Chapter 54
K oshka had made himself relatively scarce since Rowan had been so very present, but he was starting to grow accustomed to her.
And at long last, she seemed to be getting bored. I took it as a good sign, the small interest in engaging with anyone or doing anything that she was finally showing.
Though she was going to get herself bitten.
“Here, kitty kitty,” she called, reaching out a hand to the feline that clearly hated her.
“I wouldn’t,” I warned her, not looking up from my ledger.
She ignored me, because of course she did.
“Come here, kitty,” she said even louder.
He purred with satisfaction just as he did before pouncing on a rodent, but she would learn that the hard way.
Sure enough, there was a hiss of pain, tinged with the edge of offense.
“ Koshka .” I injected my tone with disapproval. “It isn’t polite for one of my pets to bite another.”
“Koshka?” she repeated, drawing out the O in her Lochlannian accent. “Is that a name?”
Der’mo . One might think a week of having men discuss her fate in a language she couldn’t understand would motivate her to learn at least a bit of it, but she had picked up next to nothing aside from the stray curse word.
I sighed. “You really do need to learn at least some of the language, Lemmikki. It means cat. ”
She raised her eyebrows. “You named your cat, Cat ?”
“I told you, he’s not my cat,” I protested.
It was largely true. He did whatever he pleased. If he just so happened to come here to sleep and eat most of the time, that was neither here nor there.
A delicate snort escaped her. “Lie to me, but don’t lie to yourself.”
Bold words from the woman who insisted that she was in that tunnel because her sister needed vodka and refused to acknowledge any part of our current situation.
“What an interesting sentiment, coming from you,” I told her.
Her eyes sparked, and for a fraction of a moment, I wondered if she would rise to the challenge like she would have before the flogging. Then she averted her gaze, pretending I hadn’t spoken at all.
I suppressed a grimace, going back to her general lack of Socairan. “You should at least try to learn something.”
She retreated into the blankets like the very idea of using her ample spare time to actually learn something was offensive to her. “Aren’t there like a hundred different dialects? That feels unnecessarily complicated.”
“There are five,” I corrected, exasperation in my tone. “But most people you’ll meet have at least a working understanding of Old Socairan.”
“Then why don’t you just all converse in that, if it’s so easy?” she challenged.
“Because when it comes to our armies, the words that tend to differ dialect-to-dialect are the important ones, and better yet, they mean the opposite of each other,” I explained to her, glad she cared enough to ask anything at all. “Can’t very well have soldiers arguing about whether their commander meant left when he said vaseo or whether he intended to say right but slipped into his old dialect. So somewhere along the way, the king decided the military would speak the common tongue.”
“Then I see no need to learn a different language. It’s not like I spend a lot of time out in the villages.” Something like panic flitted over her features.
At the idea of spending time in the villages? At the idea of needing to learn Socairan?
I opened my mouth to remind her that her life, in particular, was hardly predictable, and that she might enjoy knowing next time someone discussed her execution when she was sitting four feet away.
“I’m quite spent now.” She said abruptly, burrowing herself into her blankets with an exaggerated movement. “Be a good little owner and close those curtains.”
I shot her a look to let her know how I felt about both her ordering me around and about her using my bed to run away from every remotely uncomfortable situation. But I said nothing.
Rather, I muttered a curse under my breath that roughly translated to the word brat , along with a few others while I closed her curtains.
“Well, I understood that just fine.” Of course she did. “See, I know all the Socairan that I need to know.”
If she picked up words that easily, though, it wouldn’t be hard to teach her. Whether she wanted to learn or not.