By the time I return to the clearing, I’m completely whacked. I hadn’t remembered how tiring just talking for a long time with another human can be. Somehow it’s different from interacting with the samurans, perhaps because there I’m used to having a Bond with them. I don’t have to pay so much attention to their expressions or try to guess how they might be feeling – the Bond tells me unless they actively hold back their feelings. And even then, there’s usually some leakage.

  Nicholas is a different question. Though I’m sure Animal Empathy has been helping me since I found him increasingly easy to read as the afternoon wore on, I still have to put effort into doing so. Adding in the fact that I felt the need to second-guess everything I said in case it revealed more than I wanted considering we’ve known each other for less than a day…. It was tiring.

  I collapse next to Kalanthia, leaning against her like she’s a warm, furry wall. She shifts so her head is lying on her paw next to me in an unsubtle hint – apparently if I want to use her as a backrest, I need to pay for it with scratches. I lift my hand and do just that – I’m not actually that physically tired, just mentally kaput.

  Bastet also presses in closer and I scratch her head too. Then a heavy one lands on my legs. I look down to see Noir gazing up at me hopefully.

  “I’ve been stroking you,” I tell him with more of a whine in my voice than I’d like. “Every time we stopped.”

  He replies with a plaintive sense of incompleteness, as if it’s never enough. I sigh and give in, alternating between Bastet and Noir. But I do glare at Lathani and the raptorcats when they start hopefully stepping forwards. Since they were walking with me, they’ve had plenty of stroking.

  What is it like? Happy asks curiously, settling down near me and greeting Aingeal when it pops out of my collar and circles her head, coming to rest on her shoulder. Is it anything like home?

  “No, nothing like that,” I reply honestly, trying to figure out how I can describe a manor estate to someone who barely knows what farming is. Then again, maybe I can just accompany my description with images of what I saw. “We went through the house on our way here. That extends a lot further than it looks like from here. Then there are smaller buildings in different places. In fact, there’s a whole village not that far away – less than an hour when walking, apparently. We didn’t actually visit it, though.” Nicholas had explained that he would normally have taken me on a tour on horseback, but that he feared only one of his horses would be able to cope with the number of predators in my train. Frankly, since I don’t know how to ride, I didn’t push it.

  “There’s a wood between the estate and the village – a bit like a small forest. And then the land is split into different parts. There are gardens like this – where plants have been grown only because they are beautiful. There are other gardens which are more practical – behind the house there’s a massive vegetable garden which apparently supplies the house. That’s a bit like the farming areas that we set up between the village and the den. And then there are fields where animals graze or crops grow. It’s pretty flat around here, though from the other side of the house we can see some mountains in the distance.” I shrug. “It’s far more developed than any of you are used to, but far less developed than I experienced where I came from.”

  And how is this Binder? What have you observed of him? Kalanthia asks, the apparent lightness of her tone belied by the roiling emotion I can feel beneath.

  I consider my words carefully.

  “He seems OK, from what I’ve seen.” It’s hard to make a judgement about someone in such a short time – I’ve learned that often first-impressions can be misleading and sometimes completely wrong. But Nicholas clearly cares about his manor and his people – and they react well to him. Several times in our tour we came across people working. They were a bit wary of the load of beasts accompanying me, but responded well to Nicholas. There was no fear in the interactions, though there was clear respect. And several of the workers didn’t hesitate to raise a problem with Nicholas, though they did so quietly enough that they probably thought I couldn’t hear, and were polite about it. But the fact that they felt that they could speak to the ‘Great Lord’ about issues is a good sign – I’ve experienced enough good and bad managers to know that.

  And they seem to be well-fed and healthy, from what I’ve seen, though I suppose I’d have to go into the village to see whether that’s true among all the people.

  I’d still like to sleep on the decision, but I haven’t seen anything so far that makes me want to back out of our agreement. And if I can make sure that my stipulations are part of the enforceable agreement, then perhaps it’s not so bad – if the goddess is as impartial as Nicholas has said she is, then I won’t have to worry about him breaking the agreement either.

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  Perhaps what I need is another source of information to confirm or deny what Nicholas has said.

  “My lord?” The voice that drifts into the clearing is wary and the person who it belongs to is not yet visible. Well, speak of the devil….

