by Zara Zenia
Chapter Twelve
Zarbonov
Though the twin moons had risen an hour before, the practice yard behind my family manse was still active. I stood in my library in the main tower, carefully watching each pair to catch any errors.
It wasn't a large showing for the evening drills, only a few of my younger cousins in bad need of extra time with a weapon in their hands. But I couldn't help but feel a surge of pride as I looked down at them, working beneath the silver moonlight over stones that had belonged to our family for generations.
Stones we had defended with word and sword, whatever weapon best suited us. As our society progressed and took to the stars, we clung to our ways, using them as our last and best shield against invaders. It made our civilization a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy and kept our home world safe.
No army or fleet had set foot on Xiba in generations. Families like mine were tasked with making sure no one ever did. Discipline and tradition forged us, even if our darker natures seeped through the metal on occasion.
But our ways weren't without their consequences. Ella's stubborn nature could doom both of us if she said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Ignorance wouldn't save either of us. That didn't make her morning victory easier for me to swallow.
By my count, we had two exchanges. Though she didn't seem to realize it, Ella had won both. I needed a mate to stand by my side. I needed to keep my distance from Ella or risk ripping away her bodice and breaking my oath to her. Apparently, I didn't get to have either.
The door chimed behind me, pulling me from my thoughts. "Bring her in, Ingendia."
I turned around just as the two of them stepped through the open door, Ingendia with her lips pursed and Ella scowling at her. Ella still wore the plain linen dress from breakfast, but her full lips had been stained the color of berry wine and black kohl rimmed her eyes.
My eyes moved to Ingendia. "Was this your doing?"
She bowed her head, but I could see the twinkle of mischief in her eyes. "A proper Xiban mate should look pretty for her husband, Kai'ben. I believe it was your grandmother who taught me that."
"Ingendia."
She clasped her hands behind her back. "She looked like a dead fish, Kai'ben."
I pressed my lips together. If we had been alone, I would have told Ingendia exactly where to shove her behavior lessons, but I couldn't risk raising my voice and scaring my mate again. Despite the scowl on her face, the dunes of her courage were low that night.
Ella looked from Ingendia to me and back again, her scowl deepening. "You know, just because I can't understand you doesn't mean I can't tell when you're talking about me."
My eyes moved to Ella. Ingendia hadn't bothered to tame Ella's wild curls or paint her face that morning. She hadn't gone so far as Carzon's servants either. The middle ground Ingendia chose fit our ways, and Ella looked good in them, but the stain brought too much attention to her lips. I couldn't look away from them, couldn't stop imagining my lips moving against them.
In time, Kai'jan.
"Get out," I said to Ingendia in our tongue before turning to Ella. I paused for a moment, letting my thoughts translate themselves into Ella's language. "She wants to make you look more like what you should be."
"The two of you keep saying that," she said as she hugged her arms. "Position and status matter a lot to you?"
"They are everything to us." I reached for the medallion pinned to my shoulder and unfastened it. "This is kai'let, my family crest."
"Kai'let," Ella's berry lips spread and curved as she struggled with the word. "That means family crest."
"No, 'let is crest. Kai means that it is mine."
"Like a prefix?"
I furrowed my brow. "I do not know this word."
Ella scrunched her nose. "No, you wouldn't, would you? Um . . . I've never actually had to explain prefix before. It's like a piece of a word that changes what the rest of the word means."
"Then yes, it is." I slid the medallion into her hands, letting her feel the weight of it against her fingers.
Ella turned the 'let over in her hands. It was heavier than it looked, a fact that still surprised me after all the years I had worn it. She ran her pale fingers along the grooves, tracing lines in the pattern.
"Is it my job to clean this?" she asked.
"A warrior's ‘Jan cares for his 'let. What other words do you need to know?" I asked.
She furrowed her brow. "I need to know all of them. That was kind of the point."
"All is too broad. That will take years."
Ella opened her mouth to speak but closed it again as if she thought better of the idea. The extra attention the movement brought to her lips, to the parts of her I couldn't touch, frustrated me.
The door chimed again, and this time Ingendia didn't wait for me to call for her before she stepped in, followed by the scent of cinnamon, syrup, and janlt brewed strong the way I liked. She clutched a tray in her hands, balancing it with care so the pitcher of dark green liquid didn't tip over.
"A snack," Ingendia said in broken English before switching to our language. "She is too skinny, Kai'ben."
"I know," I whispered, even though Ella couldn't have understood me. The Primen sent a messenger that morning with a note of apology stamped with his official seal and assurances that the servant who’d mishandled Ella and the other girls had been punished.
He wouldn't have punished her too severely, but the health of the others didn't matter to me. Ingendia would see to her meals now, and she knew better than to mistreat what belonged to me.
Ingendia set the tray on the desk and poured two bowls, the steam billowing beneath her nose as she spoke. "Give me time, Kai'ben. She will recover."
Ella flopped down in the chair on the other side of my desk. "Again, it's not really hard to tell when you’re talking about me."
I took the bowl that Ella passed me, though my eyes stayed on Ella's lips. "Ingendia is concerned for your health."
