River’s End ch 61: Such Sizable Lies

Grr thought the transport carried Veloi-nas, a sapient race of rodents from a very distant world. The males weren’t so bad. At least they weren’t venomous, but the chances of encountering a male in a raiding party were next to nil. While no larger than my foot, a Veloi-na raider took whatever she wanted and felt no guilt for killing a silly primate.

As Grr rushed off to sound the alarm, I wished it was Veloi-nas. Instead, once the ship maneuvered close enough to the shore, the doors folded back to reveal a company garbed in the interlocking armor of soldiers from the River’s End.

They were Rablah-nas stolen from this world and turned into warriors. Had they been lured away by Alaysq’s sweet promises to deliver where half-Lily had failed? Did they truly want Grenswa?

By the time their boots touched the sand, a crowd had gathered around me. Grr had returned to my side along with Pol. I should have run and hid, but I couldn’t move, and the one in the lead, the shortest, would have found me anyway.

Red braids flowed out of a notch in his new helmet and waved in the stiff breeze as he told the Silver Crumb he came for me and nothing else. He made it sound like a rescue, but I did not accept the hand he offered, and Pol was discerning. He stepped between us, and Grr followed his lead. Their backs formed a wall, concealing Ishiyae from my sight, but I still felt his gaze.

“Rose, get on the shuttle.”

What options did I have? Flee. Where to? I wouldn’t get far. Fight? I had broken his helmet once, and now I had a mob to battle at my side. Yet, I had witnessed Ishiyae destroy Rablah-na opponents, and he did it in my ungainly body. As himself, he could best this whole city.

He stepped closer with an order for my shields to move away, but they stood their ground. Teeth visible, Grr said I did not have to go with this trespasser if I did not wish it. They were loyal to me as goddess-kin. They would protect me with their full power.

“As goddess-kin?” With a muted chuckle, Ishiyae pulled off his helmet.

Pol gasped and stumbled back a step.

The molten color of Ishiyae’s hair glowed in the aurora light, flowing from a thick, high tail and over either shoulder. There was no longer a possibility of it being simply a decorative part of his armor. His eyes, one amethyst and one glazed paler, raked the crowd before landing on me.

Pol’s voice shook. “Have you shapes like Kel and colors like Asafrán.”

Ishiyae’s eyes did not leave me. “Were Kel and Asafrán parents to me. Was Lily sister to me.”

Pol dropped his forehead to the ground, and most of the crowd did likewise. Grr remained standing, but his knees and tail quivered, and instead of being between us, he was the peak of an obtuse triangle, gaze flicking from one end to the other.

Ishiyae grinned. “If you’re related to Lily at all, goddess-kin, it’s a distant relation.”

Now I didn’t even have the crowd to fight for me. I still couldn’t hide from or outrun him. Even if I refused to move, he would carry me. Unless…

“Did you know that if a vedia touches their bonded royal, they will be drained to the brink of death?” Within our shared mindspace, I added, ‘Or do you think you’ll be spared if you pretend our bond does not exist?’

Mismatched eyes narrowed and arms crossed, he tilted his head. “Does it hurt to pull such sizable lies out of your butt?”

“If you don’t believe me, ask Alaysq.”

With as much as he hated her, I doubted he would, but to my surprise, Alaysq’s voice echoed like thunder in the mountains. ‘She speaks truth, Ishi. Do not risk touching her, skin to skin, or you will be as you were when she kept you in control of her limbs.’

He grimaced, and I blinked.

This time, her words came to me alone, soft as the hiss of fog slithering through the grass. ‘This is an amusing game you two play. Now it is Ishi’s move.’

Within the space of another blink, a shooter occupied his hand, and before I could think of moving, it fired. Grr fell. Orange streamed from his thigh. He hissed, wined, and growled as I and several others packed around him, trying to stop the bleeding. The wound was large, his face quickly losing all color.

