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Scales & Shadows Ch18: Expectations
🕑 Added 2023-04-17 04:08:35 +0000 UTCPhaeliisthia’s words hit me hard, and they made me think. I’ll have a role in “this,” she said. A role to play in the struggle for power between the strongest players in Jii’Kalaga and the external forces that draw ever closer.
I glanced at my sire, Hssen Tyaniis Ssyri’Jiilits. Royalty. A surname meaning “Holy” Jiilits. These were mine now. Perhaps not quite, in a sense, but I no longer doubted my sire’s intention.
Hssen Issa Ssyri’Jiilits. Kelaniel. Ra’zhii. Me.
This is real.
Something about Phaeliisthia’s comment shook me—forced me to face what was happening. Ever since I’d woken up in the Grand Temple in Ess’Sylantziis, everything had seemed either a dream or a nightmare.
This is real.
And Phaeliisthia said I have a part to play. She said I matter. Do I?
I didn’t miss much conversation for all the time I spent in my head, because the next thing that happened was the return of the servant from earlier, flanked by two others.
They set plates topped with carefully arranged food and cups full of drink down in front of all of us. I didn’t recognize the fish, or half of the fruit. This smells great, but I really just want something cheap and familiar.
Phaeliisthia said something to Noksi when the ussyri got her food, but I didn’t hear it.
“Issa?” Kyrae whispered. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head to clear it, then quickly nodded. “I’m fine, yeah.” I pushed the thoughts of power, influence, and risk aside.
Kyrae frowned, but I took a bite before she could ask me anything else. While the food was certainly nice—moist flakey fish and a sweet sauce—I didn’t share the same teary-eyed relief Ssiina seemed to have toward the dish.
The food on the ship here was just like this though?
“Kyrae?” Phaeliisthia purred, “Is there a problem with your food?”
Kyrae startled away from trying to study my full-cheeked face.
“I know your sister Issa has all the table manners of a crocodile, but you shouldn’t let that spoil your appetite.”
I gulped, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and stopped myself from speaking when Kyrae twisted my arm under the table.
“I’m just worried about Issa, that’s all… Phaeliisthia.” Kyrae responded, tucking in with more restraint than I cared to have.
Phaeliisthia tittered. “I didn’t miss that pause. ‘Tutor’ or ‘Tutor’ Phaeliisthia’ are both acceptable.”
“Why not Phael?” I asked.
Phaeliisthia’s eyes narrowed. “Nok-Nok is the only one I permit to call me that.”
“Once I got older,” Ussyri Noksi intervened, setting another carefully-removed fish bone on the edge of her plate, “I didn’t like that Phael kept calling me ‘Nok-Nok’ so I started calling her Phael to get her to stop.”
“I will not stop,” Phaeliisthia insisted, crossing her arms.
“And there you have it,” Noksi said with a grin. She grabbed her cup, a little larger than ours, and took a long drink.
My sire politely cleared her throat. “Phaeliisthia, how long do you anticipate it might take to tutor my daughters?”
“Why would you be in a hurry, Tyaniis?”
“What sire would not want to spend time with their children?”
“You, perhaps?” Phaeliisthia replied coyly. “If certain rumors are to be believed…”
Tyaniis hung her head. “I… wish to change—for all of their sakes. I’m not going to bare my heart out to you here, Phaeliisthia, but I do not desire to remain distant or cold in their lives. Hinssa would not have wanted as much.”
“Good.” Phaeliisthia took a single delicate bite of fish on a talon and quickly ate it. “Perhaps you have much to learn as well. Not here, of course. How will you prepare for the arrival of your new daughters, especially the one who bears a distinct lack of scales? I take it these events are all still very secret. Else you wouldn’t have come to me.”
“Correct.” Tyaniis stared at her plate, then back up at Phaeliisthia. “You are known to be more than capable of handling not only yourself, but hssen, ussen, and Temple alike.”
“I am quite immune to sycophantism, yes.” Phaeliisthia took a long, slow drink. “You’ve made a good choice, Tyaniis, by taking your daughters to me. I will prepare them well for the wider world and those in it who would seek their downfall. This choice shows you care more forthem than for how you may live through them. Quite frankly, find it refreshing to see you do not resent losing the throne like everyone seems to say you do.”
Tyaniis narrowed her eyes. “Do they now? Who?”
Phaeliisthia shrugged. “Them. Figure it out—information is only powerful until someone else knows it, after all.”
My sire hissed.
Phaeliisthia smiled predatorily. “Are you dissatisfied at the demonstration of my tact regarding your currently-secret daughters?”
