Chapter 19
We left our room for dinner maybe half an hour later. I wasn’t sore exactly, but even with my supreme pillow princess energy, there was no way I could take Inkiri’s barb twice in less than an hour and not feel it. It was pleasure pain though, as I assured him when I put on my pants with a wince.
He rubbed my back as we opened the door to our room and headed toward the stairs.
The walls up here were white except for where Kinnek had created some fantasy scene or something from Aer.
Sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference.
Just where the stairs started, my eyes were always drawn to a ladybug he’d painted on there. He’d told me once that it meant luck.
“Sadir, we can go soak after dinner. The warm water might help.”
I kept a straight face and gingerly put one foot on the step below. “That would be nice. Uh, your brother isn’t going to soak with us, right?”
Inkiri clicked. “He might want to. I’ll go and see if Nokim needs my help in the kitchen before I find Zeddira.” He overtook me, but stopped a few steps below when our eyes were level. “You relax.”
“Okay, I can do that.” Relaxing was one of my more sharply developed skills, after all.
I made my way to the bottom of the stairs, and from there I wandered into the living room.
The room was spacious and had low couches, which I knew my guys liked. It was an Aer thing more than an Earth one. Piled in a corner next to an indoor lemon tree that soaked up the light from the large window were a bunch of floor cushions.
The large window and the fact that it was south-facing also meant Kinnek’s paintings could really let their colors shine.
The walls were full of his art, for once contained on canvas or paper rather than living on the walls directly.
He’d painted humans as if he’d learned to look past the differences with the tip of his paint brushes and pencils, but there were landscapes and abstract, playful images as well.
I liked those. Every time I looked at them, I found something new, a swirl or edge that I hadn’t really seen before.
But Kinnek’s art wasn’t the most interesting sight in the living room today.
Vergis sat on the couch. Three of the bagu guests were literally sitting at his feet on the floor cushions my guys preferred to the couches sometimes, two of the bagua in black, one in taupe.
The interpreter was by the wall filled with bookshelves, going through a volume, fingers turning the pages reverently.
He and Vergis both looked up at me, and I froze like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Hi,” I said.
“You need my help?” Vergis grumbled.
“Uhm, no, Ink just told me to park myself on the couch.”
Vergis frowned and glared while the interpreter tilted his head.
“You mean, you are going to sit?” He closed the book.
Just like Fellisse or Nokim when I’d first met them, his accent was far more pronounced, but I liked how it made the English sound smoother and rounder in places. “Might I perhaps join you, sir?”
I shrugged and headed over to one of the three couches, not the one Vergis was sitting on. He radiated mild murderous intent, and I wasn’t as eager to be in the splatter zone as the three bagua at his feet.
“Sure, but you don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ That’s weird. Just call me Rory. What’s your name?”
The interpreter beamed. He was still clutching the book as he sat some good two arms’ lengths away from me.
“I’m Lueris. Of House Livim, originally.”
I glanced over to Vergis and his newfound entourage. The three bagua clicked softly. Vergis ignored them. Your fault, he mouthed at me.
When was it ever not?
“Cool,” I said to Lueris.
He tilted his head. “Are you asking about House Livim? I can assure you, the grounds are quite comfortable, even in the cold season. But it is very nice at this time of year, although I don’t mind admitting that I prefer it during the second planting season.
You should come and visit, Rory.” He inched a bit closer.
“I would be happy to show you around myself. It really is a beautiful place, the Asshar mountains almost as close as Volkon Lake.”
I fumbled with my friendship bracelet absentmindedly.
The place did sound interesting, and I was kind of curious to meet Inkiri’s dads, the ones he exchanged cordial letters with.
Then again, I wasn’t sure whether Lueris would think I’d accepted the invite if I said it sounded interesting, and then I didn’t know if that would put Inkiri in an awkward position.
Essentially, I wasn’t sure how to talk to Lueris without putting my foot in it. Story of my life, really.
I settled on: “I’ll have to talk with Inkiri about that.”
Lueris tilted his head this way and that. “Does your mate desire to have a say in where you go, Rory?”
Something told me I was potentially getting Inkiri in trouble. Well, there was my foot, going right in it.