"Pfft, now that I don't believe." Ella reached toward the platter of braided spiced pastries, plucking one from the pile.
Ingendia glanced at Ella from the corner of her eye. "You are 'Tak. You do not understand."
"Everyone keeps saying that, but that's the whole reason I'm up here!" Color flooded Ella's cheeks and her eyes sparkled the way they did when her confidence returned. "You think it's a lot to teach? Try needing to know it."
Ingendia's brow furrowed. "You will learn, 'Tak. You have no choice."
"If that was meant to be comforting, you suck at it."
Ingendia froze and turned to me, a small jerk of her neck her only signal. For the first time, she had seen what I’d seen in Ella at the auction. She had seen the warrior spirit in her.
"She may do well, Kai'ben," Ingendia said.
"And the seas may turn to dust." I blew over the bowl of tea to cool it. "What can be doesn't matter if we can't get past what is."
"You think she can't learn?" Ingendia took a pastry from the pile and set it on a plate, passing it to me.
Ella looked between Ingendia and me, her pale amber eyes noting every move we made. It killed her not to be able to understand us, but she didn't say a word. Instead, she turned her eyes to the bowl in her hands and the thick green liquid in it.
"We call it janlt," Ingendia said. "It is made from fruit trees in the west of Xiba."
Ella looked up at Ingendia, then sniffed the janlt. "It kind of smells like cherries."
Ingendia shook her head. "I do not know this."
I didn't know what Ella spoke of either, but I had lost enough face in front of my mate over the last day to last a lifetime. So, I ripped a hunk from my pastry and stayed silent as I chewed.
"It's small," Ella said, curling her thumb and first finger into the shape and size of a coin. "And red with a pit in the center. They taste good."
"Janlt is good too, 'Tak."
Ingendia slid her fingers beneath the bowl and lifted it to Ella's lips. She sipped
, tentatively at first, then in greater gulps as her eyes widened in surprise.
"It's not like cherries, but it does taste good. You were right." Ella smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her lips in anything but a sneer or scowl.
"She is not like us," Ingendia said, switching back to Xiban.
"That is putting it mildly," I said in Ella's language.
"Then perhaps she needs to learn differently from us." Ingendia moved away from the desk and stood in the center of the room. She closed her eyes and took a breath.
An image appeared on the floor planks at Ingendia's feet. A wide, sprawling tree with gnarled roots breaking through the ground in all directions. Pale yellow leaves clung to each branch. The air in my office was still, but a strong breeze shook the branches of the tree, sending green fruit plummeting toward the ground.
"This is yantir tree. We take fruit, dry it, and brew janlt."
"Tea," Ella whispered. "It's like herbal tea."
"But if we want to eat it, we make yanmeen." The image at Ingendia's feet changed from a tree in an empty field to a plate of freshly baked yanmeen.
Ella's eyes lit up as she recognized the object. "Bread. Yanmeen is bread!"
Ingendia nodded. "Yes, 'Tak. You would call it bread." She glanced at me from the corner of her eyes but didn't say anything.
"Wait, if you guys can communicate this way, why don't you do it all the time?"
"Do you recognize the pattern on that plate?" I asked.
Ella stared at the image on the floor for a few seconds before her eyes darted to the plate that held the pastries. The pattern was identical.
"These are my byantin," Ingendia said. "Things I have seen and experienced."
"You would call them memories. Imagine opening your mind to a stranger every time you asked their name."
Ella's shoulders slumped. "No, I guess I wouldn't like that at all."
I took a sip of my tea, using the time to weigh my words. But I didn't respond to Ella. I looked at Ingendia, speaking our language. "If you think this method will work then you should teach her."
"While I take care of your chamber in the talajut and hers downstairs? She'll never have a moment's rest."
"Then she will learn how I teach her!" I snapped.
More volume crept into my voice than I intended. Ella jumped and lowered her head, focusing her eyes on the bowl in her hand. A pang of guilt settled in my gut. It was too easy to forget in anger that my would-be mate wasn't like us.
"That was for Ingendia, not for you," I said. "We disagreed on something."
Ella met my eyes with more difficulty than before. "She doesn't yell back?"
"She cannot. Ingendia serves me. Her place is below mine."
"Is she your slave?" The color drained from Ella's face as she saw Ingendia's wild, furious eyes. "I just . . . I meant because Kai'ben means master."
Watching Ingendia's wrath stew almost made up for her insolence. "No, she is not."
Ingendia held her tongue, but her glare said more than she would ever say to me out loud. A good teacher knew how his student learned best. Ella could learn faster through byantin. Her inquisitive mind would find questions that neither Ingendia nor I would think to tell her. Even simple information, the sort of thing I took for granted, was new to her. What better mind than her own to pick out the pieces?
I rose from my chair and walked around my desk. "We organize by what we do. Each of us is handed our work from our bloodlines. Ingendia serves. Her father served. Her children will serve."
As I spoke, new images appeared on the wood. Memories of the servants from my childhood. Ingendia's mother setting a bowl of stew in front of me, shown from a child's perspective. Her aunts and uncles attending to chores.
