“It must have been the water that weighted it, in all the little holes.”
He prattled on about their being afraid of it, and who had argued for taking it back into the ocean and who was for keeping it; but Leodora barely listened. Gingerly, she raised one finger to its cheek, straight across from her own. On contact a current flowed up her arm. Sparks spun from where her finger touched. They circled her arm, danced upon her shoulder and up her neck, around her head—sparks that only she could see, for Tastion, though he stood just beside her, kept right on babbling about bringing the figure here. The sparks dazzled her. Penetrated her as if she were coral, too.
Tastion’s hands gripped her, and she recoiled, only to find herself incongruously dangling from his arms, as though she’d fallen.
“What happened to you? What made you swoon?”
“Did I?” she asked. Her mind was a vacant beach. She let herself be drawn upright, held on to.
“You just tipped over like you’d fallen asleep. Am I that boring?” A joke to disguise his worry.
She could only shake her head. Tastion drew her away from the upright figure and stepped between them. Now the glow surrounded him. In his shadow she blinked as if she’d been asleep. Where were her thoughts?
Tastion turned her and led her out of the icy chamber, away from the figure. She went passively, too confused to contest his judgment, although she muttered “I’m fine” to reassure him. She glanced back at the figure.
Out of the cave, he guided her down the path toward Ningle and then beneath a stand of fir trees, a spot they had come to more than once to be alone. No one traveled the path to Ningle at night, and no one could have seen them sitting on their bed of needles in any case.
He said, “You aren’t taking care of yourself, my girl,” and brushed her hair back. “You shouldn’t fight with your uncle until after you’ve eaten something.”
“But I—”
“You need to have someone look after you.” He kissed her neck. “Someone to care for you.” He kissed her cheek. “Someone to provide everything.” He turned her chin and leaned forward to kiss her.
Leodora pulled away. His shadowy face seemed to wear a smile of mild exasperation, as if he was saying to her, Well, I had to try.
“Someone to provide everything for me? Why, Tastion, how thoughtful. Who has been assigned the task?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“Why? You can’t fulfill any such role yourself, if I asked, which I haven’t and won’t. We both of us know to whom you’re already tied.”
“That’s just ritual. I have to pledge to her when she comes of age, but my heart, Lea—”
“Your heart. Your heart is not the part that throbs for me, Tastion. What am I to be? Your whore in the garret?”
“What is the matter with you all of a sudden? We’ve kissed like this, made these promises—I haven’t said a thing I haven’t said before, and you liked it before.”
“I wasn’t the bartered bride of Koombrun before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that in two nights my uncle will have me married to the one creature in your village wretched enough to accept the tainted daughter of a witch.” She felt the heat of tears flooding her eyes, and swung her head sharply to fling them back. She would not cry over this.
“He has no right!”
“He has every right. I’m his ward. His property. He can sell me the same as any fish in his basket.”
“Well, then we’ll just…” He hesitated, finally grunted in defeat. There was no idea he could come up with that she hadn’t visited already in the boathouse. So long as both parties wished to see the union through, she would be married. Unless the village interceded. Which it wouldn’t. “Fine, then,” Tastion said. “It’ll be perfect. You can live with Koombrun and still meet me. No one will be the wiser—certainly not Koombrun. It’s the perfect camouflage, even better than the boathouse—”
She got to her feet. “I’m really nothing to you, am I? Just convenient. If I’d given in to you before, you wouldn’t even be here now. You’d have had your ride and finished with me and passed me on to your friends. Lemros and Sel could have a turn. I could carry your child and there’d be no consequences for you. Oh, maybe a rebuke from the elders, a retreat until you came to your senses, were purged