Jabone's Sword (44 page)

Kasiria didn't know how she felt about brandishing a sword with her husband's grandfather's finger in the hilt until she took it the rest of the way from Tarius. She took it from the scabbard, which was obviously new, and then it just seemed like it really was her sword. It seemed to have a power, a will all its own. When she walked a few steps away from Tarius and swung the sword in a couple of huge sweeping arches in the air. It seemed to sing. It was light. There was no tip heaviness to it at all. It was the right weight for her, the perfect length, and she swore it felt as if she'd grown a sixth finger.

"See, Kasiria? The sword wants you."

"Are you sure, Tarius?"

"Kasiria, my father is long dead, and we believe a sword is to be used. these swords that we build with our own fingers in the hilts, it is not just for show or to frighten our enemies, nor is it some primitive right of passage. These swords have a soul of their own. They are literally part of us. We Katabull are magic people. A part of my father remains in his sword. You will use his sword well and it will serve you well."

"Tarius, I can't . . . Thank you. For the sword and for welcoming me into your family."

"There is no need to thank me." Tarius walked up to her and clapped her on the shoulder. "When we get back I will teach you all that I know, and you need not thank me for that either. You make Jabone happy and my greatest wish for him was always that he should be happy."

She started walking back for the hut and Kasiria started to follow and then stopped short.
Get back? We will live here. Live here! I had never thought about it, but of course we'd have to live here. I could never separate Jabone from his pack.
She started to panic and then she looked around her.
He's here, all my true friends are here. The Kartik is beautiful. So there could be worse things than that I should have to live out my days in a paradise where I am treated as an equal. I will miss my father, but he has more children and I have a new life. I'm of the Pack of the Marching Night now. My family and my life are in the Kartik and I will embrace all that I am here among my own kind.

"You coming girl?" Tarius asked, yelling down the trail towards her.

"Yes, I'm coming."

* * *

"So this is your room?" Kasiria asked, crawling into bed with him. His bed was made of logs with rope stretched between them and then a mattress stuffed with what she could only guess was thrown on top of it. It was surprisingly comfortable. Their "home" was a series of four hexagon-shaped huts connected by covered walkways. The largest one in the middle was a kitchen and living area where the Katabull throne dwarfed everything else. The three smaller huts were separate bedrooms for Jabone, his fathers and his mothers. She was sure she was never going to get used to him having four parents or remember which parents were his birth parents and which were his extra parents because they obviously didn't see it that way. It had been a lot easier before she'd actually met Arvon and Dustan because then she had just thought of Tarius as his father and Jena as his mother and she knew that was absurd but it was a lot easier to keep track of than this.

"This is my room, right between them, so that they could take care of me when I was little. If I had brothers and sisters we all would have lived here 'til we moved out," Jabone said sadly, then he smiled. "But well if I did then we'd have to share with them right now so I guess it's lucky I don't have siblings."

"Why don't you have any siblings?"

"My madra had to have me," he said as if that explained everything.

"Tarius is your birth mother then?" Kasiria hadn't really been sure, because . . . well Tarius just didn't seem like she could do something like give birth.

"Yes, that is what Madra means, Kasiria, it means the mother of your birth. It is how cross-paired couples' children keep their parents straight. Ufalla and Tarius sometimes call their parents Madra and Fadra but there is no need because they only have two parents. Tarius is my madra, Jena is my mother, Arvon is my fadra, and Dustan is my father. They all raised me. Just one cub. Normally they would have had four, two at the very least."

"Why didn't they have more?" Kasiria asked, and then wished she hadn't because it was obvious that he was upset.

"Because, my madra was in charge of everything and she couldn't be pregnant. It was a great sacrifice for her to have me, and my mother couldn't have any cubs because my only brother lies in a grave in the cold ground of the Jethrik because your father shot my madra . . . " And then she got to hear yet another story where her father was one of the villains.

And yet he still loves me, and they have embraced me in their family.

"I'm sorry, Jabone."

"You have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing. You weren't even born yet—neither of us were. I always wanted a sibling so badly, and when I finally had the courage to ask my mother why I didn't and learned that I'd had a brother who never got to draw a breath . . . Well it's just not fair."

