THIRTEEN
BY THE TIME I found the metri, the others already had. The kid, for one-although I confess he didn't look like much of a kid from the back. With Del's observation still foremost in my mind, I studied him with new eyes. He was broad enough, tall enough, and the coloring was the same. Aside from that, though, I didn't think there was so much resemblance.
He wasn't the only one with the metri. Prima Rhannet and her first mate were there as well. Everyone except the metri was talking loudly, trying to raise voices over one another until the room rang hollow with shouting. Dumbfounded, I stopped short in the doorway and stared. Didn't even blink as Del joined me there, wet hair combed out, saying something cross about enough noise to wake the dead.
The metri sat in a chair, hands folded into her lap. She wore the mask I associated with her so long as we were not discussing her daughter or the man her daughter had married: calmly self-contained and utterly unmoved by anything anyone said.
There was much gesticulation and tones of hissing hostility. Del's godling rounded on Prima and Nihko, seemingly accusing them of something they didn't much like, as they answered in kind. I was not surprised to see the red-haired captain so animated, because it was like her; but Nihko Blue-head only rarely showed so much emotion. As for Del's godling, well, I didn't know him at all, but he seemed extremely comfortable with shouting, so I assumed he had lots of experience.
This looked and sounded like nothing so much as a family quarrel. I began to suspect there was a lot more to the story than a renegada captain and her tattooed first mate, and a kid who looked enough like Nihko to be his son. And since Nihko himself resembled me, this made it a very tight-knit family indeed.
And I couldn't understand a word of what anyone was saying.
Out of patience, I drew a very large breath deep into my lungs and let loose a roar that overrode them all. 'Hey! '
Even Del jumped.
Now that I had everyone's attention, I smiled my friendliest smile. 'Hello,' I said with cheerful courtesy. 'Would you care to repeat all that in a language I can understand?'
'We,' Del murmured.
'We,' I amended. When no one said anything at all, I glanced at them one by one.
Prima Rhannet's hand was at her waist where her knife generally resided tied to her belt, but she wasn't wearing the knife, or even that particular belt. Like Del, she wore an ankle-length sleeveless tunic gathered at the waist into a woven sash. Nihko never was so blatant about his weapons, which he didn't have at the moment, either; he just stood with his head turned slightly toward me, eyes glittering. But the godling, as youth so often does, had turned to face me squarely, to challenge the unexpected, every powerful part of him poised for movement.
Hoolies, Del was right. He could be me. If you stripped away fifteen years and all the scars from me.
Or added them to him.
It was eerie. You don't usually recognize yourself in others. For that matter, you don't usually recognize yourself in a silver mirror or a pool of water unless you know it's you, and only then you know it's you because logic argues it must be: if you're peering into a mirror or water, the image staring back very likely is your own. I knew my hands best of all because I was so accustomed to using them, to watching them as I did things with them, even without thinking about them. But unless one studies oneself from head to toe every day, one isn't even aware of certain aspects of one's appearance.
But he was me. Or I was him. Del had already noted it, and now the renegadas and the metri did as well. The kid and I stood there staring at one another in startled recognition and unspoken, unsubtle territorial challenge, while Prima Rhannet began to laugh, and Nihko … well, Nihko grinned widely in a highly superior and annoying fashion, brow-rings glinting.
They had tossed the bones, the captain and her mate. And won.
I touched the thong of sandtiger claws around my throat. The metri had given me back the brow ring she'd cut from the necklet, saying that so long as Nihko was present I'd do better to wear it lest I lose most of my meals. Since I had yet to learn a way of maintaining any measure of decorum while spewing up the contents of my belly, I accepted the ring, knotting it back into the thong. One of these days I was going to find out just why Nihko made me sick.
Other than for the usual reasons, of course.
The kid said something under his breath. The metri responded with a single word that flooded his face with the dusky color of embarrassment, or anger. As he glared at me I began to appreciate, in a very bizarre and detached sort of way, just why so many people gave way to me when I employed the most ferocious of my stares.
There was no subtlety about Del's godling, but he might learn it one day. If he lived.
'Family argument?' I asked lightly.
'They soil this household,' the kid hissed, switching languages easily. 'As do you.'
'Herakleio,' the metri said only.
His hands were fists. 'They do,' he insisted. 'All of them. Prima is a disgrace to her father, her heritage- and Nihkolara is ikepra! This man'-he meant me, of course-'is a pretender.' He shifted his furious glance to Del, all fired up to make other accusations, and realized rather abruptly he knew absolutely nothing about her.
Except that she was beautiful. And, I didn't doubt, that he had seen her in the pool. Without clothing.
I watched the change in him. The anger, the touchy pride remained, but slid quietly beneath the surface as something else rose up. Color moved in his face again. He drew a breath, expelled it sharply through his nostrils, then consciously relaxed the fists into hands again.
I gave him marks for honesty: he did not try to charm the woman who had just seen his childish display of temper. He accepted that she had, was ashamed of it, but did not deny it.
The metri moved slightly forward in her chair, immediately commanding the attention of everyone in the room. She was smiling in triumphant delight, rather like a cat, as she looked first at the boy who claimed he was her kin, then at me who claimed I was not.
The woman laughed. Slowly, as if tasting something unexpected and quite delicious. 'I should have both of you sheathed in plaster,' she said calmly, 'and placed on either side of my gate. Surely everyone in the islands would come to marvel at my new statuary.'
'Naked?' Prima inquired.
Rather surprisingly, the metri did not take offense. 'Oh, I believe so. Unclothed, and ambitiously male.'
The kid-Herakleio?-was stunned. He turned jerkily toward her, jaw slackening. 'Metri?'
'Come now, Herakleio,' she said. 'Admit the truth. He is you.'
'He's old!' the kid announced.
Nihko grinned. Prima gulped a laugh. Del put fingers across her mouth as if to hide a treacherous response, expression elaborately bland.
I smiled, vastly unoffended. 'Older than you,' I agreed, 'which serves me just fine, as the first one born inherits soonest.'
A glint in the metri's eyes told me she understood and appreciated the provocation. Especially as it worked.
'First born!' Herakleio shouted, furious all over again. 'First born of what whore?'
'Stop. ' This time it was the metri, all amusement wiped away. 'You soil this household with such shouting, all of you.'
Herakleio shot a venomous glance at Prima Rhannet. 'And why do you care if we are naked? Men are nothing to you.'
'Oh, men are a great deal to me,' she replied, unperturbed. 'I have no complaint of them, in general. I
