She lifted her chin as she began binding her hair back into a tail. “There? You see? Because I carry our child, you expect me to sit quietly in some stone box until it is time to give birth.”
“No,” Tavi said. “I expect you to keep our…” He tried not to choke over the word. “… child… safe.”
“Safe?” Kitai eyed him. “There is no such place, Aleran. Not anymore. Not until the vord are put down. There are only places where it will take longer to die.”
Tavi had no real answer to that. He leaned back on his heels and stared at her for a long moment.
“This is why you insisted on a courtship,” he said. “On us sleeping apart.”
Kitai’s cheeks flushed. “It… is another reason, Aleran.” She swallowed. “There were many reasons.”
Tavi leaned forward and offered her his hand.
She took it.
They held hands for a quiet moment.
“Our child,” Tavi said.
She nodded, her eyes wide and difficult to read.
“When did you know?”
“Toward the end of the voyage back from Canea,” she said.
“How long?”
She shrugged, and for one of the few times in Tavi’s memory, failed to look calm and confident. “Six months. If the father was Marat. But our people and yours… this has never before happened.” She swallowed, and Tavi thought that she looked, in that instant, fragile and beautiful, like a flower coated in ice. “I do not know what will happen. No one knows what will happen.”
Tavi sat in total silence for a long moment, trying to get his head around such a simple and enormous truth.
He was going to be a father.
He was going to be a father.
A little person was going to come into the world, and Tavi would be his father.
Kitai’s fingers stroked over his hand. “Please tell me what you are thinking.”
“I’m…” Tavi shook his head, at a loss. “I’m thinking that… that this changes things. This changes everything.”
“Yes,” Kitai said in a very small voice.
Tavi blinked, then seized both her hands in his. “Not between you and me, Kitai. This doesn’t change that.”
She searched his eyes, blinked twice, and a tear rolled down each cheek before she remembered her watercrafting and closed her eyes.
Tavi suddenly drew her hard against him so that he could put his arms around her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t you dare think you need to hide them from me.”
She turned her face against his chest, and her slender arms suddenly tightened on him. He was abruptly reminded that she was very nearly as strong as he was, despite the difference in their sizes. And she was wearing chain mail. Very chilly chain mail. Tavi winced but didn’t move.
Kitai left her face against his chest for a time, and her tears, warmer than his ever were, made his skin damp.
“I did not know what you would do,” she said a few moments later, her arms never loosening. “What you would think. We didn’t do things in the right order.”
Tavi was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “You were worried about our child being thought of as a bastard?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve seen Maximus’s scars. I saw how mad Phrygiar Navaris became. I’ve seen others who are… who are outsiders. Abused. Because they are not legitimate. As if simply by being born they are guilty of a crime. I did not know what to do.”
Tavi was quiet for a time and stroked her hair with one hand. Then he said, “There are two things we could do.”
She made a sniffling sound and listened.
“We could arrange things so that the child was not thought of as a bastard,” he said.
“How?”
“Oh, we lie, of course. We get married at once and simply say nothing else, and when the child is born we marvel that he—”
“Or she,” Kitai interjected.
“Or she must have come early.”
“Will that not be found out? A truthfinder would realize that was a story immediately.”
“Oh,” Tavi said, “everyone would realize it was a story. But no one would say anything about it. It’s what is called a ‘polite fiction’ among people who care about such things. Oh, there might be some sniggering, some remarks made behind our backs, but it wouldn’t be seriously challenged.”
“Truly?”
“Happens all the time,” Tavi said.
“But… but it would still be used against the child. Laughed at behind his back. Used to taunt him—”
“Or her,” Tavi interjected.
“Or her,” Kitai said. “It will forever be a weakness that someone else will be able to exploit.”
“That’s up to the child, I daresay,” Tavi said.
Kitai considered that for a moment. Then she said, “What other thing might we do?”
Tavi gently tilted her head up to look at him. “We do as we please,” he said calmly, “and dare anyone to disagree. We give our child all of our love and support, ignore the law where it could hurt him, and we challenge to the juris macto anyone who tries to do us harm over the issue. We do something for all the bastard children of the Realm, starting with our own.”
Kitai’s eyes flashed a brighter shade of green as something fierce kindled to life in them. “We can do this?”
“I don’t see why not,” Tavi said. “I’m going to be the First Lord, after all. Anyone who is going to turn against me will do it regardless of what excuse they use. Anyone who supports me will do so regardless of what order we did things in.”
Kitai frowned at him. “Chala,” she said quietly, “I do not care about other Alerans. I care about what you will think.”
He took her hands between hers, and said, “I am told that a Marat woman’s custom is to offer a potential mate a trial by contest before The One.”
She smiled slowly. “You’ve been asking about it?”
“The professor who gave me the assignment was most insistent,” he said drily. “I have drawn a few conclusions from this fact.”
“Yes?” Kitai asked.
“That since the woman chooses the contest, she has ample opportunity to reject her suitor. If she doesn’t care for him, she simply selects a contest at which he is unlikely to prevail. Say, a young woman of Horse doesn’t care for the attentions of a Wolf suitor, she challenges him to a horseback race.”
Kitai’s eyes danced, but her tone and expression were both serious. “The One witnesses the contest. The Marat most worthy prevails. This is known, Aleran.”
“Of course,” Tavi said. “I doubt that The One cares for his children to be forced to mate with those whom they do not desire.”
“Many young Marat males would disagree with you quite loudly. But in this, you are very nearly as wise as a Marat woman,” Kitai said solemnly. “Not quite. But very nearly.”
“I seem to recall a trial by contest between a certain beautiful young Marat woman and a foolish Aleran youth. It was quite a number of years ago, and the trial was held in the Wax Forest near the Calderon Valley. Dimly though I recall such an ancient time, I seem to remember that the young man was victorious.”
Kitai opened her mouth to reply hotly, then seemed to think better of it. She let out a rueful chuckle. “Only because the young woman willed it so.”
“How is that any different from any other young Marat woman who wishes to accept a young man as a mate?”
Kitai arched an eyebrow at him. “It…” She tilted her head. “It… is not.”
“Well, then,” he said. “According to the laws and customs of your people, for which I have the deepest respect, we have been married for a number of years. The child is perfectly legitimate.”
Kitai narrowed her eyes, and a smile haunted her lips. “We are not wed. That was not a proper mating trial.”