Ivory and Bone(47)

“Fine.” I slide my hands under my thighs to ensure I will resist the temptation to brush your hair from your eyes. “Why did your family come to the north to visit us in the first place? It’s clear you hold no interest in my clan, and only five years ago there was enough trouble between our clans to stir whispers of war.”

You lean back on one elbow and stretch your legs. Your face slips into shadow—all but one eye, sharp and intense, illuminated by a pale shaft of light streaming through an overhead vent. “It’s simple—it’s because there are boys here. Isn’t it obvious? Chev needs to find a mate for me. After all, Seeri is betrothed, but I am the oldest. Chev is hesitant to allow Seeri to marry before me. I think he’s afraid if he doesn’t find someone for me soon he’ll be stuck taking care of me forever.”

“I hardly think you need to be taken care of,” I say.

A murmured laugh rises in your chest. Maybe it’s because of your supine posture, or maybe because a thickened breath of bitterness mixes with the exhale of levity, but the laugh breaks in your throat.

A stretch of leg, an arch of neck that rolls down your spine to your hips, and all at once you sit up. Your shoulders lift from the bed and your face floats toward me, your hair stirring a scent of smoke into the sweetness rising from the open honey. My heart gallops, but there’s something else—a heavy ache, a hole behind my racing heart—a clutching hunger that claws at me, calling to my attention the soft curve of your throat, the warm glow of the skin just below your ear, the tension in your lips as they curl into a cryptic grin. “Another question?” I ask, focusing my attention on the echo of your words repeating in my head—Chev needs to find a mate for me. “Why wasn’t your brother’s friend, your sister Seeri’s betrothed—why wasn’t he promised to you, since you’re the oldest?”

The grin vanishes. Your teeth press into the corner of your bottom lip.

“By the time of Seeri’s betrothal, I was already betrothed. I was betrothed so long ago I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. The match was forged when I was a little girl and still lived with the Bosha clan.”

This answer, so calm and measured from your lips, sends my heart sputtering again.

“Another boy? Did he stay behind when the clans split?” It occurs to me that maybe the boy is still in the Bosha clan. Maybe you hope that you will be reunited.

“No,” you say. “He came with us when we left for the south, but he never saw it. Before we reached the southern shores, he died.”

The next few moments seem to stretch out and pass slowly. I feel your words hang in the air like a ghost. He died. Of all the things I’d expected you might say—all the reasons I’d thought you might give for not being promised—this was not one of them.

“As for the possibility of being promised to Seeri’s betrothed, you met him, right? He isn’t the most subtle or humble of men. Not that I’m particularly strong in those traits, myself. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like me—”

“Seeri’s betrothed doesn’t like you?”

You slide back, the presence of the ghost grows heavy like a weight, and I wish I hadn’t asked so many questions. Your attention is on the space behind my shoulder, and your expression has turned dark. “I won’t lie to you—the possibility of marrying me instead of Seeri was offered to him, but he had no interest in the idea.” You drop your eyes to the floor and then quickly raise them to meet mine. If you are harboring any feelings of self-pity, they don’t show. “I imagine he had the same reasons you laid out yourself that night in my camp. Your thoughts on the traits that make a woman a good wife? I believe my sister’s betrothed would list the same characteristics—patience, a lack of arrogance—and Seeri has those things. And that, I assume, explains why he chose her.”

I search my memory, trying to recall exactly what I said that night. I know I deliberately chose things I believed you lacked. Why was I so confrontational? Was I hoping to humiliate you, to punish you for rejecting me?

But then I remember—it was you who wanted confrontation. As soon as things began to settle down, you had to ask a question that would ramp things up again. What traits in a woman make her a good wife? you asked me. I had tried to smother the confrontation, but you fanned the smoldering embers. You wanted the flames.

It’s my turn to slide back, drawing my damp palms across the coarse coat of a giant bearskin, a pelt I considered luxurious before I saw the riches of furs and hides in your own camp. I’m far enough from you now that perspective returns, and as I take you in, I realize the extent to which you have misled me.

For these few moments, sitting here in this close, dim space with you, my senses confused by unfamiliar scents and flavors and the curl of your lips, I almost forgot all that I learned about you today from Lo. I almost forgot the mistreatment she suffered at the hands of your family, at your own hands.

Hands that at this moment rest, palms up, in your lap, feigning innocence.

I glance at the ivory pendant around your neck and think of its bone twin around Lo’s.

Bone isn’t good enough for you anymore. If Lo can have bone, you must have ivory.

“How did he die?” I’m not sure when I decided to ask, but the question has been turning in my head since you first mentioned him. I know it might hurt you to talk about it. Maybe that’s why I ask.