"The transport dragon that airlifted my wounded out reacted violently to Lady Nargra-Kolmayr's presence." Jasak's voice was level, his expression calm, but Shaylar could sense his emotions through the hand still on her shoulder. He wasn't at all happy about broaching this entire subject, she realized. "We didn't have any problems with the dragon from Fort Wyvern, though. I'd hoped it was just a fluke the first time."
"That still doesn't answer my question," Neshok said flatly, stopping in the road now that they were far enough away from the dragons and glaring at Jasak. "What did she mean about not doing anything?"
"Lady Nargra-Kolmayr," Jasak said, and Shaylar realized he was deliberately stressing the Andaran title he'd suddenly assigned her rather than use her first name, "has what her people call a Talent. It's an ability to communicate with others using her mind, and we think some of the dragons may be reacting to it."
Neshok's eyes flared wide in sudden alarm, and Jasak shook his head quickly.
"It's very much like our Gifts, Hundred," he said. "In fact, you could just think of it as a different sort of Gift. It doesn't turn her into some kind of magic mindreader, nor can she influence your thoughts or communicate with her own people from this far away."
"And just how do you know that?" Neshok demanded, his face dark with anger.
"I know because she told me so," Jasak said flatly. "And because if there'd been any way for her to use her Talent effectively against us, she'd certainly have done so, and she hasn't."
"Because she told you so!" Neshok repeated in a scathing tone, completely ignoring Jasak's second sentence. "The woman's a prisoner of war, and you expect her to tell you the truth? Are you a complete idiot? She's going to lie with every breath she takes! I ought to put a bolt through her right now?or throw her back to the dragons!"
Jathmar stiffened, his hands closing into fists. Neshok was speaking too rapidly, and too angrily, for Jathmar to completely follow the conversation, but he'd understood enough. He started to step in front of Shaylar, but before he could move, Gadrial's hand?no longer limned in fire, thank the gods!?closed on his elbow. He looked down at her, then looked back up … just in time to see Jasak step in front of his wife.
Jasak was a good three inches taller than Neshok, and much broader across the shoulders, but it was his expression and his body language, not his size, which made the other hundred abruptly step back a pace.
"I'm getting tired of explaining this to pigheaded, pea-brained, bigmouthed excuses for Andaran officers who frigging well ought to know better," Sir Jasak Olderhan said very, very softly. "But I'll try one more time, and I advise you to listen to me very carefully, because I'm not going to repeat myself again. Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband are my shardonai. Any insult, any injury or threat, offered to them is offered to a member of my family. Perhaps you'd care to reconsider that last sentence of yours."
His hand hovered in the vicinity of the short sword at his hip, and Jathmar's tension clicked up yet another notch as Jugthar Sendahli and Otwal Threbuch quietly stepped out on either side of Jasak, facing Neshok and his detail. The Second Andaran Scouts, Jathmar abruptly remembered from Gadrial's explanations, were the hereditary command of the Dukes of Garth Showma. Apparently, he realized, that relationship extended rather further than he'd assumed it did.
None of them actually touched a weapon. But none of them had to, either.
"Very well," a white-lipped Neshok grated after a moment. "I withdraw the last sentence. But shardonai or not, how can you be so sure they're telling you the truth? For that matter, how can you be sure you didn't decide to make them shardonai in the first place because she somehow influenced your mind?"
"Because she was three-quarters unconscious with a concussion when I made my decision," Jasak said almost contemptuously. "And because after three weeks in their company, I've discovered that unlike certain Arcanans I could mention, these are both people of honor who understand the mutual obligations of a baranal and his shardonai. They may not volunteer information, and they may even refuse to answer questions, but they won't lie to me, Hundred."
Neshok's angry, frightened expression didn't change. He was obviously not convinced, but equally obviously he couldn't think of a way to continue the argument without edging back into potentially dangerous waters. That was when Gadrial spoke up unexpectedly.
"Lady Nargra-Kolmayr is as clear as glass, Hundred Neshok. It's not in her nature to lie! God above, man?all you have to do is look at her to know that!"
Gadrial's outburst had drawn Neshok's angry eyes back to her. Now those eyes softened with an expression of pity.
"Magister Kelbryan, your work with Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah is renowned, even out here on the frontier. I can't imagine the grief and shock you must have experienced after his murder by these?" his glance flicked once more toward Shaylar and Jathmar, hardening again "?barbarians."
White-hot fury exploded suddenly inside Shaylar made even worse by the lingering echoes of the terror she'd felt when the dragons began to hiss, and she jerked free of Jathmar's arm. She took a long, angry stride towards Neshok, stepping around Jasak. The Fort Wyvern officer towered above her, but the mantle of her anger made her a giant.
"Barbarians?" she hissed in his face. "Don't you dare call us barbarians! Don't you dare use the word 'murder' after what your soldiers did to us! We were civilians, damn you?civilians! And if you don't believe that, look what happened when your soldiers finally had to face ours. You kill civilians?use weapons that burn civilians alive!?but you call me a barbarian?
"My country is four thousand years old?four thousand years of civilization, art, science, and literature! Sharonian civilization is over five thousand years old. Five thousand years of recorded history?how many do you have?"
Neshok looked like a man who'd picked up his boot and suddenly discovered a cobra in it.
"We're not the ones who've acted like barbarians, but don't think for a moment that we don't know how to respond to barbarians! My mother is a Shurkhali ambassador! Do you think she, or any of our countries, will ever forgive you for what you've done? They think?she thinks?that I'm dead, curse you!"
She stood there in a puddle of utter silence, glaring up at Neshok, and naked shock had detonated behind his eyes. Even Jasak seemed stunned.
"Your mother is an ambassador?" he asked hoarsely, and she turned on him with flaming eyes, too shaken by the encounter with the dragons to contain the pain and rage Neshok had roused.
"Yes! What? You thought our people were too primitive, too violent for something that civilized?"
"No, Shaylar," he said, deliberately taking both her hands in his so that she would know. "I never thought that. Any civilization that could produce you is worthy of respect. But your mother's status makes this whole situation even more difficult, more complicated."
Shaylar bit down on a hysterical laugh as it tried to break loose in her throat.
"You don't have the slightest idea how much more," she told him. "You don't have any concept of how the Shurkhali honor code is going to react to what's happened."
"No, but I'm trying to understand, for your sake, as well as because it's my duty. And it's also," he flicked a cold glance at Neshok, "just one more reason to treat Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband with courtesy."
His eyes locked with Neshok's, and a muscle jumped in the other man's jaw.
"The Two Thousand is waiting," he half-snapped after a moment and turned on his heel one more to march toward the fort.