Well, the orange was gone. But if you knew Leontine faces well enough, you could easily see the shocked rise of eyebrows in that furry, feline face.
“She probably also doesn’t understand,” Severn continued, “why you had to accompany Marcus when he visited her after she was injured in the fiefs. Nor does she fully appreciate how unusual Marcus—and by extension, his Pridlea—is.”
“Unusual?” Kayala said, as if tasting the word.
“He means it as a compliment,” Kaylin said quickly. “And I do—he’s the only Leontine on the force for a reason.”
“Yes. He can coexist in an office that has, among its many members, other males.”
“They’re mostly human,” Kayala offered.
“So is Severn,” Kaylin told her.
“If Corporal Handred chose to visit us in the human Quarter, we would of course grant him the hospitality of the Pridlea. He has, however, come to the Pridlea, and in the Leontine Quarter, social rules must be observed.” She sniffed, a very catlike sound of disdain. “Although why one would consider them male, I have never fully understood.”
Kaylin winced.
Severn, however, did not. “He can also coexist in an office that has, among its members, many females. And his wives accept this.” He moved something other than his mouth for the first time, and bowed.
“They are not our kind,” Kayala said, but the edge had gone out of her words. “They are human, or—what do you call the long ears that are hard to kill?”
“Barrani.”
“Barrani. And bird-men. They are not of the Pride. We are not threatened by them. They cannot trespass upon our home.”
“Wait,” Kaylin said. “What if there were other Leontine men?”
“There won’t be.”
“But if there were?”
She was silent. Kayala’s silences usually meant death. Quite literally.
“And other Leontine women?”
The silence was almost profound. Kaylin had once asked Marcus why he was the only Leontine on the force, and Marcus had growled an answer: There’s only room for one. If you want another one, talk to the Swords or the Wolves. She had thought he was joking at the time.
“What about me?”
“Ah, you. You are his kitling, the one he can’t lose through growth or time. You are not of the Pride,” she added, but she ruffled Kaylin’s hair—which had long since come loose from its binding—with affection as she said the words. “He brought you home,” she added, “and we saw you—hairless, furless, like our young.”
“But Severn’s—”
“Corporal Handred is not like you, Kaylin. But he understands and accepts his role here.” There was no question in the words. “Come,” she said, and growled.
Severn bowed again. “I will wait for Kaylin in the carriage.”
“Good. It is not a good time to be in the Quarter without escort.”
“Kayala, I can take care of myself.”
“Of course you can,” was the smooth reply. “We can all hunt and kill. But the trick to living in a city that is so crowded and so dangerous is to avoid having to kill.”
Marcus had four other wives—five in total. Each of his wives had their own room, or rooms, and each of them had their own growls. They had different ways of showing submission, and of expressing rage. Kayala could do either without consequence, but if Kayala was the eldest, she was a far cry from old.
Then again, Marrin at the Foundling Hall was old, and you didn’t cross her.
Tessa was next in line, and her fur was a slate-gray that was almost black. Her whiskers were dark, and her fur was shorter than the fur of the rest of her Pridlea. She was fastidious while eating and grooming, and of the five wives, Kaylin thought her the most dangerous. But for all that, she was often the friendliest as well, and little human foibles didn’t bother her.
She didn’t, however, react well to the sight of blood, and Kaylin did her best not to bleed around her.
Graylin—a very unimaginative name—had been the runt of her litter, and her parents, convinced she wouldn’t survive her childhood years, had been less than attentive. Kayala said that Graylin was almost feral when this mistake in judgment was acknowledged. If Tessa was the most fastidious—by a whisker—Graylin was the least, by a whole lot more. She had been civilized to the point where she could eat in a large group and not go nuts about food distribution—but she seldom left the Pridlea. She had the softest voice, the softest purr, and the most tangled fur.
Reesa was golden in color, just like Marcus or Kayala, and she looked younger. Her eyes were large for Leontine eyes, and she seldom blinked, which some people found discomforting. Reesa thought this was funny, and after a while, Kaylin had to agree. Like, say, a year of visiting at mealtimes.
And Sarabe, the youngest of Marcus’s wives, was also a russet-colored Leontine—a color that was considered unusual, although Kaylin had met one other, at least, that bore the same red fur. Only the face, the hands and the feet were fringed in the more traditional gold. Sarabe liked to sing. Singing Leontines were a bit more than Kaylin could handle for hours at a time.
She wasn’t singing now. None of them were even speaking. They sat curled up on each other in what looked like the end result of a football tackle, and didn’t bother to get up when Kayala escorted Kaylin into the common room. In the common room—which had a Leontine name that Kaylin had never had much luck pronouncing, to the gleeful amusement of Reesa—dinner was served, and matters of concern to the Pridlea were discussed. Marcus, oddly enough, was seldom invited to the common room. He came for meals, and for discussions about his children, and he left as quickly as he could. Kaylin, loving this room at thirteen, had never understood why.
But if the common room was not his room, it was clear that his absence marked it, and not for the better.
Sarabe jumped up. “The kits will want to see you,” she said. Kaylin, watching bodies roll to either side at the sudden lurch of Leontine momentum, smiled. She’d been on the inside of these pile-ons as a child, and she had been allowed to play with Sarabe’s kits if she asked politely. Where “asked politely” meant speak in Leontine. Sarabe was the most … human of the Leontines. She was also a good deal younger than Kayala or Marcus.
“The kits will have to wait,” Kayala replied.
The kits were triplets—this was fairly common for Leon-tines—and they were all girls. None of them had Sarabe’s coloring; two were gray, and one was a pale brown. Sarabe had noted this lack with satisfaction, and Kaylin had never asked why; she understood that Sarabe was a bit self-conscious.
“Easy for you to say, Kayala. You won’t have to deal with their cries of outrage.”
“I can, if you prefer.”
Reesa laughed. It was a grim laugh. She rolled to her feet next. “Kitling,” she said to Kaylin.
Kaylin nodded. “I suppose you were expecting me.”
“I was expecting you last night,” Reesa replied gravely, her gaze unblinking gold as her eyes met Kaylin’s and held them.
Kaylin winced. “We were up in the Tha’alani Quarter. I had to heal,” she added. “The crowd there is ugly. And there are more Swords gathered in one spot than you see anywhere, even Festival.”
Reesa hissed. It was the Leontine version of a whistle. Well, this hiss, at any rate.