Symbiosis

by Nicky Drayden

  We converse for nearly an hour, weaving between serious issues and ridiculous anecdotes from the Klang ship. Still, I am reluctant to share the truths of our own people. I start to understand how restrictive we’ve been, how limiting. How our matriarchy has shoved so many people into a false binary. Still, I am filled with hope for how things can change. But we must give the Klang a voice, and that will not be easy. My eyes keep flicking back to Bakti as he talks. He speaks so easily, so effortlessly, his words coming straight form the heart. And when he’s listening, you can see his brain is churning, digesting the words, not just waiting until it’s his turn to talk again. I must be staring too hard because eventually Kallum knees me under the table as we are eating. The potato morsel on the end of my fork jostles and falls onto the floor. I hold a moment of silence for the loss. Our potatoes never have compared in sweetness nor butteryness.

  I look over at Kallum.

  “Careful, or your eyes might tumble out and onto the floor, too,” he whispers.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. I admit I am smitten with Bakti, but not in that way. Thoughts start churning through my mind. The Klang need a voice, but to have a voice in our society requires having a respectable Line—and it just so happens that one of our most prestigious Lines has a vacancy that needs to be filled by a suitable husband.

  Bakti laughs at one of his own jokes, same infectious laugh his mother has. I smile, every single one of my teeth showing. I am brave enough to turn the world over for my family, and for the chance to give us all a better life.

  Seske is going to love me for it.

  Or hate me.

  In the meantime, I’ve got a wedding to sabotage.

  Seske

  Of Upheld Vows and Spilled Milk

  I should have known this wouldn’t be a small wedding. There are thirty-six people in the wedding party alone. We stand together, on a raised stage adorned with massive ceramic pots containing several varieties of war lilies, their feathery plumes standing erect and their fanged mouths discreetly taped shut. Banners made from our family silks drape down from the ceiling, intertwining with one another—the golds and greens and blacks shimmering under the harsh lighting. The amount of perfume my heart-mothers have doused themselves in threatens the very integrity of my sinuses, as they stand behind me, misty-eyed, locked arm-in-arm-in-arm. I guess I’d forgotten about all the pomp that surrounds the final marriage in a family unit. There would be nine of us now, and ten soon, with the way Charrelle’s belly is poking out. There was no hiding that we’d started our family before wedlock was complete, so instead of trying to obscure her belly, we decided as a family that we should make it a focus, having her gown cut in a way that fully accentuated her rotund physique. She glows, standing up here with us, and I love it. At least it’s a welcome distraction from the hooded man standing upon a pedestal, fifteen feet up in the air.

  Remi?

  Ronni?

  I forget his name. Third one to the left of the line of suitors I was presented with, I remember that. I hadn’t attended any of the premarital meetups. Adalla had gone to a couple at first, but when the Klang boarded, her work doubled all at once, and she barely had time for me, let alone learning to love a stranger.

  All of his parents stand upon smaller pedestals surrounding his, decreasing in size—the tallest pedestal, holding his head-mother, is a mere foot lower than that of our future husband’s, and the shortest, holding his will-father, is only a foot removed from the ground. Despite his status in the family, his smile is brighter than any of the rest, seeing his son become a will-husband and soon to be will-father, following in his steps.

  I scoot a few feet back and a little to the left, so that I’m closer to Adalla and her heart-mothers. No one notices that I’ve broken rank. Every single eye in the whole of this audience is focused on the singer, belting out the history of our people in an overly dramatic fashion, hitting more than the occasional off-key note. Teary eyes nod along anyway. Charrelle is behind me, eyes closed, head shaking back and forth to the beat. Every so often a moan escapes her lips, as if she’s really getting into the song. I squint harder at the singer. She looks so familiar. Then I see it’s Talby Onatti, the two-bit actress who was engaged to Wheytt right before I shuttled him off to his eventual death.

  Each note stabs at my heart now, with memories resurfacing that I naively thought I’d buried deep enough. Another panic attack is setting in and I need to fight it. I steel my nerves, then wedge myself farther and farther back, until I’m out of the audience’s view altogether. I take a few slow breaths to settle myself, but it is not enough. I feel as though this entire wedding hall is about to collapse down onto me. I need an escape.