Tyaniis’s hiss turned into a sigh, and she picked at her fish. “No. I suppose I am not.”
“Marvelous! I think I’ll let you and that bodyguard of yours stay for dessert. She’s already managed to eat more than you have.”
I glanced over at Dyni, who’d stayed quiet this entire time from her coil between Tyaniis and Ssiina. Her plate was almost empty and her stoic face failed to hide a blush, especially as she struggled to stay silent.
“I thank you for your generosity, Phaeliisthia,” my sire replied with a tone so forced that I could see through it.
“Of course!” Phaeliisthia replied. “I strive for nothing less. As for an answer to your original question: I do not know for certain how long teaching them will take. Much will be determined by how they each learn and where they want to reach. But, for your peace of mind, you may assume more than one year.” She held a finger up. “And less than five.” She opened her hand fully.
“Thank you, Phaeliisthia,” my sire responded.
The strange woman shrugged. “I think that’s enough questions for now. Let us eat before the food is cold, Tyaniis.”
My sire looked at my empty plate, Dyni’s empty plate, Ssiina’s empty plate, and the half-empty plates of Kyrae, Ussyri Noksi and Phaeliisthia herself, and then down to her own mostly full place. Admonished, she finally started eating.
***
Conversation was limited until dessert. Phaeliisthia answered a few questions about the garden from Ssiina that I didn’t understand. She also evaded a few questions from Dyni about her own history and the history of Uzh, the enigmatic woman pointing toward the latter instead of herself. Ssiina’s bodyguard had been coaxed out of her silence once Tyaniis and Phaeliisthia were the only ones still eating.
As for me, I kept mostly silent, even as a sweet dessert of fruit and root mash was laid out in front of us. Ussyri Noksi’s plate was different: slices of fruit were set as eyes and fangs in a face of root mash, all swirled with syrup. I couldn’t help but giggle softly.
“Are you nervous?” Ssiina asked once we’d all tucked in.
“No,” I replied. “Just thinking.”
Ssiina frowned. “…Right. You know, you can speak openly to all of us here.” She gave a side-eyed glance toward Ussyri Noksi.
“Yeah, I know.” I put a large spoonful of mash and fruit in my mouth to stop any more words. Sweet!
“Are you not grateful for this opportunity, Issa?” Phaeliistha asked.
I almost swallowed my spoon. “O-of course I’m grateful, Phaeliisthia! I’m just…” I trailed off.
My future tutor raised an eyebrow. “Just…” she waved a hand around.
“This is all real. Three weeks ago I was dying in a gutter and now I’m eating this—” I gestured to my dessert “—in a place like this—” I kept my hand moving, sweeping it around the lush garden “—and my tutor’s someone powerful enough to ignore formalities with hssen and ussyri both. Just what am I gonna be expected to do?”
At the end of my impromptu speech, I looked at my sire. Tyaniis closed her eyes in thought, but right as she opened her mouth to speak, Phaeliisthia interrupted her with a raucous laugh.
“What will you be expected to do!?” The strange woman stood up out of her chair. “Your sire and the temple both came to me, Issa. The magnanimous, marvelous Phaeliisthia! What you’ll be expected to do doesn’t matter! That goes for all of you!” She gestured at all three of her future students in turn. “I am going to teach you, to train you. If you have what it takes, I’ll make sure you know exactly how and where to shove any expectations others place on you. Just as I do.”
Phaeliisthia finished her speech looking squarely at my sire and taking her seat once again. “And as I am certain your sire desires.”
Tyaniis hissed out a long sigh, releasing tension in her coils. “Yes, I do. My apologies if I’ve not made that clear. I will ask things of all of you, as family. I do not deny this. But… I hope you can all make your own choices. I hope you—and I—are granted that luxury.”
“Luxury?” Phaeliisthia snorted. “Luxury? If you didn’t bind yourself so tightly with rules and laws, I doubt you of all people would call such a thing a luxury. You’d call it a simple fact.”
“I have an image to maintain, and I believe in those laws,” Tyaniis replied solemnly. I barely heard her whisper “most of them” at the end.
“I also have an image to maintain, Tyaniis. As does Nok-Nok.” Phaeliisthia returned to her seat with a flourish of her hands. “And now if you would please take your bodyguard and leave my estate. Unless you wish for the last bite of dessert?”
“I wish to say goodbye to my daughters, Phaeliisthia.”
“I’m not saying you can’t visit.”
“You aren’t saying I can either.”
“Can and will are different, Tyaniis.”
“Are you going to stop me?”
Phaeliisthia smiled in return. “Say your goodbyes. The rest of us have not a moment to waste.”
