Numenera--The Poison Eater

by Shanna Germain

  A week or so after Rakdel had pulled the blue-black blade from her leg, Talia had made her way carefully – her thigh not-so-gently reminding her of its condition with every step – to Books & Blades to see about Omuf-Rhi’s offer of a job. “Take a left at the Moon Skar and keep on going almost to the wall. You can’t miss me.”

  She had carried a fist filled with the blue-black blade but empty of expectations. A not-small part of her hoped that the haired creature called Omuf-Rhi had forgotten her. That she could go back to her singular goal of preparing to run.

  As soon as she walked in, she discovered that he was not someone who easily forgot things.

  “Hello, future champion of the Keep. Hello, future poison eater!”

  He was the first one to give her the moniker poison eater, long before it became true.

  no.

  Khee had stopped at that, sat down on his haunches, and wouldn’t go any farther. It was clear from the start that Omuf-Rhi liked Khee more than Khee liked him. And no amount of jerky or even ground meat was going to remedy that.

  “I know it’s nothing personal,” Omuf-Rhi said each time Khee took whatever was offered and then promptly snubbed him. “Although I’m the one who should be mad, being the one with a new set of teeth marks in my arm and all.”

  “Why don’t you ever say you’re sorry to him?” she’d asked Khee once. He’d blinked at her without responding. Hours later, a small word had sidled up to her sideways, scared and tentative.

  shame.

  She’d put her hand softly on Khee’s head and let him keep taking the treats that Omuf-Rhi offered without bringing it up again.

  What she and Khee created in the silences, Omuf-Rhi filled in with words. He talked. A lot. It didn’t take long before she discovered far more about him than she ever wanted to know. He loved Rakdel. He thought she loved him back, but she never said it. He was something called a lattimor. And the purple wing-shaped patch across his back was actually where his brain lived. That last one wasn’t quite right, but despite him describing it to her multiple times in myriad different ways, she was still a little muddy on how it worked.

  Talia didn’t mind listening – everything he said was interesting enough, but her favorite times were when he left her to read while he taught fighting lessons in the circle. Mostly, it seemed to be young people whose parents were willing to pay well to mold their children in hopes for the zaffre. Which was a good thing, because the entire time she’d been there, she hadn’t seen him sell more than a dozen books.

  She, on the other hand, read as many as she could fit in, especially in those early days. She wasn’t particular, and she read sporadically, picking up and putting down as her interest waxed and waned. She’d learned to read from her sisters, many of whom had come to the vordcha older than her, and who had more time in the world before the blackweave and the martyrdom. She wasn’t quick, but her speed had improved each day.

  By then, she had rented a room nearby – at Isera’s suggestion. The room was tiny, on the top floor of a three-story building. Hot, and full of insects that crawled and buzzed, and seemed to come in through windows and out of the very walls.

  good

  Khee had said when she’d showed it to him, and truly it was. Way better than the blackweave, way better than the sticky, tarry webs crisscrossed too loose, too high up, so that she always felt like she would fall through it to the ground. Which wasn’t ground, but yet another weave, another wall to keep them in. Better even than the wall-hole they’d been tucked into not so long ago.

  “Temporary,” she’d said. The word held less conviction than it would have had a week before, and she didn’t yet know how she felt about that.

  So many moons ago. Long enough that when she walked into the shop this morning, and Omuf-Rhi said, “Hello, poison eater!” it wasn’t a joke between them anymore. It was truth and serious. She was grateful that he didn’t lift his thumbs from the thin blade he was sharpening across his knees.

  There was no one in the place, which wasn’t unusual for this time of day. Or, really, ever.

  “Where’s your beast?” Omuf-Rhi asked.

  Talia glanced over her shoulder. Khee had been next to her the whole way, and now he wasn’t. A second glance showed him just outside, resting on his haunches, watching through the open door.

  “How’s Rakdel?” she asked.

  He seemed surprised at her question. To set him at ease, she lifted one shoulder in a soft shrug. “I heard they ran into something in the Tawn.”

  “She’s fine,” he said. “She’s with Isera.” Pointed.

  “I didn’t come to work today,” she said. “I need information.” If she was going to lie to Isera – and she was, she realized as she stood there – then she needed some truths to do it with. If there was any place to find those truths, it was here.

  “Help yourself,” he said.

  She started toward the section where history lived, then stopped and turned.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  He waited.

  “I don’t have a weapon.” Her words were stilted. She was bad at asking.

  He didn’t really have eyebrows, but he lifted one of the furrowed ridges above his eyes.

  “I should,” she said. “I think.”

  He must have sensed her mood, for on any other day, he would have given her far more information about weapons than she needed or wanted. How they were made, what was best for what, why the materials mattered. Today, he said, of the blade across his lap, “I have this one.”

  It was red-handled, the blade of burnished turquoise. “I would borrow it,” she said. “If I may.”

  “You can keep it,” he said. “If you’re willing to work for a bit today while you gather your information. Rakdel’s been tending to the…” He faltered, paused, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d been going to say. She got the sense he was being careful, an odd moment for someone who usually seemed to talk first, regret after. He left the thought and finished with, “I’d like to take her some food.”

