Maybe he thinks the same about me. Or maybe it’s the lack of available women. But he asks me to marry him two weeks after meeting me. I say yes. Happiness laces my every step, my every breath. Finally, finally, I have the family I’ve been searching for. Andru will make a kind and gentle husband. Our babies will have his dark eyes, maybe my blonde hair. Regardless, they will be beautiful, and we will raise them in a little cottage all our own. He starts building it the day after he proposes.
The crops are, indeed, doing a little better this year, thanks to a deep well built the autumn previous. The aerolass must have noticed. They are creatures of the sky, whom I thought had abandoned the human plains. They raid us mercilessly. Run down women and children, take precious oil and herbs by the sackful. Light homes on fire. Break us, so we won’t follow.
They come to our half-finished home. But I won’t let them have it.
I think Andru will be proud of me, defending our little bit of land and our promise to one another, a promise we’ll fulfill at the week’s end. I think he’ll understand.
I think he loves me.
But his parents mark me as a devil. Other villagers blame my presence for the raids. My heart breaks as Andru joins them. He never openly reviles me, and he does, at least, convince the others not to kill me.
And so I leave that little half-finished house, and all my dreams of our future together, behind.
That was Ungo.
I’d gone seeking refuge, with the faint hope that I might come across the Cosmodian and ask her to teach me, but I didn’t know her name, and she didn’t call Ungo home. But I found someone else, however brief his companionship may have been. Even now, nearly four years later, I think of Andru. Even now, I sometimes wish I had let the aerolass band destroy everything so that I might have kept something.
Unach notices my bruises the next morning, despite my attempt to hide them with my hair.
“What in the black pits is this?” She grabs my chin like I’m a dog and lifts my head, taking in the dark marks left by Grodd’s fingers. “You’d think you’d learn, getting mixed up with those humans!”
I pull from her grasp and rub my neck. “They’re friendly to me now, Unach.”
Her thick brows furrow. She spins toward Azmar, who winds the cords of his hair behind his head. “Do you know about this?”
Azmar hunches over in a chair, reading something, his dark, twilled hair falling over either shoulder, save for the top half that’s been spun into a knot at the back of his head, a pen sticking from it like an overlong thorn. The way the light falls, he’s half in shadow. The darker half shades him deep viridian, while the lit half colors him more like young buckthorn. His eyes glint like sunlit sandstone, and when he glances toward me, I can’t read his smooth expression. His words from last night flash through my mind. If you set her down and walk away, I won’t report you. And Azmar is a man of his word.
He doesn’t lie, he simply doesn’t answer, stands, and walks into the narrow kitchen.
But I didn’t make such a promise, and I have no desire to protect Grodd or to keep more secrets than necessary. “It was Grodd.”
Unach whirls back to me. “Grodd? That piss-licking son of a whore! He’ll see his head on the chopping block—”
“It isn’t illegal to harm a human,” Azmar says coolly. The words sting more than they should, deep in the center of my chest, though I know he’s merely stating facts. He didn’t write trollis law.
“Grodd forgets he is Pleb.” Unach names the caste like it’s tar on her tongue. The muscles in her neck bulge between her tight shoulders. She grabs her sword and hooks its sheath onto her belt with more force than necessary, then takes up her club. “Seems he needs a reminder.” She starts for the door.
“Keep it private,” Azmar warns. “Lark doesn’t need more attention.”
Unach hesitates only a second before exiting the apartment and slamming the door behind her.
I roll my lips together. Tie back my hair, since it failed to cover me. “Grodd may be a Pleb, but he was a Montra before. He could hurt her.”
Azmar steps out of the kitchen, mixing his morning brew in a large tin cup. “Grodd knows the laws. If he raises his hands against someone of a higher caste, especially five ranks higher, he’ll risk execution, especially given his current ill favor. If he’s smart, he’ll take the beating and move on. If he’s not, we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
We. My chest warms at the word. I think of the night before in the waterworks, crying against Azmar’s chest, feeling safe for the first time—