7
The next few days were spent in normal boring travel, and when I wasn’t giving Tammad lessons in control, I was buried deep in thoughts of my own. What I felt and what I’d been told refused to resolve themselves into something I could cope with, and being on my own as far as my abilities went was horribly unsettling. I still had the same abilities I’d had when I’d started, but suddenly whether or not to use them was entirely my own decision. No Amalgamation to turn me off when my job was over, no Tammad to tell me when I’d done wrong and punish me for it, no Garth to talk me into doing experiments, no Len to warn me about making mistakes. I’d ranted and raved about all the restrictions I’d been under, chafed endlessly and complained bitterly, but now that I had the freedom I’d wanted so badly, I was afraid to do anything with it. I kept my arms very tight around the barbarian as we rode, really wishing he hadn’t decided it was time for me to grow up. I wasn’t ready to grow up, and still wasn’t even entirely convinced that staying with him was the best thing for him.
By the time we’d awakened that very first morning, the woman Leelan was already gone, not only from Dallan’s tent but from the whole camping area. Afterward Dallan said that she’d told him she was on her way to take care of some unspecified business, but would be back in Vediaster’s capital city about three days behind us. If we were still in the city at that time, we were all invited to share the hospitality of her house. That didn’t strike me as an invitation to look forward to, but I found myself very definitely in the minority. My traveling companions thought it was a wonderful idea, but what else can you expect from men?
The pestering I’d been anticipating from Dallan never materialized, and once again it was Leelan I had to thank. The drin of Gerleth, back in his haddin as the others were, was his usual pleasant self when anyone spoke to him, but the rest of the time he was thinking, daydreaming, and fantasizing, three distinctly different efforts. Thinking usually involves facts or speculation from known quantities, daydreaming lets the mind flutter wherever it likes without direction, and fantasizing is the almost-wish for a specific event or circumstance, choreographed and dialogued to satisfy an inner craving. The thing that brought all this to my attention was the way Dallan began to fantasize, then cut it off in annoyance. Among normally intelligent beings, it’s usually daydreaming that’s done the least; what begins directionless is most times quickly diverted to thinking or fantasizing. Dallan wasn’t letting himself fantasize, and his day-dreaming had a lot of rigidity about it.
“Hamak, what’s bothering Dallan?” I finally asked the barbarian in a whisper, also using Centran to keep the conversation more private. “Didn’t he enjoy himself with my noble defender?”
Tammad shifted in the saddle, half annoyed and half relieved that I’d interrupted the individual exercise I’d given him to do, then cast about for a way to answer me.
“He did indeed find enjoyment with the woman,” I was told at last, but almost with an air of discussing things that weren’t quite proper. “Any man would find enjoyment with a woman such as that in his arms.”
“Then what’s the problem?” I asked, ignoring that “any man” phrase he’d used. He’d been pushing away a good deal of disapproval when he’d said it, and I didn’t understand why.
“It is not-proper-to use a woman who is unbanded and then fail to band her,” he managed to get out, part of his mind bent out of shape. “That the woman offered herself to Dallan was of no moment, for she comes from a country unlike our own and the drin meant to have her in any event. Come the start of the new day he would have put his bands upon her, yet had she already gone. Such immoral behavior is greatly vexing to us all, yet there is little we may do at the moment to correct it.”
“Immoral behavior,” I repeated blankly, wondering what I was missing. “You think her having spent the night with Dallan was immoral?”
“Certainly not,” he said in soft exasperation, definitely growing impatient with me. “For a man to take a woman for the darkness is natural, as things were meant to be. For a wenda to take herself off after such a doing, alone and without the protection of a man of her own, is completely unacceptable. What if the merging were to have begun a child? What sort of upbringing would such a child have, with no father to raise it and train it? What of Dallan’s feelings, to think that a child of his might well be without protection and provision? The thing was thoughtless and highly improper, and should not have been done.”
The incensed indignation pouring out at me told me I would be smart to let the whole thing drop, but that didn’t mean I stopped thinking about it. It was hard accepting the apparent fact that on Rimilia it was the man who got caught if he messed around with an unbanded woman, but that was the only way I could make any sense out of it. I already knew that all the children belonged to the men and that if a woman was put up for banding by someone else the children she’d produced didn’t go with her, but I never would have guessed in what direction that line of thinking could go. As long as there was a man there to claim ownership of a child, it didn’t matter who fathered it; how the child turned out after it was raised was the important part. For a woman to take the chance of starting a child and then to disappear without giving the man involved an opportunity to do the right and proper thing was Rimilia’s version of scandalous behavior, and somehow I couldn’t help grinning at the thought. Dallan had been the victim of a hit and run, and he was the one worrying about whether or not that particular night would produce something unexpected.
The country of Vediaster began a few miles beyond the town we’d camped in that first night, but at first there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the countryside we’d passed through. Despite the fact that no one had admitted seeing Aesnil and her two companions coming through the town, we were all still certain we were right behind them. The road had widened considerably, a requirement of the volume of traffic that used it, and only short distances of that road wound through forest or uninhabited field. Most of the land all around us was under cultivation, a sign of a prosperous country, but there were also a number of sword-bearing, unbanded women on the road, most of them coming from the opposite direction. None of the three men with me did anything but nod politely in answer to their nods, but the three minds were nothing but disapproving.
We camped the third night in a stand of trees not far from the road, knowing that on the following day we’d reach the city of Vediaster, the seat of power for the country of the same name. Cinnan was distracted and almost unbearably impatient, fighting to keep himself from riding on ahead without rest, just to get there sooner. Dallan was distracted and down in the dumps, fighting to keep from watching behind us for the woman who had said she’d be coming back to the city we were heading for. Tammad was distracted with something he’d been thinking about, something pleasant but also something that was making him the least bit impatient. I was annoyed that it happened to be raining, a light, pleasant rain, but one that meant I couldn’t try my hand at cooking again.
With Dallan finally thinking about something other than his stomach, I’d spent the last three days working at getting the best of our food rather than the other way around, and really believed I was finally getting somewhere. I’d cheated by watching the minds around me as I’d cooked, letting their reactions tell me when it was time to take something out of the fire or time to leave it in a little longer, what to season with and how much to use, what was tasty and what was just barely edible. The most annoying part was that none of the three seemed to notice that they weren’t dying of food poisoning any longer, or that I had taken over something they hadn’t even wanted me to think about. They accepted my efforts without comment and without notice, but at least I felt better about it.