The Arrows of the Heart

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “For mixed company,” he cut in. “Right. I feel like I’m chasing my tail with you.”

  “Easily solved. Stop chasing me.”

  “I was going to.” He said it musingly. “I told Zynda not an hour ago that I was done trying to seduce you.”

  Hearing those words made me oddly flustered, though I’d of course known his intentions. Knowing he’d discussed as much with Zynda made it more…pointed. “And what did she say?” I asked, though I should have refused to participate in this conversation any further. He kept enticing me back into it.

  “She said that was too bad, as you might be good enough for me.”

  Oh.

  Not what I expected. And I didn’t know what to say to that. Zynda had been kind to me—but what an extraordinary thing for her to tell him. “So that’s why you asked me to breakfast?”

  He shrugged, looking out at the water. “Eh. Not really. Mostly I was tired of carrying this thing she gave me.” He kicked his heel against the box. “And feeling sad and worried, which I don’t enjoy. Then I saw you and thought, some flirtation with a beautiful woman is just the thing to cure my sad and worried.”

  “And yet I make you feel like you’re chasing your, er, tail.”

  His chair thumped down as he leaned his forearms on the table again. Did the man ever sit still? “I’ll tell you a secret, gréine,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “I kind of like feeling that way.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  I didn’t either.

  “But if you truly want me to leave you alone, I will.” His playfulness had fled again. “I don’t wish you unhappy.”

  I should’ve said it then. No uncertain terms. But I couldn’t quite make myself. Maybe because telling a man “no” in any terms isn’t something a Dasnarian woman does, so the words didn’t leap to my lips. Also… though talking with him could be aggravating and infuriating, it was far better than being alone.

  “Why were you feeling sad and worried?” I asked instead. He had looked unhappy. Certainly not his usual mien.

  If he noticed my equivocation, he didn’t say. “It’s a long story. War, death, the end of the world. The usual.” Sitting up, he raked his hands through his hair, hitting tangles. “No wonder I’m getting nowhere with you,” he commented. “I’m all scruffy. Comes of being muzzy headed from getting up so early, curse my crazy, obsessed sister.”

  He blurred, like he did when moving fast, then a big black cat was sitting in his chair. Before I could react—at least mentally, because my heart jumped immediately, my fingers twitching for the bow I’d left in my rooms—he was him again. Human him. But now his hair flowed smoothly, neatly tied back, his shirt a deeper blue than his eyes, laced and unwrinkled.

  I knew I was gaping at him, my default reaction it seemed, but I couldn’t gather my wits.

  “Did I scare you?” he asked, frowning.

  “A little,” I allowed. “In my world, when a big predator shows up in front of you, it’s a bad thing and you’d better react fast before you get dead.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt you as a panther any more than I would as a man. I’m still me.”

  “Exactly the same?” I asked, unable to squelch my curiosity, as it was something I’d been burning to know for a while.

  “Not exactly.” He looked thoughtful. “It’s kind of like when you’re dreaming, how you’re you but also other things. With more control, though, like when a dream isn’t going the way you want it to and you can turn it and guide it in a new direction.”

  I gazed back, aware I kept forgetting myself by looking right into his eyes. “No,” I said slowly. “I’ve never heard of anyone being able to guide a dream. And I don’t dream at all.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone dreams. Even animals dream. Surely Dasnarians do, too.”

  “So they say,” I replied with some tartness, “but not me. I never have.”

  “Never? Not once in your entire life?”

  “No.” I shook my head to emphasize it. “That’s just how I am.”

  “And you’ve never had sex of any kind, with anyone at all.”

  I would not clap my hands to my hot cheeks, no matter how much I wished to. “The two are hardly related.”

  “I don’t know,” he mused, a wicked turn to his mouth. “Maybe you should experiment.”

  “With you?” I retorted, which was hardly wise.

  “You know the offer is open.”