  My eyes flick over to the corner of the room, where the buffet is set up. It will be ten more minutes before Talby finishes her song, so I slip between silk banners and duck behind the war lily planters until I’ve made my way to the buffet table. I stoop down and hide beneath the one with the pastries and appetizers, using my hand to probe up until it is filled with my favorite delicacies: battered woodlice, brined cheese wedges, and two jellied biscuits. The battered woodlice go down with a couple chews, that quiet popping of their segmented plating between my teeth immediately lulling me to a place of comfort. I tackle the cheese wedges next, which must have been harvested at least three Zenzee’s back, judging from the pungent smell—like that time Adalla and I had gone skinny-dipping in the salt pond at the far end of the wayward canopy and happened upon the preserved corpse of a drowned wash hoglet. Daidi’s bells, it’s definitely not an appetizing smell, but beneath the cheese’s slippery, stinky rind lies a buttery, black ooze that’s so savory, it makes my toes curl in my slippers. I am extremely careful not to spill it on me as I lick the rind completely clean. I save the jellied biscuits for last. Something sweet, to wash the last bits of my sorrow away. Talby’s on the last verse of the anthem now, not much time before I have to get back. I shove the entire biscuit in my mouth, but it’s denser than I’d anticipated and its purple jellies dribble over my lips and down the front of my dress, leaving a dark stain upon my green silks.

  Now I truly panic. Maybe it won’t be noticeable. I spit on my index finger and try my best to mitigate the damage, but the stain is spreading and getting worse.

  “Seske?” says a deep voice. I know it is not Wheytt’s, but I am instantly transported back to the memory of my coming out party, when I was forced to choose my suitor. Wheytt had come to my rescue with a napkin then and had talked me down from my panicked state. It was his guidance that had led me to choose Doka over all the other potential husbands.

  I keep my eyes clenched, because I know when I open them and turn around, it will not be Wheytt standing before me. Finally, I open my eyes and see Baradonna, Doka’s personal guard. My sigh is deep and heavy. Her face scrunches up like a fist. She doesn’t like me much, I can tell. Her hand goes to her knife, pulls it out. She wouldn’t, I think to myself. Not here, not now, with so many witnesses. But she does have that look in her eye, like she’s always on the verge of cutting someone.

  She slashes the blade, not at me, but at the cloth covering the buffet table. Soon she’s got a square patch of fabric that she offers to me. I take it, watching carefully as she sheathes her knife.

  “Thanks,” I whisper to her. “But you could have just offered me a napkin.” I point to the pile of cloth napkins on the other side of the table.

  She lets out a harrumph. “Those flimsy things aren’t going to do anything but smear it in worse. Here, let me.” She takes the fabric swath back, hocks up a huge wad of spit, then takes to the front of my dress. She’s rough, but quick and accurate, and by the time I pull back, I look down and see the stain is completely gone. “Thanks,” I say again. I appreciate it. “I am glad to know Wheytt is in such capable hands.”

  She looks at me coldly, and then I realize what I have said. “Doka. I meant to say Doka! I was just thinking about—”

  “It’s fine. Sometimes tongues slip,” s
he says, more than a little bitterness on hers.

  I start fumbling over my words, trying to explain myself, remembering the kiss Wheytt and I had come so close to sharing on my wedding night. It was not my best hour, but I was young and confused, and shouldn’t have been making life decisions when I was only a few years removed from sleeping with a crib worm.

  “I knew him, you know. Wheytt,” Baradonna says. “We both worked the sphincter to the second ass for a time. Opposite sides. Apparently, I got assigned there because I’d taken a little too much interest in some anomalous resource allocations from the Accountancy Guard’s head office and royally pissed off the Comptroller. I’m not sure what Wheytt did to pull such a shitty placement fresh out of training—he never admitted to anything. Maybe him being a man was enough. Who knows? But he worked that sphincter like a true professional. Poured his whole heart into the job like swabbing ass was his birthright. He was funny. Witty. I miss him, too.”

