Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

full lips, high cheekbones, and heavy-lidded almond-shaped eyes. Her skin had a curiously bluish cast to it. She wore a leather harness hung with pockets and straps that covered her breasts and belly but left her smooth, muscular arms bare. She was a vision of perfection.

Below the waist she was a three-meter python.

Nira came back into the underground council room dangling under the Naga’s arm like a sack of tubers. She couldn’t seem to focus. The creature was terribly strong. Nira was not a large woman by any measure, but the thing handled her as easily as she herself might a chicken. The Naga dumped her unceremoniously on the floor, and she noted dully that Renna was bound to a chair and gagged. Not dead. Huh. She supposed she ought to be more curious about that, but she couldn’t look away from her captor’s long, sinuous tail. Catch you in the dark and eat you for dinner.

“I told you there was another,” the Naga said conversationally to the humans, looking at Nira almost fondly. “How your folk manages without darksight I’ll never understand.”

“We’ll just have to muddle on as best we can, inferior creatures that we are,” murmured the Governor sardonically from where he sat at the head of the table.

“That’s not what I meant,” the creature responded. A smile played about her lips that said that’s exactly what I meant.

“We apologize for the disruption to our meeting,” the ancient Weaver Hand Megda said smoothly. She gestured to Renna. “This one is a subordinate of mine. She must have found a way to follow me. She has never liked me.”

The snake woman blinked at the diminutive Weaver, uncomprehending. “And you never had her killed?”

The Mother Hand opened her mouth and closed it again, momentarily at a loss. “N-no,” she stammered. “That’s not really how we handle these things.”

The Naga pursed her full lips. “And yet you were preparing to murder her as I arrived.”

“Well… yes,” Megda said. “This is not a secret we trust her to keep.”

The thing shook her head, mystified. “You humans make things too complicated. If you had eliminated her the first time she gave you trouble, you would have no problem now.”

“If we followed that advice in all our dealings,” remarked the Governor, “where would our two peoples be right now?”

The creature smiled, showing her teeth. Her eye teeth were too long. “Perhaps there are moderating factors on the larger scale,” she allowed. She looked at each of the members of the little council one by one, the vertical pupils of her eyes tight, showing the full iridescent green of her irises. None of the humans could hold her gaze for very long except for the Governor, who stared back dispassionately, his brown eyes flat, almost bored. The Naga’s smile widened, and a translucent white membrane flicked sideways over those monstrous eyes from beneath her eyelids. The Governor flinched, and he grunted, looking away. “Though occasionally I wonder if it’s worth the effort,” the Naga murmured, amusement heavy in her tone.

Nira couldn’t stop looking at her tail. It was as thick as a mature oak trunk, and it tapered down to a slender point that was currently curled in on itself in a lazy loop. Her flank was a pearly white with a helix pattern of tiny iridescent blue scales that marked her top side all the way down to the tip of that impossible tail. The scales on her stomach were wide and flat, seeming both armored and supple. The creature turned her gaze to Nira, and she tried to pretend she hadn’t been looking. “A discontented Hand of Gaia,” mused the Naga. “And who might this other mouthful be?”

The monster stooped down to get a closer look at her. It was a disturbing motion. She did not bend at the waist; she had none. Instead, she simply lowered more of the serpentine body that had held her at eye level onto the floor. From Nira’s perspective, it now looked as if someone had severed a beautiful woman at the hips and planted her torso on the ground. Her mind couldn’t make sense of it. The creature leaned in close, her face uncomfortably close. She gripped Nira by the jaw, not allowing her to turn away. Her breath smelled of rotten meat and the cold, inhuman tang of snake. Her nictitating eyes drank in Nira’s features. “There’s something unusual about this one.”

The clear-voiced merchant woman at the table spoke up. “I’ve never seen her before; have any of you?” The others at the table all shook their head. Renna, tied up in the corner, merely glared balefully over her gag. “She looks like any hundred others that I pass in the street every day. From her clothes, she’s either a day laborer or else she’s come in from the countryside. Your Weaver must have brought her along for some reason, Megda.”

The Naga shook her head, still inspecting her. “You can’t see it, but she burns hotter than the rest of you. At least five degrees, I’d say.” She stroked her captive’s cheek with a smooth, sharp fingernail. “Why are you so much warmer than a human ought to be, my pet? You put me in mind of a mouse.”

Nira wanted to flinch away, to pull back, but the creature’s eyes were mesmerizing, and her grip was strong. She’s right, she realized suddenly. She was warm – very warm. There hadn’t been a single moment since she had fallen onto the docks where she had been chilled or had goosebumps, not even in the cold cell of the City Watch. She remembered wondering if she had a fever, but events had been so upsetting, so chaotic and unbelievable, that she hadn’t really stopped to take stock of herself. She could feel the warmth radiating from her skin.

“She might be ill,” said the general uneasily. “We need to be rid of these two. Let’s kill them and have done.”

Mother Megda perked up at