“You’re paying too much.” Zyr’s voice came so close to my ear that I jumped and dropped the change the Tala merchant had handed me. The coins clattered to the stones, making a merry racket.
Zyr swiftly gathered them up, speaking rapidly in Tala. The woman behind the counter grinned and shrugged elaborately. The Tala had a way of doing that, shrugging with their whole bodies, kind of rippling in a way that made it clear they didn’t care at all about your opinion. Or for anything like an objective standard of law.
Zyr pointed a finger at her, going on at length, his words severe enough to make her pout—though that didn’t stop her from replying in rising tones as she waved her hands at me in implicit accusation. A group of Tala sitting at a nearby table watched with great interest, murmuring to each other as they stared at me with animal bright eyes. I wanted to shrink inside my skin.
“Zyr—please,” I begged, weakly, and far too quietly for either of them to hear me over their escalating argument.
Then they were done. The Tala woman grudgingly gave me my original coin back and Zyr handed her one of the smaller ones. She set out my tray with a pot of tea, two mugs, and two sweet rolls, giving me a brilliant smile as she had the morning before, and as if nothing had occurred. Zyr took the tray before I could, and I realized he didn’t have his box. He carried the tray over to a table on the edge of the balcony, forcing me to follow, where—mystery solved—the box sat.
“Here,” he said after setting down the tray. He held out a hand and I cupped my palms so he could pour the coins into it. He pointed to one. “That’s how much your half of breakfast is worth. Don’t ever pay more than that.”
“The gold coin is what I paid her before,” I grumbled.
“What?” Zyr paused in mid-pour, blue eyes blazing as if on fire. I quickly looked away. “How many times?”
“Just yesterday,” I managed, the intensity of his anger making me timid.
He growled—actually growled, like a wolf—and was gone. From where I sat, I could hear him loudly berating the merchant woman, who argued back at the same volume. I sipped my tea, grateful for both its sweet warmth and for something to do while I pretended I didn’t know him.
When he came back, he slid into the chair in a flurry of tossing hair and bright silk then settled immediately into a pose as languid as if he’d never argued with anyone a day in his life. He placed another gold coin on the table, tapping it. “See this one, with my cousin’s unbeautiful face?”
She did have a sharp profile, with a strong nose and chin. But I’d seen the High Queen of the Thirteen Kingdoms in person and I’d never call her “unbeautiful.” Definitely not pretty, like a milk-bathed Dasnarian girl. Still, she had a force of personality that made such considerations irrelevant, as if a woman like that couldn’t be defined by something as frivolous as physical beauty. “Her Majesty High Queen Ursula,” I said, hoping he’d take the hint and use her proper title.
“Yes, yes.” He waved that off. “These coins are shiny and new, which are both things Tala like.”
I laughed and coughed it back. “You make your people sound like magpies.”
“Some of us are,” he replied in utter seriousness. “Remember that. You are also new—and shiny, though in a different way—so you won’t know that we haven’t had foreign coin, or foreign goods, or delightfully beautiful foreign women, here in Annfwn for very long at all. We lived for centuries in isolation, and it hasn’t even been two years since that changed. These merchants aren’t even trying to cheat you, exactly. They just want to collect these coins because Ursula is half Tala and she’s Queen Andromeda’s sister and they see her as heroic and I don’t know what all. The point is, Marskal and Ursula had bags of these things and they handed them out like love potions at summer festival. But they’re worth a lot. You can get a hundred days of breakfast for one. Another reason you won’t starve. Understand?”
I covered the coin with my hand and slid it into my little pouch, deciding not to try to explain that I still wasn’t sure how to handle money in general. I’d recognized the smaller coin he’d pointed to as being the price of breakfast, though, so I could remember that. Unlike most Dasnarian women—and thanks to an indulgent father—I could at least count. But he wasn’t so indulgent that he’d violate the law that Dasnarian women couldn’t handle money. So I’d never used coins before, or purchased anything, as everything I needed had been given to me.
“May I ask you a question?” I ventured, since he seemed to have wound down, and he also didn’t seem to mind me questioning him.
“You just did.” He grinned when I flicked a glance at him. “Oh, come on—Dasnarians don’t have a sense of humor?”
“No,” I replied primly. “But we do answer questions when asked.”
“Seems I’ve asked you a few questions you’ve declined to answer.” He plucked his roll from his plate, unwinding it and licking the sweet icing from it as he exposed each new bit, lolling back in his chair, long legs outstretched.
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t the proper way to eat it, but even I could recognize that particular trap from a distance. So I quietly ate my roll in polite fashion, cutting neat pieces from it with my eating knife, hoping to set a good example for this wild man.
