"Kitai," Isana said quietly, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you about."

"Yes?" she asked. She wore her cloak with the hood up, hiding both her decidedly conspicuous hair and the canted eyes of her Marat heritage.

"Regarding you and… and Tavi."

Kitai nodded, her green eyes shining with amusement. "Yes?"

Isana sighed. "I need to know about your relationship with him."

"Why?" Kitai asked.

"Because… because of things I am not free to share with you, your… your friendship with him could cause… relations could be a factor in…" She shook her head in frustration. "What does your relationship with him mean to you, precisely? Where do you see it leading you in the future?"

"Ah," Kitai said in a tone of comprehension. "Those kinds of relations. If you wished to know if we were mating, you should have asked."

Isana blinked, then stared at Kitai, mortified. She felt her cheeks burn. "No. No, that isn't what I meant at-"

"Not nearly often enough, of course," Kitai said with an exhalation somewhere between a sigh and a growl. "Not since we left the fortress. We can't on the ship. Never when the Legion was in the field." She kicked a small stone at the buildings on the other side of the street with a scowl. "Alerans have a great many foolish rules."

"Kitai, that isn't what-"

"He was very clumsy at first," Kitai confided. "Except for his mouth." She smirked, and added drily, "But then, he's always been clever with that."

Isana began to feel somewhat desperate.

"It was as if no one had taught him what it was he ought to do. Which I suppose could be another problem you Alerans have. After all, if no one has any idea how to go about it, no wonder you all get so nervous just talking about it."

"Kitai," Isana said weakly.

"They started paying me for doing what I was doing anyway, in the Legion, and I considered purchasing instruction for him. It seemed as useful a purpose for spending money as any. But I was informed by the women working at the Pavilion that it was improper-and that by Aleran standards, practically anything I did was going to make him happy, provided I did it naked." She threw up her hands. "And after all that fuss about wearing clothing in the first place!"

At least no one was walking close enough to hear the conversation. Isana began to mumble something she hoped Kitai would not take as encouragement- then caught a swift brush of the girl's emotions. Isana stopped in her tracks and arched an eyebrow at Kitai. "You're teasing me."

The Marat girl's eyes shone, as she glanced over her shoulder. "Would I do such a thing to the First Lady of Alera?"

Isana felt her mouth hang open for a moment. She closed it again, and she hurried to catch up to Kitai. She was silent for several paces before she said, "He told you?"

"He may as well have," Kitai replied. "His feelings changed every time he spoke about you." Her expression sobered. "I remember what it felt like to have a mother. I felt it in him for you."

Isana regarded the girl for a time as they walked. Then she said, quietly, "You aren't what you appear to be at all, are you?"

Kitai arched a pale brow at her.

"You appear to be this… barbarian girl, I suppose. Adventurous, bold, careless of manners and proper behavior." Isana smiled faintly. "I asked about your relationship with my son. You've told me a great deal about it."

Kitai shrugged a shoulder. "My father has a saying: Speak only to those who listen. Anything else is a waste of breath. The answers to your questions were there, if you listened for them."

Isana nodded quietly. "What you have with Tavi… it's like your people's other totems, yes? The way your father is close to his gargant, Walker."

Kitai's eyebrows shot up. "Doroga was not mating with Walker, when last I knew." She paused a beat, and added, "Walker would never stand for it."

Isana felt herself laugh despite all.

The Marat girl nodded at that, and smiled. "Yes. It is much the same." She touched her heart. "I feel him, here."

"Are there others, like you? With Aleran… I don't know the word for it."

"Chala," Kitai said. "No. Our peoples have never been close. And whelps are usually kept safeguarded from any outsiders. I am the only one."

"But what clan would you go to?" Isana asked. "If you went back to your people, I mean."

She shrugged. "I am the only one."

Isana absorbed that for a few moments. "That must be difficult," she said quietly. "To be alone."

Kitai bent her head, a small, inward smile on her lips. "I would not know. I am not alone."

Love, deep and abiding, suddenly radiated from the Marat girl like heat from a stove. Isana had felt its like before, though seldom enough, and the power of it impressed her. She had thought the barbarian girl an idle companion before now, someone who stayed near Tavi out of her sense of enjoyment and adventure. She'd misread the young woman by a great deal, assuming that the lack of emotion she generally felt from the girl had meant that there was no depth of conviction in the person behind it.

"You can hide yourself, your feelings. The way he can," Isana said quietly. "You let me feel that, just now. You wanted to reassure me."

The Marat girl faced her, unsmiling, and bowed her head. "You are a good listener, Lady Isana."

Isana bit her lip. "I am hardly a lady, Kitai."

"Nonsense," Kitai said. "I have seen nothing in you to indicate that you would be anything other than one of nobility, refinement, and grace." She pressed something into Isana's hands. "Hold this for me."

Isana blinked as Kitai handed her a sack of heavy burlap. She looked around. The Marat girl had directed their steps while they walked, and Isana had not realized that they had left Craft Lane. She was not certain where they were now. "Why do you want me to hold this?"

"So I have something to put the coldstone in after I have burgled it," Kitai said. "Excuse me." And with that, the girl stepped into a darkened alleyway, flicked a rope up over a chimney, and calmly scaled the outside of a building.

Isana stared for a moment, aghast. Then footsteps sounded down the street, and she looked up to see a pair of civic legionares on their patrol. For a moment, Isana nearly panicked and fled. Then she berated herself sharply and composed herself, slipping the bag underneath her cloak.

The legionares, both of them young men, dressed in leather tunics rather than the military lorica, nodded to her, and the taller of the pair said, "Good evening, miss. Are you all right?"

"Yes," Isana said. "I am well, thank you."

The shorter of the two drawled, "On a pretty spring evening like this, why wouldn't you be. Unless you were lonely, of course."

His immediate and… somewhat exuberant interest ran over her, and Isana felt her eyebrows go up. She'd spent comparatively little of her adult life in places where she wasn't known, by reputation at least, if not by sight. It hadn't occurred to her that she would be effectively anonymous, here. Given the apparent youth of a powerful watercrafter, with her hood up and the strands of silver in her dark hair concealed, she would look like a young woman no older than these legionares. "Not lonely, sir, no," she said. "Though I thank you for asking."

The taller one frowned, and a practical, professional kind of suspicion rippled across her. "It's late for a young woman to be out alone, miss," he said. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"Meeting a friend," Isana extemporized.

"Little late at night for that kind of thing in this part of town," the shorter legionare said.

The taller one sighed. "Look, miss, no offense, but a lot of these young Citizens from the Academy book time, then don't show up for the appointment. They know they're not supposed to be seen down to the Dock Quarter after dark, so they promise the extra coin to get you up here, but-"