  “Yes?” I ask, opening my eyes and forcing myself to sit up. Kalanthia is a comfortable backrest. I might have actually fallen asleep except for the fact that every time I stopped stroking my Bound, one or more of them nudged me and woke me up enough to continue.

  The speaker steps into the room. It’s a girl, dressed in a plain dark-green set of tunic and trousers. No, not a girl, a young woman – probably late teens or early twenties. I suddenly feel ancient even though I can’t be more than ten years her senior.

  She lifts her arms, crosses them and puts them on her shoulders, then inclines her body over them. If her pale yellow hair wasn’t tied up in a bun, it would be falling in front of her eyes. She stays in the position for a moment and then straightens again.

  “Your room is ready, my lord. If you and your…Bonded would care to follow, I will show you to it,” she suggests quietly, an inflection of fear appearing in her voice as her eyes touch on the array of beasts around me.

  “Sure,” I say, pushing myself to my feet. Let’s go, I share with my Bound, casting a glance over them all and stroking Lathani and Ivor as I walk over to the woman. “What’s your name?”

  “Me, my lord?” She sounds a little surprised. “Linde, sir.”

  “Alright Linde, I’m Markus. Nice to meet you.” I smile at her.

  “Ah…nice to meet you?” she responds questioningly, looking a little like a startled deer. Closer to her, I notice that I’m about a head taller than she is, and significantly broader. Even though I didn’t see many women on my tour, I noticed that they were all relatively small even though the men seemed not too dissimilar to me in size and breadth. Some of them have been significantly bigger than me, even. I wonder why there’s such a difference.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of my Bound, Linde. They won’t hurt you,” I reassure her. “Not as long as you don’t try to attack us,” I add – all appearances indicate that Linde is a servant in the house, not a fighter or an assassin, but it’s quite possible that I’m wrong. I don’t want to make a promise which I then break.

  “Oh, I won’t do that, sir,” she hurries to reassure me, looking even more frightened – apparently my attempt to reassure her backfired a bit.

  “OK, good. You can call me Markus, by the way,” I say a little awkwardly.

  “I couldn’t do that, sir!” Linde responds fervently. “Lord Nicholas says that you’re to become his heir. I couldn’t treat a noble heir with such familiarity! I couldn’t!” Red rises to her pale cheeks and she looks halfway between pleading with me to believe her and angry that I suggested that she make what is apparently an egregious error in comportment.

  Well, at least she seems to have stopped being frightened of my Bound.

  “Alright, fine,” I tell her, suddenly feeling tired again. I don’t have the energy to argue. “You were going to show us to our room, right?”

  “Yes, sir! Of course! My apologies for becoming distracted!” She turns on her heel and starts marching away before I can remind her that I’m the one who distracted her. I just sigh and rub my forehead, then send a glance at my Bound and follow her.

  Markus? Are you well? River asks, placing a hand on my shoulder as my companions join me in making our way through the gardens.

  Fine, I tell her. Just…not looking forward to all the expectations of behaviour here.

  Guilt comes through the Bond between us.

  We can leave, if it is too difficult for you. We will manage with the eggs even if we do not yet have a village of our own. They are fragile, but not so fragile we cannot move them, especially since you are able to Shape a protective container for them.

  It’s fine, I tell her, trying to convince myself too. To be honest, even if we go, we’ll still have to deal with people expecting me – and you – to behave in a certain way. That’s just humans – we like making expectations for behaviour and then punishing those who don’t conform in one way or another. To be fair, it isn’t just humans – the samurans were the same. The difference is that there I managed to get myself to the top of the pile meaning that I could make the rules. If I’d been born a samuran and started off as a lowly Unevolved like all of them do, I’d have had similar expectations of behaviour there.

  But I’m not looking forward to returning to titles when I only recently managed to get most of the village to be relatively informal around me. Titles, especially unearned ones, just make me feel awkward and self-conscious. It’ll be fine, I finish after a pause. Perhaps River realises that I need to believe that as much as she does as she doesn’t press any further.

  I speed up a little, catching up with Linde. She sends me a nervous-looking side-eye. Perhaps she’s worried that I’m going to continue the previous conversation. As it is, I’ve got another concern in mind.

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