River’s End ch 62: Keep Your Useless Civility

It was so much worse than mold, and the dripping wasn’t water, though I immediately pressed my hand to the wall and ordered the shower on. It obeyed, but Nyen remained motionless as the stream pelted him.

Black blood soaked the floor. Its path left dried rivulets across his chest and arms, tracing back to the sword driven through his forearms and deep into the wall. He hung, eyes half-open and nearly devoid of color. The scales on his hands shown pearlescent white.

I pulled the weapon free and caught him before his head could hit the tile. How long had he been like this? Ishiyae knew, so this must have happened before he left.

“Please, Nyen, show me you’re alive.”

His stuff muscles resisted movement as I separated his arms and wrapped them in towels. With the softest of these, I massaged water into the scales on his ears and temples, willing him to breathe.

Eventually, his eyes closed, and slowly, his tail approached where my hand kept pressure on his wrists. Its tip wrapped my finger but didn’t have the strength for anything more.

“[Togdy doesn’t like repeating this so often, but this is again awkward.]”

I twisted toward the Dossie in the doorway. “Call for medical help.”

He lowered his head, nose twitching. “[They won’t help him.]”

“Call anyway.”

As I positioned Nyen more directly within the stream of water, I noted his feet had retained some of his neon hues. Even so, they were nicked and bruised. He had likely tried to use them and his tail to pry the sword free but couldn’t get proper leverage.

Togdy shook, ears loudly slapping his head, then sat. “[You should leave this room. Let Togdy take him where it is best.]”

I paused in scrubbing the dried trails from Nyen’s arms. “Where is that?”

Togdy’s tail tucked around his hindquarters, end tapping the floor in an unsteady rhythm. He wouldn’t answer because he knew I wouldn’t like it.

Bile filled my throat, and I choked out a guess. “The kitchens?”

“[Ishi said he was a gift. Togdy hasn’t tried this kind yet, and he smells de—]”

“You can’t! Even—” I gathered as much of Nyen onto my lap as I could. “I know you eat meat. Your body needs to, but you know Nyen.”

He tilted his chin. “[Is that his name?]”

Again, I paused. No, we didn’t know Nyen’s real name. We had yet to hear him make any sound at all, but that didn’t make him fodder.

Togdy stood and stretched. “[In space, you can’t waste like on a planet with infinite resources.]”

“Planets have finite resources, too,” I grumbled.

“[Then act like you know some restraint. At least turn off the water.]” From the hallway, he added, “[Come out where there are soft things to sit on. Togdy won’t take him until he’s dead.]”

That wouldn’t be anytime soon if I had any say in it. I stopped the water, bundled my patient in towels, and stormed out after the slinking Dossie.

The corridor led to a generously sized room lined by bookshelves and vases of databeads. Togdy claimed a pile of pillows in a corner. In the opposite corner, a raised bed of yewn had bloomed for the night, and their menthol perfume beckoned me.

With a snort, I banished their lure of peaceful sleep and stomped over to a third corner, where Ishiyae lounged cross-legged at a low table, now dressed in a flowing poncho and loose slacks.

“What. Happened.”

He looked at me over the rim of a steaming mug and answered within us. ‘That thing goes around trying to stab people. I solved that problem.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but another scene forced out my perception of our surroundings. In the shower, hair full of soap. Nyen flew out of nowhere, jagged sword choked in his grasp. Capturing that arm was easy, slamming it and him into the wall. He released the weapon, but I caught it before his other hand could.

His first arm slipped free, and I now had soap in my eyes. Closing them, I let his vacuum of heat tell me how he moved and where to strike. An elbow to the side of his neck. A knee to his spine. Both hands captive in mine, lined up against the wall. The sword slid between the ulna and radius bones.

As abruptly as it appeared, the memory left. At some point, I had sunk to my knees, eye-level with Ishiyae, Nyen clutched in my arms.

Something close to a frown decorated my vedia’s expression. “[A gift of the truth. It’s easier than explaining it.]”

“D-don’t show me memories of you naked!”

Lips twitching, he leaned forward. “[If that’s the part that most disturbed you, you’re more jaded than you seem.]”

