A servant appeared. Djimbi. He kept his eyes upon the floor. I guessed him to be older than me by several years; I wondered if he had a claimed woman and children. Won dered if he was considered a spinning spider by Jotan and her ilk.
Jotan rose, went to a desk, dipped quill in ink, and scratched the quill over parchment. She blew the wet ink dry with a fan of white feathers, then rolled the parchment, slotted it into a bamboo casing as slim and short as a fresh shoot of sugarcane, and melted emerald wax over the cork bung. She stamped it with a seal, then refreshed her quill in ink and wrote two more missives, which she likewise sealed in bamboo and cork. She handed all three to the servant, who had waited with eyes cast to the floor the entire time.
“Wake the heralds Suip and Domsti,” she ordered. “Suip is to deliver this scroll to House S’twe and place it in the hands of Bayen Hacros S’twe himself. He’s to carry Bayen Hacros S’twe’s response back to me this evening. If S’twe needs him to wait several hours in his byre before a re sponse can be given, Suip is to wait. Understood?”
“Yes, Lady Bri.”
“Herald Domsti takes
this
scroll to House Etaan. He’s to return here and fly at dawn to Clutch Swensi and deliver this last scroll to Bayen Hacros Bri. Three scrolls, each to a separate person. Send the wrong scroll with the wrong herald to the wrong house and I’ll have you castrated. Un derstood?”
“Yes, Lady Bri.”
“Go then.”
The servant backed out of the library. Jotan remained standing by the door and faced me and the dragonmaster. “I’d suggest that you both retire now. I’m sure you’ve had a long day. I know mine hasn’t yet ended.”
“Are you mad?” the dragonmaster cried from where he’d been pacing back and forth before the fireplace. “We’ve more to discuss than this!”
“Not tonight we don’t.”
“Where’re the men of this house? I demand to speak with them.”
She smoothly continued to talk through his spitting pro testations, though I saw her stiffen. “Tomorrow etiquette dictates that you meet my mother, Zarq. Dragonmaster Re need not accompany us. Mother knows who you are.”
Which meant that her mother knew, in all its appalling detail, of what had befallen Jotan during Jotan’s imprison ment. I thought a mother ought to be spared such things. Then again, maybe not all mothers knew obsession and passion as intensely as mine had.
I recalled the great white sprawl of the villa we’d landed in, guided by Jotan, some short hours ago. It was huge, this Bri estate; it was nigh on palatial. But it rested at the foot of the Liru Mountain and was not amongst those tiers of palaces and cupolas of Liru itself. The Bris were affluent, yes, but they were not ludu bayen. They were not landed gentry of pure Archipelagic blood.
“Who else lives here besides you and Malaban and your mother?” I asked, ignoring the spluttering dragonmaster. “Aside from your servants.”
Jotan gave a wintry laugh. “We’re a veritable nation unto ourselves, we Bris. I have sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews . . . they all live here. But don’t worry. You’ll remain safe and anonymous. Only my mother need know who you are.”
The dragonmaster stalked across the room and stood before us. We’d been wrong to ignore him; it had whipped him into a rage.
“I want answers!” he cried, yanking the snarled froth of his unraveled goatee braid. “I will
not
be sent off to bed while some saggy-titted via flings heralds hither and yon—”
“Dragonmaster Re,” she said icily, and her venomblooded eyes locked with his, and that was something to see, two venom addicts unafraid of death facing each other in a moment of barely repressed fury. “I am under no obli gation to give you anything you ask for, and I demand that I be treated with the respect I accord you. Is that under stood?”
The dragonmaster was a monkey of a man, enraged and impotent and demented and old. Yet he’d killed so frequently, and so well, that his arms were corded with death; his muscles were lubricated with murder instead of blood; his sinews were fed by slaughter; his bones had grown strong and thick from the crack of skulls beneath his fists. He launched himself at Jotan Bri a second before I launched myself at him.
We became a twelve-limbed beast devouring itself.