"I'm sorry I brought up such unhappy memories." She crawled on top of him and kissed his lips. "When we get back, can we have our own hut or do we have to live with your parents?"

"We can have our own hut," he said, laughing.

"But it should be close, so that when we have a bunch of cubs your parents can play with them."

"That would be best," Jabone said smiling. "I have always thought how hard it is for the cubs who grow up with only two parents."

"Jestia," Ufalla said at her shoulder, "Tarius said I'd find you here. What are you doing?"

"Trying to turn that storm," Jestia said, pointing to a line of dark clouds on the horizon.

Ufalla didn't say another word for several minutes. Finally Jestia turned to face her, she smiled. "Well you don't have to be so quiet. I'm already finished. Come here." She put her arms around Ufalla's waist and pulled her against her. "You don't have to make yourself scarce every time I'm doing a spell. Are you afraid of my magic?"

"No, but I don't want to make you mess anything up."

Jestia laughed and hugged her tighter. "You aren't going to mess anything up. Having you with me only makes it easier for me to cast."

Down the deck she could hear Kasiria talking in that too loud way that she seemed to think would suddenly teach the Katabull Kartiks how to speak Jethrikian.

Jestia untangled herself from Ufalla and took her hand, "Come on I've had enough of that to last a lifetime."

Ufalla followed her.

They walked up to where Kasiria was and she turned to them. "Could you ask him when we will get to the territories?"

"Two more days, three tops," Ufalla answered.

Jestia wondered why Kasiria seemed so anxious. Jestia certainly wasn't in any hurry to face the Amalites again. It had to be done but a few more days weren't going to make any difference one way or the other.

"Are you ever going to learn Kartik?" Ufalla asked with a laugh.

"No," Jestia answered, and then to Kasiria, "screaming at them isn't going to make you any easier for them to understand. If you can't manage to ask a simple question in our language how are you going to understand them if they do answer you?"

"I don't know, but I do seem to understand it much more than I can speak it," Kasiria said, her shoulders slumping.

"Speak Kartik," Jestia said, waving her hands flamboyantly in the air.

Behind her Ufalla laughed and said, "You don't have to do any of that. You just do it for show don't you?"

"Do I look good doing it?" Jestia asked with a smile as she flipped her hair back away from her face.

"Well of course. You look good doing just about everything," Ufalla said in a husky voice.

"Do you two ever give it a rest?" Kasiria asked, and then she grabbed her throat. "I can speak Kartik!" She laughed, looked at Jestia and said, "Thank you Jestia, thank you so much and . . . Quit doing things for me."

"You say that as if I'm going to ask for your first born or something," Jestia said.

"Well thanks, Jestia," Kasiria said excitedly, and ran off no doubt to find Jabone.

"You are welcome," Jestia said after her. Then she turned to Ufalla and whispered, "Maybe some of her husband's seed some day, but definitely not a child."

Ufalla laughed and shoved her so hard she then had to catch her.

"Do you always have to be so rough?"

"You know I don't," Ufalla said with a sly smile.

"Jestia!" Tarius bellowed from the helm.

Jestia looked at Ufalla and rolled her eyes. "Why do I always have to do everything?"

Ufalla shrugged and walked with her to the helm. "Yes?" Jestia asked, looking at her nails and seriously considering a spell to make them look pretty instead of mangled.

"Were you able to turn the storm, Jestia?" Tarius asked.

"Aye," Jestia said, quite bored with the whole thing. "And then I made Kasiria speak Kartik."

"Thank the Nameless One," Tarius said. "The girl was about to drive me mad between butchering our language or screaming hers at us."

Jestia nodded her head in agreement and then she heard practice swords and looked up to see young Tarius and Eric fighting on the rear deck. "Come on." She dragged Ufalla after her.

"Bye," Ufalla said to Tarius. Tarius just laughed.

Jestia fought first with young Tarius, who hadn't been able to lay a blade on her. Then she found herself fighting Ufalla which she found was actually sort of exciting her. Then she hit Ufalla in the head and Ufalla staggered back. No one was more shocked than Jestia was. "Oh baby, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Ufalla said in an agitated voice. She rubbed her head and looked at her with an expression Jestia couldn't read.

