Lunav

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Lunav Page 8

by Jenn Polish


  I sigh deeply and set my shoulders, making sure they have none of the pinchedness of most faeries. I wiggle my face around to wipe the tension off of it. I swing my arms back and forth, pumping my neck from side to side, like I’m getting ready to tackle some feat of great physical strength. Osley and I exchange glances. I nod at quer curtly.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” I tell quer softly in the most widely used non dialect around these parts, adjusting easily to the accent I grew up with, that of the working people of the Highlands. When Mom and I first arrived in the Grove after we fled, that non accent was the first thing the other young ones noticed and hated about me. Then, it was the fact that I grew up so much slower than they did. The young ones I was age-mates with when I got to the Grove went through their choosing and became nears before I had even moved on from their old learning pods. It was easier than it could have been, I guess, because Jax hadn’t accepted another healing partner since Idrisim died, but he accepted Mom as his new co-healer. So the others had to accept it too. They didn’t blame Mom for me. But they came to blame me for looking like a non, came to call me slow, stupid, ugly, because that’s how I grew.

  I sigh again and shake my head like I’m trying to get water out of my ears. Usually on spying missions, I know my moms are close by. Now, if Kashat did his job right, they’re sleeping comfortably deep in the Forest, content with the lie that I’m helping him with Lunamez preparation and am going to be up all night in the Underland with him and Lerian.

  Better to just jump in, like I do into the Flowing when the water is cold. Get the shock over with in one go.

  “See you soon,” I mutter to Osley, and, after receiving permission from the grass ahead of me, I limp out of the Forest and into Lethe, toward the inn. My fingers toy with the vial in my pocket, and I grind my teeth slightly.

  I loosen my stride as I approach the inn, seeing a group of young non men standing around outside with flasks in their hands. They nod at me without seeming to really think about it. With my short hair and small chest, a lot of non men not only think I’m a non like them, but a man too. I nod back, eager to keep it that way, at least with these ones. They’re all too young to be my mark, and dressed in typical Lethean laborer garb. Their trousers are stained from days of work, and their tunics are casual. The head Slicer certainly wouldn’t be caught traveling in such unrefined clothing.

  I yank open the door and pause as warmth, light, and scent from the inn’s two tree flesh fireplaces hit me like a wall. My eyes swivel quickly around the room. It’s a big place, with a three-sided bar in the center, surrounded by tree flesh tables and benches, and four exits, counting the one I’m walking into. One, I know from past experience, leads to the kitchens; one to the outside; and one to the rooms people can rent upstairs. The walls, all made of tree flesh, are supposed to give a homey feeling even though it seems to me like I’ve just walked into a den made of body parts. I remember growing up in buildings like these, though, and a small, ashamed part of me feels somewhat comforted.

  No one really reacts to my entrance beyond a few scattered glances that quickly return to games of darts, conversations at full tables, or the bottoms of mugs. I scan the room and the pit in my stomach loosens a bit; this is too easy. A tall, reedy man who looks like he’s never seen the sun in his life is sitting alone at a fully serviced table across from the quiet side of the bar. He’s wearing a royal white robe with—my stomach swoops in relief—the orange stripes of the head Slicer. I shove my hands deep into my pockets and sidle over to the table next to him.

  “Anyone sitting here?” I gruffly ask the two non girls at the other end of the tree flesh table I’ve chosen. They giggle and one looks me up and down. I cock an eyebrow.

  “Go ahead,” the one with reddish hair says, and I nod my thanks. I thrum my fingers on the tree flesh absently after I sit down, offering a silent apology to the trees whose lives were ended and bodies dismembered to make this table.

  “What’ll it be, sherba?” a soft voice asks. I almost jump at the Grovian faeric term of endearment, pressing my wings deeper into my wing sleeves. But I remind myself sternly that in Lethe especially, our languages influence each other. No matter how hard the palace tries to prevent it.

  The barmaid, whose name I remember from my last mission is something like Ruth, is balancing an empty, circular tray on her fingertips in front of me, her eyebrows raised. Her red and white dress is super short and the top of it barely covers her chest. I swallow hard and nod my head toward the head Slicer at the next table.

