“So that’s what I was doing wrong all that while,” he said, a strange calm-but-excited feeling in him. “I was asking.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” I snorted, very aware of Tammad, behind my arm, looking at us. “You can’t really believe all women think like that, Garth, no one alive is that innocent.”
Garth flushed just the way I wanted him to, and the confusion rolled back over him. I shook my bead in derision to increase his confusion, feeling Tammad’s annoyance flare when he realized what I was doing.
“One must use sense when listening to the words of a wenda,” the barbarian put in to Garth, sounding considerably more casual than he was feeling. “The wenda who spoke before us resolved the matter in her own way, which is but one way of many. It may seem different to other wendaa, yet it may also seem the same, as each wenda is not equally willing to speak of the thing. A woman’s denial is often meant as a gesture, to salve her pride and protect her willfulness, a thing the truth would not accomplish.”
Garth breathed an “Ahhh” of satisfaction, his mind and eyes filling with instant amusement, especially when I turned on the barbarian in a fury.
“You think you’re so smart!” I hissed at Tammad, feeling—actually feeling—the way be was laughing at me. “When it comes to women you think you know it all, don’t you? You think you can roll over anything or anyone you please, especially if they’re female! Well, the one thing I really want to see is the day you meet a woman you can’t push around or browbeat into listening to you! That’s the day that overblown ego of yours will explode in your face and free all that hot air you’re filled with! You’ll probably end up being no more than two feet tall!”
I began getting to my feet to storm back to my cabin, furious with both of them, when a big hand grabbed my caldin sash and pulled me back down to the carpeting. I sprawled on my left side, closer to Tammad, and looked up to see the deep amusement those blue eyes still retained.
“As the time of my come-uppance has not yet arrived, you would do well to recall that you have not been given permission to leave,” he said, his voice just short of its usual chuckle. “I will see what food there is within you, so that you may be more attractive to him who claims you when I am no longer able to defend my right to you.”
“Maybe I’ll be the one to claim you then,” Garth put in, leaning forward to grin down at me. “I don’t know as much about women as he does, but I intend learning all I can. By the time he can’t control you any longer, I should be able to take over—if I haven’t found anyone of my own by then.”
“I have no worries on that score,” I told Garth angrily and with bitterness, sitting up again with my back toward Tammad. “By the time you’ve learned to ignore a woman’s wishes the way he does, to beat her and bully her the way he does, you won’t want me around any longer. Every time you look at me you’ll know how wrong you are, and how quickly you turned your back on what’s right. I’ll bring back memories that are too painful, Garth, and every time you look at me you’ll know what’s right. You just won’t want to admit it.”
Garth’s grin had disappeared entirely by the time I was through, his light eyes a somber reflection of his thoughts. He didn’t mind seeing me embarrassed and pushed around a little, especially if he could help, but turning mild revenge into a way of life was something else again. Tammad had been trained to it from childhood, but Garth had been taught different values, ones the barbarian would not find as easy to overcome as he thought they would be. Tammad was trying to turn Garth into a barbarian, but I was fighting to keep him civilized and sensible. One barbarian in a woman’s life is more than enough.
“And yet, right and wrong are not simple entities,” Tammad put in. “To each of us, that which we desire is right, that which hinders us, wrong. A woman, however, will consider that which she feels should be desirable as right, where a man is able to see the reality of the desire. My Terril has been taught that all those about her owe her deference and obedience, for her talent sets her above those others. She strives to maintain this state of affairs, yet finds happiness only when she is made to obey my wishes, whatever they may be. Is she, then, one whose words it is wise to give heed to, one who clearly sees her own needs and the needs of others? A man listens to the words of all; a wise man hears the true from the false.”
“And an intelligent man uses his eyes and common sense,” I added immediately, not liking the way Garth’s distress and confusion eased in Tammad’s direction. “He talks glibly enough of happiness, but how happy do I look to you? Am I glowing and in love with the whole universe, am I laughing over nothing and constantly humming to myself? If I’m all that happy, why does he have to keep me a prisoner?”
“Your happiness would return if you allowed it to do so,” Tammad growled his eyes undoubtedly hard where he sat behind me. “A stubborn, female foolishness keeps you from what once was yours, before the foolishness occurred to you. Am I to bow to foolishness and release you, thereby adding to the foolishness? Once we have reached Rimilia, things will be as they were.”
“Things will never be as they were!” I flared, twisting around to glare at him. “As soon as you find out I’m not kidding about not working for you, your intense interest will dissolve and turn elsewhere. You won’t know if I make it back to my own people and you won’t even care. If another man takes me prisoner instead, well so what? I’m nothing but a woman, a mere wenda, and that’s what women are for, to give men a good time. What difference does it make which men and women are involved?”
He stared at my anger in silence for a moment, the hardness in his light eyes tinged with disturbance, and then he shook his head.
“Would that I had your ability,” be murmured. “It seems impossible to me that you truly believe this, that I would cease to care what befell you.”
“You haven’t begun caring about me yet,” I pointed out, finding it impossible to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “When I stopped to think about it, I discovered that everything you did was designed to make life easier for yourself.
You protected me because you needed me, not because I meant anything to you. You let me fall in love with you because I was easier to control that way and gave you less trouble. You returned me to the embassy not because it was what I wanted, but because you had given your word to do so. You could have saved me a lot of grief by explaining what you were doing, but it was too much trouble explaining a l’lenda’s actions to a mere wenda. You simply did not care enough about me. And you don’t care enough about me now to keep from embarrassing me in front of strangers. If you want to know how I really feel, you now have it all.”
I was looking at him defensively, half expecting him to punish me for having spoken to him like that, half wondering what be was really thinking. I’d learned to be wary of touching his mind too deeply, knowing how he disliked it, which was why he’d been able to fool me so completely the sleep period before. His surface emotions were mostly vast confusion, swirling around a tinge of outraged denial, but his control was too good for me to believe that denial. Garth’s mind was even more troubled than it had been, but he wasn’t prepared to put his distress into words. Tammad, though, was a different matter.
“It is beyond me how you are able to believe these untruths,” he said, shaking his head again. “The sole thing which occurs to me is that you are interpreting through mistake rather than describing from reality. That you now find yourself embarrassed is no more than the fruits of your own doing, the results of your attempts to disobey me. Should you again begin to obey me, the embarrassment will be no more. As you will find when we have reached Rimilia.”