  “Is this an offer of marriage then?” This I asked deliberately, to snap him out of his determined flirtation, and it worked. He blinked and sat back.

  “Ah… the Tala don’t really marry,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “For most of us, our animal natures aren’t really suited for monogamy.”

  “Their Highnesses King Rayfe and Queen Andromeda are married,” I pointed out, because I’d asked about that and knew it to be true. A fixed point in the otherwise chaotic lawlessness of Annfwn.

  “That’s different,” Zyr replied, with that wave of his hand.

  I really wanted to ask why, but couldn’t think of a way that didn’t sound like a challenge.

  “Is that truly the only way a Dasnarian woman can enjoy sex, is if she’s married?” Zyr asked, seeming to be sincerely trying to understand, though the concept clearly made him incredulous.

  “An honorable, high-station woman, yes.”

  “And the dishonorable types?” His eyes glinted again, lips shaping the question with a hint of sensuality that shouldn’t be there at all.

  “They have options, to some extent, from decent to terrible.” I hesitated briefly, then figured I might as well explain. “A man might offer a woman his bed, which means he’ll provide for her—food, shelter, all her needs—and protect her. For the rest of her life,” I added with some zest, delighted to find myself enjoying the play of astonishment, shock, and maybe even a brief hint of terror flying over his expressive face. It felt good to have a step up on him for once. A Dasnarian man would never reveal so much of his thoughts, so that came as an unexpected pleasure. One thing to be said for the crazy Tala culture—their openness made conversations more fun. I put some effort into schooling my expression into polite lines, rather than grinning at my bullseye hit.

  “I…ah. Oh.” Zyr started to rake his fingers through his hair, found he’d tied it back in his shapeshifting tidying up, and irritably flung the tie away so he could shake his hair out. It flowed around his shoulders like a mane, paradoxically adding to the sense of him as some great feline predator. Especially as he worried his lip with his rounded human teeth in a distinctly unpredatory way. “See, ah, Karyn. I hope you know there’s a translation problem there and… Um.”

  I nodded in understanding, adding a woeful smile. “Unfortunately, according to Dasnarian law, once the offer is made, it cannot be retracted. In fact, because Dasnarian women don’t participate in the drafting and signing of contracts, making the offer is as good as sealing it. So.” I lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a decidedly not elaborate, but quite fatalistic Dasnarian shrug. “What’s done is done. I greatly appreciate that you’ll care for me for the rest of my life.”

  He actually spluttered, casting his gaze from side to side, seeking escape. “Oh, see. Um. But you were worried about starving and that was after—” He broke off, narrowing his eyes at me and I let go the laughter I couldn’t restrain any longer.

  I convulsed with belly laughs, unable to stop, particularly when Zyr folded his arms and scowled at me in decided disgruntlement. If anyone had told me days or even an hour before that I’d ever enjoy a joke at a man’s expense, I’d have said they were crazy. As it was… oh, what a fine thing to laugh like this!

  “Are you done?” Zyr asked with injured dignity as I subsided, wiping away the tears the deep laughter had squeezed from my eyes.

  I nodded. But an unladylike snort-giggle escaped me. I took a breath and calmed myself, at last meeting his gaze calmly—although my mouth kept twitching into a smile.


  He broke into a grin. “It’s good to hear you laugh, even if the joke was on me.” He held up his hands when I began to protest. “No, no—I deserved that. I had it coming.”

  “You did,” I replied. “That’s what you get for your flirtatious ways.”

  “Now, hold on a moment.” He frowned at me, not playing this time. “I’d argue that flirtation is one of the joys of being alive. So is sex. I’ll bow my head to running afoul of your customs, but I won’t agree that I deserve to be punished for wanting to share a goddess-given pleasure with you. Or,” he said meaningfully, when I opened my mouth to argue, “for thinking we should be able to enjoy that together without rules. It seems to me that your laws have brought you more misery than joy.”

