Treasure Revealed

by A. S. Etaski

  “A question, Sirana,” she began as she dressed.

  “Yes, Elder?”

  “Why did you avoid your Sisters instead of fighting them? Isn’t that how Rausery taught you to handle it?”

  “I still can’t fight off four of them when they get the jump on me, Elder, any better than the Aurenthin could that many Sathoet. I need distraction and tricks instead when I’m alone like I was while you were gone.”

  “You couldn’t go to Jaunda or Gaelan?”

  “I couldn’t find them.”

  “And how in the Deepearth did you convince Lead Qivni of this desirable idea?” she said with irony. “She’d have protested strongly, I think, and I know Rausery always weighs her opinion.”

  I paused, glancing at Reishel, who listened with unblinking eyes. She did seem better, mentally alert, less distracted by the weakened state of her body. Her white hair held a soft wave now that it was dry, cut just below her shoulders, and watching her now, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she might have been a distant cousin to the Sorceress.

  “I told the Lead what she wanted to hear,” I said.

  My Elder’s eyebrow arched. “Explain.”

  “Qivni thinks I’m selfish, and only that. That I’ll never be fully loyal to the Sisterhood. I told her I needed to avoid a fight with Sisters so as not to draw the Prime’s attention and cause trouble for you and Reishel at a bad time.”

  My Elder rejected that. “Chances are greater you’d have simply been fucked to exhaustion and left alone. Hardly needing the Prime’s or my attention.”

  “No, Elder,” I snarled, “not again. I mean it. Next time those cunts pile up on me, it will need someone’s attention. I told Qivni the truth, I knew it was a bad time to pick that fight. I wanted to delay it any way I could.” I nodded to my Sister. “For her sake. Qivni believed me.”

  “Did she tell Rausery that?”

  “Only that I was being picked at. Not what I said to her.”

  “And her Elder replied with?”

  “Very little. Asked for a recommendation from her Lead, checked against your orders for me, and made her decision. She took me along without saying why. But we captured Jael Aurenthietti, and Rausery used me to ‘clean’ her just as you had Qivni and Gaelan do when you captured me. She wants to test the fighter from the last battle for the Sisterhood.”

  My tone wasn’t resentful of that, I made certain of it. Neither my Elder nor Sister spoke for a few moments, and D’Shea continued to prepare herself. She became stronger before my eyes with each layer and leather tie, more determined.

  “A good read of the situation, novice,” she granted. “And a clever solution. Leading to valuable foreknowledge for me.”

  “Yes, Elder. You needed to know.”

  D’Shea gestured for me to dress and waited while I did so. Reishel would remain naked until after she was presented back to the Sisterhood.

  Before we left her quarters, the Sorceress said, “Think about a reward you’d like for your initiative and success, Sirana. I will try to grant it.”

  I wondered if the Fourth Daughter of House Aurenthin would be dragged to the Palace for her trials, sent to the same candle-lit chamber where I’d first seen the Sisterhood standing together. Jael was technically a Noble, although she’d never been to Court and acted more like a commoner. Particularly in her crude and frequent cursing in the hallways of the Cloister.

  “Let me go or just kill me and be done with it, you curd-dripping, spinneret-suckers!”

  Somehow, her Matron had let her get away with this behavior, while my sister Jilrina had never let me step out of line where she could see it; even my words had been taken away. Jael also lacked any patience to read the powerful females around her, which might work against her, or…

  I glanced at our eldest. Or the Prime might get a charge out of her.

  This was Rausery’s pick, not D’Shea’s.

  We didn’t go back to the Palace when the cait was revealed before our top superior. Instead, the Red Sisters were crowded into the same room where I’d first been presented, where Jaunda had been the first to pick me up and drag me to her quarters to give up my holes to her pleasure. We took our places with backs to the same wall, red uniforms lining the entire room, and Jael was in the middle, surrounded, terrified, but using her fear to make herself seem downright dangerous for one about twenty turns younger than me. Small, quick, and poisonous.

