Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [40]
“Tag the tail!” she shrilled. “Tag the tail and you’re it!”
Arvin felt rage course through him. No. It wasn’t fair-the slave had cheated. She hadn’t given him enough of a start. His body drew back into a coil; then he lashed out. His fangs sank into the girl’s arm, and he tasted the sweet, hot tang of blood.
The slave girl gave a strangled gasp and staggered backward, staring at the twin beads of blood on her forearm, then collapsed onto the floor. “I thought…” she gasped, her tongue already thickening in her mouth. “We… friends…” Then her eyes glazed.
Arvin’s tongue flickered in and out of his mouth. The slave girl lay still on the floor, no longer breathing. Dead.
Regret trickled through him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so hasty. Who was he going to play with, now?
Arvin shifted, turning over in his sleep. The night air was growing cooler, less muggy. He squirmed over to a section of rooftop that retained a little of the day’s warmth; his body drank it in. A part of him realized that he had moved like a snake, undulating hips and shoulders in order to shift himself…
The dream shifted. Now Arvin was kneeling on a low stone platform in the middle of a room richer than any he had ever seen. It had a high, domed ceiling held up by gilded columns, windows draped with silk curtains that fluttered in the evening breeze, and walls painted with Origin frescos-a series of images showing the “World Serpent looking down upon the snakes, lizards, and other reptilian races issuing from Her cloaca.
Arvin was weary with the exhaustion that follows an intense rage. His hands were raw from having pounded his fists repeatedly against his sleeping platform, and his skin was moist and itching from the acidic sweat that had oozed out between his scales. He’d hissed until his jaw ached, thrown his dinner against the door-splatters of egg and shell clung to its polished wood-and still his mother hadn’t relented. He was not going to be given another slave with whom to play. Not until he learned to coil his temper. Until he learned to master his emotions. Until he stopped acting so human.
That had punctured his pride. Humans were stupid, blundering creatures. Look how the yuan-ti manipulated and dominated them, just as humans and the other lesser races dominated animals. It was the natural order of things. It-
The door opened. Arvin looked up at the strangest human he’d ever seen. The man was short, dark skinned, and bald-and so wrinkled his face looked as though it had shrunk beneath its skin. Yet he was lean and well muscled. His only article of clothing was a loincloth, nearly as dark as he was. Around one wrist was coiled a finger-thin turquoise serpent with translucent yellow wings: a flying snake from the jungles of Chult. Arvin stared at it, transfixed, as it raised its head and hissed. He’d wanted one of those for so long…
The bald man moved his hand up and down, causing the flying snake to flutter its wings. All the while, he stared at Arvin, not speaking.
In a distant part of the family manse, Arvin heard a wind chime tinkling. Yet the breeze that had been ruffling his curtains had stopped. The clouds must have cleared; sunlight was shining in through the window now.
“Desire,” the bald man said in a deep voice that was at odds with his thin frame. “I can feel it radiating from you, like heat from a sun-warmed rock. Your emotions run deep and swift-very unusual, in a yuan-ti.”
Arvin stared at the impudent human, wondering when he was going to hand over the flying snake-perhaps he should just take it from the man, instead. The pet was obviously an apology from his mother for her overreaction about the slave girl.
The bald man raised his free hand and flicked a fingertip against