Page 34 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

Soon he can communicate with his guards. He learns their names. Cel and Ador, who are brothers. Lok, the young woman who is only fifteen summers and Olladin with the long black beard, who is their leader.

One day he finds an old pack of Archaneum cards in the library and when Lymok says he can have them, he practises a few card tricks he learnt from the magicians at Copperhead Circus and even teaches his guards how to play archa with him — the fast loud racing version Tobi prefers.

Lok, in particular, is very taken with the frantic, exciting game.

One long sunny afternoon he sits with his guards in the grove, that Tobi has learned is called the zhilvar, Baby at his feet.

After they finish a raucous game of arca, Tobi says in Ambolk, “The cards also tell…” he pauses, “tomorrow,” he says, finding the Ambolk word for the next day and then gesturing with his hands to signal further on. The future.

The guards look at each other. “ Mariand ?” Cel says.

“ Sho ,” Tobi says back. He thinks mariand means something like ‘the future’.

“ Mariand. ” He pulls out the twelve cards that show the Sidusia.

He spreads them out in a row and says in Ambolk, “Card,” then points at the sky and says, “moon.” Trying to convey that each card represents a moon of the year.

Then he hands the rest of the cards to Cel and makes a gesture to Cel to shuffle them.

With more gestures and words of Ambolk, he gets Cel to lay out a card face down against each of the sidu cards and points out things in each one that tell what will happen to Cel over the next twelve moons. Cel explodes with laughter when he gets the love card against Gi, only a single moon hence.

After that Tobi ends up telling the fortunes of all his guards and as word spreads he even finds himself doing it for many Solwen who approach him and say, “Mariandcards.” Fusing an Ambolk word and an Artemian one.

Tobi even ends up fortune telling for many of the Green Women, the Verilissia , who he had thought might find this Artemian heresy, but it seems the Amber Forest is quite tolerant of faiths other than their own.

Some of them seem quite fascinated with the deeper meanings of the cards and Tobi ends up bringing some of the Verilissia to the library one morning so Lymok can help him explain more of the signs and symbols on the cards.

Tobi had been taught card reading by Old Mother.

But he does not believe arca cards can really tell the future.

His mother had once explained that men see in the cards what they want to see and if something predicted comes true it is either a mere coincidence or that being told something will happen makes them more likely to pursue it.

Tobi thinks of Cel and the pretty kitchen maid he desires, who he knows Cel is flirting with quite determinedly now the mariandcards have foretold he will win her in a single turn of the moon.

Kushel Yaelin often watches Tobi when he is showing the cards to the Verilissia, but she never approaches Tobi or asks him to tell her own fortune.

Tobi notices over the passing days that Yaelin often watches him.

He wonders why. He is her son’s kushir. But there is something in her expression that makes Tobi think she is more fascinated by him than that fact alone.

When he sees her looking and catches her eye, she does not look away, she stares at Tobi with her soft blue-eyed gaze, until Tobi is the one to break it.

Each evening, after dinner, Harok takes Tobi to his bed, and as more days pass this way, Tobi finds himself looking forward to Harok’s bed more and more.

Harok’s love making is exquisite. He attends Tobi’s body with his hands and mouth and magnificent cock.

Delighting in his spend, seeming to enjoy Tobi’s pleasure more than his own.

Always leaving Tobi deliciously sore and bruised from the rough love making of his dreams.

Slowly, but surely the wall between them from not sharing a common tongue begins to crumble as Tobi learns more Ambolk words and Harok even picks up one or two in Artemian.

Tobi learns that Baby is called a karrem.

Although this is just a word meaning beast rather than a specific one for lykat.

He does call Harok karrem the first chance he gets.

Harok seems to find this quite amusing, praising him with sweet words, “ Ga, garan, garasiana ,” which Tobi knows are all ways of saying, ‘good boy’, calling Tobi karrem vas in return, ‘Beast Tamer’ before using his tongue on Tobi’s hole until Tobi is screaming for Harok’s cock inside him in a stammering mix of Ambolk and Artemian.

Harok learns a few words of Artemian too, although his vocabulary is quite limited to things he wishes to growl at Tobi or his desire to understand when Tobi’s begging lapses into Artemian in his desperation. Harok understands, “Please,” and “Master,” and “Fuck me.”

When Tobi begs to be fucked in Artemian, Harok growls back, “Suskara, open legs,” or “Suskara hole.” He responds to, “Harder,” both by fucking harder and sometimes by growling, “Sho, Suskara, fuck harder,” or “Ereyek fuck Suskara,” or even “Suskara more fuck?”

He also knows the word “cock,” although he seems to use it interchangeably with “magnificent cock,” which Tobi puts down to the fact that he uses the two words together often enough that Harok might be confused.

But it is a magnificent cock. A magnificent cock and some very skilled fingers and a tongue. And a mouth that kisses like Tobi’s own mouth is the air Harok needs to breathe.

And a man. A complicated, confusing man, a man who looks like he has stepped out of Tobi’s lewdest daydreams. A man whose moods change like the wind.

But if he is to be here, in this strange place, for some time until he is rescued by the Imperial Army, he decides that he is going to make the best of it just like he has made the best of many things.

And that best is to see how much pleasure he can have in Harok’s bed.