  She nodded assent, and he set the blade on the top of the wall that surrounded the training ring.

  How long she stood before the weapon without touching it, she didn’t know. Long enough that the sun coming through the building’s roof shifted her shadow in front of her.

  Finally she put her hand on the red hilt, wrapped her fingers around it. It was warm from the sun, and smelled of sharpening oil and the stuffing of the practice targets.

  Why do you never carry a weapon?

  She thought she’d answered the orness true. But as her palm met the red leather, as she lifted it and tested the heft of the weapon in her hand and saw how easy it would be to let it go and watch it fall, she knew. Oh, Maeryl. Oh, sisters. I am sorry.

  She spent a bit of time reacquainting herself with a blade. She tried her hexed hand – her former weapon hand – but it didn’t grasp the hilt the way she’d hoped. It took her a while to get comfortable with wielding a weapon in her left hand. But she worked at the training targets until she was sweating and stuck with dust. By the end, she could slip the blade in and out of the sheath she’d borrowed from Omuf-Rhi’s training stock with accuracy and something akin to speed. Like with stealing – not that she did that anymore – she wasn’t sure she’d ever be great at it, but she at least felt like she could handle herself.

  When she was done, she splashed her face and took a long drink from the water reserve next to the ring. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Anymore and she would have been avoiding what she’d come to do.

  Omuf-Rhi kept saying he had a perfect system for organizing the books, but if it was true, she’d never deciphered it, beyond a general sense of theme. She’d looked for the tome of history from which she’d memorized the line about the device, but couldn’t find it. Either it had been accidentally relegated to some unknown area of the store or someone had purchased it.

  A thin, black book called The Ten Poisons caught her eye. It see
med to be a medical notebook of sorts, full of details about poisons, far more than ten. Handwritten notations in various colors of ink filled the edges of the pages. At the very back, a chapter called Eating Poison.

  She read it with a roughness in her gut. It was, she thought, similar if not identical to what she’d read before. She found the line she’d memorized, but also much of it that she had forgotten or perhaps just hadn’t seen the first time.

  The winged beasts of metal and mist shall arrive in great numbers to darken the skies. And there shall in Enthait be a weapon, so grand, so glorious, so powerful, it shall destroy all of the enemies and all of the beasts and all of the living and all of the dead and only the orness, the keeper of the aria, shall remain. And the orness shall know the song of the aria, so that she may sing it free upon the city.

  The winged beasts of metal and mist? The song of the aria? The phrases rolled around in her brain, painful as a pebble, but she couldn’t make sense of it. The entire thing read like a prophecy of the future, but also like a retelling of the past. Which was it? Or was it both?

  She read the rest of the book, looking for more about the winged beasts or the device, but there was little else there that seemed useful.

  It was evening before Omuf-Rhi returned. She was bent over one of the last books in her pile, Khee at her side. An unnamed tome – there were a surprising number of books that bore no title – which appeared to capture the history, not of Enthait, but of a city that rose into the sky and rested on nothing but air. It seemed to have been located where Enthait now stood, but the map inside the front cover wasn’t clear enough to tell her for certain. Other than that, her search hadn’t turned up as much as she’d hoped.

  “How’s Rakdel holding up?” she asked, when she sensed Omuf-Rhi’s shadow at her back. It was the safest thing she could ask.

  She closed her book with her finger between its pages. Piled up the three she wanted to take with her. She didn’t think he’d mind. Or even notice, as exhausted as he looked. There were no shadows under his eyes, but she’d noticed that when he grew tired, the hair along his arms seemed to flatten and she could see the shape on his back fluttering slightly.

  He ran a hand over the books she’d piled up, but didn’t say anything about them. “You should go and see her.”

  He didn’t mean Rakdel.

  “Yes,” she lied. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t found anything she needed. “As soon as I finish these.”

  He gave her a look and opened his mouth, as if to say something. He let it go and let her go.

  Khee rose, stretched and padded out ahead of her, not even giving Omuf-Rhi so much as a glance before he left.

  She stepped to the door, stopped at the threshold between light and shadow. “Khee’s sorry,” she said.

  “I know.”

  WARD

  In the end, she hadn’t lied after all. She did as Omuf-Rhi had suggested and went to see her. Or tried to.

  She couldn’t not. The war within her that the orness had started – lie about everything she was and keep up the farce, or tell the truth and put everyone in danger – was waging in her head, and she couldn’t tell what was right and what was wrong anymore. Her fear of being found out, of disappointing Isera, had fallen away in the last few hours, replaced by a deeper, greater fear. That Isera was dead or dying and that she had stayed away, not to protect Isera, but because she was, would always be, the one who dropped her weapon and ran away.

  No. With a sudden deep need, she nearly ran toward Isera’s, Khee easily keeping pace beside her. Her new blade banged against her hip, comforting in its novelty.

  Ardit and Rynz were standing in front of Isera’s door. Not just standing. Guarding. Waiting. It was in the stance, the loose hand, the way they weren’t talking as they stood, one on either side of the entrance. They both had the air of someone expecting people to be going in and out. All except one.

