The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 24a - A Race of Bastards

Harric gave a non-committal nod.

When he offered nothing else, Brolli spoke again. "This Caris, she sleeps so far from you. Why is it so? She wears love rings from you, yes? You give them to her, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then, I must ask why you sleep so far apart. Is it custom with your people? Perhaps you wait until Willard sleeps and I am away for secret tryst?"

Harric tried to read the alien features of the Kwendi's face, but found it difficult. He judged from his tone, however, that it was a serious question, not mocking. "Well, the first reason is simple," Harric said. "She's angry with me."

"Ah!" The Kwendi laughed. "She cannot stay angry long."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that. I've seen her when she sets her mind on something. She's not like ordinary people that way."

"She is different. I see that."

"The second reason is that even if she wanted me, it's only because she's got those rings on. One day they'll come off, right? She might think I've been taking advantage of her then, and kill me."

The Kwendi's brow furrowed in earnest perplexity. "Because of the rings? Why?"

"Because she's being forced by those rings," Harric said, more vigorously than he intended, "or altered, or whatever you want to call it. It'd be like taking advantage of her when she was drunk for the first time. It isn't right."

The Kwendi stopped and faced Harric in a patch of red moonlight. A mountain breeze sighed across the rock face around them; far below, tumbling water rushed through the darkness. "I thought I watch carefully your mating customs in your queen's court, but I never notice this 'right' you speak of. You have to win a 'right' before you mate? Or is it before you marry? Or is marriage itself this 'right?'" Brolli fetched a traveler's journal and stylus from his shirt, and jotted some notes.

Harric stared for several heartbeats. When the Kwendi put the book away, Harric laughed. "Are you serious?"

Brolli looked at him. "There is no marriage among my people, so I do not understand why you hesitate to mate."

"Marriage isn't about mating, Brolli. It's bigger than that. It's for life."

Brolli's brows pinched. "Marriage is not about mating?"

"Well, no. It's more." Harric smiled, bemused. It occurred to him that since he'd never had a father, and since the two women who raised him were unmarried or widowed before he was born, he didn't know the first thing about permanent male-female partnership. His entire understanding of marriage therefore consisted of nothing more than the vague longing of all bastards for something sacred and unattainable.

"More than mating," Brolli repeated. He plucked the journal again from his pocket, and scribbled a note. "Yet her looks at you are about mating. Even I see that. Such complicated mating rituals!"

Harric laughed. "Hold on. Are you telling me that you have no idea what marriage is, but you decided to make a magical wedding ring for our queen?"

The Kwendi's face crumpled in something resembling embarrassment. He put the journal away and started walking again. "The rings were meant as a gift," he explained. "She has no husband, yes? We thought, since your people mate for life, that she, all alone and without a mate...well, think she maybe was not so...how you say...attracting? With these rings we think she could capture a mate."

Harric laughed heartily. It hurt his ribs and head but the ragleaf muted the pain. "I'm sorry. But, I can't believe you survived that gift. A wedding ring for the Lone Queen of Arkendia? Ambassador, our queen is famous in ten kingdoms for shunning marriage and abusing courting princes. She built a career on it. She built modern Arkendia on it."

Brolli sighed. "Yes. She nearly threw us out the window. It was a bad beginning to our talks."

"My own troubles with that ring seem suddenly small. How'd you calm Her Majesty?"

"I gave her instead another ring of my own, just as strong."

"So, if your people don't marry, Brolli, may I ask what you do?"

The Kwendi flashed his feral grin across his shoulder. "We mate."

Harric waited for more. None came. He asked, "And then what?"

Brolli glanced back as if for clarification in Harric's face. "We mate again? Perhaps I do not see your question."

"I mean, do you stay with your mate then, for the baby?"

"Ah! No. She raise the baby with her family."

"You just leave her?"

Brolli apparently sensed something in his voice, for he paused and turned to examine Harric closely. "This is the way of all my people. When my sisters and cousin have babies, I help raise them with my family."

Harric felt a concealing veil lift from his mind to reveal an aspect of life he'd never sensed possible. "You're a nation of bastards! You have no idea who your fathers are."

"Why should that matter? The woman determines the family. It is easy to know who is the mother. Hard to know for sure the father."

"That's the best thing I've heard all year. You know they used to enslave us bastards in Arkendia? Still do in the West Isle"

"I have heard it. Now hush." Brolli laid a finger across his lips. "We draw near."

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