Ekku Nerutaara, a titular dame of the hunt

Arms elbow-deep in the bloody guts of a loper, my mind drifted ever to Vesija. I shouldn't have been worried for him. They couldn't encounter anything in the forest more dangerous than my father.

The venom gland slipped in my fingers, but the knife cut true. I ripped my prize out and made sure the amber bladder remained intact. Lamplight scintillated through the viscous contents just in the manner I had been taught to consider optimal.

My mother snatched the gland and spun it in her fingers to ascertain the quality. "Well, seems you still know how to cut a loper."

"Was that in doubt?"

"No." She pressed our prize into a small rack. "You remain a child of Jaan."

Coming from her, the remark could only be praise. "Thank you", I said.

Mother pushed a tap into the gland and squeezed out a drop of venom, which she collected into a hollow quill from the loper's hide. She flicked the engorged needle around and touched it with the tip of her extended tongue. Her eyes rolled upwards in a brief lapse of stately composure.

Loper venom is a rapid neurotoxin, capable of paralysing a man of Vesija's size in ten heartbeats. Yet it rarely kills by itself. Many a tale has been spun of the novel and gruesome applications the substance has been put to by the patricians of the old. Like lopers themselves, people of my heritage tend to be immune to the worst of the effects. That made imbibing the unrefined toxin a status symbol in the former regime, though only after the mutiny did the habit grow to represent the decadence of the former regime.

"Don't give me that look, Daughter." She herself smirked with open abandon. "I'd offer you a dose, if not for the children."

"Children?" I glanced at the bump between me and the worktable. "Oh, there are no multiples."

The wide-eyed shock on Mother's face was so uncharacteristic, I myself gasped. She, however, recovered her smile quickly. "Well, fortunately you have the hips to push out the spawn of a giant."

I frowned at her, but my instinct made me wrap arms around my abdomen. "Presumably I can manage one birth, when your portions could 'push out' all of us."

Mother's smug poise remained unshakeable. She tilted her hips and said: "Dzema's big head snapped my pelvic bone, but I did indeed manage."

A chilly wave of apprehension crawled down my spine. Vesija had assured, plenty of times to the point of annoying me, that there was no reason for me to worry, but the anatomic differences between sexes still crept into my waking nightmares.

Tap on my shoulder startled me from those grim thoughts. Mother smiled at me, without any apparent sense of superiority. "It shall be fine."

Words got stuck in my throat, and I could only nod.

"Now, tell me about your life on the periphery. Altogether quaint, I presume?"

"It's certainly peaceful." The absent-minded movement of my hand swung the knife in front of Mother's nose, but she didn't move her eyes from mine. I continued: "The settlement we live in can scarcely be called a town, though there are plenty of farms and prospector villages in the area. We selected the place for its distance from the Pylon's new location, but Vesija estimates the shift of trading routes shall increase the property values considerably in the near future."

"That is... indeed quaint, in a pleasant way, I'm sure. But what shall you specifically be doing?"

"I've studied by letter to 'man' our pharmacy."

Our matriarch lifted an eyebrow. "Is alchemy, with its fumes and symbionts and whatnot, proper for an expectant lady?"

"I shan't be expectant forever."

"Of course. Yet I do dare to hope this child shan't be your sole contribution." Mother sighed. "My eldest is as old as I was, when I had my first child, yet I have more of my own children than I do grandchildren."

"You do have more children than most, Mother."

Her blade sunk into the now drained bladder, and with a whisk of her hand, she flung the sorry sack into a recycling maw. The woman gave me a glance full of self-assured amusement.

The sound of hurried footsteps approaching distracted her from any answer.

A rapid set of knocks on the door, and Keramli burst into the room. "Mistress?"

"Yes?"

"Your daughter has returned."

"I can announce myself", said a familiar voice in an unpresumptuous version of our Jaan accent. The steward bowed from the way of my sister Lytta. She had remained an imposing sight: half a head taller than mother or myself, the un-Jaanish height accompanied by ladylike sturdiness, which had grown only slightly over the passing years. Her travelling attire managed to invoke aristocratic excess without compromising comfortable practicality.

My sister gave me no time to react, before she jumped at me like a ghostkin beast. Her embrace had such force that I briefly panicked from the pressure on my belly. Lytta of course was aware of the realities of my condition, and didn't actually press me overmuch. She withdrew and smiled at me, wide and gentle as a clear horizon. Perhaps I returned the grin, but I was too preoccupied by my uncontrollable shivering to pay attention to my expressions.

"Hello, Lu–– Neruu. It is wonderful to see you."

"It's nice to meet––"

"What did the leeches have to say?" our mother snapped.

Lytta sighed and turned towards our mother. "They agreed to the suggested terms, even if they did crumble about it."

"They should be glad we deign to do business with their ilk. It seems I should have come along to put the fear of our ancestors into the vermin."

"Mother... We agreed that I shall handle the business. In fact, you insisted that I do." Lytta took a rag and begun to clean my hands. "Are you done here, Neru? It's been so long we two talked. We should rectify that over cups of infusion, with sinfully sweet confections on the side, of course."

I managed to return her smile.

The corridors whisked past, as Lytta dragged me through the house. The jolts from our rapid steps stirred my insides near to the point of nausea.

"Slow down!" Fortunately the heirloom carpet didn't roll under my heels, as I planted my feet firmly in place.

