"I don't fear ghosts, girl," he replied with a level look. "The ghosts had better fear me. I'm much worse than they are."
She gave him a sidelong look, then dazzled him what that charming smile. "I think I've found someone who will fill the nights of my grandchildren with wonderful songs," she told him, then she started towards the Selani encampment.
Tarrin snorted, then turned to circumnavigate the camp. Sarraya floated along beside his head, looking around him at the Selani who gathered with weapons in their hands to observe them. "They're a pretty paranoid bunch," she noted. "The Selani I met when I was in the desert weren't so mean looking."
"Sounds like this is a pretty rough stretch of desert," he replied. "Allia never talked about these Sandmen, so they must only be native to this area. Sounds like these Selani get lots of exercise."
"That girl certainly seems adventurous. I get the feeling she's so set on going with us just for the excitement of it."
"Possible. If she wants excitement, I'm sure she'll find lots of it. Considering the way trouble always seems to follow us around."
Sarraya laughed. "That's for certain," she agreed with a continuing chuckle. "You sure you're ready to deal with a stranger?"
"No," he answered honestly. "But something inside me wants to try anyway. Maybe the part of me that's so tired of being what I am."
"Nothing wrong with trying," she assured him. "She seems pretty self-sufficient. If we send her away, I don't doubt she'll make it back to her tribe."
"She's just a girl," he snorted. "She shouldn't be off her mother's leash."
"The desert raises them young, Tarrin," Sarraya replied. "Besides, Selani age slower than humans. She looks eighteen, but I'll bet she's probably around twenty-five. She's cute."
"You're noticing the wrong things about the wrong gender, Sarraya."
"Women can appreciate the beauty of another woman, Tarrin," she said curtly. "And besides, she's not half as pretty as I am."
"You certainly have a high opinion of yourself."
"She's the wrong color. All wrong. How can she be truly beautiful unless she has blue skin?"
"I think some racial prejudice is showing through."
"Posh," Sarraya snorted. "She's cute, I'll give her that, but nowhere near me."
"Why all this sudden interest in how cute a Selani woman is, Sarraya?"
"Just comparing, Tarrin. Women like to do that. It's not like I want to date her or anything."
"I'm so glad to hear that. I'm sure she would be too."
"What a thing to say!"
"It's true. You're way too short for her."
Sarraya glared at him, then she burst out into helpless laughter.
Tarrin managed to skirt the camp, getting around on the north side, without too much trouble. He displaced a smaller flock of sukk as he came around, the large birds wanting nothing to do with the Were-cat, and he found a nice rock upon which to sit while he waited for Denai, while Sarraya flitted off to go look at something. He had no idea why he was waiting for Denai. He should have just moved on, and let her decide whether it was worth the trouble to catch up with him. Part of him wanted nothing to do with her. But another part of him did want something to do with her, and for the first time in a very long while, that part of him was shouting louder than his fear. It could have been because he saw her as a child, it could have been because she was Selani, and he trusted Selani up to a point, or it could have been that he was simply ready to see if he could tolerate strangers.
He wasn't quite sure why he was afraid to go into the camp. He'd gone into human cities alone, without his sisters and friends around him to give him some support and some familiarity to keep him calm. He'd managed to go into that Saranam city easily, and though he'd felt anxiety and fear, it had been managable. But these Selani… it seemed different somehow. He trusted their behavior, up to a point, because of Allia and his understanding of them. Yet he was afraid to surround himself with Selani. Perhaps it was because, unlike humans, Selani did pose a danger to him. Allia was more than capable of killing him, and he knew it. That caused him to afford much more respect to a Selani opponent than a human. And that was probably why he was afraid of them. Respect caused him to fear them, fear them more than humans, simply because they could hurt him. With humans, it was different. The average human had almost no chance of doing him any harm, so he wasn't very worried about going out among them. It took an extraordinary human, or one with knowledge that was not commonplace, to do him harm.
Strange. If that were the case, then maybe he was more tolerant than he thought he was. If he was able to differentiate between those that could harm him and those that could not, and give each group a different level of caution, then perhaps he wasn't quite so feral as he believed.
He watched the Selani as they watched him, gathered on that side of the camp, many of them holding weapons and watching to see if he did anything hostile. He knew the sharpness of Selani eyes, so he knew that they had seen the brands. That was probably the only reason they weren't attacking him as an outlander. He was a mystery, an unknown, carrying the brands that would give him safe passage through the desert, but of a species they had never seen before. The combination of those meant that they would simply not pester him.
Well, at least most of them thought that way. One rather tall Selani broke away from the group, holding a longspear in his hand. He marched towards Tarrin calmly and steadily, but Tarrin gave no outward reaction to the man. He simply watched him, with only his tail moving back and forth. A surge of irrational fear rose up in him, but he rose up along with it and stomped on it. He would not be a slave to his own fear. He would not! It was hard to scent the man through the dried blood that still stuck to him, from the fight with the inu, but once he got close enough, the coppery-flavored scent of the Selani reached him. There was nothing in that scent to hint to him what the man intended to do. Usually, a scent gave away fear, anger, even murderous intent. But he couldn't find any of those things in this man's scent.
The man didn't attack. He stopped, about ten paces from Tarrin's rock, and grounded the butt of his spear in the dusty soil. "You claim blood debt on my daughter?"
"She claims it against me," he said evenly in reply. "I already absolved her of any need to satisfy her debt. What she does is by her own choice."
"You carry the brands, so you must know of our custom. You know she would not simply walk away."
"I certainly tried to convince her. I don't have time to shephard a child."
"Speak carefully about my daughter, stranger," the man said with a bit of steel in his voice. "Her brands give her the same rights as any of us."
"Truth is truth," Tarrin said, rising up onto his feet, rising up over the Selani man. To his credit, the Selani didn't flinch away from Tarrin's unnatural height. "All of you are like children to me."
"Seeing you like this, I see the truth of that," the man acceded with a hint of a smile. "What my daughter does is her choice. I have no right to force her. Those rights were surrendered when she took the brands. But I will not allow my daughter to travel into danger without understanding that danger."
"I intend to let her guide me for a few days, then I'll send her back," he told the man. "I'm not the kind that goes looking for danger. I agreed to let her guide me so I could avoid dangerous areas."
"She says you intend to move in the night. That is seeking danger."
"These Sandmen don't concern me, shih," he said, using the Selani term for honored stranger. "I don't fear ghosts."
"You don't understand the danger."
"I understand the danger. They are ghosts made of sand. There are ways to stop sand."