“Why do you think? Someone shot me. Then this one lunged at me. I reacted in reflex.”
“I hadn’t realized you knew how to use a sword like that.”
He shrugged. “I learned on Lyshriol.”
“You trained with swords on your home planet?”
“All highborn boys do there. It’s part of the culture.”
“It just seems so—” Dazza squinted at him. “Barbaric.”
Vyrl scowled. “What, if I crisped him with a laser carbine, that would be civilized? Hell, we could be really civilized and have the Ascendant drop an antimatter bomb on Ironbridge.”
Dazza didn’t answer, and Kamoj could tell Vyrl’s words bothered her. She had been prepared to hate Dazza, after what Vyrl had told her this afternoon. Instead she kept remembering Dazza’s tears, so uncharacteristic of the craggy colonel, when the doctor realized Vyrl was going to live.
“What I don’t understand,” Vyrl said, “is why Ironbridge stagmen are prowling around my woods.”
Dazza glanced at Kamoj. “Would you feel more comfortable if I told him?”
Kamoj nodded, wondering what Dazza knew.
“Told me what?” Vyrl asked.
“We sent people down to talk with Maxard Argali,” she said. “It seems your bride was betrothed to Jax Ironbridge.”
Vyrl stared up at Kamoj. Mortified, she averted her eyes.
“Their marriage was arranged years ago,” Dazza said. “Apparently Ironbridge is quite fond of her.”
Kamoj almost gagged. If Jax was fond of her, she would hate to see how he treated people he didn’t like.
Vyrl spoke gently. “Look at me, water sprite.” When she met his gaze, he said, “I’m sorry. I should have realized a woman such as yourself would already be spoken for.”
She wished she could disappear into the woodwork. Vyrl glanced at Dazza and tilted his head toward the door.
“Uh-ah, yes, well.” The colonel stood up. “I have to check in with the Ascendant. I’ll look in on you later.”
When Kamoj and Vyrl were alone, he said, “I truly am sorry. I figured there might be others, but I assumed if something was serious, you would refuse my offer. It didn’t occur to me that you would have no choice.” After a moment he added, “Or maybe I didn’t want it to occur to me.”
“You established your bid legally,” Kamoj replied. “No one could match it.”
“I don’t get it,” Vyrl said. “How did the concepts of slavery and a dowry get mixed up together here?”
“Slavery? What do you man?”
“Don’t you hear what you’re saying? I outbid him for you. How can you not hate me?”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I bought another human being. That’s wrong. On top of which, it was a woman who had already given her word to another man.” Dryly he added, “A woman younger than most of my granddaughters.”
Granddaughters? Older than her? Surely she heard wrong.
Then again, Jax was Vyrl’s age and he had illegitimate children everywhere, some of them adults with their own children. That, she realized, was what bothered her. Not that Vyrl had children but how he came about them. With Jax she had almost managed to convince herself she didn’t care what he did. With Vyrl, an agony of jealousy rose in her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stopped massaging his head. “Nothing.”
“Something about my children,” he said. “Their mother?”
“Men can marry only one woman here. Perhaps in your Imperial court it is different.”
He laughed. “Concubines and court intrigue? Gods, Kamoj, that isn’t me. I may have more titles than I know what to do with, but I’m still a farm boy from nowhere. All I ever wanted was my wife, my family, and my land.”
She spoke with care. “Then you are widowed?”
“I married my childhood sweetheart when we were kids.” In a voice soft with sorrow, he added, “Ten years ago she took a fall in the Backbone Mountains. She died instantly.”
“Hai,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” His voice gentled. “We had many good years, twelve beautiful children, over forty grandchildren so far, and gods know how many great-grandchildren.” He paused, squinting at her. “I get mixed up which of the new ones are grandchildren and which are great-grand. There’s even a few great-greats in there.”
She stared at him. “But you are so young.”
“People marry young where I come from. I was fourteen.” He laughed. “When I told Dazza that, she nearly went through the wall. Legal age in the overall Imperialate culture is twenty-five, and the average number of children for a conventional couple is two. By the time I was ‘legal,’ I had six children.”
It didn’t sound odd to Kamoj. In her experience, people married young and had as many children as possible, with the hope that at least some would survive until adulthood, and perhaps, if the family was lucky, even prosper.
But the numbers and his age still didn’t fit. She struggled to work it out. Although she was better at mathematics than most people, she usually had wires with beads to do problems as difficult as this one. No matter how she looked at it, she kept coming up with the same impossible results.
Finally she said, “Even if your children married as young as you did, I don’t see how you could have so many descendants, especially great-grandchildren and great-greats.”
“Why? I’m sixty-three.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? No. That can’t be.”
“It’s true.” He grinned. “But if you want to tell me how young I look, I won’t object.”
She smiled. “You can angle for compliments all you wish, my handsome husband. But I still don’t understand. How can you look so young?”
“Good genes and exercise, I suppose. Also, the nanomeds in my body do some repairs, enough to help delay aging.” He hesitated. “Did you really mean what you said this afternoon, about wanting me to stay with you?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you could have your betrothed back if we arranged for me to ‘die’?”
“Jax Ironbridge is a—” The word slug tempted her, but she held it back. No more appropriate word came, though. She kept imagining a slug making its way through the mud.
Vyrl laughed. “You can compare my competition to all the slimy creatures you want.”
“I would never speak ill of Ironbridge’s good name.”
“You’re tact is laudable.” He closed his eyes. “I like your worm images better, though.”
She stroked his forehead. “Lionstar Province has no worms.”
A guilty look passed over his face. “I don’t really have a province on this planet.”
“Of course you do.”
“I do?”
“Argali and our villages.” She thought of Azander. “Your stagmen come from outlying hamlets, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Most of those hamlets were originally part of the North Sky Islands. But they’ve become unattached.” It appalled Kamoj, actually. Rather than trying to support villages so distant and so impoverished, past governors of the Islands had ignored them, until finally, after many generations, the villages lost all association with their former province-and with that, their last hope of survival. “If their stagmen are your sworn liegemen, then you are also now the authority in their villages.”
He opened his eyes. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“A union such as ours is a merger. A business arrangement. In marrying me, you agreed to help support my people.”
“In other words, responsibilities come with power.”
She took a breath. “Yes.”
“Such as?”
“Food. Work. Tools. Shelter.” Softly she said, “Survival.”