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It was only a week until the sable moon, and the figure’s throat was stripped raw—not for water, for that would not satiate.
They thirsted instead for all those talents, all those skills!
They thirsted to own them forever!
They thirsted for them to be in the hands of someone deserving!
After what felt like an eternity, the moon beat that longing back to its usual background hum. And the sensation was related by a tremendous guilt.
After so long resisting the urge, they had finally succumbed to temptation...
They pushed those thoughts aside. It had been necessary. They needed to know the truth. And this had been the only way.
In the distance, a shard of lightning crashed beyond the headlands.
And to think, they thought, strolling on, the boy doesn’t yet know what lurks within him.
42
TEIGRA
The drums pounded off the jagged roof of the Ranios Grotto, joining the background rhythm of lapping waves and enormous clapping.
If Ardoran weddings were more raucous than those back home, then the weddings of Ardoran giants were about as far from Mestibian civility as you could get.
Giants of all shades were dressed in finest formalwear, which involved whole skins of livestock flowing over their shoulders, with the face and horns of the animals worn as something halfway between a mask and a helmet.
At first, the choice of skins seemed random, but it became clear once Jaspar had explained all the little patterns. Regular giants—or “byclopes” as she now knew them to be called—favored rams for men and sheep for women, with whites and browns and speckles separating family units as clearly as shield patterns might for humans.
By contrast, the larger and more intimidating cyclopes favored ox skins, with hide color less important than the length and shape of the horns.
And the two centimanes present—the bride, Gyges, and an older male at her side—wore skins of red deer stags, apparently a nod to the flighty independence of their subspecies.
In the lead-up to the event, she’d learned the deep twists and turns of giant society, which seemed a whole different world to the human nobility of the city. Apparently, the byclopes and cyclopes had a racial rivalry that extended back eons, long before humans had habited the land. While both subspecies lived and worked in similar fields, often quite literally, it was rare to find them both attending something as sacred as a wedding.
The reason they were all here now, as Jaspar had explained it, was purely because of the centimanes. The third giant subspecies were astoundingly rare and had long acted as a sort of intermediary and peacekeeper between the hostilities of the other two—a balancing force and quasi-leadership role that had allowed them to accrue power and influence, even if broader giant society was still treated several rungs lower than humans by the rest of Ardora.
So centimanes are sort of like the Mestibes of giant culture? she’d asked Jaspar, who’d laughed and nodded.
Back in the grotto, Jaspar spent the entire morning at Teigra’s side in a rise and tumble of emotion. He whooped when the couple jumped into the sky-blue pool in the mouth of the cave, entering at opposite ends, but emerging together. He cried as Gyges’s deer pelt was replaced with an umber-mottled sheep skin that matched the smitten giant holding two of her many hands. He spoke in full voice the prayers of the ceremony—not to the Five or any of the other Galaxians, but to the Goliaths, the ancient gods that the Galaxians vanquished millennia ago. And he swayed with the music during the festivities that followed, singing along in a strange tongue that made him sound like a slightly confused wolf.
Back home, such behavior would have been the height of incivility for a patrician boy—even for a minotaur. Praying to the Goliaths in particular, even if only doing so politely as part of another species’ ceremony, would have been unthinkable.
And yet, as he wandered to the cauldrons of drink, shaking a dozen hands and giving a dozen hugs, she didn’t feel that judgment. Even if he was a bit loud and a bit scattered, he genuinely cared about people. He took the time to learn about their hopes and interests and fears. And the strangest part was, he seemed to do it without trying. He didn’t have to gird himself to talk to strangers or push through after a long day to attend yet another function.
He liked doing it.
“Drinks up!” he said on his return, thrusting an enormous cup of honeycomb mead at her. A waxen cube was stuck to the rim, scented as fresh and sprightly as the lemon blossoms they’d passed on the way out here, to the northeastern headland of the bay.
She held the drink awkwardly. “Ahhh...”
“Oh, sorry! I keep forgetting that you don’t drink.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. It just means more for me!”
All around the grotto, giants were dancing and slapping each other on the back. Ms. Securia was engaged in conversation with a few cyclopes, wearing horns so large they had to be chiefs of some kind.
