Aestith looked at himself in the polished brass mirror in Bellan’s room. If not for the gentle curly texture of his hair, it may have gone to his shoulders.
“Stop fidgeting or I’ll end up pokin’ yas again,” Bellan warned him.
Aestith stilled, but kept glancing at the mirror. He couldn’t help it. Even to his eyes, he looked like a woman. It was terrifying and exciting all at the same time.
Bellan complained good-naturedly about how so many cultures and peoples apparently needed different costumes for men and women, lest they not be able to tell which is which. This amused Aestith to no end.
He had decided that, in the sanctity of his own mind, he still thought of himself as male. In his head, he always would be male. However, he couldn’t deny his body, or Lolth’s apparent wishes. He would present himself as a woman for the obvious social benefit, and why would anyone ever doubt otherwise, unless they saw him naked?
Not to say that hadn’t happened. He was a young ma—wom—he was a teenager, flooded with desires. While he would never desire to see a dwarf naked, there were occasional drow—his own family had had several trade routes with duergar, which kept them from demeaning themselves by going to the surface as often. He never saw any of their caravans, however, but he was always careful nonetheless.
With his own kind, he had to learn, and be more careful in his approaches. He never approached drow women, for one, which he judged to carry too much risk. He felt he could lust after them all he wanted, privately, but for sex, he exclusively chose men. He didn’t think he could bear to be with another half-drow again.
He never got completely undressed, and it was frustrating. It was easier if he put on a jacket and bound his breasts and flirted with them as if he were male, then kept much of his clothing on—you don’t need to strip for only oral. That was easier in ways, even if not as fulfilling. He wanted to be held and touched.
Aestith didn’t know what Bellan thought of him and he had no intention to actually ask. Maybe she thought all drow elves were like this now—if only. Maybe she thought it was only him, though, and had simply never cared about his sex. Why should she? It wasn’t her business.
Bellan did think that the drow, compared to other elves, were much closer to a “proper height”. She would say, What do they need to be so tall for? To better hit their heads on the ceilings?
“Finished,” Bellan said. “Now just shrug out of that an’ I’ll teach yas how t’ hem it.”
“Aren’t you doing it for me?” Aestith teased.
She rapped her knuckles against his hip. He hopped off of the shabby box. She said, “If you have an opportunity t’ learn somethin’, don’t shirk the opportunity jus’ because someone else is willin’. Now wriggle outta that. There we go.” She took the dress from him and moved into the parlor room. He sat and watched her sew. She made basting stitches along the hem with her needle and thread to hold it in place, but it wouldn’t stay. He got the hang of it after a moment, and took the sewing from her. Bellan fully expected him to have it finished in a single candlemark—a herculean task. It took him most of the night and the stitches were far from straight. He was able to work through his Trance state if he relaxed and moved slowly, leisurely.
He had taken to spending some time meditating, because it calmed and centered him. He was still homesick, but remembering he wasn’t truly alone eased the pain.
Elves don’t dream. He had been told that since he was a child, though he often suspected that the ones touting that just didn’t remember dreaming. Why should they? You live long enough, you can’t remember everything, and childhood is so hazy and nothing makes any sense about it in retrospect. But he slept, not because he needed to, but because he actually enjoyed the activity, or lack thereof. Sleeping carried him off somewhere his body wasn’t betraying him, where he wasn’t out of any control of his life, where he wasn’t afraid that his sisters might hurt him for the slightest transgression.
Sleep was just a way to escape. It was why he enjoyed reading novels too—which was something that Descaronan had always scoffed at. She thought that if someone were going to read, it should be war tactics or instruction on uses of poisons or suchlike. His other sisters would quietly agree with her on such points—no one had time for such trifles as reading for leisure. Except Amalette. He wished he had brought with him even a single book from the family library.
Aestith missed home. He missed Virabel’s sayings that made snippets of wisdom easy to remember and the way she’d sniff and turn up her nose at sweets. She had said, Chocolate masks the flavor of anything, Aestith. If you want to poison someone, use chocolate. He missed Amalette’s singing. She would read a book out loud, and he would stand or sit behind her, slowly combing out her beautiful wavy hair. One thousand strokes until it gleamed like a torch. He even missed Haeltania; how she would sit at her vanity or her desk and carefully apply powders and paints while he polished her shoes.
‘How do I look, Aestith?’ She looked fit to be a goddess, and he had loved the way her normally smoke-gray lips were painted a red like a brilliant gemstone, or blood. ‘It’s too bold, isn’t it?’
He had wanted to tell her that it wasn’t, that she was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that the red made her lips stand out, that no one could help but to notice her, but she wiped it off with a sigh.
