sword sheathed across her back was nowhere near the size and weight of Bahzell’s massive blade, but Leeana suspected most Sothoii men would find it uncomfortably heavy even as a two-handed weapon.
Sharkah, obviously, did not.
“I’ve met your Da,” Sharkah said, releasing her forearm. “You’ve the look of him. And although I’m thinking he might not be wishful of admitting it to you, he was fair bursting with pride when he spoke of you.” Her teeth flashed in a white smile under the street lamp. “It might be as how he was of the mind that one scapegrace daughter might appreciate another!”
“I believe I may have heard a little something about you, too,” Leeana acknowledged. “Something about stubbornness and sword oaths, I think.”
“I’ve no least idea what it possibly could be as you’re talking about,” Sharkah said, and then raised an eyebrow at Bahzell as he stepped back a full pace from her.
“Pay me no mind,” he told her. “It’s just stepping clear of the lightning bolt I am.”
Sharkah laughed, then looked back at Leeana.
“I’m thinking we’ll deal well together, you and I, Sister,” she said, “and anyone as could get this fellow”-she jabbed a thumb in Bahzell’s direction-“into harness will be coming as a welcome surprise to Mother and Da. So why don’t we just be taking you off to meet the family?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“She’s a likely lass,” Bahnak Karathson allowed, looking across the hall at his newest daughter-in-law. “Mind,” he smiled a slow smile as his youngest son, “I’m thinking as how the ears might take some getting used to.”
“Do you, now?” Bahzell asked mildly, his own ears flattening ever so slightly. He glanced across the hall at Leeana-totally surrounded by his sisters (all his sisters) and his mother-and then looked back at his father. “It’s fond of her ears I am,” he said in that same, mild tone.
“Aye?” His father raised his eyebrows and took a long, slow considering sip of ale, then set the tankard back on the table and gave Bahzell another smile, this one warmer and broader. “Well, that’s all any man could be saying, isn’t it then? And the only thing as matters, when all’s said. I’ve not forgotten how your grandfather argued and shouted-aye, and threatened to disown me entire, more than once-when I’d the questionable taste to be falling in love with your mother. A stubborn man, your grandfather, but a wise one, too, when all was said. He came to love your mother like his very own daughter by birth, and it’s in my mind as how a son should learn from his father’s wisdom. So if it’s all the same to you, Bahzell, I’ll just be skipping over the stubborn bit and allow right now as how it’s a rare, beautiful wife you’ve found, and one it’s pikestaff plain has wit and wisdom enough for three…even allowing as how her taste in husbands might be just a wee bit odd.”
Bahzell gazed at his father steadily for a handful of heartbeats, then twitched his ears in solemn agreement.
“She is that, all of it,” he said softly, turning his head to look in her direction once more as she went off in a peal of laughter at something his youngest sister Adalah had said.
At twenty-five, Adalah came closest to Leeana in age of any of his siblings, but she wasn’t yet out of the schoolroom, given the difference in hradani and human lifespans, and it seemed fairly evident she was in the process of developing a deep, schoolgirl’s admiration for her new, exotic, redhaired, human sister-in-law. It rather reminded him of the way Sharkah had reacted when she first met Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, although he doubted Adalah would be particularly tempted to take up the sword. Like his immediately younger sister Halah-and most unlike Sharkah-she was more inclined towards the domestic lifestyle.
“I’ll admit, it’s more than a little hesitant I was at her age,” he admitted quietly to his father. “She’s naught but a girl, by our people’s way of thinking.”
“A well grown ‘girl,’ for such a wee little thing,” his brother Tormach said dryly. He was only twelve years older than Bahzell himself, and his…admiration for Leeana was evident.
Bahzell cocked an eyebrow at him, and Tormach colored quickly.
“I’ve no doubt as how your brother meant only to be saying she’s a way about her as makes you think she’s older than her years,” Bahnak said blandly, and Tormach’s face burned still hotter. He looked helplessly at Bahzell for a long moment, then shook his head.
“I meant nothing of the sort, Bahzell,” he admitted, “and it’s your pardon I beg. Aye, Father’s the right of it- I’d not believe she was a year less than forty, to see how she carries herself and the confidence of her-but that’s not what I meant, and it’s a wonderful muddy taste that boot in my mouth is after having.”
“Well.” Bahzell considered him thoughtfully, then snorted and reached for his own tankard. “It’s not so very irked I can be, given the same thought’s spent quite a bit of time working its way through my own brain. And that was part of the problem, as well. It’s years I’ve spent amongst the Sothoii now. I’m after knowing how quick humans grow into their lives, yet still any time I so much as looked in her direction I’d come all over guilty at the thought of ‘robbing the cradle.’”
“And you such an ancient graybeard yourself,” Bahnak observed in a marveling tone.
“You’ve no need to be rubbing it in, Da,” Bahzell replied, and his father laughed. But then his expression sobered.
“If ever I’d doubted that there’s more to adulthood than years, Kaeritha and Vaijon-aye, and Baron Tellian and Sir Trianal, come to that-would have cured me long since, Bahzell. Leeana is one as will keep you on the straight path, standing beside you, lending you her shoulder when you’re after needing it, and it’s plainer than plain as how the two of you were made to be one. It’s proud I am you had the good sense not to let the difference in your ages be standing betwixt you.”
He met his son’s gaze levelly, and Bahzell nodded slowly, reading the other part of his father’s message in the shadow deep within Bahnak’s eyes. Even if Leeana lived a very long time for any human woman, he himself would be little past middle age for a hradani when he lost her. Yet it wasn’t how long he’d have to miss her that mattered. What mattered was how long they’d have together, the life they would share. The memory of that would keep his heart warm to the end of his own days, happen what would. And, he reminded himself a bit more briskly, he was a champion of Tomanak, and as Tomanak himself had told him on that long-ago day, few of the war god’s champions died in bed.
“I’ll not be calling it good sense myself, Da,” he said quietly. “It might be that’s not so very bad a way to put it, but it was the heart of her that took me by the throat, and there was no turning away from her, come what would and sense or no sense.”
“Aye?” His father reached across and squeezed his shoulder firmly. “Well, that’s not so bad a way to be starting a life together, either, now I think about it. Not so bad a way at all.”
“Bahzell, it’s good to see you!”
Vaijon stood, reaching out to clasp forearms as Bahzell, Tormach, and their father walked into the council chamber. Trianal of Balthar and Arsham of Navahk rose a heartbeat later, and Bahzell smiled as he gripped Vaijon’s arm firmly.
“And the same to be seeing you,” he said, but his smile faded slightly as he studied Vaijon’s expression. There were lines of fatigue in that face, and he looked at least two or three years older than the last time Bahzell had seen him. The Horse Stealer glanced at Trianal and saw an echo of Vaijon’s weariness in the Sothoii’s face, as well.
“And Brandark?” Vaijon asked, leaning to one side as if to look around the three massive Horse Stealers and spot the Bloody Sword.
“As to that, I’m thinking he’ll be along in a day or three,” Bahzell replied, and snorted. “We’d some letters from Tellian to Kilthan, and the little man allowed as how he’d just be taking them on to Silver Cavern to collect Kilthan’s response before he was joining us here. He’d some business of his own he wanted to discuss with Kilthan, and he’d some strange notion of giving Leeana and me a mite of privacy on the ride from Balthar.”
