Venom’s Taste

shoulder his way through the throng of people below. The narrow, open-sided viaduct didn’t bother him the way it did some humans. He was agile enough to feel surefooted, even when forced to squeeze to the very edge to let a yuan-ti pass.

Ahead lay the Solarium, an enormous circular building of green stone topped with a dome of thousands of triangular panes of glass in a metal frame that was reputedly strengthened by magic. The sun struck the west side of the dome, causing it to flare a brilliant orange.

The viaduct led to a round opening in the side of the Solarium. The human slave sitting on a stool just inside it rose to her feet as Arvin approached. She had curly, graying hair and wore, in her left ear, a gold earring in the shape of a serpent consuming its own tail. It helped distract the eye, a little, from the faded S brand on her cheek. She held up a plump, uncalloused hand to stop Arvin as he stepped inside the cool shade of the doorway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

Arvin peered past her, down the curved corridor that led to the heart of the building. Side tunnels with rounded ceilings branched off from it, leading to rooms where the yuan-ti shed their clothing. The air was drier than the sticky summer heat outdoors and was spiced with the pungent odor of snake. He was surprised to find no one but this woman watching the entrance; he’d expected at least one militiaman to keep out the rabble.

“A yuan-ti asked me to meet her here,” Arvin told the slave. “Her name is Zelia.”

The slave sniffed. “Humans aren’t allowed to use this entry. You’ll have to wait at the servant’s entrance with the others.”

Behind her, within the Solarium, a yuan-ti that was all snake save for a humanlike head slithered out of a side tunnel. It turned to stare at the humans with slit eyes, tongue flickering as it drank in their scent, then slid away down the corridor in the opposite direction, scales hissing softly against the stone.

Arvin stared down at the slave. She might be twice his age, but he was a head taller. “I’m on state business,” he told her firmly. “Zelia will want to see me at once. If you won’t let me in, then go and find her. Tell her I’m here.”

The slave returned his glare with one of her own. “The Solarium is a place of repose,” she told him. “You can’t expect me to burst in and wake our patrons from their slumber, looking for some woman who may or may not exist.”

Arvin fought down his impatience. Slave this woman might be, but she’d been at her job long enough to consider herself mistress of all who entered the doorway, be they slave or free folk.

“Zelia has red hair and green scales,” Arvin continued. “That should narrow down your search. Tell her Arvin is here to see her with an urgent message about…” He paused. How to word it…? “About diseased rats in the sewers.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood firm, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until his message was delivered.

The slave tried to stare him down, but her resolve at last wavered. She turned away and snapped her fingers. “Boy!” she shouted.

From a side tunnel came the patter of footsteps. A boy about eight or nine years old, carrying a glass decanter containing pink-tinged water, emerged in response to the doorkeeper’s call. He was barefoot and dressed only in faded gray trousers that had been hacked off at the thigh; his knees and the tops of his feet were rough, as if he’d scraped them repeatedly. His hair was damp with sweat and the S brand on his cheek was still fresh and red.

“This man claims to have been summoned here by one of our patrons,” the doorkeeper told the boy, placing emphasis on the word “summoned,” perhaps to remind Arvin that, while he might be a free man, he was ultimately at the beck and call of the yuan-ti. “Find the yuan-ti Zelia and deliver this message to her.” She relayed Arvin’s message. “Return with her reply.”

The boy ran off down the main tunnel. Arvin waited, stepping to the side and dropping his gaze as two yuan- ti entered the Solarium and were greeted with low bows by the doorkeeper-who all the while kept one eye on Arvin, as if expecting him to dart into the Solarium at any moment. The boy came running back, this time without the decanter.

“Mistress Zelia says to bring the man to her,” the boy panted.

The doorkeeper was busy directing the yuan-ti who had just entered to one of the side rooms, but Arvin saw her eyebrows rise at the news that Zelia would see him. As the yuan-ti departed down a side corridor, she glared at the boy. “Take him to her, then,” she snapped, “and be quick about it.” She aimed a cuff at the back of the boy’s head, but the boy ducked it easily.

