I wanted to scream and throw something at the man who stared down at me so calmly, but screaming would have given them both too much satisfaction, and there was nothing in reach to throw. I didn’t have to turn my head again to know Dallan was also staring at me, and then I got an idea for a final shot.
“Perhaps you have both failed to notice that I am, at the moment, unbanded,” I pointed out, abruptly feeling considerably better. “Perhaps what you say would be true were Tammad’s bands still closed upon me, and yet they are not. I stand now as any other woman in this city, unbanded and accountable for her own actions, serenely and completely alone. And my next action, I believe, will be the finding of a large cup of wine to drink.”
I started to take a step between them, certain they would have to let me go, but I’d obviously forgotten for a moment what Rimilian males were like. Their hands tightened very slightly on my arms, and I was pulled back to where I’d been standing.
“Terril, I am aware of the reason your understanding is incomplete,” Dallan said very seriously, “yet does that understanding fail to alter the fact that it is indeed incomplete. You must know that to be without bands is not the same as to be unbanded.”
“Indeed,” said Hestin, nodding soberly. “I am told you are five-banded by your memabrak, a sign to all of the strength of his feelings. When the fifth band was put upon you, treda, was it not done with the rite of five-banding? Does that rite not continue in force, having failed to be renounced by the one who spoke it? Were the bands not taken from you by someone other than he?”
“And do you not now labor to return to his side?” Dallan finished up, the final link in the anchor they were hooking me to. “You are thoroughly banded, sister, with bands or without.”
They were both staring at me again, waiting patiently for their words to sink in, but all I felt was furious. It wasn’t fair trapping me like that, with roundabout alien ideas.
“I have no wish to obey you!” I told them both, glaring at them in turn and stamping a foot. “You cannot make me obey you!”
“No, wenda, we cannot make you obey,” Dallan agreed with a lot of satisfaction, putting his arm around my shoulders while Hestin released his hold. “You power is far too great for us to overcome, yet is there now no need to overcome it. You will obey us, for that is the only thing you may, in honor, do. Come.”
He headed me out of the room by the arm around my shoulders, Hestin following just behind, and their combined satisfaction was so heavy it set my teeth on edge. I didn’t want to listen to them, I didn’t, but that monstrous disease called honor wasn’t giving me a choice.
It didn’t take long to reach my small room at the back of the house, what had probably originally been decided on as a good hideout room. Dallan and Hestin hustled me inside, then Hestin pointed to my bed.
“Remove your clothing and then return yourself there, treda,” he said, his eyes now more impatient than calm. “That you have been so long away from it is outrageous.”
“You will, of course, grant me privacy the while I do so,” I said in resignation, reflecting glumly that at least the time could be used to try thinking my way out of the trap. Hestin’s definition of outrageous and mine didn’t quite come together.
“You have spent your privacy upon other things, girl child,” the healer answered, his voice calm and even but absolutely inflexible. “Do now as you were told.”
I looked up at him immediately, reaching to his mind at the same time, and had no trouble at all discovering that I was being punished. I had gone my own way when I should have been listening to him or Dallan, and now I would pay for it. I tried to maintain an air of furious dignity while I reached down to untie my sandals then took my shirt and breeches off, but furious embarrassment was what it turned into. They both had their eyes glued to me to add to my punishment, and I couldn’t climb back into bed fast enough.
“And there you will remain for the while,” Hestin said as I quickly pulled the cover fur over me, his mind filled with a sense of justice. “A meal will soon be brought here to you, and then I will examine you.”
He and Dallan went then to seat themselves on the carpet fur among the cushions, and I turned all the way over to my left so that I didn’t have to look at them. Both the fur I lay on and the covering fur were fresh, replacing the ones that had been too full of the smell of salve and pain, but that didn’t do as much as it should have to comfort me. The bed the furs covered was made up of two very large cushions, one on top of the other, different from the piles of furs used in Grelana and Gerleth but normally just as comfortable. Right then the most comfortable bed in the Amalgamation wouldn’t have helped, and not only because of the way my back was throbbing. Once again I was being punished by Rimilian men, and I didn’t need any of my abilities to tell me that I hadn’t had the last of it.
A very short time later there was a knock at the door, which was my lunch tray being delivered by one of the servants. Dallan was the one who took it and brought it over to me, and was also the one who fed me what was on it. I hated being fed like that, as though I couldn’t be trusted to do it myself and get it right, but I was still being punished. Dallan’s mind hummed as he fed me, his blue eyes unmoving from my face, and that made it horribly worse.
When I had swallowed the last of the juice and handed back the goblet that had been given me. I looked up to find that Hestin was waiting his turn. I was made to lie back and the cover fur was taken from me, and then those hands were touching me and that mind was deep in the work it loved best. Only a few minutes went by before I was told to turn over, and then another few minutes passed in silence. I was too distracted and upset to notice the quality of that silence and, before I did, it was broken.
“Clearly I must now admit that I have come upon something beyond my understanding,” Hestin muttered, almost to himself. “It cannot be, and yet it most certainly is.”
“What disturbs you?” Dallan asked from the place he’d reclaimed among the cushions, his voice both puzzled and concerned. “Has she done that great an amount of harm to herself?”
“You speak the very point that disturbs me, man,” Hestin answered, turning his head to look at Dallan. “Although she is weary from having been up and about after so long a time spent unmoving, she has not been done harm. On the contrary, despite the discomfort she feels, she is nearly well. Such a thing simply cannot be.”
“For what reason do you find it unacceptable?” Dallan asked, brightening at the good news even as I turned my own head to look at Hestin with the same question in my mind. “Should we not be pleased that she is nearly beyond the harm given her?”
“Indeed,” Hestin nodded in agreement, “and yet it has been no more than three days. How might she be beyond the whippings she was given in no more than three days?”
Dallan blinked at the healer without answering his question, most of the pleasure gone from his face, but I didn’t understand what the problem was.
“For what reason should I not be nearly well in three days?” I asked, keeping myself flat but raised up on my elbows. “It was surely no longer than that the last instance.”
“The last instance?” Hestin replied with a frown, now even more disturbed. “This has occurred a previous time?”
“I was whipped by those called Hamarda, and then escaped them,” I said, shrugging as best I could. “I fled across the desert for perhaps a day, and then was found by those who took me in. When I awoke, two days later, Dallan was there beside me. I was then no more badly taken than I now am.”