“What, you thought to see our thousands here at Rucombe?” The stranger laughed again, shaking his head. “Rucombe’s scouts hailed us in our crossing near the bridge and we came hither. The rest come more slowly. I imagine they are still crossing into the mountains, and will go on to Dis.”

  Gravity entered the stranger’s face for the first time, and if it were not for the grime of travel and two whole horns, he could have been Antilles himself. “How fares our city? Is it…?”

  “Dusty,” said Antilles. “No more ruined than at its exodus. Ease thee, Arion. There is work to do, aye, but not in ruins.”

  193

  The tense set of this Arion’s shoulders relaxed. He started to speak, then leaned out and stared at Taryn, his ears coming sharply forward. “Ha,” he said.

  “Another one!”

  Antilles turned, ears likewise pricked, and Taryn gave a little wave. “Oh aye! Taryn, here. Come and greet my brother!”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” Taryn ventured, offering her wrist to be swallowed in Arion’s leathery grip.

  He tipped a horn at her, looking amused, either by her remark or just the novelty of shaking with a human, which must be on a par for him with clasping wrists with a fellcat. “Our father was the lord of this Valley,” Arion said. “He sired seven sons and four daughters at last reckoning.”

  “Oh.”

  “But come!” Arion released Taryn and grabbed at Antilles again. “The others only stepped aside to wash before meeting you, and—aye, here!” Arion waved broadly at someone on the other side of the crowd.

  Rhiannon gripped Taryn’s hand with warning. Taryn looked at her, and therefore missed the moment when the other Cerosan stepped out before Antilles.

  She did turn back at the expectant hush that fell over the commons, however, and there they were.

  There were a dozen of them, maybe, males and females both (the idle curiosity of the past two years was immediately answered as Taryn saw that, no, they had no udders, only a pair of perfectly ordinary, if massive and furry, breasts). Antilles was staring at one of them in particular, a brown-eyed female with just a touch of gold in her tan pelt. His mouth was open. Taryn had a feeling that if Cerosan could smile, Arion would be grinning ear to ear. He had his arms folded, his head high, and ears tipped with pleased anticipation as he watched Antilles gape.

  “Eurydome,” Antilles said at last. His voice had an odd, thick quality.

  “Antilles!”

  The brown-eyed female swept forward. Antilles opened his arms and she fell into them as naturally as tin figures on an old-fashioned clock. He held her with a great deal more gentleness than he’d held Arion.

  Taryn held Rhiannon’s hand, trying to sort out what she was feeling as she watched Antilles nuzzle tenderly at this stranger’s shoulder and throat. Her own tingled. It wasn’t jealousy, precisely. But it was something. It was sure something.

  At last, Antilles stepped back from this disturbing embrace, although he kept one arm around this female. He turned to another female in the crowd, one who had watched this entire display with clear pride and approval. He said,

  “Mother.”

  194

  She tipped a horn at him. “We came at all speed, my lord, and lo, the moon is not yet full and so we are yet in advance of the time you had set.” Her voice hardened somewhat. “Though I mislike the implication.”

  “Implication?” he echoed, and Taryn noticed that his arm tightened a little around Eurydome’s shoulders, a familiar and protective gesture. His horns had lowered, squaring off against the woman he called ‘mother’.

  “The implication that you must be wed at this moon.” The female in the crowd rolled her eyes. “As if no other moon would suffice. Yet here we are, and so I forgive you. Now let us return to Dis. The Hall of Ceremonies, I am certain, shall demand all the time remaining to us if it is to be made even near to adequate before your blasted moon rises full.”

  “The Hall of Ceremonies?” Antilles finally let go of Eurydome and stepped in front of her. “I am to be wedded here.”

  “Here? In a barn?” The open shock in her voice silenced the horsemen.

  “You cannot mean it!”

  Antilles folded his arms, his face hardening.

  “If you cannot be troubled with the traditions of your own bloodline, have some consideration for hers! Does she not deserve the honor of a proper wedding?”

