Torgan Wine Ch. 26

Draeseth's lips curved in a pleased smile. "I will get a hive and let you teach me."

°°°°°°°°°°

After their lunch, seared beef with a sour wine sauce and roasted potatoes with capers, both of which Isonei picked at half-heartedly, the trip to the markets was prepared for. Instead of riding out of the main gate in a carriage, Lislora sent a cart down to wait and showed her through the Keep to the servant's entrance. Worn stone stairs and an unobtrusive door led down to the level of the town.

Draeseth placed his hand on top of hers as she held his arm, rocking onto her toes impatiently waiting for Lislora to close the door behind them.

"You are behaving like a child, and you call me impatient." He teased quietly as they began to walk.

"You are impatient, and I've been kept confined to a winter garden for weeks. What month and day is it? I asked Krouth and he wasn't sure."

"It is the eighteenth day of Shprayt, the third of your month of death."

"The third of the month of Tyhnoth, thank you my Draeseth."

"Why do you ask?" Frowning, he held her arm tight to his side.

"On the last day, the day the moon is dark, is a holiday I don't want to miss. Families gather and tell stories of their loved ones who have died. I won't be with my family, but I want to be remembering the stories on the same day as my father will be telling them."

"And you need to know the date for this?" He looked at her as if she were being devious.

"When is the last time you saw the moon here, my flower wine? The sky is always so grey you can't even see the sun." She loosened her grip on his arm and he tightened his.

"It is not always so grey. Shprayt is the coldest month, and the darkest."

After a moment's silence as they walked, she offered as a concession, "On the first day of Iloduin we give gifts to those still living that we care for and appreciate. Krouth has already asked me not to get him a gift. Do you-"

"You may give me a gift any time you wish. I will be certain to have one for you as well, my Isonei." Draeseth smiled faintly. "I will see to it you have some money to spend."

In the bustle of the market Isonei looked eagerly at the stalls. Baubles and cloth, food stuffs and ingredients, there were even weapons and live animals on display. People were eager to show their wares to Draeseth and were very plainly trying not to stare at her openly. Everyone except for a snowy haired man standing at the entrance of a workshop on the edge of the market.

His skin was a pale blue-green tinged with grey and his eyes, even from a distance, looked like mist caught by the sun. The effect made her think of Tyhnoth and her breath caught. Draeseth pulled her arm gently drawing her away to show her a stall filled with the glass he had spoken of. There were delicate glass flowers as well as decanters and goblets, even clever little glass animals and things she didn't recognize.

When she inquired Draeseth said they were symbols of Ganas' blessing and his saints. He purchased one for her with opaque white glass and clear grey, intended for healing and forgiveness. The glass was twisted and wrapped around itself like an intricate knot. She turned it in her hands, fascinated by it for a moment and then looked up to find the Torgan Prince smiling indulgently.

"We should return to the Keep. I think Lislora has finished her errands." Draeseth drew her along until they reached the cart and the exultant looking Lislora.

The Torgan woman proudly chattered something to him in Torgan and seemed surprised when he winced. Isonei waited patiently while they conversed, clearly unhappy about something. Finally Lislora turned to her with a frown, "You do not like swine?"

Isonei shuddered, "It's unclean! I can't eat it!"

"It is not! You will like the taste, I promise." The Torgan woman tried to smile at her reassuringly and Isonei began to back away.

"I won't eat unclean food!" Isonei's eyes searched Draeseth's displeased face as dismay twisted her insides. "If you won't keep your word and see to my care as you promised tell me now, I will walk home!"

"You will not be forced to eat it."

"It will not be served to me." At his hesitation she knew she would need to ask Krouth to be certain it wasn't fed to her despite her objections.

"It will not be served to you, but it will be served."

"I will rely on Krouth to show me what I can safely eat. Have I shown anything but respect for your religion and your traditions despite the fact I find them difficult to navigate? Why would you even consider serving it to me without my knowledge?"

"I was not considering that, my Isonei. I only..." He seemed to see her distrust and took a step toward her with his hand open.

"It is my fault, Lady Isonei. This meat is expensive here in the Torga Kroscur. I thought I was being shrewd by making such a large purchase. The meat can be smoked and cured... I had not asked him before I paid." The Torgan woman looked dismayed, "To waste it..."

