Three True Auguries and A Lie

Far far above, celestial sharks wheeled imperceptibly slowly; schools of comet-bright fish scudded across the night. The Royal Augur adjusted her telescope and bent to inspect the flank of a silvertip shark, which arced across the northwest quadrant of the sky.

“A pattern of scarring and scrapes, consistent with coordinated attack,” she said. “You walk a minefield. Quarter twist, with underside of jaw and topside of tail both visible: there is great danger in misjudging who your enemies are.”

The King stood with her head tipped back, dark curls foaming down across her shoulders and back, the crimson robes of office falling languorously from her shoulders. She had been born under the shadow of the silvertip shark; at twenty-three, she was new-crowned and in the midst of her first Patron Return.

“That sounds about right,” she said. Her voice was low and smooth. “And that’s a shyshark and a frilled shark on its tail. Who’s born under those shadows, again?”

It was a long list. The Augur wrote their names down, and handed them to the King, who tossed it onto the Augur’s overflowing desk. “Let’s go to bed.”

Several hours later, the Augur awoke and disentangled herself from the King’s long, sweaty limbs. She could never sleep well with the smell of sex on her. She washed her hands and brushed her teeth, then padded back to the telescope.

There, barely visible above the southern horizon, she found it: the great shadow of a whale, on its centuries-long journey back into influence.

Quietly, in her throat, the Augur sang the whalesong her grandmother had taught her. A mournful hopeful almost-tune.

A prayer.

As they always did, the whales counseled patience.

The Augur spun the telescope toward a meaningless part of the sky and returned to bed.

†

On her thirty-first birthday, the King came for her first augury since ceremonially departing the Augur’s bed. (“I have to think of marriage, and heirs; I can’t be distracted”—but the Augur knew about Lady Aegrit. And didn’t care.)

“The mountain-people are causing trouble again,” the King said. “What fate is coming in on the sky-tide?”

“King, they still follow the whale-ways, and orcas have been sighted in the sky. To them, it means…change. Disruption, for good or for bad.”

The King waved her hand. “Yes, yes. But do they plan something silly like revolution? It would be a shame to have to stage another genocide.”

The Augur hid her shaking hands in the pockets of her apron. She thought of her grandmother, with her strong, twisted knuckles, who had taught her the whalesongs. Her mountain-born cousins, who could jump up the side of a cliff as nimbly as goats, and always teased her for her city manners and sharkly ways. The baby, who she hadn’t gotten a chance to meet yet.

“There will be no violence, my King. It’s just one sighting, and unconfirmed—anyway, no whale-worshipper would follow an orca into battle. They’re not real whales—just dolphins who have gotten wise enough to be dangerous.”

The King sighed in relief and clapped the Augur on the shoulder. (Their first physical contact for almost a year. Her smell—)

“Fuck, but I’m glad I can trust you, my little translator. Alright, I’ll offer them a political marriage. My sister Ren, maybe. She’s not doing me much good moping around the palace. We’ll make a big fuss about it. And I’ll ready the guns just in case. Now—come here, darling, a kiss for my birthday.”

After, the Augur touched her trembling mouth and said, “Would you like to know what a whale-worshipper would see in the sky for you? A little trivia for your birthday.”

“Tell me.”

“They would tell you that you will have the moon.”

That cocky smile flashed across the King’s face. “Prosperity and righteous might? I’ll take that.”

†

At thirty-three, the King asked for advice on her marriage. “My sister’s gone and converted to whale-worship, stupid girl. Stupid me, for expecting better of her. Anyway, I’ve got to produce more babies than she can possibly assassinate. What does the sky say?”

This is the moment, the Augur thought. The current turns here. She sang a little prayer in her throat.

The sky was full of sharks; there were many suitors for a King who was young, beautiful, and famously voracious in bed, even if she ruled over difficult times.

“Do you know you hum when you’re thinking?”

The Augur jerked up. “What?”

The King was stroking her own collarbones; flirting. “You always have. It’s cute.”

No time for that. The Augur returned to the sky. There—a bramble shark with pitted skin across its belly, and crossed behind it, a sleek, fat shape, barely visible in the deepness of the sky. The Augur racked her brain. Who had been born under the bramble shark’s fleeting shadow? Ah yes.

“Lord Graecl. The Royal Perfumer’s son.”

The King wrinkled her brow. “Really? He’s unappealing, unconnected, and barely even—”

The Augur cut her off with a raised hand. (Borderline treasonous, but she had to take advantage of the King’s brief uncertainty.) “Look. Do you see how the body of the bramble shark arcs in parallel with the body of your divine Patron as it leaves our sphere of the sky? He is aligned with your interests, but secondary to you; he will never outshine you or even try. And he stands in double trine with four other sharks: though apparently insignificant, he is the key to greater power. He will give you the future you hunger for.”

The hungry King wavered, set her chin, nodded. “I’ll say I’m honoring our tradespeople. And at least I’ll smell nice.”

You always smell nice, the Augur thought. But the King was gone.

†

Against the wishes of her surgeon, with the blood of her hysterectomy still not dry on the mop-rags, the King called the Augur to her side. “What happened?” she croaked. “You hand-picked Graecl for me, but he was carrying the disease that did—this. He mutilated me. And now my sister and her husband will put a line of dirty whale-lovers on the throne.”

The Augur said nothing. She hated blood, the smell of it, the way it worked into everything, horrible red-brown grit. She’d been so careful that there would be no blood. (She’d been naive. There’s always blood.)

She hummed in her throat, but the whalesong didn’t soothe her.

Well, she’d made herself the other kind of whale, hadn’t she? The liar. The black-and-white trickster. The killer.

Where would she go, now that her task was done? Not home; no whale would welcome an orca in.

The King gripped her arm with a feverish strength. “Are you listening? I was supposed to have the moon! Instead I get my guts carved out, my kingdom fucked to pieces by my idiot sister, my legacy amputated and left to rot on the surgery floor?”

“Do you know what whale-worshippers say about the moon?” the Augur asked. She felt as cold and remote as the ever-swimming stars.

The King spat on the gory floor. “Of course I don’t.”

“We say it is the orca’s devouring mouth.”

© 2022 Lauren Bajek

About the Author

Lauren Bajek is a queer writer, parent, and literary agent living in the Rust Belt. She tweets at @laurenbajek.