The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Four by Parks Richard & Lee Yoon Ha & Ronald Margaret

Author:Parks, Richard & Lee, Yoon Ha & Ronald, Margaret [Parks, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Firkin Press
Published: 2013-09-10T05:00:00+00:00

He frowned. “Are you illegitimate?”

“No!” Why would he think that? Because I didn’t bear my father’s name. I kept forgetting how different the Niyazi were from us. “My brother inherits. . .”—Kekeri—”. . .my father; and I, my mother.” Our parents decided this between them, before we were born. The firstborn would inherit Penareh, because my father used to honor my mother above all people. “My parents are estranged.”

“Curious,” he said, “how Myna never bothered me with these details. Women, huh.” He handed the goblet back to his man and nodded to me. “Well then, let’s see your wares, Vendelin Penareh.”

I motioned Taemin forth. He was pale and visibly trembling, but I would worry about him later. At a nod from me he went on one knee, and swung open the lid, which I had unlocked earlier. I extended my power and tipped a finger into the box, and immediately a golden gecko ran up to my elbow. I approached the birdcage throne and swung my arm out. The lizard ran down my arm onto my fingers and over to the Shahniyaz. It settled around his wrist, glittering gold like a tiny-toothed bracelet.

“Huh,” was all he said.

“As we at Penareh are both artificers and traders, I come to trade with you in these my own designs,” I explained. “I constructed many of the geckos with my own hands, under my mother’s tutelage. They are singularly effective against the swarming desert locust.”

“Huh,” he said again, and took my hand. The gecko ran back to me, but the Shah didn’t yet release me. His slightly oily fingers rubbed mine. I didn’t take my hand away. So diplomatic. My mother’s daughter. I felt no anger yet, but it was a close thing, building under the surface of my skin.

He smiled then, eyes bottomless with slow-maturing hunger. “Effective against locusts. Most useful. . . for peasants? Yes, very sweet, Vendelin. Oh, but I am sure you can do so much better, especially with your heirship resting upon this, as you say. Make me a locust.”

I drew my hand back, and he touched his fingers to his lips. I held myself in check, barely. “A locust?”

“Yes,” he hissed, “a locust that obeys commands. A locust that will come among other locusts, and make them swarm, at my command, wherever I desire. Yes? There you’ll have something worthy of the Raker. Or is that beyond you, girl?”

“No,” I snarled, “It is not beyond me.” My sweet-clawed baby Bird! I couldn’t very well refuse his challenge, and yet, and yet—

“Then return here in three days.”

I shook the lizard back into the box, threw shut the lid, and stormed out without as much as a bow. I felt his eyes on my back as I walked, and I knew, I just knew, that he smiled.

~ ~ ~

On the way back to the hostel, in the carriage, Taem sat shivering opposite me. The iron box crushed his thighs and knees, but he hugged it tightly to his body, although it would be safer and easier to plunk it on the floor.

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