Vanity's Brood

by Lisa Smedman

  Arvin had to smile.

  Gonthril’s expression turned serious again. “What if the information in Zelia’s head turns out to be of no use to the Secession?” Gonthril said, “I’ll have wasted my resources. There’s an entire city of yuan-ti that need killing and precious few humans bold enough to do the job.”

  Arvin fought to keep his smile from wavering. Gonthril’s hatred of the serpent folk ran deep. If he realized that Arvin was part yuan-ti—and that the wife and children Arvin was trying to protect were as well—the only “help” forthcoming would be a crossbow bolt in the back. He was glad, yet again, that Karrell’s ring was still on his finger.

  “Zelia is worth killing for other reasons,” he said.

  “Convince me.”

  “You’ve heard that Sibyl is dead?” Arvin asked.

  Gonthril nodded. “So House Extaminos says.”

  “It’s true,” Arvin assured him. “Now Zelia is trying to pick up where Sibyl left off. Sibyl was only pretending to be Sseth’s avatar, but Zelia actually stands a chance at becoming just that.”

  “How?”

  “It’s complicated, but the short answer is this: Sseth is bound inside his domain. He needs someone to free him. Whoever does this will be rewarded with anything they ask for. Zelia knows of an artifact called the Circled Serpent—a key that opens a door to Sseth’s domain. Using it, she can free him—and become his avatar.”

  Gonthril whistled under his breath. He sat in silence a moment, then reached inside his shirt and pulled out a chain that was looped through a ring—a wide band of silver, set with deep blue sapphires. He took it off the chain and slid it across the table to Arvin. “Put it on.”

  Arvin did, reluctantly. He remembered the last time he’d worn it. With the ring on, he’d be unable to tell a lie. If Gonthril asked directly about the Circled Serpent, Arvin would have to tell him it had already been destroyed. Gonthril would assume everything Arvin had just told him was a lie, and Arvin would have to fight his way out of the Mortal Coil.

  He resisted the urge to glance at the half-dozen crossbows pointed at him. Instead he took a deep breath. Control, he urged himself. He didn’t need to tell the whole truth about the Circled Serpent—he just had to concentrate on answering Gonthril’s questions as succinctly as possible.

  Gonthril looked him square in the eye. “Do you work for House Extaminos?” he asked.

  Relief washed through Arvin as he saw the tack Gonthril’s questions would take. He smiled. “No,” he answered, his voice firm and level. “As I told you when you asked me that question a year ago, I work for myself.”

  This time, it was the truth.

  “Is the story about wanting to kill Zelia a ruse to trap me?”

  “No.”

  “Is your name really Arvin?”

  Arvin frowned. “Of course.”

  “Are you a doppleganger?”

  Arvin laughed. “No. What you see is what you get. I’m—” He was about to say “human” but checked himself just in time. He shrugged. “I’m Arvin.”

  Gonthril nodded then gestured for Arvin to take off the ring.

  Arvin did and passed it back to Gonthril. The rebel leader slipped it back on the chain and hung it around his neck.

  “What’s the Seccession’s part in your plan?” the rebel leader asked. “What do you need us to do?”

  “Not the Seccession,” Arvin said. “You. I need someone who can pass as me without having to resort to magical disguises. I’ll be playing the part of one of Zelia’s spies—a spy that has ‘captured’ Arvin. It will be dangerous and unpleasant, but if Zelia reacts as I expect her to—and believe me, I know her well—it will give me the chance to take her completely by surprise.”

  “I see,” Gonthril said. For several moments, there was silence. Gonthril glanced at one of his rebels. The man gave a slight shrug then nodded.

  Arvin waited for the rebel leader’s reply.

  “I’ll need to know more details, of course,” Gonthril said, “but so far, you’ve got my interest.”

  Arvin heaved a mental sigh of relief. He hesitated then decided to broach the question that had been nagging at him for some time. “Before we get into the details, there’s one thing I neglected to ask the last time we met,” he said, his voice low enough that Gonthril’s people wouldn’t hear it.

  “Go on,” Gonthril said.

  Arvin waved a hand between them. “We look enough alike to be brothers,” he whispered. “Is there any chance that we might be?”

