Chapter Text
The shove was rough, and Talas wasn’t strong under even the best of circumstances. She stumbled and fell over onto the filthy stone floor, the metal clang of the cell door shutting behind her barely registering to her ears as she slid on some straw and something slick that she hoped was mud but knew probably wasn’t. She glanced behind her without rising, sharp eyes instantly locking on to the dark ones of the guard who had shoved her in.
“So…” Talas croaked, rolling over and sitting up slowly, ignoring the pain in her shoulders and elbows from the fact that her hands were still manacled behind her back. “What’s on the menu tonight?”
The guard grunted and made an obscene gesture with one hand, before turning and walking down the hall to where a table and three other chairs sat, as well as another guard. Madue, Talas was pretty sure was his name She hadn’t had a chance to catch the name of the other guard yet.
Talas sighed, crossing her legs and shifting her shoulders again to try and get the ache out of them. There was pain in her stomach, too, from repeated beatings, and across her back from the lashings of a whip, and her bifurcated tongue kept poking at a sharp tooth that had been shattered yesterday, trying to work the tooth out so that the new one already growing to replace it would have more room. At one shoulder she saw loose skin where the beating had been sufficient to tear away the upper layer, exposing shiny, slightly wet new scales beneath. She could have shed her skin, of course, replacing her entire epidermal layer and even slipping out of her manacles in the process…but then she would still be in the jail cell with no way out, and she’d have revealed that their shackles were useless on her.
Not the smartest idea for a yuan-ti prisoner in Port Nyanzaru.
Talas let out a long, low, sibilant hiss that a person fluent in the Yuan-ti dialect of Draconic would have known to be a series of curses, directed at her guards, her captor, and most of all herself. She scooted backwards along the ground, lacking the strength or the will to stand, until she was back against the wall of her cell. The one small mercy of this cell was a hole in the roof of it. Ten feet off the ground, there was no way for her to reach it, and even if she could have it was too narrow for her to squeeze through, and there was a grate at the top that was no doubt expertly locked in place as well.
But sunlight came down it in the mornings, and sometimes the warm rain of Chult as well. Both were welcome respites from the Hell her life had become over the past…
…Nine Hells, had it only been a tenday?
Talas bit back a rather human sob at that, trying to hold her emotions in check and failing miserably as she felt tears in her eyes. It was supposed to be easy. She was yuan-ti. Her people were supposed to have abandoned emotions thousands of years ago when they abandoned their humanity. But there were always outliers, and Talas had been one of them. And especially over the past ten years, ever since first coming to Port Nyanzaru…
“Olwenyo…” Talas murmured as she let herself fall onto her side, curling up so her knees pressed to her chest and closing her eyes tightly. “Nkolu…Akeyo…”
Ten Years Ago...
Talas glanced into a mirror and saw a human woman looking back at her, a sight she was finally used to. Her skin was nut-brown, her eyes darker still, and her black, thick hair was braided many times over and drawn into a ponytail that hung to the small of her back. Dark red lipstick complimented the brighter red and golden clothing she wore that, while voluminous, seemed loose in all the right places to draw the attention of those around her.
She was at a rooftop party, celebrating so-and-so many years since the Chultans had thrown the northern nation of Amn from their city and their land. Talas forgot how many years and didn’t think it mattered that much, not for the purpose of her disguise. The whole city was celebrating, of course. She’d had just enough to drink to fit in, but kept her wits about her and made sure to pace herself and not lose her senses.
Talas wasn’t worried about her disguise dropping, not like she had been for her first few months here. The ring she wore on her left hand didn’t merely cast an illusion over her; while she wore it, she was human, and the ring was tight. It would not slip from her finger accidentally.
But Talas was still in the process of establishing herself in this city, her ‘legend’, as the effort was known. She and a number of other yuan-ti had come from the east, the former nation of Thindol which had drowned in the cataclysm that had plagued the Realms some decades back. The humans there had died or fled for the most part, but the yuan-ti remained, claimed treasures left behind by the humans, and turned their eyes outwards. Chult would be their next conquest, and Port Nyanzaru, their first step.
Talas didn’t know the names or assumed faces of her fellow coven members, but they all knew her. She knew a sign and a phrase that the other members would use to identify themselves if need be. Talas’ job was to establish a safe-house, a getaway in case something went wrong and a yaun-ti needed to abandon Port Nyanzaru. She’d done so, a small domicile in the middle-class section of the Port, paid for with Thindolese gold coins that raised few questions given the prevalence of looters to the former nation.
Now she just needed to become known in Port Nyanzaru. It wouldn’t do for a woman to just show up one day, buy a house, and then never leave it. So, she’d started putting in appearances here and there, claiming to be from a Thindolese family that had managed to reclaim lost treasure. She’d discovered that she had a talent at singing and musical instruments and indulged it. That had gotten her invited to join the musician’s guild of Port Nyanzaru.
Now her life consisted of attending parties, singing for the rich merchants of Chult, and living a life of exquisite luxury in the meantime. Because…why not? Her job was only to have a safe-house and a means of quick egress from the city. She had both, had set them up easily. Surely her coven did not expect her to sit around bored out of her skull, especially given that under ideal circumstances she would never be needed.
Talas heard the beginnings of a general cheer, and took it up herself as light flashed in the night sky overhead. She looked up with the rest of the crowd just as fireworks began going off. Mugs and cups and glasses were raised high into the air and then drained of their contents, and then the owners of the empty containers went to find new liquids to fill them with. Talas was no different as she sauntered over to the open bar and set her cup down.
