“Nor do I believe in eating humans. Even though my parents did. And my brothers.” He shrugged, gazing off. “And Keita.” He looked back at them. “Well, they don’t do it now,” he sneered. “Not since Annwyl became part of the family. And when Talaith joined us, we stopped eating horses.” He gazed off again. “I think we’re beginning to run out of livestock, though.”
Deciding he was done with this bizarre conversation, Zachariah headed toward the door. “Tomorrow we’ll take you to the Nolwenn sanctuary. Perhaps using my mother’s name can help you get in to meet Haldane. She was the city’s commander general for thirty years until she retired. And you’ll stay here for the night.” Zachariah stopped and glared at the giant. “In separate rooms, Uncle.”
He looked back at his granddaughter, smiled, and walked out.
Once the old man walked out, Éibhear closed the door and faced Iseabail. “Would you stop calling me uncle?” he spit out between clenched teeth.
“But you are my uncle. An uncle who loves his dear, sweet, and much younger niece. What’s wrong with that?”
“Have you noticed that everyone in this family of yours is a warrior? Or a soldier? Or a giant-armed blacksmith?”
She clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait for him to meet Rhona and Uncle Sulien!” she cheered, mentioning two of the family’s best blacksmiths. “Imagine the weapons we’ll get when they compare ideas.”
“You may not have noticed this, but your entire Desert Land family of warriors and soldiers and blacksmiths hate dragons.”
“Oh, no, no. I think they’re simply frightened of dragons because they don’t know them yet or understand them. I just think they hate you specifically, which is a completely different issue.” She jumped up. “Gods!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I forgot Macsen. I left him outside.”
“He’s fine. I let him in while I was trying to track you down. I gave him some rocks to eat.”
“He doesn’t eat rocks. He just chews on them until they break into pieces.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
“Yes!” Izzy chuckled, but it faded away, and he saw the worry on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if we should eat with them.”
“Other than their hating me, why not?”
She rubbed her hands against her leggings. “What if, after they talk to me, they don’t like me? What if they’re disappointed?”
“You think these people will be disappointed? In you?”
“What do you—”
“They’re casually sitting around in their armor. The men and the women. The children have toy swords . . . and maces . . . and morning stars. Your great grandmother Zarah is missing three fingers from one hand and has an axe wound in her back. She pointed it out to me with great pride. That’s your great grandmother. While you are a revered and feared general in Annwyl the Bloody’s army. A monarch they seem relatively terrified of. So I really don’t think you’re going to disappoint your father’s family, Izzy. In fact, the way they’ve all been glaring at me—as if I’m running around wagging my c**k at everyone—proves, to me at least, that they at the very least feel protective of you if they don’t already adore you. Now”—he pushed her toward the door—“can we eat before I’m forced to gnaw my own arm off?”
She pulled the door open. “Can I call you Uncle Éibhear at the dinner table?”
“No, you may not, evil viper.”
Chapter 35
Dinner wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as Izzy had feared. In fact, she enjoyed herself. She didn’t think Éibhear did, but he put up with it, which she truly appreciated.
“Can I ask,” Izzy said to her Aunt Layla, who was the one who’d taken her out of the jail, “why were Éibhear and I taken into custody? I understood this to be an open city?”
“It is.” Layla shrugged. “Or perhaps was. We’ve been having problems with cults lately.”
“What cult?” Éibhear asked.
“It has no name, but we’ve been finding sacrifices in the tunnels under the city. Found a few bodies out in the desert, too. Nasty bit of business.”
“So I’ve ordered,” Izzy’s general grandmother, Maskini, interjected, “that anyone armed but not wearing colors is to be brought in and detained until we can question them.” She smiled at Izzy. “You were armed and not wearing any colors.” She glanced at Éibhear. “And you were just sort of terrifying.”
He shrugged. “Sorry.”
“You know”—Izzy looked at everyone around the table—“I’m a little surprised.”
“About what?”
“That there are so many female soldiers here. Mum told me about my father, but she didn’t really discuss life here in the Desert Lands except to say that women didn’t travel alone.”
“No one should travel alone,” Layla said before sipping her wine.
“And,” Zarah explained, “the women of our lands have been warriors for a few centuries now. But we weren’t always. At one time, we followed the rules the human gods set up. Men fought the wars and the women had and raised the children.”