"I wouldn't keep you from eating it. But I cannot."

"What meat can you eat?" Lislora's expression faded from dismay to resolve.

"Fish, beef, goat, sheep, venison, any poultry, I don't even need to have meat. But I cannot eat hare or swine."

The Torgan woman blinked, "I will make certain your meals do not include hare or swine."

"Thank you."

From behind, a quiet male voice spoke something in Torgan, Isonei turned to find herself face to face with the man who had been staring. He studied her face as if he were expecting the answer to a question.

"I don't speak Torgan."

Draeseth's low indecipherable growl made him step back and drop to one knee on the slush covered paving stones. The man's eyes were firmly pinned to the ground. The large Torgan spat something else in his tongue and abruptly lifted Isonei onto the cart with the goods. He and Lislora walked behind, speaking to each other as the cart made its way back into the Keep.

°°°°°°°°°°

For the rest of the day, Isonei couldn't get the thought of the snowy haired man out of her head. He looked almost Aran except for the shade of his skin. Where had he come from? What had he wanted to ask her?

The cloak meant she had more freedom now, and everyone else still had their own business to attend to. Going to the market to try to speak to him should be safe enough since she had been seen with Draeseth and Lislora. As for Draeseth's jealousy, if she wasn't back before he noticed her missing a market full of witnesses to her doing nothing wrong should suffice.

After breakfast Isonei fetched her cloak from where it had been hung the day before and made her way out to the servant's entrance. It was so exciting to go out alone she barely remembered to close the door behind her.

Making her way through the market, people seemed less inclined to hide their stares without Draeseth present. It made her think that she might have been wiser to have discussed it with Krouth first. Stepping into the workshop was something of a relief. The few people inside were occupied and didn't look up at her entrance.

With her hood still up she watched the man she'd come to see as he worked until he seemed to notice her. The careful way he heated and reheated the glass and his delicate movements with his metal tools were mesmerizing.

The exquisite goblet he was working on seemed nearly finished, she watched him reheat it again and break it free of the rod it was attached to before allowing a younger Torgan man to place it in what looked like an oven. He smiled curiously as he approached her, speaking Torgan.

Isonei let her lips twist. "I don't speak that yet."

His head tilted and he looked almost lost, she decided to try Lerian. "I don't speak Torgan yet. Do you speak Lerian? Or Aran?"

His apprentice whispered something to him and he shook his head replying slowly in Torgan. She understood, "Oist," the word for no.

Looking to his apprentice she asked "Do you speak Lerian? Or Aran?"

"Yes, a not much." The boy looked nervous. "Lady pleases a thing?"

"I want to speak with him, I have questions. He tried to ask me something and I couldn't understand him. I also wanted to ask where his home is, he makes such beautiful things, where did he learn?"

He frowned for a moment as if trying to understand what he'd heard and then spoke tentatively to the pale man in Torgan.

She was beckoned over to sit with him on a pair of stools. He spoke a strange language that sounded oddly familiar and it took a moment to realize it was almost like Aran. There were words she could pick out of it.

"I could understand some of that." Isonei smiled at him warmly and he inclined his head. "It isn't Aran though."

With careful listening she understood him to say it was a sister tongue. He drew the curve of the coast of Ara and the islands that stood out from it. He called them Mun and she nodded her recognition. The Sons of Mun she had met had spoken Aran and their skin was darker and more blue. They had been the ones her father had gone to for the glass bottles their wine was put in.

With a wry smile she touched her chest, "I am Isonei of House Ernelis, and you are?"

"Xago of Mun."

"That's an odd name for a Son of Mun. How did you come to be here from your islands? This place is so cold."

Above his first drawing, a distance away, he drew a coast and frowned as he said, "Karis, now Phaethia." He grimly conveyed that they had gone to trade at a port and it had been conquered. The more he spoke the easier he became to understand. "I was taken. Phaethians see the conquered as property. I was given as a gift when the Torgan admired my skill of glass. My name was changed away."

She stared at him incredulously. "That is wrong. That is..." her heart wrenched for the man. To be stolen from home and family was one of the worst fates imaginable. "Draeseth keeps you here against your will?"

