Chapter 157 - Life Among the Tanti part 3

Ilio and I had built a hut at the edge of the Tanti village, constructing it after the Tanti method of homebuilding, with a thatch roof made of reeds and rushes and wooden walls and a stone hearth built in the center of the floor. We had traded meat for woven rugs and hangings to make it comfortable, and there we lived as the summer season withered into autumn, and the belly of the Neirie woman Ilio had got with child continued to swell with new life.

Priss and her sister Lorn were taken in by their parents upon their return. It was a joyous reunion, certainly, although I'm sure it was tempered by the grief they all felt for the death of Aioa.

Priss was not condemned for being with child. The Tanti did not censure unwed women for getting impregnated. They viewed marriage as a contract, and since she was unwed, no commitments had been broken. Priss's parents were a little taken aback that Ilio was the father, but only because it was strange that a vampire should mate with a mortal woman. They only became more confused when Priss tried to explain to them that Ilio had been mortal when she laid with him at the command of her Oombai master. Her mother and father were simple folk, and did not understand how mortals could become vampires. They believed the T'sukuru were a separate, predatory race—a misconception I did not intend to cure them of, not after the Pruss warrior Kuhl had tried to kill me for my blood.

Ilio declared his desire to be a father to the child, and husband to the slave girl Priss (if she would have him), soon after we arrived, but his attempts to court her were stymied by her family, who politely—but firmly—turned him away whenever he went to call on her.

"Be patient, Ilio," I counseled him, when he threw himself about our lodge in frustration. "They do not disapprove of you. They are only hesitant because such a union is unknown to them. Give them time. Their hearts may yet warm to the idea."

I knew this because I had eavesdropped on the conversations they'd had in their home.

My enhanced vampire hearing.

"And what if they do not? What if they intend to bar me from seeing my child forever?" Ilio cried.

"Then that is what they will do," I said sympathetically. "Be wise. Do not defy her father. You will only harden his will against you. You will turn the whole village against us if you try to force yourself upon her family. You know what a fearsome reputation our kind has among these mortals. Would you be like the blood drinkers of the east?"

"No, of course not," he sighed, flopping down on his mat.

"If the girl Priss desires you for a husband, she will buzz at her father's ear until he surrenders in annoyance. It is how these things work. I know this from experience."

"You do?" he asked.

"When I sought to win the hand of my first wife, Eyya, her father was not very impressed with me."

'When you were a mortal man?"

"Yes."

"How long did it take her to convince her father to accept you?"

"Oh… several seasons," I answered, and the boy collapsed on his back with a howl.