Tim Pratt: Venom in Her Veins

“I never saw the need for a bellybutton,” Krailash rumbled.

“We humans do. Though if she were born premature, the navel might be very small, perhaps there’s a tiny depression after all. But, really, I’m less concerned about the absence of something ordinary than the presence of something abnormal. Those scales worry me. I suppose it may be a nasty fungus, or …” She half-smiled. “Perhaps she’s just got a little dragon in her ancestry, hmm?”

“That would be a blessing, wouldn’t it?” Krailash said. “You can have one of the family healers in Edgwater examine her when we return. If nothing else, they can cut the scales away.” He stood. “I should go.”

“Yes,” Alaia said, wrapping the child back up in the blanket, and cooing to her gently. “Go, and rain hell on the monsters who made this poor girl an orphan.”

Krailash went down the steps from Alaia’s wagon and started toward Quelamia’s trailer. After half-a-dozen steps he stopped, frowning at the ramshackle, black-painted cart that had suddenly appeared before him. How odd. Where had it come from? A fourth wagon in the camp’s center, as big as his own, with windows in the shape of oversized humanoid skulls with glass for eyes, a metal chimney pipe jutting crookedly from the roof, and a clacking mobile of animal bones dangling by the door?

The door banged open, and a tiefling leaned out. Purple hair stuck up in ill-tended tufts from the back of her head, sharp horns jutted from her pale red forehead, and her dark eyes twinkled with amusement. A long black pipe dangled from the corner of her mouth, and she exhaled smoke through her nostrils, making her look even more infernal than she might otherwise.

“Hello, Rusty,” she said.

Glory . Another of the important figures in camp, but one whose existence had slipped Krailash’s mind entirely, as it almost always did unless he were standing face-to-face with her. He hadn’t even noticed her wagon until he’d nearly walked into it. Because she hadn’t wanted him to. She was not invisible but forgettable , slipping from the minds of everyone who met her except Alaia and other leaders of the family. That forgettable quality meant that Krailash’s security plans seldom involved protecting her, but Glory liked it that way. She could, she said, protect herself, and what better protection than going unnoticed? Now that he saw her, all his memories about her returned, and most of them weren’t particularly fond.

“There might be trouble coming,” he said. “You’d better go back to … whatever you do in there. For your own safety.” The dragonborn and the tiefling races had a long tradition of enmity, though the clash of their respective empires was lost in such dim mists of history that the dislike between Krailash and Glory was more theoretical than practical. The fact that she was a psion-a master of meddling with minds-troubled him far more than her infernal ancestry. Krailash was a warrior, and a person of honor, and Glory’s ability to scramble the memories and motivations of her enemies struck him as cowardly.

She took another deep puff on her pipe, the foul smell of burning herbs wafting into Krailash’s face. “Nice of you to worry about me. What is it this time? Giant centipedes? Another troop of apes guarding a temple no one even remembers?”

“Someone from the Underdark abducted several nearby villagers, and they may attempt to attack the caravan. Alaia would be annoyed if I allowed you to be kidnapped.” Krailash was uncomfortable with Glory’s role in the caravan, but he understood her powers were necessary to protect the family’s trade secrets from the many would-be rivals who sought to usurp their power and wealth. In some ways, she was the most important member of the caravan, though she mostly just lounged around and smoked and drank. The family paid her well for very little work, but, then, they were paying her for the experience of her long years, not the labor of a few hours.

“Ha. Any cave-dwelling scum who try to kidnap me will end up working for me, Krailash. So don’t worry on my account.”

“There are things in the Dark that don’t have minds to meddle with, demonspawn. And an arrow flying toward you cannot be persuaded to strike someone else instead.”

“Point taken, Rusty. Are you going to jump into the pit with a dagger in your teeth, then?”

“That’s my usual preference. But I’m going to enlist the help of Quelamia.”

A shadow crossed the tiefling’s face. Quelamia’s mind was exceedingly well-protected, and Glory didn’t like people she couldn’t read. She changed the subject quickly. “Who’s the newcomer to camp?”

Krailash frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I sense a new mind.”

“Ah. A human infant left behind when her family was stolen away. Alaia is taking care of her now.”

“Huh. There’s something strange about her mind.” The tiefling shrugged. “Probably just that she’s a baby. Their tiny minds are little maelstroms swirling with unregulated sensory inputs. Good luck with your monster-hunting, Rusty.” She disappeared back into her wagon, slamming the door and making the mobile of bones clatter.

Krailash walked around her wagon to Quelamia’s home, the memory of his encounter with Glory already receding in his mind. He thumped the unbroken trunk of the tree-on-wheels where Quelamia lived with his fist, and a hole-a knothole, really-opened in the bark. The eladrin stuck her head out, pale gold hair hanging long past her shoulders, pointed ears peeking out. Her eyes were unbroken orbs of pale blue, like the glaze on a fine ceramic pot, and though her pupil-less gaze seemed blank, Krailash knew her eyes took in more than his ever could, sometimes in two worlds at once. She said, “Yes?” with her usual absent-minded quality, as if she were looking past him into the farther reaches of the Feywild, that world beyond this world that she had once called home.

Krailash explained about the crying child, the signs of massacre, the pit he’d found in the temple, and the disappearance of his guardsman. Quelamia’s expression became vaguely troubled when he mentioned the Underdark. “If you want us to go down there …” she began, but Krailash shook his head.

“Our duty is to the caravan. Sad as I am to lose Rainer and to see the human child made an orphan, we must protect the safety of Alaia’s holdings, and a trip into the dark against unknown enemies is too dangerous.”

“Then what did you have in mind?” Quelamia asked.

“Closing up the passageway from the Underdark to the surface,” Krailash said.

Quelamia nodded. “I see. Let me get my staff.” She disappeared back into her tree, and returned to the small opening a moment later bearing a brown branch as long as she was tall, with leaves sprouting from shoots along its length-it was a part of her own living tree somehow detached and made into a weapon and implement of power. She flickered, and a moment later was standing beside Krailash, the tree’s trunk once again closed and unbroken. “Do the others in camp know what’s happened?”

“No, I only told Alaia, and, ah-” He blinked. “Just … just Alaia, I think.”

Quelamia nodded, looking pointedly at the spot between her wagon and Alaia’s-in other words, looking at nothing in particular as far as Krailash could see-and said, “Let’s see what we can do about this hole in the ground. Lead the way.”

Krailash had no fear with Quelamia at his side. The jungle seemed to make way for her as she walked, rendering his usual hack-and-slash trailbreaking unnecessary. Branches swayed aside and thorns turned their sharp points away when they passed. The wizard was the most powerful member of the caravan, stronger in magic even than Alaia, and was so valuable to the family that she received a percentage of the organization’s profits rather than a normal salary, something only fully vested members of the Serrat family usually received. While Krailash’s duties were essentially seasonal, with work only required of him during the harvesting season and the long trek of the caravans from the city to the jungle and back again, Quelamia worked actively for the family year-round, advising and assisting the members of the other branches of the family as well as Alaia’s own Travelers.