Numenera--The Poison Eater

by Shanna Germain

  She was pretty sure they were stolen. Likely from one of the vendors in the Eternal Market. But they looked fresh baked, so maybe not. Plus, he was scrawny. Even his fingers holding the bag didn’t have enough fat on them, the knuckles concave in their swirls. She gave him three and nodded her thanks.

  “This is going to be good, Khee,” she said. The words sounded like lies before she even said them. “I still don’t know what’s going on, exactly, but I’m figuring it out. And I have ternes. Whatever they are.”

  The bag smelled good, a bit savory, a bit sweet, so they couldn’t be all bad.

  On the way out of the market, they passed an old man on the corner, his back curving like a letter, who wore a banner across his chest. She caught something of it out of the corner of her eye as she went by, like a snatch of a dream. She circled back.

  He reached out to her, blindly, his hands grasping.

  “What is that you wear?” she asked him.

  The man straightened himself so that he stood almost upright – she could tell it pained him – and showed her the painted fabric upon his chest. For a moment, she thought she’d been mistaken, that it wasn’t a banner, but one of Angha’s blankets.

  But no, it was just her face on the fabric that had make her think that. Her face, painted on the banner. Blue eyes. Blue cloak. The artist had taken liberties – lengthened her nose, removed the red streaks from her hair, but it was easily her.

  And above her face, in bold silver letters: CROSA.

  Careful.

  In the bottom corner, it bore the mark of the orness. An etched star.

  She put a hand on the man’s shoulder, acknowledging that she’d seen enough. He lowered himself back down gratefully.

  Bending her knees so that she might be at his eye level, she asked, “Where did you get that banner? Who asked you to wear it?”

  “They paid me six shins.” As he answered, she caught his eyes in the moon sliver – covered white, unseeing orbs.

  “Do you know who?”

  He shook his head and touched the edge of the fabric. “What does it say?” he asked.

  It says I’m in trouble.

  “Finwa,” she said. “You can take it off now,” and tucked her remaining few shins into his fist.

  No one else would see that banner, she knew. It was a message for her. From the orness. She was watching, waiting, for Talia to make her move.

  * * *

  Talia knew she should be scared. But if anything, the orness’ not-so-subtle message awoke an anger in her. Born from a sense of justice, or perhaps fear, she found that she grew more angry, rather than less. She couldn’t remember the last time her blood sang in her ears the way it did when she’d seen her face on that banner.

  CROSA.

  She spat the word out. She’d be damned if she was going to be careful now. She still didn’t have a handle on what exactly the orness’ game was, but she would figure it out, and when she did… she didn’t know yet. But she would figure that out too.

  What she didn’t want was for her anger to pull her from the bigger, more important danger: the vordcha. Sometimes, tucked as she was into this city, inside these walls, they seemed so far away, so unreal, that she had a hard time keeping them at the forefront of her mind. The details were fading. Slippery as snow.

  The orness was a monster, yes. But she wasn’t a monster like the vordcha. She was just here, now, and that made her scarier and bigger than she deserved to be. It was time to tell Isera the truth, all of it.

  The silver spiral on Isera’s door both beckoned and turned away. But Talia had had her fill of turning away. She would leave this choice in Isera’s hands. It was possible she would want no part of it.

  Isera poured them drinks – a fizzy thing that went up Talia’s nose, but was more savory than sweet. If she wasn’t thinking on other things, she would have taken the time to realize how much she enjoyed it on her tongue.

  But she needed her tongue for other things now, and so she only took a sip before setting her glass back on the table.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she said. There was so much to the story. What mattered, what did she need to keep alive? The horror, the fear. She needed to hear how dangerous, how inhuman they were, even if from her own mouth so she would not forget. So that when they came, she was not unready.

  “Start with you,” Isera said. And it made sense to her, and so she did. Talia told her the thing she’d never told anyone, barely even herself, about being given over to the monsters. Although, of course, she hadn’t known then that they were monsters, so perhaps those who had given her away hadn’t known either.

  lies.

