Seeder, Chapter Six

6. Orchid

They stop in West Crown Gap to take on supplies; tribute, Atuma’s father says. The train is a creature that must be constantly fed, a great metal snake that generates nothing of its own. Atuma pointed this out to her mother once over dinner, and her mother slapped her across the mouth. This was when her mother cared enough to slap her, before the priest was killed. Her mother stormed out of the dining car and the priest, in his slithery whisper, said “The train doesn’t have to generate. It emanates. The Urizen Dynasty is a mass delusion, a sleeping spell cast over Lod. The train rushes through the Goredeti blood fields, circles clerics and academics sunk in Lake Baikai, delves through cavern-factories at Chud, slows to inspect troops in Ignat. All the while it casts off sparks where the wheels meet the tracks, throws them into the eyes of the citizens. In its wake they see wonders, a country scrawled across their vision.” Whenever the priest spoke, Atuma felt drowsy. If she slipped too far, she might wake with the priest over her, on top of her, inside her. She suspected he’d been fucking her mother, cuckolding her father, for a year before a cohort of her father’s advisors shot him in the club car and threw him under the train’s wheels. An accident according to the conductor’s log. Her mother never complained, but she arranged bad ends for all the men who carried out the assassination. The priest came to Atuma in nightmares, deliverying homilies, inviting her into deeper sleep.

Atuma opens the door to her brother Dwellon’s car and is startled to find the doctor and her mother with him. Dr. Markoe holds Dwellon’s wrist, hand limp like a dying flower. Dwellon’s skin is the pale green of pond scum, except the moss-colored bruises around his eyes. Floronic syndrome is Markoe’s diagnosis. It’s a description of symptoms rather than an indication of cause. Her mother insists Dwellon was better before the priest had his “accident,” but he’s been this way for years with no improvement or decline. Atuma’s believes the priest caused his condition somehow, by curse or by poison, to keep her mother dependent on him.

“Good morning, mother,” she says. “That’s a pretty color on you.” Her mother wears her usual grey, which makes her unadorned face the color of mop water. Sometimes compliments pierce her fog, forcing her to recognize Atuma is speaking to her.

Not this time.

“I was headed to the dining car for breakfast,” Atuma ventures. “Would you like to join me?”

Her mother looks at Atuma for the first time since she entered the car. “Darling, you know I can’t stand watching you eat,” she says. The other sure way to get her mother’s attention: mention food. If she can’t register affection, Atuma’s content to elicit disgust. “You should skip breakfast this morning,” her mother says. “We’re showing you off to the people this afternoon. It would be nice if you didn’t strain your dress seams. And the painter is coming on board this morning to do your portrait. They can trim your edges, but let’s make their job a little easier.”

Insults about her weight roll off Atuma’s back; she listens for the relevant bits. “You hired a painter?” she asks.

“Artists are the only worthwhile thing this city has,” her mother says. “Might as well get something out of this trip. Maybe just coffee this morning?”

“Yes, mother,” says Atuma, bowing her head.

Her mother returns her attention to Dwellon, who floats in the liminal space between sleep and waking. Atuma isn’t bitter that her brother is better loved. He’s heir apparent. Her mother’s reason for existing is to deliver him safely into adulthood, to keep him alive long enough to take the crown. Her apparent failure has emptied her out; the priest wormed his way into that emptiness.

“We should let him rest,” says Markoe. It’s the only curative he ever offers.

“He likes singing when he goes to sleep,” says her mother. “He needs my voice.”

“He needs rest, and so do you,” says Markoe. “It’s a big afternoon, you need to look your best, for your people.” Since the priest, no one’s as close to her as Markoe, but she doesn’t fawn on him the way she did the priest. Markoe flatters and coaxes to stay in her good graces.

“Toomie can stay with me,” says Dwellon. His voice is all breath with nearly no sound.

“I can take my coffee here,” Atuma says. Her stomach gurgles in protest, but her mother will have the breakfast thrown away before she reaches the dining car.

“Only till he falls asleep,” says Markoe.

“Thank you,” her mother says, putting a hand on Atuma’s arm for a half a heartbeat. It’s the one kindness she’ll get from her mother today. Markoe guides her mother out, nodding to Atuma in gratitude as he does.

“They made my portrait already,” Dwellon says. “It looks nothing like me.”

“Would you want it to?” Atuma asks. “You look terrible.”

“A picture should be true,” Dwellon says. “They showed it to me and I felt like I was a ghost and the picture was the real boy.” He tries to sit up to look out the low edge of his window. “Where are we today?”

“Belovode,” she says. “There’s a parade this afternoon. We’ll prop you up so the crowds can see their prince.”

“They’ll put make up on me,” says Dwellon. “I hate that.”

“They put make up on me, too,” Atuma says.

Dwellon shrugs, ceding the point. “Will we be here long?” he asks.

Atuma shakes her head. “Mama hates it here,” she says. “Markoe says we’re headed east so dad can talk to the auroch-riders about going to the front.”

“They won’t, will they?” Dwellon asks.

“No,” says Atuma. The pacts between the Urizens and the Goredeti tribes are ancient, but amount to naming rights for the lands past Kitezh and trade agreements on the grain and livestock produced there. Her father has a governor in the east, but he’s a willing captive of the Goredeti chiefs. The land they ride on is Lod, but none of the auroch-riders consider themselves Lodi, or give a fuck for the Urizen dynasty. These are facts Atuma understands, even if her father doesn’t.

“I’d like to ride an auroch,” Dwellon says.

Atuma smiles at him sadly. He can barely sit up; tendrils of infection snake around his spine and bend it toward the earth. A newly-calved auroch would toss him. “Some day,” she says.

“If we lose the war,” says Dwellon, “is dad not king anymore?”

“They take away some land,” Atuma says. “We pay them for their dead. Nothing happens.”

“Then why fight?”

“So Factories can build things. So people can work,” says Atuma. She’s reciting lessons the priest taught her. “War requires things. It keeps the factories busy.”

“It’s not a very good system,” says Dwellon. “When I’m king, I’ll stop the wars.”

“What will the factories make?” Atuma asks.

“Something that doesn’t hurt anyone,” says Dwellon.

“It’ll be good, when you’re king,” Atuma assures him.

“I’m going to sleep now,” he says. Speaking makes it so: he shuts his eyes, slows his breathing to barely there, and falls asleep. Atuma doesn’t want to leave, so she tugs the bell pull. Eliza, anticipating Atuma’s need, arrives with a steaming iron mug full of black coffee in hand.