  Talia drew up short when she saw them, but she was already in the street, already in eyesight. Khee, less aware, kept running a step or two after she did.

  Rynz saw them first. He ducked his chin to the side, gave his head a small shake. His fingers tapped the flickerstick at his side. A warning. For her? She thought so.

  She hissed at Khee, who caught on fast and pulled back. A moment later, they were both tucked into the shadows between the houses, invisible from the greyes’ vantage point.

  For one single heartbeat, relief flooded through her, cool and sweet. She’d tried. She’d run, but toward and not away. It wasn’t her own cowardice, but something beyond her control, that kept her from seeing Isera. She’d done everything she could.

  That thought, and the sensation of relief, didn’t even last long enough for her to believe it.

  “Skist,” she muttered, as Khee nudged her hand with his wide snout.

  They’d have to find a different way.

  The wall above Isera’s house was high and flat. Talia squatted on it, watching the path to the house. Since they’d sneaked here – coming the long way around from the north so they were less likely to be seen – the zaffre had been coming and going. Khee panted next to her, his tail occasionally thumping against the stones.

  The moon was coming up to full. Whatever the seasons here, this one stretched out long days of light. It was still warm, though, even into the night, and she was grateful for the quiet breeze that sometimes made it from somewhere across the desert to cool her skin.

  She’d picked a place on the wall where they could see Isera’s house, but just barely. Or she could. She actually had no idea what Khee’s eyesight was like. As a predator, it was probably pretty good. As a predator who’d been enhanced by the vordcha, she was sure it was far better than that.

  She was about to ask him, when she saw two more people come toward the house. She didn’t think they could see her from there, but she lowered herself down toward the wall anyway. One of them wore a brown apron. Rakdel. She was pulling a metal container much like the one the Painter used, except she knew this one wasn’t filled with pain and sorrow, but with medical supplies. No, no, no. Ganeth had promised.

  The orness saying, How we love our Aeon Priest…

  Talia’s heart was a wild thing.

  “Khee, please go and see.” She was hoping that no one would look at him sideways, as often as he was seen in Seild’s company. Maybe they’d let him in if he was by himself. “Just let me know if she’s all right, yes? If the chiurgeon says anything…”

  There was no word attached to his response – or if there was, it wasn’t one she understood – just a general sense of confusion that pinged around inside her like an insect looking for a landing place.

  “Right…” She didn’t want that feeling again. She would do a better job with her words in the future. Of course, he wouldn’t know what a chiurgeon was. “Rakdel.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he eyed her a long moment, as if to say, you’re not fooling anyone, and then he went as she requested, making his way carefully down the wall and disappearing from sight.

  A moment later, he reported back with a quick

  wait.

  So she did. She crouched on the balls of her feet, watching the street in front of Isera’s house for a sign of anyone else coming or going. There was nothing. A man came swiftly down the street, a shining sword in hand as she watched, but he seemed to be headed elsewhere, and didn’t stop or slow down at Isera’s house.

  You promised, Ganeth. You promised she was all right.

  And then she thought of the orness’ face charms. How we love our Aeon Priests.

  And you believed him.

  She could handle Khee’s voice inside her and that other voice – familiar, but one whose name she hadn’t yet spoken, whose face she had not yet looked at – but not the orness’ mocking tone. “Get out,” she said aloud, but even in doing so, she knew the orness was right.

  Sooner or later, she was going to have to decide: did she trust Ganeth or not? She had trusted him, b
ut the orness’ words had put a crack in that. Which wasn’t right, because she trusted the orness less than she trusted anyone. And yet. And yet.

  Rakdel came out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron. Talia stood and took a step forward; Rakdel would give her answers. Rakdel would tell her the truth.

  The sudden hook at the back of her legs caught her completely by surprise. She let out a small, involuntary yelp – not at the pain, which hadn’t yet had time to sink in – but at the shock of being swept off her feet. Her body’s instinct was to tumble into a rollaway, but this high up and with this thin a ledge, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t fall right off the wall.

  Instead, she let herself go down on her back, flatten to the stone. It was risky, but if she had any chance of coming out of this, she needed to be able to see her attacker. She landed hard, her back instantly pinging in protest, the air whooshing out of her lungs in such a hard rush that she was instantly dizzy. Her hexed arm hit the wall with a sharp crack.

  “Burrin,” she breathed. So he did know how to softstep with those shoes when he needed to. Good to know. If a little belated.

  He stood above her, the end of one of his long sticks pointing at her chest. His face was reddened in a big splash above his cheek. The kind of mark a spew of acid might make if you weren’t expecting it enough to sidestep. The creatures had gotten him too, then. Seeing him like that did little to appease her fears.

  He stood tall before her. His sepia skin was near-black beneath the eyes and his blues were dusted and dirtied.

  “You are no poison eater.” Each word accented with a poke of his stick – not hard enough to do her damage, but hard enough that she flinched each time. Burrin did not thumb his mouth after he spoke, as most would if they were making an accusation. She didn’t know if it was because he thought it was beneath him or because he was once again proving that he needn’t follow rituals. And, truly, he didn’t need to. Every word was honed with an edge that made it clear that he was accusing her of being a liar.