“It sure is, big guy,” Sionna said with a smile. “I know we were supposed to have dinner and all that, but how about we skip straight to the bedroom?”
“What?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
“I realize I have been a little unfriendly to you, but I’m hoping to change that…”
“Um. Are you sure you’re not Visola? This is very out of character. Vachlan has threatened me on several occasions, graphically describing what he would do to me if I ever touched his—”
“No, it’s really me!” Sionna insisted, moving closer to the American man. “Vachlan has no intentions of murdering you. Trust me. He doesn’t really care who touches his sister-in-law.”
Marshal Landou held her at an arm’s length and sniffed the air suspiciously. “Is that perfume? You even smell like General Ramaris!”
Sionna sighed. “Dammit, I knew I was coming on too strong. I just don’t know how to do this. It’s tough for a professional woman, you know? My nephew has been ill, and I have been very stressed out lately.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Marshal Landou said seemingly sincerely. “Trevain is a great guy and I really hope he pulls through. Forgive me for being insensitive, Sionna. I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she said, placing a hand on the man’s arm. “It’s not your fault. It’s the same thing that got his mother—something we haven’t been able to identify. It’s driving me nuts too, because it’s my job to identify these sorts of things.” The tall bald man abruptly closed the distance between them, and Sionna reflexively flinched. When his arms went around her, her eyes shifted around uncomfortably.
“Sorry, I just thought you could use a hug,” Marshal Landou said. “Sometimes you can’t save everyone, Sio. That’s just the way life goes.”
“Yeah,” she said, in a soft, scathing voice, “but it’s family. It’s personal, you know? It hits me really hard and makes me feel so helpless.”
“Aw, darling,” Landou said, rubbing her back soothingly. “I think this is the first time you’ve really opened up to me like this. I’ve never seen you so vulnerable. You should expose your womanhood to me more often, Sionna. It’s so attractive to see the way you really feel underneath that hard, impenetrable façade.”
Against his shoulder, she rolled her eyes and fought the urge to gag. Returning the hug fiercely for a moment to gain her composure, Sionna pulled away and looked up at him dejectedly. “I was just hoping for a distraction tonight. I thought that you could help me to feel better somehow...”
“You just had to ask,” he said softly, lowering his lips to meet hers. His hands circled her body, pulling her firmly against him, and knocking her off balance.
Sionna allowed herself to melt against him, completely enjoying the sensations. She hardly even noticed when he scooped her up off her legs and carried her to the couch. Such a thing did not happen often, as Sionna was a very tall and muscled woman. In the water, of course, it was much easier, but it still had not happened in over a century. She made a mental note to enjoy the sensation while it lasted, for she was fairly certain it was the last time she would allow a man to carry her anywhere when she was not laid out in a coffin.
In the next moment, Sionna felt the comfort of cushions against her back, followed by the falsely comforting sensation of a large man on top of her. She returned his kisses naturally, marveling at the fact that she still remembered how to do so. She was enjoying it so much that she forgot to think logically about all the synapses and hormones causing her to feel the way she did. She allowed herself just to feel. Which is why she was surprised when his lips left hers and began to trail down her neck and chest; he was soon kissing her stomach and pushing up the hemline of her nightgown. When his mouth began to assault the insides of her thighs, she lifted her head in hesitation.
“Oh. Are you sure you want to do that?” she asked him skeptically.
“Sure. You said you were stressed and wanted to feel better,” he reminded her.
She gave him a small shrug of submission before lying back on the couch. Soon, she was enjoying the sensations, trying to prevent a smile of amusement from quirking up the sides of her lips. “A little to the left. A bit higher. Oh yes, right there. Continue doing that for a moment. Great. Now pause.”
“Wow,” he remarked. “You sure do give a lot of instructions.”
“I won’t give you any more,” Sionna said happily. “Do as you will.”
