Page 58 of King of Serpents

Therxian frowned and turned abruptly, determined to drag the information out of her, but Jathella caught his arm and dipped her chin gravely.

“Do not engage with her further. I know that the queen has personally questioned her and applied force more than once, though no one attended her or knew what line of questioning she applied. My guess is that it was for this exact information if she had foolishly taunted her during an interrogation—and she is that sort, as you have seen. Vekatha’s mind is broken, her body withering and rotting away, but her nature is unchanged. She will keep her secrets, it seems.”

“The council hid her,” he rumbled. “This means that there is a child of Yilada hiding as a daughter of a noble-line.”

“The question is, which one?” Jathella murmured.

Therxian sighed. “More mysteries to unravel. And I still need to educate myself on certain matters if I am going to challenge the council. I am not Zathexa, so I need to be well-prepared. Thankfully, I still have access to the royal library. I can only hope that I shed light on these matters as well.”

Jathella frowned at him. “What is the other mystery?”

“I am not entirely certain,” he admitted. “But it has something to do with one named Luwai.”

“Luwai!” Jathella drew to a sudden stop, startling him as she stared at him in surprise. “Did you say Luwai?”

He snapped his gavo. “I came across the name—”

“Luwai was a Seshanamitesh poet your sister adored. The female went willingly into exile to dwell with her hunter mate she loved when Vorahna was just sixteen revolutions. The poet’s name was stricken from the public works. How do you know of her?”

Chapter 41

Alex stared at her mate, chewing absently at her food, completely absorbed with every word that fell from his mouth as he shared everything that he had learned that day. Jathella sat silently at his side, her face set in grim lines. Alex shook her head in awe and looked over at the captain of the guard.

“Do you think that the scroll might have belonged to Vorahna?”

Jathella’s mouth thinned. “That is what I have come to determine.”

Alex’s eyebrows flew upward. “You personally came all the way down here to examine the scroll? I am sure that Therxian could have returned with it later and saved you the effort.”

“Unnecessary. It just happened that Kitanara wished for me to bring you some of the... snacks,” she gestured to the carefully packaged bits of what could only be described as sweets and something akin to street-food, “that she acquired from the market. Not only was it convenient, but...” a strained look passed across her face “... anything that might explain what happened to Vorahna is of the utmost importance to me. Do you have the scroll here?” she asked, her gaze turning inquiringly to Therxian.

Therxian inclined his head, and he rose. “It is. There is no need to wait any further. I admit that I did not expect you to be so emotionally invested in this matter.”

Jathella swallowed, her gavo snapping weakly in reply. She silently watched him, her eyes following him as he proceeded to the shelves and reached for the scroll sitting amongst a collection of older, dustier volumes that had belonged to the queen who had once resided there. He turned with the scroll, and the captain’s eyes widened, her breathing catching with anticipation as he crossed the room back to her. He held it outstretched, and she quickly took it, her hands subtly shaking as she unrolled it and spread it on the table in front of her. She lifted a trembling hand to trace in the air over the painted female figure briefly before her gaze drifted down the letter. Her mouth parted with a regretful sigh.

“Vorahna. She was so delicate and sweet. Not an unkind bone in her frail little body. No female deserved the life that she was forced to live. And yet, despite her weakness, her spirit thrived and grew bigger than that of any other I had ever known. And then one day she was gone. She never woke up. Everyone said that she had finally succumbed to the wasting sickness, but I saw that Zathexa never believed it. Nor did I. Seeing this... it is like she was just here yesterday. This is done by her hand. I taught her to write. I could never forget how carefully she formed every mark. But I do not understand. She was here? Why would she come here and not tell anyone?”

“Perhaps she did not think our mother would approve. You spoke of the poet. Read it carefully. It seems that my sister was truly our mother’s daughter in spirit regardless of her failing body,” Therxian replied.

Her gaze drifted to the other figure, and her tail coiled restlessly around her. “An Uralial?” Her eyes lifted questioningly. “Are you suggesting that she was meeting secretly with an Uralial male? Such is absolutely—”

“Forbidden,” Alex filled in with a faint smile.

“Yes,” Jathella drawled on a long hiss. “In this palace you will see fragments of a past better left forgotten as far as the council is concerned. Images of a Seshanamitesh and Uralial joined together. No one knows why there was a separation between us evolutionarily that divided our species into two, but it was not uncommon in our history for our communities to cross and interbreed.” A faint smile passed across her face. “This was a point that excited Vorahna, though I never understood why. In fact, the cross between our communities was so common that the royal family often produced both Uralial and Seshanamitesh offshoots to represent the two hands of our people, though such traits disappeared generations ago. According to lore, the queen of the period—not wishing to share power—killed her Uralial-born sister. She claimed that the evolution of the Uralial was aberrant and unnatural. The Uralial were slaughtered to purge their bloodlines, and those that escaped retreated to the lower waterways beyond the reach of our kind.”

“And here I thought humans had the corner market on dysfunctional families,” Alex muttered. “We have royal sisters murdering each other as a precedent in the Aglatha.”

“It was more than just the Aglatha,” Jathella quietly corrected. “It was something that was planned among many of the queens of all the interconnected shinaras of the region. To divest the mutated taint from their people and exile the Uralial to the depths, much as the Vehal were abandoned to survive under their own power. It was a massacre, though it is a forgotten part of our history in many respects. All that is remembered is the separation. Vorahna was fascinated by it. She studied it, and in turn, as her guard and companion, I too learned of it. More than I would ever have liked,” she added with a grimace.

“What strikes me about this is that what we see in the Aglatha seems to be a struggle to maintain some kind of status quo,” Alex observed. “This is not unheard of happening back on Earth. Even the non-gratas system calls back to feudal systems in early Earth history. We are the modern ‘serfs’ of our overlords, but with somehow fewer protections. There is a tendency for humans to relapse to systems that are convenient or comfortable when progress reaches a point of forward momentum where it makes people uncomfortable when they face losing a sense of stability or familiarity in the face of change.”

Jathella hummed thoughtfully. “Yes. From what I recall, Vorahna had gone on endlessly about how the social system among the Uralial was more... fluid than that of the Seshanamitesh or even the Vehal. Males and females both led and created in accordance with their capabilities. That, paired with their obvious mutation from the true form of the Seshanamitesh, inspired a conservative movement among the noble mother-lines that spread among the common nests from their influence. That reclaiming tradition and the ‘original design of Shangla’ and purifying that shinara back to its original state caught hold and spread insidiously among the shinaras. It has continued to simmer beneath the surface, manifesting in cruel ways toward the Uralial, while making exceptions with harsh conditions for those who are useful in supplying the shinara with material exclusive to the Uralial mother-lines.”

Therxian hummed thoughtfully, his gavo lifting slightly as he considered her words. “So it would seem that what happened back then is an ongoing problem. Zathexa’s hunter mate pushed against the assigned roles among the males in the shinara that left her open to assassination by Yilada who championed tradition. It is possible that Vorahna’s frailty was intentional by some plot to render Zathexa’s branch of the royal line impotent and powerless.”

“A measure of control,” Jathella murmured. “A developing nestling has all manner of attendants. No one would have even imagined that anyone would intentionally poison a female that had been so longed for by all of the Aglatha.”

“Unless that was the point all along,” Alex rejoined, and her lips pursed for a moment as she thought. “Perhaps someone never intended the queen to conceive a daughter.”