  Gonthril gave a tight smile. “My mother had a very strong spirit. When I was growing up, I often heard her tell my father she wouldn’t be bound to any one man. We may—you and I—very well have been fathered by the same man.”

  “Did your mother ever mention a bard named Salim?”

  “No.”

  “Then your father—”

  “The only man who earned the right to be called ‘father’ was the man who raised me,” Gonthril said in a stern voice. His expression was grim. For a moment, Arvin was worried he’d offended Gonthril.

  “That man is dead,” Gonthril continued, “as is my mother. They died in the so-called ‘Plaza of Justice’ the year I turned thirteen, executed for a crime they did not commit, but that didn’t matter. They were human, and ‘insolent to their betters.’ Even as they were led to their deaths, they refused to go quietly and shouted insults at the yuan-ti who had condemned them.” His eyes grew fierce. “I decided to carry on that tradition of defiance. That same year, I joined the Secession.”

  Arvin listened quietly, surprised by how much he and Gonthril had in common. Each of them had been forced to make his way in the world alone. Their lives, however, had taken very different paths.

  Gonthril shrugged. “You don’t need to convince me that we’re related,” he said. “I’m helping you for the good of Hlondeth—for the benefit of humans everywhere—not because of some blood tie we may or may not share.”

  Arvin nodded, his face neutral, but his heart was beating quickly. Was the man across the table from him really his brother? Arvin’s mother had believed that Arvin was the only child Salim had ever fathered—but what if the bard had been lying to her—or simply hadn’t realized that a previous liaison had produced a child?

  It would be ironic indeed if the leader of a group dedicated to returning Hlondeth to human hands turned out to be part yuan-ti.

  Gonthril had already moved on; he leaned across the table in a conspiratorial hunch. “Now tell me your plan. In detail.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Arvin walked toward Zelia’s tower, herding his captive ahead of him. Gonthril had a blindfold over his eyes and his hands were bound behind his back. His feet were hobbled, so he staggered when Arvin shoved him forward. The bonds looked and felt tight but were special knots that could be loosened in an instant by tugging the right strand. The rebel leader played his part to perfection, never once complaining about Arvin’s rough handling.

  When they reached the door, Arvin waited. Tension knotted his stomach. The seed Pakal had killed in Karrell’s village had told him of the tower’s defences—about the strip of copper hidden within the doorframe that would manifest a catapsi on any psionicist who entered and the invisible mage mark designed to take care of non-psionic intruders. The seed had also told him how to get past them. A pressure plate high above had to be pushed with a far hand manifestation as one stepped through the door. It had alerted Arvin to the dangers that lay within. Even so, Arvin had to steel himself as he knocked then waited for the door to open. The bottle he held in his left hand was slippery with sweat.

  Control, he told himself. Then he smiled. He was thinking like Zelia—which was just what he wanted.

  Arvin’s crystal hung around Gonthril’s neck and Karrell’s ring was on one of the fingers of Gonthril’s right hand. A glove on his left hand hid the fact that his little finger was whole. The disguise wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, but if all went well, Zelia wouldn’t get a chance t
o make a close inspection.

  As the door swung open, Arvin grabbed Gonthril by the hair and forced him to his knees.

  He had been expecting some minion to answer his knock, and was surprised to find Zelia herself staring out at him. Then he realized that it was probably one of her duplicates.

  It looked like Zelia, though, down to the last pore. Long red hair glowed in the light of the setting sun, and her green eyes matched the color of the scales that freckled her cheeks and hands. She wore a yellow dress of watered silk that plunged low between her breasts and left her arms bare. The scales that covered her body were a deep sea green. She glanced briefly at Arvin, then at the captive. Her eyes flashed silver as she manifested a power. Then she frowned.

  “It’s the ring,” Arvin told her, “but let him think what he likes—he’s powerless. I drained him with a catapsi.”

  His voice sounded strange in his ears. It matched the form he’d metamorphosed into: Dmetrio. He’d spent extra care in shaping his body, down to the last detail. The hair that framed his high forehead was thinner and darker than his own, and his scales were the exact shade Dmetrio’s were. His body was leaner, his groin a smooth surface with his genitals tucked inside a flap of skin. His posture and movements were fully those of a yuan-ti. He swayed, rather than standing square on his two stub feet, and kept his lips parted, tasting the air with his tongue.