"Isonei, if I try return to Mun I will be dead for fleeing. I am treated better here than in Phaethia." He shrugged. "How are you here?"

Isonei looked away from him. She had been taken as well but it had been her own choices that led to it. It was nothing like what had happened to him. Her Daga could have asked for her back. But at least at the end of the year she could return to Ara, if not to her father's house.

"I think we are not so different." Xago spoke softly. "You cannot go home?"

"I cannot go home. Not yet." She tried to blink back the tears and paste a smile on her face. "It isn't so bad here."

"I will make something beautiful for you and you will come speak with me?" He lowered his head as if he were trying to look into her eyes from below.

It drew a small laugh from her and she quickly wiped the tear that managed to escape with it. "I will gladly come speak with you. You feel like home, and your glass is a joy to look at."

Xago beamed. "What does Isonei of House Ernelis like?"

"Flowers and bees." She put her hand over her heart. "My father has fields and orchards for his bees; he makes the best honey wine in all of Ara."

"You do not like the sea?" The way he widened his eyes and opened his hands reaching them out to the sides, he seemed to be teasing her.

"I love the sea, the Sea of Glass is a wonder to behold, but my family doesn't live close enough to look at it every day. We are close enough to eat fresh scallops and clams when we wish." Isonei teased back.

The man in front of her straightened and hissed. "Scallops and clams. Crabs legs, well seasoned, and shrimps cooked in spices and lime with fine Mun liquors."

She buried her face in her hands. "The food here is so wretched."

He began to laugh. "Yes. But I can make something with a better flavor for you. I will send it with the gift."

"I will be in your debt, Xago of Mun." Isonei was rising, reaching out her hand to him when she heard Krouth's sharp tones.

The snowy haired man bowed and began speaking calmly with the displeased Torgan servant and after a moment Krouth turned to her with a sharp look. "Why are you here?"

"I came to speak with-"

He cut her off brusquely, "You are not permitted to wander alone and speak with strange men, Lady Isonei. Your lax Aran upbringing may have led you to believe such things are acceptable but you should know by now that in Torga we have stricter morals."

"How is it immoral to speak with someone of home, food, and his beautiful work? I have done nothing wrong," she snapped back. "And if Torga is so strictly moral why is it so much more dangerous for me to walk alone here than it is for me to walk alone in Ara?"

Krouth's dark eyes glinted and his mouth set in a hard line. "It is time you returned to the Keep, Lady Isonei."

Turning to Xago, she inclined her head apologetically, "Thank you for speaking to me, Xago of Mun."

"It was my honor, Lady Isonei of House Ernelis." He bowed deeply. "I will send the piece you requested and the food we spoke of. I hope it brightens your spirits."

"You are very kind, and I thank you from my heart." Placing her hand over her heart she gave him a sad smile before she allowed Krouth to escort her from his shop.

°°°°°°°°°°

Draeseth, Krouth, and Lislora had a long discussion about her trip to the market. The fact that they insisted on having the conversation in Torgan when they knew she couldn't understand it made her feel resentful. As it was, all she could do was sit and stew in her unhappiness at the situation. They finally seemed to come to an agreement and Isonei looked at them icily as she waited to be told what it was.

Instead she was left sitting alone. Rising from her perch she walked to the window overlooking the slush and dirty snow of the town below. Grey smoke rose from chimneys up to the leaden sky and the place felt so unbearably heavy she leaned her forehead against the cold glass and murmured the prayer that had been her constant companion as she had come into Torga. "Maeralya, mother of all, I beg you, give your child hope and put these wrongs to right. Your child is lost and alone. Sweet Tyhnoth, dour Tyhnoth, I beg you for your gentle comfort and your firm cold hand. Protect me from pain and give your mother's child a gentle death."

"It baffles me Lady Isonei, that you would pray for death." Brother Odgar's frown could be heard in his voice. "Arans are reputed to be such a... lively people." He closed the door behind him.

"Tyhnoth can be dour, but he is gentle and kind. Death is a kindness. Imagine the wretchedness of the world if he abandoned us." Isonei sighed. "This place feels as though it's crushing me. I find one bright spot, someone who reminds me of Ara so strongly I can smell my father's fields, and I'm accused of being immoral for having a conversation with him."

