Master of None Read Free Page B

around her murmured, puzzled. “Tell me you find me irresistible,” she said softly. “Tell me your blood runs hot with desire at the sight of this body. Could you really perform your duty as a kharvah on this worn carcass?” Her face was contorted in a smile of scorn and resigned loss.
    He swallowed hard, and raised his head to stare unblinkingly into her eyes in clear breach of protocol. “Pratha Yaenida, were you to honor me as a member of your House, I would perform my duty in any manner you required, and would do so with pride and pleasure.” He hoped he sounded far more confident than he felt.
    Her eyes narrowed as she drew the tasmai wrap back over her skeletal body protectively, her green-veined hands fussing with the intricate folds. “I almost believe you,” she said, and looked out of the windows at thin clouds skimming high in the afternoon blue. The younger women stared at them with perplexed expressions. “From anyone else, I would suspect such an audacious scheme was nothing more than brazen ambition and greed. But not from you.” She glanced back at him, her look as hard and cool as marble. “Explain yourself.”
    He looked down at his hands still pressed against his thighs. “I have no one to talk to,” he finally answered. His throat hurt, as if trying to swallow against a stone lodged there.
    She snorted. “Is that all?”
    “For godsake, isn’t that enough?” he asked, and heard his own voice catch with repressed anger. “I’ve been on Vanar over a year, and I’m dying in this isolation! Living in a charity shelter isn’t all that much different from prison, Yaenida, and at least in prison I had you to talk to.”
    “There are no prisons on Vanar.”
    “I wasn’t ill, l’amae,” he said, knowing his resentment leaked out, “and the people asking me all those questions weren’t doctors.”
    Her eyes watched him impassively as she worried the stem of the pipe with her teeth, squinting as tendrils of smoke escaped from her nostrils and curled past her face. He felt his frustration rising.
    “My life is constant hell here. No one dares talk to me; they’re all too nervous even without that Changriti
bich’chú
stopping me in the street to keep me properly terrified.” She raised an eyebrow at his use of vulgar slang to refer to the Qsayati Vasant Subah, head of the Vanar security police. “Not that it matters since I can’t learn this damned language, with or without my tutor. I’m
naeqili te rhowghá
, and I know exactly what that means, she’s managed to teach me that much,” he said sharply at her surprise. “I’m in fact worse than the lowest of outcasts: everyone knows who I am, but I’m treated like some dangerous animal set loose by accident. I try and stay out of trouble, sitting around doing nothing until I’m out of my mind, but the instant I go out, I make one mistake after another. I have nowhere else to go, Yaenida, I need your help,
please
!” He was shouting, leaning forward on his knees as he gestured angrily toward her.
    From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the younger women rise, snatching up her staff and striding toward them with protective hostility. He only knew one way to respond, and immediately “turtled,” elbows against knees, his forehead against the back of his hands pressed against the floor. He cursed inwardly, prepared for the blows, and hoped she’d at least spare his head.
    He heard rather than saw the argument: a fast whipping of Vanar, one voice sharp, the other cracked with age but strong. Yaenida’s emaciated fist smacked against the cushions. The only words he caught were “Get out.” A fast padding of feet, the glimpse of satin-clad heels past his face, and the sudden silence pressed against his ears.
    “Vultures,” Yaenida muttered. “I’m not dead yet.” She grunted as she shifted awkwardly on the pillows, then said, “Nathan, you look ridiculous. That position is for small children. Don’t be so damned