Retrospection on an Introduction
Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado
Kamele spun on her toes in the center of the common room, looking down into the floor mosaic. Leaves, and birds, and cunning furred animals moved beneath her feet.
She laughed as Jen Sar came into the room, wine glasses in hand. "I thought you said small."
He lifted an eyebrow and looked about, as if just discovering his environment.
"Small," he said, stepping forward and offering her a glass, "is a relative term. The house I grew up in was larger." He looked about again, and bowed gently. "Many times larger, in fact." He sipped wine. "Of course, it enclosed the clan entire."
Liad, Kamele thought, raising her own glass, was certainly a strange place, with an abundance of odd customs. She would have gladly heard more of those customs, but Jen Sar was disinclined to talk much about the world he had left. Kamele theorized some disagreement with the directors of his kin group, which had resulted in his taking up the role of traveling scholar, until nomination to the Gallowglass Chair brought him to Delgado.
"Can you see the stars from your garden?" she teased him.
"I can and I do," he answered with a gravity that was belied by the quirk of a brow. "Shall I show you?"
She hesitated, belatedly covering her hesitation with another sip of wine. "That would be lovely," she murmured, "but the stars rise late, don't they? I need to be back to the Wall before—"
"Yes, of course." He hitched a hip onto the arm of the couch and looked about him, glass held casually in long, clever fingers, the silver ring a sly gleam against his golden skin.
Kamele bit her lip and walked over to sit on the couch near his perch. He looked down at her, smiling, and her stomach tightened.
Her friendship with Jen Sar Kiladi had grown deeper over the last two semesters; the pleasure she took in his company as surprising as it was satisfying. But Ella was right, she acknowledged. Satisfying as it was, it was time to alter their relationship, or cut the association entirely. People were beginning to talk, the more so since Jen Sar had declined Professor Skilings' offer. She'd heard from Skilings' assistant, who had been working, forgotten, in the next room when the offer was made, that Jen Sar had professed himself honored, obliged, and desolated not to be able to accommodate her.
Skilings had not been pleased. No one had ever turned her down, not, so rumor went, since she'd moved to Topthree. Mortified, she had looked about her for a reason for Jen Sar's refusal—and her eye had inevitably fallen on Associate Professor Kamele Waitley, who spent a great deal of time in the company of a very senior scholar. And, as Ella so reasonably pointed out, Kamele could not afford to have Skilings as an enemy.
It would be best for everyone, Ella said, for Kamele to end the friendship.
Ella, Kamele reminded herself, liked pretty men.
"Jen Sar . . ." she began, sounding breathless to herself.
He lifted an eyebrow. "Yes, my friend?"
"I . . . that is . . ." Her voice failed her entirely, and she looked away, biting her lip. It wasn't as if she was inexperienced! She'd had two previous onagrata, not counting her Gigneri pairing—and here she was acting like a green girl, stumbling over her first offer!
"Kamele?" Jen Sar's deep voice carried concern. "Are you well?"
"Yes, I—yes." She leaned forward and awkwardly put the wine glass on the side table with a bit of a clatter, then turned to face him, looking up into his sharp, unhandsome face. She took a breath.
"Jen Sar," she said firmly, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. "It would be . . . an honor to accept you as onagrata."
Both eyebrows rose, his lips parted—and then there was that moment of arrested movement that had become familiar to her, and the odd feeling that Jen Sar had . . . stepped away . . . from himself.
Abruptly, he smiled, a sweet, open expression she had never before seen from him. He leaned forward and put his glass next to hers on the table.
"Tra'sia, cha'leken!" he said gladly, and bent down to kiss her on the mouth.
Strictly speaking, she should have initiated the kiss, but Kamele found she didn't mind that he had taken the lead. Indeed, it was some time before she could speak, and some little while more until she cared to.
"What did you say?" she asked eventually, her cheek snuggled against his shoulder. "Before you . . . kissed me?"
Jen Sar sighed lightly, ruffling her hair.
"A Liaden—expression of joy," he murmured, sounding . . . chagrined.
Kamele laughed, and reached for him again.