The thump of furniture overturning. The thud of flesh pounding flesh. Grunts, panting. No shrieks. No curses. Just blood and teeth and fists.
The crack of a brass statuette splitting bone, and the dragonmaster fell to the floor, convulsing, and I cursed and fumbled for a pillow from a divan, leaving a streak of blood upon samite, and shoved the pillow under his head. His eyes rolled. His convulsions stopped. He went limp.
Silence.
“I’ve killed him,” Jotan said flatly. She knelt on the drag onmaster’s other side. The lacing of her gown was open to her navel. A flap of torn flesh hung above a rapidly bruis ing left breast. The dragonmaster’s rotten teeth had mauled their way through the silk of her gown.
The dragonmaster’s chest fell. Remained still. Wouldn’t rise. Couldn’t rise.
But no: Slowly, reluctantly, it rose.
Fell . . . rose.
“He’s alive,” I said, and I dropped onto my rump, shaking.
“We’ll end up like that one day. Deranged by venom,” Jotan said, throwing the brass statuette aside. It thudded against an overturned table. Her eyes met mine. They were feral, alive, and gorgeous. She wanted me. Wanted me there, now.
So help me, Dragon, I wanted her, too.
“Wait,” she said, and she licked her lips, and I froze in the act of coming toward her on my knees.
Jotan rose to her feet. Staggered over scroll casings that had clattered to the floor when backs had slammed repeat edly against wooden floor-to-ceiling hexagonal scroll cells. She reached into one cell and rifled through the bamboo casings that remained within, her arm buried to the elbow.
When she returned to me, I already knew what she held in her fist.
“Where did you get it?” I asked through a bruised and swelling lip, hating her and myself and the rock-crystal vial with its ebon contents that she held in her palm.
She unstoppered the vial.
That scent. It ravished me, and I welcomed the mauling.
Hands trembling, she slowly withdrew the stopper from the belly of the nearly empty vial. The long crystal stalactite of the vial’s stopper came out tipped with venom. Under her trembling hands, the stalactite rattled on the lip of the vial.
“I plan on visiting my supplier tomorrow,” she whispered. “You’ll come with me.”
I nodded. Yes. I’d go with her.
“Open your mouth,” she whispered, and so help me I obeyed, and she slowly ran the tar-streaked stopper over my lips, over my gums, across my tongue.
She did the same to herself as heat blazed in my sinus cavities and my head turned into a ball of fire.
“Part your legs,” she whispered, and again I obeyed, leaning back against a scroll case and lifting my gown to my waist. She dipped the stopper into her vial, then ran the blackened crystal over the gnarled flesh that remained from where a nun had circumcised me, and then she slid the crystal into me.
She did the same to herself while my back arched and I longed to bite her, enter her, become the soul and breast and heart and nerve center of her, as I sobbed and ached for dragonsong.
As I hated myself for once again descending back into venom’s captivity.
“Now,” Jotan croaked, “we will make our own motet.”
And that’s what we did. Deprived of the dragons’ enig matic music, we fucked and moaned and sighed and cried and made our own choral composition on the library floor.
Jotan nodded grimly. Pale and sweat-beaded from ven om’s ebb, she was standing beside the bed the dragonmas ter had been laid in. She’d dressed in a clean gown and had hastily braided and coiled her hair. In the privacy of my room, the two silent serving girls had washed and likewise dressed me in a clean gown, and I knew I looked somewhat respectable, despite my bruises and swollen lip and the late hour.
But clean clothes and liberal doses of attar still couldn’t disguise the scent of venom and sex that lingered around Jotan and I, nor the lingering sourness of bile from me; I’d been violently ill after indulging in venom with Jotan. I was appalled that I’d succumbed, so readily, to the desire for venom. I was in Lireh to spark rebellion, to start a war; I carried knowledge that could overturn centuries of oppres sion; and I’d vowed never to use venom again. No half mea sures. That had been my mantra, my motto, the principal guiding my bold confidence ever since I’d escaped Ghepp’s dungeon.
