Free Sanctuary by Mercedes Lackey Page A

Aket-ten, now that her family was here and she was no longer needing to hide from the Magi. Surely she would want to spend most of her own free time with them.
    Why was it that nothing in his life could ever be simple?
    “Gan!” said Kalen instantly. “If you cause all of them to become enchanted with your handsome face, I will be very put out!”
    Kiron glanced over at Kalen to see if he was joking, but couldn’t make out anything but a shadow among the shadows.
    “By At-thera’s horns, aye, leave some for the rest of us!” exclaimed Pe-atep.
    “He does have competition, you know,” Oset-re reminded them.
    “Perhaps we ought to prevent him from venturing anywhere near until we have our chance,” Kalen suggested, in a tone that sounded as if he was entirely serious.
    Surely not.
    Quite taken aback, Gan evidently decided to put a gracious face on the matter. “I,” he announced, with a dignity that bordered on the ponderous, “have no intention of frittering my time away in pursuit of women. Or at least, no more than one or two women. We have a new home to create! That temple that was uncovered—it is to be our winter quarters, and what had been workshops are to become our dragon pens, and that will take much work. As you yourselves pointed out, we have no one to do it but ourselves. There is too much to do to waste our precious time on such nonsense.”
    “Ehu!” cried Huras in mock alarm. “He’s demon possessed!”
    “Or else the Magi stole him and left a changeling!” Kalen said with a shudder. “For surely that is not Gan!”
    “Perhaps I should exorcise him,” Kaleth said slyly. “A long fast, and an ordeal might do the trick, or perhaps there is a more expedient solution. It is said that neither changelings nor demons can survive immersion in running water.”
    “Attempt to duck me in the spring, and you will regret it,” Gan growled. “That, I do pledge you!”
    “And you the one who cannot get enough bathing!” Pe-atep chuckled. “What is the difference between a cold bath and a ducking, I ask you?”
    “A world of difference, I thank you.” Gan’s face was quite visible in the moonlight, and he was glowering.
    No one made any move to get up, but they teased him unmercifully, at least until it looked as if the jests were about to get more irritating than amusing.
    Kiron refrained from joining in, and for the most part, so did Kaleth. After all this time together, they all had a fairly good sense of how far they could go with each other, and a distinct aversion to stepping over that line, though they could, and would (and tonight, did) go right up to the very brink of it.
    The great irony of it all was that in this case, the others were far more likely of success than Gan was. Most of the young women that Lord Ya-tiren had brought with his household would be common-born, servants and laborers and the like, and with them, Gan’s noble blood and handsome face were likely to count against him. It had been Kiron’s experience—limited though it might be—that young women who were not born into wealth and privilege tended to be suspicious of men who were. And when wealth and high birth were combined with good looks, that only made them doubly suspicious that, whatever the man in question said, what he actually intended was to have his joy and wander on to the next conquest. Whereas for someone nearer in rank, philandering came with attendant high costs . . . and not just social costs, for if the girl in question had brothers, those costs could swiftly become both physical and painful.
    In fact, those few young women who were of anything approximating Gan’s social rank probably already knew him, knew of his reputation of old, and might well be as uninterested in him as their lesser-born sisters.
    No, in fact, Pe-atep, Huras, and Kalen were all more likely to have success among Lord Ya-tiren’s household than Gan, and Menet-ka be more likely to succeed with young ladies of rank. As for