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It was a beautiful day for a walk in the woods. That is to say, the wind was stirring the trees restlessly, the clouds were scudding low and driving bands of mizzle between the trunks, and the stones of the Astandalan highway thudded solidly against her neat black leather boots.
Jullanar always made sure her footwear was sturdy and well-fitting enough to stand up to a forced march over a Border. Her dress, though staid and matronly, was a well-judged weight of wool against the weather, and handily concealed the three daggers that she had stashed - one in the side of a boot, one tucked up under her garters, in case of need, and one more accessibly stashed in the sensible shawl where the corners crossed over her chest, under the decorative (and incidentally also long and pointy) pin that she used to secure it in place.
If only any of these weapons were of any use against the threat she faced in Ragnor Bella. Peaceful, placid Ragnor Bella. Close to the great highway and the gate that led towards Astandalas and the heart of the Empire, but not directly on the main route. A sleepy, quiet sort of place, well suited to her sister Lavinia - and, she had dared to think, a good perch for an outlaw keeping her head down and her ears open for news of her equally outlawed friends.
She cursed herself with each stamp of her feet. How could she have been so stupid? It had been going so well. She had slid comfortably back into respectable Alinorel society with scarcely a ripple, letting the scurrilous association of the siege of distant Galderon explain her absence and give the gossips a niche to tuck her into. Rebellious, but pardoned. A wild youth. She had not even had to lie. She had been at Galderon, had taken her degree there, had supported the university against the Empire, even to the point of helping to draft the missive that went over the heads of the provincial government and appealed directly to the Emperor himself.
If she had also spent the better part of her time away travelling around the Nine Worlds as a member of the notorious Red Company, well, the occasional fearful silences made it clear that her family had some idea of the possibility, but she need not dwell on that. The price on her head was astronomical, but she had long since stopped caring about it. After a while, it was just a number. Though sometimes it had been satisfying watching it go up in response to their various escapades.
And like a fool, as soon as she was comfortably settled - had used the money she had come into over the course of their exploits to set up the small bookshop - had loudly and publicly advertised her presence and her connection to her family - she had turned around and cheerfully embroiled herself in small local mysteries. Adventures of the kind the Red Company had always sought out, little opportunities to help the people around her in unexpected and dramatic ways. The sort of thing that had worked perfectly well whenever they spent a week or two in a new town or city.
The sort of thing that, she now realised, came with different and far greater risks for someone who had decided to make a place their permanent home. It had not occurred to her, when she returned to her family, that she had made them all hostages to her discretion.
The highway ran straight into the Woods Noirell. Jullanar paid no heed to the change in the texture of the air around her, to the deepening shadows between the trees, to the uncanny glimmer of their pale trunks in the early evening gloom. The soft drifting rain had stopped as she walked and the clouds were lifting, letting golden late summer light flood slant-wise across the grey stones.
Her boots stamped satisfactorily through the puddles. She was, she realised, half-expecting some strange and wonderful thing to happen, to drag her away into a different story. All of her instincts cried out that a wise animal would soon appear, or a veiled lady on a grey horse with bells on the harness, or a bandit crew ready for trouble and not expecting it from her plump and ordinary-looking self. All of her instincts were wrong. She was no longer travelling with a great mage, bound up in the serendipity his magic wrung out of the fabric of the world.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She made herself stop, by the side of the road, and shake the water from her shawl, and pat down the hair which was resolutely working its way free from her braid. She forced herself to think over her predicament in plain language.
She was an outlaw, named as a Terror of Astandalas, condemned in advance to be hauled back to the capital for torturous public execution if she was ever discovered. She was a small town bookseller, with a nose for trouble, who had discovered a small sequence of chicanery and corruption that led to a series of packages between two young lovers being misdirected to reveal their affection to their unsympathetic parents. It had been the work of a weekend to rout out the jealous suitor at fault, to break into the relevant houses and retrieve the packages, and to give the star-crossed teenagers a shoulder to cry on and a good talking-to about their options and intentions.
In the process she had inadvertently revealed her identity to Saya Etaris, one of the starchiest women in the older generation - an unhappy, domineering soul who used every fragment of her authority to push her personal miseries on those around her under the disguise of virtuous living.
