Captain's Fury (Codex Alera 4)

Kitai shrugged a shoulder. "My father has a saying: Speak only to those who listen. Anything else is a waste of breath. The answers to your questions were there, if you listened for them."

Isana nodded quietly. "What you have with Tavi... it's like your people's other totems, yes? The way your father is close to his gargant, Walker."

Kitai's eyebrows shot up. "Doroga was not mating with Walker, when last I knew." She paused a beat, and added, "Walker would never stand for it."

Isana felt herself laugh despite all.

The Marat girl nodded at that, and smiled. "Yes. It is much the same." She touched her heart. "I feel him, here."

"Are there others, like you? With Aleran... I don't know the word for it."

"Chala," Kitai said. "No. Our peoples have never been close. And whelps are usually kept safeguarded from any outsiders. I am the only one."

"But what clan would you go to?" Isana asked. "If you went back to your people, I mean."

She shrugged. "I am the only one."

Isana absorbed that for a few moments. "That must be difficult," she said quietly. "To be alone."

Kitai bent her head, a small, inward smile on her lips. "I would not know. I am not alone."

Love, deep and abiding, suddenly radiated from the Marat girl like heat from a stove. Isana had felt its like before, though seldom enough, and the power of it impressed her. She had thought the barbarian girl an idle companion before now, someone who stayed near Tavi out of her sense of enjoyment and adventure. She'd misread the young woman by a great deal, assuming that the lack of emotion she generally felt from the girl had meant that there was no depth of conviction in the person behind it.

"You can hide yourself, your feelings. The way he can," Isana said quietly. "You let me feel that, just now. You wanted to reassure me."

The Marat girl faced her, unsmiling, and bowed her head. "You are a good listener, Lady Isana."

Isana bit her lip. "I am hardly a lady, Kitai."

"Nonsense," Kitai said. "I have seen nothing in you to indicate that you would be anything other than one of nobility, refinement, and grace." She pressed something into Isana's hands. "Hold this for me."

Isana blinked as Kitai handed her a sack of heavy burlap. She looked around. The Marat girl had directed their steps while they walked, and Isana had not realized that they had left Craft Lane. She was not certain where they were now. "Why do you want me to hold this?"

"So I have something to put the coldstone in after I have burgled it," Kitai said. "Excuse me." And with that, the girl stepped into a darkened alleyway, flicked a rope up over a chimney, and calmly scaled the outside of a building.

Isana stared for a moment, aghast. Then footsteps sounded down the street, and she looked up to see a pair of civic legionares on their patrol. For a moment, Isana nearly panicked and fled. Then she berated herself sharply and composed herself, slipping the bag underneath her cloak.

The legionares, both of them young men, dressed in leather tunics rather than the military lorica, nodded to her, and the taller of the pair said, "Good evening, miss. Are you all right?"

"Yes," Isana said. "I am well, thank you."

The shorter of the two drawled, "On a pretty spring evening like this, why wouldn't you be. Unless you were lonely, of course."

His immediate and... somewhat exuberant interest ran over her, and Isana felt her eyebrows go up. She'd spent comparatively little of her adult life in places where she wasn't known, by reputation at least, if not by sight. It hadn't occurred to her that she would be effectively anonymous, here. Given the apparent youth of a powerful watercrafter, with her hood up and the strands of silver in her dark hair concealed, she would look like a young woman no older than these legionares. "Not lonely, sir, no," she said. "Though I thank you for asking."

The taller one frowned, and a practical, professional kind of suspicion rippled across her. "It's late for a young woman to be out alone, miss," he said. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"Meeting a friend," Isana extemporized.

"Little late at night for that kind of thing in this part of town," the shorter legionare said.

The taller one sighed. "Look, miss, no offense, but a lot of these young Citizens from the Academy book time, then don't show up for the appointment. They know they're not supposed to be seen down to the Dock Quarter after dark, so they promise the extra coin to get you up here, but-"

"Excuse me?" Isana said sharply. "Exactly what are you accusing me of doing, sir..." She snapped her fingers impatiently. "Your name, legionare. What is your name?"

The young man seemed somewhat taken aback, and she felt his flash of uncertainty. "Urn. Melior. Miss, I don't want to-"

"Legionare Melior," Isana said, pressing her aggression with the kind of self-assurance no younger woman could quite have matched. She reached up and lowered her hood, revealing the silver laced through her hair. "Am I to understand that you are accusing me"-she gave the last word very slight emphasis- "of prostitution?"

The shorter of the two frowned and returned with restrained belligerence, "Well why else would you be out here alone this late with-"

The taller one stepped firmly on his foot. Then he said, "I meant no accusations, my lady. But it is my duty to keep things in order here at night."

"I assure you, young sir, that everything is in order," Isana replied firmly. "Thank you for your concern," she said, then added a slight barb to her tone, "and for your courtesy."

The shorter legionare glared at his partner, then at Isana, and seemed to come to some sort of realization. "Oh," he said. "Right."

The taller one rolled his eyes by way of apology. "Very well, my lady," he said, and they continued on their way.

Once they were out of sight, Isana let out an enormous breath and leaned against the nearest building, shaking slightly. A fine contribution to their mission she would have made, from the inside of a cell with any other wayward ladies of the night they'd collected. For goodness' sake, there was even the chance that she might have been recognized as something other than an anonymous Citizen. She hadn't exactly been a celebrity during her previous visits to the capital, but there had been a number of speeches on behalf of the Dianic League. There was always the chance, however slim it might be, that she might be recognized.