“Harilek! You were making up things last night. You’ve got all the wiggly purple marks.”
I looked at my arm. Sure enough, I’d forgotten those scars right across my forearm from two bullet wounds that had gone septic.
“True, Shahzadi; but remember you said that the fairy prince—the one you mentioned at the end—who killed all the dragons had no marks, ‘not even a little one on his face.’ I’ve got several of them, including a long red one on my cheek under this bandage. So we shall have to make another story to fit in with these marks.”
She did up my sleeve without a word.
Paulos looked at us inquiringly. “What’s the story of the wiggly marks?”
“We were telling fairy stories by the fire last night about dragons and things. And I said that dragons’ claws made wiggly purple marks, and I forgot that I had some on my arm, only not from dragons—wounds from war—and Aryenis saw them just now. So I suppose she thought I had really been fighting dragons, and was surprised.”
I thought that was neatly out of it, and hoped Aryenis did, too.
Paulos held up a mail shirt, a lovely thing, long sleeves ending in mittens with slit wrists, so that you could have your hands bare if you wanted to, woven in alternate rows of black and silvered steel that shimmered in the light.
“We have an old custom in this country, Harilek, that, when a man first puts on his mail and girds on his weapons for war, it is done for him by a woman of his house. But you are a stranger in a far land, and have no womenkind here. Therefore Aryenis will do proxy for them if you are willing. If you wear my mail I should like to see you don it in our old formal fashion.”
I could but agree, so Aryenis passed the mail shirt over my head, and helped me adjust it in place. It came about halfway to my knees, and was very light. I had expected something heavier.