"Oh! Sorry!" Lytta spun and grabbed my hands, pressing her grinning eyes and flared nostrils close. "I'm just eager to get you away from Mother. You can imagine how much I burn to speak with you." Her mouth slipped into a playful smirk. "Obviously a lot of has come to pass since we last met. If Mother and Father hadn't been so serious about the matter, I might well not have believed it at all."

My face flared like under the summer sun. Here I was, in full feminine display to my estranged elder sister, yet she acted as bubbly as I had always remembered her. Lytta grinned and pulled me along, this time with less of a fierce hurry.

The richly dark oil-saturated panels glistened with an undying sheen. They covered the cramped cabinet that had turned into Lytta's office. Instead of one of our heirloom iron chairs, she offered me a seat consisting of spongy wood and ample cushions. After our brisk walk through the house, my body responded to the weight coming off my feet with utter slumping relaxation.

For herself, Lytta fetched a practical office chair from behind the monolithic desk grown from coral jet, but didn't sit down. Instead, she went to the door to open it. Right on cue, her son Rytna strode in with a tray held over his head. The tray had only touched the desk, before the boy had already turned to leave.

"Now, wait a moment, Ryt." My sister fetched an arm-long tube covered in festively striped membrane. "I brought you something for the hibernalia."

The sleepy eyes of the boy blew to their widest extend. He received the gift with suitably polite lack of interest, yet ripped it open like some little predator afraid a big scavenger might come to steal its kill. Out appeared the polished bone and decorative nacre of a rifle in the venerable Veuhe-pattern, its dimensions familiarly miniaturised.

"Is that..?"

Lytta smiled at me. "Yes, it's your practice gun. I had it refurbished for Ryt. You don't mind passing the old piece on?"

I shook my head, at loss for words.

"Ryt, what does one say after receiving a gift?"

"Thank you", the boy said without quite daring to look up me in the eye. "Aunt Nerutaara."

"You are welcome", I said.

Lytta wiped unruly locks of hair off the boy's eyes. "Now go show your gift to Grandmother. She shall teach you how its used."

With a sharp breath, the boy's posture straightened. He nodded and dashed from the room. Lytta closed the door after him and sighed.

"You'll have him learn the Old Art?" I asked.

"Yes. That is the wish of his father, I guess mine also." Lytta handed me a plate with two small pastries covered in powdered sugar along with a warm cup of heady infusion, before taking a seat. "Surovi, my husband––"

"I remember." To me, the overtly ambitions naval officer had always appeared more interested in the prestige of our heritage rather than Lytta herself. Yet she clearly loved her husband, and she was no fool. The thought of keeping up such cold pretences with my own husband chilled my heart.

Lytta smiled wider and continued. "Surovi wants Ryt to follow his example." Lytta took a sip and allowed the heat and bitterness to twist her lips the tiniest bit. "But you've seen how the boy looks, Neru. Should he join the military, it'll have to be in the Hunter Regiment. In the navy he could never step on the main deck, let alone the bridge."

I nodded. "To think, had I a backbone, I might be a hunter stuck in some damp hole in the Outremer."

"Backbone? Sister, it's a wonder you can walk with the heft of yours!" Lytta stood and went to browse the cabins of her massive desk. Out she drew a vividly-printed pamphlet. "Look what they publish of you."

My hand trembled, as I took the pile of flattened pulp that turned out to be an issue of a chip dreadful called "True Narratives of Bemusing Real Wonder". On the cover gleamed a rather stiffly executed illustration of a caricature of a Jaan lady facing the sneering man-face of a massive serpent.

"'Interfectrix of the Mountain God'", I enunciated the title. "'A new Nerta the Huntress tale'. There's more of these?"

Lytta shrugged. "Not yet, but I doubt it's nothing but the matter of time." Grinning, she leaned in closer. "This one was published only a week after the Pylon incident, so I doubt the details all that accurate."

"Well, for one, these vestments are too scant to have hidden..." Warmth spread over my face as a a burgeoning smile threatened to overwhelm my solemn expression. I let out a breath to collect myself. "The roasting by spooks from the Directorial Department was stressful enough. I don't need two-chip 'journalists' on my tail."

"Speaking of fame, that's related to why I visited the town. You see, we have already received queries whether this is in fact the childhood home of 'the' Nerutaara."

"I see..."

"Yes. If you are fine it with, we thought to implement... an informational campaign. Nothing large scale. We'd make sure not to reveal where you are or what you are doing currently. I'm sure these hacks in fact prefer that your person remains mysterious. More room for sequels."

"I guess I owe at least that to the family..."

"No, no, don't think of it as an obligation. It's just another opportunity for our little business."

"Hmm... If you are sure nobody shall come knocking on our door, then do go ahead."

"Thank you." The woman leaned further forward to grab my hand. "But enough of money and fame. Let's talk about my 'new' sister."

The little biscuit-like treats steadily evaporated, as our talk coursed through subjects ranging from the careers suited for husbands to cleaning sponges to the style of underwear we preferred on a lazy day without any outdoor obligations.

"Do you plan to stay here with Ryt for long?"

"As long as Surovi's employment situation remains what it is. He was supposed to have extended shore leave this year, but with the Rolu-situation, there's talk of him getting his own command. After that it's goodbye family life."

"And I get anxious if my man remains away only for a week." I rubbed my cold hands together. "Or only one afternoon."