  “What he’s got over there looks good,” I tell her, my voice low-pitched but loud enough, hoping he’ll hear it over the dart game on the other side of the bar. He does, and raises his steaming mug at me in acknowledgement. I grin at him, trying not to picture his hands covered in newly born blood.

  Ruth chuckles, leaning her hips onto my table and bending over me conspiratorially. I force my eyes onto her face, which turns out not to be a problem; her eyes are a stormy kind of gray that proves nice to look at. “Sherba, are you even old enough to have what he’s drinking?”

  The Head Slicer chuckles, but not meanly. “Oh, get the kid some mulled mead, Ruth. Looks like he could use the warmth.” He winks at me and I’m mildly surprised. Usually men of his rank take longer to warm up to me than this, probably because of my darker skin and my lower class accent. But who knows, maybe he’s already been drinking a bunch of that brew. Maybe he thinks I’m a man and am trying to pick up the girls at my table, and he’s trying to help me out, or pick me up himself. Or maybe I really do look cold and he’s just not a bad person. Except for the fact that it’s his job to slice open our newly borns’ skulls.

  But I don’t think about that now. I can’t. I grin up innocently at Ruth as the girls giggle beside me. Ruth screws her face into a mischievous grin and spins off to the bar to pour me a mug.

  “He’s right. You do look like you could use a little something to warm you up,” one of the girls tells me. She has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. “Or someone,” she throws in as an afterthought, and I hear the Head Slicer chuckle nearby.

  “You volunteering?”

  “Do you want me to be?”

  I grin lopsidedly. The girl with the reddish hair rolls her eyes. “You two wanna be alone?”

  I shake my head, but don’t take my eyes off those green ones. “Nah. Just getting to know each other. What brings two beautiful ladies like yourselves out to an inn like this, huh?”

  “Oh, nothing much. The chance of finding a man like you.”

  Part of me feels dirty and the other part is flying. They’re nons and they think I am too. But being looked at like maybe I could be…attractive? It only happens when I’m spying and my wings are tucked away.

  But they also think I’m a man. Evelyn knew I’m not, even with my wings tucked away. We were supposed to meet here for a date. Or something.

  Because she looked at me like I could be attractive too.

  It should disgust me, that thought. The Controller, of all people. And it does disgust me. For the most part.

  But the small part of me that wonders what could have happened if she wasn’t the Controller and I met her here like she’d asked me? That part of me sings, and I wish it were a limb so I could hack the traitorous feeling off of my body.

  I swallow the thought down and slide over to the girls’ side of the tree flesh table.

  “So you’re on the hunt for someone strong, sensitive, and dashingly good-looking?”

  The head Slicer chuckles over at the next table. I let him catch my eye and he winks at me. I grin even as I swallow vomit.

  Everything’s going perfectly.

  “On the hunt?” Green Eyes arches an eyebrow. “With that accent? What are you, one of those new hunting parties the king’s putting together?”

  I nod my thanks at Ruth as she puts a steaming mug in front of me. I drink deeply before I answer, and I sigh into the warmth flooding into me. “Maybe.”


  “Oh come on, he’s playing us. He’s too young to be on those squads. Look, he hasn’t even started growing a beard yet.”

  The girl with reddish hair lifts her fingers to my face, and I can’t help it. I jump a bit. It’s too close for comfort. My knees slam into the underside of the tree flesh table, and Green Eye’s drink tips over onto her dress.

  “I’m sorry!” I stumble, trying to rise but making it worse. “I didn’t mean to, I—”

  “No, it’s fine, it—”

  “It’s not fine, Maeve, you’re drenched! Ugh, how could you look like a hunter but move like a filthy faerie?”

  Maeve’s friend drags her up and toward the bar to dry her dress off, glaring over her shoulder at me as she goes. I don’t hear Maeve’s protests even as her friend pulls her away, nor do I see the men on the other side of the bar laugh when she tells them the story of the loser with the smooth words but no moves to match. I don’t feel anything except like I’ve flown top speed into one of Harlenikal’s tail spikes. I just stay there, pathetically, half standing, my hands still pathetically half-outstretched. Mouth pathetically half-open.