“I don’t mind the instructions,” he said, grinning. He spent several minutes pleasuring her before he suddenly found that his tongue would no longer work. He tried to clear his throat and speak, but his whole body was beginning to feel stone-solid and statue-stiff. A tingling, burning sensation was traveling through his skin, especially his mouth and tongue, which felt like they were ablaze.
“Darn,” Sionna said with a sigh. She fluffed the pillows under her head in boredom. “I was hoping it would take a few minutes longer for the tetrodotoxin to take effect. I was really enjoying that. It looks like you’re already pretty much paralyzed.”
Seeing the look of shock in the man’s eyes, a smile swept over Sionna’s features as she swung her leg back over his head and rearranged her skirt. “I’m sure you know what tetrodotoxin is, right? Of course you do. Lethal venom of the pufferfish. Well, you just ingested some, sweetie. You really should be more careful about whose clitoris you go around sucking. Like, specifically, not the aunt of people you have killed or tried to kill.”
She began to tidy up the pillows on the sofa that had been pushed out of place. “Don’t worry; it’s not a fatal dose. You should be in a deathlike state for a few days, with an extremely low heart rate and slow, labored breathing. But you know all about poisons, don’t you, Gaston?” She gave the man a sardonic smile. “Sadly, this is the first time I’ve really discovered something we have in common. A love for neurotoxins. They are spectacular, aren’t they? I’m really enjoying this; it’s definitely the best date we’ve had so far. Why don’t you get a little more comfortable while we chat?”
Sionna smashed her heeled foot into the man’s face, kicking him off the couch and onto the ground. His body remained bent due to his locked muscles. “So tell me if I’m correct here, Gaston. You tricked us at first by giving Trevain colchicine, a natural drug found in the autumn crocus—he was already taking a low dosage in his gout medication, so we didn’t notice the higher concentration in his system. I do love a man who sticks to naturally found poisons—that’s admirable. None of that newfangled synthetic shit. I mean, Mother Nature gave us so much to work with! Have I ever told you about my fetish for shellfish? I suppose not. It’s too bad that this is the first time I’m really being vulnerable and exposed to you.”
She giggled lightly at this phrasing. “The only regret I have is that I told you about my serum. Now the Clan surely knows of one of our biggest aces. It took my whole lifetime to develop that product and synthesize that enzyme, and now…” She stopped talking because she saw that the man was shaking his head and trying to move his tongue. “What?”
“Ahhh dinnnt teeed dem,” he said.
“And how am I supposed to believe you?” she asked angrily. “You killed my niece.”
“Ahhm zawwy,” he said. “Ow yah nah?”
“If you’re asking how I found out about what you did, I will have you know that sometimes the dead grow voices. They raise them up and sing loudly about those who have committed atrocities.”
“Sho,” he mumbled in attempt at saying her name. “Pahs. Pahs.”
“I believe that’s your feeble effort at begging? Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to grab something to tie you up with, and then we’ll put you somewhere safe until Vachlan gets home. It was his daughter you killed. He has a few choice words for you.”
“Ahhm Vakaan kaznn,” Marshal Landou mumbled desperately. “Az kazan.”
“You’re Vachlan’s cousin?” she translated. “Why the fuck should I care? Oh! I know. If
you could speak, you’d be telling me some sob story about how Vachlan killed your whole family and ruined your life, and that’s why you intend to do the same thing to him. Is that right? I’d probably even feel somewhat sorry for you.”
When the man mumbled in feeble grunts of assent, Sionna reached back and slapped him across the face. “I have news for you. Vachlan has destroyed the lives of everyone under the sea multiple times. Including those of his own family. You’re not alone in having a bone to pick with him—and I would have slain him myself if my sister didn’t care for him. So before you come around playing Lady Justice with a vendetta, think about all the people you’re hurting that don’t deserve it.” Sionna suddenly stepped away from Landou, putting a hand to her head in frustration. “You killed my sister’s child. Do you know what that did to her? Of course you do—that was probably the whole point.”
“Ahdahs fam Cahnn ah Zakan,” the man tried to explain. “Ahdahs!”
