The following weeks were more than pleasant for Mani. Maid Aegirine was not only well-versed in conduct befitting nobility, she was also cunning enough to explain it intelligently. He had generally found his so-called court tutors to be one or the other, when they were even marginally competent to begin with. Kaaltendt’s natural and cultivated isolationism meant that not many people even wanted “outsiders” to understand their more esoteric customs. There was no status to be gained teaching the consort of a foreign dragon the intricacies of behavior and expectations of polite society in Kaaltendt.

It wasn’t as if Mani was unfamiliar with court hierarchies and politics, as he had been raised in it as the human brother to seven dragons who were all grandchildren of the reigning queen. His whole family and clan were long-standing nobility of Akanata going back untold generations. He knew how deep to bow and who was the great-granddaughter of the second bastard prince of Etatanku.   

None of which helped him in the equally ancient but far more bizarre realm of Kaaltendt, a land bereft of dragons.

Which was not true, of course. There had always been dragons, but there in the modern era there were so few and they were so looked down upon that it was as if they barely kept their claws dug into the land of their birth. Everyone claimed to loathe Mad King Maganrad for the genocide he exacted out on the very dragons who were loyal to him, but then they paid homage to his madness by continuing the tradition of treating dragons as less than human. Feared, but not respected.

Which meant that Maid Aegirine’s lessons were a breath of fresh air. She pulled no punches in discussing the thirty-three noble families and their histories, nor did she seem to have much patience with the politics surrounding Queen Theaedra and her flight. It was clear she knew them all intimately and extensively, and he settled on the fact that she was somehow the daughter of one of those noble families herself. He entertained fanciful notions of her being a runaway from an unhappy marriage, or perhaps cast out for some scandal.

She was smart enough never to give him any clues to her own past outside of the obvious, but he always did enjoy a challenge.

Of course, it did not hurt that she was also strikingly beautiful. As devoted as he was to his dragon, Mani was only human. Her curves and sloe-eyed beauty were possibly due to her remote heritage, he figured. She was familiar with the regional differences between what she called “the Western Highlands” and the court etiquette of the capital located in the middle of the southern steppes of the Uhltric Mountains in a way that suggested personal, rather than secondhand, knowledge. The majority of the people of Kaaltendt that Mani had met were closer to Ro’s looks, tall and swarthy. Maid Aegirine was neither but she was Kaaltendt stock without any doubt. She was different enough from the rank and file to be interesting.

Mani had not cared one whit about contracting himself to a dragon when he was sent to Kaaltendt’s shores by his father, simply because it seemed so far-fetched a possibility. He was more ambassador than merchant and so believed he would have little chance to meet many dragons outside of court. He had enjoyed the intimate company of women and men in equal measures during his bachelorhood, and had planned to continue to do so.

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Then, of course, Ro had shown up and stolen Mani’s…his everything, if he was being truthful.

And while he would never say as much to Ro, whom he loved fiercely, he did on occasion miss the attentions of a beautiful lady. So he flirted a little and enjoyed the view in a harmless way, keeping his hands and his mind in their places while she coached him through a number of increasingly complicated and awkward scenarios.

She shook her head sadly at his latest fumble. “No, Guardian Roki, if the lord of the manor has three sons by two different wives, remember to address the oldest of the second wife with the same title as the youngest of the first.”

He rolled his eyes. “Children come in sets, by descending ages. Two can’t be ‘the youngest.’”

She sighed, sitting down, and he followed, sitting across from her with possibly less decorum than was proper. He hated the rules of inheritance in Kaaltendt, mostly because they seemed very random to him. Sometimes the elder child could inherent, sometimes they couldn’t; sometimes only girls could inherit, sometimes only boys; and dragons never could inherit anything other than money. The reasons Maid Aegirine gave him for each instance were always complicated and he rarely remembered them. What was the point of having inheritance laws when there were a thousand “exceptions” to each one?

“It’s just that the firstborn is usually the most important, so no one cares who the youngest is, or if there is more than one who is ‘the youngest’.”

“Even if he is the firstborn of another woman? Does she not count?”

“I wouldn’t say that. There are simply…laws.” She shrugged.

“And the women put up with this?” He shook his head. “I do not see my sister, a second wife to a man whose first love died tragically from wing-rot, accepting that her firstborn is not a first born. Because I assure you, my nephew is a firstborn.”

She tilted her head, thinking. “But that’s just as confusing. Instead of having two youngest, you have two eldest.”

“Two eldest from different women. Each is eldest in his own right; what rank they are as sons to their father is secondary.”

Her delicious lips tipped downward. “When you put it that way, it does make more sense.”

“Of course it does. Akanata is nothing if not orderly and sensible.” He nodded, as it was true.

“Except for perhaps your religion?” She smiled. It was already an old argument, more of a tease than a disagreement, and Mani sighed heavily, feigning persecution.

“We should not be judged negatively for the length and complexity of our scripture.”

“I have seen law books that weighed less.” She laughed, and he was so charmed by the rare event that it took him a moment to gather his riposte.

“You have never seen more than the first volume of the Katah. The entire text would break your desk.”

She raised her hands, laughing. “Enough! You cannot threaten me with the mystic ways of the dragon god of Akanata!”

He smiled and readied to answer, to keep the pleasant banter going, when Dr. Worthan burst through the door like a foot-bound fledgling to shout at Mani, breathless and scattered. “War!”