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Nothing would have pleased me better to take one of them into my family line; they're all fine gentlemen. As it is—well, some¬day soon I suppose I'll have to please Mother and go looking amongst someone else's underlings for a wife. Eventually I'll find a maiden who's of sufficiently low rank to be too overawed to notice my eccentricities."
    "She'll have to overlook more than that," Gel warned him,
     
    "Or you'll have her running back to her Papa with stories of how you can't keep your slaves properly under your thumb."
    Kyrtian felt compelled to give his mother's counters to those arguments, which were the same that he himself had raised. "Elven maidens in most households are kept close-confined, Mother says. And a maiden of low rank should be dazzled by her new surroundings and too much in awe of Mother ever to question things. We think that as long as her servants obeyed her, she'd never know we do things differently here." He com¬pressed his brows in a little frown. "I'd have to make sure that she was never allowed to abuse them, though ... and that could take some management."
    Gel looked dubious, but only said, "If you'd just leave the wife-hunting up to your Mother, you can be sure she won't choose someone we'll have to worry about. She has entry to all the bowers, and if she can't find someone sympathetic to our ways, she can at least find someone who is too timid to speak up about anything, too stupid to care, or has been too closely sheltered to know what is and is not usual."
    "I suppose that's the only real solution," Kyrtian sighed, and winced at the thought of a mouse, a dolt, or a frail flower as a wife. What a disgusting situation, he thought, frowning. And I'm going to have to do something about it fairly soon. Mother isn 't going to allow me to put it off much longer.
    Gel snorted at his rueful expression, as a particularly hard bounce sent them all in the air for a brief moment. "Don't mope," he replied sternly, then added, with a crude chuckle, "At least you aren't going to be saddled with a wife who has the hips of a cow, the manners of a pig, and the face of a horse. You Elves are never less than handsome, so you won't have to wish for a bag to put over her head when you do your duty to present the estate with an heir."
    Kyrtian flushed, feeling the tips of his ears burn. Gel had been his teacher, companion, and friend for as long as he could remember, but the human could be amazingly coarse, some¬times. How on earth could he explain that what made him dread matrimony was the fear that he'd find himself bound for cen¬turies to a dull, insipid idiot? How could he possibly get up
     
    enough interest in a maiden like that to do his duty by the estate and the clan? Gel would only laugh, and tell him that it wasn't what was between a girl's ears that mattered—
    If I could find someone like Mother, he thought wistfully, I'd wed her no matter what her rank was. Did Father ever really know how lucky he was to find a maiden with wit, courage, sense, and intelligence? What are rank and magic worth, com¬pared with qualities like that?
    "We'll have to tell Milady about the new scheme for a siege," Gel said cheerfully, interrupting his thoughts. "She'll probably want to have a hand in it herself this time—and I think you ought to give her a bit of a command. Maybe then she'll stop teasing us about our pastime."
    "You know, you could be right." Kyrtian braced himself as the carriage hit a series of ruts that threatened to bounce them all against the ceiling, rattling his very teeth. This was the worst part of the road; in a moment, everything would suddenly smooth out as they reached the paved section. "Maybe if she gets a taste of this, she'll realize just how challenging it is."
    My only other choice would be to tell her the truth—that it isn 't a game, that Gel and I are training the humans to defend the estate if—or when—combat comes here. I don't want to do that; I don't know that danger is