He eyed me. Licked off the last bit of icing. Then sighed dramatically. “Ask your question already, gréine. And for future reference—just ask, don’t beg for permission.” He had the roll entirely unwound and licked clean. Now he tipped his head back and fed the long rope of it into his mouth, bite by bite. His lips closed over it in a way that made me think of kissing, and his graceful throat… What was I thinking, staring this way?
I decided to pour more tea, keeping my gaze firmly on my cup, and mentally scrambled for my question, which no longer felt relevant at all. “Why do you refer to Her Highness Queen Andromeda by her title, but Her Majesty High Queen Ursula you call by any number of irreverent nicknames?”
“Irreverent nicknames,” he echoed, sounding vastly amused. “Because, my sweet Dasnarian, Queen Andromeda is my queen, Queen of the Tala. No matter how many documents my mossback cousin might draft declaring her majestyness, Annfwn and the Tala don’t belong to her and her cluster of acquired realms.”
“But Annfwn is the thirteenth kingdom of the Thirteen Kingdoms,” I pointed out. “That’s the law. Doesn’t such irreverence make you a—” I glanced about, to be sure no eager ears lurked nearby to overhear. “A traitor,” I whispered.
“A traitor?” Zyr shrieked, clutching his hands to his heart. He’d popped his chair up onto its two hind legs, so it wobbled wildly with his gesticulations, threatening to pitch him over the edge. “Oh, no! Save me, someone—the big, bad mossbacks are coming to get me!”
“Shh!” I hushed him, though no one seemed to be paying attention, despite his loud calls for help. “It’s not a joke.”
He let the front legs of his chair smack down. Quick as a snake he reached across the table and grabbed my hand, eyes dancing with mischief. “Call me irreverent again—it makes me feel so naughty.”
“Absolutely not.” I extracted my hand pointedly but he seemed unbothered. “And you wouldn’t find being in prison so amusing, should it truly happen to you.”
Abruptly he sobered, as if a shadow passed over the sun. I even glanced at the sky, but it remained clear, the first rays of full day shooting over the sharp edge of the cliff. “You’re right,” he replied, easily enough, but with something under it. “I have been, and amusing it wasn’t.”
“You’ve been in prison?” I was aghast, and—though I kicked myself for my imprudent curiosity—dying to know more. I’d never known anyone who’d been imprisoned. “What happened?”
“Nothing much,” he retorted. “Prisons are notoriously boring. Fortunately, shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to keep in prison.” He shot me a smile, but he wasn’t as cavalier as he wanted me to think. “Answer my question about the bed thing.”
“What?”
“Why did you have a fit when I said you’d enjoy being in my bed?”
My face went hot, and I picked at some crumbs, wishing I hadn’t eaten my breakfast already so I’d have something to do. “Because I don’t want to be your lover,” I said quietly, desperately hoping no one was listening.
“No, I know you say that.” He waved that off as easily as he did formalities. “I don’t believe you, by the way. This was different than your usual virginal protestations. You were shocked by my saying that exact phrase. Why?”
Unspoken words tumbled in my mouth, fighting each other to be first. “You don’t get to not believe me,” I told him, finding myself furious. “I am a virgin and will remain untouched until I marry.”
“You were married to Kral and stayed a virgin.” He’d gone back to sprawling in his tipped-back chair, but something in his relaxed posture reminded me of the big cats that liked to lie on wide tree limbs in the older orchards back home. Still in the shadows, apparently asleep, they pounced without a sound on the unwary that passed beneath. Could Zyr shapeshift into that kind of cat? The thought made me shiver and Zyr seemed to note it. Those blue eyes—almost feline, now that I thought of it, with that same uncanny illusion of seeming to glow—keen on me. “I bring that up to point out the flaw in your logic,” he added, as if being helpful. “That virginity and marriage aren’t necessarily equivalent.”
I curled my hands together in my lap. “That was a different situation, and this topic is not appropriate—”
“For mixed company,” he cut in. “Right. I feel like I’m chasing my tail with you.”
“Easily solved. Stop chasing me.”
“I was going to.” He said it musingly. “I told Zynda not an hour ago that I was done trying to seduce you.”
Hearing those words made me oddly flustered, though I’d of course known his intentions. Knowing he’d discussed as much with Zynda made it more…pointed. “And what did she say?” I asked, though I should have refused to participate in this conversation any further. He kept enticing me back into it.
“She said that was too bad, as you might be good enough for me.”
Oh.
Not what I expected. And I didn’t know what to say to that. Zynda had been kind to me—but what an extraordinary thing for her to tell him. “So that’s why you asked me to breakfast?”
