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“You think that is strength. To kill an innocent beast? To be cruel to a child?”

“Vahul had to do those things. He had to treat me so. He wanted to keep his throne.”

“He was cruel. He could have taught you well to be an Irgo and remained your advisor when you came of age. Instead you killed him. So what use is his strength?”

“You think an Irgo should have allowed a green boy to train a dog to growl at him and not be punished?”

Tobi thinks of that first dinner in Urynwud when he snatched meat from Harok’s plate. “Baby growls at you,” Tobi says. “And you do not punish her or me for it.”

“But you do not teach her to do so,” Harok says “This is the difference. Your beast growls at me because she is wise.”

Tobi frowns. He doesn’t know why Harok would think Baby wise for growling at him and before Tobi can ask, Harok shifts Tobi from his lap and stands, “We eat now, Suskara,” he says.

Harok walks over to where Embox is nibbling at some grasses on the edge of the forest. He collects something from the pack and brings it back.

It turns out to be a package of food wrapped in roughspun linen.

Harok roasts some pieces of cured meat over the fire on a metal plate. The delicious scent of it makes Tobi’s belly growl.

They eat the food in soft, easy silence. Tobi is glad of it. He understands and speaks Ambolk well but he still has to concentrate. It’s very pleasant just to be together — Tobi feeling the warm soft sensation in his belly that he often gets when he is with Harok — and share this simple meal of meat and bread and butter and some sharp pickled vegetables Harok produces from a small clay pot. Tobi would like to end the meal with some honey cakes or ripe plums, but it seems Harok has not brought any sweet food with him.

When they have eaten, Harok pulls Tobi into his lap and pushes his big hands under the fur and Tobi’s cloak beneath it. Both slip off his shoulders, baring them to the sea wind and Tobi shivers, pressing close to Harok’s big warm body. Harok moves the fur so more of Tobi’s skin is exposed. He pushes the cloak down to Tobi’s waist and takes hold of the neckline of Tobi’s alit and pulls it off, up over Tobi’s head, wrapping him naked in the fur.

“Suskara,” Harok says, pulling Tobi close and pressing his lips to Tobi’s neck, “you are more to me than I ever dreamed. But there is much you do not know about me. And much I need to tell you in time. But before that, I wish to know about you. I want you to tell me about yourself.”

Tobi tips his head back to look at Harok.“What about me?”

“Your story. Tell it to me. I knew you were part of the Darek family, but Mereli tells me your father is Prince Rafus. But you do not live with him in the Rose Palace of Attar or the Ivory Palace of Ceruleum. I thought that in Azuria the sons were always the heirs of their fathers. Why do you not have the life of a prince?”

“I am bastard born,” Tobi says. Lymok had told Tobi once that there was no Ambolk word meaning bastard, so he uses the Artemian one and explains, “My father and mother were not wed. I have not seen my father since I was sixteen years old.”

Tobi tells his story as best he can. Lymok often had him speak in Ambolk as they made conversation. Asking him all kinds of questions about himself and teaching him the words so he could respond in Ambolk. He does his best to remember them and form the sentences well, and only struggles for the right word occasionally. He watches Harok’s face as he speaks, hoping the story he tells makes sense to him.

He wants Harok to know this. He wants Harok to know all of him. Even the things that shame him.

“My father didn’t know about me for the first seven years of my life. My mother was an actress with a company that toured around Fanost. We played in Lunatum, Obliquum and Naranda. These are all cities in Fanost. The east of the Azurian Empire. But there was plague. Sickness. My grandsire Emperor Erond closed the playhouses. He closed the roads into Attar from Fanost. The plague went away but the ban was not lifted for moon after moon. Even after Erond died. My mother had no way to make coin. She wrote to my father for help. He let us come to the Rose Palace in Attar. He thought her story true. He believed I was his son. I have Darek eyes. I look like my father’s son Atticul. My father’s heir.” Tobi wrinkles his nose.

Harok traces a finger down the side of Tobi’s face.“You did not like this Atticul?”

“Ei. He was cruel. But I liked my other brothers. Damon and Lukas. My uncle Selim was the new Emperor. He would never have a son because he was devoted to Zai. My father was his heir. My father’s only true son was Atticul. Damon, Lukas and I were prized, as we might have to form the royal line if my father sired no more sons. I was a boy of seven turns and I became a prince. I slept in a room shared with my brothers. My mother had a chamber with my father’s wives. I am sure she shared my father’s bed. When Selim opened the roads between Fanost and Azuria and playhouses re-opened, my father forbade us from returning to Fanost. I was too valuable. I did not think we were prisoners but we were. My mother and I stayed in Attar for a year’s turn, before my mother came to me in the night and said we had to leave. She said she had discovered something that meant we had to run for our lives. But I did not want to go. I wanted to stay and live in the palace.”

Tobi sniffs. He does not know what Harok will think of him when he knows about the terrible things he did.

“You rejected your mother?” Harok says. “You stayed behind?”

“Worse,” Tobi says. “I went with her. In the Rose Palace there was a beast tamer who played for the Rose Court. He had a lykat. I liked to follow him and watch him train his beasts. He taught me much, but he treated his animals cruelly. When we left, I stole one of his lykat cubs. That beast was Baby’s mother. My mother tried to stop me, but I insisted and she let me take the beast. I would only go with her if I could have a lykat.” Tobi stops and smiles sadly up at Harok. He has not reached the tragic part of his tale, but he already feels deep sorrow, heavy in his chest.

Harok strokes Tobi’s face and says, “Just as with me. You would not go without your beast.”

“We returned to Fanost. I was badly behaved. I was a young boy and I was angry. I missed having rich food and servants. I wanted to be a prince. I ran wild in my anger and I did not see that my mother was suffering. I stole and got into fights. I was cruel to her. She became ill for worry about me. Her illness turned to madness. She was forgetting things. She was not sleeping. She began to read strange books in the night. She wrote letters to her old friends in Archillia and had them send her things. She wanted to learn magic. She read old stories. The fae, demons, the Bellator, the Dark Water, Pia and Prim. Years passed and she grew stranger. She spoke words that were confusing and scratched herself bloody. She could not perform. She could not remember the words. I took her place in the players. Performing with my beast. When I was fifteen turns she attacked another woman, saying that woman was a demon. We had to leave.” Tobi looks out into the forest behind the shoreline. “I miss my mother. I haven’t heard her sing in so long. She does not even remember me now. She does not know she has a son. Her mind is broken.”

“What happened to her? Is she gone from this world?”

“No. She is in Ceruleum. She is cared for by the Brides of Zai.” Tobi swallows. “And all because of me. I did it. I ran so wild. I caused it.”

“Many a mother has a wild son, Suskara.”

“But they do not go mad from it.”