Jullanar would have expected Saya Etaris to loudly denounce her in the market square, or to drive her away from town so that she could not lead the youth astray. Perhaps one of those things would have happened, if it not for…
Ben Etaris was a handsome-ish young man, in his way, and could display a certain wheedling charm. Jullanar had indulged in a night or two of experimentation, shortly after her return, and had found him willing enough, if clumsy and a little too demanding for her tastes - spoiled, as the beloved only son, no doubt. She had also detected in him a certain selfish flexibility to the laws that he, as a constable, was in theory supposed to uphold, and a general lack of character and fixity of purpose. As far as she was concerned, their short liaison was long since concluded.
Saya Etaris thought differently. Saya Etaris could not understand why the delight of her motherly heart and apple of her gimlet eye had fixed his affections upon this good-for-nothing criminal, but as far as she was concerned, what Ben wanted, Ben should get.
Very much including Jullanar.
Saya Etaris had delivered an ultimatum: agree to marry Ben when he proposed (as Saya Etaris would make sure he did, the next time he and Jullanar saw one another), or be revealed as Jullanar of the Sea.
Exposure had never seemed like a genuine threat, until now. Jullanar was confident that she could escape from any minions of the Empire that turned up here in Ragnor Bella to collect her, but she could hardly pack up Elderflower Books and take it with her.
(Fitzroy probably could. She would not let herself think about that, or wish for the might-have-beens.)
Worse, she could not protect her family from the consequences of her unmasking. The social opprobrium alone would be devastating. But the real danger was in the Empire’s response. Would they consider her family her accomplices? Would Lavinia be arrested for associating with Jullanar in recent months?
It was disconcertingly easy to picture Lavinia protesting her innocence in increasingly polite and strained confidence all the way up to the executioner’s block.
Jullanar had not given Saya Etaris an answer. She had rushed out, hiding her face before the angry tears started to fall, storming off along the road to who-knows-where.
Who-knows-where was not, at this moment, helping.
“Excuse me, miss? Are you all right?”
Jullanar’s hand was resting on her dagger without conscious thought. She turned, schooling her face. “I’m perfectly fine,” she snapped. “Thank you.”
To her disappointment, the person who had spoken was not obviously a bandit, or fae, or in any way a legitimate target for her wrath. He was a young man with a steady, kind face, his skin a warm golden brown, his hair loose and black and shoulder-length, his clothing looser and lighter than an Alinorel gentleman would have considered appropriate for the weather.
His companion - a relative, surely, their features were so similar - snorted. “Perfectly fine, standing alone in the woods in those soaking clothes as the evening draws in, miles away from anywhere but St Noire." He smiled, and added, "Which is not where you’re from, or you’d recognise Basil.”
“Some people like being caught in the rain,” protested the first man. Basil, presumably.
“So they do,” agreed the second, readily enough. “Are you one of them, Saya..?”
“Thistlethwaite,” said Jullanar, shortly. She drew a breath. She had not realised that she had walked so far. St Noire was the village at the centre of the Woods Noirell, the closest settlement to the Border. She choked down her anger with some difficulty and managed a more or less neutral tone. “I do apologise, gentlemen, I was lost in thought and have come further than I intended.” And it was later than she had thought, and she was both wet and cold. “Thank you for the reminder. I will have to overnight in St Noire. At the Bee at the Border, if it’s still open.”
The second young man, thus proved entirely correct, favoured her with a smile a shade on the triumphant side. “As it happens, my cousin Basil here runs the bar at the Bee,” he said. “We’re on our way back there ourselves.”
There was nothing for it, then, but to accept their unsubtly protective company. At least, not being Alinorel, neither seemed to feel the need to ostentatiously defend her honour from the shame of being found alone in the woods. In fact, once she got over her chagrin and their inescapable companionship, she found them remarkably easy to get along with.
Basil Mdang, the barman, was full of an endearingly effervescent energy. His cousin Kip Mdang, whose short-cropped hair and finer clothes were apparently evidence of an appointment in the Imperial Bureaucratic Service in Astandalas itself, informed her sardonically that Basil was always somewhat like this, but was in particularly fine fettle this week due to his approaching wedding to the love of his life. Basil shook his head sadly and told her that Kip was, alas, always like this and had no such excuse to offer in his defence.