He shrugged, looking out at the water. “Eh. Not really. Mostly I was tired of carrying this thing she gave me.” He kicked his heel against the box. “And feeling sad and worried, which I don’t enjoy. Then I saw you and thought, some flirtation with a beautiful woman is just the thing to cure my sad and worried.”
“And yet I make you feel like you’re chasing your, er, tail.”
His chair thumped down as he leaned his forearms on the table again. Did the man ever sit still? “I’ll tell you a secret, gréine,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “I kind of like feeling that way.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I didn’t either.
“But if you truly want me to leave you alone, I will.” His playfulness had fled again. “I don’t wish you unhappy.”
I should’ve said it then. No uncertain terms. But I couldn’t quite make myself. Maybe because telling a man “no” in any terms isn’t something a Dasnarian woman does, so the words didn’t leap to my lips. Also… though talking with him could be aggravating and infuriating, it was far better than being alone.
“Why were you feeling sad and worried?” I asked instead. He had looked unhappy. Certainly not his usual mien.
If he noticed my equivocation, he didn’t say. “It’s a long story. War, death, the end of the world. The usual.” Sitting up, he raked his hands through his hair, hitting tangles. “No wonder I’m getting nowhere with you,” he commented. “I’m all scruffy. Comes of being muzzy headed from getting up so early, curse my crazy, obsessed sister.”
He blurred, like he did when moving fast, then a big black cat was sitting in his chair. Before I could react—at least mentally, because my heart jumped immediately, my fingers twitching for the bow I’d left in my rooms—he was him again. Human him. But now his hair flowed smoothly, neatly tied back, his shirt a deeper blue than his eyes, laced and unwrinkled.
I knew I was gaping at him, my default reaction it seemed, but I couldn’t gather my wits.
“Did I scare you?” he asked, frowning.
“A little,” I allowed. “In my world, when a big predator shows up in front of you, it’s a bad thing and you’d better react fast before you get dead.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you as a panther any more than I would as a man. I’m still me.”
“Exactly the same?” I asked, unable to squelch my curiosity, as it was something I’d been burning to know for a while.
“Not exactly.” He looked thoughtful. “It’s kind of like when you’re dreaming, how you’re you but also other things. With more control, though, like when a dream isn’t going the way you want it to and you can turn it and guide it in a new direction.”
I gazed back, aware I kept forgetting myself by looking right into his eyes. “No,” I said slowly. “I’ve never heard of anyone being able to guide a dream. And I don’t dream at all.”
“Nonsense. Everyone dreams. Even animals dream. Surely Dasnarians do, too.”
“So they say,” I replied with some tartness, “but not me. I never have.”
“Never? Not once in your entire life?”
“No.” I shook my head to emphasize it. “That’s just how I am.”
“And you’ve never had sex of any kind, with anyone at all.”
I would not clap my hands to my hot cheeks, no matter how much I wished to. “The two are hardly related.”
“I don’t know,” he mused, a wicked turn to his mouth. “Maybe you should experiment.”
“With you?” I retorted, which was hardly wise.
“You know the offer is open.”
“Is this an offer of marriage then?” This I asked deliberately, to snap him out of his determined flirtation, and it worked. He blinked and sat back.
“Ah… the Tala don’t really marry,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “For most of us, our animal natures aren’t really suited for monogamy.”
“Their Highnesses King Rayfe and Queen Andromeda are married,” I pointed out, because I’d asked about that and knew it to be true. A fixed point in the otherwise chaotic lawlessness of Annfwn.
“That’s different,” Zyr replied, with that wave of his hand.
I really wanted to ask why, but couldn’t think of a way that didn’t sound like a challenge.
“Is that truly the only way a Dasnarian woman can enjoy sex, is if she’s married?” Zyr asked, seeming to be sincerely trying to understand, though the concept clearly made him incredulous.
“An honorable, high-station woman, yes.”
“And the dishonorable types?” His eyes glinted again, lips shaping the question with a hint of sensuality that shouldn’t be there at all.
“They have options, to some extent, from decent to terrible.” I hesitated briefly, then figured I might as well explain. “A man might offer a woman his bed, which means he’ll provide for her—food, shelter, all her needs—and protect her. For the rest of her life,” I added with some zest, delighted to find myself enjoying the play of astonishment, shock, and maybe even a brief hint of terror flying over his expressive face. It felt good to have a step up on him for once. A Dasnarian man would never reveal so much of his thoughts, so that came as an unexpected pleasure. One thing to be said for the crazy Tala culture—their openness made conversations more fun. I put some effort into schooling my expression into polite lines, rather than grinning at my bullseye hit.
