The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(453)

His smile was suddenly sad. “I’m glad to hear that. But the fact remains you might hurt someone, for all your best intentions. Eino is impressionable, and even a young godling can be… impressive.”

I put my juice down, completely mystified. “Eino’s really strong, though. He’s even stronger than me in a lot of ways.” I felt this instinctively. “That’s why I want to stay near him, so I can get strong like that.”

“Yes.” Arolu stopped smiling. “You could use him that way. But what does he gain from the exchange? Will he grow stronger too?” When I inhaled, because I had never thought of it as using, Arolu sighed. “Study the history of gods and mortals on this world, Lady Shill. I suspect I cannot keep you from Eino; I’ve lived among enulai too long not to understand something of your kind and your natures. You must be what you are—but please, try not to make the same mistakes as others of your kind. That’s all I ask.”

With that, he patted my hand and got up and went away upstairs. I sat there a little while longer, trying to understand what that whole conversation had been about, but I didn’t. Then one of the boys came over and said, “May I take your plate, Lady?”

I blinked up at him. He was small, almost as small as me, and his hair was only to his shoulders; he’d braided it back. He didn’t have on a complicated robey thing the way Eino and Arolu did; his was simpler and plainer-colored, with narrow sleeves that had been pushed up to the elbow. He kept his eyes turned down, which I didn’t like, so I said, “Hello! I’m Shill. Who are you?”

He looked surprised. “Oh—um. I’m Juem, Lady. Just a servant.”

I knew the word servant. It was sort of like the way some mortals tried to do things we wanted, except we never asked them to. I wondered why. And I really wished he would look up! “Hey, do you want some juice?” I picked up the pot Arolu had used. There wasn’t much left so I made more until the pot was full, and then I made some cups, and then I stood up to try and pour the juice into them the way Arolu had done. The other boy was over by the fire, looking at me oddly; Juem just stared, gape-mouthed. I don’t know why. It was hard pouring the juice. I spilled some, then gasped and tried to find something to wipe it up with, and Juem reached for a rag on another table, but then I just vanished it away and tried to pretend I hadn’t spilled it. Juem started laughing behind his hand, and I ducked my head. “Um. Sorry.”

The other boy—the one who’d told Arolu about me being outside Eino’s room—came over and took the pot from my hands with a graceful little bow. “It’s all right, Lady. That’s our job, anyway. It takes practice.”

“It’s a hard job!” They both giggled at this, but I felt better, because I didn’t think they were laughing at me. “Um, hello. I’m Shill.”

The other boy looked amused. He was older than Juem, but looked a lot like him, and I could feel the kinship between them. Siblings! “I heard. I’m Erem. Honored to meet you, Lady.”

“OK.” I wasn’t sure what else to say when people said stuff like that. “Do you want some too?” So we all sat down and had juice together.

“This is good,” Juem said as we relaxed. “We should do a fermented version for the wedding feast.”

“What?” Erem looked shocked.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Juem chuckled at Erem. “The old lady announced it yesterday; didn’t you hear? She’s picked Mikna. ’S’why Eino stormed out all afire before mid-meal. She said who she’d picked, he asked her for a private talk in her study, all prim and calm as you please—and then Heshna at the Dallaq clan house said he could hear Eino yelling. That’s two houses away.” He grinned at both of us; I blinked. “They say he didn’t even come home ’til the middle of the night!”

Anything about Eino interested me. I knew that mid-meal was a time when humans liked to feed themselves in the middle of the day. I had appeared in the market around midday! So I had met Eino right after he had yelled at Fahno, then gone looking for a way to sneak his scroll into the Raringa.

Erem inhaled, sitting forward. “Only he could get away with that.”

“Maybe. Rumor has it he was at Yukur with a bunch of other boys breaking curfew, all of ’em cavorting like traitors of old!”

“No!”

I was not supposed to tell, so I bit my bottom lip. But I was so curious! Maybe I could ask about things that weren’t about the anatun? “I don’t understand,” I said, carefully. “Why was Eino upset? What is a Mikna?”