Temper

Malav had been ready to kill her. The little thief had stolen his staff, that he hated it made no difference, it was his. She had no right. And then she began to sing.  A song he had heard often as a child, sung softly at night by his caretaker. A song that was not intended to be sung in the little thief’s language. He had only ever heard it in the Luzor tongue, not even in the language his own people spoke.

He pulled back his hood and fixed her with his glare. And she slipped. As he watched her he heard the words of the priest as if they echoed across the stonework, a choice. In this city. The staff gleamed in her hands and he heard the whisper, a wife, his to claim, for a price. Crossbow quarrels shot through the air where she had been. He cursed and ordered them to hold their fire. He threw his crossbow behind him and leaned from the window.

She was dangling. The staff had snagged somehow, making a nearly horizontal bar and she hung from it. He could hear her softly singing of rivers of blood and an army of the damned. She sounded furious. Malav watched as she managed to get a leg onto the staff, and carefully pull herself up, she clung to the arches and climbed. He was baffled for a moment why she would choose to climb up before he realized that she was on the inside, going down she would be trapped in a cage of stonework.

As her weight came off of the staff it slipped through the gap it had caught on and fell to the inside. He watched her pull herself over the top of the support and begin to climb down the outside with a furious look to him that brought a smile to his dour face. He gave the order to meet her at the bottom and to have his staff fetched. Malav considered for a moment letting her be brought up to him, but she was one of the goddess’ chosen. If she could be kept from him, they would try. The chosen were not permitted to marry, not even princes or kings.

The gods had insulted him and cursed him with his appearance, they would not deny him a wife. A wife with the gift of prophecy. A wife with a temper to match his own.