Teka opened her eyes wide in the old way that had so terrorized the very young Aerin caught out at some misbehavior. “Of course. Bath or a meal first?”
Aerin considered. Even the muscles that made her tongue move and her jaw open and shut to speak and her lips smile hurt. “Malak, very hot, and a very hot bath first, and then food.” There was a thrashing behind her and a long pointed face poked over her shoulder. “And food for this one, too. She’ll skip the bath. Where are the rest of them?”
Teka scowled. “Wherever it pleases them to lay themselves. I did manage to herd them all into your rooms, lady, and the back hall; they terrify all the staff and most of the court. But they won’t leave—and, well, I for one am capable of acknowledging that we owe them a debt, and loyalty is very admirable even in mute beasts, but,” she said in a tone of suppressed rage. “I do not approve of animals sharing their sol’s bed.” The yerig queen yawned widely, and then a long piece of black shadow stood up from the still curtained foot of the bed, stretched himself, and flowed off the bed to the floor. He leaned against the backs of Teka’s legs and began to purr and, to Aerin’s delight, a slow flush crept up Teka’s throat and face.
“I’m glad not everyone in my father’s house is terrified by my friends,” said Aerin.
“No, my lady,” Teka said in a low voice. The king cat poked his head around Teka’s waist to smile smugly at Aerin, and Aerin said, “You know, my wild friends, if you are planning to move in with me permanently, you will have to have names. If you live in a house, you are domesticated, and if you are domesticated, you must be named.” The yerig sitting beside her licked her ear.
Aerin began the long excruciating process of getting out of bed; she felt that she would never move easily again. “I’ll help you, my lady,” said Teka, as Aerin touched her feet to the floor and hissed involuntarily. Teka was thinner than she had been when Aerin saw her last, and as Teka put out a hand to help her, Aerin saw a long bandage wrapped around her forearm under her sleeve. She jerked her eyes away and looked up at Teka’s face again. “Must you call me lady?” she said crossly. “You never did before.”
Teka looked at her oddly. “I know that perfectly well,” she said. “If you’re up. I’ll look to your bath.”
The hot water helped the deeper aches but just about killed the blisters, and Aerin herself with them. She padded the back of the bath with two or three towels so that she could at least lie softly; and after three cups of very strong malak she dared climb out of the bath. Teka laid her down on a cushioned bench and rubbed a little more of the soreness out with the help of some astringent solution (that smelted, of course, very strongly of herbs) that was even worse than the hot water on blisters; Aerin shrieked.
“Quiet,” said Teka remorselessly. She finished by smoothing on a silky pale ointment that almost made up for the astringent, as Aerin told her. “Your adventures have made you no more polite, Aerin-sol,” Teka said with asperity.
“You could not possibly have hoped for so much,” Aerin responded as she eased into the undershift Teka had laid out for her.
“No,” Teka admitted, and turned down the corners of her mouth, which meant she was suppressing a smile.
Aerin turned to pick up the tunic. “Why am I getting all dressed up to eat breakfast?” she inquired. The tunic was new to her, blue and heavy, with a lot of gold thread worked into it.
“It’s mid-afternoon,” Teka said repressively. “The honor of your company for an early dinner has been requested by Tor-sola.”
Aerin grunted, and put the tunic on—and grunted again. “He woke up, then.”
“So it would appear. There is nothing that can be done with your hair.”
Aerin grinned and shook her head so that the fine not-quite-shoulder-length tips swung across her cheeks. “Nothing at all. It doesn’t seem to want to grow.”
Tor looked haggard but convalescent, as Aerin felt she probably looked as well. She’d worn Gonturan as a way of acknowledging the formality of the occasion, but the swordbelt only reminded her more intensely of certain of her blisters, and she was glad to hang it on the tall back of her chair. Tor came to her at once and put his arms around her, and they stood, leaning against each other, for a long time.
He put her away from him only an arm’s length then and looked down at her. “I—” He broke off, and dropped his arms, and paced around the room once. He turned back like a man nerving himself for a valorous deed, and said, “I’m to be made king tomorrow. They seem to think I already am, you know, but there’s a ceremony ...” His voice trailed off.
“Yes, I know,” Aerin said gently. “Of course you’re king. It’s what my—what Arlbeth wanted. We both know that. And,” she said with only a little more difficulty, “it’s what the people want as well.”
Tor stared at her fiercely. “You should be queen. We both know it. You brought the Crown back; you’ve won the right to wear it so. They can’t doubt you now. Arlbeth would agree. You won the war for them.” Aerin shook her head. “The gods give me patience. You did. Stop being stubborn.”
“Tor—calm down. Yes, I know I helped get the Northerners off our doorstep. It doesn’t really matter. Come to that, I’d rather you were king.” Tor shook his head. Aerin smiled sadly. “It’s true.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
Aerin shrugged. “I thought you invited me here to feed me. I’m much too hungry to want to stand around and argue.”
“Marry me,” said Tor. “Then you’ll be queen.” Aerin looked up, startled at the suddenness of it. “I mean, I’ll marry you as queen, none of this Honored Wife nonsense. Please I—I need you.” He looked at her and bit his lip. “You can’t mean that you didn’t know that I would ask. I’ve known for years. Arlbeth knew, too. He hoped for it. “It’s the easy way out, I know,” he said, hope and hurt both in his eyes. “I would have asked you even if you hadn’t brought the Crown back—believe me. If you’d never killed a dragon, if you broke all the dishes in the castle. If you were the daughter of a farmer. I’ve loved you—I’ve loved you, to know it, since your eighteenth birthday, but I think I’ve loved you all my life. I will marry no one if you’ll not have me.”
Aerin swallowed hard. “Yes, of course,” she said, and found she couldn’t say anything else. It had not been only her doom and her duty that had brought her back to the City, and to Tor, for she loved Damar, and she loved its new king, and a part of her that belonged to nothing and no one else belonged to him. She had misunderstood what her fate truly was a few days ago, as she rode to the City to deliver up the Crown into the king’s hands; it was not that she left what she loved to go where she must, but that her destiny, like her love, like her heritage, was double. And so the choice at last was an easy one, for Tor could not wait, and the other part of her—the not quite mortal part, the part that owed no loyalty to her father’s land—might sleep peacefully for many long years. She smiled.
“Yes-of-course what?” said Tor in anguish.
“Yes-of-course-I’ll-marry-you,” said Aerin, and when he caught her up in his arms to kiss her she didn’t even notice the shrill pain of burst blisters.
It was a long story she told him after that, for all that there was much of it that she left out; yet she thought that Tor probably guessed some of the more bitter things, for he asked her many questions, yet none that she might not have been able to answer, like what face Agsded had worn, or what her second parting from Luthe had been.
They ate at length and in great quantity, and their privacy was disturbed only by the occasional soft-footed hafor bearing fresh plates of food; yet somehow by the end of the meal the shadows on the floor, especially those near Aerin’s chair, had grown unusually thick, and some of those shadows had ears and tails.
Tor looked thoughtfully at the yerig queen, who looked thoughtfully back at him. “Something must be done for—or with—your army, Aerin.”