  That arrow hit home, striking the deep bruise in my heart. All those years of a marriage in name only, with no material change in my circumstances. I’d begun to long for a normal life like my sisters had, with a husband present in it, and children to warm my heart. To keep me from dying alone as the withered branch of my family tree that never bore fruit. By giving up my marriage with Kral for the possibility of a real marriage, with children, had I taken too much of a gamble?

  “Karyn?” Zyr stroked quick fingers over the back of my hand. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. Laugh again.”

  A command I couldn’t obey, as laughter is not so easily summoned. But I stretched my mouth in an obedient smile. “Regardless of all that, they are my laws and I will follow them,” I told him. There. My no uncertain terms.

  He inclined his head in sober acknowledgement. “I suppose we shall have to be friends only, in that case.”

  “Friends?” I tasted the word, though it was a familiar one. A deeper shading on ally, which was the sense most commonly used in Dasnaria. It would be unheard of for a woman and a man to be friends there, so much so that we didn’t have a word for it. We had ways to describe men who took each other’s part and supported one another. And unrelated women could be friends in ways that made them like family. Men and women, though… “What would that mean?” I asked, in all sincerity. “So we won’t run afoul of translation problems,” I clarified when he smirked at me.

  “We spend time together that isn’t sex,” Zyr replied, looking thoughtful, like maybe he didn’t know either. Then he grinned. “It will be interesting. Fun! We can learn about each other.”

  “All right. So I explained about the bed thing. Will you tell me why you were sad and worried?” That was something I’d discuss with a friend.

  “Yes. I meant to tell you before but you distracted me. I’m tired of sitting, though—shall we walk?”

  I’d long since finished eating, so I agreed. We both stood and he started to go.

  “You forgot your box,” I pointed out.

  He turned and scowled at it, as if it had personally offended him. “Zynda’s thing. I need to take it to my rooms, so we’ll have to walk there first.” He hefted it easily, though it looked quite heavy, then shook his head at me. “Don’t look all suspicious. We’re just dropping it off. You don’t want me to have to carry this thing all day, do you?”

  The way he said “thing” made me want to laugh at him, he sounded so put upon. So I agreed. I’d just wait outside his rooms. I didn’t have to go in. And my etiquette teacher would never know, no matter how she whispered her cautions in my mind.

  ~ 3 ~

  Zyr knew everyone we passed. No surprise since he’d lived in Annfwn his whole life and it’s not a big place. Probably their whole country would fit inside just the city of Jofarrstyr, which is part of why I doubted the Thirteen Kingdoms could withstand the empire, should His Imperial Majesty be serious about acquiring them. The magic barrier protected them, yes, but obviously Deyrr had found ways through the barrier—and had been planting sleeper spies for some time that way—so that might not last long.

  The Dasnarian Temple of Deyrr wasn’t the same as the emperor, but from what Jepp had uncovered in her spying, the followers of the dark god might be His Imperial Majesty’s tools in expanding his empire.

  Even so, everyone said hello to Zyr. He might have been king the way each person took pains to greet him. Walking with him was like being in a bright circle of light. Even if only reflected, it still warmed me.

  “You were going to tell me about Zynda,” I prompted him, a little tired of him talking to everyone but me.

  He slid me a glance. “I will, but it’s something of a secret, though a poorly kept one. I’d like to wait until there are fewer people around to hear.” Indeed, the road had grown quite busy while we ate, so I nodded agreement. “Sorry about that,” Zyr added. “If Zynda hadn’t given me this thing, we could’ve gone straight down to the beach.”

  I focused on his aggrieved tone rather than on the surprise that a man had apologized to me, and for something as trivial as inconveniencing me. “If you don’t like it or want it, why are you keeping it?”

  “Besides the fact that my sister made me take it and I’m afraid of her?” He flashed me a cheeky grin when I laughed. “No, I do like and want it; I just don’t like things, you know.”