  A hissing filled the air, though Zelia’s lips remained closed. “You’re right,” she said a moment later. “His aura is empty.”

  “If it wasn’t, the door frame would have drained him,” Arvin chuckled.

  Abruptly, she looked up at Arvin. He was ready for her. As her eyes flashed silver a second time, he pulled energy into his throat and imagined his hands sweeping through the air in front of his face, washing his thoughts clean. At the same time he concentrated, simultaneously manifesting the power that allowed him to shape sound. The droning of his secondary display became a sharp hissing noise—the sound the Dmetrio-seed would have made, had it been the one manifesting the empty-mind defense.

  Zelia tsk-tsked, shaking her head.

  Arvin shrugged, adding a feminine sway to the gesture. “What did you expect?” he said. “None of us like to reveal all of our playing pieces at once, do we?” He glanced past Zelia into the tower. “Where is she?”

  The duplicate didn’t bother to pretend she didn’t know who he was talking about. “In the study.”

  She opened the door wider, an invitation for Arvin to step inside. He did, taking care to deactivate the traps in the door as he passed through it. Zelia hung back, waiting for him to prove that he knew where he was going, which he didn’t. Her body language, however, spoke volumes to someone trained by the guild. The slight turn of her hips plus her deliberately averted eyes pointed him in the right direction. Shoving Gonthril ahead of him, Arvin crossed the entryway and made for a door on the right. The handle was trapped with a venomed needle, so Arvin pushed the secret button as he turned it, preventing the needle from springing.

  The study had a basking pit and walls hung with slitherglows that filled the room with soft, shifting rainbows. The scent of oil lingered in the air. The only piece of furniture was a small cabinet opposite the door. The room was unoccupied; the basking pit was empty. Arvin turned as Zelia closed the door behind her. One hand still knotted in Gonthril’s hair, he forced his “captive” back to his knees.

  “Where’s Zelia?” Arvin asked.

  Zelia cocked her head. “Right here,” she said, touching her chest with a slender finger.

  Arvin didn’t believe it for a moment.

  Gonthril shifted suddenly, twisting in Arvin’s grip. “You bitch!” he shouted, rearing to his feet. “You killed Karrell! I’ll—”

  Arvin manifested a simple power, shaping the sounds in the room. As a loud hissing filled the air, he shifted one of the fingers of the hand that held Gonthril’s head, giving a two-tap code. Gonthril reacted according to plan, writhing and moaning as if his brain were burning. Arvin wrenched Gonthril’s head back, exposing his throat, and bared his fangs.

  Zelia caught his arm. “Don’t be so hasty,” she hissed. “Let him suffer a little more. Let’s savor this.”

  Arvin twisted his lips into a sadistic smile. “I know,” he said. “Let’s fuse him.”

  “No!” Gonthril cried. “Not that!” He tried to force his way to his feet but Arvin shoved him down.

  As Arvin pretended to be busy subduing Gonthril, he heard a chuckle from the seemingly empty air next to the cabinet. A second Zelia appeared in the room, standing next to it. She was dressed identically to the first—aside from their positions in the room, it was impossible to tell them apart. Arvin was almost certain it was the original, or maybe the first Zelia was the original and the second was the duplicate. It would be just the sort of mind game she would enjoy.

  This second Zelia stepped swiftly forward and flicked her fingers against Gonthril’s face. Silver flashed in her eyes a third time. Gonthril’s shouts of protest became muffled howls as his lips fused together. The flesh of his legs joined, and his arms melded with his torso. He crumpled downward into a ball, his body smoothing and folding in upon itself until it resembled a wrinkled lump of clay through which the ropes that had bound him passed. Hair and fingernails were still visible, as were the two holes in what had once been his nose. Gonthril breathed through these rapidly.

