And I saw she was excited. Her eyes were shining with it. She was happy. Something good was happening and it wasn’t just me getting up and getting dressed.

“Please,” I whispered, reaching out and taking her hand, “get me Diandra.”

She looked in my eyes. Then she nodded. Then she turned her head and said something to Jacanda who was dragging in the tub.

Jacanda looked at me, looked at Teetru, nodded, left the tub where it was and dashed out of the tent.

I fell down to my back and stared at the top of the tent.

“Another day in paradise,” I whispered, my voice sounding defeated.

This was because it was and that was because I was.

I allowed myself to feel this for approximately two minutes. Then I pulled my shit together and hauled myself out of the bed to face whatever next was to come at me that day.

* * * * *

The marketplace was a short ways away from the encampment, through a small stand of weird, thin, green stalked trees that looked a bit like bamboo but weren’t.

And the marketplace, unlike the encampment, was a fixture. There were tents but there were also buildings, not sturdy by a long shot but buildings nonetheless.

And they had, I discovered, everything for sale there. Everything.

Diandra, her pretty dark-haired, dark-almond-eyed, twelve year old daughter, Sheena (who spoke enough English to make herself understood in a broken and charming way, mostly because she spoke it smiling a sweet smile and giggling after practically every word) and I caused quite a sensation when we arrived.

And this sensation, I figured, was not entirely due to my new kickass outfit (ice blue, halter bikini top that hooked to a golden chain around my neck and was also fastened with a chain around my back, ice blue skirt with shafts of gold and hints of white and silver, wide belt made of gold and silver disks, no bands at my biceps but so many gold and silver, skinny bangles on my wrists it took Gaal five minutes to push them up my hands and they covered me from wrists to mid-forearm and tinkled every time I moved my arms (which was, I noted for the first time in my life, a lot), gold earrings, again chandelier but dripping with rough, seed pearls and pearl pins affixed to the coils, twists and braids in my hair everywhere).

The queen had come calling.

With a chatty Diandra and a giggling, smiling, brokenly chatty Sheena, I wandered the marketplace looking over the wares.

Earthenware jugs, bowls and vases of all shapes and sizes. Bolts of materials of everything from burlap to silk in every color you could imagine. Dried, cured meats. Hard, salami type sausages. Cheeses.

Vats of yogurt. Dried fruits. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Nuts, both with shells and without. Sacks of various grains. Pottery. Enameled bowls. Knives and spoons (no forks, I noted, as I noted none were at Lahn’s table) made of silver or pewter and even wood. Trinkets,

bangles, chains and hair bobs. Yarn of every color. Thread of every color. Looms both big and small. Rugs, again, both big and small.

Casks of wine. Candles.

You name it, they had it. The place was huge, it was bustling and from the horses (with rickety, primitive wagons and without) and what looked like oxen (not that I’d ever seen oxen, I was guessing) tied to basic wooden fences outside the marketplace, it wasn’t just there for whenever the Daxshee set up at the dais but it stood there always and people came from other places to purchase what they needed.

I was wandering and taking it all in but I was also in my head.

This was because I was wondering about Diandra. She seemed kind.

She seemed friendly. She seemed to want to be my friend, to want to help.

And I needed help.

Like, a lot of it.

I just didn’t know where to start.

“The whispers are fading, Dahksahna Circe,” she told me, lifting a bolt of silver fabric shot with crimson and violet.

I stopped fingering a heavy cream silk and looked at her. “Sorry?”

She turned to me and dropped her hand. “The whispers are fading.” Her grin turned wicked and knowing. “The warrior king and his warrior queen battled on last night, I hear.” She leaned in and raised her brows as I sucked in breath. “I also heard… he won.”

“What?” I breathed and she laughed softly, getting closer.

“Something else you need to get used to, my dear,” she bumped me with her hip then looked down at the fabric, her lips twitching,

“the walls of tents are thin. And, especially with the Dax, people listen. ”

Oh my God.

“People heard us?” I breathed (yes, again!).

“You were shouting,” she answered on another wicked grin.

Oh my God!

“Then you were moaning and crying out,” she chuckled as I stared at her in mortification, “the spoils of victory for King Lahn, I’m sure.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, she threw back her head and laughed then she wrapped an arm around my waist and guided me away from the fabric stall, still chuckling as I noticed Sheena grinning unabashedly at me.

She knew too.

And she was twelve!

The horror!

“Settle, my dear,” Diandra urged on a squeeze of my waist when the look of mortification stayed rooted on my face, “this is good,”

her face dipped to mine, “very good. His people could not know his words of the wedding rite were true. But last night, you proved them true. Shouting at a king?” She shook her head in mock disapproval all the while tsk tsking and I knew it was mock because she was grinning the whole time. “That’s not done, Dahksahna Circe. Only the bravest heart and fiercest spirit in the soul of a woman would risk challenging a mighty warrior king.” She gave me another squeeze, looked away and murmured, “Well done, my dear.”

Okay, shit, I was in trouble.

“Um… Diandra?” I called as she moved us to a trinket stand filled with bangles, earrings, delicate chain bracelets and necklaces and all sorts of cool shit for hair, Sheena trailing and stopping around the side of the table where the wares were laid out.

Diandra fingered a silver hair pin with what looked like a garnet in it and murmured, “Mm?”

“What does trahyoo mean?” I asked and her eyes came to me.

“It means, sleep, in the imperative. As in ahnoo, which is imperative, ahnay would be used if you were to say,” she picked up the pin, “‘I like this’ or in Korwahk, ‘Kay ahnay sah’ But if you were to want to put emphasis on it, say, if you were a king… or a queen, where you expect your merest whim obeyed, you would say,

‘I like this.’ Or ‘Kay ahnoo sah.’ Therefore, if you are ordering someone to sleep, you wouldn’t say, ‘ trahyay’ you would order,