“I need supplies to treat him.”

He reclined, picked up a tablet, and read.

I huffed. ‘Do not ignore me.’

‘What language were you told to speak?’

Nyen didn’t have time for me to be stubborn, so I bit my cheek and repeated my request in Laysis.

With a nod, Ishiyae gestured toward the entrance wall, where the shelving stopped short in deference to a screen. “[Order whatever you wish on the console, and someone will deliver it.]”

Skeptical, I rose. “[It doesn’t need a password?]”

“[You are River Guardian, no?]”

Behind me, Togdy had lain out a fluffy blanket, and I warily set Nyen down. “[I am.]”

“[Then your existence is the password.]

It worked like my citadel home, then. Ishiyae touched the walls when he issued instructions so the ship could confirm he had the genetic right to do so. My River Guardian status gave me the authority to command both the citadel and the River’s End. Even if he had never been to Menyaze, Ishiyae’s heritage granted him the same privilege.

A heritage he shared with Fredo.

As I scrolled through the console’s list of offerings, I chided myself for not realizing this sooner. Even before any mention was made of Fredo being a Sojourner, how had I been so blind to the clues? I may have never seen the citadel respond to his orders, but I had also never seen him try to give one. There were times when he had to have used the passages on his own.

Why would he keep that secret from me? Did he know what that power meant? Despite our friendship, despite the dreams and thoughts we shared and how much I told him, he kept these big things from me.

Inner me scoffed. What exactly would you have done had you known?

My fingers stilled on the screen. I probably wouldn’t have done anything that helped.

As tears collected along my lower lids, I blinked this nonsense aside and concentrated on the listings. They extended beyond medical supplies. Even if they didn’t, I could send messages in Ishiyae’s name, and if he was the one asking, the denizens of this ship would do everything they could to give it to him.

“I could rule,” he had said.

Are you not already?

Alaysq claimed to have punished him after he tried to kill me. Soldiers speculating about his breakdown on Grenswa believed Su hated him when not in his presence. He was not all-powerful here, but neither was he powerless.

Not wanting him to sense my intentions as I typed, I distracted him with conversation. “[Ishiyae, could you have stopped the attack on Grenswa?]”

“[The wise man picks his battles.]”

Order confirmed and separate message sent, I whirled toward him. “[You were the one who chose to target them?]”

Without taking his eyes from his reading, he produced a small, sealed bag from a drawer beneath the table and opened it. “[More like chose not to argue with Su over it.]”

“[You didn’t deem a whole planet of lives to be worth a little discomfort between you and the king of this ship who hates you anyway?]”

He winced at that last part, pulled a strip of spice-coated meat from the package, and bit down on it. “[No.]”

My bones turned molten, and my step toward him bent in a blend of stumble and kneel. “[How can you be so nonchalant about such horrible things?]”

“[Perspective.]” He swallowed the morsel and ripped off another.

“You’re Seallaii-na!” I forced myself to stand despite the liquid lead sloshing in my stomach. When I spoke again, at least my voice was pitched a smidgen lower than a geunda’s squeak. “[Eating that will make you sick.]”

I brought his nightmares to the front of my mind, hoping he saw it, too—the fire on Seallaii, the flames on Grenswa.

With a grimace, he shoved the rest of the meat in his mouth. ‘Does a scyuen apologize when it takes its prey?’

‘Hunting is a matter of survival for the scyuen. You’re—’

A buzz shook the room, and Ishiyae stood. ‘I do what I must to survive.’ On his way to the door, he paused much too close to me. ‘Keep your useless civility.’

I trailed him, unsure which of my requests had been delivered. It was the medical supplies.

As I grabbed them and rushed back to Nyen, I called back, “Civility is the difference between living and thriving.”

He didn’t return for a while.

From his throne of pillows, Togdy watched in reticence as I mixed Shlykrii-native ingredients into ointments, pastes, and syrups—some to stave off infection, others to encourage blood production, one to raise sugar levels—and administered them to Nyen. I gave attention to every cut and contusion, eventually concealing the worst wounds on his arms and hands beneath thin, durable bandages soaked in a saltwater solution.