Jullanar found herself relaxing, with these chance companions of the road, and feeling more like herself again. By the time they reached the Bee she was able to share Kip’s affectionately disgusted look at the way Basil bounded over to greet his lady love - her name was Sara White, and Jullanar had heard a great deal about her many virtues as they walked together.
Sara exclaimed over the state of Jullanar’s dress and insisted on lending her spare clothes for the evening. It took a few quick passes to secure her daggers, but Jullanar was glad to hand over her wet things to be dried. She attempted to pay Sara for her trouble, but Sara waved the money away. “You’re here as our guest,” she said. “For tonight, at least. If you stay tomorrow I’ll take your coin then.”
Back in the taproom Jullanar found Basil behind a bar and Kip tucked with bureaucratic neatness into a large armchair in front of the fire. She managed to buy them both a drink - though Basil would only agree to drink his later in the evening, when he came off duty - and settled down into the chair opposite Kip to brood on her options.
It was much better to think things through here in this comfortable place, surrounded as she was by good memories of the merry time the Red Company had passing through here on their way to the capital to crash an Imperial party. That Party, as it was colloquially known, these days, across nine whole worlds. She smiled to herself. They had certainly won their renown fair and square.
Kip nodded politely as she sat down and then returned his attention to the thick report he was reading. The cover read, in a formal court font, Tithes, Taxation, and Theories of Public Health under the Pax Astandalatis. Occasionally he made little bristling noises of rage, rather like a tea kettle on the brink of boiling, and jotted a comment in a small notebook.
Jullanar - tonight she would allow herself to be Jullanar, both Thistlethwaite and of the Sea - sipped at the unladylike tankard of beer she had indulged herself in and considered her options.
She could publicly reject her family and reveal her own identity. That would likely protect them from Imperial attention, but it would leave them vulnerable to grief and stress and gossip. The thought of her mother, who was ill… of her sisters… no.
She could refuse Saya Etaris and dare her to make good on her threat. That would amount to the same thing, with far greater danger for the Thistlethwaite family in general. No.
She could… accept the blackmail. Marry lumpish Ben Etaris. He did not disgust her, just… did not measure up, in so many ways, to friends and lovers past.
She had her bookshop. She could make a life for herself, with a husband in the background. He was weak-willed enough that she could steer him, as needed. She grimaced sourly at her own thoughts, wondering what kind of person she was, that she could contemplate shackling herself to the man and bullying or manipulating him out of her way for the rest of their natural lives. Ugh.
She looked up from her drink and the fire and flushed to find that Kip Mdang’s eyes were on her, and his expression was both earnest and concerned. “You are… not all right, I think,” he said, softly.
“I am not,” she agreed. “I am - trying to resolve a problem.”
“Is it the sort of problem that might be eased if you talked it through with a total stranger?” he asked her, with a courteous lightness that gave her every freedom to refuse and pass off the enquiry as a joke.
Meeting those warm brown eyes, Jullanar did not think that Kip was joking about wanting to help. Perhaps she could not share everything, but…
“It’s going to sound ridiculous,” she warned, and felt treacherous tears prickling behind her eyes. She blinked them back, aware of how easily this engaging young man’s opinion might swing round to dismissing her distress if she displayed her emotions too easily.
“It can hardly be more ridiculous than the suggestion that individual good health in Astandalas is directly linked to the beneficial activity of tithing to the Emperor,” said Kip Mdang, drily. “The greater the tithe, the stronger the physique, apparently. Unless, of course, you have doubt in your heart. My boss will be delighted to hear that we can shut down the Ministry for Health entirely.”
Jullanar stifled a sound that might have been half-sob, half-chuckle. “No,” she said. “Nothing like as nonsensical as that, I’m afraid.” She breathed in. “A highly respectable doyenne of Ragnor Bella society is attempting to blackmail me into marrying her son.”
Kip reacted with neither the instant outrage nor the pity nor the laughing disbelief she had half expected. He went very still. “Ah,” he said, “I see.” And then he simply looked at her, and waited to see if she had anything to add.