  Khee was right. She’d known everything they were the first time she’d seen them. Even at her age.

  She backtracked, picked up the thread she’d dropped when she’d told that lie, and went forward. She told of the implants and mech the vordcha had slid inside their veins. How it gave her memories and emotions that weren’t hers. She told Isera of Maeryl, and their escape plan. How she’d run, fallen, craven. And returned, only to fall again.

  It came out in a rush. Not a story, then. Not like the ones she’d woven for her sisters, for Burrin. This was how the truth sounded. Broken and tattered.

  She even told her part in the lie. How she’d believed she wasn’t the true poison eater, but had told no one. She skipped over the orness, Seild, the device, kept it on her tongue. Seeds for later.

  Through it, Isera sat, quiet.

  “I’m done,” Talia said. She was. Spent. Exhausted. Unsure that she had accomplished what she’d set out to do. The vordcha seemed both more and less real now that she’d talked about them. Scarier, but also she was just so tired.

  “Can I ask questions?” Isera asked.

  Talia nodded. Of course. Her hand was shaking, and she wrapped it around the glass to keep her fingers still.

  “Are they human?”

  Talia searched for the answer she wanted, knowing the near impossibility of trying to describe something that was both human and inhuman. Something that for so long had been her only understanding of the world. She had forgotten what small life she’d been allowed to live before the blackweave, and that made everything the vordcha did seem normal. At least, it had until Maeryl. Maeryl, who had come to the vordcha so much later than the rest of them. Maeryl, who’d remembered the ocean and her family and her love and even her language before the vordcha had begun to take it away.

  “They were trying their best not to be human,” she said. “Maybe they were once. But I don’t think so.”

  “What will they do, when they come?”

  “Destroy everything,” she said. “Except me. Possibly Khee. They’ll take us. Make us what we were. Something worse.” She didn’t want to think about that part. They would not kill her. They would take her, back to that place, fill her full of metal and mech. She would die here, by her own hand, before she allowed that.

  She didn’t say what she knew in her heart. That they would also take Seild and maybe others. Their mechbeasts and martyrs were dead. It was possible they were already searching, filling the blackweave with new ones. More than possible. Probable. In fact, she thought that might be why they hadn’t come for her yet. They were rebuilding an army. So that when they did come, she could not say no.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Talia said.

  Isera shook her head, and Talia could feel her heart, the way it unmoored and began to plummet through her insides.

  “No,” Isera said. “I told you once it’s my job to see true. That isn’t the same as seeing the truth. Sometimes, the truest things must be shrouded in lies to keep them safe.” Talia thought of Burrin, of Seild, of the orness. Had the orness told her something false to protect something true?

  “I don’t know how to stop them,” Talia said.

  Isera leaned forward, put both of her hands on Talia’s real arm. “We’ll find a way.”

  And in that moment, beneath the fierce mismatc
hed gaze, Talia felt hope begin to bloom. And something else too. Something that made her nerves spark and sing. Not the city’s knife-edge song, but something fresh and clean and new.

  * * *

  As soon as she told Isera, it felt like time was running out. She didn’t know why, but she could feel it in her blood, in the mech in her back, in the way Khee’s stripes started flaring random colors at all times of day. Seild giggled and clapped her hands each time she saw it, but Khee was less thrilled, sharp-toothed and growly, pacing and sending wordless questions to her.

  She didn’t think the vordcha were coming yet. But they would be soon. Not just for her and Khee. They would not pick and choose. They would destroy every bit of the city, everything inside it, if they could. She’d known that for a long time, even if she was only beginning to come to terms with it.

  She needed to find out when and how. She needed to do another poisoning. And she needed to do it now. But first, she had a promise to keep. A story to tell.

  If there had been a way to tell Ganeth ahead of time that she was coming, she would have. She knew he had devices, ways to communicate with others from far away (how we love our Aeon Priests), but he’d never given her one. And so she ran.