"Cheater," Tarius accused Jestia.

"What are you talking about?" Jestia asked, more than a little put out.

"Come on Jestia," Ufalla said with a laugh. "You used a spell."

"I didn't," she said.

"You did," Tarius accused. "Every time one of us were about to hit you, you moved."

"Well that's what you're supposed to do, block or move, dumb ass," Jestia said.

"No one's that fast," Tarius said, and added disapprovingly, "you're not practicing your sword work if you use magic."

"I didn't," but now she wasn't sure. Jestia looked at them feeling a bit of panic. "Are you playing some joke on me because if you are it isn't funny."

"I don't think we're the ones tricking anyone," Tarius said.

"Jestia, what's wrong?" Ufalla asked, so Jestia knew she must look as upset as she felt.

"What's wrong you big jerk is that I didn't cast anything." She threw down the practice sword and took off for the hold. Halfway there Ufalla grabbed her arm and spun her around. She started to jerk away from her but Ufalla was much stronger than her and she wasn't letting go.

"What's wrong?" This time it wasn't a question, it was a demand.

Jestia was scared. She looked at Ufalla and said in a whisper, "If I was using a spell then I did it without knowing. Then I'm casting without even trying. I'm casting with my random thoughts."

"So?"

"So . . . What if I get mad and cast something I don't mean to? What if I go to sleep and my dreams cast things and . . . "

"That's not going to happen, Jestia."

"I don't know that, so you surely can't!" Jestia hissed at her. She immediately made herself calm down. Gods! If she was casting with random thoughts she couldn't afford to be mad and certainly not at Ufalla.

"Jestia, you fought a bit better, nothing bad happened," Ufalla said.

Jestia looked at the welt on Ufalla's forehead and started to cry. "Take me to the cabin, Ufalla, I have to think, or maybe not think."

* * *

Jabone had been taking a nap when Kasiria woke him up speaking to him in Kartik saying, "Are you going to sleep all day?"

He just smiled and said in Kartik, "I might."

So she climbed on top of him and asked, "Do you notice something different about me?"

"You've braided your hair like mine. It looks very nice."

"I am speaking Kartik you idiot," she said.

He laughed. "So you are . . . "

Jestia walked into the small cabin. Kasiria and Jabone had been sharing the cabin with Jestia, Ufalla, Eric and Tarius.

"You guys have to leave," Jestia said dismissively.

"Not again," Jabone moaned. "Maybe we want a turn now." Kasiria smacked him in the shoulder and he laughed.

"Seriously, you guys have the room alone more than anyone else," Kasiria said disapprovingly.

"And we use it better," Ufalla said with a laugh.

"You have to leave for your safety," Jestia said, then went to her bag and started pulling out more books than should have fit in it.

"Our safety," Jabone said with a laugh.

Ufalla looked at them and rolled her eyes, "She thinks she's having some sort of magic melt down because she apparently cast a spell without knowing it."

"You're acting like it's no big deal and it's huge! I can cast from thought, but I'm still supposed to have to consciously think about it. It's not supposed to just happen. Go please, I can't trust myself," Jestia said, and this time she was pleading not demanding so Jabone shoved on Kasiria 'til she got up and then he got up as well. Kasiria thought with a smile.
Never tell the Katabull to do anything, ask them. Jestia knows that.

As they walked away she heard Jestia tell Ufalla. "Stand outside the room. Guard the doorway and don't come in or let anyone else in 'til I figure out whether I'm dangerous or not."

"She sounds serious," Kasiria said, some worried.

"Yeah, but you have to remember that Jestia tends to make a big show of everything. Still I don't think they just want the room for sex again," Jabone said thoughtfully then smiled and added, "though if they did, that was a really good way to get rid of us."

* * *

"She said what?" Tarius asked her son, motioning for the helmsman to take the wheel.

"She said she was casting without trying," Kasiria answered before Jabone had a chance. "That she was worried she might be dangerous."