  “I should be contented anywhere,” Eurydome said. “Aye, even the fields of great Rucombe shall seem a chapel so long as my love stands beside me.”

  Both Antilles and Taryn flinched and stared at her. Rhiannon’s hand was so warm.

  Antilles shook himself out of it first. “Lady,” he said to Eurydome, touching her arm. “Forgive me. My wife is chosen already.”

  “But…” That glow of pride and pleasure held for a few trembling seconds before confusion crumpled it away. Eurydome shook her head. “Your letters said…you meant to marry…?”

  “We were children,” Antilles said softly. “I love another now.”

  “Who?” his mother demanded, still in that same shocked tone.

  “Dianthe? Not Narcisse!”

  Wordlessly, Antilles reached back and drew Taryn against his side.

  The silence was absolute. Not even the wind moved. She couldn’t hear her own breath.

  Arion spoke first, sounding merely curious. “Is this a joke?”

  “Nay. This is to be my wife.”

  Taryn tried to smile. It took a lot of work.

  Arion scratched at an ear and slid his eyes toward Antilles’s mother. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  The female’s chest began to heave. She said something in a harsh voice in that other language.

  195

  “You will speak—” Antilles roared, causing Taryn to leap instinctively into the shelter of Rhiannon’s arms. “—so that all may understand! Speak your insult to her face!”

  Without hesitation, the female shouted right back, “You are not marrying that!”

  “That?” Taryn echoed, startled. “I’m a that?”

  A large hand closed on her shoulder. Bizarrely, even though she was looking right at him and could see both arms busy making angry gestures, Taryn thought it was Antilles. “You seem like a very nice that,” Arion said behind her.

  “Why don’t you show me, oh, that field yonder?”

  Taryn allowed Arion to pull her gently back from the growing storm, but she kept watching, kept gaping. She didn’t even think she could blink.

  “Who are you to tell me this?” Antilles gave his mother two fingers to the chest. “I am lord! The choice is mine!”

  “And this is what you choose? To sunder the line that has stood since Daegelimos himself rose from the flames? You choose to end the bloodlines of unbroken lords for want of that…that filth?”

  Arion covered his face and sighed as a hundred horsemen drew runkas.

  “It would be like a night without stars,” he muttered.

  “How dare you!”

  “How dare I? I?! I am not the one seeking to tie myself and my noble name to human vermin! How dare you? How dare you dishonor your father’s memory so? How can you mean to admit that creature to the halls of your ancestors, to devour the fruits of the royal gardens, to allow its evil spawn to scuttle through rooms where heroes walked?”

  “My spawn!” Antilles roared. “My own, mine and hers, and if a son, then my heir, so beg her pardon, harridan, or never will you be welcome in the land he shall someday rule!”

  “This is apt to continue some while,” Arion remarked, tugging once more at Taryn’s shoulder. “And I could be improved by a drop of wine and a bite of bread.”

  “Beg? Now I must beg?”

  Taryn walked backwards, helplessly staring as Antilles and his mother continued to fight. Any minute now, she was certain she’d see one or the other of them throw a punch.

  “God, your mom is a bitch,” Rhiannon said very casually, and Taryn whirled around to gape at her in horror.

  “My…?” Arion laughed and made an elaborate shudder. “Nay, not mine. My mother, ah, a sweeter spirit and gentler tongue you should little find.

  She’s crossed now.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Taryn delivered an elbow hard to Rhiannon’s side, hoping to knock a similar apology out of her.

  196

  “I thought you said you were brothers,” Rhiannon said instead.

  “Aye?” They had reached the Jiko (and could still hear Antilles and his mother thundering away at one another), and most of Arion’s attention was on the food, but he spared a quizzical glance for them. “And so we are, but of different dams.”

  “Catted around a bit, did he?”

  “Dammit, Rhiannon!”

  “What?” Rhiannon shrugged.

  “I don’t take your meaning, human.”

  “I mean, your dad did a lot of cheating on his wife.”

  “Rhiannon!”

  “My father never married,” Arion said mildly. He helped himself to a leftover trencher and passed it to one of the few Farasai still tending the hearth to fill with vegetables and spicy sauce. “But aye, he had many consorts and no small number of concubines.”