  Arvin felt a dull horror as he glanced down at the lump that had, a moment before, been a man, but so far, his plan was holding together. Zelia had swallowed the bait he’d tossed her and had repeated her previous error, fusing Gonthril’s fingers together, ensuring that Karrell’s ring could not be removed. It was up to Arvin to keep her occupied, so she would not slice it free.

  The first Zelia gestured toward the far wall. “Roll him over there,” she ordered.

  Arvin obliged. As he tumbled Gonthril against the wall, he kept one wary eye on the Zelias. At the first hint of suspicion on their part, he would begin his attack.

  The second Zelia regarded him with unblinking eyes. “So, ‘Dmetrio,’” she said. Why haven’t I been able to reach you? Where have you been?”

  Arvin turned. “I had a run-in with an old friend of ours,” he answered. “Juz’la.”

  The second Zelia gave him a sharp glance. “What of her?”

  “She, too, quit the Hall of Mental Spendor,” Arvin said. “She’s working for Sibyl now.”

  Zelia’s eyes widened.

  “Or perhaps I should say, Juz’la was working for Sibyl,” Arvin said. He ended with one of Zelia’s gloating smiles.

  The first Zelia cocked her head. Her tongue flickered from her lips. “You’ll have to tell me all about that,” she said. “Later.”

  As if at some unspoken signal, both Zelias swayed toward him. The first one ran a hand down his bare chest, toying with his scales; her tongue flickered out again, touching his chest.

  “Interesting perfume,” she said. “It tastes like ginger.”

  Arvin forced himself not to recoil though his skin crawled. He nodded. “I thought you might like it.”

  The second Zelia lifted the hand that held the bottle. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “The best wine in House Extaminos’ cellars: a truly exotic vintage,” Arvin answered. He nodded at the lump that was Gonthril. “I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate before we swat the gnat.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Arvin caught a flash of silver from the Zelia who had moved slightly behind him. She was manifesting a power!

  Despite knowing that he was already a heartbeat too late, he plunged into his muladhara and started to draw energy into—

  The cork popped from the bottle, startling him. As it drifted over the shoulder of the Zelia whose eyes had flashed, Arvin realized what power she’d just manifested—a simple far hand to pull the cork. She would have been suspecting treachery from her seed—contact poison on the neck of the bottle, perhaps.

  “Dri
nk,” she said.

  The first Zelia stared up at him, the tips of the fangs showing as she smiled. One hand continued to stroke his chest. Behind her, Gonthril rocked back and forth in a futile effort to free himself, moaning softly.

  Arvin lifted the bottle in a toast first to one Zelia, then the other. “To the sweet taste of victory,” he said. He drank deeply. The wine was indeed a fine vintage, better than any he’d drunk before, but all he tasted was the hassaael’s perfumey flavor, which prickled his nose. That, and a faintly bitter undertone that was his own blood.

  He licked his lips with a forked tongue. He glanced between the two Zelias, as if uncertain which to pass the bottle to first. He still couldn’t be certain which was the real Zelia and which was merely a duplicate. The one giving the orders might be the original—or she might just be playing a clever game. For all he knew, both women were duplicates.

  He hoped not. Two Zelias were enough to deal with.

  The one stroking his chest took the bottle. A cabinet opened, and three delicate crystal glasses floated through the air toward her. She poured the wine into them, set the bottle down, and passed one glass to Arvin, the other two to the second Zelia—then took Arvin’s face in both hands and kissed him. It took all of Arvin’s self control not to flinch away from her and still more effort to return the kiss. Their forked tongues entwined briefly, then she pulled away. She glanced at the first Zelia, nodded, then took one glass and raised it in a toast. The other Zelia returned it but didn’t drink the wine herself until the first had swallowed hers.

  That decided it. The Zelia standing slightly behind Arvin had to be the original. The one that had met him at the door was taking the chances, tasting his mouth to see if he’d really consumed the wine, then drinking it herself.

  The second Zelia clinked her glass against Arvin’s then drank. Arvin resisted the urge to smile as he sipped from his own glass. His guess had been right: the Dmetrio-seed hadn’t known what hassaael was, and neither did Zelia.

  Lowering her glass, the second Zelia stared with a smile on her lips for several moments at Arvin—then coiled an arm around his neck and drew him close.