asked,” Kaylin replied with a shrug. “I knew it was an honor, so I did it.”
All of Marcus’s wives now looked at each other in turn. The silence—a silence that was very unusual in the Pridlea—was heavy. “We told him,” Kayala said at last. “Sarabe—”
Sarabe said nothing.
“Guys, look—Marcus needs help. And to help him, I need to know what’s going on.”
“You will likely know more than we know by the time you have finished speaking with my sister,” Sarabe said at last. “But I will say what I can. You’ve noticed my fur color?”
Kaylin nodded. “I like it,” she offered.
“I don’t. And my sister does not. It marks us, and we are forbidden sons because of it.”
“Forbidden … sons.”
“Yes.”
A thought—an unwelcome thought—occurred to Kaylin. “You can choose the sex of your cubs?”
“No. We cannot. We merely have the duty to see that if sons are born, they do not survive. Don’t look at me like that, Kaylin. You don’t understand our history. You don’t understand what the color of our fur means.”
“No. But I’m listening.”
“In times past,” Sarabe continued, “we would have been drowned at birth. My sister and I. But our mother was young, and foolish, and the old ways are not as strong in this city as they are among our other tribes. My mother’s husband—that is your word, yes?—was old and also foolish, and he had lost many wives to birthings. He desired cubs, and when we were born, he approached the Elders, and he petitioned for our lives. He understood that he could not hide us. He could not dye our fur, and expect us to survive in the world without the blessing of his Elders. He was a friend of Marcus, his mentor. He was unusual in many ways for a Leontine, and if Marcus is unusual, my father is often blamed.” She shot a side glance at Kayala, who nodded.
“Because we were girls, and at the urging of many of the more liberal of our kind, he was granted his petition and we were allowed to grow. There was no certainty that we would survive to adulthood—many who are otherwise unmarked do not. But we were not seen as a threat. Indeed, it was thought that none would take us to wife, and we would find no Pridlea, and have no children, of our own.
“It is in our children that our greatest threat lies,” Sarabe added.
“You have children.”
“I was blessed with three daughters,” Sarabe said. “I do not know what Marcus would have done had one of my cubs been a son.”
“He would have drowned him,” Kayala said firmly. “And if not he, then one of us.”
Kaylin couldn’t believe her ears. She asked Kayala a question in her high, broken Leontine, and Kayala reached out and ruffled her hair. “We are a dangerous people,” the Matriarch told Kaylin, “and our ways are harsh. But better the death of the son than the death of the race.”
“You’re talking about babies,” Kaylin said, finding no easy way to express her outrage in Leontine. Which, given that Leontine was her language of choice for cursing, said something.
“You may have noticed that babies do not stay young,” Kayala replied. “Reesa, stop that—we just replaced that table.” Reesa obligingly pulled her claws out of the wooden surface. Kaylin had always wondered what Leontines outside of the city used for scratching posts—or dinner tables—but she wasn’t certain at this moment she wanted to know. “Babies grow. And the sons who are born to those who bear the witch-fur grow into something wild and dangerous.”
“I’ve practically lived with Marcus for eight years. He doesn’t move a piece of paper without telling you all about it. As far as I can tell this is true of all Leontine men. Hells, he might ask you first on a good day. You’re saying—”
“Marcus is a kit,” said Tessa firmly. It was full of affectionate amusement. “He understands that the Pridlea is his in name only, and he doesn’t meddle.” The warmth of the smile left her face, leaving fangs in its wake. “Not all men are as smart, and not all men are as … what is your word? Casual?”
“Laid-back, maybe.”
“Laid-back. Doesn’t that mean dead?”
Probably, to a Leontine. “It means relaxed.”
“Ah! Yes, that is the word. Relaxed. Not all men are as relaxed or as sensible as ours.”
“Marcus desires our happiness,” Kayala said gently. “He always did. He learned, as he grew whiskers, that our happiness and his were entwined—but he wanted our happiness first. You must have noticed the way he takes you into his own shadow, Kaylin? He wants what is best for you.”
“Getting yourself thrown into a Caste jail while vultures rule the Hawks is not what is best for me. And it doesn’t make me happy either.”
Graylin hissed.
Kaylin lifted a hand, palm up, in immediate surrender. “I’m sorry,” she told them all quietly. “I don’t know where that came from.”
Kayala batted the side of Kaylin’s head. It hurt. It did not, however, send her flying, which told Kaylin it was meant affectionately. “You are like us, when you worry,” she said. “We understand.”
“He always notices the strangers,” Sarabe continued, her voice so soft it was hard to hear. “He always notices the outcasts or the misfits. He speaks unkindly, but while he bares fangs and exposes claws, he stands between us and those who mean us harm. Many of his brothers think he is—what is the word, Kayala?”
“I don’t think Kaylin needs to hear the word,” Kayala replied sharply. Which probably meant it was, in Kaylin’s line of work, a useful word. She held her peace, however.
“They think he is weak,” Sarabe continued, choosing a less colorful, and entirely Elantran, substitute. “Because he doesn’t fight unless he needs to. But if he is cornered, he can kill. We’ve seen it, and we know.”
“If you’re cornered, you can all kill.”
“Yes, but Marcus doesn’t choose to hunt for sport. He is gentle.”
Tell that to the Quartermaster, Kaylin thought, remembering the carved surfaces of far too many desks.
“Let me continue, then. My sister and I were allowed to live. We were allowed to grow, and we were allowed to request the rites of majority. All of this was considered safe, for us, although many of the more conservative Leontines resented it. They made our lives harder,” she added, baring fangs.
“Sarabe,” Graylin told her, “if you begin to catalogue all wrongs done you, we will be here all night, with Kaylin no wiser.”
Sarabe smacked Graylin, who rolled with the blow. “He is much kinder than his wives.
“But … we were allowed to live normal lives because it was understood that we would never progress