As I worked, doubts and indecision riddled my thoughts. The door would unlock at my touch, and Togdy wasn’t a guard. If I picked up Nyen and left, would he let me go? I could find my way to a shuttle, though I didn’t know how well those were equipped for independent travel. It might barely make it out of this solar system, and it might take a hundred years to get that far.

Ishiyae’s memories told of a vessel I could use, hiding in the bowels of the River’s End—the Star’s Serenade, the home of the Abaeyoi clan. Yet, I had to wait for my second delivery. Unless Ishiyae had already intercepted it.

I had just finished tending to Nyen when he returned.

“[Where did you go?]”

“[Nothing of it leaked to you?]” The question emerged slurred and slow as if it had fought to be released, and he plopped onto the yewn bed.

I shook my head and spoke in Menyaze, the language that should have been closer to his heart, that should have meant more to him. “{Are you alright?}”

He copied the switch easily enough. “{It’s better if you do not know then, what I had to do to say no.}”

A deep ache, more than simply physical, eked into our mindscape, darkening the sea beneath our feet. His eyes closed, and I decided not to press him on it, despite my myriad of questions. If their ship was somewhere within this one, where was the rest of his clan? He claimed he didn’t remember them, but he clearly remembered Fredo. He said he killed my mother.

When neither of us moved for several minutes, Togdy dimmed the lights, and I stretched out alongside Nyen, arm pressed against his to lend him my warmth. He curled into me, scales glistening marginally brighter with each heartbeat.

Ishiyae leaned over the side of the bed. “{Why are you sleeping on the floor like some inferior creature?}” His arm hung over the edge, deliberately tangled in vines to keep it from reaching out to me. He might as well have given in. I felt it anyway, a caress of my jawline. “{You must be exhausted so long without yewn flowers.}”

“{Nyen needs me more.}” I crossed my arms and scooted closer to my patient. “{Besides, if I get in that bed, I might accidently drain you, remember?}”

“{I looked something up,}” he said, and I stiffened, sure my lie was over and he would grab me. “{Despite the closeness the bond creates, no royal has ever married a vedia or mykta. Is this why? Because it would kill me? Or because the bond would break?}”

Fear warred with defiance—self-preservation versus freedom—and it tasted of vinegar. I wasn’t sure whose it was. As his touch met my hair, I closed my eyes and braced for him to yank it again, but his wily fingers gently combed through the loose strands over my ears. I waited for them to get stuck. Mine would have, but his proved mutinous even in that. He reached the ends and began a second stroke. It felt nice.

It would have been nicer if he weren’t a monster. I had to remember that. He attacked Grenswa. He tortured Hent, left Nyen impaled to a shower wall, shot Grr and Pol, and he’d probably done countless more horrid things. More than that, he didn’t regret any of it.

Or did he? The sea within held a biting chill, and its ripples rivaled a blade’s edge. If this was regret, was it his or my own?

I opened my eyes to find he still stared at me, scar camouflaged by the dimness, left eye brighter than his right but in a way I could fool myself was only a trick of the light. Why did he have to look so very much like his brother?

Thoughts of him freed my voice. “{Tell me about Fredo.}”

Ishiyae scowled and rolled away. “{Don’t spy on my thoughts.}”

I hadn’t, but I would if I didn’t get answers. Why had they been on that island? Where were their parents? How had he killed my mother, and for what?

In the space where his face had hovered, the faraway ceiling taunted me with a display of swords, or at least one sword. Empty hooks outlined where a second blade was meant to cross the first, but it lay on the bathroom floor now, stained with Grenswa-na blood.

Perhaps that was where Togdy had vanished to, cleaning that up.

I stood, but it remained at least a story above me. In this gravity, I could jump that high, but what would Ishiyae do? Even if I got it, I had witnessed him turn a matching weapon on Nyen. He would do the same or worse to me.

Words would have to be my blade.

