Miry practically needed to be pulled from the saddle, her legs locking up with cramps the moment she touched solid ground. Nenra had little patience for her discomfort, pulling her along by the arm and half carrying her weight as the party moved quite briskly through the city, re-energized by promise of beds and a warm meal. The smaller girl whimpered in pain as she struggled to keep up, but bit her lip and tried to look tough and well-adjusted, which she decidedly failed at.

She tried to place the city that Lord Zakroti spoke of, but was too exhausted – [i]exhausted from doing what? There’s nothing of worth you’ve done…[/i] to properly consider it. She’d read something about it, at one point, some sort of siege and great infighting? or something. She made a mental note to ask the lord about it when they had a moment. If he wouldn’t think her an imbecile for not already knowing, that was.

The old woman looked rather grandmotherly, Nenra thought; the sun-worn leathery skin and silvered tresses of age were not so different between their two people, really. Following Zakroti’s example, she stooped into an awkward (and clearly hastily learned, given the mumbling of steps under her breath that accompanied it) curtsy-turned-bow as she remembered that she was finally, once again, wearing the trousers she was most comfortable in. 

Miry sank into a pretty curtsy in turn, though somewhat less assured than her presentation would normally be, her knees shaking under her skirts as she forced saddle-sore legs to comply. She clasped her hands behind her back, the speaking-screen nested behind her as unobtrusively as possible – even if Zakroti understood her handsign, she cared to keep it close until she could ascertain that about the rest of his household… but she also heard her mother’s voice, sharply in her ear, demanding that she hide it as much as she could around the company of high society. The tips of her ears brightened with her shame, and she adjusted her hold on it, wobbling and appearing to wish to melt into the ground.

Clouded by her discomfort and desire to sleep, she couldn’t be certain, but she was fairly confident that the words exchanged (and the passing of the lord’s sword) were a traditional greeting of hospitality used by Drakkan lords visiting the holdings of one…usually of the same status, or slightly less, but not all [i]that[/i] much less?... Drakkan titles were …confusing, to say the least. She’d read about them all as a matter of her education in history, though some of those readings had been several years before the present… none of their systems made much of any sense to her, or cared to settle that well into her memory. Far easier to remember were courtly bows and spoken cues, the ways of tuning one’s voice to be a respectful mimicry of the timbre and dynamic of the host. Some part of her longed for that, the simplicity of her home, or even the imperial city; she conveniently forgot the meltdown-inducing terror that had been the weeks of decorum and etiquette (and “pretending to be normal”, but that was beside the point) instruction prior to her sister’s presentation. 

Upon the sword being given back, they rose from their assorted positions of deference, one of the guards splitting off from the others to stand beside the lord while the others drifted a short distance away, towards the dormitory that had been mentioned. Lord Zakroti held up his hand with a gentle flame to create enough light for the party; Miry took note of this being one of his elemental powers, as it had been a detail skipped over entirely during their first meeting. 

Nenra’s overwhelming urge was to ask to sleep alone in the stable, but she held her tongue, weighing her options. She had no desire to sleep in Zakroti’s bed; gods only knew what a lecherous lord might do with that opportunity, and she’d had far too much of Qeynate’s eyes at the Choosing to think for a moment that Zakroti would not have similar sentiments towards her form. Sleeping in a room with Narlemaewel, whom she had gathered was the lord’s chosen man – perhaps even his protégé? Seemed little better. The perversions of these sorts were impossible to overstate, and if she was to be alone with one of them…he could easily take an act against her safety, and it would be her word against his. Her, a Bride well-known for her aura of trouble, against his favored bodyguard. 

“I think I should bunk with the men-at-arms,” she said plainly. Miry glanced at her, and she tacked on a cursory, “if it shouldn’t displease you,” though she thought it very much a waste of words – surely he would not have offered the choice if he would be displeased with either option! “Another night on a soft mattress may ruin my shoulders.” She was accustomed to the comforts of home, a straw-and-wool contraption laid across a frame of rope and wooden slats, a linen sheet over it and a wool blanket to ward off the chill. It had been quite enough at home, but when she became a lord’s prize, apparently that standard went up considerably – since arriving in Shadow Wroth, she’d had nothing less than feather toppers on a soft wool mattress, and it had thrown the muscles in her back and shoulders all out of alignment. 

