Darek’s plan was to get Alea out of the open marketplace and into the secure environment of House d’Wyr, but there was one problem with this plan that she was quick to point out to him.
“I’m working,” she said. “I can’t just stop.”
“You already did,” Darek said.
“I’m going to call this my mid-shift break and hope none of Raetha House’s spotters report me,” she said.
“Really, cowering in fear of a mercantile house…”
“Might be above a member of a noble house, a lake house, even, but it’s life,” Alea said. “For most of the city, it is how it is. We have to work for a living.”
“We all have to work for a living,” Darek said. “Being in a noble house doesn’t excuse me from being useful… being a common soldier and a male means I grew up knowing that I might have been sent out on the long patrols, or assigned to the border guard. I had that hanging over me.”
“Right up until you found yourself a position on the house guard,” Alea said. “That put me ahead of you in being sent to the battlefield, and Polloi units don’t have the same training, equipment, or support as Durakeshi ones.”
“Yes, well, in this day and age, the odds of an all-out war with an external power are all pretty negligible.”
“You can ignore the possibility, now,” Alea said. “But when you were simply a soldier with no rank and no position, it hung over you.” She turned to go. “I must get back to my work.”
“House Eyru is known for giving their halfkinds free rein,” Darek said. “They take a kind of perverse pride in it, if only because they have so little else to boast about. The rumor is they speak at house meetings and in the chapel and everything… one of them is even the beloved of their matriarch. If I had to guess by the way the others fawned over cer, it’s the one you kicked.”
Alea went still, her face blanking like a stone mask as she clamped down on her instinctive reaction of fear. She felt so naked without a hood.
“I am a woman,” she said. “High-born or not, polloi or not. I will not fear the retribution of a pretty penis who has not been taught cer role.”
“What about the retribution of a house matriarch?” Darek asked. “Or soldiers who see an assault on their house’s pride? Think of how o—how my house—dotes on our pretty Dehsah. Their wicked Dylie might be a poor, ill-mannered bit of smoky quartz compared to our black diamond, but ce’s all they have.”
“If I end up feeding the fish of Lake Durak because I insulted the wrong bile-toad, then so be it,” Alea said. “This is what life is, for the Polloi.”
“Oh, don’t be such a martyr,” Darek said. “The gulf between us isn’t a matter of class, it’s a matter of the willingness to seize an opportunity that’s put before you. I could have ended up in the city army, putting my life on the line to protect you and all the other herdlings, but I didn’t because I chose to take the chances I was given, with the guard and then with Dehsah and Dee.”
“Chances not everybody is accorded.”
“Says the woman who turned her back on the possibility of being a matriarch’s amikan!” Darek said.
“Do you really think that’s what Delia Daella wanted for her life?” Alea asked. “And do you think she would have been seated with me apparently grasping at the folds of her robe?”
“If it was a choice between you and her, or her mother and Durilla Degra?”
“Durilla Degra is a far more suitable choice, to those that have the benefit of viewing the matter dispassionately and from a distance,” Alea said.
“Yes, I would have to imagine she is far more pleasant from far away,” Darek said. “But whether or not Dee ever becomes matriarch, you turned your back on her and walked out of the house… and now you complain about how hard it is to be houseless? It was your choice, just as it’s your choice to refuse my protection now.”
“It’s not a choice, I have to work,” Alea said.
“I’ll employ you,” Darek said.
Alea was not able to blank her face quickly enough to stop Darek from spotting the mixture of rage and confusion that this remark prompted.
“What is it?” he asked, innocently.
“I am not working for a male,” she sung venomously.
“Raetha House is female merchants, then?”
“My employer is the organization, not those who run it,” Alea said. “You should not even be speaking to me. This is against all propriety.”
“We were intimate,” Darek said.
“I was intimate with Delia Daella, who was simultaneously intimate with you,” Alea said. “Any more than incidental contact between the two of us was for her sake and pleasure alone, not my own. We were never intimate.”
“Whatever your motive, it happened,” Darek said. “And I enjoyed it.”
“If I wished to find employment of that sort, I would be at the city barracks and not the marketplace,” Alea said. “The female barracks.”
“Dehsah needs a companion,” Darek said. “Ce’s not allowed to walk outside the walls, and we’ve had to restrict cer visitors as part of the new security protocols.”
“That would be your idea, I suppose,” Alea said. “It would just be devastating if something happened to cer while Dee was away.”
“It would be,” Darek said flatly. “Do you know how awful you sound, Alea? You are talking about an elf, and one who is much beloved of many people, not just Delia Daella. If my love for Dehsah had been anything less than genuine, do you think Dee would have accepted me?”
“I’m sure you do love Dehsah,” Alea said. “As you love power, as you love security, as you love anything that brings you closer to your goals.”
“Yes!” Darek said. “And as I love food and as I love air.”
Alea sighed.
“At this point, I really have no choice, you know,” she said. “I’ve been standing here talking to you far too long to expect a warm welcome at the Reathan compound at the end of the shift. If I do not come with you and accept your protection, I will be left exposed, homeless as well as houseless, and without means of support.”
“If allowing yourself to drift into circumstances in which you seem to have no other choice is what it takes for you to make the correct choice, so be it,” Darek said.
“But I will not be shut up in the walls like an ornament,” Alea said. “I will be productive.”
“You can attend to Dehsah’s needs,” Darek said.
“Dehsah is a natural servant,” Alea said. “What kind of needs can ce have?”
“Very well, then… Dehsah’s wants. You can pick up cer shopping and such.”
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to tread on your hem,” Alea said, and Darek stiffened and stilled.
“I spent some of my off-shift procuring a gift,” he said. “I don’t have time to wait on cer… I’m useful.”
“And here we observe the prized charm which won you a place in the bed of a first daughter of the house,” Alea said.
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