I moved at that. She did not anticipate it, assuming me dead. I seized the knife and threw it away, and pulled her down and turned her so she was under me.

“What’s this?” I said, my voice hoarse as if I were half-dead indeed. “Kill me, then die with me? That would be a fine marriage night.”

She did not seem afraid, more stunned, as she had some cause to be.

“Someone warned me,” I said. “It was make believe. I am not poisoned. If you wished me slain, why weep for me?”

She was still crying. The tears ran down into her hair.

“I have been twenty nights nerving myself to it,” she choked out. “I cannot live with you. But when it was done—”

“You did not cry or die for your man in the fortress,” I said.

She shut her eyes. She did not need to tell me. For all her murdering, she loved me, and for all my anger I could not kill her, having stopped her own arm at the work.

I touched her as she lay beneath me, the curves and hollows of her gliding flesh. Her eyes tightened, and her hands fastened on me of their own volition.

“You can live with me,” I said. “You will see.”

I never feared her treachery after. It could have been all too simple for her to finish me in the nights that followed, when desire was slaked or when I slept. Yet she did not, and I knew she would not. There is one sound way a man can bind a woman to him, the same way she will bind him, and with the same rope. That hour I had the proof of her liking. I thought the feuding was done forever.

So Demizdor became my wife, though never like a wife of the krarls. It was Asua and Moka who waited on me, who saw to the duties of the tent, the food, the washing and mending. Demizdor did not even carry the jars to the waterfall. Demizdor lived as a brave lives, scorning the women’s tasks, going with me to fish, riding with me to hunt, for she had ridden with her gold-mask on his wars, though never fought in them; so the city women were, it seemed, half man if not warrior. When the krarl saw her mount the black horse I had given her, their eyes expanded and they muttered. Choke it down, I thought. Though the meat is gristly, there are tougher joints to come. I gave her saddle gear of scarlet and the bridle had tassels of white silk. She wore a man’s breeches too, to ride. That caused a stir. She could cast a straight spear at a need, but generally was content to watch me.

I taught her the bone games of the Dagkta; she taught me stranger ones with bits of stone for the pieces, a thing called Castles, which you must play hating and cool to get it right. She marveled elaborately when I learned it straight off, calling me a clever savage. They had some art for the bed also; neither was I a slow pupil at that, nor did she mock me then.