by Samuel Fort
Chapter 34 - The Poisoned Kiss
“Is everything in order?” asked Fiela, wiping her mouth with a napkin and looking at the script Ben held in his hand. As usual, she had placed her chair only inches from his, but today both of her feet were propped up on a stool with an ice bag applied to the soles.
“I wouldn’t call it order,” replied Ben. Ridley had brought him the script the evening prior and the researcher had made a point of reading every entry and comparing it to the latest news on the internet.
Last night there had been no matches, though a few news articles suggested that events would unfold as the script required. This morning, reviewing the dozen or so newspapers that Mr. Fetch had brought him, in addition to articles on the internet, Ben found over a third of the events prescribed by the script had happened while he slept.
He reviewed the list of matches he had scribbled on a piece of paper:
United States and China exchange harsh words. U.S. Congress votes to prohibit all imports from China until South China Sea conflict resolved. China promises ‘grave repercussions’ to American interests in Asia and has stated that exports to the U.S. and its allies are suspended indefinitely. Russia cuts off oil shipments to Europe to protest ‘foreign intervention’ in latest Baltic row. Venezuelan economy crashes after world currencies falter. Anarchists take credit for explosion at Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
“More like disorder,” he said moodily. Dropping the script to the table, he turned. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, Mutu. I am sorry to have bothered you last night.”
“Bothered me? Fiela, I’d have been upset if you hadn’t sent for me. What did you say you dropped on your feet?”
“A barbell. I was exercising. It just slipped out of my hand.” She pantomimed dropping the weight with her open palm.
“That’s why you should wear shoes. You’re lucky you didn’t break any toes. Why don’t you put the ice bag on top of your feet?”
“It’s too cold there.”
“Huh,” said Ben, bending over to inspect her injuries. “You’re not even bruised. It must be those super genes of yours.”
“Must be.” Wanting to change the subject, she said, “Lilian told me she found you asleep in your study last night.”
“Yeah, I was more tired that I realized.”
“She said you were moaning.”
Ben nodded. “I had a dream. I don’t remember much.” He looked at her. “I think you were in it, though.”
“Really?” asked Fiela excitedly. “What were we doing?”
Ben noted that she didn’t say, “What was I doing?” She immediately assumed they were both in the dream. He tried to remember and came up only with an image of Fiela walking across a bridge of some kind. Her hands were covered in blood. He had a feeling she was looking for him but he was behind her, and when he called out to her she couldn’t hear him. He thought maybe Ridley was there, too, and another man, whom he didn’t know, but who seemed to know him. It was one of those dreams that wasn’t a nightmare but that had a very negative vibe to it.
He said, “You and I were having a picnic in the park. Ants were on the food.”
The girl seemed mildly disappointed. “That’s nice. You were probably thinking of our trip the other day.”
“Probably.” Yawning, the unshaven man pushed a half-eaten plate of burnt scrambled eggs away just as a flash of lightning shot in from the dining room window, making him wince. It was gloomy outside and rain was slapping the window in ham-fisted waves. A storm had moved in and was forecast to remain in the area for the rest of the day and most of the evening.
The girl put her head on his shoulder and picked up the script, turning to the Cuneiform version. She read for a moment before saying, “Uncle told me you were good with languages. Are you trying to learn Agati? I wish you would. I know my English sounds funny.”
Ben laughed. “Your English is perfect, Serretu. Far better than most native speakers. That’s what gives away the fact that you’re not a native speaker, actually.”
“I read a lot,” the girl explained, “but some of the writing is outdated. Poems from a hundred or two hundred years ago. The structure is different, and the words. I didn’t complete my courses because of the war.”
Looking out the window at the purple and black clouds, Ben reviewed his discussion with Ridley the night before. “Perhaps you would read them aloud sometime.”
“Read what aloud?”
“The poems.”
“I do.”
“No,” he said, “to me.”
Fiela pulled back. “Really?”
“Why not? If you’re so fond of them maybe I’ll like them, too.” He didn’t actually think so, but it seemed wrong that Fiela should be so taken by her poems and have no one with whom to share her interest.
The Peth was suspicious of her good fortune. “Truly, Mutu, you would want that?”
“Well,” he replied, pretending to lose interest, “not if it would inconvenience you.”
“It wouldn’t,” she replied promptly.
He took a sip of his coffee. “Then why not?”
“I shall, then. We shall go to the Great Hall each evening and I shall sit in your lap and read to you until you can take no more.”
Ben scratched at his stubble, wondering at the wisdom of his decision. “Hmmm.”