  She was comfortably old enough to breed and fight in the army but hardly more than a novice if she’d been training with the Palace Guardsvrin at Court as I had been at her age. It quickly became clear she had had different tutors from the unfamiliar stance she took.

  “One more twitch and I’ll rip your egg sacs out through your cunts!”

  I sighed inside, trying but failing to catch her eye. The taste of her slit was still fresh in my memory, but wherever she had been with Rausery, waiting for us, Jael wasn’t thinking about that moment as I was.

  The Prime wasn’t the only one grinning at a fiery, puffed-up insect ready to blast us in the face with a caustic fart if we got any closer. Corpora Thena clearly liked what she saw, swapping whispers with Panagan and Suna while Moria leaned in. I had found Cilyan and Gaelan to stand near them, and Reishel had joined us now redressed in her full uniform. Lead Jaunda stood beside Qivni, appraising the naked recruit with the rest of us; I couldn’t read either of them very well, but I could tell Elder D’Shea wasn’t too impressed. Elder Rausery gauged the Prime more than she did the youth, having already watched her for a while before now.

  Suddenly, the Prime took three long strides into the middle of the room; she was huge in her approach, like a boulder set to crush. The nude cait experienced a whole-body jerk, releasing the tension built up in one bad flinch, but I’d been watching her feet braced wide and her knees bent. Her heels hadn’t moved backward one finger-width. The Eldest Sister noticed, too.

  “Either too stupid or too stubborn to know you’re in slime gut-deep, Aurenthietti,” the Prime said. “Which is it?”

  “Trick question.” Jael’s voice shook badly but she continued to snarl at the cruelest Sister. “I know I’m chin-deep in loose stool. Everyone at my House knows who you are, Red Sister Prime. Doesn’t mean I shrivel like a mushroom spent of its spores now you’ve finally shown yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you already picked my fate by now. Begging and whimpering won’t change that, it never has. So just move the fuck on with it, I’m getting bored.”

  The Prime struck her so fast I didn’t see exactly where it landed, only that it threw Jael to the floor in one strike. The old female kneeled and took hold of her throat, jerking to get her attention. Jael gave it to her, baring her teeth even as she struggled for breath. The Prime was smiling in a way she hadn’t at my trial; she had seemed so bored then.

  “I hear you don’t like Sathoet,” the eldest rumbled.

  “N-none of us do,” the youngest wheezed.

  “Sorry I missed that show. First violation can never be repeated. Still, I relish the look on their faces. How about a repeat performance, just for me, recruit?”

  That needle pierced right through the youth’s armor; her bright copper eyes widened, and she jerked her head in refusal, denial. The Prime exhaled, her grin wholly malevolent.

  “Beautiful. D’Shea? Go suck your Priestess, or whatever you need to do to make sure I have a room in the Sanctuary in under a mark. Call Tachnathon as well.”

  “Yes, Prime.”

  “Rausery, pick five to go with us. The rest are gonna wait and see how this ends.”

  “And then?” the Elder prodded her, calmly curious as she signed to Qivni and Jaunda then scanned the rest of us, looking for specific Sisters.

  “Then she gets the real test of wits. We’ll see if she has any.”

  A few Sisters were disappointed when they weren’t chosen, I noticed, although most didn’t show an opinion. I
wasn’t selected, either, and felt frustrated—more waiting— coupled with that same trickle of dread now mirrored in Jael’s face. I wasn’t certain whether she had seized on the fact that the Prime had called her a recruit or not; I wasn’t certain if she realized the same thing I had by this point.

  That she would return a Red Sister or not at all.

  Survive, little scrapper. It’s all you can do.

  The young Aurenthin blurted a frightened roar when the five chosen—Leads Qivni and Jaunda, Lunent Agalia, the healer-Lunent Nyllel, and Jaunda’s Corpora Kiren— picked her up and bound her. The chosen Red Sisters then left with the Prime and Elders without delay, Jael’s vociferous struggles fading from our hearing. The rest of us were left with orders to follow-up on our current assignments and continue the endless list of tasks and maintenance chores.