As we ripped fabric for bandages and applied pressure, Ishiyae’s presence nudged at me. Why had he done this? Grr had done nothing to him. How could he stand there motionless, watching his victim bleed out?

I wanted to say Ishiyae cared. I searched for remorse or guilt and found nothing. Indifference was a blanket wrapped around me so tight, it melted into me and formed a second skin.

My hands slowed. This Rablah-na boy was insignificant to the universe. He would die sooner or later. Did it matter when?

I squirmed. Grr’s life absolutely mattered. He had saved me. If he hadn’t existed, things would have turned out differently. Even if he didn’t matter to the universe, he mattered to me, and wasn’t that enough?

This wasn’t my apathy, it was Ishiyae’s, and if he could influence me, I should have been able to influence him.

Retreating from Grr and those who could do more to help him, I stood and faced my foe, pouring all my feelings into one word. “Why?”

His brows lifted. “Get on the shuttle or look back and give me my next target.”

“These are people, Ishiyae. In some sense, your family.”

“I don’t remember my family.” He said it so casually, even the warm wind felt like ice against my prickling shoulders.

The shooter rose again, fired, and this time Pol lay on the ground, a gaping hole in his chest.

Screaming, I charged at Ishiyae, both hands in front of me, unsure if I meant to grab or punch him. He avoided me, and the shooter lifted once more.

“Stop! I’ll go with you,” I cried, face wet and sticky with tears. My fists clenched. “I’m getting in the shuttle. Just stop this. I know you’re better than this.”

He had to be. He was Fredo’s family, his brother, his twin.

He swiveled toward me, weapon returned to his side but still unholstered. “You don’t know me at all.”

“We share a portion of our minds. I only wish I didn’t know you,” I hissed as my socked toes met the chilled metal tiles of the transport’s entryway.

“Pretend I’m good if it makes you feel better.” Ishiyae was right behind me. “I killed your mother. I killed the ruler of Seallaii, and I was just a toddler.” The words rang in the close quarters, and beneath them, within us, I heard other lines.

You will destroy Seallaii and change the universe. The tyranny of River will end.

I halted, and he glided around me to avoid a collision.

How would a toddler kill the ruler of the most powerful planet in the universe? I knew he had been there when she died. In his and Fredo’s dreams, I watched as my mother fell with Fredo in her arms. I assumed that fall killed her, but what did that have to do with Ishiyae? How did the fire start, and why were they there?

Half-Lily had wanted to destroy Seallaii, too, and this was Lily’s brother.

As I turned toward the hatch, Rablah’s fire-lit sky was replaced with white metal.

My hand tangled in the silver rings over my stiff shirt. I couldn’t breathe. “Ishiyae, why are you with the River’s End? Do you believe in their cause?”

He heard me. I felt that, but he did not answer. Instead, he gave orders to the armored Rablah-nas as they took their positions in the transport’s deeper rooms, leaving me standing alone in front of the closed door.

I pressed my forehead against it. ‘Alaysq, please give me answers.’

‘Poor girl.’ Her ethereal arms wrapped me in a tight embrace. ‘When the time is right, Ishi will bare his soul to you.’

The side of my fist hit the door. ‘I don’t want him to bare his soul.’

Why would I want to see the rotten thing I was now connected to, shriveled and viscous, a natural cruelty fed by the suffering of others?

My hand flattened against the cold metal and slowly slid down. ‘I just want to know he’s not evil.’

‘Tears on your cheeks are embers on his.’ She wiped my eyes, but she could only touch what was in my mind. My real tears continued to overflow. They glittered against the door’s white matte. ‘Your anguish hurts him twice as much. Look at him.’

I had to turn to do that, shoulders against the door now as I blinked the inner room into focus. He stood at the ship’s helm, fingers toying with hovering holograms. Menus filled with tiny text flickered at each subtle movement, warning of conditions outside as he piloted the craft. A sour grimace sat on his face, and he blinked too frequently. His breaths were shallow and quick, though when he addressed his underlings, nothing but authority rode in his voice.

