, gave an address as close to the clave as she could without giving herself away, and was in such sound sleep by the time they arrived that the driver had to wake her with a near-vicious shake. She had no idea how long he’d been doing so, but it was clear from his face that he’d begun to think she might be dead.

  “Sehwa,” she mumbled as she dropped the last of her shins into his outstretched hand.

  Her room was as she’d left it. Cloak on its hook. Hexed armband. Blue-black blade. Seven silver circles.

  But no Khee.

  She was alone. And so she slept and did not dream of the orness coming to take away her sight.

  * * *

  In the morning, the city was throwing a party. It often did, when the greyes came home.

  She and Khee skirted as much of it as they could. He’d been waiting outside the door that morning an
d she didn’t want to admit to either of them how happy she’d been to see him. Now, as they walked, he leaned into her through the crowded parts. It was a comfort that she welcomed.

  Everywhere vendors were plying those who walked by with free samples, fresh fruit, baked goods, hunks of meat long cooked over herbed flames. She took the ones for Khee, but couldn’t bring herself to eat. The city itself did not sing today, but the people did. The sounds of live music flowed through the streets, some of it beautiful and haunting, other bits of it wild and full of energy. It made for a jangled discordance that seemed right somehow. It matched the jaggedness of her thoughts. Even her outfit felt confused – she wore the hexed armband, but not the arm. The poison eater cloak, but turned inside out. Her blue-black blade was tucked into a pocket.

  “Khee, did you see Isera yesterday?” It helped to say her name out loud. She was so afraid that Isera would take one look at her and would know everything. But it was a risk she was going to have to take.

  see.

  The word conveyed a sense of comfort and softness, whether he meant it to or not.

  “We’ll go see her,” she said. “But I have to do one quick thing first.”

  Softness?

  She hesitated to answer, because she knew it wasn’t going to be something Khee wanted to hear. But Khee was perhaps the only living creature she’d never lied to, and she wouldn’t start now. Not over this.

  “Omuf-Rhi,” she said.

  Khee yawned, showing his teeth. A little girl passed by, half-eaten meat dangling off a stick, and she squealed when she saw his mouth. Likely she thought the beast coming toward her meant to have her food for himself, but Talia knew Khee well enough to know that he was just expressing his discomfort.

  “We’ll make it quick,” she promised.

  Omuf-Rhi’s store Books & Blades was aptly named. Tucked inside a clay brick building with an open roof, the very center held a round fenced ring for teaching fighting lessons. Everywhere else was books, scrolls, maps, sheaves, anything that could be written on. Piles, shelves, piles that eventually formed shelves. There was order, but it was nearly incomprehensible to anyone but Omuf-Rhi, and possibly even to him.