“This way,” he told Arvin.

Arvin followed him down the corridor. The farther along it they went, the hotter and drier-and muskier-the air became. Arvin couldn’t imagine having to spend his whole life working in this snake-stink. It was already making his temples pound. “Here,” he said, fishing a silver piece out of a pocket and holding it out to the boy. “Keep this somewhere safe, where the others won’t find it. Maybe you’ll have enough to buy your freedom, one day.”

The boy eyed the coin in Arvin’s hand suspiciously.

“Nothing is expected of you,” Arvin reassured him. “It’s just a gift.”

The boy plucked the coin from Arvin’s hand and tucked it into his own pocket then grinned. As they reached a point where sunlight flooded into the corridor from the large room beyond, he dropped to his knees, tugging on Arvin’s shirt as he did so. “We’re not allowed to stand,” he whispered.

Arvin wasn’t sure if this rule applied to free men, but he complied. Dropping into a kneel, he followed the boy into the main room of the Solarium, trouser knees scuffing against the floor.

The sunning room of the Solarium was even larger than he’d imagined. The enormous circular chamber, capped by its high dome of glass, was bathed in hot, bright sunlight. Perhaps a hundred or more yuan-ti lounged on a series of low stone platforms on the floor, while snakes of every color and size-either more yuan-ti or their pets- hung from the delicate framework of wooden arches that connected one platform to the next. Some of the yuan-ti could pass for human at a distance while others had obvious serpent tails, heads, or torsos. They lay naked in the bright sunlight, men and women together, in some cases coiled in what Arvin would have assumed were sexual unions were it not for the slow, sleepy languor that pervaded the place. Human slaves-most of them young children-moved between the platforms on their knees, offering the yuan-ti sips of blood-tinged water or thumb-sized locusts, impaled on skewers and still twitching.

The boy led Arvin toward a platform near the center of the room where Zelia lounged with three other yuan-ti who looked almost human. The boy then backed away. Zelia lay on her side, coiled in a position no human could have emulated, her torso bent sharply backward so that her head was pillowed on one calf. She had a lean, muscled body that was soft and round in just the right places. Arvin noted that her scales gave way to a soft fuzz of red hair at her groin and that her breasts were smooth and pink, quite human in appearance. He found himself imagining what it would feel like to have Zelia’s body coiled around his-to feel the contrasting textures of rough, scaly skin and smooth breasts-then realized that Zelia had lifted her head to glance sleepily at him. Arvin, still on his knees, his head level with the ledge on which Zelia lay, dropped his gaze. He concentrated on the floor and waited for her to bid him to speak. The air seemed even hotter and drier than it had been a moment ago; Arvin found himself wetting his lips, just as the yuan-ti around him were doing.

Zelia chuckled, as if at some private joke. “You’ve been hunting sewer rats?” she asked, eyes still half- hooded with sleep. Her tongue tasted the air. “Yet you smell sweet.”

“One of the rats came out of the sewers,” Arvin said. “I caught him.”

Zelia sat up swiftly, her eyes glittering. “Where is he?” The three yuan-ti behind her stirred in their repose, disturbed by her sudden motion. One of them-a man who might have been handsome, save for the hollow fangs that curved down over his lower lip-rolled over and laid an arm across Zelia’s thigh. She slid her leg out from under it.

“The rat is dead,” Arvin answered.

Zelia gave an angry hiss.

“But not by my hand,” he swiftly added. “His… mistress claimed him. But before he died, I managed to learn what he and the others plan to-”

“Not here,” Zelia cut him off with a fierce whisper. She glanced pointedly at the three other yuan-ti who shared the platform with her. “Follow me and keep silent.”

She slid off the platform in a flowing motion and moved toward the exit-walking at an apparently unhurried