Chapter 11 #3
Osumlik looked down his nose at her, though now he was sweating more than he had been when chasing Coral. “We must take the sentiments of the patient into account, madam.”
“And her money, of course,” said Ana. “For she is, after all, eager to pay for all this, despite its madness. I simply find it notable…so many Armentas have befallen misfortune recently. And here Velona is demanding it be done to her, and you gladly abetting it!”
Osumlik sputtered, while Fotia’s face was fixed in terrific discomfort. Then, with no warning whatsoever, the little drokha-cat sat up, sprang out of Fotia’s arms, and scurried through the cracked door on the other side of the balcony.
“We’ve been summoned,” said Fotia.
We walked to the cracked door, Osumlik sputtering on behind us, and entered.
—
The room within was not at all what I’d expected of a prime gentryfolk’s chambers. It appeared spacious—but it was hard to tell, as coils and drapes of mosses hung from the ceiling so densely it was like passing through a jungle.
My eyes fluttered as I studied the mosses, identifying them in my memories. There was katuska-bloom, and emmek, and kul-weed: all used by Apoths and medikkers for their ability to pull contaminants from the air. The atmosphere of this room was likely some of the purest in all the canton.
Or, it would have been, if it were not for the numerous offertories and avarias that stood about.
Some of the cages contained urns and carven stone boxes; others, glass chambers containing bones or preserved moths.
If it hadn’t been for all the cleansing mosses, there surely would have been a great stink of decay.
Fotia led us forward. The drapes of moss formed a corridor, and there at its end was a woman seated in a fretvine chair cunningly grown to sport wheels so it could be pushed about.
The woman watched us approach. Her gaze was strong, and there was much about her that suggested a life once lived with vigor—the darkness of her skin, for example, was like that of someone who labored outdoors—but she was now devastatingly reduced.
She sported huge, dark circles under her eyes, and the skin about her lips was dry and papery.
She had lost all her hair and now wrapped her pate in a bright yellow cloth.
Yet though her face was thin, her neck and arms and legs were bloated and swollen, and shot through with coils of purple and gray: signs of great alterations done to her.
More disturbing was the apparatus that sat beside her.
It was a glass pot filled with cloudy, amber fluid, with some breed of crustacean lurking at its bottom.
A coil of long, translucent, intestinal tubing wound out and entered the woman’s arm at the elbow.
I watched as the thing in the pot shuddered, and dark ichor coursed down the tube and into her veins.
As a final, absurd note to all of it, the drokha-cat Coral now sat upon the woman’s lap, watching us with its wide, anxious, silvery eyes—though it had donned a small red cap, fastened about its tiny neck. I guessed the old woman had stuck it on her as we’d approached.
The woman raised a hand and gestured. “Fotia,” she said. “Come. Come, girl! I wish to see something!” Though her body was weak, her voice was firm, and my sister quickly did as she bade.
The woman gazed at Fotia, and then at me. “What a likeness!” she said. “And what a bloodline you must have had! You two are as pretty as a pasture flower…To think that such faces could be made without the arts of flesh-crafters.”
Though I was slightly offended, I bowed to her and introduced myself and Ana.
“A pleasure it is to meet you, ma’am!” said Ana, grinning cheerfully despite the morbid atmosphere. “I thank you for making time for m—”
Yet Velona Armenta had only eyes for me, and said, “It should be you who’s jailed, you know, and not my son.”
“I…I beg your pardon, ma’am?” I said.
“You abandoned your family,” Velona snapped.
“Walked away. Slithered into the jungles like a fox. That’s a great crime, you know.
This girl’s heart bears many cracks because of it.
” She reached out and fondly took Fotia’s arm.
The intestinal tubing attached to her elbow shuddered as she did so, and Coral had to shift to avoid its touch.
“I…was doing my duty,” I said haltingly. “I wished to support my family, ma’am.”
“If a man cannot support his family on his homestead,” said Velona, “upon the very earth he owns, then he is no man at all. This is what the Daljen said—the records of Master Haal. I hope she has excoriated you, boy! Did she speak her mind honestly to you?”
“My sister,” I said, “has never lacked courage when it comes to speaking her mind. I found she has not grown out of the habit.”
Fotia managed a half smirk at that.
Velona narrowed her eyes. “You’ve a clever tongue. I dislike that. Artful words veil a dark soul. But…I did not call you here to correct your crimes, and I’ve only so much time. There are other misdeeds we wish to discuss. Far worse ones, perhaps…perhaps of an unnatural making. Yes?”
Again, Ana bowed. “This is so, ma’am.”
Velona looked away. “Yes.”