“I…ah. Oh.” Zyr started to rake his fingers through his hair, found he’d tied it back in his shapeshifting tidying up, and irritably flung the tie away so he could shake his hair out. It flowed around his shoulders like a mane, paradoxically adding to the sense of him as some great feline predator. Especially as he worried his lip with his rounded human teeth in a distinctly unpredatory way. “See, ah, Karyn. I hope you know there’s a translation problem there and… Um.”
I nodded in understanding, adding a woeful smile. “Unfortunately, according to Dasnarian law, once the offer is made, it cannot be retracted. In fact, because Dasnarian women don’t participate in the drafting and signing of contracts, making the offer is as good as sealing it. So.” I lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a decidedly not elaborate, but quite fatalistic Dasnarian shrug. “What’s done is done. I greatly appreciate that you’ll care for me for the rest of my life.”
He actually spluttered, casting his gaze from side to side, seeking escape. “Oh, see. Um. But you were worried about starving and that was after—” He broke off, narrowing his eyes at me and I let go the laughter I couldn’t restrain any longer.
I convulsed with belly laughs, unable to stop, particularly when Zyr folded his arms and scowled at me in decided disgruntlement. If anyone had told me days or even an hour before that I’d ever enjoy a joke at a man’s expense, I’d have said they were crazy. As it was… oh, what a fine thing to laugh like this!
“Are you done?” Zyr asked with injured dignity as I subsided, wiping away the tears the deep laughter had squeezed from my eyes.
I nodded. But an unladylike snort-giggle escaped me. I took a breath and calmed myself, at last meeting his gaze calmly—although my mouth kept twitching into a smile.
He broke into a grin. “It’s good to hear you laugh, even if the joke was on me.” He held up his hands when I began to protest. “No, no—I deserved that. I had it coming.”
“You did,” I replied. “That’s what you get for your flirtatious ways.”
“Now, hold on a moment.” He frowned at me, not playing this time. “I’d argue that flirtation is one of the joys of being alive. So is sex. I’ll bow my head to running afoul of your customs, but I won’t agree that I deserve to be punished for wanting to share a goddess-given pleasure with you. Or,” he said meaningfully, when I opened my mouth to argue, “for thinking we should be able to enjoy that together without rules. It seems to me that your laws have brought you more misery than joy.”
That arrow hit home, striking the deep bruise in my heart. All those years of a marriage in name only, with no material change in my circumstances. I’d begun to long for a normal life like my sisters had, with a husband present in it, and children to warm my heart. To keep me from dying alone as the withered branch of my family tree that never bore fruit. By giving up my marriage with Kral for the possibility of a real marriage, with children, had I taken too much of a gamble?
“Karyn?” Zyr stroked quick fingers over the back of my hand. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. Laugh again.”
A command I couldn’t obey, as laughter is not so easily summoned. But I stretched my mouth in an obedient smile. “Regardless of all that, they are my laws and I will follow them,” I told him. There. My no uncertain terms.
He inclined his head in sober acknowledgement. “I suppose we shall have to be friends only, in that case.”
“Friends?” I tasted the word, though it was a familiar one. A deeper shading on ally, which was the sense most commonly used in Dasnaria. It would be unheard of for a woman and a man to be friends there, so much so that we didn’t have a word for it. We had ways to describe men who took each other’s part and supported one another. And unrelated women could be friends in ways that made them like family. Men and women, though… “What would that mean?” I asked, in all sincerity. “So we won’t run afoul of translation problems,” I clarified when he smirked at me.
“We spend time together that isn’t sex,” Zyr replied, looking thoughtful, like maybe he didn’t know either. Then he grinned. “It will be interesting. Fun! We can learn about each other.”
“All right. So I explained about the bed thing. Will you tell me why you were sad and worried?” That was something I’d discuss with a friend.
“Yes. I meant to tell you before but you distracted me. I’m tired of sitting, though—shall we walk?”
I’d long since finished eating, so I agreed. We both stood and he started to go.
“You forgot your box,” I pointed out.
He turned and scowled at it, as if it had personally offended him. “Zynda’s thing. I need to take it to my rooms, so we’ll have to walk there first.” He hefted it easily, though it looked quite heavy, then shook his head at me. “Don’t look all suspicious. We’re just dropping it off. You don’t want me to have to carry this thing all day, do you?”
The way he said “thing” made me want to laugh at him, he sounded so put upon. So I agreed. I’d just wait outside his rooms. I didn’t have to go in. And my etiquette teacher would never know, no matter how she whispered her cautions in my mind.