After checking on the youngsters, he didn’t interfere with the workout. Weston was there, and Raeth had the support of all the boys as they paired off to spar with the girls. They were being daintier with the girls than he would have been. He wondered if they would have been so dainty if Dinah had still been among them.
Leaving them to it, Lucivar headed for the places where he would most likely find Beale and Holt. He wanted to ask them about lessons.
Jhett didn’t chatter, for which Daemonar was grateful, but she did point out the spring flowers she recognized and spoke their names as the three of them walked to the village. Grizande repeated the names quietly as she scanned the land around the drive in much the same way Daemonar did—a hunter who enjoyed the scenery but was always aware of other living things and of the potential danger hidden within beauty.
Suddenly Grizande stopped and focused on the trees near the bridge that was the boundary between the Hall’s drive and the village’s road. She growled softly.
Before Daemonar could send out a psychic probe, two minds tapped his first inner barrier. Young. Curious. Individuals who were, for him, a normal part of the estate and didn’t require vigilance.
“A pack of kindred wolves lives in the north woods,” Daemonar explained. “They hunt on the estate, and they will defend anyone who belongs to the Hall. You’re sensing two juveniles who are out exploring. You’re both new, and they’re curious about meeting you if you’re now part of the Hall’s pack. Is that all right?”
Jhett didn’t look sure about meeting wolves, but Grizande nodded. Of course she did. Her little brother was a tiger.
A short whistle was all it took to have the youngsters trotting over to meet them. Daemonar was familiar, so they acknowledged him first with licks and a quick sniff. The females were more interesting, Grizande more than Jhett because she carried Jaalan’s scent on her clothes as well as her own.
*Play?* one of the wolves asked on a general communication thread.
Daemonar shook his head. “We have to go to the village now. Maybe later.”
Grizande said, “Later is long time?”
Whining from the wolves. If they sensed that the girl would rather play with them than go to the village, they would make a fuss to get him to agree to playtime.
“Later is after the midday meal.” He had no idea what Grizande was supposed to be doing this afternoon—or what he was supposed to do—but it would be good for kindred to meet kindred before kitten and wolves stumbled into one another.
Grizande sighed. The wolves sighed. Jhett sighed—but Daemonar didn’t think she sighed for the same reason.
He herded the females across the bridge. The wolves stayed behind.
“Do you know how to swim?” Daemonar asked.
“Yes,” Jhett said.
Grizande nodded. “Tigrelan. Deep rivers. Must swim.”
“Tigers like to swim too. There’s a small lake on the estate. In the summer, we go there to swim.”
“Wolves swim?”
“They do.”
For the rest of the walk to Halaway, he told them the story of how Prince Smoke came to the Hall looking for Jaenelle Angelline and how his pack was invited to live in the north woods and how Smoke’s descendants had lived there ever since—a link to the kindred wolves who held their own Territory, which was closed to humans.
“We’ll start at this shop,” Jhett said when they reached Halaway’s business district, which was the village’s main street.
Daemonar glanced at the shop. It wasn’t the one he’d have chosen. *Jhett, my father and uncle are paying for Grizande’s clothes, so . . .*
That was as far as he got before Jhett turned to Grizande and said, “It’s not the shop for fancy clothes and lingerie, but it has basic clothing of good quality. I came here a couple of weeks ago to fill the gaps in my own wardrobe.”
Grizande braced as if preparing for battle. She looked at Daemonar.
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Jhett knows what you Ladies need. You two take care of that. I’ll wait out here.”
“You do not like inside?” Grizande asked.
“It’s a clothing shop for females. I am not needed inside.” And he’d keep insisting on that for as long as Uncle Daemon let him.
The girls went inside. Daemonar stood on the sidewalk with his back to the shop’s window. If he hadn’t been standing escort, he would have gone to the bookshop a few doors down the street. Or to the bakery to pick up something for Manny and Tersa. There was nothing in the bakery that wasn’t made at the Hall by one group of cooks or the other, but sometimes the novelty of eating something that wasn’t made at the Hall appealed to him. And bringing a box from the bakery tended to catch Tersa’s interest. Persuading her to eat was often a challenge, and her health was still fragile after she almost bled out a few months ago when she’d created several tangled webs to give warning of the troubles that were coming. He could usually get a few bites of food down her if he arrived with treats from the bakery. And Mikal would consume anything that was left when he arrived home, so nothing would turn stale, let alone go to waste.
Two of the guards who served Halaway’s current Queen rode up.
“Standing escort for a couple of Ladies from the Hall,” he said before they asked the question. He tipped his head. “They’re shopping.”
The younger guard looked amused and sympathetic. The older one leaned in his saddle, and Daemonar approached.
“We heard one of them is . . . ,” the guard began.
“From Tigrelan, yes,” Daemonar replied. “A tiger kitten came with her. A Warlord Prince.”
The guard studied him. “Been a while since we’ve had visitors from that Territory.”
“They’re receiving their training at the Hall. An instructor from Scelt has also just arrived.”
“Human?”
Daemonar bit back a smile at the hope in the guard’s voice. He understood the reason for that hope all too well. “Yes. A Green-Jeweled witch from Maghre.”
“Well.” The guard straightened in the saddle. “Well then.”
He hadn’t actually seen the new instructor. While he and Grizande had waited in the great hall for Jhett, Holt had pulled him aside and told him the basics.
“Does she know Liath?” he had asked.
“They’re . . . acquainted,” Holt had replied.
The way Holt had said that was not reassuring.
He watched the street, nodded to people he knew, turned down invitations from young men and women to join them for a drink at the coffeehouse. Turned down a different kind of invitation from an adult woman who should have known better—and who had paled when he reminded her that he needed his father’s or his uncle’s consent before having sex.
There were a couple of women in the village who were attached to the Queen’s court and provided a discreet service. There were a couple of men attached to the court who provided the same service. After all, needs didn’t begin in the marriage bed. But the no-sex-without-consent rule applied to all the youngsters living at the Hall. The staff needed permission from Beale or Helene—and anyone who had met Mrs. Beale and her meat cleaver might think long and hard about approaching Beale for permission. Everyone else required permission from Uncle Daemon. Or Lucivar or Aunt Surreal, depending on who was in charge that day.
Given those choices? Better to wait and talk to Uncle Daemon. Definitely.
It was a long hour before the girls walked out of the shop. Grizande looked a little stunned, but Jhett seemed pleased.
“Why don’t we walk down the street for a bit so you can see where some of the other shops are located?” Daemonar said. “Then I’d like to . . .” He trailed off when he spotted Tersa looking into a shop window.