"You found an Aran?" Seating himself on the sofa he patted the place beside him with a serene smile.

"No, the glassmith, Xago, is from some islands..." She shook her head and came to sit with him letting him take her hand and pat it. "Mun."

"But he reminds you of Ara?"

"Our homes and languages aren't so different. He's going to send me some food that I might find more pleasing."

"Prince Draeseth would be happy to have anything you desired prepared." The man looked at her with concern.

"He and I don't enjoy the same food, and his cooks have no idea what Aran food is meant to taste like. If you had any idea how much I miss the tastes of home... I would kick a small child for a plate of well cooked scallops and they aren't even my favorite."

Odgar tried not to smile. "I see. So he is bringing food to the... friendship. And what would you bring?"

"I don't understand what you mean. You bring friendship to a friendship. Conversation and company."

"This may be difficult for you to understand." He paused, "This Xago would give you gifts, food and so on in exchange for your company. You cannot see how that would turn into more? How he would expect more?"

"What you're describing isn't a friendship. A friendship doesn't have expectations of desire."

"Ah. In Torga, women do not have friendships with men. Men have expectations. With kindness and a few gifts women grow," Odgar hesitated, "amenable to those expectations."

Isonei stared at him for a moment. "I think I understand." His face brightened. "Torgan women are taught to trade their affections for gifts. They're kept so isolated that any man who gives them kindness and a gift is a marvel and they trade without thinking."

"No!" He pulled his hands away and stared at her in horror. "Torgan women are chaste and do not allow men to pursue them as you seem to."

"I am not being pursued. If I were I would rebuff him. I am exclusive with Prince Draeseth until the next Festival of Maeralya. Arans are able to have friendships because we do not starve ourselves of all contact and affection."

Brother Odgar began to sputter. "You fail to understand."

"What you fail to understand is that desire is a choice." Isonei snapped at him and then continued icily, "I know exactly what a man has to offer. I choose to give my desire or not. That is what makes my desire valuable. If I had no understanding of that choice, if I had no knowledge of what desire was or of what friendship was, then I might behave as a Torgan woman and mistakenly give my desire in exchange for a pleasant conversation and a plate of food. But I am an Aran woman; I know very well when I am giving my desire and when I am giving my friendship."

The Torgan priest was silent, staring at her stonily. After a moment she went on, "Until the next Festival my desire belongs solely to Prince Draeseth. He has no reason for jealousy. I trust him, he should do the same." Rising she returned to the window and gazed out miserably, hearing the priest leave the chamber.

Left alone again she resolved to return to her room. Sleeping through her unfortunate stay in Torga seemed to appeal more and more. She stripped out of her heavy overdress and layers down to the long warm chemise and climbed under the covers. Sometime later the irksome tapping on her hand she'd been growing accustomed to waking to, roused her from her cheerless dreams.

Lislora was frowning down at her. "Are you ill?"

"Tired. What do you want?"

The Torgan woman's frown deepened. "You have been summoned."

Sullenly, Isonei roused herself from the bed and allowed the woman to dress her and fix her hair. She was taken to the study where Draeseth waited with a scowl. It was the other men in the room that gave her cause for concern. Xago was flanked by Torgan guards and his hands were bound behind his back. The Torgan Prince gave a command and Xago was forced to his knees and his bound hands were tied to his feet making his back bend. The guards then left the three of them in the room together.

"I am told you were warm to him." Draeseth rose from his seat drawing his black and silver knife. "Does his appearance fascinate you?" He gestured for her to come to him with the tip of it as he made his way to stand next to Xago.

"I was warm to him because we spoke of home, and-"

He gestured sharply with the knife toward the man. "And food. He intends to make a gift for you. He said the same. I am the one who gives you gifts, wife."

With the dangerous look in his eyes she knew better than to argue over being called his wife for the moment, instead she offered a concession. "If you require it I will refuse gifts from anyone else."

"I require it. As I require you to try to be content here."

"I am trying." Isonei felt anger and nervousness for Xago fighting for expression as she tried to be calm.

"Would a friend help you?" His eyes narrowed.

"It would. I-" She stopped speaking as he reached out and took hold of the back of her head with his free hand, looking at him in surprise. He hadn't reached out and touched her since he'd arrived.