He had never gotten along with Descaronan; they cared about very different things and he was better at magic than with a spear, so he wasn’t much use to her. Yet he missed how she would rouse him and drag him off hunting with her, saying she had need of his particular talents, even when he had known it was because she thought he needed the practice. She was like a warrior princess from some distant land, wholly different from her other sisters. She had no interest in her hair or painted lips, no talent for singing or wise sayings. She was a warrior. She scared him, and he respected her talent. Desarandian he scarcely even saw, much less interacted with; she didn’t care to have him underfoot in the forge and he didn’t like being there anyway. But watching from a perch in the rafters above her, the way she waded among the workers like a pike in a pond or took up the hammer herself or criticized some slave about the bellows—she was a master of her craft.
And Jaele. He could only remember her covered in blood, bleeding from a gut wound that would take marks to die from. And he had left her because he had been scared. Jaele, who had died so young she still had a milk name, nearly of an age with him. He missed her most of all. He missed her smirks and her little jokes. He missed running errands for her and being part of something whole, rather than an estranged intersection of spider silk.
Bellan expected to find Aestith still sewing when she woke; he was gone, the dress neatly folded.
#
He had to be careful in this area; some of the poisonous mushrooms were waxing, but he knew where they were. He walked for half a bell before he stopped. He knew, somewhere deep in his marrow, that the roads to Enainsi were close enough nearly to taste. If he kept walking, he could follow the easy trading routes back. He could be home within the turn. His legs felt weak at the thought.
Then what, Aestith? Go back to stuffing himself into layers and binding his breasts? Back to butchering his hair and carving up his arms like a roast? Just so they could kill him for deformity in due time, or else for fear of him social climbing?
He folded his arms under his breasts. Aestith’s fingers bit into the flesh of his arms. An old, angry hurt rose to the surface like a fish after an insect. He felt cheated. He was cheated out of his childhood, out of his home. Cheated out of his family and his entire life. Nothing had ever gone right, had it?
His eyes watered. It wasn’t fair.
He pressed his back to the rock wall and slid down the side. He shifted and pushed his legs against his chest, hugging them close to himself. Nothing was fair. His body was bad enough, but why Jaele? He didn’t even want Virabel to die, not really. It didn’t matter that she was trying to kill him; he didn’t want her to die either. Every death hurt his family, was a blow to the Tith'Rix and their place in society. His family had lost three members all at once. Where there had been seven, there were now four. He wondered who was head of the family now, if his sisters would fight over it and leave the family even smaller, or if they would come to an agreement. They’d probably kill Virabel’s daughter, come to think of it, before they turned on one another.
In our blood, victory. A family saying. Each member was a pillar holding a ceiling; it weakened with every destroyed supporting pillar. Similarly, it also meant that installing a pillar where it was useless was wasteful.
He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t belong here. He belonged at home, and he was angry at himself for running away. He was angry with Virabel for organizing the trip, and angry with her for attacking him and possibly killing Jaele. And he was angry with Jaele for wanting to go on this doomed, stupid venture, and angry at her for dying. He was angry at his mother for getting pregnant shortly after he was born and dying. He was even angry at Lolth, for doing this to him.
He covered his face with his hands. “I don’t want to be your chosen one. I just want to go home,” he whispered, half in prayer. He saw no reason why she should answer him, or respond in any way; she never had before. Save once, and that was on her terms, and certainly in response to nothing he had said. He wasn’t even certain he hadn’t hallucinated it. More likely, she’d punish him in some way, for insolence no doubt. For falling into despair in his personal struggles instead of overcoming them. “And I’d deserve it,” he muttered.
A spider dropped down on a long, single thread. He couldn’t see the smirking red lips that meant Lolth was watching, so he assumed she wasn’t. The spider alighted on his elbow, where she paused for a moment. He caught her before she skittered off and let her run over his hand, then turned his hand so she ran again, one to the other. Flip again, move his other hand close. Flip. Over and over. It seemed so pointless. No matter what he did, the spider acted predictably, always perseveringly in one direction. Then, unexpectedly, it stopped.
She sat on his knuckle, unmoving but not biting him either. She took a tentative step forward. Gently, he moved his hand to the cave floor, but she made no move to retreat from him. She sat. It seemed so strange that after her ordeal of temporary capture and struggle that she should be so reluctant to leave, or did she think it was a trick like the times before?
She would move to another surface, only to have that one, too, rotate and shift her back to the beginning again, over and over.
Did she think anything, for that matter?
It didn’t matter what Aestith wanted, when it came down to it. Lolth had selected him out of everyone else; what right did he have to complain? There was only one feasible path he could take. Any other was a drop off into empty space and a long way down. It was still an option. Turning away was always an option. He had a choice—or the illusion of one anyway. He could either rise or fall, but stagnation was not palatable.
