Fen turned toward Quan. “He won’t,” he informed her sadly. “Not yet. But are you well? Do you need anything? Are your wrists bound too tightly?”
His gaze met Lan’s again.
Lan huffed but made no move to release her. “No, cub.”
“Cub?” Quan echoed. “Flower? Oh, is this about that fucking song? The moment it was first sung for us, I knew The Geon had made an error. He’d obviously never spoken to you any more than your shitstain of a father ever did.” Heni made a wheezing sound. Lan made not a sound at all. Fen turned to his cousin and smiled. She inclined her head toward him. “Then to find out The Acana sent you to him anyway,” she added, clearly trying to lower her voice so that no one else would hear. “And then his message all but accused us of hiding you. The disgrace of it! But you’re well? Are you bruised?”
Fen gave a start and glanced down at himself before he realized his shirt collar must reveal some of the spots of faded blue along his throat. He pulled at it. “Istin,” he explained. “For the Bal tradition. It was all we had.”
“The Bal…?” Quan asked in confusion before apparently remembering those stories. Her usual volume returned with her anger. “Not The Geon?”
Fen gestured to calm her since he couldn’t yet touch her. “No, not him. Lan.” He turned his face up toward Lan.
Quan turned to Lan as well, maybe connecting the streaks in his hair to the marks on Fen’s neck. “I suppose that’s some small relief. You weren’t taken. You ran away to your lover. But… the camp of the Wild Dog? The Acana is not going be pleased.”
“He doesn’t like that name,” Fen informed her quickly. “Although I am trying to make some use of it.” He inched closer to her until Lan said, “Cub,” more sharply than before. “He’s worried,” Fen confided to his cousin. “He rescued me.”
“The… Wild Dog rescued you?” Quan asked doubtfully. “From The Acana?” she continued a moment later, thinking of rescue the way Dol had said that others would, assuming Lan had saved him from his father’s cruelty and the bed of The Geon, and not from starvation or wolves.
“I ran on my own,” Fen admitted quietly, so she would know some of the truth. Then he spoke for all to hear. “The Wild Dog found me and gave me choice.”
“A captive doesn’t have choices.” One of the others with Quan said it, glaring toward the camp.
“If he released you now, I could leave with you and I wouldn’t be stopped.” Fen looked up. Lan’s dark eyes told him nothing. “Although, if I ran away on my own, I would likely die in the woods. But that’s what I would have done anyway if he’d left me where he found me.” Fen turned to his cousin. “He carried me himself, Quan.” His own breathlessness couldn’t start a blush because he was already blushing. “He gave me his food and his blanket. He listens to me. The Acana sent me as part of an alliance I had no wish to be in, and it was the Wild Dog who saved me. Since then, I’ve formed an alliance of my own here.”
“Alliance?” The sound of Quan’s shock carried through the clearing. She lowered her head to hiss at him. “What of your family?”
Fen rolled his shoulders. “I can speak on my own, as my own family.”
Quan opened and closed her mouth. She surprised him by looking to Lan, as if she thought Lan would understand her confusion, then seemed to remember she didn’t trust him and glared at him before facing Fen again. “What sort of alliance do you mean, cousin?”
Fen had forgotten how direct Quan was. He took a breath, then spoke, not quite looking at her or at Lan.
“I, Fenwit, child of the Bal and the Acana…” Those words alone caused a small stir from both Quan and Lan and made Heni cough. Traditionally, one only claimed the larger, more prominent family in any formal statements. “…Am here to advise Killan from the morra, known to you and others as the Wild Dog,” he held out a hand to Lan as gracefully as he could, “in any alliances he might desire to make.”
There was silence. When Fen looked up, Lan was regarding him in a way to make Fen want to roll over like a dog and show his belly. Then Lan turned from him to face Quan.
“Greetings, Quan of the Lylanth. Welcome to my camp.”
Quan did not gape or shout or snarl. She sucked in a breath and narrowed her eyes and said, “You!” to Lan. She followed it with a growl. “If you hurt him to make him say these things, I’ll gut you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Heni coughed again.
Lan paused before giving his answer. “He says such things all the time now that he has the freedom to.” He looked to Quan.
Quan did not look away. “It’s only an alliance if you actually listen to him.”
Fen frowned for that. “I’m familiar with not being listened to, cousin.”
Quan finally glanced to Fen again. “But you grew up in that place, Fen. It’s all you’ve known until now.”
Fen looked down, but then inclined his head to show he understood what she, and Lan, and Dol, and several others had tried to tell him. He continued calmly. “But he does. Eventually, I will even know his plans as he ends this.”
Quan must have been more exhausted than she appeared, because she shrugged with tired exasperation. “Ends this?”
“The fighting.”
She blinked several times, then fixed Lan with a curious frown. “And how is he to do that?”
