Hellibolt had been as good as his word. When they had awoken in the morning and started tearing down camp all the men remembered was that Kasiria had saved their necks. Although none of them said anything remotely approaching gratitude, they were treating her with more kindness and courtesy than they ever had before. If even one of them remembered that she had become the Katabull they didn't say anything.
They were nicer to her all the way to Pearson Garrison, but being unused to them being anything but obnoxious to her she couldn't really say she enjoyed the reprieve. In fact, their usual rhetoric would have been welcome as it would have brought some normalcy to her suddenly very abnormal existence.
She was the Katabull, just an unwanted piece in a failed plan to humble a kingdom that had spurned them.
What did that mean? What did any of this take away or add to her? Was she more than she had been when she left the academy or less?
She shook these unwanted thoughts from her head. The sword was all that mattered. If a fighter was all she was and all she wanted to be then she should embrace this part of herself that could only make her a better fighter.
They rode into the garrison just before evening and dismounted. She heard the familiar sound of practice swords. All practice weapons in the Jethrik were now made from split bamboo imported from the Kartik though Old Justin had said that they used to use padded oak sticks. "Since changing to the Kartik practice weapons we've had far fewer cadets maimed in practice," he had told her once.
The practice blades had a distinctive sound, one she'd recognize anywhere. As she grabbed her gear off her saddle and a groom took her horse from her, she looked towards the sound and saw him. Her breath caught in her chest. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His dark black hair went to the middle of his back and was braided in two small braids on either side of his face while the rest was allowed to flow freely around his head. He had three earrings in his left ear and a ring in his left eyebrow. His gambeson was the bright colors the Kartiks seemed to delight in and that she, being from in country, had hardly ever seen. His breaches and boots were dark black. For a minute all time stood still; she swore it did. Then he dropped his weapon to his side and turned to look at her, and his dark eyes just seemed to look right through her. Without realizing it she had walked right up to where he was.
"Kasiria!" Derek, the Captain of the Guard at the garrison said at her shoulder, and from the smile on his face and the loudness of his voice she knew it wasn't the first time he'd said her name. Derek was an old friend of her father's and one of the few people who was privileged to know her true identity. "Is something wrong?" he asked of the vacant stare on her face.
"I lost three of my men to bandits, sir," she said, never taking her eyes off the young Kartik man.
"I'm sorry to hear about your loses, Sergeant."
"It could have been far worse, there were at least twenty of them," she said in a voice she knew sounded detached, as if she was unaffected by the whole thing, which wasn't what she wanted, but she'd never been very good at pretending at emotion she wasn't really feeling.
"I will expect a full report of the incident later. If you're up for it, Kasiria, as long as you're here you might as well meet Jabone and his people. They are new recruits from the Kartik. You will be training together in the coming weeks. My hope is that they will teach us something of their ways of fighting and we will teach them something of ours."
The boy held out his hand to her in a gesture that was obviously foreign to him, and she took it and shook it, holding it longer than she should have just looking into his black eyes and feeling a million things she had never felt before. "Hello," she said.
"Hello," he replied, and it was obvious that Jethrik wasn't his native tongue.
She finally let go of his hand.
"Are you well?" he asked. "Have you been wounded?" All right he had a thick accent but his Jethrik was actually very good.
"No, I . . . I'm fine just a little rattled. Did you and yours have a good journey?"
"Aye, it was a fine journey," he said, and the way he looked at her made her feel naked. A tall, dark very beautiful girl came up and took his arm. She had bright dancing brown eyes and had three rings in her right ear and one also in her eye brow she said something to him in Kartik that made him blush some and Kasiria was immediately jealous that the other girl was touching him. "My pack . . . I mean my comrades, Ufalla," he said indicating the woman on his arm, "Jestia and Tarius." He pointed to the other two in turn. Jestia was if possible even more beautiful than Ufalla. Her raven-black hair pulled back from her face in a single braid. Her eyes were such a dark shade of green that Kasiria at first thought they were black like Jabone's. Her features were fine, her nose aristocratic, and her every movement seemed to ooze sensuality. She had at least a dozen rings in her left ear and three in her right.
"Tarius?" She was taken aback looking at the small, long-haired blond man who also had three rings in his left ear. "You mean like Tarius the Black?"
"I was named for her," he said proudly.
Jabone shot him a look and said to Kasiria. "As are many babies in the Kartik. My name as well has become common as their legend grows."
