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= LANTERN ROAD =

a novella in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

18.

Instead, he threw himself back on his pillow, groaning with pain, and tossed the sword aside. "What have you done to me, you garden weed?"

"I have brought disgrace to our family and to my future husband's family."

"Ah well do you know it, viper." He pulled the decapitated basket close and took out a linen towel to staunch his blood. He spoke in a halting, painfully slurry voice: "I should throw you both out that window. But you, foolish wasp"—he used the human word to wound the baba—"you useless spider, because you could not be discreet in your insect-like spitefulness, this matter will be the laughing stock of the Obayyo for the next thousand kjirs.

“Worse by far, Dumonhi will not fall for it for a moment.

“Ah dammit, a pox on you both. If he were here, he could honorably wound his shame by killing you with his bare hands or any way he chooses, as is his right. I should probably pen you up like animals until he returns from the campaign on Far Tomi Shore. Your fate will be most unpleasant, for he may turn you both over to their family babas, and I cannot imagine what they will invent by way of torturing you both to death."

A moment of horrified silence filled the room, as each contemplated a picture of several large, wasp-like females with many legs and arms, busily stabbing, piercing, burning, and biting Ramy and Ramy-baba toward a long, agonizing death.

It need not come to that, of course, for there were the knives of love, the knives of the rabbit.

Ramy sensed her father’s continued love, even amid his torment and loss. She spoke with dignity, as befitted a Ramyon noblewoman. She addressed her father in a high, even voice, for everything was suddenly very clear.

Even the pain, the loneliness, the abandonment that Dumonhi's callousness had caused her had evaporated.

She felt sorry for Jory, and wished him life, perhaps as a bandit if he escaped. Dumonhi notwithstanding, Jory was the only male she had ever loved as a lover, though her father thought of him as a monkey.

"Father, we will commit astound the rabbit by dawn this very night." She meant that she and her baba would commit suicide together with their nursery knives, given so long ago.

The silence in the room was as profound as the black shadows that flooded the corners and the floor around her knees. Her sister was a dark mound in the darkness.

Father rose, wiping his mouth with the spattered linen. Leaving his sword thrown aside, he stepped shakily from the dais and bent close to look at Ramy for the last time. His expression was a mixture of fury and pain. A trail of tears ran down the creases in each cheek. He held the towel before his mouth and could no longer speak. But he touched her cheek lightly with the backs of two fingers.

She touched herself there and found blood on her fingertips.

She licked her fingers and tasted his forgiveness, which filled her like a spring breeze.

He touched her baba similarly, forgiving her also.

The sister, or wasp, bowed before her maker. She was a large, coppery shape half-draped in amber shadows, with a Shurian face and upper body, but a carapace and half-insect legs in back.

Had Ramy married Dumonhi, they would have begotten together. He would have fertilized Ramy, who would have fertilized the eggs carried in her sister. The baba would have birthed—in the Tower of babas, assisted by the other holy babas—one baby and one tiny new matching baba in each delivery. That was how life had evolved on Oba, and now Ramy had tampered with the laws of the cosmos and the gods.

Lord Ramyon—without ever looking on his daughters again—turned his back and stormed out of the room to his private chambers.

Servants slid the doors shut, leaving the two sisters in moonlit isolation.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.