  I slipped away to avoid those chores. I’d been doing mostly that for nearly quad-span now and was careful not to catch Corpora Cilyan’s eyes as I left Gaelan and Reishel to their own. Heading back to my tiny quarters for a few supplies, I knew I would leave the Cloister and go… somewhere.

  I considered returning to the Wizard’s Tower to visit Callitro again, but my Elder was abruptly and deeply engaged in delicate politics once again, and I didn’t have a Sister-made infertility tonic to satisfy Phaelous, so I opted to avoid earning that displeasure on all sides.

  I’m not that stupid or stubborn.

  Yet it was a waste to just sit. D’Shea had approved of my initiative with Auslan and in slipping into the Collection of Jael; she was pleased in a way she hadn’t been when I’d failed to explore anything outside my given objective at my former House Thalluen. My Elder had offered me a boon just now, in exchange for allowing her to manipulate the psionic wounds between Reishel and me to somehow speed her healing with the arcane. I still didn’t understand how that was possible, even for a Sorceress, but couldn’t deny the results.

  I also didn’t know if Reishel knew I’d been eavesdropping on her own harsh test with the Prime. I didn’t know if D’Shea knew. I hadn’t asked, because I hadn’t wanted to. I had become aware in such a strange way, floating barely tethered, feeling as if I had just traveled time itself, only to find I had been sleep-fucking my critically wounded Sister for who knew how long?

  Maybe what I saw wasn’t even what happened. Perhaps it was just a dream in Reverie.

  I left the Cloister and returned to House Itlaun. In no hurry, I drifted carefully around the plantation for some time. It was my Elder’s most vague mission still outstanding, watching this Matron, this set of Daughters, and this Consort. I had learned patterns, become familiar with schedules and faces. The only thing I hadn’t done was what I’d been told to avoid.

  Letting them see me.

  I had been a Red Sister for almost a full turn now. Not long relative to others, but I’d just aided to bring a vulnerable Sister back into the fold and had witnessed the selection and initial testing of another. I was no longer dangling free and without foothold at the bottom of the line. D’Shea showed me secrets; already I learned to circumvent the Prime’s precise orders with something that worked better for D’Shea. I had survived to become a Red Sister, and I was deep into the muck of it now. I’d never get out, no matter if I ever wanted to.

  I wished to know how others saw me. If I was still pretending, if it showed. I wanted my own test, and if it displeased my Elder, I could make it my reward to avoid punishment. And I’d know better. If not?

  I’ll ask for something else.

  House Itlaun had a garden with secret places deeper within clustered growth which I had to think were included deliberately. It was not easy to find a spot that few household servants visited at least once in a cycle; nearly all of these places visited unveiled either trades or trysts but few actual plots; all were short-term, materialistic, and the immediate satisfaction of some flash of want. I had decided that the servants here were content here, as they were at my Mother’s House, and this was how they played, whether they believed they were unobserved or not. There was a certain wisdom to the Matron allowing “secret” bargaining in a controlled area. Even pets needed to scratch their itches and groom their nests to keep them healthy and clean.

  I thought about Auslan, Callitro, and other males here and there as I waited through the cycle before my target came into the garden alone. The Consort was just inside the plantation’s residence and I’d even glimpsed him once through a partly-covered window. He was the reason I hadn’t gone inside to reveal myself to another.

  Because going inside is exactly what I want to do.

  I couldn’t dream too much about the males, though; my body responded to pure sound and I held still when I saw Curgia enter at last. Without pause she sought one of the back clusters to duck down. My ears detected the working of a small mechanism, and I didn’t think it was the lock of a secret door or a hatch. I was already moving, concerned I’d somehow lose track of her, when I heard her gasp in pain just before she dropped something on the soft ground.

  I slipped into position so that I could see her form in the dark, swirls of her life’s heat helping her stand out from the ever-present Radiants. She was hunched over, her knees spread wide beneath a plainer gown bunched around her mid-thighs. The skirt was too generous for me to be able to see any tell-tale bump in her abdomen. Something cylindrical was lying in the dirt. She cursed Braqth and one Priestess in particular, a blasphemy very close to one I’d used in the wilderness with insatiable rut-hunger eating at me. I heard the despair in her voice, saw her punch at her own gut—more frustration, as it was not nearly hard enough to cause any real damage.