“I don’t dislike him,” she said, “but I don’t want to marry a man I can’t respect. But… she has said that she will reveal information about me to my family if I do not accept his proposal. I - I run a bookshop, in town. I don’t want to leave it. And I don’t want my family to be hurt, because of me.”
“Hence the dilemma,” said Kip, and sighed.
The earnest regret of that sound was too much. Jullanar felt her tears spilling over, and scrubbed them away. “I’m so angry,” she said, “I feel so stupid - I should never have let her find out - I should never have come here -”
“This miserable excuse for a woman should never have turned her hand to blackmail,” said Kip, suddenly fierce on Jullanar’s behalf. “I fail to see how her behaviour is your fault.”
His fiery look was so out of place against all the polished courtliness of his manner that Jullanar was startled into a laugh. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it. He smiled, a little sheepishly, and they sat in silence for a while as the fire crackled and the conversation in the room rolled on behind them.
Kip turned back to his book, but he seemed less engrossed in it. At least, he wasn’t making those small grumpy noises so often. Instead he was looking up, into the fire, as if in thought. Jullanar savoured the clean bitter tang of her ale and let herself just sit with her problem. It had been far too long since she felt comfortable enough to be quiet like this with someone - it had been - well, since she left Galderon, and Marianne, and came here to what was supposed to be her peaceful refuge. Doubtless it would be peaceful enough, but so far she had spent more time with her family than getting to know her neighbours, and that had been fraught with all the undercurrents of love and hope and expectation and soul-deep misunderstandings.
“Thank you,” she said, after a while. Kip looked up at once.
“What for?” he asked.
“For listening.” She hesitated, and then said, “I knew when I started my bookshop that I wanted to build something, to stay in one place. I hadn’t considered how binding it can be, to have something that you love that can’t be wrapped up and carried on the road.”
“You don’t want to leave it,” said Kip. He drummed his hand briefly on the arm of his chair. “Is there any legal penalty for blackmail, here on Alinor?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and felt her face twist. “If you don’t mind the entire contents of the case being discussed at length in open court and pored over by lawyers looking for a false step to pounce on.” And, of course, no accusation of blackmail coming from Jullanar of the Sea would seriously harm Saya Etaris once her identity was known to the authorities. The best she could hope for was to discomfort her denouncer, which would be little compensation if her family was...
Kip made a rueful sound of sympathy, drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair again, then addressed the fire. “If, though, it was impossible for you to give in to this woman’s demands. Legally impossible, I mean, so that she had nothing further to gain from exposing you… would she do so anyway, do you think? Knowing that you would reveal her attempt?”
“I…” Jullanar blinked. “I’m not sure,” she said. If Saya Etaris could no longer get what she wanted, would she invite the scandal and attention of levying her accusation - knowing that Jullanar would reveal her machinations on Ben’s behalf? "Almost certainly not," she concluded.
Kip carefully did not look at her. “Bigamy is a legal term here, I believe? The crime of marrying more than one other person?”
She sucked in a startled breath. He could not possibly be suggesting -
Now he looked at her, with a quick blaze of that same ferocity, a flame-quick and stone-steady conviction. “My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa," he said, "My island is Loaloa. My dance is Aōteketētana. I know I’m a little young and wet-behind-the-ears for you, my lady,” he gave a casual little half-bow over his book, slipping into a passable imitation of a ridiculously aristocratic court accent, “but - would you consider taking the humble hand of your most loyal servant?”
His tone was light on the offer itself, despite the sturdiness of his declaration of identity. She could refuse him with no embarrassment to either of them, turning this into a joke that they could laugh over with Basil later in the evening - but - but - those steady brown eyes were serious.
“A marriage of convenience?” she said, equally lightly, “how gallant, sirrah.”
He heard the testing note in her voice and grinned, reminding her at once how young he must be. “Oh, most assuredly a marriage of convenience,” he said. “No obligation to -” he blushed so ferociously that she could not help laughing.
He was funny, friendly, wise, and sharp. Not somebody she felt any desire to take to bed - gods, what a puppy - but…
She should say no. She should solve her own problem, or at least take its consequences on her head, without dragging in some poor young innocent and binding his fate to hers.
