Tim Pratt: Venom in Her Veins

“Life of adventure, here I come,” Glory said sourly. “I’m not promising to wander the earth with you forever, but I think things are going to get ugly in Delzimmer-hundreds of terazul addicts denied their life’s only purpose? No fun, and I’d rather not be there when they start rioting in the streets. Even if I make sure they can’t see me, I might get trampled accidentally. So I’ll stick with you until I find a better situation. Okay?”

“The two of you,” she said. They were rather spoiling her plan to walk off nobly into the woods alone to find herself and seek her fortune, but she had to admit-she’d enjoy the company, and it was easier to stay alive in the jungle and beyond if you had someone to keep watch while you were sleeping. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Julen said. “We already know. That’s the whole point of being family.”

“Speak for yourself,” Glory said. “We’re not family. I’m just going along with you so I don’t have to dig my own holes to crap in.”

Zaltys asked them to wait for her near the severed head of the idol where they’d skinned the shadow snake while she said her good-byes to the yuan-ti. Scitheron begged her to reconsider-he offered to make her low priest, which was apparently a kind of high priest-and she politely declined. “Listen,” she said. “There’s a pit, with a stone grate over it … Can you tell me about it?”

“The pit of the anathema,” Scitheron said. His tongue flickered wildly. “We haven’t been there yet. We weren’t sure if the anathema still lived.”

“It was alive a few days ago,” Zaltys said. “It spoke to me.”

“Are you sure you won’t become our low priest?” Scitheron said again. “The anathema is a sort of king, and a sort of representative of our god. But it went mad, long ago, and slew most of our people. We kept the anathema locked away, and fed it sacrifices to placate it. It is a great power, to be honored and respected, but it is also very dangerous.”

“It speaks to your god, though, right?”

Scitheron nodded. “You wish to commune with Zehir?” He sounded so excited, like the more devout aunts in the Traders did whenever she showed the slightest interest in Waukeen, the god worshiped by most of the Serrat family.

“I have a message for him,” Zaltys said carefully.

Scitheron showed her to the pit, though Zaltys remembered the way. “Don’t open the trapdoor,” he warned. “Speak through the grate. It can hear you, though it may not answer.” He bid her good luck and slithered away.

Zaltys kneeled by the edge of the pit. “Anathema,” she said.

“Daughter of serpents,” the thing in the pit whispered. “You have returned. Did you save our people?”

“I did,” Zaltys said.

“Then I will be fed soon. Good. Would you like to be my first meal? Being eaten by the anathema is a great honor.”

“No. But I have a message for Zehir.”

“Speak, then. The god hears what I hear.”

Zaltys spoke at some length. She’d learned most of the fouler words from the guardsmen in the caravan, and she ended with a rather forceful and graphic suggestion that she sincerely hoped Zehir would follow.

The anathema chuckled. “I am not sure that act is physically possible,” the anathema said, “even for a god as mutable in shape as Zehir. But your anger will delight him, Zaltys. You are truly his daughter.”

Zaltys spat into the pit, and the anathema laughed as she walked away.

Julen, Glory, and Zaltys set off into the jungle, carrying rations and water and potions and everything else useful they could find in the camp. Julen had a map of the lands north of Delzimmer, and at the upper edge was a place marked Tymanther, where Krailash supposedly had family. Zaltys thought it would be nice to let them know he’d died heroically saving the world, or at least a small portion of it.

“There’s no sense of scale on this map, though,” Glory said, turning the sheet of parchment over and peering at it upside down. “I have no idea how long the journey might take us. A few tendays to reach Delzimmer-though it might be best if we swing wide around the city, lest your relatives get their hands on you and lock you up in a tower somewhere. After that, though, there are just leagues and leagues to cover. And there’s no telling what we’ll run into along the way.”

“I know,” Julen said. “Back home, I’d be taking Advanced Poisons class right now, and then spending two hours practicing my knife work, and then reading classics. But now, I have no idea what’s going to happen next. It’s amazingly liberating.”

Glory looked at Zaltys and shook her head. “Humans,” she said. “They’re impossible.”

“Yes,” Zaltys agreed. “But what can we do? He’s family.” They set off into the green vastness of the jungle.

As they passed under the low-hanging branches, a pale green serpent slithered behind them in Zaltys’s shadow.

She pretended not to notice.