Ussyri Noksi rose up and leaned forward. “Phael, if I may: What about me?”
“Hmm? Oh, I figured you could stay a while, Nok-Nok. A decade perhaps, to make up for lost time.”
“Absolutely not.”
Phaeliisthia frowned. “Where did your sense of fun go? Can you stay at the very least to teach some basic magic to Kyrae? I’m not privy to the Temple’s latest, admittedly out of disinterest and distaste.”
“That would be a conflict of interest.”
“Yes, and?” Phaeliisthia raised a single eyebrow.
While the two of them argued, my sire did finish her dessert. She also turned to all of us, her expression unreadable to me.
“Ssiina, Issa, Kyrae: I apologize again for my failings as a sire, and for the rushed nature of this agreement. Please understand, however, that this arrangement is for the best. I will visit you all when I can, but until then, do your best to learn what Phaeliisthia teaches you.”
“I wish she hadn’t hinted at the storm that’s brewing…” Tyaniis side-eyed the strange woman who was still arguing halfheartedly with an increasingly frustrated Ussyri Noksi and shook her head. “But what’s done is done. I will not change my course in supporting you three, but know that this decision will also cause strife for all of you. As you know, Jii’Kalaga is a land of deep traditions, and in the face of this new age, they are changing quickly. We all will need to take a side or be swept away.”
Tyaniis sighed and forced a smile. “Be well, daughters mine. I love all of you, and I wish to see you again as soon as is possible.”
She rubbed Ssiina’s hair, then paused with her hand over mine. After a moment of hesitation, I leaned into it.
“I’m not a kid, but okay,” I mumbled.
Her touch was warm, and Kyrae responded much the same I did, albeit with a little more surprise. Neither of us expected a hssen to be so… accepting. What was my mother like?
With a sad smile, Tyaniis rose and gave a small bow. “Dyni?”
The bodyguard turned and smoothly uncoiled to stand next to Tyaniis. She gave Ssiina a small wave.
“We will leave you now, Phaeliisthia. Take good care of my daughters.” Tyaniis turned away, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder, the tips of her fangs showing. “And before you ask, that is a threat, your reputation preceding you or not.”
“Understood.” Phaeliisthia waved back, pointedly ignoring Ussyri Noksi’s continued protests. She gave no bow, no title, no acknowledgement of the status of my sire.
Kyrae glared at the irreverent woman, but relaxed after a moment, somehow satisfied with her smug expression. So, I tried to be too—not that it was easy.
I watched my sire, Tyaniis, and Ssiina’s bodyguard, Dyni, leave down the path we came in. A cold feeling swept through me, and I felt the shadows until both Ssiina and Kyrae grabbed my hands.
“You’re shaking,” Kyrae said.
“We’ll be fine,” Ssiina encouraged.
I took a deep breath. I’m not alone. Kyrae and I aren’t alone.
“And that…” Phaeliisthia announced far louder than was needed “is my final offer, Nok-Nok!”
“One week,” Ussyri Noksi repeated, holding up a single finger. “A single week is all I will give you, and I will teach all of them the basics only so they have a point of comparison against your… interpretations.”
“Hmm,” Phaeliisthia put a finger on her chin and looked upward. “Acceptable, but disappointing. Agreed.” She nodded, then turned to us. “Now, if we are all finished eating, I will have the servants show you three to your quarters. Your belongings from your ship should be along shortly, and I will expect you in the central courtyard in no less than one hour.”
As if on cue, the red lamia from before exited the villa and slithered toward us, flanked by two other servants, both ke’laniel women. For the first time, I took a solid look at the red lamia: long, deep crimson hair framed a slightly masculine face, and his build was slim and short, like Dyni. He wore a neutral expression and nice, but unadorned clothing that matched his slightly pale skin tone and red scales well.
When he reached us, he bowed low. “Follow me, please.”
While he bowed, and the other servants took our plates, Phaeliisthia strutted off on her own toward the deeper garden. Ussyri Noksi followed her, trying and failing to seem stoic.
Once Kyrae, Ssiina, and I were alone with the servant, I looked down at my hands and then at my expensive clothing. Ssiina had called it simple, but it really wasn’t—it was made just for me: green, gold and black with wide sleeves and fine fabric. Me! I was even getting used to how the fabric felt on my skin and scales. These clothes were mine and I liked them.
Kyrae and I were rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the empire. Even if I knew how it happened, it made my head spin. According to those same people, I was one of them—Kyrae too, as if by my choice.
This truly is real.
The servant stood there, waiting. Waiting for us, for me.Am I really above someone else? Do I want to be?