Kasiria sized them up as a group. Jabone and Ufalla would have made the height and weight requirements for Sword Masters easily, but the other man wouldn't have come close and the other woman would have missed it by a couple of inches. The small blond man didn't look like he fit in at all. A troll among gods, Kasiria thought.
Her men had already scattered but even if they hadn't she wouldn't have thought to introduce them. She didn't remember their names half the time. She wasn't close to them. These people you could tell all had a common bond. They actually cared for one another; it was clear in their mannerisms. They were comfortable with each other in a way Kasiria couldn't remember ever being comfortable with . . . well anyone.
"Why don't you all get cleaned up? Dinner will be served soon and you all look like you could use a good hot meal," Derek said.
The girl called Ufalla whispered something to Jabone. He grinned stupidly, said nothing, and followed her and the others away.
She just stood there watching him go like some love sick fool. This can't be happening. This can't be happening now. I'm a fighter, that's what I am, and now I'm not even a human fighter and I can't be feeling these sorts of things for someone I have just met. I am a princess he is a Kartik, a fighting thug. He was all sweaty and dirty and . . . he smelled good to me. It's the animal inside me, that's what it is, what it must be. Besides he has a girl friend. It's obvious that he's with that girl and . . . I think I could take her.
"Kasiria," Derek said gently. "Are you all right?"
For answer she just started rattling. "I killed eight men."
"What?" Derek said in surprise.
"There were so many of them and they jumped out of the trees and they killed three of my men and they knocked me off my horse and I jumped up and I just started swinging and I killed eight men."
"Come on." Derek took her gear from her hand and started leading her towards the bath house thinking that she was just shaken from the attack, which was exactly what she wanted him to think. "You get cleaned up and you'll feel better."
* * *
At dinner Kasiria grabbed a bowl of stew and a roll and looked for a place to sit. She saw them sitting at the head table with Derek and desperately wanted to join them. She kept standing, looking around as if she'd forgotten or lost something, hoping Derek would see her and wave her over.
* * *
"There she is," Tarius teased Jabone in Kartik. Jabone looked up, saw her, and then quickly looked back at his plate.
"Shut up."
Derek smiled, "So what's all this then?"
"You talk too much," Jabone spit back at Tarius in Kartik.
Tarius just laughed and told Derek. "Jabone is in love with that girl."
"That's not what I said!" Jabone said, taking in a hissing breath and reminding himself to never say anything of the least importance in Tarius's hearing ever again. "I said she looks just like my mother."
Derek made a confused face and whispered. "You're Tarius's son?"
"But Jena is my mother," Jabone explained.
Derek if possible looked even more confused.
"His parents are cross paired," Jestia said, as if that should answer everything Derek needed to know. When she saw by the look on his face that he still didn't, she continued, "Tarius is his madra, his birth mother, but Jena is his mother. She reminds him of Jena."
"Ah Jena." Derek breathed. "A beautiful woman." He smiled at the memory. "I don't think Kasiria is that pretty; however, she's every bit as rough around the edges, maybe even more so."
"Rough around the edges!?" Jabone said, taking immediate offense. "There is nothing rough about my mother. She is the most gentle of people, very regal, very elegant."
"He means she doesn't act like their cattle-type women do. He means she thinks for herself," Ufalla told him in Kartik. Jabone nodded. He looked up and this time the woman caught his eyes and he looked back into his plate. "Invite her over, Jabone. If she really is like your mother, stuck in this land she must feel as lonely as Jena did," Ufalla urged.
"I can't," Jabone said.
"Well I can." Tarius jumped up and waved wildly. "Come sit with us," he called in Jethrik. Every eye in the room turned to him and he quickly sat back down looking a little embarrassed.
"I don't think they make noise when they're eating," Ufalla told her brother in their own language.
"She's coming over." Jabone glared at Tarius, "If you say anything to embarrass me I will split you."
Tarius looked all innocent and said in Kartik, "My brother would I ever do anything to embarrass you?"
* * *
Derek watched as Kasiria made her way across the room toward their table.
"Sir Derek," She nodded her head as she sat down next to Ufalla and across from Jabone.
"Kasiria." He nodded back. He tried to hide his amusement. After all, he knew how they were all connected to each other but they had no idea. How strange and ironic fate was. The daughter of Persius, King of the Jethrik, hiding in the Jethrik army because she wanted to fight her father's enemies, was sitting at the same table as Tarius's son, Queen Hestia's daughter and Sir Harris's children, who were hiding in the Jethrik army so that they could fight their parent's enemies.