She opened her mouth, and what came out was, “But how would it work? You don’t intend to stay on Alinor, surely?”
“Oh, that part’s easy,” Kip said, with breezy confidence. “I’m a junior secretary in the Ministry of Health - astoundingly junior, but very respectable - you have recently returned to your family after an absence of some time… we can tell them that we met and determined to wed a few years ago, but kept it quiet until I became more established in my position.” He gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look. “It has been, Saya Thistlethwaite, the dream of my life to settle down in a small Alinorel village and run a bookshop. But family expectations forced me into service in Astandalas. I must do my duty and reach a senior enough grade to avoid bringing shame on my Ancestors. Only then can I throw over the chains of my career and retreat to this happy corner of the world to grow old with you.” He smirked at her.
“You would - return to Astandalas?”
“I’ll visit,” he promised, “I was planning to visit often anyway, since Basil settled here.” He looked, for a moment, genuinely wistful. “My family all live in the Vangavaye-ve, halfway round Zunidh from any useful gate. I had already resigned myself to missing them for the next few years. At least this way I’d have another friend here.”
“Kip Mdang, after an offer like that you’ll have another friend wherever I stand,” she said, promptly, and to her amusement he blushed again. She sighed. “I can’t possibly accept.”
His head came up at once. “Why not?” he asked, neither accusatory nor pleading but plain dealing.
She shook her head, feeling an odd mixture of admiration and almost-maternal affection. Kip kept rising new notches in her estimation. The last thing she would do, for a friend, would be to allow them to unwittingly marry one of the most notorious criminals in the entire Empire.
“You haven’t even asked me what I’m being blackmailed over,” she said.
He almost bristled in response. “Is it something you’re ashamed of?” he demanded. “Is it something that can be resolved without this marriage?”
The answers were no, and no, of course, but…
“That is hardly the point, Sayo Mdang,” she said, “Marriage is a binding contract with legal consequences for both of us. I can hardly allow you to fetter yourself to an old woman like me, for life, without the faintest notion of what you’re getting into.”
If she had any doubt about Kip Mdang’s interest in her person, his reaction would have laid them to rest. He entirely ignored the entire reference to her age, taking neither the opportunity to protest nor to compliment, and instead homed in on the meat of the argument. “And you will not want to tell me what is at stake, and double your potential blackmailers at a stroke,” he said, thoughtfully.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she told him, and surprised herself by how much she meant it. “It’s that - it's not a safe thing to know.”
His eyes glinted, just a little, and she realised a second too late that he was rising to the challenge of the mystery she presented. Just as - just as any of her other friends would have done, in a similar situation.
He did not hassle her, but he did not let the idea go, either. He talked a little more about the convenience of having an absent husband, joked about sending a cut of his lordly salary back across the Border to her (“though I imagine you make far more than I do, with your bookshop”), and did not once try to trick or trap her into revealing her secrets.
Jullanar found herself entering into the banter even as she kept up a firm rejection of the core concept (“Perhaps I should send you a stipend, to support your loose living in the Palace of Stars”).
The taproom emptied. Basil wiped down the bar and crossed the room to put up the shutters. Sara came through from the kitchens, where she had been supervising the catering staff, and the pair of them snuggled up together on a sofa. Kip capably built up the fire so that the four of them had a comfortable blaze to sit and contemplate. Jullanar realised that, despite everything, she had had an enjoyable evening.
“What have you two found to talk about?” asked Basil, genially.
Kip gave Jullanar a questioning look.
“Oh, go ahead and tell them,” she said, feeling obscurely that she owed Kip some recognition for his kindness, even if she could never take him up on it.
“Saya Thistlethwaite has, alas, proven unpersuadable on the subject of matrimony,” he announced.
Sara spluttered a laugh and then covered her hand with her mouth. Basil groaned. “Has he been bothering you?” he asked Jullanar, his tone making it clear that this was another joke.
“Not in the slightest,” she said, and explained her predicament. “Kip kindly offered to marry me so that I could not be forced to marry Be- that is, the man in question.”
“Only you, Kip,” said Basil, fondly but with a touch of concern. “What about Ghilly?”