Ella stared at the byantin, her eyes focusing intently on one segment, only to dart to the next. "What about your family? What do they do?"
The images on the floor changed again. My grandfather, his skin nearly gray and mottled with age, holding a sword high above his head. My father and uncles in the practice yard, standing before a class of new recruits.
"You're soldiers." The words that left Ella's lips weren't a question. She said them as firmly as one might say wounds bleed or moons rise.
"For generations."
A look of pride bloomed on her face, an expression more beautiful than any I'd seen from her yet. Her lips curled up in a smile that begged me to claim them.
"That is all for tonight. You will come to me again tomorrow night and every night thereafter." I moved back to my desk and sat down. I couldn't afford a repeat of the breakfast incident.
Ella stood, smoothing her skirt with her fingers. She and Ingendia moved to the door and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to watch her as they left. I wasn't prepared to call the exchange a defeat, but the evening had confirmed one thing. As an opponent, my mate was determined not to give me a victory.
Chapter Thirteen
Zarbonov
In two moon cycles’ worth of lessons, Ella had proven herself the most competent student I had ever seen. Once she had a taste of our knowledge, she was insatiable. She came to my chamber each night after her evening meal, always with a question on her lips.
Even my temper, which flared once or twice over the weeks though I tried to suppress it, couldn't temper her thirst for it. In her first days, everything loud frightened Ella. A booming war cry from the yard or a belly laugh from down the hall—it didn't matter. Her body tensed at every sound beyond her tolerance and her eyes darted around the room as if waiting for something else to happen.
Some nights, she lingered until there were only a few hours before sunset. Those hours with Ella, on the far side of my desk watching the byantin, quickly became my favorites of the day. The pride in her eyes when she answered my questions correctly. The smile of delight that came to her lips when she learned a small detail she found interesting. Every night I spent near her, I fell further under her spell.
And you know how dangerous that is.
On the first night of the third cycle, Ella knelt on the floor, inspecting a byantin from my training days. It was a favorite memory of mine, the day I’d first beaten my father with live steel. I leaned against my desk watching her while I sipped from a bowl of wine.
"Xiba have technology. Why learn to fight with swords?" Ella asked in my language, never taking her eyes from the image on the floor.
"Not every warrior learns every weapon. My family trains many different warriors across many different work paths."
"So, you know everything."
The firm tone of her words, as if she knew for a fact they were truth instead of inference, made me laugh. "I would say I know enough. Some know more and many know less."
"Is that why you know English?" she asked, slipping back into her own language as she sat back to look at me.
I shrugged. "The Primen's mate is human and he is fluent in your language. Anyone who hopes to work with him has tried to learn it. I've tried to learn better than them."
Ella rolled her eyes and shook her head, but a smile showed on her lips as she lowered her head back to the image, bringing the luscious curve of her breasts back into my view. She slipped back into Xiba when she spoke again. "You people measure yourself against others too much."
As time passed, Ella's health improved as well as her mind. The dark skin beneath her eyes lightened and cleared. Under Ingendia's watchful eye, color and fullness returned to Ella's body. It seemed to invigorate her from within.
"And next you'll tell me that on your world, nobody cares how they measure against anyone else?"
She shrugged her shoulders, sending a few of her deep brown curls over her breasts, hiding them from my view. Pity. "We do, but not so openly. And nobody admits to it. Like when we mate. Most women would never approach a man unless they did so for a friend."
"Why?"
Ella opened her mouth to answer but closed it again, her brow furrowing. "I don't know. Xiban has no words to ex
plain it. It's . . . an action so open it could offend someone."
"Someone of higher status than you?" I asked.
She leaned back and balanced her hands in her lap. "Sometimes, but not often. I guess we worry about offending people often. Or maybe that was just me."
"If it was common among your women to claim their mates through an intermediary, then I doubt it was just you. How in the black sands did you people get anything done?"
"It gets worse. Our women would sometimes make potential mates seem more beautiful than they were. So, you might meet a woman for dinner and find out she was different from what you thought she would be."
Ella smiled to herself. "It's easier here. Xiban can't do that."
"The memory images would make it difficult, yes."
"True, but I meant because you cannot lie," she said.
I cleared my throat and tapped my chin. Of course, she remembered that. Ella loved small details. She clung to them as if they were just as important as any other.
"Yes, I may have made that seem more important that it is," I said, covering my guilt at having let the lie go so long with a hearty gulp of wine.
Ella tilted her chin up but didn't say anything. Her eyes never left mine, a smug smile tugging at the corners of her plump lips. Sometime in the first moon cycle, Ella had taken over her own grooming. No more kohl-rimmed eyes. No more berry-stained lips. I wasn't ashamed to admit to myself that I missed them, but Ella wasn't herself in them.
I made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "You knew already."
She nodded. "I thought so for a while, but this memory image confirmed it."
"How?"
Ella pointed at the planks as the memory started again. My father brought his sword down toward my neck. I thrust my blade toward his belly just far enough to force open air between us. He stumbled backward, almost gaining his footing before my kick to his chest sent him tumbling backward.