If that wasn't the gods working in mysterious ways he didn't know what was. He wondered whether he should send word to Persius that Tarius's son and the others were here. If, for that matter, he should send word to Tarius that the king's daughter was there. But he had promised Tarius that he would tell no one who these children were, and he had promised his king that he would tell no one who his daughter was.
He realized that the table had gotten suddenly very quiet. He looked at the Kartik children who were suddenly looking around the room no doubt to see how they were supposed to behave, and he remembered Tarius's early days at the academy. To his shame he remembered how he had made those days harder for her. Like them she'd just been trying to fit in. Derek smiled. "It's all right to talk during dinner," he said, and the four Kartik youths smiled as if relieved. Harris's son immediately started rattling a mile a minute about how much bigger Jethrikian horses were and how he wanted to trade his horse in for one.
"You will fall right off on your stupid head, big brother," his sister said.
"Bigger horses eat more," Jabone said, making a face.
"You are like your madra. You make friends with horses and then you keep them 'til they can't carry your weight any longer and turn them out to pasture."
"A good horse is your best friend on the battle field," Derek said.
Tarius laughed. "No, the Katabull are your best friends on the battle field. Any warrior knows that."
Jabone glared at the boy and spat something back at him in Kartik.
"Do you see many Katabull then?" Kasiria asked, looking into her stew. Derek had never seen her act so shy; he guessed that the attack had left her badly shaken. That or she was intimidated by the Kartiks.
"Of course we grew up . . . " Tarius started, and Ufalla slapped her hand over her brother's mouth and spat much the same thing at him that Jabone had. He nodded his head that he understood, muttered something in Kartik, and smacked himself in the head. Derek laughed out loud because the only person he'd seen hit themselves in the head like that was the Kartik Bastard herself, Tarius the Black. It must be some Kartik thing or perhaps he'd just picked it up from her.
"We see a great many Katabull. They are respected in our land, revered," Jestia said, looking at Kasiria. "We don't shoot our Katabull through with arrows nor do we have them drug behind horses, they are in fact considered the most noble of the queen's servants."
"We treat them the same way here now," Derek said.
"No we don't," Kasiria said with passion. "We say we do but we don't. We fear them just like he does." She pointed at Jabone. And when she did all three of the other Kartiks started to laugh in an altogether unseemly way. Ufalla whispered something to Jabone and then even he started to laugh.
"That's right," Jabone said. "I fear and loath the Katabull."
Derek decided that these four Kartik youths couldn't hold their tongues in a bucket.
"Well I fear and loath them, too," Kasiria spat out, thinking it was the right thing to do. But then they stopped laughing and just glared at her as if she'd grown two heads. And Master Derek was looking at her and shaking his head no violently, so Kasiria knew she had just made a huge mistake.
"Have you ever met one?" Ufalla asked glaring at her now with real contempt in her eyes.
"No."
"She wouldn't know if she had," Jestia said, and her voice had that same quality of tone that Kasiria's father had when he thought he was speaking to someone who he considered to be well beneath him.
Kasiria didn't know why they had turned on her. Jabone was the one who had said something derogatory about the Katabull when Tarius had brought it up. He was speaking in Kartik. I just assumed he said something bad. He must not have; he didn't. What an idiot I am. What do I do now? Just scream that I'm Katabull? I don't want everyone to find out because I was telling the truth about my people. And I can't make it happen so there is no way that I could prove it to them.
"I . . . I have never met a Katabull that I know of, but I'm sure I would like them," she said nervously. They all just continued to look at her like she had two heads. "I'm sorry, I don't know your ways or your customs and I think I'm trying a little too hard." She started to get up to move and Jabone grabbed her wrist.
"No stay," he said. "Obviously we are all having some problem with language and cultural differences. Just know that I didn't and would never say anything against the Katabull."
"I . . . " She looked down at his hand on her wrist and sat completely down. "I wouldn't either. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."
"She is like your mother," Tarius said, and started laughing. Jabone slapped him with the back of his hand hard enough to knock him out of his chair to the floor, and the room became very quiet again. Tarius pulled himself out of the floor still laughing sat down and started eating again, so obviously this was the way they normally behaved around the dinner table.
