“Oh. Oh! I am sorry.” Girion’s cheeks turned a faint pink above his beard, and he honestly looked ill at ease. “I... I am afraid I will need your assistance with how we are to appear, what words to bandy, and that sort of thing.”
Jocasta shook her head. “I can tell you when the fish are running and what’s in season. I can tell you what to do with gout or chilblains. Those are the only words I bandy. You must have had so much training on etiquette—”
Girion’s face closed over. “It stopped when I was nine. The formal training in etiquette, manners, and the like. My father took over my training in strategy, defense, and diplomacy, and, of course, I had tutors, and I went through Caledon’s Royal Academy of Defense. Everything else I’ve learned along the way, or I’ve picked up from frantic nudges and head shakes.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a weary sigh, flicking the long, silvery white braid from one shoulder to the other. “When you’re a king, and you can rip someone’s arm off, they do tend to give you a wide berth at social functions. And if you hate social functions...” Girion smiled ruefully.
Jocasta smiled back. “When you live on the back end of the world, the social functions are few and far between, as well. You’re the king! Can’t you simply cancel the ball?” she begged, pretending that she didn’t feel like a coward.
Girion laughed. “I wish. But sometimes you show force in the banquet hall, not the battlefield.” He held out a new, tightly rolled scroll towards her. “We have a ball coming all too soon, and I thought we should go through the guest list. I’ll tell you what I know of each person, weaknesses, points to flatter, topics to discuss.”
“How many people are coming?”
“Sixty or so.”
“Sixty!” she squeaked.
“You will be expected to know less than I am.”
“Or more,” she countered, hands going to her hips as if she was telling off a patron who claimed she’d shortchanged him. “I am not a massive, imposing king with a chest like a granite wall and a scowl that would melt lead! I am a little nothing, a little nobody, a short nobody! To impress them, I will have to do so much more.”
Girion looked thoughtful. “You may be right.”
“Iamright,” she huffed, arms now crossing. Her family referred to it as her “stinking eel” pose. When she was stubborn, she clung to something like the smell of rotting fish, and nothing lingered quite as bad as stinking eel.
Suddenly, his large arm was behind her back, and he was ushering her along. “We can go to my study.”
“You have a study?” Jocasta didn’t picture him studying, just lunging and leaping into action, winning by default, his sheer size and strength his first weapons, and that cool, practical mind she’d witnessed acting as his secondary defenses.
“I study at times. I study a lot. I read every law before it is passed, and if it takes me more than an hour to read or I have to ask someone else to explain part of it, then I suggest it is revised, simplified, and shortened. Laws should be made in the service of the people, not to add to their frustration.”
“I agree with you on that.” Jocasta smiled as she found herself whisked away, down the backstairs, through narrow (to Girion) stone passages, eventually emerging into a room covered in tapestries and dented shields, a worn desk with sword hacks and missing chunks sitting under piles of books and scrolls.
“Uh. I don’t let them tidy in here. It drives the Master of the Household mad.”
“I can see that.” Jocasta groaned and shifted some discarded armor from a chair to the floor.
“Don’t do that! You mustn’t lift things my size, or you will strain—no!”
Jocasta had thought he’d smile—or maybe she’d just thought she ought to prove she had the gifts he wanted her for. She picked him from the floor with a single sweep of her arm, just two inches, but when she saw the sick dread in his eyes, she put Girion back down. “I’m sorry. I thought I would prove that I was strong. Strong with magic, if not muscle,” she murmured, stepping back.
Girion was staring at her, fists clenched, eyes hard. His chest heaved. “Don’t do that again. Never.”
“Never!” she agreed, a current of fear sickening her as it lodged in her middle. “I’m sorry.”
A long breath. A deep breath. “You have so much power. Power that many shifters and humans lack. When you are someone’s ally, you trust them. You want them to be strong. But not to use that strength on you.”
Jocasta nodded vigorously, her long black curls sleeked down with something Laren and Letty had rubbed generously into her hair, bobbing around her. “I will never use my powers against you.”
“Oronme!” he thundered, but in the next breath, he was whispering, a hand raised in apology. “I am sorry. I will never,ever use my strength against you. Only to protect you. You need never fear me, never in any form.”
“All right. That is right,” she soothed.
Girion nodded and spread the scroll out on the table. He rubbed his scarred eye thoughtfully, then walked to the long leather rope by the side of the door. “Is it too early for wine?”
“No.”
“I think better on a full stomach.” He patted his chest, and images sprang into Jocasta’s mind without her permission.
He was all muscle, layers of thick muscle bunched together, a broad, barrel of a chest with flat expanses above it. So strong. Nothing but strength.
