Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

turning her head, she knew when Conn came out of the mist to fall into step beside her.

2
    SHE DID NOT JUMP OR SCREECH.
    Conn supposed he should be grateful for that. She either was brave or particularly unexcitable. A lioness? he wondered. Or a sheep? Either suited his purpose.
    They walked together in silence under the lengthening shadow of the trees. The air swirled with moisture and the scent of pine. Mist sheened the black road and collected like a veil of pearls on the girl’s fair hair.
    She walked with long strides like a man’s, her arms crossed tightly in front of her. She did not look at him.
    Conn had thought that she was shy. He wondered now if she was actually guarded. There was a stillness in her that did not feel completely natural, a watchfulness he recognized, almost like the discipline he had learned to impose on himself when he came to rule.
    Which was absurd. She was too young to have learned such control, too human to need it.
    He did not know what to say to her.
    Her brother Dylan was selkie. Her brother Caleb had married one. It was clear to Conn, however, that her family had told her nothing. Why should they? The recent trouble between the children of the sea and their fellow elementals, the children of fire, had nothing to do with her.
    Yet the vision of her face had dragged him from his tower and drawn him halfway across the world. He eyed her almost resentfully.
    “I thought you were talking to everybody later. At the house,” she said to her feet. Long, narrow feet, he noticed, in shoes that might once have been white.
    “I am.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “I am talking to you now.”
    She turned her head. “Why?”
    Such directness was unexpected and somewhat disconcerting.
    “I would like to get to know you better,” Conn said carefully.
    “Why?” she repeated, nettling him.
    Conn was not used to accounting for his actions. Even his wardens did not question him. He could hardly tell her he was trying to figure out what possible use or interest she could be to him. “I cannot be the first man to seek your company.”
    She smiled crookedly. “Yeah, I have to beat them off with a stick.”
    He stared. He could not have heard her correctly. “I beg your pardon?”
    Pink suffused her lean face. “I meant . . . It’s been a while.”
    Could he turn that to his advantage? Did human females want sex, miss sex, as selkies did?
    “How long is a while?”
    She blinked. “Boy, you take this getting-to-know-you shit seriously, don’t you?”
    “You do not have a husband?” he pressed. “A suitor?”
    “You mean a boyfriend?”
    Was that the word?
    “Yes.”
    Her shoulders hunched, almost hiding her ears. “Nope.”
    Conn was aware of a faint release of tension. The claims or existence of another sexual partner meant Page 15
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    nothing to him, but they might matter to her.
    He was glad she was not married.
    Her shoes scuffed the wet, black road. “What about you?” she asked.
    “I live alone,” he said truthfully. Selkies did mate, but few pairings lasted through the centuries.
    “No one special?”
    “Not for some time. My, uh, work does not permit many distractions.”
    “What kind of work do you do?”
    “You ask a great many questions.”
    A smile lit her narrow face. “I work with five-to seven-year-olds. Taking an interest is part of my job description.”
    He stared. “You are a teacher.”
    He had once gone to great lengths to secure a teacher for the half-grown, half-feral whelps of Sanctuary.
    But there were no children on the selkie island anymore. Not in over twenty years. Dylan had been the last.
    Conn’s people were dying out. He needed more than a teacher to save them this time.
    “You have a problem with teachers?”
    “Not at all,” he said politely. “I admire those who can teach. I simply have not known many.”
    “You must have known some.”
    He raised his eyebrows in question.
    “When you were a kid,” she explained.
    “Ah. No. I received instruction—what there was of it—from my father.”
    She nodded. “Homeschooler. We don’t get a lot of those on World’s End. Most islanders are just grateful we have enough children to keep the school running, you know?”
    “Indeed.”
    “Did you like learning from your father? Or was it lonely without other children?”
    Conn frowned. It was not the sort of question anyone had ever asked him. That