“{You were named after flora of Iniahara.}” My knee pressed into the spongy soil at the edge of the yewn bed, and a moment later, my other knee joined it. “{Ishiyae, the vine that wanders, always in search of the best ground. Efereodonidii, the vine that thrives wherever and strengthens all around it.}”

He sneered. “{Iniahara. They betrayed us.}”

I crawled until I sat back to back with him, not touching, but close enough to feel the pulse of his heat. “{You hate them. But not just them.}”

“{I didn’t understand it then.}” He sounded small, like the toddler of his memories. “{It took a long time to collect all the pieces.}”

He hesitated, but I didn’t fill the silence. It was a vacuum drawing the story out of him.

“{They learned the River’s End desired Sojourners. We had two newborns, and in our celebration, we let our guard down. They bought modified Veloi-na venom and used it to incapacitate us. They sold us, a whole clan, and all the River’s End paid was broken, useless scraps.}”

I tsked. “{You say us, but you were one of those infants.}”

He leaned against my back, too warm, a fire. “{Some of us never woke up. Others didn’t survive the years of experiments.}”

This he had experienced firsthand. Screams echoed. Needles dug into my arms.

You will destroy Seallaii.

Unmoving bodies.

The tyranny of River will end.

“{They used my father’s identity to send a message to the ruler of Seallaii. They told her that her brother plotted against her but his vedia had betrayed him. Kel would give her the evidence at a secret meeting.}”

The story he spoke aloud didn’t match what I heard giant shadows of Shlykrii-nas telling his younger self.

She is evil.

She wants to hurt you.

If you defeat her, your father will wake up.

If you are good and do exactly as we say, Fredo will get the medicine he needs.

He was smarter than they thought. As the transport descended, he knew they wouldn’t bring him back. He had promised to do what they said if they kept Fredo safe on the River’s End.

The hatch opened. He stepped onto a planet’s surface for the first time, and he knew he would die.

The gravity made it hard to walk.

“{I knew what they intended because Fredo did. He always knew what they really meant, and he could communicate it to me without saying a word. Father said not to tell anyone.}” With a sigh, he turned toward me. “{But I didn’t want to die, so I hoped that I would live. I had to defeat the evil queen as they said. I was supposed to wait until she was close enough to hear me even if I whispered. Then I would speak my brother’s name. I thought it would scare her away somehow. I didn’t know it was the trigger.}”

Sobs jarred his words, leaving them broken and uneven, but each one played out around and within us. His family were positioned like mannequins atop a silver pyramid, unconscious but rigged to stand, veils in place as proper River Guardians. From a distance, they would look attentive and in well-disciplined formation.

The last Shlykrii-na to retreat instructed Ishiyae to remain by his father’s side, to be a good Sojourner child and stay quiet until the moment planned for him to speak.

His legs, so unused to this gravity, were exhausted by the time the woman appeared upon the steps. Ishiyae’s heart stopped. His brother walked alongside her. Father had always told him he had to protect Fredo, and he would, even if she or the scary giants with her killed him.

Charging, he cried a warning to get away from the evil lady. As she gripped Fredo’s hand tighter, Ishiyae called out for him, and as the O of that name tore through his throat, everything exploded.

“{The needles, the chemicals, the scalpels, they had turned the adults into bombs, bodies packed with shrapnel, inextinguishable flame, and bioweapons.}”

The crumbling structure and flames folded away, something he must have practiced many times to be able to do it so neatly. The shelved walls of this room were dark in comparison as afterimages flickered in the corners of my vision.

At some point, I must have moved. I sat knee to knee with him, gazing into mismatched eyes streaming tears. I cupped his cheek, thumb sweeping aside the river of his anguish.

“{Skin against skin.}”

Menyaze was known for its idioms, and this one’s meaning eluded me. He meant it literally, I realized too late, snatching my hand away, but he caught it in a crushing grip.

“{I’m touching you, but I’m not dying.}”

I had no words, no lie, no truth, no sarcastic rebuttal. I simply saw again and again how much he had been betrayed.

He believes himself the last of his clan.

I could have told him Fredo lived, that he was near.

He hates the River’s End, yet he stays with them.

He towed me into a suffocating hug and wept into my shoulder, my chest. Slowly, my arms rose to encircle him. He needed it. In that moment, we both did.

Continued in chapter 63: Curiosity is Glue

Thank you for reading!