Venom in Her Veins (8 page)

“I’ll detail a few guards—”

Zaltys rolled her eyes. “It’s barely ten minutes away, and that’s if I creep along slowly. The scouts didn’t find anything threatening besides the shadow snake, and it’s
dead. We’re barely in the jungle yet—I think I can make it that far safely. All right?”

Krailash considered. “All right. This time. But come straight back.”

“Yes, yes.” Zaltys told Julen she’d see him at dinner, then set off toward the jungle. She took a brief side trip to snatch one of the folding shovels the laborers used to dig latrine pits, then went into the trees.

She found the clearing easily, following the marks left by her own trail—Julen hadn’t left any more sign than she had, amazingly, he was skilled at stealth—until she reached the statue’s severed head. The serpent’s body was still there, untouched as yet by predators. Zaltys began digging a hole near the statue, easily turning up spades full of the yielding, damp earth, until she had a small pit a few feet deep. She placed the shadow snake’s body in the hole, and put its eyeless head on top. Then she refilled the hole and piled some of the smaller chunks of statue rubble over the grave, disturbing countless colonies of fat, trundling beetles in the process. She kneeled for a moment by the grave, unsure why she’d felt compelled to bury it, unsure what she should say. “I’m sorry you had to die,” she said finally, and stood up, turning back toward her camp.

While she’d been intent on filling the grave, the clearing had filled with snakes. Mundane ones, not flame spitters or shadow snakes or coil constrictors, just brightly-colored jungle serpents, all lifting their heads in the air and looking at her, swaying slightly. Zaltys started to take a step back, but she sensed, somehow, that they meant her no harm. Were they capable of telling that
she’d done a kindness for their larger, more shadowy relative? Or annoyed at the way she’d casually killed one of their own with an arrow earlier? Either seemed possible, though neither was likely. As she moved forward, they slithered aside, clearing a path for her, and Zaltys backed into the trees, watching the serpents as they, in turn, watched her.

Once she’d put a few trees between herself and the clearing, she turned and raced back to camp.

A
LONG TABLE HAD BEEN BROUGHT IN FROM SOMEWHERE—
or possibly constructed rapidly by the carpenters and wheelwrights who traveled with the caravan—and covered with a rich pale blue cloth. Actual glass and porcelain dishes had been set out, in place of the usual wood and stoneware, and there was even a cut-glass vase filled with fresh jungle flowers in the table’s center. Only the seating betrayed the essential roughness of the enterprise, being a motley assortment of folding stools and camp chairs. When Zaltys arrived, having changed out of her hunting leathers into something less formal than her city garb but, at least, not actually blood- and sap-stained, Alaia sat at the head of the table dressed in mist-colored robes with a jeweled diadem on her brow, with Julen at her left. He wore a black formal dining suit that Zaltys couldn’t believe he’d bothered to pack. Quelamia sat farther down the table, and wore robes that seemed woven from waterfalls and sunlight and green leaves. Glory sat slouched across from her.

“Glory,” Zaltys said, taking the empty chair at her mother’s right hand. “I didn’t know you even
owned
a dress!”

Glory sniffed. Her gown was equal parts shadow and spiderweb, clinging to her slim and shapely form, and her jewelry was the silver of moonlight. “I found it at the bottom of a trunk somewhere.”

“Who’s talking?” Julen looked around, frowning.

“Glory,” Alaia said sternly. “Uncloud the boy’s mind. He’s seventh in line to succeed the head of the Guardians—I daresay he has the standing to know you
exist
, at least for the duration of our meal.”

“Sorry. It’s habit.” Glory waved her hand in a gesture that, Zaltys knew, was entirely unnecessary, and Julen gasped.

“A tiefling! Where’d you come from?”

“Glory is our resident psion,” Alaia said, patting Julen’s knee.

“Most people stare at my horns,” Glory said, and Julen looked away, blushing. Glory preferred to go unnoticed, but Julen had quite obviously noticed the way her clinging gown showed off her bosom. Zaltys snickered, and her mother gave her a warning look.

“It’s so nice to have more family with us,” Alaia said. “I do not imagine we’ll be able to have a formal dinner every night, but I thought it would be a nice welcome for Julen, to help ease him into the reality of life in the caravan.”

“It’s walking, walking, and more walking,” Glory said. “Or, if you’re me, riding in a carriage. And then sitting, and waiting, and sitting some more, and
then
doing a little work at the end.”

“Some of us have work to do throughout,” Quelamia said. “But, yes, there are long stretches of simply traveling.”

“So … we’re not there yet?” Julen said. “I mean, this is the jungle, right?”

“This is the edge of the jungle,” Zaltys said. “We have to go a lot deeper to get to the terazul blossoms—under trees so dense the sun doesn’t really penetrate, among the wild things and ruins, along tracks that become so overgrown in the months between our visits that Quelamia and the road crews have to clear the paths all over again.”

“The overgrowth is something we encourage, magically,” Alaia said. “Though the jungle scarcely needs any help. But it helps hide the paths from those who would steal our trade secrets.” She gestured to a waiting servant—just a laborer pressed into service for the evening—who brought over a tureen of soup and ladled it out into the waiting green glass bowls before each person at the table.

“I don’t see why you need to traipse off into the jungles anyway,” Julen said, sniffing his soup dubiously before tasting a mouthful. “Huh. This isn’t bad.”

Zaltys took a spoonful of her own, and found it rather bland, but then, her favorite part of any caravan meal was the fresh-killed game, and that would come later. “How would we avoid coming into the jungle?” she said. “That’s where the flowers grow, and without the flowers, where would the family be? What are the Serrats without terazul?”

