I pulled myself up off the ground, not bothering to gather the few shredded remains of my shirt around me. "I am not a lizard," I said, eyes narrowing. There was one person, and only one person, who I let call me a lizard, because I knew she was not serious when she said it. That was Siowyn, and the person standing in front of me was quite definitely not Siowyn.
"Fine, then," he snapped. "Dragon. You're a sodding dragon! That better?"
"Actually, no," I said, and he stared at me with an incredulous look on his face, as if he couldn't believe that I wasn't satisfied yet. "First, we call ourselves the clans. You will almost never find one of us using the word "dragon" unless talking to or about humans. And second, I am a half-breed, not a full-blooded clan member. So no, I am not a "dragon.""
"Minor detail," he said. "That doesn't change the fact that you're not human, you lying bastard!"
"I am half human," I said. "And when did I say that I was human?"
He stared at me, thinking for a moment. I knew that he would not be able to come up with an answer, because I had specifically not claimed to be human. For one, it would have looked odd, stating that I was human. Humans never felt the need to reassure other humans that they were human when they first met. Only non-humans trying to pass as human did that. And, also, it was none of his business whether I was fully human or not.
"That doesn't matter," he growled. "What matters is, you came on to me, you sick freak!"
"I did not!" I exclaimed, putting my hands on my hips and staring at him angrily. "I merely wanted to find a way to prove to you that I was male, since you didn't believe me and were too stubborn to let the real owner of the body you're in have control. It's because you, the Bound spirit, are in control that you can only see Fa'lyr and thus thought I was female. Besides, you were the one who turned this into something sexual, not me!"
"How else was I supposed to take that?" he asked me. Then his voice turned vaguely protesting, just on the edge of a whine. "Besides, you enjoyed it!"
"Are you sure of that?" He had no proof that I had enjoyed what he did, unless he was sensitive like Siowyn was. And while he was a god, supposedly, I had the distinct feeling that he could not feel others' feelings in that way.
He frowned, hopefully realizing that I was right. But then, after a few moments' thought, he spoke again. "Any normal person would have enjoyed that."
That particular statement made no sense to me. The majority of the humans, and members of other races that had two sexes, were not attracted to or aroused by those of the same sex. Many of them, in fact, found the idea disturbing and "unnatural," and tended to consider the clans in the same category, despite the fact that the clans are naturally only of one sex, thus it cannot possibly be "unnatural" for any two full-blooded clan members to get together. But as such, I failed to see how he could say that any normal person would have enjoyed what he did, unless he was still thinking of me as female.
And, my confusion was just enough to take some of the edge off of my anger. "And just how did you decide that?" I asked him. "Most men I know wouldn't be inclined to agree with you."
He shrugged. "Sensation is sensation. What does it matter whether it comes from a man or a woman?" Quite an interesting notion there. It was definitely not an idea that most humans I knew would care for.
"I thought that most human gods disliked that sort of thinking," I commented.
"Most do, but I'm not most human gods." He stared at me, almost as if daring me to challenge his statement.
"Something strange is going on here," Fa'lyr said. "I'm pretty sure that he is Darhim... But at the same time, he's completely different. The Darhim I knew wouldn't quite be that indifferent about the idea of having sex with another man. He was a blasted womanizer!"
"Maybe this isn't him, then?"
"No, it's definitely him," she said, her voice confident. "He's just changed quite a bit since back then."
I decided about then that I had gotten too far off track. I had let him take control of the situation, and had meanwhile forgotten that I was supposed to be figuring out why he was there in the first place, and what had happened to the prince. And now I was arguing with him, which wasn't getting him any closer to Syrr Temple and then getting to the bottom of the situation.
"We can have this discussion elsewhere," I said, crossing my arms across my chest.
A smile spread across his face, a smile that made me vaguely uncomfortable for a few moments. "You're really persistent, aren't you?" he asked. "Why don't you make up your sodding mind?"
I looked at him with a blank, confused expression on my face. "What?"
"Well, first you want me to go off somewhere private with you to have sex," he said. I started to protest almost immediately, but he interrupted and continued. "Then you get all bent out of shape when I try to give you what you want, and it doesn't even get you excited. Now you're back to trying to get me to go off somewhere private with you. Make up your mind, will you?"
I stared at him, completely unable to come up with anything to say in reply to that chain of nonsense. I had told him that I had no desire to sleep with him, multiple times. The fact that he refused to believe me annoyed me almost as much as being called a lizard did. And the fact that he could not seem to think around that ludicrous idea of his frustrated me to no end.