  “Things?” I repeated in the same tone. The Common Tongue word meant any physical object, I thought, but maybe I misunderstood.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, the elaborateness hampered by the wooden box. “Most shapeshifters don’t. You understand.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Oh. Hmm.” He considered. “Well, I guess it’s that you can’t take much with you when you shapeshift. Some Tala get really good at it and can keep special, small mementos that come back with them to human form, but mostly, why bother? You either leave it behind or lose it forever.”

  “You came back with clothes on just now,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but very simple ones. Nothing special. If I shifted and took this box with me, it would be gone. And my sister would kill me,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Where would it go?” I asked, completely perplexed.

  “A question for the ages,” Zyr agreed.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because…” I floundered. “You go there, when you’re in between one thing and another.”

  He flashed me a smile. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Oh. I really wanted to ask how it did work, but that seemed to be rudely pressing for an answer to a question I’d already asked and he’d ducked answering. And he called me evasive.

  “Why is the wooden box important?” I asked instead, as that seemed safe.

  “Here.” He stopped and turned toward me. “Open it.”

  Delighted to satisfy at least this itch of curiosity, I undid the latch and lifted the lid. It was filled with pieces of wood in varying sizes. “Oh,” I said, disappointed. How dull.

  “That’s what I said to Zynda,” Zyr confided with a grin. “Take one. Doesn’t matter which.”

  I plucked one out at random and Zyr nudged the lid with his chin, making it drop with a clang, then started walking again. I hastened to catch up. His rooms must be near the top of the cliff.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Turning the stick over in my hands, I studied it. It had been more deliberately formed than I’d thought on first inspection. Not round, but flat, it had irregular indentations all along two sides. And it felt smooth, polished by the maker, yes, but also by the action of many hands touching it over time.

  “I think it’s very old,” I said.

  “You can sense that?” Zyr’s eyebrows winged up.

  “Sense? No, I mean, it feels old, like a staircase where the passage of feet from generations of family have made indentations in the middle of the steps.”

  “I’ve never seen a place like that.”

  “Dasnaria is a very old civilization,” I informed him with pride. “The Hardies have held our lands for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Eight hundred and twenty-seven years.” Unlike most Dasnarian women,
I also knew how to read and write, and the history of the Hardies. “Long enough for the stone steps in the original hall in Castle Hardie to have big scoops in the middle.” I drew it for him in the air.

  “Ah, well, Annfwn is a child in comparison then,” Zyr replied, seeming not at all upset to come in junior. “Current guesses are we’ve only been living here for a few centuries.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “The Tala aren’t much for writing stuff down. Goes with not liking things maybe.” He shrugged that off as unimportant, pointing his chin at my stick. “But that’s where that comes in.”

  I gazed at it, perplexed. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a map!” He grinned in excitement. “See?”

  “Ah.” I nodded, totally not understanding at all.

  “Look.” Zyr set the box down on the low wall. We’d climbed quite high by then, but he seemed not to notice the precipitous drop. I stayed well back from the edge. He took the stick from me, holding it so we looked down on it. “Imagine you’re looking at it like this as you fly along a coastline.”

  Oh, right.

  “Got the image in your head?”

  “No,” I burst out, more than a little annoyed. “I’ve never flown, Zyr!”

  “Oh.” His face wrinkled in chagrin. “I forgot. Wow. I’m sorry.”

  Abruptly I realized he wasn’t apologizing, but feeling sorry for me. “People aren’t meant to fly,” I informed him crisply. “That’s not the way of things.”

  “Good thing I’m not a people then,” he retorted, “because flying is the best feeling in the world, a goddess-given joy beyond compare.”

  “I thought that was sex,” I shot back, realizing too late I shouldn’t have let that particular arrow fly, because his smile went salacious.

  He leaned in. “They’re a lot alike,” he confided, his tone velvety.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I replied stiffly, looking away, wishing I could control my stupid blushing.

  “Never mind.” He sounded conciliatory. “That was unfair of me. I’ll do better. Don’t be sad.”