  “Do they fight like that a lot?” Taryn asked.

  Arion found a piece of the wall to lean against. He cocked an eye at her, took a bite, chewed thoroughly, swallowed, and said, “Lady, forgive me, but ‘tis something of a shock to hear your lord declare his will to wed a human.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it is.”

  The shouting stopped. Arion glanced at the window and ate his bread.

  “Aye,” he said. “They have always fought. Tis a difficult thing to be named heir, and still not enough for Psychore’s only child. There was always a chance our father might favor some new son. She was determined that he should keep the honor given him. My brother, gods love him, chafed under her guidance.

  And when he chafes, he lets folk know it.”

  Antilles burst into the Jiko, openly fuming. He glared at all of them, raked a hand down over his muzzle, and snorted hard. “She always gets the best of me,” he muttered and beckoned Taryn to him.

  “Were you expecting cheers of gratitude?” Arion asked. “The last human we have seen in this Valley devastated our city and drove us out.”

  “Were it not for Taryn, he would still be here,” Antilles retorted. “And thee still in Abbadon suckling the goodwill of Lord Kambyses, so aye, I expected better than open insult.”

  “Aye, well.” Arion finished his trencher and clapped his hands free of crumbs, sending out a second cloud of road dust. “I think that was naïve of you, brother, but for my part, I would cheer even a fellcat thee named wife so long as I might sleep in my own bed once more.”

  Antilles threw a glance at the window, then shook his head. The look held a lot of heat, but none of it was directed at his brother. “It may be some time yet.”

  197

  “Aye.” Arion accepted a cup of wine from a horsewoman. He drank, sighed, and then eyed Rhiannon closely. “So,” he said.

  Rhiannon glared back at him, instantly at half-bristle. “So what?”

  Arion switched the subject of his gaze to Antilles, but pointed at Rhiannon with his cup. “Is this yours as well?”

  “This?” Rhiannon echoed dangerously.

  “And that,” Taryn muttered.

  Antilles patted her arm. “This is Rhiannon,” he said, nodding in that direction. “Taryn’s only sister.”

  “Oh aye?” Arion extended a hand. “I greet you.”

  Rhiannon gave his hand a smack. “Greet ‘this’,” she snapped, and stomped out, snarling, “‘Is this yours,’” not quite under her breath.

  Arion watched her go, his ears rotating.

  “Sorry about that,” Taryn said, blushing.

  “Aye,” Arion replied distractedly. Then turned an interested eye on Antilles. “Is she, though?”

  “Nay.” Antilles sounded amused. “One MacTavish is quite enough for anyone.”

  “Hm.” Arion looked long and hard at Taryn as she hid in the security of Antilles’s arm. When he raised his eyes to his brother, his face was grim.

  “There’s going to be trouble. You know this.”

  “Aye.” Antilles held her closer, though his voice was unconcerned.

  “There has always been trouble, brother. Such is life. But I am lord. It is for me to answer the things that trouble me. And it will trouble me greatly should my lady suffer insult from my own kin after all that she has done to make it possible for thee to return. Let that be heard, brother. And let it be heard very well.”

  198

  38. The In-Laws

  To say that the next few days were touchy would be a lot like calling the mood in Europe in the early 1940s ‘tense’. For the most part, the Cerosan stayed to themselves. On the surface, this deliberate distance could be easily mistaken for the simple desire for rest after a long journey, but one didn’t have to go much deeper than the surface to feel the suspicion radiating out of them whenever Taryn wandered too near.

  She couldn’t blame them. She really couldn’t. Every day, she reminded herself of what humans like her must have done over the years to Cerosan like them. The wizard’s crimes alone justified a certain amount of bitterness.

  But she hated having to apologize for it.

