I stared at him a long moment, matching stare to stare, then shook my head. 'Let's go, bascha.'
'Tiger-'
Nihko's brow rings glinted in the sunlight. 'You would abuse the metri's hospitality?'
'Look, I don't want to abuse anyone's hospitality. But you certainly didn't offer us any when you destroyed our ship, and you didn't improve matters by attempting to sell me to the metri-'
'Did sell,' he put in.
'-and she's not exactly being hospitable by ordering me to make a man of her brother's wife's brother's brother's grandson,' I finished.
'That's one 'brother's' too many,' Del pointed out helpfully.
'Do you not believe he needs it?' Nihko inquired.
I glared at him again, eyes narrowed. 'Just where do you fit, Nihkolara? Aside from being profanation and abomination, that is. What are you to these people? What are they to you?'
'My past,' he said only.
Another figure moved out of shadow into light. The boy whom the metri wanted to be a man. 'Tell him, Nihkolara,' Herakleio challenged, lounging against the white-painted stonework of the entryway. 'Tell him the whole of it.'
Nihko made a gesture. 'Herak … let it be.'
'Herakleio. Ikepra are not permitted familiarity.'
Color stained the first mate's face, then flowed away so he was alabaster-pale. There was tension throughout his body; Herakleio had reached inside him somewhere, touched a private place.
Herakleio displayed white teeth in a sun-coppered face. 'Tell the pretender how you fit, Nihkolara.'
And Nihkolara told me, while the heat beat on our heads.
FOURTEEN
I FLOPPED flat on the bed and stared up at the low ceiling. 'This is all too complicated. And getting worse.'
Del, sitting as she so often chose to sit-on the floor against the opposite wall-shrugged. 'What is complicated? There were eleven women placed upon the island by the gods, and each bore eleven daughters of those gods. Then the gods sent those daughters sons of other women, and so the Eleven Families took root and flowered here.'
'How poetic,' I observed sourly. 'And of course you'd find it easy: it's all about women. '
'I suspect it is simpler even for gods to get babies on women.'
I rolled my head and looked at her. 'You're finding entirely too much amusement in this, bascha.'
'Am I amused?'
'Inside. Where I can't see.'
Her mouth twitched. 'And from those eleven daughters came sons and daughters of the sons sent to lie with them, and so the people of first couplings may name themselves gods-descended.'
'But not everyone on Skandi is gods-descended.' I realized what I'd said and amended it immediately. 'Not everyone believes they are gods-descended. I mean, they aren't gods-descended, of course, because no one is, but if they think it's possible, they might believe they aren't. Even if others are. Believe they are, that is.' I dropped my forearm across my face and issued a strangled groan. 'I said this was too complicated!'
Del seemed to grasp it well enough. 'They believe they aren't gods-descended because certain sons came to Skandi from other islands, not from gods, and married the daughters of those first divine couplings.'
From under my arm I added, 'And so those who can count the generations back to those specific eleven women consider themselves superior to everyone else.'
'Well,' Del said judiciously, 'I suspect that if I were descended of gods, and the others weren't, I might count myself superior.'
I removed my arm and hiked myself up on one elbow. 'You would? And here I thought you considered yourself no better than even the lowliest slave, bascha.'
'I said 'might,' ' she clarified. 'And it doesn't matter, here. Here I am a woman.'
'You are a woman anywhere. And I know for a fact a lot of men are convinced you are gods- descended.'
'Thank you.'
'Of course, they don't know you as well as I do.' I flopped down again, pondering the information. 'It seems obvious enough to me: these eleven women found themselves in the family way, and, thus disgraced, were exiled here.' I shrugged against the mattress. 'It's a pretty story they all made up to excuse their wanton behavior, and the eleven little outcomes of it.'
'But it might be true.'
'Oh, come on, bascha-gods impregnating women?'
'It would be an explanation for why there's magic in the world.'
'Magic? Hah. Maybe superstition. Stories. Meant to entertain-'enlighten.'-to pass the night-'
'-or to keep a history alive.'
'-or to simply waste time.' I thrust an arm beneath my head and changed the subject. Sort of. 'So Nihko and the metri are related through the now-infamous Eleven Families-'
'And Herakleio.'
'-which explains why so many Skandics look alike.'
'Which explains why you look like so many Skandics. You are.'
'But not necessarily related to the metri, or Nihko, or your boy Herakleio.'
'He's not my boy,' Del declared. 'He's older than I am.'
'By what, one or two years?'
'That's still older, Tiger.'
'While I'm just old. '
'You should take a nap,' Del advised after a moment.
'Why? Because I'm old?'
'No. Because you're cross-grained.'
'Cross-grained?'
'Out of sorts.'
'I know what it means, bascha. And if I am, it's because I'm tired-'
'I said you should take a nap.'
'-of all these convoluted explanations,' I finished with emphasis. 'Hoolies, this is ludicrous! Women impregnated by gods, and men sent to marry their daughters-'
'Most history is a collection of stories,' Del said. 'It is so in the North.'
'And I got my name because I killed a sandtiger I magicked up out of my dreams,' I blurted in disgust. 'Hoolies, do you think I really believe that? I was a kid. Younger even than Herakleio. Or you.'
'You have done things,' she said finally, 'that are not explainable.'
'There's an explanation for everything.'
'And your sandtiger?'
I shut my eyes. 'Coincidence. Hoolies, I just wanted a way out of slavery. I took advantage of something that happens once or twice a year. It was just the Salset's turn to be meat for a beast.'
'And changing the sand to grass?'
'The sand isn't grass, Del. It's sand. And besides, all I did was suggest they bring the water to where it wasn't.'
'Which can change the sand to grass.'
I grunted. 'In time, I suppose.'