  She lays her arm around my shoulder and pulls me in for a tight, albeit awkward, side hug. “Now this new guy, Rendi.” She nods at my soon-to-be husband. “He’s pretty to look at, if you’re into that sort of thing, but dull as dirt, I’m afraid. Though I do hear he excelled at his consort training.” Baradonna arches her brow at me. “You know, I hear things . . . and notice things, better than most, and I can tell you that you and Adalla are in for some prime time cunn—”

  “You know, I probably need to get back to the wedding party,” I say, fanning the spit stain away, and maybe a little of the embarrassment on my cheeks, too. “Talby is going to stop singing any moment now, and then everyone will notice I’m gone, and I don’t need that kind of drama this time around. No surprises. Just a nice boring wedding with a nice boring husband, and we’ll deal with any issues later, not in front of thousands of onlookers.”

  Baradonna steps up even closer to me and lifts her chin. “Boring? You don’t seem like the type who will settle for boring. What are you really looking for in a husband?”

  “I don’t see how that is any of your business.” I say this with my most practiced royal huff, but Baradonna isn’t deterred.

  “I’m serious,” she says, the earnestness in her voice palpable. “If you could write your own destiny, who would you want standing by your side up there?”

  I take a deep breath. No one, is my honest answer, but Baradonna saved my gown from biscuit jelly, so I guess the least I can do is entertain this one question. “Bright. Considerate. Passionate in everything he does. But it doesn’t matter. That’s”—I say, pointing at Rendi—“what I’ve got.” I go to leave, but Baradonna pulls me back.

  “Unhand me!” I say in a harsh whisper.

  “You realize you’ve just described Doka. What was so wrong with him that you were driven to humiliate him on your wedding night? Why did you press so hard for having the marriage annulled? You undermined his power, and for what?”

  My lips purse and my stare hardens. “Unhand me now, or I will be forced to have you arrested.”

  Baradonna squeezes my arm tightly to reassert her physical dominance, then lets go. She has so much anger for me, I can feel it, but she dares not assault a member of the royal family further. The last person who tried to hurt me in such a way got banished, and not even the fact that it was my sister had saved her from that fate.

  I straighten up and flex my political dominance with a well-placed scowl, but Baradonna meets my gaze, refusing to back down. I get the feeling that maybe Doka doesn’t have her as domesticated as he thinks . . . which is extremely concerning.

  And with that lingering, Baradonna turns and leaves me at the table alone with my thoughts. Maybe I shouldn’t have pressed to have our marriage annulled, from a politically strategic perspective at least. And it isn’t as if I don’t like Doka. We work well together. We have fun together. On paper, it was a perfect match, but I can’t help but wonder if it could have worked off paper as well.

  A chill runs through me. I look over at the wedding party. Doka is staring at me, concern on his face instead of anger or frustration or any of the other valid feelings he could have for me right now. “Are you okay?” he mouths.

  I nod and conjure up a smile from the depths of my heart. At least we’re still within the same family unit. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if I’d pushed him out of my life completely. I hurry to rejoin the party, slipping my hand into Adalla’s, her palm clammy and soft against mine. I’d married for love.

  At least the once.

  I stare at Rendi in his regal raiment, trying to make out the features behind his veil. I know adding a third to our will-unit will change things between Adalla and I, but maybe it’ll be a positive change. A new spark to ignite the cold of our bed. Finally, three minutes later, the song comes to an end, and everyone claps and all eyes come to focus on the top pedestal. One by one, Rendi’s parents dismount from their perches, each vacant one becoming a stair for those higher to dismount.

  Adalla and I step forward. Rendi’s parents surround us on both sides. We stand rapt as he makes his way carefully down the staircase, each step perfect and practiced, his silks flowing behind him like ripples on the water’s surface. Then he stands before us. The vows are read, and we watch as his head-parents weave their burgundy family silk into the rest of our family’s. Then the officiant declares us as wed. Rendi’s will-parents pull back his thick veil, and I close my eyes and quickly peck him on the lips.

  I wait for Adalla to do the same, but she just stands there, staring at him. I nudge her in the arm, then notice everyone is awestruck, thousands of onlookers all speechless. I look back at Rendi, but he is clearly not the third suitor from the left. From the shape of his face and the lay of his limp hair, I immediately see he’s a member of the Klang. My heart sinks to my feet.