  Not that she had actually said the words, “I’m sorry for the plight of your people,” but there was definite accusation in every icy stare of theirs and definite apology in every forced smile of hers. She’d feel guilty about it later, she always did, but when she had to share space with them (which wasn’t often. As visitors, the Cerosan ate and slept in the Traveler’s lodge, not with the Farasai and their honorary kin) she could feel only that chicken bone of resentment lodged in her throat. If it wasn’t for Antilles and his moral support—

  “I am leaving for Dis,” Antilles announced, stalking into the Jiko for late-meal.

  Taryn sprang up. “You coward!”

  Dozens of horsemen gaped at her, but Antilles merely snorted. “Taryn, my people are less than two months’ travel from their home, and there is much that requires attention.”

  199

  “Oh no, you don’t! This is not about Dis!”

  “Aye, it is. There must be at least one clean source of water, ten working cisterns, ten—”

  “Days without Psychore!” she finished.

  He swelled his chest with righteous indignation, then woofed it out and flung himself down into his chair. “Lady, ‘tis Dis, or I do a murder on my mother.”

  And God help her, but for a second there…

  Taryn sighed. “All right, all right. Go on and leave me. Don’t give it another thought, ya dosser.”

  Antilles snatched up his cup and drank. When it was empty, he thrust it out for filling again. “A great, grisly murder…” he mused.

  “Go on. Have fun. Don’t think of me all alone in our bed, salting my morning cracker with bitter tears and pining for you.”

  Tonka coughed very suspiciously into his fist. Others in the Jiko snickered outright and many more rolled their eyes or snorted disapproval.

  “Ah, Taryn,” Antilles groaned. “I pray you, peace.”

  “Then take me with you!”

  His eyes dropped to her stomach and all hint of humor left him. “Nay, I will not.”

  “Alone in our bed,” she went on, turning away from him. “Shivering with cold.”

  “Tis the center of the hottest summer in all my memories, lady.”

  “Shivering with heat…”

  Antilles cast his eyes skyward and shook his head. When he looked at her again, it was entirely without pity.

  “Has she said something to thee?” Tonka asked, and there was only one

  ‘she’ to whom he could be referring.

  “No,” Taryn admitted, and gave Antilles a plaintive look. “But you’re here! Who’s going to say anything to me while you’re here? Please, if you love me, don’t leave me alone with her!”

  His face set into stone. He got up and headed for the door. The Farasai, true champions at ignoring public disturbances, kept their eyes on their meal as Taryn heaved herself up and pursued him, pleading all the while.

  “She’s a battle axe! And she hates me!”

  “Psychore is my mother,” he said firmly. “And that is not about to change. You must find a way of co-existing with her.”

  “Oh, like you’re doing?”

  “Aye. And I have had two hundred years and better to find that I co-exist best in another city. When you can say the same, you may accompany me in flight.”

  200

  “That’s age discrimination!” She caught the door and stamped her foot as he strode out across the commons. “Tilly, you coward!”

  “Twixt coward and matricide, I know well the title I would prefer to wear.” He stepped into the Traveler’s lodge to claim a belt and an empty water cask, just in and out, but the scant second’s pause left him visibly softened toward her on his return. “Yet thee, my maiden, thee shall take the path of bravery and here remain.”

  He was trying to make up, trying not to leave on a sour note. She knew she should meet him halfway, but the hurt was too raw. Unreasonable, maybe, but couples so seldom fought over reasonable things, she knew. The worst fight she’d ever witnessed between her parents had been over which way the toilet paper was supposed to hang. So when she heard this placating words, her response was not plucky resignation, but a scowl and a huff.

  “Very well,” he said, moving on. “Then thee may take the path of contention and be bound wrist and ankle to our bed.”

  “Ooo!”

  “And there remain while I tend to matters in Dis,” he finished.

  Taryn kicked at the ground, wishing she had something light and essentially harmless to throw at him. “Fine!” she called. “Go ahead and leave me! But you’re not my sunshine anymore!”

  “Ai!” Antilles smote himself on the breast, then came back to pat her on the head. “I know it for a lie, my maiden. Fear not.”

  There was a fine line between humoring her and patronizing her. In her current state of mind, Taryn wasn’t a hundred percent sure he hadn’t crossed it.

 

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