Page 15 of Prima
“I would offer it to you,” she says, “but I’ve been using it since I was a baby.”
He looks up at her. “It’s quite all right. I drink out of cups of gold and jade when I’m home.”
She must look like a loon, grinning nonstop. But humor aside, she has the feeling that he isn’t entirely joking. She’d bet that this boy with his swift, unusual boat has seen a thing or two growing up and perhaps indeed sipped out of chalices made of precious materials.
“Did you also bring my hostess gift from home?” she asks, sitting down on a folding stool opposite him.
His gaze dips down to where her sarong is tied across her chest before meeting hers again. His eyes are as cool as the sea at much greater latitudes yet heat ripples across her skin.
“The liquor? That was a parting present from the men who were spared another six months of ‘volunteering’.”
“Ah,” she murmurs.
“You sound surprised.”
“Only because you sounded extremely upstanding.”
He snorts. “Dawan is rotten from top to bottom. If I’d refused this gift, the men would think that I still mean to report them for unauthorized wife-hunting: At best they’d go to bed dreading my return; at worst they’d organize a much larger party to come after me. Taking their gift signals to them that I understand the system and can be bought. They’ll be much more at ease and I won’t have to watch my back with as much trepidation.”
She pours tea for him. “So you’re at least a little bit corruptible?”
He waits for her to fill her own cup before raising his. The cuff of his tunic is embroidered with a pattern of branching corals, blue on white. “That depends. Who’s looking to corrupt me?”
“Me, of course.”
He lifts one brow. “In what way?”
Her heart beats faster. “In what way are you amenable to corruption?”
His glance slides down her, so briefly it’s barely a flicker. Is that his answer? Yet as he looks back at her, in that cool, steady way of his, she realizes that maybe she isn’t as fully in control of the situation as she thought she was. The boy isn’t just beautiful and capable, but dangerous in a way she can’t fully articulate.
She backpedals a bit. “And you’re not worried anymore that I might have been sent by your superiors?”
He takes a sip of his tea. His hand is strong, yet his hold on the small cup is delicate. “Our women are resilient, but they’re wary of men. Those hoping for marriage would not initiate contact with random strangers. And the ones with their sights set on concubinage require demonstrations of wealth and power on my part before they deign to smile.”
“I see—my smiles are too free,” she says, smiling. “What about women who intend neither marriage nor concubinage?”
She already knows, of course, that it is not an option for the women of Dawan. But she wants to hear what he has to say about it.
“Legally they must enter into either by the time they are twenty-one. Extremely highborn women can disregard their husbands, but even they must marry.”
“What about men? Must they also marry that young?”
“We have a severe shortage of women. These days men are lucky to be assigned a wife before they turn thirty.”
And yet the men of Dawan wait, however impatiently. And if they blame anyone, it’s the women who run away, not the men who control the system and have many concubines each.
“How old are you?” she asks.
“Seventeen.”
Two years younger than her. Surprising—she’d pegged him at twenty, at least. “So if I come back in ten years, you’ll still be unattached?”
He considers her question, looking puzzled. “Why would you come back?”
True, why would she? Just to be wife-hunted again?
Yet the thought of never seeing him again beyond this day is oddly dispiriting—disturbing, almost.