"Have you all been training long?" Kasiria asked.
"Me not that long, a few years," Jestia answered. "But they're all sword babies."
A few years isn't long? Kasiria wondered then asked, "Sword babies?"
"Yes, look." Jestia took Ufalla's hand and held it up. The little finger was missing. Tarius and Jabone also showed their fingers or the lack thereof.
"The bones of your fingers are in the hilt of your swords," Kasiria said,,a cold chill going up her spine.
"My friend Tarius also assumed that custom," Derek laughed. "When she first came to the academy and we all thought her male . . . We were not friends. Nor were Harris and I." He looked at young Tarius, though Kasiria had no idea why. "I was a cruel boy, an arrogant one. You can't tell now but I had a head full of red hair in my youth. It made me different and told anyone who looked at me that I had a parent born of the island. I came from a wealthy noble family and I was an embarrassment, an obvious bastard. That's no excuse for my bad behavior but it did make me mean. War has a way of twisting a man for the good or the bad. I fought under Tarius and beside Harris. They forgave me for my idiocy and I came to love and admire them both."
"These three were born to the sword," Jestia continued, and Kasiria noticed a certain jealousy had entered her voice. "They have always known what they would become. Their cords were cut with their parent's swords and they have been practicing every day since they could hold a stick."
"Didn't it hurt?" Kasiria asked looking at Jabone's hand.
"Oh yeah," Tarius answered, smiling brilliantly.
"And you've been fighting all your life?" Kasiria asked Ufalla.
"All of it that I can remember," she said with a shrug. "Our father and our mother are both sword slingers. I'm rather more interested in how you came to take up the sword, since I see no other women here."
"I just . . . for as long as I can remember it's all I've ever wanted," Kasiria said.
"Well I've got to go," Derek said. "Kasiria, I have set up lodging for you and Ufalla and Jestia in the old officer's barracks towards the back of the garrison. You boys will be bunking in the common barracks . . . "
"No." Jabone shook his head dramatically. "We are supposed to stay together," he said,indicating the four of them. "My madra said we would be together."
"On assignment you will be together, but our customs don't allow young men to bunk with young women."
They all started to talk in Kartik at once.
"Hold, hold, that's the rules," Derek said. "The girls and Kasiria will be fine."
"We aren't worried about them," Jabone said quickly. "We aren't like you. Our women can take care of themselves better than most of your men. We don't want to be separated from or kin in a strange land; that is against our ways."
"You won't be separated in the field, I promise you that. You may do whatever you please when you leave here, but in the garrison . . . They'll sleep in one barracks and you'll sleep in another.
* * *
The women had been given a small, empty officer's barracks on the edge of the compound close to the garrison wall.
Ufalla spit something out in Kartik as they were choosing their beds.
"What did you say?" Kasiria asked curiously, and more than a little put out.
"I said your rules could not be any stupider if they worked on making them that way," Ufalla said with utter contempt. "Your streets are full of crap and then you make rules like this."
"Well I can't say I disagree with you there. I've been fighting the customs of my own people most of my life. Do me a favor and speak my language. I'm afraid I failed miserably at my foreign languages classes and I don't want any more mix-ups like what happened at dinner," Kasiria pleaded with embarrassment.
"Oh you mean like when you thought Jabone had said something derogatory about the Katabull and then he did as a joke and you said the same stupid thing just to agree with him because you've got a burning desire for him?" Ufalla teased, and both she and Jestia laughed.
"Not that you're right, but you act like you don't care."
"Why would I care?" Ufalla asked with a shrug.
"Isn't he your boyfriend?"
Ufalla and Jestia both laughed even harder then, Jestia in fact actually rolling on her bed.
"Well I don't think it's that funny," Ufalla said, which just made Jestia laugh all the harder.
"What's so funny?" Kasiria asked, smiling now just because their laughter was sort of contagious.
"Jabone is my best friend, my pack brother, but I would never have a boyfriend."
"Because they would get in the way of your sword work?" Kasiria asked, thinking she understood where the woman was coming from. Ufalla stared at her in confusion, obviously not understanding what she was saying, and Kasiria realized why. They were Kartik; the girl had said both her father and mother were fighters so in her mind having a relationship wouldn't exclude her from fighting.
"No, dummy, because Ufalla's as queer as the Great Leader," Jestia laughed again and Ufalla shot her a look. "What?"