I made a noise of incoherent frustration, something deep in my throat that was halfway between a gurgle and a growl. Then I threw my arms up above my head and whirled around. "I give up!" I exclaimed. "You are completely and utterly insane, and I have better things to do than deal with your self-centered sex-crazed nonsense."
Before he could reply, I stormed to the door, threw it against the wall behind it, and made my way, rather noisily, through the hall and down to the common room of the inn. The innkeeper, again standing at his post at the bottom of the stairs, spotted me and started yelling angrily. I ignored him up until the point where he grabbed me by the arm and tried to hold me back to continue yelling at me. Then I pulled my arm roughly out of his grasp, so hard that he stumbled forward slightly as my arm came free, and shoved my way out of the entire inn.
I continued that way until I reached the inn where I was staying, despite the crowd that still filled the streets of Port Jether. That particular crowd was slightly different from the one that gathered during the day, this one being made up more of people out looking for fun, rather than people out on daytime business, but it was just as numerous, if not more so. It would be several more hours before this crowd dissipated, however, leaving me shoving people left and right indiscriminately in my anger.
"This isn't going to get him to Syrr Temple any faster," Fa'lyr felt the need to tell me just as I pushed aside a rather diminutive woman, possibly a fae (I hadn't looked long enough to check) just before arriving in front of my inn.
"I don't really care at the moment," I muttered, drawing strange looks from the crowd around me. "I'll go back for him in the morning, when I am hopefully less inclined to slaughter him."
"Why bother worrying about that?" she asked. "It's not like you would get far trying to kill him anyway. He's stronger and faster than you are."
"I'd rather not get myself killed when he defends himself. And if I did succeed, I would have to worry about explaining to the king of Jether, and later to Da'syrr, the Elder, and Oya about why I felt I needed to kill the prince."
"I guess that makes sense," she said, flashing a smile at me. She apparently hadn't thought about the fact that I could get myself killed trying to fight him, even if I failed in killing him. And, if I died, she would die again. She had made me quite aware twenty-one years earlier that she had no desire to die again anytime soon.
As I approached the inn, I looked around the building for Kiren. I had chosen not to have her in the stables, since it was an extra charge that I didn't actually need to deal with. She didn't mind waiting outside in nice weather the likes of which we were having that day. And I could trust her to stay where I left her, or in the vicinity, as long as she wasn't in the clan lands.
As for theft... With the average horse maybe someone would be able to simply walk off with her, especially if he offered up a piece of something tasty to lure the animal to him. But Kiren was different. She was fiercely loyal to me, showing a side of her that was usually hidden beneath a gentle exterior when threatened by someone with less than pleasant intentions. She simply would not put up with someone trying to steal her, a fact attested to by the unconscious man lying next to her when I finally spotted her.
How she managed to take out the people who tried to make off with her, I was not quite sure. I would often come back from a trip on foot to find her standing guard over an unconscious body, or sometimes even a few bodies. They were unmarked, even by hoof prints that might suggest that she had kicked them, and I had decided long before that all that really mattered was that she was not killing them, and that they didn't succeed in walking off with her. Still, it confused me, and only made me suspect more that maybe the man who had sold her to me had been telling the truth about her being descended from a god.
"Hey, love," I called out to her, earning a happy whinny in response. I went over to her side and patted her side. "I know you don't like this place any more than I do," I said, even though I had never gotten any indication that she didn't like crowded places. Kiren didn't spook easily. "We'll be getting out of here tomorrow, whether Darhim likes it or not."
"When did I tell you my name?" came a voice from behind me. I recognized that voice, and had been arguing with it just a few minutes earlier. I had also been under the impression that I had left him standing in the middle of his room at the Sign of the Black Cock, and that he wouldn't have followed me when I stormed off.
I whirled around to face him, anger flaring back up when it just started to calm down. There he stood, right in front of me, now that I had turned, and close enough to reach out and touch. He had a confident grin across his face, but a vaguely puzzled look clouded his eyes slightly at the same time. I crossed my arms across my chest, still bare, and glared at him.
"Why did you follow me?" I asked him, my voice soft and low.
"You're the one who wanted me to come with you," he said. "And when did I tell you my name?"
"You didn't," I said. "Fa'lyr did. She knew you before she died, and she recognized you right away."
"I don't recognize the name," he said. "And you said that I've been seeing her when I look at you... I've never seen her before today."
That did not make Fa'lyr very happy. She had already realized that he didn't recognize her, just by the fact that he hadn't reacted to seeing "her." But it was probably different being told so, straight from his mouth. Until he said it, it was just a suspicion, a guess. But once he said it, it became reality, and in a way a denial that something that had been a fairly major point in her life had ever happened.