These past weeks I’d been surrounded by people who were, at least in my mind, still over or equal to me. But, right here right now I was the person being treated with deference.
I can’t think about this right now. Just press on.
I uncoiled myself first, sliding over to the servant, and forcing my tone to be chipper in a way that felt distressingly familiar. “I’m Issa! What’s your name?”
The servant raised up from his bow, and quirked an eyebrow at me, not unlike Phaeliisthia. “I am Zinniz. Follow, please.”
“How long have you worked under Phaeliisthia?” I pushed myself to smile and waved at my sisters, who joined me.
“I have worked under Mistress for many years.”
“How many?”
The servant didn’t reply.
“Zinniz, Hssen Issa asked you a question,” Ssiina spoke up testily.
The red lamia did not even turn to Ssiina to reply. “And I did not answer. It would be unbecoming of me to reveal such details. While you are here as guests, Mistress Phaeliisthia’s word is law, and class holds little weight.”
“So will you listen to us at all?” Ssiina snapped.
“Ssiina!” Kyrae protested.
“I have my orders,” Zinniz replied evasively. “I am to help with your basic needs and answer most questions you have about the estate and the city.”
Ssiina fumed.
I didn’t understand why she was so mad. “Sister, why does it matter?”
Ssiina turned to me quickly, her eyes losing their hardness. “It… well…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kyrae answered. “Didn’t you wish to learn to mingle with the lower classes?”
“Certainly.”
“And do you think you can do that if you act as though you’re above them?” our elf sister pushed.
Ssiina opened her mouth, put up a finger, and closed it again, mumbling, “You… have a point.”
I could swear I saw the ghost of a smile play across Zinniz’s lips for a second, and then we reached the door. He pushed the old wood inward, and coiled to one side as we entered.
Phaeliisthia’s foyer certainly matched its owner’s tastes. Brightly painted sculptures of wildlife and plants in ceramic pots dotted a large, square space, while gold-flamed sconces provided ample light. Stairs of reddish wood (no ramp!) extended to an upper floor. Across the ceiling was a mural of a fantastical forest scene; plants of all colors bloomed under an azure sky.
“Your rooms are on the first floor,” Zinniz said, slithering toward the stairs up.
I followed first, although Kyrae outpaced me on the steps, passing in front before we reached the top. Behind, Ssiina was frowning and biting her lip while making her way up the uncomfortable surface.
Really, Sis? Stairs aren’t that bad! You must’ve done worse while sneaking out, right?
At the top, Zinniz turned and led us down a hallway lit by slanted sunbeams from the exterior wall and populated by vines and murals of more vines.
When he reached the second door, the red lamia pushed on the handle, letting the door swing open. “This will be Ssiina’s room.”
We all gathered to look inside. A circular, soft-looking bed sat in the corner of the space. Shuttered windows let in thin slivers of light, which played over the smooth wooden floor. Aside from the bed, there was a wash basin, a wardrobe, and to my surprise a desk with parchment, ink, and a quill.
Ssiina frowned for a moment, then forced a smile. “It’s lovely. Quaint.”
Quaint? Ssiina, you really need to see how lower-class people live.
“Issa,” Zinniz said from a little further up the hall. “The next room is yours, then Kyrae.”
“We can share a room!” I quickly interjected.
Zinniz shook his head. “You will not. Mistress has ordered it so.”
“Why?” Kyrae snapped.
“You are to determine why yourself. There is a sundial in the courtyard you should be able to see from your rooms. You should also be able to see an open plaza. That is where you will meet Mistress in one hour. Do not be late.” Zinniz bowed and continued on down the hallway.
I bit back a retort and quickly slithered to check my own room. The space was almost identical to Ssiina’s: large, luxurious, and devoid of my sisters. By the time I’d turned back to the hallway, Zinniz was gone.
I faced the empty room again, listening to Kyrae enter hers. Just because Phaeliisthia put us in separate rooms doesn’t mean we need to use them. Or does it?
Suddenly, I felt tired, like all the stress of what had been said today hitting me at once. Everything felt weird still, but the bed was familiar. I slithered into the room in a daze, toward the circle of linens as if on instinct. My tail closed the door behind me and everything was suddenly quiet. Quiet in a way I hadn’t experienced in days. Sire had told me not to sleep with this shirt on, so I tossed it to one side, feeling the warm air on my skin.
Shadows swirled around me, but they stayed distant enough that I didn’t feel their cold touch. I just needed to rest for a moment before I met back with my sisters. Without even checking out the nearby window, I coiled onto the bed, laid down against my scales that were still warm from the sun, and closed my eyes.
