The World Weavers by Kelley Grant Page A

shook his head and turned away.
    â€œHa, ha!” The man reached over and slugged him on the arm. “A joke. You and she would make beautiful babies. She likes you.”
    Kadar was certain something was missing in translation. “I thought Tigus didn’t marry.”
    The nomad laughed loudly, doubling over in his saddle. “No, no,” he gasped. “You would not be bound together, only making babies! The Tigus need new seed. You could give me strong grandbabies. Ha!”
    Kadar shook his head. He knew that was the Tigu way, but he couldn’t fathom having a child without marrying his partner and raising the child together, as he’d planned to do with Farrah. Onyeka seemed to have no problem leaving her child in the city, but Kadar hated leaving his daughter’s care to other ­people.
    â€œAh, it is all funny now,” Turo said, sadly. “War is coming. It is better not to have babies now.”
    Kadar tried to pull his mind away from Farrah, from his daughter, and from a newer interest in Onyeka and failed as they rode on into the dusk. They stopped at a tiny oasis, well into the night. Kadar dismounted wearily, tired of his own thoughts.
    He watered Asfar at the hole, and when he turned to tether her with the rest of the beasts, Onyeka was beside him.
    â€œWe could share a bedroll, on this night,” she offered as he tethered his mare.
    Kadar tried not to show his surprise at her forwardness, but she sensed it.
    â€œI am sorry,” she said, taking a step back. “I thought you were interested. But I remember; you clans go more slowly than we do. Forgive me.”
    Kadar put out a hand to stop her, his own emotions turbulent. “No, it isn’t that,” he said. “I am interested in you. I am beginning to like you. But it’s too soon . . .”
    â€œToo soon because we just met?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
    Kadar paused, then decided to confide in her. “My daughter’s mother died a few ten-­days ago,” he said.
    â€œAnd you loved her, and don’t want another in her place,” she said, nodding.
    Kadar pursed his lips. “I did love her, but . . . in the end, it wasn’t enough. It’s confusing to explain.”
    She shrugged. “We have time as we set up camp. It interests me to learn how the Northerners do love, if you do not mind talking about it.”
    Kadar helped her tend to the humpbacks. “She was a fighter, like you, but with words rather than weapons,” Kadar explained unbuckling and handing Onyeka a saddle. “I fell in love with her when I first met her in Illian. When she became pregnant I wanted to marry her. Northern laws wouldn’t allow us to, because she was a Forsaken.”
    â€œBut having a child changed that love?” Onyeka asked, checking the tack for wear. “The mothers in the North are the main caretakers, right? A warrior is not a natural caretaker.”
    Kadar nodded. He ran his hand down a beast’s back, checking for sores. “There were many things. But in the end, freeing the Forsaken was more important to her than her child and I were. She felt that harming children and killing feli were fine if done for her cause. I was torn between doing what was right and loving her. In the end, I lost that love. I did not even get to bury her, to return her body to the sand, because she’d bonded with another man. He took her to bury.”
    â€œAh,” Onyeka said softly. She turned to him. “Tigus do not make such commitments to each other. To do so forces us to choose between the love of a single person and doing what is good and right for the whole—­which is what the One requires. You chose what was right, rather than your love for one person but still have doubts and pain because of that binding between you two. That is why the Tigu way is not to bind to one partner, is to let all raise the children. Then our