‘He is supposed to crave your happiness, yet he does not trust you, and how can he when you do not trust him? You are a knife in his chest, my precious.’

I scowled. ‘I still don’t appreciate you calling me that.’

‘But you are precious to me.’ Her tone carried a pang that hooked into my heart, a tiny, curved needle. I didn’t care about her feelings. So, why did it hurt?

I threw her analogy back at her. ‘You so value a knife in your chest?’

‘You are what I need.’

‘So, I’m precious like a comb when your hair is tangled.’

She clucked, vaporous arms coiling tighter around me. They didn’t feel as incorporeal as before. ‘My attachment to you has deeper reasons beyond that.’

‘It’s time you explained those reasons. Do you share the goal of that ship you’re on? Why do you want to destroy your own homeworld?’

She sighed, but her arms didn’t loosen. ‘I do not necessarily want Seallaii destroyed, but I do not care if it is. Su’s plots are entertaining, so I support him.’

Something in how she worded that prodded at me, and I straightened, shoulders leaving the door. She had borne a child to the ruler of the River’s End, a concept that still twisted my gut, but she could have done it for love. For such silly attachment, she could have sided against her own people.

I could understand that. Even with the vague, confusing things I felt for Hent, given time and the right conditions, I could see myself doing something similar.

But that wasn’t what she said.

‘Do you know what happens when a vedia dies?’

The shift in topic hit me like a hurricane’s gust and drew my attention back to Ishiyae, my vedia, even if neither of us wanted this bond. He had almost died when he controlled my body to save me from that hungry mob. Within our mindscape, he had become an empty, motionless shell, stars fading.

Stars. Just like when Fredo moved me a few hours before. Did those stars have something to do with the bond? If he had died, would they have turned into something like a supernova within me?

‘Those stars are how your mind interprets the Lorsknu.’

‘Wait, there are Lorsknu within vedia?’ My eyelids fluttered as if trying to refresh the scene, hoping one of these times the pieces would fit in place.

‘Lorsknu dwell within royals capable of forming a bond and apparently within keilan. A vedia is a shell like a shirt or a sock. The core of your Lorsknu remain in you, but their limbs wear the members of your entourage.’

‘That’s how distance makes no difference.’ Some overly righteous part of myself was aghast. Were the Lorsknu using us, or us them? Why had no one told me this? How had I not figured it out? It made so much sense. ‘Space as we perceive it is different for them. Communicating with my vedia would be like communicating with my own hand.’

When I had believed Fredo dead, it felt like I lost a limb.

Alaysq’s ghostly fog formed a wan smile. ‘The Lorsknu are energy, and that is what they understand. When a limb is lost, they devour it to heal the wound. When the core is in danger, it takes all it needs from the limbs, but if the core’s shell dies, nothing the entourage has will be enough. The Lorsknu will take it all.’

‘If a royal dies, so do all in their entourage,’ I whispered, spine sliding along the door. ‘But you somehow survived that.’

Her hold slackened, and an odd sensation shivered through me. I didn’t see what she saw, but I felt her gaze run along her prosthetic arm. I had never accepted a proper bond with her, so how was that possible?

‘The Lorsknu had begun to consume me, but these Shlykrii-nas stopped them. They left me as empty within as I was without, everything I loved, lost. My child—’ She swallowed, and again I felt it as if it were my own throat tight with grief. ‘I am broken, incapable of love. It fit that I be the mate of the highest-ranked of the Shlykrii-nas, nothing more. All these years, the only thing I have wanted from Seallaii is you.’

‘To refill the void where the Lorsknu were.’ My eyebrows bunched together. ‘But I won’t.’

‘Have you any idea how much that vacuum ached? Now it is finally gone, and your anger or hate are nothing compared to it.’

Dread coated my tongue and made it slow, imprecise. I could barely form the thought. ‘How?’

