Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [14]
Even Jamil's playful punches had a tendency to hurt. Keph rubbed his shoulder as he looked his friend over. Jamil's grandmother on his father's side had been an ore and that blood granted him not only size and strength, but coarse, heavy features and a skin tone that carried a slightly grayish cast. That night, however, his skin seemed strangely pale and his dark eyes fever-bright.
"So where have you been, Jarull?" Keph asked. "Everyone's been wondering. For the last few days, you're all anyone's been talking about."
Jarull wrapped his arm around Keph and said, "Sailing a tempest of ale and wine, Keph, sailing a tempest!"
Drunk then. Jamil's human side gave him a turn of wit.
"If you've been drunk for five days," said Keph, "I'd have heard about it. You can't drink for a night without smashing something."
"I didn't say it was in Yhaunn, did I?" Jarull poked him in the ribs. "There are half a dozen festhalls in Ravens Bluff where I'm no longer welcome."
"You went to Ravens Bluff without me?" Keph glanced at his friend and narrowed his eyes. "Who is she?"
Jarull grinned and pinched his fingers together in front of his mouth. "I swore an oath not to say," he said. "But I can tell you this." His voice dropped. "She's dark, beautiful, meaner than my grandmother, and she likes her men big and tough."
He flexed his free arm and something sparkled on his fist. Keph reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling it closer. Jarull wore a ring on his middle finger, a twisted band of age-blackened silver set with a deep purple amethyst. The big man tugged his hand free before he could get a better look. Keph glanced up and raised an eyebrow.
"From your woman of mystery?"
His friend roared with laughter. "And that's not all!" He jingled a pouch at his waist and swung Keph around to face the nearest ramp descending deeper into the Stiltways. "Come on! Down to the Cutter's Dip. I'm buying. You've got a head start on me tonight, but I'll try to catch up. If we're lucky, Lyraene will come looking for you again!" He held out his fist.
After a moment, Keph grinned, then laughed as well. "If we're lucky!" he said, and bashed Jarull's fist with his own.
It was natural that he and Jarull should have become friends, Keph thought as he staggered home in the gray half-light of pre-dawn. They had met at some party or another, dragged there by their parents. How many years had it been? Not too many. Just as they were both entering the age when rebellion began to be a real possibility, that was for certain.
Jarull was the only son of a merchant who had seen her half-ore husband ride away to meet his death on some outrageous adventure and was determined not to let her son follow in his footsteps.
Keph was the youngest son of Strasus "the Bold" Thingoleir-a wizard who had once stood toe-to-toe with a red dragon, meeting fire with magic until the monster had been blasted into cinders-and Dagnalla Irongard, first Strasus's rival in the Art and later his wife.
Brother of Malia, her proud parents' first apprentice; brother of Roderio, their second; brother-in-law to Krin Foxrun, who had won Malia's love in a mage duel fought over her honor; and uncle to Adrey Foxrun, already mastering cantrips at eight years of age; Keph was a tremendous disappointment to his magic-rich family.
Keph ground his teeth together in a fierce grin. Jarull's mother desperately wanted her son to stay by her side. Keph's parents would have been happy if their
Artless youngest son had just faded into the shadows.
Neither was likely to happen anytime soon.
He stumbled around a corner and across the small courtyard that lay before the Thingoleir family hall, Fourstaves House. Once it had been Twostaves House, named for the mages' staffs carried by Strasus and Dag-nalla, but when Malia and later Roderio had completed their apprenticeships, Strasus had given it a new name. Keph had heard that someone had suggested renaming it again, to Fivestaves House, once Krin had married Malia, but that his parents had refused, believing that it might offend the natural-born fifth member