“The saravva, please,” she said, pulling a silver coin from the folds of her robes and setting it down next to the cup.
“Saravva!” A deep voice objected from right next to her. Talas turned even as the bartender began refilling her drink. She found herself looking at a tall man. The sides of his head was shaved, while the flat top of hair on his head had the faintest hint of red in it, an unusual sight in Chult.
“How can you have saravva on today of all days? You know it’s an Amnian import, yes?”
Talas put on her best smile. “Yes,” she said, “but now Amn pays for the privilege of importing it, and a few coppers off of every bottle are collected by our Merchant Princes instead of their Council of Six.” She took her cup from the bartender and drank, enjoying the tart taste.
The man looked her up and down as she did – a bit more down than up, but that was exactly what these robes were supposed to do. Her own gaze flicked over his form, the open shirt that showed a hairless and well-defined chest, the short sleeves that showed well-toned arms. The man was no epitome of masculine physique, but nor was he unpleasant to the eye – not even Talas’. Two years of living as and among humans had been more than enough for her to get used to a lack of scales.
“You say our Merchant Princes…” the man intoned, “but you’re not from Chult. I can tell from the accent.”
Talas shrugged. “My family was Thindolese. When the waves claimed the basin we went north to Calimshan, but my mother kept our tongue and accent. I moved to Chult two years ago.” She smiled to him. “I don’t plan on leaving.”
The man put a hand to his chest. “Apologies, ma’am. My judging your taste in wine wasn’t meant to suggest you should.” He took a drink from his own cup. “Though I still think it very poor. There are so many fine wines here tonight, imported from all over the Realms…and you choose saravva.”
“Hmph,” was Talas’ instinctive response to that.
She swayed a little from left to right, not due to the drink, but a memnonic picked up as a child as she considered her options, as though leaning into one or the other. On the one hand, this man had been rude to her, though in a casual and small way. On the other, he was very attractive, and the night was starting to get on at this point, the fireworks having been the highlight of the party. She hadn’t planned on going home alone tonight…
“Well,” Talas set her drink down, “since I’m in the presence of a connoisseur…what do you recommend?”
The man grinned, and it was a very pleasant grin, full of benevolence but with more than a little mischief as well. He held out his own cup for her.
“Try it.”
Talas took the offered drink and put it to her lips…and had to bite back a laugh and a snort of surprise at the tart taste that greeted her tongue. She barely managed to swallow.
“Saravva!” she cried. “You…you hypocrite!”
“It got you talking to me,” the man said as he leaned back, elbows resting on the bar. The position pulled open his shirt a little more, exposing more of his chest, a fact he had to be aware of. He finally held out one hand, palm up.
“I am called Olwenyo. You?”
She placed her own hand in his. “Talas.”
Olwenyo didn’t miss a beat in politely kissing the top of her hand, never breaking eye contact with her as he did. Very smooth when he wanted to be, this Olwenyo. She let her hand linger in his for several long moments before withdrawing it, making her decision then and there.
“I’m keeping this,” she said, waving his cup while walking backwards and into the crowd. “You can have it back…if you find me before the party’s over.”
With that, Talas let herself disappear into the crowd of people still on the rooftop. She spotted Olwenyo fortifying himself by downing the contents of Talas’ own cup of saravva, which she’d left behind, but then she turned and fled, a smile on her face that wouldn’t leave no matter how hard she tried to suppress it.
Talas led him on a merry chase. First it was through the party, letting him spot tantalizing glimpses of her here and there through a crowd. When the crowd began to thin out she passed through a door and into the home below, the demesne of one of the Merchant Princess of Port Nyanzaru. Wakanga O’tamu, maybe? Talas couldn’t remember at the moment. The lower floors were hardly bereft of people, seeking refuge from the crowd on the roof – or privacy for their liaisons with others.
Behind a tapestry here, just beyond a door there, on the other side of a line of servants passing by…but she didn’t lose Olwenyo. Of course, she wasn’t trying very hard. She got the sense that Olwenyo wasn’t trying very hard to catch her, either, enjoying this childish game as much as she was.
She made what appeared to be a tactical error when she ducked into a small side room, a simple guest bedroom from the looks of things. It had only one exit, unless one counted the tall windows that offered a two-story drop to the mansion’s grounds below. By the time Olwenyo caught up to her, she was standing next to the bed while he stood in the doorway, the smile on his face having lost some of its benevolence but picked up a substantially larger bit of mischief in exchange. She’d had time to light a candle on the nightstand next to the bed.
“Cornered yourself, after all that?” Olwenyo asked.
Talas’ own smile hadn’t gone anywhere as she sipped at Olwenyo’s saravva wine. She pointed at the door.
“It has a lock.”
So it does,” Olwenyo said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him, locking it as he did. By the time he’d turned around, Talas had put the wine down next to the candle, sat down on the bed, and leaned back. With a simple shrug of her shoulders, her robe fell from about them, exposing herself from the waist up. She lifted one hand and beckoned the man.
Olwenyo came forward at the command, getting right up to her, leaning down a little…and then reaching out and grabbing his wine from the nightstand, never touching her.
“Goodnight, Talas,” he said, waving the cup and walking away much as she had earlier.
He made it about three steps back to the door before she tackled him from behind, and though she was not heavy and he was not weak, both of them fell anyway. They laughed on the way to the floor, though, not minding that the saravva spilled. They both had other thirsts that needed quenching this night.