“Orders?” Sionna repeated. She gestured at herself bitterly. “And what was this? Was I part of your orders as well? I’ll tell you one thing! Vachlan is a thousand times the man you are; and I consider him to be far less than a tenth of what a man should be. So do the math.”
Moving to leave, she found herself stopped in her tracks by her date’s muffled screams for her attention. She turned back to him, coldly observing his piteous state. “There is one thing that you should never forget about me,” Sionna said quietly, “even if you’ve forgotten everything else: I am my sister’s sister. The other Ramaris girl—the actually dangerous one.”
Visola peeled off her white gloves slowly. She stared at her fingers absentmindedly as she tried to convince herself that Vachlan surely had a good reason for disappearing without a trace. It was probably important palace business that had taken him away without warning. Anyway, the day had not been a total loss; Glais had thoroughly enjoyed Coriolanus. It had delighted her to see the young boy so interested in the theatre, and so impressed with every aspect of Diomede City, but Visola had been unable to focus as she worried about Vachlan’s odd behavior.
She ripped her white hat off her head and tossed it aside crossly. She lowered herself to their bed and looked around the empty room with a blank expression, searching for the answers that no one seemed to want to give her. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed and she bolted off the bed, heading for her bedroom window. She ran her fingers over the thick ice ledge, noticing some new indentations that had not previously been there. Had someone entered the room through the window? Frowning, Visola opened the window and began to scan the exterior of the palace wall for any other evidence of unusual wear. Seeing nothing, she closed the window.
And then she noticed the bullet hole in the window. It was tiny, and almost unnoticeable in the corner of the glass pane. She traced it with her fingernail nervously, beginning to feel terror blossom in her chest. Visola immediately imagined the worst, and the worst was that the Clan of Zalcan had captured her husband. She tightly gripped the windowsill with both hands leaning forward and trying to calm her breathing. Her heart pulsed erratically, as though it had been impaled with dozens of needles.
It had been a decade since she had felt such intense pain in her chest. The last time, she had been watching four Clan warriors subdue her husband and attempt to behead him. Now, he could already have been beheaded. She had no way of knowing. Visola felt her knees weaken as her blood pumped madly through her body. Since there was no one else in the room, she allowed herself to crouch down to the ground. Looking at the floor, she noticed the imprecise alignment of their Persian carpet with the wall. Vachlan was particularly attached to his carpet, and he would not have allowed it to shift without fixing it at once. Visola could feel her blood pressure rising, and she smashed her fist into the carpet several times, just to calm herself down. She felt the ground frozen floor yielding faintly under her fist. The physical pain had always been therapeutic in soothing her emotions.
On a whim, Visola began to roll up the carpet to peer at the ice beneath it. She could see the faint impression of where her fist had caused the ice to crack. She could also see a few other cracks in the ice from recent impacts that she had not caused. Tossing the carpet back down, Visola sat on the floor inertly for several seconds. She tried to recreate and replay a video of the struggle that had evidently occurred in her bedroom, but doing so caused her chest to ache again. Pushing herself off the ground in a rapid, fluid motion, Visola sprung upright and marched into the corridor. She breathed deeply as she moved through the palace halls, putting both of her hands in her hair. She kneaded her scalp with her usual hostility to ease the dizzy ache behind her eyes. Hearing familiar male voices, she entered the room from which they came. Through indistinct vision, she saw her two grandsons standing across from each other and arguing viciously. Usually, the sound of the Murphy boys engaged in heated disagreement was music to her ears, but now, it only caused her to groan.
“Dudes,” she said, trying to force a casual tone. “Have either of you seen Vachlan?”
“Nope,” said Callder immediately. “Hey, are you okay, General?”
“I will be okay when I have my hands around that man’s stupid neck,” Visola hissed.
Trevain cleared his throat awkwardly, exchanging knowing glances with Callder.
