Heir of Beasts

Ch. 5.2- Violence Sings to Her

                   

The woman standing in the doorway just stares at me. I can tell right away she's not Shikkan: her hair is a rich brown and her irises are so dark they swallow her pupils. She's even shorter than I am, but her lean body is corded with muscle. She caries a large rifle.

         I stare back, unwilling to let her know how fast my heart is beating. I will not be afraid.

         "So you're the one our Cousin keeps talking about," she says in a heavily accented voice. "The great Izsaiki," she mocks, a small smile moving her lips. Her eyes are hard as river stones.

         "Who are you?"

         "A daughter of revolution," she answers coolly, "and no friend of yours."

         I wait for her to say more, but she only watches me, her eyes tracing my body with a studied precision. She reminds me of a sand viper tasting the air, trying to determine the direction of prey.

         "I expected more," she says finally.

         I almost laugh. Does she think I care what she thinks of me? Does she think words can do anything to me now, now that I'm spinning out my last hours?

         "So did I," I reply as calmly as I can. "I expected a life."

         I can feel the threads of it slipping through my fingers like a fistful of desert sand, each possibility a particle of mica glinting under the sun before it falls away. My twenty second birthing day. Shira's ascension to head of the Dimaraste. Dancing with Alya at another Feast Day, laughing as she spins in circles around me, head fuzzy with wine and midnight. Walking with my mother to the market. Telling stories with great-uncle Nather by the fire. Commanding the palace guard. Sailing the Karithian Sea. Even climbing he gleaming white ice cliffs of Imgyonstarn. I realize now how much I expected, took for granted, even.

         I expected a future.

         And wasn't that my right? Isn't that the right of every living thing? I shake my head, lost inside myself. A hard-edged grief settles inside of me, heavy, weighing me down. Maybe it was my right, maybe it wasn't, but right and wrong have ceased to mean anything here.

         "Did you really expect to live?"

         Did I? Logically, no. But again, hope is hard to kill. And I did hope.

         "You did, didn't you?" She laughs, shaking her head. "Oh, you nobles are all the same. Children who think they're gods."

         She comes closer to me, moving with the control and grace of a jungle cat. I hold my ground, unwilling to be intimidated by the gun strapped to her back or the gloating look in her eyes.

         "Just like the Yus'mahar, thinking some divine force will swoop down and save you. You'll be looking up into the clouds until the moment your neck snaps from the noose."

         "The Yus'mahar..." I frown, confused at her mention of the ruling family of Yukkaita. Well, the former ruling family. They were killed in an uprising three years ago, leaving the jungle nation under strict military rule.

         The pieces fall into place and I gasp.

         She smiles at me, all feline showing off its teeth. "You understand now, don't you? You know who I am."

         "Shao Asha," I spit. Yukkaita's guerilla army, the pack of feral animals that tore its ruling family to shreds. Last I heard they were content to rule their little patch of jungle... so why are they here, in Shikkah, of all places? How has Sholu managed this?