He just wished he knew why it had to be him. Why couldn’t it be someone else? Someone more suited to this. He wasn’t the best at magic, nor at weapons of any kind. He wasn’t the smartest or the most well-connected. He liked baking and reading. He wanted desperately to please Lolth, and his family, but that willingness was all he had to give. And even that was fading with his own despair.
The sound of a turning wheel made him jump. The spider fled. He rose to his feet and darted into a side passage. He watched the wagon roll past, on to the town ahead of him. He waited a long time, then slowly walked after it. It was drow-make, and he was lonely.
It took a few candlemarks to make it to the next village. The cart arrived well ahead of him, and they seemed to have decided to stop, at least for a while. That was fine. Aestith wanted company. He had to stay on the path Lolth had placed him on, but he still had the freedom to make choices along the way.
Staying carefully out of sight, he looked for anyone he might recognize. Or, more accurately, who stood a chance of recognizing him. Most of the caravans were from the surface in some convoluted way. Trading with the drow ran certain risks and reaped high rewards, but they didn’t usually want them anywhere near their villages. If the dwarves traded with them at all, it was well away from town square. They didn’t trade, and it seemed like they were only on their way elsewhere, boldly coming near to the town. Made sense. There were only so many caverns the wagons could travel on, and drow didn’t raid so much these days—or did it in remote areas and left no survivors and no traces. He counted them as he went about it, but it was a small caravan.
He stopped suddenly and darted around a corner with a shiver. It was one of the boys who had caught him in the alley. His fingers curled. How dare he come here. It felt like a violation. Aestith couldn’t go to Enainsi, but his tormentors could come here? His jaw clenched so tight it hurt.
The boy, more a man now, turned to someone calling for him. They had opened a small cask. Aestith’s reddened eyes narrowed, and he waited.
#
The world had gone hazy around the edges, like one of Eza’s grandmother’s watercolor paintings. There was always too much blue in them, but the woman had liked them. Or, perhaps more accurately, she had enjoyed telling the tale of how she acquired them—raiding, in a word. She liked to talk about her raiding days.
Eza didn’t have tales like that, not yet. His elders still considered him too young. They claimed he’d lose his head on the surface, not know what to do with himself. He knew what to do with himself. It was easy. You overpower your opponent. Life was simple like that. There was no reason to make it complicated.
While he didn’t much like the life of a guard on a merchant caravan, it didn’t pay too badly. And, once he proved himself, maybe he could convince a raiding party to take him on. In the meantime, there were the occasional perks.
She had just appeared, from what Eza could tell. She wasn’t part of the caravan anyway, and was dressed a bit strangely. Eza couldn’t really decide if she were pretty or not; some expressions she made gave her almost masculine definitions. And she was so small, petite even. It made her look masculine, except her blouse, the laces loose. He could almost see the pointed tips of her breasts under it. She looked up at another and blinked long lashes darker than her charcoal skin. She smiled at something he said with a toss of her head that made her curls bounce. She glanced toward Eza, and her gaze lingered. The smile pulled until he saw a glint of bone-white teeth that promised to bite. She hooked a stray lock of hair behind one pointed ear. Her fingernails were carefully cut to manicured points.
Then she looked away.
Eza’s lips twisted into a frown and he wandered over to them, making a show of getting another cup. He was slow about it, listening for an opening where he might insert himself into the conversation.
“... The past decade,” the male said.
The woman tilted her head to one side. “Tell me of your travels—what have you seen that was most beautiful?”
Eza murmured, “You.”
The woman’s gray eyes flicked toward him, then back to the man as if she hadn’t heard him. The man described some landscape that bored Eza, but the woman only nodded him on as if descriptions of mushroom groves were actually engrossing.
Eza interjected, “Are you traveling here yourself?”
The man flinched at Eza’s comment. “Excuse him, my lady. He’s drunk. I shall see him off.”
But the woman looked Eza over and smiled slowly. “Allow me to perform this simple task.” She looked back at the man. “Perhaps I shall listen to another of your tales at a future date.” She looked at Eza. The man’s eyes flicked from one to the other and he subserviently removed himself.
The woman took Eza’s cup, half drank, and refilled it. She gave it back to him and took him by the elbow. They weren’t walking to their camp around the wagon, though. Eza was almost giddy. The woman said little at all, only walking steadily, away from the encampment and the village. Somewhere alone. They stopped at the edge of the encampment. He saw one of the guards he had met on this venture grin at him. He grinned back. Eza’s teeth were the deep black of his own bones, denoting that, somewhere back, his bloodline had been nobility.