“I’ve had the urge to crack someone over the head like that ever since the same was done to me,” Jotan said, her voice husky and low. I remembered how she’d been knocked unconscious in prison, just prior to our rescue. Her skull hadn’t staved in like the mildewing shell of a hollowed gourd, though. “I suppose I should be grateful I survived.”
Jotan shrugged, gestured with her chin at the supine dragonmaster. “He could smell the venom on me. That’s why he attacked.”
“The dragonmaster dislikes women,” I murmured. “He’s been losing the fight for his sanity for a long time. That’s why he went wild, nothing else.”
But I knew, even as I said it, that Jotan was right. The scent of venom clinging to Jotan like a supramundane musk had triggered the dragonmaster’s leap over sanity’s edge. What would I be like at his age?
I glanced at the long-faced connate healer. He was busy unpacking items from the trolley of drawers he’d wheeled into the dragonmaster’s room, and he didn’t look at all un settled by being summoned from his bed at middle-night to tend a stranger who had been attacked by two women. By Jotan’s cavalier mien, I guessed the connate healer knew about her illegal habit, too. I wondered how his silence and loyalty had been bought.
I looked back at the waxen husk of the dragonmaster. The pillow behind his head was damp with the ambercolored fluid seeping from his cracked skull. His eyes looked as if they’d been knuckled hard, and his face was peculiarly aslant, as if one half had slid slightly south of the other. He was grotesque and foreign. I found myself thinking of my mother and how she’d looked during her last days of life, her jaw shattered and her nose staved in from a boot heel.
What was I feeling? Supreme indifference? Fear? Re lief? Horror?
No. Something far more familiar: anger.
I was angry that the dragonmaster had attacked Jotan, angry that his attack had provoked such a primal violence within me. Angry that he’d refused to readily succumb to our fists and teeth, and angry that he was in a coma and not likely to survive. Angry that now I’d have no dragonmaster to train my neonate bulls . . .
if
the bulls even came out of the cocoons. Angry at myself for using venom.
My head throbbed and I craved water and darkness and sleep.
The connate healer treated the wound over Jotan’s left breast, where the dragonmaster had torn into her with his rotting teeth. Jotan sat stiffly on the edge of the dragonmas ter’s fine bed, her eyes closed, and she sucked in air, sharply, as the healer stabbed needle through flesh and pulled gut tight to close her wound. I flopped into a chair by the crack ling fire.
And fell asleep.
When Jotan woke me, the healer was gone. My neck was stiff. My mouth felt made of chaff. The fire had long since died in the hearth, and Jotan was dressed in a luxurious rus set bitoo. The bitoo fell in many pleats and folds to the tiled floor, and the hood was equally lavish in cloth.
“We’ll travel anonymously,” Jotan said. Her voice still had that raw, erotic rasp from venom use and prolonged sex. She threw an armful of dove gray byssus at me and it landed with some weight in my lap and spilled about me. “Yours.”
“What hour is it?” I croaked, rising to my feet.
“Well past morning.”
“You should have woken me!”
“Herald Domtri is well on his way to Clutch Swensi to fetch Malaban. No, don’t,” she said with an arch smile as I started to slip out of the gown I was wearing. “That bitoo is an outer garment. You wear it
over
your gown, to protect yourself from inclement weather.”
Flushing at my ignorance, I angrily tugged the slippery fabric over my head. It slid over me and pooled at my feet, soft and cool as snake belly skin against my bare arms.
“Why did your demon not manifest last night to subdue the dragonmaster?” Jotan asked.
I quickly looked up. I’d forgotten that while imprisoned, Jotan had once witnessed the violent power of my mother’s haunt being channeled through my body.
“It’s gone,” I said abruptly. “The haunt’s left me.”
“Why?”
I adjusted the long sleeves of my bitoo to avoid her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Ah.” She didn’t believe my poor lie but didn’t know how my evasion might affect events.
Prompted by her question, I now had a question of my own. “A man known as the Wai Vaneshor of Xxamer Zu visited here not long ago—”
“The rebel Genrabi, yes. A former daronpu.”
