Master of None Read Free

sincere congratulations.”
    “Oh God,” he breathed, his fears confirmed. “Kallah is the daughter of Pratha Eraelin Changriti.”
    Yaenida reclined even deeper into the pillows, obviously amused by his situation. “Quite so,” she admitted.
    “The Changriti pratha h’máy hates me,” he said, pronouncing the words with the distinctness he would use for a child. “Two days after that, she tried to have me murdered!”
    The healing gash in his side twinged with the memory of the frantic struggle in the dark, the choking smell of bitter cinnamon in the cloth clamped over his nose, the blade scraping by his ear to impale the sleeping mat. Only the advantage of his size and strength as well as the skills learned as a boy growing up hard had saved him. The would-be assassin had vaulted through the small half-moon window, vanishing like a cat over the rooftops, leaving him crumpled on the floor and bleeding more from his nose than from the wound along his ribs. The
pahlaqu
guardian where he lived had been summoned by the hospital, and viewed the torn scrap of dark burgundy silk in his fist with zealous indifference, strongly advising him to forget the incident had ever happened. Yaenida echoed that opinion.
    “An accusation I should be careful to speak of very discreetly, were I you,” she warned him. “If Pratha Eraelin dva Hadatha Changriti wanted you dead, you would
be
dead, and she would not appreciate your slanderous allegations of incompetence.”
    “Then she was quite competent in scaring the hell out of me. I can’t marry her daughter. I would be living in the household of a woman who would make my life nothing
but
a large pond of watery pigshit.”
    “But, Nathan,” she chided, nearly laughing, “you did accept.”
    “I didn’t know what I was doing!”
he protested, his hands gesturing for emphasis, breaking strict Vanar convention. The women in the corner looked up sharply. As two stood, Yaenida waved them away impatiently. He forced down his anxiety. Never show anger,
never
. He knew better. “How was I supposed to know what she was offering?” Nathan continued, keeping his voice low and his sweating palms on his thighs. “Isn’t there some way of explaining this to her? I can’t legally be held to agreements I didn’t know were being made, can I?”
    She smiled at him pityingly, and he bit his lip to shut up. Ignorance of Vanar law, he’d already been well taught, was no excuse.
    “Nate,” she said, using the intimate name he hadn’t heard from her since his imprisonment. The unexpected familiarity made his throat hurt. “Kallah is a respectable and influential member of a High Family, and you are in no position to be choosy. Believe me, you could do a lot worse.”
    “I don’t have anything against Kallah Changriti, although she’s probably more interested in me because I’m ‘exotic’ rather than from any real affection. Surely it’s not my sparkling wit and charm. Come on, Yaenida, I can barely even talk with the girl!”
    Yaenida raised one eyebrow, which he took for concurrence. “Isn’t there some way around this without breaking protocol or upsetting her? You’re the Nga’esha pratha h’máy, can’t you explain to her I didn’t understand what life would be like for me in Pratha Eraelin’s House?”
    “The pratha h’máy of a High Family does not involve herself with the problems of
naekulam
,” she said ironically. “That would be too far beneath my dignity.”
    He stared at her in disbelief.
    She sighed. “Nobody cares about how unpleasant your life would be in the Changriti House, and I’m sure Kallah is well aware of what her mother is like. No doubt part of her reason for making such an absurd offer in the first place was to antagonize Eraelin. But
your
feelings are not important, and would not be of interest to anyone.”
    Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the impulse to ball his hands into fists.
    “It is a remarkable development, however,”