She turned toward him. Running a finger from the base of his neck down his chest, she said, “You wait for me.” She pushed against him and nodded down the path. He could scarcely keep from staring down her shirt, but he looked where she indicated. “By the pond over there.”
He stepped toward the place she indicated, and she turned her back to him. It wasn’t his place to question a woman, however. And anyway, he was eager to serve her. He quaffed down the rest of the ale. It dribbled down his chin and he swiped it off with his sleeve. Gripping the mug tightly in one hand, he stumbled over the rocks. Why had she pointed him down here? He had a tent. He thought about walking back and trying to change her mind, but quickly thought better of it; she was a woman. Did she want him to bathe first? That was probably it; he had been on the road for many a bell.
He tripped over a shelf of rock and caught himself. The mug fell from his hands but he didn’t hear it shatter. He stumbled forward, then looked back for the mug, nestled among some waxing mushrooms. He caught his ankle in a small hole and fell backward. He landed first on his ass, then slid and smacked his back against the rock. He scrambled upright. The earth fell and crumbled around him.
He reached for a handhold to help himself up. He grabbed at the cave wall. It broke at his touch, and he coughed. He gagged and fell to his knees. Something seemed to hiss. He choked. Powdery dust floated in the air. His eyes widened. The mushrooms!
He scrambled to his feet, then slipped drunkenly. He caught himself against the cave wall, breaking more of the spores. He fell. He crawled, scrambling madly away. His windpipe closed as if hands were clasped around his throat. He gasped.
Eza collapsed.
#
Aestith stayed only long enough to find out what had happened to the son of a bitch. To everyone else’s eyes, Aestith had told him not to go over there, then had wandered back to the camp to get his own ale. Eza, they said his name was, had made such a racket dying that Aestith wasn’t even the first to find him; one of the guards did.
Aestith had commented, “What an idiot.”
Eza’s body was left among the mushrooms, having been judged to be more trouble than it was worth fishing out, even for the extra labor a body could still provide.
He was exhausted by the time he returned to Bellan’s house. Bellan asked him why he seemed so pleased with himself, and Aestith only smiled and said, “I’m coming to peace with my situation.”
The death of one of his tormentors, even a minor one, did indeed calm him. Even such a small act of vengeance filled him with a peace he only ever achieved through meditation, but he wished he had been able to ritually sacrifice him.
A strange notion. Could someone not a cleric make such a sacrifice and have it be received? More, why did his mind stray there?
He wanted to do it, felt like the man even deserved it after what he had tried to do to Lolth’s Chosen, even if she had not truly chosen him yet at the time.
He remembered the cleric—Ondalia.
Or had she?
In several bells, the mushroom waned and Aestith traipsed into the grove. The body had been picked over by scavengers. Someone had removed his boots and any weapons he had. A small hatchet served to remove the hand at the wrist, and a knife peeled away strips of flesh and muscle to expose the bone underneath. When it was cleaned, he shut the pieces in a box with a few beetles he had collected. They would eat the remaining bits of flesh while the bones dried.
When the bones were sufficiently dried, he cleaned them carefully, sanded them, and used a few tools to carefully carve runes into each bone. Tiny, semi-precious stones were inlaid on them in careful patterns. He could have used any number of other objects as a divining tool, but this one was personal, and he felt a certain delight in it. The bones fit snugly into a supple leather bag.
He had made the tools on a whim the way some people became interested in reading entrails or cards, a strange inclination he could not describe, and he hesitated, then cast them onto the table. They rolled and slid, and stopped.
He studied them. Did they tell him anything, or were they just a display of bones? For a moment, he felt foolish. His lips pursed in thought and his brow scrunched. He thought of webs, of spiders weaving webs across each bone.
When his mind formed pictures in those imaginary webs, he let it go from picture to picture, bouncing around wisps of memory.
The dark pressed around him. He felt the sticky silk of webs against his skin. No words were given to him, but he saw an image; a ritual sacrifice. It took him a long moment to understand it, because the child was a girl, and then he saw the stitches on the belly, its sickly, dying pallor. This was one of his younger sisters, the ones who had slain his mother.
The priestess delicately carved into the infant’s forehead. It screamed and tried to fight, but it was too sick and weak to thrash much. They might have at least given it something to incapacitate it; it was an infant, and a girl at that. He hated the piercing sounds it made when it cried. But the woman carved out the symbol.
Aestith watched as if through the eyes of Lolth’s statue above it.
The knife blade touched its forehead. It was held parallel, perfectly still. Then it plunged into the infant’s soft, squishy skull. He watched as she continued the ritual in blood, then prayed.
A sense of calm washed over him.