“What he means is, he likes his mate to talk with our sentenmen first,” Vergis said. “Some humans have a funny little habit of doing that before accepting such kind invitations as you extend, Lueris.”
Well, gosh-darn it, but who’d have thought Vergis could be that smooth. Was he smooth? I actually didn’t know what passed for smooth when talking to bagua like Lueris. It was as if I was stuck in an Oscar Wilde play without knowing any of the lines.
Lueris smiled and nodded. “Of course. I apologize. I know my language skills are lacking, but it seems my knowledge of human customs and habits is even worse. I need to improve. Please be patient with me, Rory.”
“Sure. No worries.” That seemed to settle that. Hopefully.
Before Lueris could open his mouth again to say whatever else he wanted to say, Nokim came in, his eyes lingering on Vergis and his entourage as he said in Lugarra that “tokka” was “sen,” or that dinner was ready.
Normally, dinner happened around the large kitchen table, which had taken me a while to get used to, given that it could be a pleasantly loud affair.
Now, because there were a good twenty people with Zeddira, we were outside in the backyard, a stone’s throw away from the gazebo with the ko circle we’d used to get here that first time.
Instead of using the garden chairs and tables—Vergis had cursed them to the ninth circle of hell when he’d cleaned out the garage—there were lots and lots of picnic blankets and floor pillows, all of which would make this more comfortable and familiar for the bagua guests.
The evening light was waning. Someone had carried our electric lights out and switched on the fairy lights that crisscrossed the garden to the gazebo, and from there to the large oak nearby.
Lueris stared at all the lights and aahed. “This is very beautiful.”
The gaggle of bagua Vergis had attracted were chatting to him, and he responded in monosyllables or with a grunt here and there, which did not deter them as far as I could tell.
Nokim was trailing behind, but he turned on his heel when Charles said something about a breadbasket.
I spotted Inkiri and Kinnek on one picnic blanket along with Zeddira, who looked damn near regal the way he was lounging there and talking with them while somehow managing to look down his nose at them, even though Inkiri was taller.
Lueris gestured. “Come, I will translate for you.”
I couldn’t very well reject that—heavens knew I needed someone to translate—and I ended up sitting between him and Inkiri, with Zeddira on Lueris’s other side.
Inkiri turned his full attention on me so he could greet me by pushing my scarf aside and licking my throat. It was just a brief smack for him. Normally, he liked to draw that kind of greeting out longer.
Kinnek leaned toward me. “Guess what, snapdragon. Your bagu in-law has decided it would be irresponsible not to accompany us to the Stone for our attempt to close up the veils to the monster place.” Kinnek looked a good deal happier about that than he should have, in my opinion.
Lueris jumped into translating for Zeddira.
“Oh, that’s very kind,” I said to Zeddira, who looked at me steadily with his yellow eyes before speaking.
Lueris inclined his head and translated. “The second high counselor says it hardly needs mentioning. He thinks of you fondly already, in the way family would.”
Inkiri’s hand had ventured under my shirt and up my back. I had the vague sense that something annoyed him. Maybe he just really didn’t get along with Zeddira in a sibling kind of way.
“I really do appreciate that. That he’s risking himself and his people.”
I saw Kinnek smile out of the corner of my eye, and there was a minute tic setting Zeddira’s upper lip atremble before he spoke.
“The second high counselor wants to assure you the Raiken readily protects their own, much like you have done in Esaka,” Lueris said. “He hopes you won’t mind sharing the attention you gift your family with him while we travel.”
“That was a question, actually,” Kinnek chimed in.
I’d gotten that from how Zeddira was eyeing me. To be fair, I knew that look. Inkiri had looked at me like that, back in the women’s clothing store, and I was less clueless now than I had been then. Still more clueless than a lot of people, but just a bit less than I had been pre-monster marriage.
“I look forward to having meals together.” That seemed the safest option, both then and now.
More now that I knew for certain human wasn’t ever going to be on the menu.
The way Kinnek was trying to curb his grin told me I hadn’t made a mistake, for once in my life. No one was more surprised than me.
The dinner conversation went on in a mostly exhausting way. It took me a while to figure out that Inkiri only got involved in it when he was addressed directly, which was strange. Then again, he was bagu royalty, and what did I know about anything?