A handful of the retainer chuckled at her comment, and she flashed the men a grateful smile for their defusing of the statement. Even Narlemaewel seemed wryly amused, though she didn’t dare make eye contact with Zakroti himself. Miry, meanwhile, said nothing, edging closer to Zakroti’s left side and inching her fingers into his hand tentatively, almost as though she expected to be smacked away. Honestly, she [i]did[/i] half-expect to be smacked away, having spent the last weeks with her head being filled with only tales (and experiences, when she’d been too slow to understand and act) of their brutality. Even Zakroti’s courtesy and pleasantries could not be enough to completely dash that from her memory. 
At some length of time, both groups had made it to their quarters only to realize that in their haste, they had made no plans for feeding themselves. Among the men-at-arms, it was quickly decided to pay a visit to a tavern nearby; Nenra was pulled along before she could argue, a steaming bowl of mutton stew and large mug of ale placed before her before she could remind them that she had no currency with which to pay. 

The men-at-arms, thankfully, afforded her remarkably few of those same slimy stares that she’d grown to associate with the nobles of their kind. Their party was not left without stares; a group of armed and armored men and one, conspicuously un-armored, woman among them was not an unnoteworthy group by any stretch of the imagination. Upon facing down an onlooker who could not hold his tongue (a poor sod who’d seemingly had more ale that night than brain juice, if he thought he could confront a party of a dozen-odd soldiers) and threatening to lay him into the pavement using only a dinner fork, the oversized guardsman called Kzaar gave her a hearty smack between the shoulder blades and told her that she’d fit in with them, at least, just fine.

She tried not to show how much the compliment meant. Some part of her cautioned that word of her bravado might make it back to Zakroti, and that there might be hell in the morning if whoever-this-was made a stink about it, but she drowned her caution with another sip of the ale. The flavor was already beginning to grow on her.

After they had eaten and drunk their fill, they returned to the dormitory building, the hour late but not disrespectfully or irresponsibly so. Nenra found herself a bunk alongside the men-at-arms, mildly inebriated and tired enough to have foregone her care about modesty or respectability – she shed her day clothes and donned a shift, mostly as a layer of protection against whomever might have previously slept in the bunk she claimed.

Miry, meanwhile, had a considerably quieter night at a rather fancy eatinghouse on the high street, the table served by a pretty and overly-enthusiastic young drakkan woman, who took one  glance at the scene and immediately read what was going on. There were several innuendos too heavily veiled for her to catch, plus a suggestion of a certain, probably-alcoholic drink, “to make the night easier” – she respectfully refused it, of course. The dinner conversation was over her head both literally and metaphorically – after much thought she’d ended up settling into the chair on her knees, when the food actually came, as otherwise her chin was on a level with her plate in the oversized Drakken furniture. Zakroti and Vain seemed to prefer their mother tongue, though they switched in and out of a variety of languages seemingly at a whim. Miry caught traces of High Drakkan, which she understood parts of, a few interspersed snippets from a variety of Mannish tongues that she knew near-fluently, and several that she could not make heads or tails of in all eighteen of her own languages. Periodically, a question was phrased in such a way that she felt inclined to answer, a glance from the lord or his guard pricking behind her eyes and almost begging a reply, even – she made herself sit on her hands so that she wouldn’t, though, not wishing to derail their fluid bandying of debate with her own inability to comprehend the context that had preceded the question.

In due time they retired to their rooms as well, though only a few cordial words were exchanged between Miry and Zakroti – she hardly wished to bother the lord with more idle chatter, for all that she moved stiffly and uncertainly and her nervousness grew more palpable with every step into their quarters. She shed her bodice and skirts fairly quickly upon realizing they were turning in for the night, her fingers deft at undoing the lacings behind her back. She pulled her hair down from its braided crown, letting it fluff up around her head as it was wont to do, and after a moment of hesitation loosened the ties on her shift, to, the fine linen clinging over her shoulders and bust in such a way that a soft tug might remove them. [i]Look ready, but not[/i] too[i] ready,[/i] the other brides had said. She mussed her hair up a bit further and chewed on her lips for a moment, remembering that others had said it was a way to get them to look plump and moist and – “kissable”, without needing to fumble for cosmetics, and then went to perch on the edge of Lord Zakroti’s side of the bed. She arranged her shift, suggestively bunched up, over the very tops of her thighs, letting her hair messily tumble down over her shoulders as she waited for him to emerge from the washroom. As she waited for him, she practiced an expression of desire, though without a mirror to tell she couldn’t be sure that it even worked at all. 

Truthfully, she couldn’t even say that she wanted to be taken to his bed in this particular moment, but she’d heard enough stories to know that it was usually better the sooner it happened – and better if she was the one to initiate it. Her heart fluttered in her chest, but she tried to steady her breathing, arranging her face into a pretty pout once again. If she did well enough at this, if she could just do what she was supposed to for [i]once[/i] in her gods-cursed life, he’d eventually fall in love with her, and then – everything would work out like it did in the fairy tales. Right?