To talk to Lil'esh

Teysa had avoided the drow for long enough. She had told herself she was trying not to startle them, and perhaps that was true as far as it went, but she had also taken responsibility for their well-being. To ensure they were cared for, she needed to see them face to face.

Besides, she wanted to talk to Lil’esh. She had to break the news to her, at least.

The last time she’d visited, just after the refugees’ arrival, their caverns had been a cramped and dismal place. Now, they were… still cramped, but significantly less morose. The mouth of the outer cave was swathed in webbing, forming a solid wall into which a single door had been cut. It was large enough to allow a drider ingress, but only if she ducked. Two drow with crossed spears stood guard outside.

“Hello,” Teysa began. She approached hesitantly, but the drow still flinched away, their hands tightening around their weapons.

“I’m Teysa,” she said. “Is Lil’esh here?”

The drow turned to each other and briefly exchanged whispers. “Wait out here,” one said. “Lil’esh will come to you.”

One of the guards went inside while the other remained in front of the door. She glared up at Teysa, her knuckles white around the haft of her spear. Teysa had to suppress a smile. It wasn’t funny, she knew, but she wondered exactly what this poor woman actually intended to do if Teysa had ill intent.

She showed courage, at least. That was worth something.

Lil’esh appeared at the door, the other guard shadowing her just behind. She looked up at Teysa and her face lit up. “Teysa!” she cried, and broke into a wide grin. “What a pleasure to see you!” She turned to the guard behind her. “Hia’lee, you simpleton, why did you tell me ‘a drider?’ had come to see us? This is Teysa! You can let her in whenever she wants!” She turned back to her visitor, all smiles. “My apologies, Teysa,” she said. “These two are overeager.”

“No apology needed,” Teysa said quickly. “They’re just doing their jobs. It’s important to be vigilant.”

“Walk with me,” Lil’esh said, extending an arm. Teysa hesitated for a moment and took it. “We’ll be back soon,” Lil’esh called over her shoulder as they set off down the corridor. “If something comes up, Jurrik is in charge.”

“Again, sorry about that,” Lil’esh repeated, as soon as they were out of earshot. “To tell the truth, the guards are just for show. I have no illusions about our strength relative to yours. But it makes my people feel better. These are nobles, Teysa, they’re used to living in houses with guards on every door.”

“By all means.” Teysa had been listening in bemusement. This Lil’esh was far more assertive than the sullen, somewhat withdrawn girl she was used to. She supposed that responsibility changed people in all kinds of ways. “How are things with your people?”

“Better than they were.” Lil’esh withdrew her arm, after first checking to ensure that they were out of sight of the guards. “We have fresh flowing water now, and some privacy. Our injured have had time to heal. Or die,” she added. “We’ve lost a few elders in the past week.”

“What about Mish’li?” Teysa asked. She felt a bit guilty about it, but that was the one drow she really cared about.

“She lives still,” Lil’esh said. “But she has not awoken. The healers are not sure if she ever will. She was badly injured. It might be a mercy if she were to die. I would not want to go through life like that.” Teysa’s face must have betrayed her shock, because Lil’esh held up her hands defensively. “Don’t get me wrong! Nobody is going to help her along to the other side. If Lolth wills it, she will recover. Otherwise…” She shrugged.

“And your sister?”

Now Lil’esh fretted. “Je’lyn, I worry about.” She hesitated. “You may not know this, but births for our people are… difficult. There are often complications. It is worse among the nobility. Back at the City, she would be attended by a dozen healers and two high priestesses wielding divine magic. Here, we do not have any of that. Mish’li has—had—the spells. None of the others who did made it out alive.”

Teysa nodded. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Defeat Lockh.” Lil’esh’s mouth was a grim line. “If we can drive him out of the city before my sister’s time—and if he left any of the clergy alive—then all will be well. Otherwise, I fear for her.”

Teysa pursed her lips in thought. “What about the Matron?” she asked. “She has the strongest magic of anyone I’ve ever met. And she has extensive experience with, uh, motherhood.” She coughed; Lil’esh’s expression was curdling into something fearful and angry. “I just mean that she’s good at keeping people alive during birth. I could talk to her, if you want.”

Lil’esh was quiet for a while. Just when Teysa was about to speak up again, the drow replied in a simmering voice that bespoke iron self-control.

