David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

"At least we're still alive, Shay." Jathmar's soft voice summoned her back from her wandering thoughts.

"And we're still together. And," his voice changed subtly as an almost grudging edge crept into it,

"whatever else, we're damned lucky Jasak is such a fundamentally decent sort."

"Yes, we are." Shaylar's dark, beautiful eyes warmed with deep approval as she gazed at him. Jathmar felt that approval through the marriage bond, and acknowledged it with a crooked smile of his own.

"I am trying, love."

"Oh, I know," Shaylar said. "Believe me, Jath, I know."

And she did. She not only knew, but she understood exactly why Jathmar's feelings where Sir Jasak Olderhan were concerned remained … complex, to put it as tactfully as possible. Gadrial Kelbryan-

Magister Gadrial Kelbryan-had shared a term to describe both Jathmar and Jasak. It wasn't one Shaylar had ever heard before, but once Gadrial explained its meaning, she'd had to agree that it was a perfect fit for both of them. The term was "alpha male," and she and Gadrial had watched with a mixture of apprehension, frustration, impatience, and genuine amusement as the two men tried to come to some sort of understanding of their mutual roles.

It wasn't an easy task. Of course, it wouldn't have been an easy task for anyone, whatever sort of alpha or beta male they might have been.

No one could possibly expect Jathmar to forget that it was the men of Jasak Olderhan's company which had killed every other member of their civilian survey crew. Which had come literally within a hair's breadth of killing Shaylar, as well-and even closer than that to killing him. In fact, without Gadrial Kelbryan's minor Gift for Healing, Jathmar, at least, would have died, and it was highly probable that Shaylar would have followed him.

No, no one could reasonably have faulted Jathmar for hating the very ground Jasak walked upon, or feeling a fierce, savagely satisfied sense of vengeance when Sharonian troops virtually annihilated Jasak's command after Hundred Hadrign Thalmayr relieved him of command. One thing was certain-

Jasak had never blamed Jathmar for feeling that way.

But Shaylar was a Voice, with the perfect recall and gift for languages which accompanied her Talent.

Since her capture, she'd acquired a native's fluency in Andaran, the common language of the Union of Arcana's Army. Which was the reason she knew that Jasak had never intended for anyone to die. That what she'd thought at the time was the order to open fire had, in fact, been Jasak's voice shouting the order not to fire.

The order one of his subordinates, whose stupidity had apparently been exceeded only by his arrant cowardice, had disobeyed.

Jasak had been even more horrified than Shaylar and Jathmar, in some ways, when Shevan Garlath shot down Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl while the survey crew's leader stood there with empty hands, trying to talk. But when the infuriated Sharonians responded to chan Hagrahyl's murder by opening fire with the rifles no Arcanan had ever even imagined might exist, Jasak had found himself with no option but to fight the battle no one had wanted. So he had … and at the end of it, Shaylar and a savagely wounded Jathmar had been the only Sharonian survivors.

"We really are lucky he and Gadrial are both such decent people," she told her husband now. "And that he's an Andaran."

"And that he's some sort of an anachronistic throwback, too,"another voice said.

Shaylar and Jathmar's heads turned as another woman-a little older than Shaylar, and a little taller

(everyone was at least a "little taller" than Shaylar)-appeared in the compartment door.

"Sorry," the newcomer said. "I didn't mean to intrude, but it's getting towards suppertime. I'm sure Jasak and Chief Sword Threbuch have the stewards setting up in the dining compartment by now. Would you two care to join us?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm starved," Shaylar said. "I don't really understand why. It's not like we've been burning off a lot of energy traveling for the last few days."

"No, we haven't," Gadrial Kelbryan agreed. "I'm hungry enough to eat a dragon myself, though. I wonder if it's because we're all finally in a position to take it a bit easier and pay more attention to little things like starvation?"

Her wry smile was almost impish, and Shaylar snorted in a combination of amusement and frustration.

Gadrial was a Ransaran, which meant she came from the Arcanan equivalent of Uromathia, but Ransar was very unlike the Uromathian Empire. Ransarans were much more like Ternathians-or even New Farnalians, like Darcel Kinlafia-than Uromathians, with a fervor for freedom and the rights of individuals which sometimes seemed to Shaylar's Shurkhali sensibilities to border on the fanatical, or the obsessional, at least. Not that Shaylar had any intention of complaining. She owed Jathmar's very life to the Ransaran … sorceress, for want of a better term, and despite the unmitigated horror of the circumstances which had brought them together, Gadrial had become one of the closest non-Talented friends Shaylar had ever had.

But, for all of that, the slim, powerfully-Gifted magister was also one of her jailers. The fact that Gadrial was also a potent protector, one who'd demonstrated her willingness to literally step between Shaylar and a furious dragon, only made their relationship still more … complicated. And the emotions Shaylar could sense out of Gadrial whenever the other woman looked at Sir Jasak Olderhan added their own unique strand to the impossibly tangled knot into which the gods had decided to weave all four of their fates.

"He is a throwback, you know," Gadrial said as the three of them left the passenger compartment and started down the carpeted hallway towards the luxury slider's dining compartment.

"Jasak?" Jathmar asked.

"No, Chief Sword Threbuch," Gadrial replied with a grimace. "Of course I mean Jasak!"

"It was intended as a simple expression of interest," Jathmar said with dignity. His own Andaran was improving steadily, although he remained substantially less fluent in it than his wife. Given her her utterly non-Andaran sandalwood complexion, flashing dark eyes, glorious midnight hair, and exotically musical accent, Shaylar could never have passed as a native Andaran-speaker, but her command of the language was at least as good as Gadrial's own.

"She knew that, Jath!" Shaylar scolded now, poking him sharply in the ribs with a jabbing index finger.

Then she looked at the other woman. "I think I agree with you, Gadrial, but exactly how do you mean that?"

"I sometimes think Jasak thinks he's living back during the days of Melwain the Great," the magister replied. Her tone was light, almost jesting, but Shaylar sensed a core of genuine concern under the amusement.

""thinspace"'Melwain the Great'?" she repeated, and Gadrial shrugged.

"Melwain was an Andaran king who lived well over a thousand years ago. By now, the legends crusted around him are so thick that no one really knows how much of his story is historical and how much is invented, but it doesn't really matter. He's become almost the patron saint of Andara because he lived such an unbelievably honorable life."

Gadrial rolled her eyes with such a fundamentally Ransaran combination of emphasis and resignation that Shaylar giggled.

"All very well for you," Gadrial said severely. "You didn't grow up living in the same universe as Andara! Those people-!"

She shook her head again, and Jathmar's deeper chuckle joined Shaylar's amusement.

"Actually," Gadrial continued after a moment, her voice and expression both considerably more serious,

"most non-Andarans really do find Jasak's people a bit hard to understand. Mythalans don't believe the concept of 'honor'-to the extent that they're even capable of visualizing the concept, at least-extends to anyone outside the shakira and multhari castes. And my own people spend a lot of their time scratching their heads and trying to figure out how anyone could define so much of who and what they are on the basis of an honor code that goes back well over a millennium and seems to consist primarily of accepting an endless series of obligations simply because of who you chose as parents. But there they are. They really still exist-some of them, at least."