  Flat out, ungainly, huffing breath. Grateful there were no crowds to weave around. Grateful for the way in which her clothing shifted with her and did not get in the way. Even grateful for the jostled pain in her spine, for it reminded her, each step, what she was running for. Khee in such a long, flat-out run that he sometimes got ahead of her, had to circle back.

  She hit the door of Ganeth’s shop still running, and caught her cloak on the doorframe. The fabric wouldn’t tear and it wouldn’t come loose and so she stood in the doorway like a child, yelling Ganeth's name while she yanked at it.

  He was dressed in the giant yellow suit that she’d first seen him in. It disappeared as he pushed a button and came forward.

  “I need…” she started, still stuck in the doorway.

  Ganeth shook his head, eyeing her cloak with a wince.

  She gave the fabric another yank, and it came loose from whatever outcropping had held it, nearly sending her tumbling into Ganeth's questioning form.

  “You’ve ripped the–”

  * * *

  “Please, Ganeth,” she said.

  Ganeth took her wrist. A steadying. She nodded in thanks, but also in surprise. Had he ever touched her before, in a gesture not related to a device? She didn’t think so.

  “I need you to get…” Each word a panted breath. And here she’d thought Khee was growing complacent and out of shape in the city. “To gather the others. It’s time.”

  He didn’t ask for what. She knew then that Burrin had told him. Prepared him. Moon meld you, Burrin.

  “I have message capsules somewhere around here,” he said. Which made no sense to her, but she’d run too far and too fast and couldn’t ask another question yet.

  He rummaged along the shelves nearby, pulling things out, putting them back, muttering. “Here,” he said, as he held up four synth capsules, each nearly as long as her hand. “Just record your message, and then say a description of the person. It will find them.”

  She took one. She’d expected it to feel odd – cold where it should be hot, squishy where it seemed solid – but it was just an ordinary capsule. Off-white synth. Heavy for its size. “Just talk?” she asked. “No button or…?”

  “Just talk,” he said.

  She did Isera’s first, a little embarrassed to know that Ganeth was standing there as she described her. When she was done with it, she looked up. “Now what?”

  “Now it…” He started, and then the capsule disappeared from her hand. Her hand, still clutching its shape, suddenly empty. “Now it does that,” he finished.

  By the time she finished all four of them, she was already used to the sensation of weight leaving with such suddenness.

  “It shouldn’t take too long for them to be delivered,” Ganeth said. To the question she was about to ask he said, “Finwa, of course I’ll meet you there.”

  * * *

  Unable to run anymore – the jostle had awoken something in her back – she and Khee walked to the Sisk, where she hoped the others were waiting. She had so much to tell them. And to ask of them. There was every chance they would turn their backs on her. And they had every right to. It was dangerous. More so than she could have even explained.

  Her back was sore, but manageable. Rakdel had given her gel to ease the pain, but she hadn’t used it. Now she wished she had.

  “Khee,” she said as she walked. “I think…” It was tentative, barely an idea. “I think the orness lied to me. About me being false. About the poison eater being false.”

  Or did Talia just want and need that to be true? Because she had made all this plan and because she needed a weapon, and so would build one out of belief, just as the citizens of Enthait built theirs. From nothing more than stories and dreams and plays for children.

  Stories were not nothing. But they were not real either.

  And no. There was something else.

  She picked her way over the uneven flagstones of the street. They were nearly to the bar and she slowed her steps, needing to figure out one more thing before she went in.

  “The orness wants me to believe it’s false, but yet… she wants me to keep taking the poisons.”

  why

  Khee nudged.

  “If I knew that,” she said.

  She could tell Khee was trying to lead her toward something, something she needed to see. But it was like the orness’ face behind her device. Too slippery to grab hold of with her vision. She was grasping at shadows, at snatches of song. Nothing tangible enough to make it stay.

  “I’m going to keep talking and you keep asking questions until I get this right.”

