“I can try,” she said. “But it isn’t something I learned. It just happened.”
“Let’s make it happen again.” He set down the skunk, which became a stick as his hand left it. “You did a side step, like this, and back. Then you hopped.” He did these motions and he talked. He was nimble on his feet; he knew how to dance. “Then something happened.”
She had heard the distant rhythm of the Megaplayers! But she doubted that he would be able to hear it too; he was not ninth born. Could she duplicate the dance without that music?
She tried. She set her feet in the remembered pattern, and her body moved, but the magic was not there.
“No, that’s not it,” Stave said, following her perfectly. “But the wind was taking your hair and skirt. Maybe if I try it up at the brink.” He walked to the verge, faced out as she had, and tried the steps again.
The wind caught at him, as it had at her, and the sound of the sea seemed to grow louder. Stave danced—and it seemed almost that he was getting it. Certainly his tunic was flaring; if it went any higher she would have to avert her gaze. Then he misstepped, and teetered on the brink.
Nona screamed, and Cougar barked. At the same time, she exerted her magic, drawing him to her by a spell of attraction. Just enough to prevent him from falling outward. Stave caught himself, and dropped to the ground, catching his fingers in the sod for support.
Nona ran up, her heart pounding. “I thought you were going over!” she said, dropping to her knees beside him.
“So did I,” he confessed. “I almost got it, but then—”
“Enough! Get away from the edge. Don’t dance any more. If—if you want something of me—”
He glanced into her décolletage as she leaned toward him. “I do. There is no other woman I wish to impress. But I think—I think it is forbidden. Get your bosom out of my face before I forget.”
She straightened up, smiling contritely. She had come to him in genuine alarm, thoughtless of her appearance. The tunics of the theows tended to be too large in the neck region, so that women normally held them closed with one hand when bending forward. Certainly she had given him something to see! She was no longer embarrassed; the horror of his near fall over the brink had banished that. But she played the innocent. “Forbidden?”
He got up and dusted himself off, then extended a hand to help her up. “Will you answer one question?”
Had he felt the faint presence of the Players? Suddenly she feared that he had. He might not have been able to attune well enough to dance, but he might realize that something was there. She didn’t want that. Neither did she want to discuss it, because the despots could be eavesdropping with their magic.
So she did not answer. Instead she stepped up close and drew his head down for a kiss.
She could tell by the way his body didn’t give that she wasn’t fooling him. He did suspect.
Then he put his mouth down by her ear. “I felt it,” he breathed, his moving lips actually touching her ear. “I felt your magic save me. You can trust me.”
Could she? He had made it seem like an endearment, as if kissing her ear. In the process he had eliminated both sight and sound, because not even a magic spy could hear such a faint sound beyond her ear or see the motions of his lips against it. Yet suppose he merely wanted to learn something about her, so as to curry favor with the despots by telling them? She could not risk it.
“Nona,” he breathed.
She jumped. He had spoken her true name! But no villager knew that. Not even her father knew it, and if he suspected, he would never have told.
Then, to cover her reaction, she spoke. “You bit my ear!”
“A love bite,” he said. “Isn’t this what we came here for?”
“I’m not sure.” Indeed, she was in doubt. Was he going to require her favor, in return for his silence? She did not see him as that type of man, but he had already expressed interest in her body. This could be a dangerous game.
He drew her slowly in, and kissed her. This time she was the unresponsive one. He pretended not to notice, then moved back to her ear. “Can you hear me?”
That much she could admit to. She tightened her arms around him, once.
“Then listen,” his lips said almost soundlessly into her ear. “I am the other changeling.”
Again she jumped. “Will you stop that?” she said aloud. “I need that ear.” The other changeling? The baby they switched with her? The true child of her parents?
“But it tastes so good,” he protested in his normal voice.
They kissed and clinched a third time. This time she held herself still for the whole of what he had to say.
“I thought I was the eighth and last child in my family,” he continued into her ear. “But my mother let slip once that she had lost one. I thought she meant the baby had died. But later I learned from another slip that it had been given away to skew the count. For my mother was the eighth child of her family, and had been required to marry young, lest she have magic. She was the eighth generation. That meant I was the ninth of the ninth, masked as the eighth to save my life from the despots. It applies only to females, but the despots tend to act first if there is any doubt.”
They changed position, and kissed a few times in case there were watchers. Cougar settled down a short distance away; he did not find kissing as much fun as fetching, but he could tolerate it. The dog had learned that sometimes kissing led to more interesting activity. Then Stave sat on the ground and she joined him, pulling up her tunic so as not to soil it, though this meant that her bare bottom was on his lap. Had he drawn up his own tunic—but fortunately he did not. He was after all not pursuing her that way, though at this point that was a mixed relief. He ran one hand along her bare leg while he nuzzled her ear again, and she had to tolerate this for the sake of the appearance they had to make. He had abruptly become most intriguing, in an entirely different way.
“But I had no special magic,” he continued. “Only the skill of illusion we all share. And my parents did not seem to expect more of me. How could that be, if I was the ninth? This concerned me. I did not at first understand that the effect is limited to the female line. Then I realized that there could have been a double mask. I did not closely resemble my siblings, though none ever teased me about it; indeed they helped me to be more like them. I could have been from another family—exchanged for the true ninth.”
His hand was resting high on her leg, but he was not moving it now. His interest was only for show. She, in contrast, was far more interested than she had been. Stave was after all no ordinary young man; he was bound to her in the most special way. He was in a sense her brother, and in a sense her protector.
She moved to put her mouth at his ear. “I never guessed!” she breathed. Then she touched her teeth lightly to his lobe.
“Hey, now you’re biting!” he protested.
She mussed his hair. It was fun flirting, now that she knew it would lead nowhere. “You are getting fresh for a first date. Get your hand off my leg.”
He looked regretful. “Oh.” He removed his hand.
She embraced him. “You should not be too quick to believe what a woman says.”
He held her close and breathed into her ear again. “So when I came of age to wander, I walked from village to village, staying only long enough to see every person who was my age. When I came to this one, and saw you, I knew. You could have been one of my foster sisters. Then I looked at your parents, and they were fair like me. And your father—”
He paused. He brought his right hand around and turned so that his wrist was before her eyes. There was a small wine-colored stain—exactly like the one on her father’s wrist. There was no doubt of it: he was the son of her parents.