Kept by the Zandian (Zandian Brides 5)

“I am still kicking.” She smiles, her wrinkled face shining in the light. “Keerah, some help?”

Keerah ducks her head; she’s the shyest, quietest of all the humans here. Sometimes she gets pink even talking to those of us she regularly interacts with. But right now she’s confident. She shifts the cabinet, revealing just baked earth below. But in the wall, a secret compartment that matches the rough mud and wood conceals the secret stash.

Leylah opens it and comes back with goggles, proTek gloves, and a small glass bottle; things she traded for—precious things—at market. As our barracks’ mother she’s allowed a pass to go to the local town to trade for necessities for us, from time to time. When outlanders are on planet, she takes advantage to trade for things like this.

The Ocretion masters think she’s only getting sweets and clothing. They have no idea what we do when they are not watching. Of what we are capable, even in our servitude. These gaps in their ownership allow us to dream of the future.

Leylah pants a bit as she squeezes the head near the jaws. I watch, rapt, as the milky fluid trickles into the jar. When she’s done, she tosses the snake head into the fire, wincing as she draws her arm back. The delicate skull bones dissolve to powder in the furnace but the fangs remain, and those she will save.

“When it is mixed with the extract of the tellaflora plant, it creates the antivenom. So if you girls get bitten, we can save you. Keerah, do it yourself, now.”

Keerah puts on the second set of goggles, the ones that are hers, and repeats it with the other head, the one that Makina brought. She breathes audibly with concentration, her brow furrowed. Her fingers, younger and stronger than Leylah’s, are fast and sure in her pair of gloves. She mixes in the tellaflora and checks the color. Tests it using the litmus paper Leylah stole. “It’s good.”

“Store it. From now on, you own this supply. You are the master of the serpents here.”

Keerah’s eyebrows go up and she makes a little sound, but then she just nods.

Leylah looks around the room. “Is that clear? From now on, you listen to Keerah. You honor the secret with your lives, with all of our lives. We tell nobody about this work, or we’ll all suffer.”

We all nod. Love or hate each other, we are bound together in this. It is a secret that we will never give up. It would be like giving up air to breathe, this secret.

“You will respect Keerah with the serpent skills.”

Again, we bow our heads in agreement.

Leylah has taught us well. Each of us has learned something from her. Keerah, the potion to reverse snake bites. Me? I’ve learned all her tales, the ones that were passed on to her from other slaves, generation to generation.

“Good job.” Leylah’s voice is neutral, but I see the gnarls in her knuckles and shudder. She’s old, and I don’t like the way my bones feel right now—like something is wrong.

“You should be making a large batch of toxins so we can kill them all.” Rannah’s voice is dark, accusing.

She’s told the others what I did this planet rotation. How I saved an Ocretion young from drowning. She hasn’t spoken to me since.

Although we sit together, I feel remote. They’re judging me. Deciding what to think about me.

Leylah looks up. “We are not ready for a revolution. If we tried too soon, we’d all die. Right now, we stay alive and pass on our knowledge, human to human. We prepare for our one chance. If we take it too soon, we lose it forever.”

“But they deserve to suffer.” Rannah leans forward like she wants to fight.

“If that young Ocretion had died? You’d be questioned. Possibly tortured. She did the right thing.” Leylah coughs.

“They’d never know we watched.” Rannah shifts in her seat. “The adults were gone. But we’d know. And we’d carry it inside us like a flame. A victory. We can pass that down.” She narrows her eyes.

Leylah’s eyes shine in the dark, the whites bright. Her skin, nearly as dark as mine, is in shadows. I can feel her disapproval without examining her expression. She’s the one who teaches us patience, and fortitude. The ability to heal, not just in body but in mind.

“We are all doing the best we can.” Her voice is soft and full of pain. “Rannah-lei, that is all we have.”

“Well, thanks to her”—Rannah won’t even say my name—“now we don’t even have the pleasure of knowing their spawn is temporarily squashed. Instead, he grows stronger. In several more solar cycles, he’ll take one of us as his pleasure slave, and we’ll find her blood soaking the floors. You can thank her when you see that.”

She gets up and the chair screams, wood on wood. As she leaves the barracks, the door slams behind her.

She won’t go far. The perimeter of our slave area is guarded; we’re not allowed beyond the fence at nightfall. I imagine she’ll end up at the patch of wall-eck trees with their sour, bitter fruit that we turn into tea—the fruit that gives Ocretions a stomachache, so it’s relegated to human areas. Maybe she’ll sit on the scratchy grass below them, the stems that cut like a file if you run them the wrong way against your skin, because our tough work trousers are built to withstand the razor edge of the foliage on this rock. She’ll curse me and grow anger inside her.

I grow anger too. We all do. It’s only a matter of time before it metastasizes into something powerful and potent that will kill us all before the Ocretions do. At least in spirit.

We may share a secret, but little by little, our hate divides us from each other. It feels like either I or Rannah need to leave, so the rest of the group can be one again.

The others follow, and then it’s just me and Leylah.