Tess gazed blankly at the door. His words had astonished her not only because of their content, but because of the admission itself. Kalim represented all that was alien and forbidding in Zalandan for her, and yet, for an instant, she had detected something vulnerable and sensitive beyond his proud, cold facade.
Perhaps she had also been arrogant in expecting these people to welcome her warmly when she had done nothing to earn such a welcome. Since she had come to Zalandan, she had not really tried to get to know the El Zalan. Like a child, she had played with the pigeons, ridden Pavda, and sought only to amuse herself.
"I'll be back tomorrow evening, if all goes well. Lord knows, I can't be certain." Galen, fully dressed, strode out of the dressing room. "I'll probably have to spend hours in the council tent trying to talk them out of starting a tribal war. Stay inside the city gates. Though I doubt if Tamar will be anywhere nearby. He usually strikes and then carries his booty back to his own encampment, but there's no sense taking risks." He started toward the door.
"Wait." She blurted out, "I want to go with you."
Galen shook his head. "This won't be a pleasant journey. No tents or satin cushions. We'll travel fast and sleep on the ground."
"I know that. I still want to go."
His gaze narrowed on her face. "Why?"
"I'm not sure." She moistened her lips with her tongue. "I think perhaps I might learn…" She shook her head and repeated helplessly, "I don't know."
"You'll see things you won't like." She nodded. Her hand clutched the sheet covering her body; the texture was soft and silky, as her entire life had been since she arrived in Sedikhan. But there were other, rougher textures and patterns to this country, and people she had not experienced yet. "May I go with you?"
He nodded curtly. "You have a right to see why I brought you to Sedikhan. Dress. I'll meet you in the courtyard within the half hour."
* * *
The fires were out in the encampment of the El Sabir, but the flames had left devastation in their wake.
Tess had begun to smell the smoke from over two miles away. Her eyes smarted as she rode beside Galen through the encampment, but she didn't know whether the stinging was from smoke or tears. Over half the tents had gone up in flames, and it was heart-wrenching to see entire families searching among the blackened rubble of their possessions, trying to salvage a cooking pot, a bit of bedding, a straw doll.
"Did he have to burn the tents?" she asked huskily.
"No." Galen's expression was grim. "But he probably enjoyed it." He reined up before a scorched, ragged tent. "This is the tent of Dala, the mother of the child who was killed. You don't have to come in with me."
"I'll come."
Galen dismounted, came around, and helped her down from Pavda. "You may be sorry."
Tess was sorry. The moment she entered the small tent, she saw the child.
The little boy lying on the pallet couldn't have been over three years old, and his long lashes curled peacefully on tan cheeks that still held the silky bloom of babyhood. He could have been asleep, but slumber did not have this quality of tragic stillness.
The thin young woman who knelt beside the child was not long out of childhood herself, but the eyes she lifted as they came into the tent were old with pain.
"I sorrow with you, Dala," Galen said gently. "Is there anything I can do to ease you?"
The woman shook her head. "They broke him, Majiron," she whispered. "They rode him down as if he were a mongrel dog that got in their way."
Galen's hand clasped the woman's shoulder.
"They saw him." The woman dazedly shook her head. "They saw him and still did not swerve aside. He was barely three, Majiron."
"Where is your husband?"
"With the other men at the council tent." Her eyes were brimming with tears. "He cannot bear to look at him." Her hand reached out and caressed the little boy's unruly curls. "And I cannot bear to let him go."
Tess's throat ached as she looked at the woman. She wanted to run far away from this place of sorrow and death. Dear heaven, she was full of pain.
"I'll send him to you," Galen said.
The woman shook her head. "I must prepare my son for burial. My husband feels my pain as well as his own. He cannot bear the burden of both right now."
"The village women?"
"They have their own families to care for. It is a bad time."
"I'll stay." Tess didn't realize she had spoken until the words were out. She took a step forward and fell to her knees beside the woman. "If you will permit me?" Dear God, why had she made the offer? She had no wish to be here.
"I don't care," the woman said dully, still looking at the child. "Whatever the majiron wishes."
"You wish to stay?" Galen asked Tess in a low voice.
"No." Her voice was trembling. "But I've got to stay."
Galen's gaze searched her face before he nodded slowly. "I'll station Said outside the tent. If you have need of anything, send him to the council tent to get me."
She could not stop looking at the face of the child. Sweet Jesu, he was almost a baby. How would she have felt if this babe had been her own?
Galen hesitated, and she could feel his stare on her face.
"Go on," she whispered. "You can do no more here."
She heard him move and then felt a current of air as the tent flap was opened. After the flap fell, she was silent a moment. What did she do now? Dala seemed to be in a stupor of grief, and Tess had never been good with people. Yet she had to do something.
Very well. She wasn't good with people, but she knew horses. She would apply what she knew of animals to Dala. Dala was beaten and wanted only to lie down and wallow in grief. But if a sick horse was allowed to lie down, that was often the end for him. So, Tess reasoned, she must keep the woman moving.
She reached over and shook Dala's thin shoulder. "I know it's not fair, but you must guide me."
Dala lifted dull eyes. "What?"
"I want to help you with him, but I don't know how to go about it. What's the first thing we must do?"
The woman stirred, temporarily brought out of her numbness by the necessity of responding to Tess's ignorance and need. She rubbed her temple and then said haltingly, "First, we should bathe him."
Tess nodded briskly. "Then that's what we'll do. I'll go ask Said to fetch water." She stood up and moved toward the flap of the tent. "Yes, that sounds sensible."
But what was sensible in a world where innocent babies were murdered?
She didn't leave Dala's tent until the sun was setting.
Said immediately rose to his feet as she stepped out of the tent. "You have not eaten. We've set up our own camp near the stream at the edge of the El Sabir encampment and found enough game for a stew. May I get you something, Majira?"
"Not now." She was too weary and heartsick to think of food. "Where is my husband?"
He nodded at a large tent several hundred yards away from where they stood. "Still at the council tent."
"Take me to him."
"It's not fitting for a woman to disturb—"
She wheeled on him, her hands clenched into fists. "Merde, I have no intention of intruding on the men's precious council. Though only the sweet Virgin knows why a woman should have no say in these matters when their children are butchered like—" She turned away. It wasn't Said's fault that life was unfair to women. Or perhaps it was his fault, and Galen's fault, and her father's, and all the men who dictated that women should bear children and then fail to give them a safe world in which to raise them. She strode past Said toward the council tent. "I'll wait until the meeting is done, but I must speak to the majiron as soon as possible."