‘Whenever we were close, your Lorsknu reached out to prod my emptiness, and I welcomed them, but your mistrust kept them from staying. I needed that connection to save Ishi when you drained him, and with that, I found a backdoor. Once I discovered that, there was only so long he could hold out.’

‘You bonded with me through Ishiyae?’ Again, my focus flew to him. This time, he returned the look. ‘Can he overhear us?’

Alaysq shrugged. ‘No more than a shoulder understands orders given to a thumb.’

Yet, he looked at me like he knew everything we had said. I should have expected that. How many times had he interrupted my private thoughts? He was the closest one to me in this bond, even closer than Fredo, much as that irked me.

His hands still directed the ship, but his eyes were locked on mine.

‘What did Alaysq do to you?’

His lip curled in a snarl, revealing his deformed tooth—not deformed for a Shlykrii-na. It revealed where his loyalty lay.

I averted my gaze, but he continued to stare.

***

When the hatch reopened, walls of faint purple greeted me, and a crew of Shlykrii-nas swarmed around our transport, inspecting it for damage.

I refused to step out into the belly of the River’s End, partly because I feared any attempt to walk in this weaker gravity would launch me through the roof. Mostly though, I didn’t want to cooperate with Ishiyae.

“There’s no longer an innocent village for you to threaten me with,” I told him.

He released a long breath. “Your idiocy is exhausting.”

He had the Rablah-nas carry me, and they wouldn’t let go no matter how I squirmed, kicked, slapped, or clawed.

“Let me down. I can walk.”

He shook his head, red braids trailing as if floating in water. “You’ll try to take off the moment they do.”

Held sideways beneath a Rablah-na’s arm, I narrowed my eyes on his back and hoped he felt it like a dagger between his ribs. ‘I hate that you’re in my mind.’

He paused by a slender door, and it swished aside, revealing a long, cramped corridor. At his gesture, my ride set me down within the frame and backed away. My gaze cut to Ishiyae leaning against the wall to my left, then to his henchmen standing attentively behind him, and finally to the open hallway on my right.

I darted that way, but Ishiyae’s arm appeared across my path and shoved me deep into the tight corridor. Before I found my footing, his hand tangled in my hair and pinned me against the wall.

Like wildfire, Alaysq’s anger tore through my skull. ‘You are supposed to bring her to my room.’

Surely it was just as loud for him, but where I curled in, palms over my ears, his wince barely creased the corners of his eyes.

‘I’m not a pet that plays fetch.’

‘Then stay, and I will come for her.’

‘Too bad the ship doesn’t listen to you.’ His free hand brushed the wall on the other side of my head, and he murmured two words aloud in Menyaze. “{Door lock.}”

Behind him, it slid closed with a note of finality. With bated breath, I waited for Alaysq’s response, but it never came. Even her ardor vanished, her mountains in my mind dark as if seen through a tinted window.

Ishiyae’s grip tightened in my hair. “This contact at least doesn’t seem to drain me.”

Doubt dripped in him, slow and nearly solid like curing sap. Fear still kept his touch from my skin, yet some reckless portion of his soul dared him to cup my cheek and see what happened. A whole parade of emotions flitted between us, most too swift for me to identify, but they were all either his, mine, or some blend of ours.

“You can block Alaysq,” I whispered.

He nodded. “I outrank her somehow in the bond.”

Did he truly not listen in earlier then? Did he not know Alaysq was connected to me only through him?

Face tilted and wearing a smirk, he looked so very much like Fredo—same high cheekbones, full lips, strong chin. His right eye held the same amethyst gleam. Short threads of red escaped from his braids, too, and hung over his brow and temples. He posed with the unnatural stillness Fredo often did. Debate still raged within him whether to touch me or not.

I cleared my throat. “You’re protecting me from her, not just in our minds, but by bringing me here.”

He chewed on the inside of his lip. “Alaysq never only wants part of someone.”