Visola blinked. “What? I didn’t mean that in a sexual way. I meant—oh, forget it! Look, I saw evidence of gunshots being fired in our bedroom. There were signs of a struggle.”
“Are you sure that wasn’t from something you guys did?” Callder suggested. “Maybe you were drunk and forgot about it? Sometimes that happens to me.”
“Wha—what do you boys think of us! Vachlan and I do normal things,” Visola protested. “Mostly normal things! Look, homeskillets, I’m really tired and I just want to find him.”
“He said he had some important business to take care of out of town,” Trevain said quietly. “I’m not really sure where exactly he went.”
“That poontang!” Visola cursed, flying out of the room.
“What are ‘homeskillets?’” Callder asked his brother quietly. “I think I know what a poontang is.”
“Thank God for the internet,” Trevain said, already looking it up on his phone. “If it weren’t for Urban Dictionary, I wouldn’t understand half of the things our grandmother says.”
Callder nodded in agreement. “I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be the other way around.”
“Okay, apparently it’s a term of endearment equivalent to ‘homies’ or ‘homeboys.’”
“That’s great!” Callder said with a sigh of relief. “As long as she’s not insulting the size of my penis again.”
“When did she do that?” Trevain asked.
“Well, she walked into the men’s locker room the other day to throw things and yell at everyone and… it was cold.” Callder shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about it—it was a very damaging experience. Can we get back to the Sisters of Sedna?”
Chapter 19: Of Lower Midnight
Varia studied her aunt moving about the classroom with poise and a hint of shyness. She could see a palpable resemblance to her mother in the slightly younger woman, but the differences were far more evident. Elandria’s voice often wavered and lacked conviction, even as she talked to the children, and she seemed less relaxed wearing her own skin. It seemed to Varia that her aunt tried to hide within herself, using her layers of fat like a protective umbrella to shield herself from the slings and arrows of the world, many of which she had literally suffered.
“Territorial waters extend outward from the shores of a country for twelve nautical miles,” Elandria explained as she indicated the diagram. “Beyond that, we have international waters which belong to anyone, but countries still maintain the rights for 200 nautical miles which is called the ‘exclusive economic zone.’ This means that they can engage in fishing, mining, oil exploration…”
“So what belongs to us, Queen Elandria?” Kolora asked.
�
�The Diomede Islands were given to us ten years ago, so the area around the islands belongs to us. But it’s mostly shared with the U.S. and Russia anyway—as you know, Adlivun is located off the coast of the Aleutian Islands and beneath them—that is American soil, but we have established native rights to the land since we are the indigenous peoples of the region.”
“Why is it important to know who owns what, Miss Elandria?” Kaito asked with a yawn.
“There are lots of reasons. In the event that something bad happens, we need to know who decides the punishment and enforces the law. We also need to know who owns the fish and the oil, so that the people from other countries do not take everything that belongs to us and leave us without anything.”
“So before they gave us the Diomede Islands, were we stealing from the Americans?” Glais asked with a frown. “Because Lower Adlivun is on American territory, and we fished American waters…”
“No,” Elandria responded. “They just were not aware of our presence. Technically, Adlivun was settled long before the United States of America, but our existence never interfered with theirs, because our domain was beneath the sea.”
“Ohhh,” Glais said, making some impressions in his notebook.
Kolora leaned over to grab his hand with a giggle. “You have to learn to listen to what the adults are actually saying, Glais. Nothing belongs to us. Not even our home.”
She’s cynical, Varia thought to herself as she observed her haughty cousin. Noticing that Elandria hesitated and shifted uncomfortably at Kolora’s words, Varia amended her thought. She is correct.
“Let’s examine a new aspect of political boundaries,” Elandria said, wiping her brow. “I spoke last week about the layers of the pelagic zone. Now that underwater societies have been globally exposed, it is possible for us to own three-dimensional territory. In the same way that a territory claims control of the airspace above their land, we control the various layers of the sea below our settlements. Does anyone remember what these layers are? Kaito?”
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