“You know him?”
“I told you: Since my imprisonment, I’ve made it a habit to know everything. I’ve trained certain servants to . . . aid me in the gathering of knowledge.”
I nodded slowly. “Gen came here—”
“—with a request that Malaban find an illustrious post for a lordling being ousted from Xxamer Zu, so that the contents of the lordling’s mansion might be used as barter for a destrier from Clutch Diri. An asinine scheme, if I may add, when the sale of slaves would have sufficed.”
Either her spies were thorough, or Malaban shared his information freely with her. Somehow, I suspected the for mer. A merchant tycoon involved in sedition would not be prone to sharing all he knew with a venom addict created and wanted by Temple.
“Do you know where Gen went upon leaving here?” I asked, keeping my face blank, watching her face closely. One who gathers secrets, holds secrets. “He never returned to Xxamer Zu.”
“He never left to return to Xxamer Zu.” Her expression conveyed pleasure at knowing more than I did. “He flew direct to Cuhan.”
“Cuhan?” I reached for the water urn on the table beside me. “Clutch Cuhan?”
“There’s only the one.”
I poured water and cursed my visibly trembling hands. “Did Gen say why?”
“No. Would you like my educated guess?”
I couldn’t even bridle at her tone of relish. I nodded and swigged down mint-laced water.
Jotan’s eyes glittered. “On the day Genrabi departed, the city was abuzz with the news that Lupini Re had flown his Djimbi Wai-ebani into Liru for safety reasons, then ap propriated Clutch Cuhan for himself, on the grounds that Cuhan was harboring you, the dragonwhore, on the Cuhan estate. People love to hate you, Zarq. It’s the one thing bayen and ikap-fen and Temple are united about: They all call for your death.”
I sipped more water and forced my hands steady. One phrase in particular that Jotan had just uttered was making it supremely hard for me to focus on everything else she was saying:
Lupini Re had flown his Djimbi Wai-ebani into Liru for safety reasons
. My sister, Waivia, had recently been in Liru. Could be here still. Unaware of my distraction, Jotan continued. “While the reports flying from Clutch Cuhan didn’t unequivocally state that you’d been captured, there
was
frequent mention of a Skykeeper. A Skykeeper! It was said that Lupini Re had summoned it for his holy mission to Cuhan. Genrabi flew to Cuhan to confirm the sight ings himself. He’d many times called
you
the Skykeeper’s Daughter in conversation with Malaban; he was alarmed, I think, to learn that a Skykeeper was aiding Lupini Re in a quest to find and kill the Skykeeper’s Daughter.”
How much did Jotan guess? How much did she know?
“And Gen’s not been seen nor heard from since,” I said hoarsely.
She nodded, her venom-blooded eyes devouring me.
“Did Kratt . . .” My throat was too dry for words. I sipped more water. “Did Kratt imprison him?”
“From what little I know of the man, I believe Genrabi had more wit than to announce his presence to Kratt in Cu han. I’ve heard the Clutch was in a state of chaos, with her alds and Temple soldiers and Kratt’s crusaders all thick in the air upon escoa and destrier. Perhaps Genrabi slipped in under cover of the confusion. He seems adept at disguise.”
Very adept.
Again, I sipped more water before attempting to ask my next question. “This Djimbi Wai-ebani that Kratt flew to Liru . . . would you happen to know if she’s pregnant?”
“As of two days ago, she is not. She gave birth to a bawl ing boy, delivered, I may add, by the same midwife one of my sisters uses.”
I almost dropped my glass. “Kratt’s ebani is still in Liru?”
Jotan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes. Why?”
“I . . . Do you know where?”
“I told you, I make it my business to stay well in formed.”
“Can you . . .” My heart was thudding so hard I could scarce speak. “Can you arrange a meeting between her and me?”
Jotan’s eyes widened. “I fail to see why you’d wish to declare your presence to the Wai-ebani of the man who’s mad-bent on seeing you dead.”
I took a chance. “We’re half sisters.”