  Pathetically half-human.

  Ruth bustles over with a rag in her hand and clicks her tongue at me. “No need to get your feet in a trap, sherba. It wasn’t your fault. I keep telling my boss he’s gotta get these damn tables raised.”

  I straighten up and nod, remembering Tamzel’s training. I bring myself out of myself, out of Sadie, and into the person I become when I’m on a mission.

  I let the head Slicer catch my gaze again and raise one shoulder at him.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s your night,” he says. He raises an eyebrow when he notices my limp, but doesn’t comment on it.

  I force an easy grin. “Just when I thought I’d found someone to talk to.”

  “Well, you can talk to me. Not as attractive as a pair of girls your age, I imagine, but I promise I won’t storm off if you spill my mead. And hey, I’m the one who convinced Ruth to let you have it to begin with.”

  “Never forget a favor,” I throw out a Lethean phrase as I raise my mug at him. I slip over to where he’s sitting. “Sure you don’t mind if I sit? I can’t guarantee the safety of your drink.”

  The Head Slicer glances over my shoulder as I sit down. “As long as you can guarantee my safety from those girls—the redhead still looks like she wants to smack you—no, no, don’t turn around—then we’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks.”

  He waves me away like it’s nothing. I take a deep breath. “You in the province for some palace business?” I nod toward his robes, trying to inject my voice with the undercurrent of awe that a lot of Highlander nons from outlying settlements like Lethe get when they talk to an official from the Highlands proper.

  “How could you tell?”

  I laugh a little, actively pushing down the swirling anger in my stomach. I don’t want him to be funny and self-effacing. I don’t want him to invite me to sit with him and say things that make me feel like less of a hybrid freak.

  I want him to be terrible. I want him to be sadistic and evil. The job of framing him as the one who sabotages the Slicing, not me, will be much easier if he’s a horrible person.

  “I’m excited they sent me out here, actually,” he goes on, gesturing for me to come sit directly across from him.

  Good, I think. He’s probably excited because he loves hurting newly borns.

  “It’s so much more peaceful out here. You can actually see the sky and smell the air rather than all those poisons they’re pumping into everything these days.”

  Damn it all. Not because he loves hurting newly borns, then.

  I nod. “Yeah, it is nice out here. Oh, uh, thanks Ruth.” Her smile accompanies my refill and the head Slicer lifts his mug toward me once more. I do the same and we both drink deeply.

  Too deeply. I cough slightly and squeeze my eyes shut, careful to close both eyelids so he doesn’t notice my second pair. “Well,” I wheeze, “that’s one way to get rid of the chill.” He laughs and half stands up so he can lean over and thump my back. My stomach seizes, but he touches me high enough up so he can’t feel the slight bulge of my wing sprouts.

  “So what brings you out here alone tonight…?”

  “Jayden,” I tell him smoothly, my fallback name for spying missions.

  “Jayden,” he repeats. “Artem.”

  I nod and hold my mug up to him again. “Thanks for the drink, Artem.” We sip in silence for a few minutes, me turning on my tree flesh bench to watch the nears and growns on the louder side of the inn, across the bar. They’re getting a bit raucous this late, dart games and the heady melodies from an old woman’s lute joining with the mead to make everyone that much louder, that much braver, that much closer to each other.

  “Looking for some quiet time in a not so quiet space,” I finally answer his question, and he smiles indulgently.

  “A near beyond your harvests, it seems,” he says approvingly.

  I shrug. He drinks deeply from his mug and signals Ruth for two more, and I’m grateful that I swiped a serum that suppresses intoxication before I left the Grove. “I have some business in the Forest in the next week or so, and I’m due to arrive tomorrow. An unpleasant matter, I’m afraid. So you’re right. Some quiet time in a not so quiet space. Seems just right tonight.”

  I clench my toes together under the table, the only thing I can clench without him noticing me tensing up. “Unpleasant?”

