A Fistful of Earth: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #2

Year 533, New Calendar - part II

A footstep wakes me.

Water splashes as I leap to my feet, crouched and ready for a threat—

Oh, holy Creator, that’s the myrecat talking. I straighten my stance and the sopping tunic that clings to me.

Manal tosses me a towel. I jump to the rim of the pool and catch the towel before it hits the water.

She nods once. “Good catch.”

“Thanks.” I shake myself off and start drying my hair.

Manal carries a tunic made of a supple pale grey leather I don’t recognize. She glances over me, then at what she carries. “You’re easy to size.”

…I suppose that’s a compliment. I shrug.

I dry off as best I can with the towel, and the hawk mage hands the tunic out to me, keeping some matching thongs wrapped around her hand.

I wrinkle my nose and sniff the garment, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never encountered neither the animal nor whatever was used to cure its hide. “What is this?”

“Tradition.” Manal scowls. “Telves are big on following proper custom. If you want Breidentel to take you seriously when you go as lulni, you must look the part.”

We dinnit tell her where we were headed.

“Hawk hearing.”

Ah. She hands me an undertunic and leggings, too, which I pull on, easy enough. Manal helps me get into the tunic that resembles a corseted jacket, which she laces up tightly with strips of the selfsame leather.

The hide is actually comfortable; must be of excellent quality, more expensive than any I’ve ever been able to afford. “Boots?”

She nods once, briskly, and passes them over. I consider the style. Not quite the same as my old soft-soled Plainskin boots, but similar. Likely related.

“What is this leather?”

Manal smiles slightly. “Nothing you’d know. Surrenians don’t share their secrets, and the piwuches stay there.” She somehow ends up with a comb in her hand and starts yanking on my hair. I bare my teeth. The hawk ignores the threat.

I focus through the pain in my scalp to ponder the implications of what she said. “Montai be from the south, below the Surrenian lands?”

“Eníí,” she says with a shrug, her intonation fluctuating on the long e at the end. “That is where many fled, to escape the myrecat.”

My father. My insane myrecat father, whom I killed—and I’m likewise insane and a myrecat. “Smart of them.”

Manal tugs on my hair and starts braiding, weaving the thongs into it in a way that makes them tie my hair back. I can feel enough of what’s going on to know I’ll probably need help getting them out of my hair.

Liathen wouldn’t mind helping.

I close my eyes. Bad train of thought, Lallie. You don’t love the poor boy. He’s infatuated with you. Let him find someone else.

…But from how he described his magic from his father, I will be his wife someday.

Someday.

So don’t that mean I’ll come to love him? Or will the prophecy goad me into marrying a sweet boy, whom I pity and am coming to respect—but whom I don’t love and maybe never will?

I rub my temples. Faery magic makes my head hurt.

“Want some goat’s milk?”

Funny. “No, thank you.” I make sure my magic don’t retaliate against hers for the pain. “Any cues on proper etiquette, or be it best for me to figure out as I go along?”