  “What is the meaning of this?” yells one of the heart-mothers. “Where is our son? And who is this?”

  Doka steps forward between Adalla and me. “I’d like to introduce you to your new husband,” he says. “Bakti Yee, son of Tirtha Yee, the Klang’s lead environmentalist.”

  It’s hard to process the uproar swelling all around me, because my own feelings are stuck in my throat. My fists ball into tight knots and I can feel my tongue sharpening in my mouth. I know I told Doka that I didn’t care who I married, but this is a total breach of trust, a flippant disregard of authority, a wanton display of recklessness . . .

  And it’s exactly something I would do.

  I unclench my fists and turn to Doka. My scowl feels sharper than a knife, but I know Doka, and he is neither flippant nor reckless. He’s got a plan in his pocket, and if it is this important to him, I need to know about it.

  “What’s going on?” I ask him, ignoring the world as order collapses all around us. “Why didn’t you trust me with this?” If I am hurting, it is because this is exactly the kind of trouble I miss conspiring with him.

  “I’m sorry, Seske. I wanted with all my heart to have you in on this, but I didn’t need you implicated as well. The Klang are suffering, and they need the power of our Line to have a voice in matters that concern them.”

  “The Klang are well-fed and taken care of,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Their basic needs are met, yes, but it is a deeper need that goes unfulfilled. They are not animals that we can keep locked up and out of the way. We must integrate them into our society, fully and completely.”

  I must look skeptical, because Doka reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder.

  “Seske, I know this is hard to process right now, but give it some time. Sit with it. I swear Bakti is a great guy. I wouldn’t have considered this for a moment if I didn’t believe that with all my heart.”

  I grit my teeth then nod.

  “Good. Now, I’ve gone over the rites of matrimony thoroughly, and the ceremony is real and binding. There were a couple loopholes I had to jump through, so even if the Senate tries to declare this wedding null and void, they will not succeed. I just need you and A
dalla to agree to it.”

  I turn to Adalla, who’s been looking intently over my shoulder.

  “You know I’m always down for bringing this system to its knees,” she says with enough enthusiasm for the both of us. Her arms wrap around my waist, and in the next instant, I remember that we are one. I extend my hand to Bakti as well, and then we are a wall, a united front.

  Which is crucial as a wave of Senators approaches us, looking more like a bunch of bowel-swabbing thugs than elite decision-makers. The unofficial leader among them, Tesaryn Wen, stalks up to Doka—a predator about to pounce on her prey.

  “I knew you’d royally fuck this up eventually,” says Tesaryn Wen to Doka. She and the Senators standing behind her make for a much bigger, much more powerful wall. “You’ve made this way too easy for me.”

  Doka shoves a piece of paper into Tesaryn Wen’s face. “Everything is in order. The marriage is sound.”

  Tesaryn Wen doesn’t spare even a glance in the document’s direction. “I don’t care what exploits you’ve found. You’ve gone against the intentions of our ancestors. We are in a time of crisis, and this is no time to risk turning their favors away from us. You of all people should know that.” Her cheeks twitch from all the pent-up anger she’s been harboring toward Doka for so long. She’d claw his eyes out this very moment if it weren’t for the threat of treason against the matriarch.

  Doka is not deterred by her threats. He puffs his chest in kind and takes another step closer to her. “If the ancestors chose to deny us their favor for an act of unity between our people and the Klang’s, then those aren’t the kinds of petty spirits I want to honor anyway.” Doka pauses and stares down Tesaryn Wen. That he would denounce the ancestors publicly is full proof that he is truly without fear. It is only then that I feel comfortable enough to say we are in the right. I put my hand on Doka’s in support, as do Adalla and Bakti. Charrelle walks up and joins us, with Kallum right by her side. Some of our heart-parents join us as well. Then Baradonna takes her place, standing shoulder to shoulder with Doka, her arms crossed over her wide chest. We are twenty strong. It feels like a lot, until I look beyond the Senators and see the hundreds and hundreds of faces scowling at us.