  He exposed his rows of teeth in a long yawn, then stretched at her feet, but kept pace with her. Tacit agreement. And a bit of poking fun. He clearly thought that her speed at sorting things was not up to proper pace.

  “Is she trying to kill me? No, I don’t think so. She’s a monster, but she’s a monster with a plan. And I think that plan involves me staying alive. Not because she cares about me, but because she cares about Enthait. In fact…” She wasn’t sure of this. She waited to see how it sounded coming out of her mouth before she took a stance. “I think she wants me to become the orness.”

  Khee didn’t disagree. He just said,

  and.

  “There is always an and,” Talia said. “But I don’t know it. I don’t.”

  Her back felt raw, stung each time her cloak moved over it. Rather than let it distract her, she sank into it, into the pain.

  “And…” she tried again. Waiting to see what would come to her tongue. “The orness is old. Older than that visage she wears.”

  She’d reached the end of the road, could see the bar’s soft light from where she stood.

  “And when she’s no longer the orness, she’s going to… what? Spend time playing grandmother to Seild? ‘Hey child, I know you’re my granddaughter, but guess what? I threatened to have you killed.’”

  no.

  “You’re right, that’s a little harsh. She didn’t threaten to kill her. Just to stick her full of poison while she said a finwa over her.”

  no.

  “That’s not a question.” Her voice came out harsher than she meant it to.

  Khee stopped at the door to the Sisk, looking at her. Waiting patiently for her to understand… what?

  “What is it, Khee? Why lie? What is she trying to protect? And from whom?”

  Sometimes, the truest things must be shrouded in lies to keep them safe.

  Oh.

  “I’m not the bee, am I?” she said. “She was trying to tell me, even then. And I missed it, completely. The whole thing.”

  She had to sit down in front of the door, butt to the rough layers of cobblestones, head resting against the hard wall behind her.
/>   “The orness is the one who’s dying,” she said.

  yes.

  “And it’s all my fault.”

  * * *

  The Sisk was quiet in the way that only public places can be quiet. A low murmur that, she hoped, would drown out their conversation. She didn’t know how the orness knew things – it was one of the things she meant to ask Ganeth tonight – but she needed her not to know about this. If that was even possible.

  Ziralyt gave her a nod as she entered, and she paused a moment, to see if there were any other signals he had for her. Instead, he came forth and clasped her shoulders, dropped his head to hers in greeting.

  “Moon meld you, Poison Eater. It’s been a long time. Your friends are in the back.”

  We are not friends, Burrin had said. And yet she wondered. She’d had sisters and captors and lovers. Enemies. Allies. Were she and Khee friends? Any of them? Maybe. No matter, there was a chance they wouldn’t be after what she was about to tell them. But she thought they might still help her anyway.

  “And you, Ziralyt,” she said. “Will you bring us drinks? Something strong. And something for Khee if you have it.”

  He nodded, cast a quick glance at Khee, who bared his teeth in a playful way. Or at least, she knew it was playful. Probably to everyone else it just looked like he wanted to eat them. “Affah.”

  The goldglam was there again, dancing to a much smaller crowd. Dressed in reds and oranges, a burnt sunset swirling round and round. Hair wrapped up and up and tinted gray-white, so like storm clouds that Talia nearly expected rain to begin falling as she walked by.

  Everyone had come. Part of her wanted to stop a moment, to sink into that, but she was afraid that if she stopped, she would not go forward again.

  They all sat round the table, a tension in their shoulders. Isera had changed into a grey outfit, something that seemed to flow over her when she moved. She played her fingers over and over the rim of her glass, endless circles.

  Burrin, still dressed in his zaffre uniform, had leaned his sticks against the wall and was waiting, his hands folded. Ganeth was at the end of the table. It felt like the first time she’d ever seen him sitting, and it reminded her of how wide he was, how much room he took up. And yet, he worked with such small, small things. Rakdel had come and, she was happy to see, Omuf-Rhi.