“And you?” I lifted my hand, ready to grab his exposed wrist. Could I really drain him if I wanted? I had to make him hurt so he would believe my lie. “Will you tell me what you want?”

“Su is king because he is Caste One. By that merit, I could rule.” His smirk flattened, and his gaze dropped to my rising hand. “Even more than him, I would deserve a Caste Zero mate.” His fingers hovered level with mine.

“Touch me, and you die.” I needed to have the venom of a scyuen, but instead, I squeaked like a geunda. Like them, I should have thrown something at him, too.

“Not right away, apparently. I could learn to work around that.” He hovered closer, cheek nearly touching mine as he whispered in my ear, “Crave it, even.”

This masochist was really asking for it, but as my hand curled into a fist, the supposedly locked door rushed open, and Togdy announced, “[This is awkward.]”

Awkward was a mild term for it. My cheeks were on fire.

As if recoiling from these flames, Ishiyae was instantly an arm’s length away from me, hand swiping the opposite wall as he gave the ship another command. “{Don’t open locked doors for Togdy anymore.}”

“[Hey!]” the Dossie barked, jumping at his back. “[It’s not Togdy’s fault. Put up a sign next time.]”

He was an orange blob behind the blur of my tears as I sunk to the floor. Crying some garbled version of his name, I threw my arms around him.

“[Yes, yes, Togdy is happy to see you, too, and all that, but you reek.]” He wriggled free of my grasp. “[You’re also scary with paint leaking down your face.]”

Sniffling, I stood and wiped my cheeks with my forearms. “Any better?”

“[No.]” Ishiyae’s eyes flashed, then flicked toward a doorway further along the passage. “[Go clean up in the washroom, and this is a ship of Surra. We speak Laysis.]”

Says the guy who just spoke to the ship in Menyaze.

If he heard this thought, he didn’t respond to it, and I obediently plodded into the washroom, grateful for its existence. I expected warm water, soft towels, and some time away from Ishiyae. Grass cushioned my first steps into the space, and the lights took a few seconds to respond to my presence. Gradually, they brightened, revealing a large sink beneath a larger mirror, a curtained area, a vacuum tube for waste, and storage compartments everywhere between.

Ishiyae passed the doorway. “[Don’t look in the shower.]”

Oh, sure. How was I supposed to fix my odor problem without looking in the shower?

Hands on hips, I stomped up to the sink, eyes repeatedly sliding to the curtain’s cobalt folds. There wasn’t a caveat on anything else, so what exactly did it hide? A search through the cabinets produced towels, soaps, and a million things I had no labels for, and these did nothing to sate my curiosity.

If I looked, Ishiyae would know, and I couldn’t say how that stopped me, but it did. My emotions were a jumble of sharp edges and hidden sides—gratitude for the buffer between myself and Alaysq. Rage at what he had done on Rablah. Fear at his behavior in the hallway. Resignation that he was my vedia, that was my fault, and did I really want him as my enemy?

I couldn’t look, but I had other senses. The room had a faint, fishy smell, but I didn’t know if that was normal, and my nose wasn’t that reliable anyway. I listened, but only the hum of the air circulators fought the silence.

With a sigh, I turned on the tap and scrubbed away. I considered stripping, but Togdy apparently had a habit of entering rooms with no warning, and where I actually wanted to be was in the shower. Perhaps if I kept my eyes closed the whole time?

Finished, I switched off the water and patted dry. A plopping sound caught my ears, like a large droplet striking a hard surface, and I paused. After several seconds, it came again, and I whirled toward the curtain. The shower probably leaked. Maybe there was mold, and Ishiyae was embarrassed by his poor maintenance of it.

Despite the spicy fragrance of the soaps, the fishy stench persisted, and something deep within told me the curtain didn’t hide simple mold.

Breath held, I closed my eyes and flung the blue fabric aside.

Continued in chapter 62: Keep Your Useless Civility

Thank you for reading!