“As you did in Grelana, when you came in search of Terril,” Dallan said, doubling the point Tammad was trying to make. “You demanded your wenda from Aesnil, and were given a place in her vendra ralle instead.”
“There is no reason to believe that the Chama of Vediaster will do as Aesnil did,” Cinnan said, maintaining the position he’d held to doggedly for the last three days. “Should we offer courtesy of manner, we will likely receive the same in return. ”
“And if we do not?” Tammad asked, his mind wary with “once bitten, twice shy.”
“Should we be taken in this city and thrown into chains, who will there be to help free us? Who will there be to be certain of Aesnil’s safety? Should we be called upon to fight for our freedom, which of us will find it possible to raise sword to a wenda? Are we to welcome the choice between our lives and safety and theirs?”
“What other choice have we?” Cinnan asked, his tone strong but his mind upset. “Should we not present ourselves at the palace, we will not find Aesnil.”
“Merely to appear there will not immediately bring Aesnil to view, Cinnan,” Dallan put in, still determined to be more practical than sympathetic. “The palace here is easily the size of Aesnil’s, perhaps even larger. Do you mean to tramp up and down its halls, peering into every room’.’ What courtesy will be found in such a manner?”
“Then what are we to do?” Cinnan demanded in a hiss, his agitation so strong that his seetar snorted and shook its head. “Do you propose that we take ourselves secretly into the palace in the guise of wendaa, hoping that those who stand guard will fail to notice us? Or do you prefer that we stand about outside the palace, telling one another amusing tales the while we attempt to see in through windows?”
“Cinnan, calm yourself,” the barbarian advised softly, noticing but not looking at the people who had begun to stare at him as we passed. “We will indeed enter the palace, yet not as those who ride in search of a wenda. I will seek an audience with the Chama, and will tell her of the outworlders and what we mean to do to best them. Once she has agreed to join us, we will broach the subject of Aesnil.”
Three women on seetarr galloped past us going in the opposite direction while Cinnan digested that, but the dust raised by their passage didn’t readily settle down. I could smell food, and people, and animals, and dust, all around and getting stronger almost by the minute. It was all giving me a not-quite headache and a queasiness in my stomach, a general sensation of not feeling really well. We hadn’t been traveling long that day, but I was also feeling very tired and wishing there were good-quality accommodations nearby, someplace with an air-conditioned room, a soft, wide bed, and an excellent kitchen supplying room service. The barbarian’s hard body was hot where I held him around, —and I was close enough to smell his sweat.
“Such an approach would indeed be the wisest way,” Cinnan grudged at last, his normal intelligence struggling to drag him away from the urge toward hysterics that he’d felt ever since Aesnil’s disappearance. “This seetar would surely find it possible to lead me to my wenda, yet is the Chama unlikely to appreciate his presence in her halls. We three shall approach the matter as you suggest.”
“Not we three,” Tammad corrected, and again I could feel his mind working. “It would be best to have one without the palace, one who would either be able to aid us should ill befall us, or ride to fetch our l’lendaa. We know not why Aesnil was brought here, yet is it near certain that she was brought rather than merely accompanied. I had not wished to increase your distress, Cinnan, yet has the time come to speak of the matter.”
“And I am the one to remain behind,” Dallan said with understanding and approval, trying to help soothe Cinnan. “I shall watch carefully from afar, and should any difficulty arise, I will do what seems best.”
“And I will wait with him,” I said, suddenly understanding, despite the faintly vague way I felt, that that might help me with my problem. Dallan had always been someone I could talk to, and even if he yelled at me I was sure he would be able to come up with something I could do.
“No, wenda, you will continue to accompany me,” the barbarian said at once, aiming the words at me over his right shoulder. “The drin Dallan must fade from sight when he leaves us, and this your presence would make more difficult. ”
“I would need to do no more than change my clothing and remove my bands,” I protested, looking up at the face turned partway to me. “How might a man hide himself more easily than a woman in a city such as this?”
“As the clothing of a plains woman suits you best, and I shall not permit my bands to be removed from you, there is little need to discuss how your dark hair and green eyes would not go unnoticed,” he answered, his voice as calm as his mind. “You will remain with the man who has banded you, and will obey him as you must.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” I came back in Centran, more annoyed than I’d expected to be. “I can see that the people here are as blond as everywhere else, but dark hair is only unusual, not unheard of. And if necessary, I can probably find a way to cover it. Let me go with Dallan. ”
“No,” was all he said before turning his face away from me again, absolute finality in the word. His mind was made up, and he wasn’t about to change it.
Only two more streets were gone behind us before their general plans were hammered out, and then Dallan wished his two companions good luck and turned his seetar toward a side street leading off to the right from the main thoroughfare we continued along. I seethed in anger as I watched him go, deeply resenting the fact that I couldn’t go with him. I wasn’t being allowed to go with him, but no one cared how angry that made me. I was being forced to obey the man who had banded me, and that was the way things were supposed to be.
Cinnan and the barbarian engaged in very little conversation for the rest of the ride, but strangely enough Cinnan seemed to have calmed down. It looked like he found Aesnil’s being taken from him easier to accept than the thought of her running away, and his mind was filled with cool planning and consideration instead of agitation. Tammad’s thick calm was shielding his mind again, but beneath it I could feel his own plotting and calculating. Both of them ignored me as if I weren’t there, and for them I wasn’t. Even Tammad couldn’t reach through my curtain to what I was really feeling, and he and Cinnan both were taking silence for acquiescence.
It was somewhat surprising to find the palace in the center of the city, only fifty feet of emptiness and a high stone wall separating it from the buildings, houses and shops surrounding it. There was a wide gap in the wall that seemed to be a major gate, guarded by a number of tall, armed women dressed in yellow, with grim, dedicated expressions on their faces; when the barbarian told them he’d come to speak with the Chama, we were all made to dismount. The women looked the two l’lendaa over with hums of interest in their minds, and although Tammad’s expression never changed, his mind bulged with held-down outrage and indignation. His definition of female didn’t include such behavior, and if he’d been anywhere but Vediaster at that particular time he would have let them know it. He wasn’t about to jeopardize Cinnan’s chances of getting Aesnil back, but the way he was gritting his mental teeth almost made me grin.
Five of the guardswomen escorted us across the ground toward the palace proper, which meant I didn’t get to spend much time with the urge to grin. Every one of them considered me something low and distasteful, unappetizing in the extreme and nothing to associate with or even to walk too near. If it were jealousy or envy, emotions I’d read in other women more than once, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but all those women felt was disgust and scorn. I walked barefoot across the grass behind two of them, Cinnan and Tammad to either side of me, tasting the way I was unarmed, dressed in ankle-length skirts, banded, and having been ridden behind a man. Any one of those things would have produced the disgust, but all of them together did more than that. To those large, proud women I was a lower life form, and the taste of that made me sicker and more depressed than I had been.