A few seconds later, Fiela said, “Mutu, do you not find me attractive?”
Ben squinted at her. “Fiela, you can’t be serious.”
“But you do, right?”
“Without question.”
“Then why have we not...”
Embarrassed, the man said, “Well, it’s only been two nights, Fiela.”
“Three nights we have lain together, and what is wrong with the day, also? Why must my sister have a monopoly on your affections?
“Serretu, she doesn’t, trust me.”
The Peth studied the tablecloth and said, “Is it my scars? Do they repulse you?”
“Of course not. You’re a beautiful young woman, Fiela.” He took a sip of his coffee and tried to change the subject. “You had nightmares last night, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” the girl admitted. She was embarrassed at how she had clung to him in the early hours of the morning, her body covered in a cold sweat. The terrors had been particularly vicious, sensing she was weak from Lilian’s application of the rod.
Ben said, “You’re sleeping next to me again tonight.”
“Lilian will not permit it.”
“Yeah, well, apparently I’m the king and all that, so, you’re sleeping next to me. She’ll be fine.”
In fact, he wasn’t sure Lilian was fine, even now. The woman had seemed unusually unhinged last night when she had come to his study to tell him of Fiela’s accident. She seemed distracted and confused, her eyes darting about the room as if there might be a predator hiding among the bookshelves. Then at two in the morning he’d awoken to the sound of a piano being played across the hall in the Queen’s Suite, a former VIP room that Lilian had transformed into a private “girl cave.” He knew the song - Jelly Roll Morton’s The Finger Breaker. Lilian had pounded the keys at an angry, inhuman speed.
When she returned to their bedroom she had reeked of bourbon.
Fiela said, “You will not tell her I asked for this?”
“You didn’t, it’s my decision.”
“Thank you, Mutu.”
“And now you’re making me self-conscious…” he said, picking up a newspaper.
She kissed him on the shoulder and he readied himself for some additional pleas that they consummate the marriage, but Fiela simply gazed at him. There was something about her expression that gave him pause. It was an expression of…what?
Love, he thought. A foolish and unrequited love. And resignation. He wanted to tell her it was his growing feelings for her that made it impossible to do what she asked. With Lilian it was all business. She needed her
throne; he needed the tablets and the money she offered him. The sex was just part of the deal they had arranged to give each other what the other wanted. No harm, no foul.
Fiela was not Lilian. The notion that he should start a sexual relationship with her merely to check one of Lilian’s boxes was abhorrent to him. Yet he was, he realized, breaking the girl’s heart.
So that’s when he did it. Without even thinking and without warning he grabbed her and gently pulled her down into his arms.
Fiela let herself fall into Ben’s arms and shuddered when she saw his eyes, which for a millionth of a second were as brilliant as stars. Before she could question what she saw, he lowered his lips to hers.
The kiss took her breath away. This, she realized instantly, was what a real kiss must feel like. Born of love and not lust. A three-dimensional kiss in a two-dimensional world. A kiss that was not a prelude but was instead its own celebration. A kiss that was better than even killing.
If a kiss was like this, what might sex be like?
She dropped the tablet and reached up, putting her arms around the man’s neck to join the dance he had started, to kiss him as he kissed her.
Then she felt it.
The change.
Not now! Oh gods, please not now!
Her body ignored her pleas. She could feel her muscles constricting and her mouth going dry and the pain that always signaled the change. She could feel the taste of blood in her mouth and knew what that meant.
Panicked, she recoiled and went stiff in the man’s arms.
Misunderstanding her reaction, Ben lifted his head. “Sorry,” he said, returning her upright to her chair. “I got a little…” He ran a hand over his face. “Ah…what am I doing…?”
“I’m sorry, Mutu!” she said, swallowing the blood that had pooled in her throat. She could see the pain and humiliation in the man’s face.
He seemed not to hear her. “Don’t be. You don’t have to please me, Fiela. I know that’s what you’ve been taught, but it’s not true. It’s just Nisirtu propaganda. I’d convinced myself that you…” He grunted, disgusted. “Never mind. Lately I’ve convinced myself of a lot of things I should be questioning.”
“But I want to!” she protested, reaching for him.
Ben stood hastily and put his hands on her shoulders. “No, you don’t. Not really. I took advantage of you. I’m sorry, Fiela.” Ashamed, he turned his head left and right as if he suddenly wasn’t sure where he was. “I need to find your uncle,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
Fiela shook her head as the tears came but he wouldn’t look at her.
She reached for him again, but he was already gone.