  She was not handling her condition well, then. This seemed a good time.

  I tested myself in how close I could get to her, slipping from the foliage to crouch near to her, my fingers threaded together and my stance one of a predator considering whether to pounce or not. My cloak and cowl broke up my outline, hid much of my own energy, and only someone looking directly at me would make out my face. My expression was placid, observing and neutral.

  When Curgia sniffed and picked up the tool again, trying without success to flick the dirt and grit from it, she sat down on one hip. I could see half of her miserable face when she shifted just enough to catch me in her periphery. She reacted quickly, turning her head and wrenching herself around to see who or what was beside her.

  Wide eyes, the searing flash of the flight response choked in its progress and she was paralyzed as if a Drider had bitten her. I could smell the sour pulse of fear and wondered whether she would lose her bladder as well.

  So, this was how Nobles saw me.

  “Y-you heard me, didn’t you?” she whispered, her hand partially obscuring her mouth.

  “Perhaps.” I gestured to the tool in her hand. “What ill-begotten Ketro made that? And do you mean to jam it up your slit? Not for pleasure, I’d think, unless you enjoy uncontrolled bleeding in solitude.”

  Curgia’s face paled, turned greyer. “I-I…”

  “You’re too far along, I think,” I said. “You’d need a brewer’s help, at the least.”

  She glanced at the cylinder as if having to recall why she’d brought it, then she swallowed. I could see her body quivering. “A-are you here to kill me?”

  I tilted my head at her tone. “Do you want me to?”

  She gripped the womb-scraper tighter in her hand and tendons stood out on her neck. She shook her head uncertainly before she hesitated again.

  “Is that a yes or no?”

  She opened her mouth, but no sound came out; it was possible she didn’t really know. For certain she couldn’t think well enough to answer me.

  “Have you thought whether the Priestess wants the demonblood in your belly?” I asked.

  In revealing that I knew her secret, I had to give her time to get over her shock. This was the first time she had ever spoken to me, but I had already watched her for a very long time, starting when she kneele
d prostrate before a Priestess and was mounted by her half-blood son.

  I cut her off with a gesture when she started, “How did you—?”

  She obeyed and bit off the question I wasn’t going to answer.

  “Well?” I asked again.

  Curgia blinked and took too long to answer for anyone I’d consider reliably useful, but at least she did answer simply. “No, Red Sister. I hadn’t thought that. She…just wanted to clog up my womb with this…thing. So that I couldn’t be blessed by the Consort before my sister.”

  “That’s all she wanted, hm? Well then, what next? Sooner or later, you’ll have to drop ‘the thing’.”

  Curgia shook her head; she had no idea. Astonishingly, she hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “Here’s a question,” I said with a smirk. “Have you noticed any Nobles raising mixed bloods sired by Sathoet?”

  The Noble stared at me. “I… I haven’t been to other Houses much… only a few times at Court.”

  “That should be enough.”

  “They’re…not common?”

  Close enough.

  “She also told you something important,” I prompted, handing her the figurative spider’s egg sac. “Her opinion about her demon’s son compared to the Royal Consorts.”

  Curgia stared at me with muddled horror. “You were watching.”

  I just smiled.

  She shuddered after a moment and shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean, Red Sister.”

  I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “I mean, either the Priestess will take the Sathoet child—her grandchild—once it’s born, or she will end the pregnancy herself. Those are her choices, Curgia, and not yours. She won’t leave it with you regardless, she’s just letting you suffer in silence so you’ll be malleable when you see her again.”

  This had clearly never occurred to the pregnant Davrin, and it was difficult for me to understand why not. However, I could see her mind working as every Davrin’s did eventually.

  “A gift from the Abyss, half divine, through her, she said,” Curgia whispered, and I nodded when she looked up at me. “It’s magical, this… baby is.”