“Teysa. I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, and I understand that recent events may have changed your perspective, but if you ever suggest giving that creature access to my pregnant sister again, whatever friendship we have is over.” She looked up, her eyes flashing. “Aliara took me to see the broodmothers. I’ve been feeding them. I know what the Matron did.”

“All that is in the past, Lil’esh,” Teysa insisted. “She doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore. She never will.”

“I don’t care!” Lil’esh sighed heavily and looked down. “You can’t just come back from something like that! You can’t just say ‘my bad, I didn’t know it was wrong.’ If peace requires that her crimes be forgiven, then fine, I’ll forgive her. But I won’t forget. And I won’t be stupid enough to put my sister in her hands.”

“It’s not just peace,” Teysa insisted. Part of her wondered why she was defending the Matron so fervently. Was it her choice? Or were the same instincts at work that made her bend the knee in the larger drider’s presence? “It’s the will of Lolth,” she said. “It was Her command that the Matron free her slaves, not mine.”

“Lolth.” Lil’esh blew a raspberry. “That makes it ok then, does it? That Lolth said so?”

The impiety in her voice took Teysa aback. “You don’t believe?” she asked. She was more surprised than angry, more curious than surprised. “I thought all the drow worshipped Lolth.”

“Believe what? That Lolth exists? I know that. Might as well ask if I believe in rocks.” She kicked one with a toe to demonstrate. “But do I believe that She cares about us? Sure, why not? That’s what the priestesses say, after all.”

A thrill of transgression ran up Teysa’s spine. She’d lived her life among pious people, and now she had discovered a hidden vein of heresy. She wondered how long Lil’esh had kept this hidden.

“Does anyone else know you feel this way?” Teysa asked. She’d meant the question innocently, but Lil’esh’s head snapped up to stare at her.

“Who are you now, an Inquisitor? Lolth isn’t even your Goddess, Teysa.”

Is she? That question was too difficult to answer head-on, so Teysa evaded.

“I’m not pressing you on your faith, Lil’esh,” she said. “That’s your business. I’m just a little curious, that’s all. Growing up on the surface, what little I learned of Lolth was pretty dire. I was taught that Her tenets were cruel and Her rites were murderous. Then I came down here and saw another side of Her. She is a mother first and foremost and She cares about Her children. That’s worth emulating, isn’t it?”

“Does She?” Lil’esh sighed. She didn’t sound angry, merely resigned. “There was plenty of cruelty and **** to go around in the City, and Her priestesses never seemed to mind. They pitched in! Yes, I’ve heard the Revelation, but it seemed very convenient to me. ‘Oh, you’ve been doing everything wrong, but I just watched you and let it happen for thousands of years and never said anything until now.’ That doesn’t seem very motherly.”

“Maybe not.” Teysa was **** to concede the point. As she did, she felt a little squeeze inside her—a twinge in her soul, like a distant ache. “But She did Her best. The best time to change your ways is years ago. The second-best time is now.”

“What is that?” Lil’esh asked. “Some kind of parable?”

“Agamor’s Psalms, chapter 19, verse 17,” Teysa said. She was somewhat surprised to note that she could still quote chapter and verse when she wanted to. Agamor may have abandoned me, but His teachings remain.

“We’re a little far from the sun to be reciting Agamorian catechisms, aren’t we?”

Teysa shrugged. “He teaches us to be a light in dark places.”

Lil’esh’s face became a battlefield where anger and amusement fought to a standstill. Eventually, she cracked a smile. “Well, we are all Lolth’s daughters.” She nodded at Teysa. “You too, now, apparently. Adopted daughter, I guess.”

She had clearly been joking, but her words stirred something in Teysa, a bone-deep sense of belonging that she had not felt in quite some time. It was brief, here and gone in an instant, but it was real enough. Lil’esh, unnoticing, went on.

“I do believe, Teysa. I believe She wants us to be happy. Drow and driders both! But there are a lot of people out there who don’t believe, and Lolth isn’t going to do anything about those people Herself. That’s up to us. So yes, I will visit the shrines and make my offerings, but don’t expect me to fall to me knees and thank Lolth every time something goes right. And don’t expect me to forgive the Matron or anyone else just because Lolth does.”

“That’s entirely fair.”

“I’ll tell you something else, too,” Lil’esh continued. “If some of the other drow find out about the Matron’s dirty little secret, there’s going to be trouble.”

“Is that a threat?” The ice that had been gently thawing between them over the past few minutes instantly froze over. Teysa wondered if she’d misjudged Lil’esh. She was suddenly, keenly aware of the distance between them, of the drow woman’s posture. Does she have a weapon?