Astonishment parted Jotan’s lips; then her face turned hard with spiteful glee. “How interesting life can be! Are others aware of this?”
“Kratt may know it by now. I’m asking for your trust and discretion that no one else learns of it.”
“I see. Well. How very interesting indeed.” Her eyes were dancing. “And you trust that your half sister won’t deliver you direct to Kratt?”
“She won’t.” I said it without hesitation or doubt. If Waivia had the desire to deliver me to Kratt, she would have done so, using the might of the haunt, long before now.
“So it’s to be just a brief visit of an auntie to see her new nephew?”
“Something like that,” I said tightly. “Can you arrange it or not? Don’t toy with me, Jotan.”
She grinned, blinked basilisk eyes. “Consider it done. Would the morrow suit you for the visit? I know you’re in a hurry to return to Xxamer Zu.”
I nodded curtly and thanked her with as much grace as I could manage.
Jotan studied me a moment, head cocked to one side, then took a step toward me. “Zarq. You realize I have a problem.”
She wasn’t talking about her addiction.
“Here you arrive, a wanted woman hated by all. And you tell me you know how to breed bulls in captivity. You tell me you and a group of rishi have seized control of Xxamer Zu, a fuck-useless Clutch on the edge of nowhere that the insipid brother of Lupini Re recently won governorship of, because of a wager backed by my brother in Arena.”
I set the glass down. Carefully.
“You ask for money,” Jotan continued. “Arms. Protec tion. You want the Emperor’s ships sunk, and help orches trating attacks on other Clutches so that you can steal their bulls. You bring an insane old man who attacks me. You tell me your demon has abandoned you, for reasons unclear. But there’s one thing you don’t tell me. You don’t tell me how you plan on breeding bulls.”
I thought of the letters she’d written last night and won dered what, exactly, she’d written on them. Or if she’d even sent them.
I faced her squarely. “Am I a guest here or a prisoner?”
Her nostrils flared. “A guest.”
“Until Malaban arrives and decides what to do with me.”
“I don’t need my brother’s direction to make decisions,” she said acidly.
“What do you want from me, then? I can’t produce any bulls for you as proof; I need time for that—not much, just a little—and I need your help and the help of the people you know to buy me that time.”
“I don’t want to be made a fool of, Zarq. Understand? I don’t want to be made a fool of.”
It all came clear.
She knew what venom did to a person. The dragonmas ter was a promise of the dementia that overcame all venom addicts. And Jotan was a venom addict. When she looked at him, she saw her own future, and it was that which she was fighting, not me. With her fierce belief in her superiority in the social hierarchy, with her intelligence and wit—she who had once been an instructor at the capital’s institute for higher learning—she was terrified of losing her mind, her status, and the respect of others. Since her rescue from Temple’s jail, her life had been reduced to the walls of the Bri villa; all she had left to her was her circle of spies, her quest for knowledge, her sense of superiority. If she were to be dismissed as a raving addict, she would lose all that. Venom would be the only thing remaining to her.
“What I tell you is truth,” I said firmly. “I own a Clutch and I know the secret to breeding bulls.”
Both half-truths.
“I won’t end up back in Temple’s jail,” she said fiercely. “And I won’t wind up a guest in Kratt’s play chamber again.”
So Kratt
had
romped in the fields of algolagnia with Jotan after stealing her and me from Temple’s prison. I’d been convinced his intelligence would have overpowered his brutal urge to torture for pleasure. I’d been wrong.
“It won’t happen again,” I said.
She pointed at the dragonmaster. “I won’t hesitate at do ing that to you, if it comes to it. Understand?”
I nodded. I understood, all right: I had no dragonmaster, no allies save a ragged group of savage rebels, no clue as to what crucial detail I’d overlooked during the black rite performed upon me by Longstride’s tribe, and Daronpu Gen—my once stalwart supporter—had correctly sus pected I was not the Skykeeper’s Daughter. To round it off, the woman under whose roof I was now abiding had just threatened to kill me, should she be so provoked.
Yes. I understood my situation perfectly.