Agnith's Promise: The Vildecaz Talents, Book 3 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Page A

so I’ll greet Riast properly. If you want to wait in my dressing-room, the Emperor need never know you’re here.”
    Although Kloveon was startled by the abrupt change in Erianthee, he rose and bent over to kiss her again – much more lightly this time, but still with passion – and said, “I shouldn’t want you to do this, but I thank you from the limits of my veins.”
    “I hope you will feel the same way when the Shadowshow is done,” she told him even as she waved him away toward the dressing-room, her mind already preoccupied with framing an explanation for her change of mind that she could offer the Emperor.

     
3. Turning-Points
     
    This time Ninianee was a wallow-moj – albeit a small one – her shoulders and back bristling with short, dark hairs, her blocky body strong and dense, her long snout ending in a flexible, short trunk flanked by two down-turning, business-like tusks. She gouged the wood of the hut with her three-toed hooves, and she managed to break the table and some crockery as well as send the ponies and mules in the adjoining barn into semi-hysterics with her carrying on. Finally, after gobbling half the sack of new grain for the animals, she fell heavily asleep on the dampest part of the stable’s floor and snored loudly until just before dawn when she returned to human shape. Catching sight of Doms Guyon as he stirred up the fire in the central stove, she stared at him, abashed at what she had done that she couldn’t remember.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, coming to drop her sajah over her naked body. “Your rampage was a small one. Tomorrow night you won’t be so rambunctious. I’ll help you back to the room as soon as you’re ready.”
    “Do you think anyone saw me?” She hated to ask, but feared not knowing more than having unwelcome knowledge.
    “Most people stay away from wallow-mojes,” he said wryly.
    “Just as well,” she mumbled, huddling into her sajah. “By Nyolach, the Unexpected, I’m sore.” She rubbed her shoulders, then her neck. “I hope I didn’t – “
    ”Nothing that isn’t standard behavior for a wallow-moj indoors, as far as I can determine. You broke the grooms’ table and attacked one of the chairs, but nothing too drastic, as you can see.” He indicated the small stack of broken bits of table and a few sections of a fractured water-ewer.
    “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Doms, I’m so sorry.” To her chagrin, she was becoming distraught. “I didn’t mean to do any of this.”
    “I know that, and you needn’t apologize. I would imagine that the wallow-moj is frightened and angry, being contained in so small a place as this stable,” he said calmly. “And they’re naturally bad-tempered,” filled in Ninianee, not expecting any pardon, but rather intending to explain how it had come about.
    “That, too,” he said, still showing no signs of disgust. “But, you know, I’m kind of grateful for this Change – it gives me some idea of what you’re capable of doing.”
    “Don’t say that,” she beseeched him. “You can’t mean it.”
    “But I do, and in no way that discredits you, so you don’t have to read anything into what I tell you that’s to your detriment,” he told her with only a slight hint of upset in his words. “Since I’m your Official Suitor, I should learn as much as I can about your Changing, for both our sakes, as I’m apt to see a fair number of them.”
    She couldn’t keep from saying, “What makes you think that experiencing a wallow-moj improves your suitorship?”
    Doms grinned at her. “If you’d been a large jeneie-fox, all I would have had to do is keep you from hiding in the nearest river, but a wallow-moj, even a small one, now that needs some planning and accommodation. You can’t ignore a wallow-moj. At least you weren’t a drouch.”
    “I might have been,” she reminded him. “I may be, some day.”
    “Then that’s for later,” said Doms, and went to bring her a cup of nut-milk.