“Not at all.” Lil’esh let out a hollow bark of laughter. “No, they won’t hear it from me. But if they do find out… I may not be in a forgiving mood right now, but there are noble houses out there that make me look like, well, you.”

“I don’t like keeping this secret, but it may be for the best,” Teysa said. “Do any of your companions know? The other emissaries?”

“Some.” Lil’esh nodded. “And I’ve spoken with them, and they will keep it quiet too. We all know that we cannot afford another conflict, especially now. It would destroy us all.” She stood up, shaking the dust off her robe. “This has been a good conversation, Teysa, but I think I have to go back to my people. There’s so much to do. Unless there was something else?”

“Aliara is gone.”

All this time, Teysa had been wondering how she was going to address the topic, and when her concentration lapsed for a moment the words spilled out of her. Now that they were out, they came more easily, more readily. “She’s gone to kill Lockh.” She could hear the hitch in her voice and took a deep breath. It was a moment before she trusted her voice not to betray her.

“I know.” Lil’esh looked up, her gaze as piercing as a steel dart. She scanned Teysa’s face and her own expression softened. “Oh, Teysa, I did not keep it from you on purpose. I thought you knew. I figured she’d have told you. I should have known…”

“Should have known what?” Now it was Teysa’s turn to interrogate the other woman’s face. Lil’esh’s mouth squirmed with suppressed guilt. “You knew she was going to leave, didn’t you? Did you talk to her?” Did you tell her to go? Answer me, you drow bitch! The speed with which Teysa’s confusion turned to anger surprised even her. It felt like an aftershock of her volcanic fury from earlier.

“I… spoke to her, yes,” Lil’esh said, picking her words carefully. “I did not give her advice. I don’t think she would have taken it had I offered. I didn’t tell her to stay or to go, Teysa, I swear. I just listened. She needed someone to listen.”

“What did she say?” Teysa asked. She leaned in unconsciously, not realizing she was doing so until Lil’esh shrank away from her. Up close, Teysa could not help but notice how much larger she was than the other woman. She had always been bulkier and broader in the shoulder; now her forearms were the size of Lil’esh’s calves.

“She just had a lot of thinking to do, that’s all,” Lil’esh protested. She held up her hands as though trying to make a wall between herself and Teysa. “She cares about you a lot. You should know that. She didn’t want to hurt you.”

Teysa drew in a deep, rattling breath. “What did she say, exactly?” she asked. “Don’t paraphrase.”

“Please!” Lil’esh cried. “Please, don’t put me in the middle of this. If she wanted to tell you, she would have. Ask her yourself when she gets back. I have enough on my plate already, I can’t afford to get between you two.”

Teysa was summoning up the energy for a stinging rejoinder when she abruptly deflated. “You’re right,” she said, and **** herself to smile. She could only imagine how her smile looked these days, with her eyes blank chips of obsidian and her mouth full of fangs. Still, it seemed to ease the tension in the room a couple of degrees. “I’m sorry. Forget it. This is my business, and I’ll take care of it.”

“I know you will,” Lil’esh said. Her voice was suddenly very soft. “You and Aliara, you were good together. A good team. I’m rooting for you.”

Something in her tone pinged at Teysa’s brain. She racked her memories. There had been… something about Lil’esh, hadn’t there? And a drider. Just before the battle. Teysa had had her suspicions, but soon enough she’d been too busy to follow up on them, and Lil’esh’s strange behavior had slipped her mind. Until now.

She decided to press her luck. “I’m not putting you in the middle of anything, but I do want your honest opinion on something. As an outsider. And as a woman, I mean, a real woman.” She looked Lil’esh in the eye. “Do you think it could ever work? Between her and, well, someone like me? As I am now?” She gestured at herself, a sweep of the hand that took in her grey skin and the massive arachnid abdomen that dangled just below her navel.

Lil’esh’s face betrayed nothing. She’s good, Teysa thought. Wouldn’t want to sit down across a card table from her. At last, the drow spoke, with a casualness that seemed perfectly natural.

“I don’t see why not,” she said. “I mean, if the two of you get along, right? If you care about each other and treat each other well. If you take care of each other. That’s a hell of a lot more than lots of drow couples do, even the married ones.”

Was there a note of hope in her voice? A wistful hint of longing? Teysa thought so. But should she say something about it?