Heir of Beasts

Ch. 2.8- Prayers and Poison

Sarusha stands in front of me, tongue sticking out of her mouth slightly as she concentrates on the layers of fabric she's artfully draping around me and securing with jeweled pins. When I pulled out the nicest and only dress I brought with me so it could be pressed, Sarusha shook her head and told me it was entirely unsuitable.

In Arzsa, the fashions are more refined, simpler. Cleaner. In Alu Oshana, there's more color, more patterns, more life. The ladies will be arrayed in colorful garments spangled with beads and rich embroidery. Like birds traipsing about, dragging iridescent plumage in their wake.

"This is kibot, my lady. If you were to travel to Macchon, this is what you'd see the highborn ladies wearing," Sarusha tells me, and I repress the urge to ask her why the fuck I would ever go to Macchon. I tried to borrow a dress from Floryn, but none of them fit. The only other suitable finery on hand belongs to Isarhet, and it's all Macchonesi, though she's been in exile for many years.

Sarusha tried to put me in a soft blue kibot edged with tiny pearls and whirling silver embroidery, but I hated it. Too soft, too delicate, too much and at the same time not nearly enough. I pulled out a white kibot covered in stark black embroidery. There's a black sash that goes with it, knotting around my midsection in an elaborate series of folds resembling a piece of art more than a bow. Sarusha tries to suggest a sage green, but I don't want to look like a growing thing. I don't want to look pretty. I want to command attention. The intense contrast draws the eye, and when I look in the mirror, I like what I see.

Sarusha lets my hair fall freely over my shoulders, adorning it only with several small pearl pins. When I half-stumble out into the hallway, unused to moving in the heavy fabric, Roze is there to chuckle. I shoot him a glare.

"Like you would do any better," I quip.

"Where is the traditional footwear?" he asks Sarusha with an easy smile, ignoring my acerbic remark. "Kibot are worn with high platform sandals, are they not? Very hard to walk in without extensive practice."

"We want her breaking hearts, not her own ankles," Sarusha jokes. I chuckle, a little surprised at her boldness. But Roze is affable. He's not like me. He doesn't have a talent for making everyone around him uncomfortable.

"I'll break your damn necks if you don't get moving," I add, because talents should be nurtured.

While we've been staying in Isarhet's Macchonesi house, a sort of base of operations for the Chalnori, the dinner is being held inside an abandoned gatehouse. The stonework is heavy and imposing, the once clean lines now cracked and marred by age and dappled with a silvery gray moss. The sun has just set, and the heat is still fading from the sands. Before long, there will be a chill to the air, and we'll hear coyotes howling as they stalk the dunes.

"Leave it to Alu Oshana to make war seem like a party and a party seem like war," Roze remarks casually, taking in the imposing stone edifice, the grand arch of it high above our heads.

"You wouldn't say such a thing if you'd grown up among the dimaraste," I snort. "Wars were declared during the salad course, waged during the entrée, and lost by the time the last dessert spoon hit the plate."

Strange, how distant those dinners feel now. How remote I am from the girl who tried to sit still and stately at her mother's right hand, hair neat and hands folded, laugh musical and polite. Kyoro's perfect daughter, my Aunt Jinn whispered once, just loud enough for me to hear. My face flamed for the rest of the evening, truth compounding my shame.

I knew I'd never be Kyoro's perfect daughter. So I poured everything that was intense and impulsive and restless inside of me into the role of Izsaiki, and they let me cling to it like a raft at sea, all of us knowing that it was easier that way. Easier if they could say yes, her violence is in service to the king. She's not a good dimarastisi Lady, but she's a great weapon.