Matriarch Read Online Free

communal room, Dijuas—the youngest of Nevyan’s four recently acquired husbands—sat suckling his infant son. Two of her three other males, Lisik and Livaor, were preparing evem for lunch, their long multijointed fingers stained yellow from the sap.
    Nothing fazed Eddie now. Seahorses. Yeah, think seahorses. They had gold eyes, from citrine to topaz to amber, with four-lobed pupils that snapped shut into crosses. He satdown next to Dijuas and reached to stroke his fingertip across the child’s head, eliciting an approving rumble from the father. The baby looked less like a stick insect now: he was recognizably a little wess’har male, a bald one, and three times as big as the palm-sized creature that had spent most of its time in Dijuas’s gestational pouch.
    â€œFulaor,” Dijuas said carefully in his double voice, tone on tone. “Fu—la—or.”
    Eddie pursed his lips and made a continuous humming sound before trying to add the second enunciated note. He’d practiced overtone singing for hours until his skull vibrated. He still couldn’t quite manage it. The wess’har larynx, or whatever passed for it, could shape sounds like human lips and tongues before it even reached the mouth to pile on more phonics. Wess’u was more of a complex song than a language.
    Eddie tried again. “Oooooooofffffffffff…”
    Dijuas trilled loudly and the chorus of amusement was taken up by Lisik and Livaor. They found it hilarious. Eddie dissolved into giggles too. There was something touchingly childlike about the wess’har zest for life, and it was easy to forget that they also switched instantly to a much uglier mode and waged total, destructive war without prisoners. Chilled or punching, as Shan Frankland described them; there was no middle ground.
    Nevyan appeared in the doorway.
    She was considered short for an isan —a matriarch—but she was as tall as Shan, a six-footer, and equally fearsome in her way. Her gold tufted mane bobbed, giving her the air of a Spartan soldier, and Giyadas watched her intently as if studying her style. This was how to be a seahorse warrior queen.
    â€œYou mustn’t mock Eddie,” Nevyan said in English. She gave her males a quick glance and—Eddie knew, even if didn’t affect him—a quick burst of her dominance pheromone. I’m the boss. Shut up. “He tries hard.”
    â€œWe’re just having a laugh,” said Eddie.
    God knew there were few of those around to be had lately. Every time he found something funny, or enjoyed food, orjust realized that life was richly fascinating, he thought of dead bezeri on the irradiated shores of Ouzhari, and Par Paral Ual, killed by his own nervous troops.
    And dead Lindsay Neville. Unlike Shan, she wouldn’t return from the apparent dead and resume her strange life 150 trillion light years from home.
    â€œI want to visit Umeh after Esganikan has completed her talks with the isenj,” said Nevyan.
    â€œI think it’ll be a dangerous place.”
    â€œI’m the senior matriarch of F’nar, and I intend to meet the isenj government, dangerous or not.” Nevyan was still very young, but she had all the seasoned steel of her mother, Mestin. “They’re my neighbor and my enemy. Esganikan is just passing through this system. That makes the situation more critical for us, and we might well have different agendas.”
    Eddie was aware of Giyadas staring up at him in expectation. She could always smell a tense debate and it fascinated her.
    â€œI thought you two trusted each other,” said Eddie. “She’s one of your own.”
    â€œWe both originate from the same species, but you might have noted that Eqbas Vorhi doesn’t conduct its affairs as Wess’ej does.”
    Yeah, I know, you’re the hippy dropouts and they’re the militaristic right-wingers. But you still took out an Earth warship without