  “Mmmm. That’s great, thank you, Ruth. You know about Initiations, of course.” He gestures with his new mug at my Slicing scar. “I always feel terribly about those your age, the ones who were Initiated as children rather than as newly borns. I fear scalpels get scarier, not less frightening, with age.” He sighs. “I’ve just been promoted to Head Initiator for the Grove, you see.” He says it as a statement of fact, not as a matter of pride. “At least now, all the operations are on newly borns who don’t know what to be scared of and won’t remember the procedure once it’s done.”

  Not true. Most of us do remember. Even that early, even eight sunups after we’re born. Nons might not, but faeries definitely remember.

  “Ah, still. It’s for the best. Imagine Lunav back in the grips of that terrible plague! You know I hear the Forest only has two faye healers; so hard to get volunteers to learn since the plague wiped out so many of them.”

  I take a long swig of my warm mead. The spices more than the alcohol rush to my head. I keep quiet, just listening. I don’t think about the way he’d never talk to me if he knew I was a faerie. I call to mind all my training and keep my face wiped clean, even sympathetic.

  The head Slicer—Artem—clears his throat, looking away like he’s embarrassed. “Ah, you came here for quiet, not to listen to the ramblings of some old man.”

  I try to protest that he’s not old—and sure enough, with thick, graying brown hair and robust voice, he doesn’t seem at all old to me—but he waves away my stammering.

  “What about you, Jayden? Don’t get enough quiet during your days?”

  I grin and take a gulp of my mead. “No, sir. In the logging fields all day, sunup till sundown. The sound of those axes alone’ll drive anyone away from direct noise.” Non loggers are rarer—they like to use faeries for the hardest labor when possible—but by no means unheard of, especially in the poorer provinces like Lethe.

  When I was younger, I learned that the easiest way to spy is to make up as few fake facts about myself as possible. I don’t imagine Zaylam would appreciate having to fly out of the safety of the Plains, risking her life to cause the distraction I need to help me get away from growing suspicions at a gaping hole in my story. Again.

  A strangely companionable silence falls between us. I swivel on the tree flesh bench between us to see what’s causing the sudden commotion on the other side of the bar. An older man in a Hand’s uniform is leading a younger one out of the inn by the scruff of his neck while the boy’s friends
hoot and carry on. I shift to make sure I’m not visible from the path to the door. I don’t recognize the Hand, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one of the Controller’s men.

  I jump when Ruth appears at my side and puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. Thankfully, I don’t knock anything over this time. She swaps our empty mugs for steaming full ones in an easy motion as she leans forward, her lips close to our tilted heads. I force myself to listen to her instead of soaking in the combination of her low-cut dress and breath of spiced ale.

  “Seems the young one’s father decided his performance in combat wasn’t where it needs to be for him to deserve a night out with his friends,” she tells us conspiratorially.

  “Mmm. What’d the poor lad do?”

  “According to him or according to his father?” We laugh. “Says he refused to arrest a mob of scum in the Samp. Gone all soft-like with them.” She rests her elbows on the tree flesh, and I hold my breath to keep my face neutral. “He swears, of course, that he’s just as tough on the slime as the rest. Just didn’t get the orders right is all.”

  “Ruth! Another!” calls a voice from the bar.

  She waves her rag in acknowledgment and lifts her tray back up.

  “I’ll be back.” I return her wink, although there’s a hole in my stomach.

  Artem shakes his head at his mug. “Fathers,” he mutters. “Have you got growns, Jayden?”

  I think of Mama’s comforting hands on Mom’s shoulders and Mom’s soft voice singing me to sleep each night when I was a young one in the Highlands.

  I think of the light non man Mom worked for before I was born, who forced himself onto Mom and gave me my lighter skin shade and my slowed, almost non-rate growth, my rounded ears and straight legs. I remember when he caught me Dreaming one night—he’d never come to the storage closet where we slept before, Mom was always supposed to go to him—and I didn’t know Mom had that much blood inside her. We were still running from him when we first met Mama.

 

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