“Ghilly?” asked Jullanar, feeling a wave of alarm - surely Kip would not have -
“Ghilly’s my girlfriend,” Kip explained, “back home in Gorjo City. We’re promised to one another, but, Basil, that does not preclude me marrying and divorcing someone else first!”
“I think you’ll find in Ghilly’s eyes it does,” said Basil, and he was giving Jullanar a warning glance, now. She felt a flutter of disappointment, and of shame, which was ridiculous. She had been firmly refusing Kip’s offer all evening.
“This would be a paper marriage,” said Kip, “between friends. It doesn’t cut across any of our promises. Ghilly will understand.”
“Will she?” said Jullanar, raising an eyebrow. “You might have mentioned this part!”
“Well, I couldn’t get you past the first hurdle,” said Kip, defensively, “if you’d sounded willing to consider it, I would have explained… anyway, Ghilly and I have a longstanding agreement that each of us can break off the engagement unilaterally if we meet -”
He cut off the sentence, and flushed from head to toe as though scalded.
“Really?” said Jullanar, scoffing slightly more than she might have done, if her emotions were in better order. “An agreement just to break things off? Are you sure you’re betrothed to this woman?”
“Go on, Kip,” said Basil, “you agreed that you could break it off, if you meet -”
Kip was staring at his book, his face almost puce. He mumbled something inaudible. Jullanar, Basil, and Sara exchanged glances.
“I didn’t catch that,” said Sara, gently teasing, “come again?”
Kip looked up, his eyes very bright, and said softly, “...Jullanar of the Sea.”
Jullanar rocked back in her chair, winded as if by a blow to her solar plexus.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t going to say…”
“How..?”
Basil was looking between them with honest delight. Sara had eyes only for Jullanar, and she clapped her hands suddenly. “I knew I recognised you from somewhere!” she cried. “I saw you - I crept into the taproom - when you all came through a few years ago - oh, I’m so glad you’re alive!”
Kip grimaced. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said, “but… I happened to be thinking about the Red Company, as we walked through the Woods -”
“And at most other times, to be honest,” Basil interjected. “Kip is a great admirer of Fitzroy Angursell.” He laughed, a deep, amused chuckle. “He taught me Shaian using all of the verses about - about Jullanar of the Sea, because he swore that he would marry her some day.”
Jullanar, totally dumbfounded, looked back at Kip. She had not thought it was possible for anybody to grow redder, but he was almost puce. “I was fourteen,” he said.
She could not help joining Basil’s laughter. “I'm sure you were adorable,” she told him.
He coughed, visibly collected himself, and said, “As we were walking, I was thinking about the Red Company - Sara told us about the time you came through here - and I had remembered that Jullanar of the Sea was from Alinor. I was wondering, idly, whether you had returned here. And we came around the corner and… there you were.”
“You surely didn’t recognise me from any description in the songs,” she said, because Fitzroy had always been extremely careful about that.
“No-o. But I saw a woman standing by herself in the Fairy Wood, about the right age, and when Basil spoke to you, your hand went to a weapon,” he said. “And then… little things. Your accent - it’s not entirely Alinorel any more, is it? And you talked about coming back after travelling, and the timeline fits, and… your story…”
“No wonder you never asked what I was being blackmailed over,” she said, slightly breathless. “I had no idea I was so transparent.”
“So, you see,” he said, “Ghilly would understand. I don’t want to put you under any pressure, Saya Thistlethwaite, and if you would truly prefer to marry your lout than to contract a legal arrangement with me that would stymie him and his mother - well, I have no right to object. But I made my offer knowing what is at stake and I would be honoured if you would join me in this small deception…" he quirked a smile. "Perhaps you can even travel with me to Gorjo City one day, to reassure Ghilly in person?”
Jullanar was crying again, and none of these remarkable young folk looked even the slightest bit concerned about her tears. She scrabbled in her shawl for a handkerchief and wiped her face. “When you put it like that,” she said, “it would be churlish to refuse.”
—
Sara’s parents were a little bemused at the speed with which their daughter’s nuptials had turned into a double wedding, but it was nothing to the confusion that Jullanar’s family showed when they trickled in, in response to her letter, over the course of the week, bearing such treasures as her great-grandmother’s wedding veil and the family records book.
