After the Evening Bells

6

The full moon came and the next month's Feast Day came with it. Kellah and Megah returned to Amin's. That night there were again soldiers present, but their numbers were fewer than the month before and their attitudes less mirthful. Kellah didn't fail to notice that, as opposed to in previous months, , all the men kept a dagger, maybe two, strapped to his side.

Still, when Joram saw the girls arrive he grabbed one of the men with him at his table, a younger boy by the look of him, and approached the two girls. The men bowed formally.

"Captain," Kellah said and nodded.

"Please. Use my given name." And then, clearing his throat, he gestured to his fellow soldier. "This is Mr. Bisby Belasmus and he very much wanted to ask your friend to dance. I told him I would help him with an introduction."

"Is that so?" Kellah said and introduced Megah to the two men. Megah shrugged her shoulders and stood up to dance with Bisby.

"May I sit down?" Joram said.

"Well, you see... I don't have much time... when the bells ring..."

"You are meeting someone," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "But until then?"

She nodded and he sat down. "He is very lucky," Joram said.

"Who?" she said, although she knew.

"The man you go to meet."

"How do you know it's a man?"

"Is it not a man?"

She hesitated. "We are to be married."

"Then why the secrecy?"

"It would be improper for us to meet alone before the betrothal. Often people do not meet before their wedding days."

"And yet your friend dances openly with men, and that doesn't seem to be a problem."

"It is different," she said.

"I guess I don't understand your customs."

"There's much you men from the East don't understand and that's why you don't belong here," she said. It came out harsher than she'd intended.

He looked at her as if trying to measure her.

No, he was not handsome at all.

"You were going to tell me," she said, "about the stupid thing you did to be made Captain."

"Mmm... Yes." He looked down into his opened palms. "I saved a man."

"You saved a man. Many a man is lost or saved in war, no?"

"Yes, well, the circumstances were special. I don't think it was an ordinary man." She looked at him strangely. "It was at Tel Moran."