The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [29]
“My my my,” said the monster, in a strangely soft and motherly voice (though Octavia had never heard her mother’s voice). “What have we here?”
Rough skin, tinted like the water in most places, but mottled with brown, as if by disease. Those eyes were like a snake’s, with vertical pupils. Clearly no human emotion had ever been portrayed there. Predatory teeth, hundreds of them, all exposed in what might have been a smile. And a black, forked tongue, flickering, tasting the air.
“Speak up, child. What do you want? Why did you call me? I don’t have all day.”
The voice was tremulous in the air, hissing inside Octavia’s skull. “I’m sorry to disturb—”
Quickly, from that long tongue, the fecund spat several small, dark items, two of which hit the bars of the portcullis, but one hit Octavia wetly in the face and then dropped to slide slowly down the front of her shift. A tadpole. A fat brown tadpole. Octavia brushed the larvae off—maybe frog, or toad?—as the fecund tossed her head back to laugh the same laugh Octavia had heard while approaching.
Then the monster said: “You didn’t wash before coming here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your face. Your face is dirty.”
Octavia would not let the fecund bait her.
“Did the chatelaine send you? I see she’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or is visiting me only fit for untouchables?”
“We’re not called that. Not any more. We’re kholics. Melancholics.”
The fecund laughed again. “Oh, I’ve touched a nerve! How clever of me. Melancholics. But really, you humans are so predicable and boring. I don’t care what you have on your face or what you force others to put on their face. You’re all the same to me. Let me guess. She’s adopted you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re her latest project. Or, if you’re not now, you will be soon.”
“I work here, in Jesthe.”
“Really? Doing tasks other than wiping asses?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“No.”
“Shame. But my goodness. Social changes! Marching forward and all that. Bravo! What does everyone else think? The staff? Do they treat you nice? Do they welcome you to their bosoms? Do they play cards with you? Share gossip? What does the chamberlain think, for goodness sake?”
“I’ve never met chamberlain Erricus. He doesn’t go to the floor where I work.”
“The floor where you work. That’s rich. From what I understand, he would remain unaffected by your marred and somewhat offbeat beauty. He might not even see you at all. Or perhaps he would see only your mark? That would be enough for him. I’d love to know what he would think if he knew you were here! And what would his predecessors say? They would gut you like a rabbit.”
“How could I know the answers to all your questions?”
“These questions are rhetorical. You’re so serious. Do you know what rhetorical means? I don’t need you to answer me. But you say that the chamberlain knows nothing about you? No one has told him, I’m sure.” She tilted her head, squinting at Octavia. “Maybe you would charm even the cold palatinate. What do you think?”
Octavia shrugged. This reek, she realized, was not the smell of rancid gardens, or of the river that bisected the city, but was mephitic, a perfumed corpse, preserved forever by unnatural means, forever rotting.
Her legs trembled. The fecund seemed to know everything. Octavia squeezed the dream in her fist and tried to clear her head. Surely the fecund could not see her thoughts, flicking unwittingly through her mind, like birds? “The cherub,” she said quietly. “The pet you made for the chatelaine—”
“Made?” Moving so fast that her great body was a blur, spraying water, the fecund wheeled, algae pendulous from her torso. The swamp seemed to be a mere puddle. That grin was long gone. “What happened to my baby?”
Octavia stammered nothing coherent.
“What happened to her?”
The monster’s stomach distended in muscular rolls and her green breasts hung heavily, two either side. What looked like smoke came