“Kip and I have been promised to one another since he was fourteen,” she told them all, airily, which made him choke on his coffee.
“I could not offer my hand honourably until I was soundly placed in the Service,” he replied, taking her literal hand in his and treating her to an utterly ridiculous devoted gaze that made them both dissolve in laughter.
“It is… good to be good friends with the person you wed,” her mother said, tentatively, that evening, “but isn’t he rather young for you, darling?”
Every member of the family had been raising this concern in turn. Jullanar found that the best way to ensure that this subject did not recur was a shiver of a wink and a murmur of “virile, mm.”
She was a little disappointed to discover that she was marrying into a matriarchal society and would not be able to ditch her surname. Kip, who seemed to be enjoying himself greatly playing the grand Astandalan gentleman for her sisters, was sympathetic but unmoved. “Nobody on Ysthar can pronounce Mdang,” he told her, “I’m looking forward to the change.”
The wedding itself was beautiful. Sara was radiant, Basil practically glowing, and Jullanar and Kip spent the day making up more and more elaborate sappy compliments to pay one another whenever a family member slipped into earshot.
They exchanged vows, signed the relevant books, and Kip gave her a quick and decorous peck on the cheek. Then they held hands and wolf-whistled together while Basil dipped Sara almost to the ground in a dramatically passionate embrace.
Jullanar’s parents gave them a lift back to Elderflower Books after the party. “Home sweet home,” said Kip, placing his hand on his heart and gazing at her with liquid ardour that forced her to swallow an entirely inappropriate bout of giggles with a peculiar snorting noise.
“I am glad to see that you two are so much... in cahoots,” said Jullanar’s father, doubtfully.
“Thank you, sir,” replied Kip, disarmingly earnest as always. “And thank you for your welcome.”
Honestly, Jullanar thought, watching her father's frown break into a reluctant smile, the man’s polite charm should be classed as a lethal weapon. They waved the carriage off and then she led him into the bookshop and went to make tea while he lost himself in the stacks.
She only realised that she had left the door open when a new voice called, “Jullanar? Julie?”
It was Ben Etaris. Of course he would have been waiting for her to return. She picked up the heavy kettle and swung it slightly regretfully in one hand. They should start with a conversation, probably, before violence, even if she seemed to hear Pali’s voice whispering suggestions at the back of her mind. But it was hardly Ben's fault that his mother was a conniving old baggage.
“Sayo Etaris!” she trilled, therefore, returning to the shop. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“My dear Jullanar,” he said, a little woodenly, as though reciting a line. “My own, my sweet.”
Kip stepped around a stack, smiling his usual amiable, innocent smile. “Who is this gentleman, darling?” he asked.
She stepped close, shifting the kettle to her other hand so that she could take Kip’s. “A friend, dearest,” she said. “Sayo Etaris, may I introduce my husband, Kip Thistlethwaite? Kip, this is Ben Etaris. I believe I’ve mentioned him.”
Ben stood there in the centre of the shop, gaping like a fish. With his dirty blond hair slicked down against his scalp, and his watery blue eyes protruding in shock, the resemblance was pronounced.
“C- congratulations,” he stammered.
“Thank you!” said Kip, brightly. “It is good to meet you, Sayo Etaris. My wife has told me so much about you.”
Jullanar knew she would treasure the expression on Ben’s face for the rest of her mortal life, and quite possibly beyond it.
“Tea, Sayo Etaris?” she offered, lifting the kettle and swinging it slightly. Ben’s gaze transferred to her hand.
“I - er - no, sorry, got a - um, place to be - good to meet you, Sayo Thistlethwaite - later, Jules.”
He doffed his cap at them and backed away through the door.
“Jules?” spluttered Kip, incredulously.
“All yours, dear heart,” she told him, batting her eyelashes theatrically.
—
She felt somewhat vindicated by the mournful complaint in the first of her new husband’s letters that the court found Thistlethwaite even harder to pronounce than Mdang. “Tough cheese, darling,” she wrote back. “If I have to live with it, so do you.”