Ufalla spit something at her in Kartik and Jestia just laughed, shook her head and said, "Well it's pretty obvious."
"It doesn't bother me," Kasiria assured Ufalla.
Ufalla grinned wildly then. "It's why I said your rules are stupid." Ufalla laughed looking right at Kasiria. "Apparently they have separated us from the men to make sure our virtue stays intact, and the truth is mine and especially Jestia's virtue has already been spent by your standards and your virtue is much more likely to be defiled by me than it would by my noble friend Jabone."
"Now your little brother is another story," Jestia said, and they just laughed harder and now Kasiria laughed with them.
"When you say the Great Leader, you talk of Tarius the Black?" Kasiria asked carefully.
"Aye," Ufalla answered.
"Do you know her then?"
The two girls exchanged a look and then Jestia said, almost too quickly. "We have met her."
Kasiria sat down on her bed and then went ahead and lay down. "My father fought with her at the Battle of the Arrow, and in the Great War. He told such stories! I have always wanted to train with her. Many of the men that teach at the academy were trained by her, but they all say they have never been able to match her style. I would really like a chance to train with her. Do you know whether she still train fighters in the Kartik?"
"Aye," Ufalla said. "We will show you the Kartik style and you will teach us yours as your captain said."
They started talking about fighting and for the first time in her life Kasiria felt like she belonged. These strange women with their strange customs seemed more like kin to her than all her brothers and sisters.
* * *
"I don't like it," Tarius said,as they chose bunks as far away from the others as they could get.
"Nor do I my brother," Jabone said, agreeing with him for the first time in days.
They sat on their cots facing each other.
"Imagine," Tarius whispered lower, "your madra, my age, alone hiding not just her parentage but her sex in a room just like this." He made an angry face. "My father the great warrior cleaning up after a bunch of spoiled rich brats just like these."
Jabone nodded that had been just what he'd been thinking. The other men in the barracks were not looking at them with curiosity as much as with great loathing. "They fear us because we look different. That was what my madra meant, why the Amalites," he and Tarius both spit on the floor, "are causing them so much trouble here, so much more than in the Kartik-held Territory. "These people are afraid; they distrust that which looks differently than they do. But the Amalites look just like them so they don't raise their suspicion."
"I don't look different than they do," Tarius said with a air of self loathing.
Jabone smiled at him. "You must or they wouldn't be snubbing you in exactly the same way as they are me. You may have your father's coloring but you have your mother's features."
"You really think so?" Tarius asked with a smile.
"Of course. That's why you're so dammed ugly." They had a good laugh.
"So what's the big Joke?" A big fellow with a brutish set to his jaw asked from behind Tarius. "Spitting on the floor is that funny to you, because here in the civilized world we don't spit on the floor."
Now if Jabone had been on his own he probably could have said a few carefully placed words and the guy would have gone away, but Tarius . . . Well he never had known when to hold his tongue, and living in amongst the Marching Night he'd never had to.
"You don't spit in the floor but you throw crap in your streets. That's some civilization you've got there." Tarius looked the man up and down and added, "I doubt you ever spit anything out, fat boy."
"Why you! I ought to . . . "
"Shut your mouth and go away before you get your ass kicked." Tarius was up and standing on his cot looking down at the other man in one easy motion.
The guy swung at Tarius who easily ducked it and jumped off the bed slamming three fingers into the man's windpipe which sent him gasping to the floor.
One of the other men started to punch Tarius in the face and found his fist in the rather large hand of Jabone. Jabone smiled at the man as he twisted the man's arm so that he couldn't bend it and drove him to the floor. Another man dove off a cot unto Jabone's back and Jabone threw him over his shoulder to land on top of the man he'd just thrown on the floor. He grabbed the heads of two men running at him and pounded them together, sending both into the rather large pile of men gathering at his feet.
Tarius was everywhere, smacking this one, kicking that one, and then moving on before they had a chance to retaliate. He had climbed up a rather large man, had him in a head lock, and was getting ready to break his nose. Jabone was driving his knee into another man's ribs when a loud booming voice screamed out.
"Hold!"
Jabone kneed the guy then let him go and stopped, holding up his hands and watched as Tarius punched the guy he held in the nose then unleashed him and dropped to his feet also holding his hands up. In the Katabull Nation this signified that you were done fighting.
"Do you two not understand hold?" Derek asked as he stumbled into what was left of the room.