She silently asked me for control. She wanted to rant at him by herself, to make it clear to him just how much it bothered her that he didn't recognize her. She probably would lunge at him at some point, and I couldn't say that I trusted her to keep it peaceful. So I refused, which just angered her more.
"Hey, isn't that the prince?" I heard a voice call from somewhere in the crowd beyond Darhim. I looked up to see a woman, probably somewhere around my age, pointing at the two of us with a surprised look on her face. The man she was with looked over at the two of us, and even as he gasped and nodded, multiple people in the crowd did similar things and started to advance on us.
The strangest thing, now that I think back on it, was how Darhim had gotten through the days between the prince's Binding and the day I found him without something similar happening. He was in the prince's body in the middle of the capital city of the kingdom. Just like that boy had recognized him in the inn, just like the woman on the street had recognized him, there were bound to be quite a few people in the crowded city that recognized him as well. But somehow he had managed to make it through those days without getting mobbed, that I knew of. All I can think of is that Darhim himself was somehow putting them off just by being there, and for some reason it had stopped working once I had shown up.
I may be a fairly good swordsman, but that means nothing in the face of an advancing mob. Large numbers of unskilled people will almost always overwhelm even the best fighter, especially when the fighter in question is particularly small. And the addition of a second fighter, such as Darhim, did not do much to reassure me. Seeing that crowd starting to move toward us, with cries of excitement and curiosity all because of the word "prince," was not a sight that made me easy. Besides, I didn't really want to kill off any humans just to avoid being mobbed.
"Maybe we should leave this place before they reach us," I suggested to Darhim.
He looked at me with more confusion written across his face. "Why should we do that?" he asked.
"There is a large group of excited humans gathering behind you," I said. "And they all want to see their prince, who would be the proper owner of the body that you are currently controlling. I know that I would prefer not to be caught by them."
"I don't see how that's a problem," he said. "They're just a bunch of lowlifes. If you're as much of a warrior as you claim to be, we'll be able to take them with no problem."
I stared at him. I didn't bother to explain to him just why I didn't want to have anything to do with fighting off a mob. I had the distinct feeling that he wouldn't understand anyway, and most likely wouldn't care whether the people in the mob lived or died. Instead, I simply grabbed his arm and started running. I caught him by surprise, which allowed me to get him moving before he could balk. Kiren would realize to follow me, so I just concentrated on running in the direction where the crowd was the thinnest.
Darhim struggled a bit, but I held on as tightly as I could and continued to run. In fact, I ran for a straight ten minutes, until we reached the edges of the city. I didn't slow down in the slightest until the houses and streets gave way almost completely to fields. I slowed then, but didn't stop. I wanted to be far away from the mob before I stopped, and I didn't want to give Darhim a good chance to get back to the city.
Unfortunately, Darhim didn't seem to agree with that decision. Rather than letting me get as far away from the city as I wanted, he finally decided that he had had enough as we passed a large haystack. He stopped, and refused to move even the smallest amount from where he stopped, no matter how much I tugged on his arm.
"You're a coward," he said, frowning when I turned to him.
"I'm a realist," I said. "Unless you happen to be a Swordmaster, we would have been overwhelmed. Someone would have turned the mob angry or violent. We would have been taken. And even if we did manage to survive, we would have to kill half the mob to do it. You can't just go around killing people like that!"
"Why not? They're just a bunch of lowlifes."
Kiren came running up behind Darhim just about then. I spotted her, and my travel bag strapped to her back, and I sent up a silent thanks to the gods that I hadn't put my bags in my room at the inn. I usually left them strapped to Kiren's back, but I had been considering taking them inside while in the middle of Port Jether. Even with Kiren as a guard, there were far too many people in Port Jether who might try to steal my things. I hadn't taken the bag in in the end, because I wasn't sure if I would remember to bring it back out, and for that I was grateful.
"Are you serious?" I asked him, my voice sharp, and slightly hot. "Are all human gods like you, uncaring and cruel? Willing to kill someone off just because?"
He shrugged.
"If I hadn't promised the Elder that I would bring you back I would just leave you here," I said, turning away from him angrily. "But I did make that promise, so I will see to it that you make it to the Temple, where I can be rid of you."
With that, I grabbed Kiren's reins and started walking away from the city. I glanced back at him once, looking at him in a way that I hoped conveyed the fact that I would literally drag him behind my horse if he didn't follow willingly. I wasn't sure how I would be able to tie him up to attach him to Kiren, but I was convinced that I would do it, no matter how difficult it turned out to be.
To my surprise, he actually followed.