Julen shrugged. “Well, there are the betting parlors, and the ships—which transport more than just terazul
products—and all the property we own and the rents we collect, and all the other enterprises the Traders set up.”

“All noble pursuits, and it’s certainly wise to diversify,” Alaia said, “but the backbone of our family is the terazul trade. Our profits in other endeavors rise and fall, but terazul income is dependable. Without it, we’d be … well, just merchants, instead of merchant princes. And if the founder of our family hadn’t stumbled across the flowers in his travels, and kept their location a secret for his use alone, he’d have remained a humble importer.”

“You can say ‘smuggler,’ ” Julen said. “It’s what he was.”

Alaia sighed. “Fine. But the fact remains, our more respectable businesses were built on the back of his discovery, and terazul remains central to the family’s prosperity.”

“All right, granted,” Julen said. “So dig up a few of the flowers, roots and all, and bring them back to the city. Let’s grow the crops there. I know the climate’s different, not so terribly damp, but surely Quelamia or someone else can do something about that with magic. What else is magic for, if not making life more convenient?” He slapped at an insect that buzzed around his neck. The tall torches burning around them kept most of the bugs away, but not all. “It just seems silly, spending all this effort, employing all these hirelings, to go out to the jungle twice a year to fetch a bunch of
flowers
.”

“The boy’s a genius,” Glory said. “Transporting the plants. Now why didn’t anybody ever think of
that
before?” She snapped her fingers at a hovering servant, who jumped, having clearly forgotten Glory was there
since filling her soup bowl. “More wine here,” she said, then turned back to Julen. “It’s been tried. Doesn’t work.”

“The family’s founder himself tried,” Quelamia said. She hadn’t touched her soup, or her wine, and she gazed into her water glass as if seeing faraway places in its depths—and maybe she was—eladrin were strange, and never seemed entirely in this world. “The flowers will grow when transported. They will thrive, even. There were even some growing in the gardens of the family villas, until the Guardians became concerned that visitors might notice them, discover they were terazul, and leave with the knowledge of what the flowers look like, making it possible for scouts to scour the jungle and find them. Those blossoms are all gone now, of course.” She lapsed into silence.

“So what’s the problem?” Julen said. “If we had a captive crop back home, we could protect it year-round, and destroy all the wild flowers. Then my father wouldn’t have to worry so much about keeping people from finding out where they grow.”

“The flowers will grow in other places,” Alaia said, “but they lose their special properties. They become, simply, pretty blossoms.”

“She means they can’t be made into potions that give you superficially revelatory but actually nonsensical visions,” Glory said. “Or dried and ground up into powder that lets you stay awake for three days straight without losing your ability to concentrate intensely—though you might lose a few teeth and get nosebleeds if you sniff too much of it.” She glugged the last of her wine and gestured for more.

“Oh,” Julen said. “Huh. Anybody know why the flowers only work when they grow wild? I thought plants were plants.”

“As far as we can tell, it’s magical,” Quelamia said. “Something about the soil in the deep jungle is imbued with magic, perhaps as a result of the great cataclysm that tore the land asunder and created the Gulf of Luiren. The roots of the terazul vines tap into some reservoir of magic, and give the flowers their useful, if morally questionable, qualities.”

“Morally questionable?” Alaia said, rather sharply. And Zaltys thought, Here we go. “No one forces anyone to use terazul potions or powders, Quelamia. Our vendors advise customers of the potency of the potions, and let them know the products are best used in moderation.”

“Terazul flowers are
addictive
,” Quelamia said. “It is difficult for addicts to practice moderation.”

“Terazul is no more addictive than sweet wine or the vile crumbleweed that Glory smokes in her pipe every day. Some people are weak, and will become dependent on
anything
,” Alaia said. “The family can’t be responsible for every choice our customers make.”

“Too true,” Quelamia said. “We are, all of us, only responsible for our own actions and our own lives.” She rose. “If you’ll excuse me, Alaia, and Zaltys, and Julen, and Glory. I have much work ahead of me.”

“Oh, don’t go,” Alaia said, calming down. “I didn’t mean to get us started on that old argument. You’re always welcome at my table.”

“I know,” Quelamia said. “And you should know I take no offense. Eternity is long, and all these concerns
are trivial when considered in light of deep time. But, speaking of smaller timescales, if you’d like me to finish that … special project … by the date you requested, I had best return to my work.”

“Ah, of course. Well, please yourself.”

Quelamia drifted away, and when she was gone, Glory belched. “It’s easy to be self-righteous when you’ve been around for 200 years. Thinks she knows better than everybody. I’ve got no problem with the moral—what would you call it—component of our business.”

Alaia sighed. “I’m so pleased to hear our enterprise causes no moral qualms for the member of our party who routinely erases the memories of other sentient creatures. That’s most comforting. Of course I know the arguments against terazul. They’re not wholly without merit. But the terazul trade gives us wealth, and in turn, we employ countless citizens of Delzimmer and the cities of our trading partners. We pay fair wages, do good civic works, and offer countless advantages to our community. One might argue that the roots of our business are a trifle poisonous, but the fruits, at least, are sweet.”

“I don’t think right and wrong really enter into it,” Zaltys said slowly. “What matters is family. You support your family, and they support you. That’s the foundation of all our success. You live for your family, and serve for your family, and die for your family.”

“Without that, we’re nothing,” Julen said, raising his glass of watered wine to Zaltys. “The wizard doesn’t understand. She’s not family. A family retainer, yes, and I’m sure a valuable adviser, but …”

“Yes,” Alaia said. “It’s different, when you’re part of the family.” She reached out and took the hands of her daughter and her nephew.

“If you’re all going to start hugging each other,” Glory said, “I’d like to be excused.”