"Sorry sir," Jabone said. "We were trained in Simbala never to leave off a fight 'til the other combatant is disabled."
"But these aren't your enemies, Jabone."
"They acted like it," Tarius said.
"He started it," the guy who actually had said,stumbling to his feet.
Derek looked at Jabone who stared coolly back and said, "He was looking for a fight. Tarius gave him one. Then they all attacked us. The dispute has been settled."
* * *
He was indeed Tarius the Black's flesh and blood. In that moment except for his size and his obvious maleness Derek would have sworn he was her. Jabone wasn't about to apologize for his actions or those of his friend, not as long as he thought he was in the right. Derek sighed.
He looked at everyone in the room singling no one out. "We all have to work together for the best of our peoples. Our Kartik brothers have come across the sea to help us fight on our front."
"They started it," Thomas insisted,
"Did they indeed, Thomas?" Derek stared at the youth 'til he was forced to look at his feet. "I'll tell you what happened. You wanted to test them, see what they are made of. Now you know they are made of muscle and skill and action. They have been trained in the sword, all manner of weapons, and Simbala—the Kartik marshal arts. No life of privilege for these boys. Trained in dirt pits instead of the comfortable Sword Master's academy, trained not for three short years but since their birth. These are stout fighting men of honor and if you don't provoke them they will teach you all they know and do you no harm. Provoke them and," he motioned around the room, "this is what you will have. Two men kicking all hell out of twenty. Treat them as you treat each other and they will make you better fighters. Abuse them in any way and they will use their skill and their strength to beat you completely down. I want this mess cleaned up and all of you in your beds. I'm going to leave you with this. I was privileged to have one of the greatest sword teachers of all, but I despised this teacher and in the ring I decided to teach this person a lesson. After I had been beaten senseless for most of an afternoon this teacher asked me, "Do you actually want to learn anything or do you just want to continue to try to hurt me?" I attacked again, and Tarius the Black beat me senseless without breaking a sweat. As long as you keep trying to hurt these people, you will learn nothing from them and they will continue to kick your asses until you learn to do nothing so much as how to flinch." Derek stomped from the barracks.
* * *
They started to pick up the room some of them tending cuts and bloody noses and lips as they went about it. At one point Jabone bent down to right a flipped cot and almost bumped heads with the man who had started the whole fight, Thomas.
"I'm sorry," he said grudgingly.
"And I'm sorry for my friend's mouth," Jabone said with a smile. "It works faster than his brain and he has yet to learn that there is honor also in choosing not to fight."
Thomas sighed. "It seems that in the last two days everything I thought I knew has been put to the test. Today I pick on a man half my size and he kicks my ass. Yesterday bandits attack us in the woods and we'd all be dead had it not been for a girl. While we were all still trying to figure out what's happening she kills eight men and sends the rest of them running for their lives into the woods."
"Kasiria seems like a worthy opponent," Jabone said.
"My friend loves her because she reminds him of his mother," Tarius said,teasingly at his shoulder.
"Shut up runt!" Jabone spat back in Kartik.
Thomas seemed some taken aback by the fact that they were talking to him as if they hadn't just all tried to kill each other. Jabone wondered why, then he thought he knew.
"We don't hold grudges over a little fight," Jabone said. It was the Katabull's way not the Kartik, but these men didn't know that and he realized that he was doing exactly what his madra had done in dealing with these people. He was using their ignorance of his country to hide what he really was. He didn't like it, didn't like feeling like he should be ashamed of what he was and whose cub he was. "Fighting, actually wrestling, is how we work out our problems."
"So you weren't trying to actually kill us then?" a boy asked, holding a rag to his bleeding nose.
"Of course not," Jabone said calmly. "If we'd been trying to kill you, you'd all be dead."
"Of all the bloody cheek," the man with the bleeding nose said, looking like he was ready for a fight again. Thomas put a hand on the man's chest.
"Hold up there, Eric. I don't think he means to be bragging. He's just telling the truth."
"Oh," Eric said, getting very quiet.
"So you have a thing for the ice queen, huh?" Thomas laughed. "Hate to tell you this but the girl doesn't like men, if you know what I mean."
Jabone felt as if he'd been shot through with an arrow and Tarius laughed, popped him in the ribs and said in Kartik, "So you were right. She is just like your mother."
Jabone found his sense of humor, laughed back and said, "Good thing they separated the boys from the girls, eh?"