Kednin ordered us all to begin serving the food we’d brought, then sat back with his eyes unwaveringly on me. I got to my feet and retrieved the bowl I’d put aside, then went to kneel again in front of the hizah. It gave me some small pleasure to ignore the other three in his favor as I was supposed to, but the pleasure was very small and didn’t last long. Kednin took a strip of the grilled meat, tore a piece off, then stuffed the piece in my mouth. I chewed it as long as I dared before swallowing, trying not to show the near ecstasy I felt as the rare juices filled my mouth and trickled down my throat. I hadn’t been permitted anything but that thick cereal grain to eat, not unless I was tasting something for a hizah. I’d tried to find one who was amused at the idea of feeding a bedin, but amusement in those men was much too close to interest. To encourage their amusement and discourage their interest turned out to be impossible, and I’d found I had to give up eating meat if I wanted to avoid rape.
Right after that it was necessary to kneel in front of Tammad, holding the bowl out for his selection, and I found myself moving slowly as I did so. I remembered another scene very much like that one, set instead in the barbarian’s tent, and he must have seen the memory in my eyes.
“I find it odd that this wenda holds no interest for you,” he said to Kednin as he helped himself to a strip of meat from the bowl. “It seems odd indeed that the loveliest bedin in the tent should affect you so.”
“Perhaps.” Kednin shrugged while I tried to keep from cringing at Tammad’s continued stare. “It is difficult to say what will attract a man’s attention, most especially in a female. Have you forgotten the balance of the service required of you, bedin?”
I glanced at him quickly, but didn’t need the glance to feel the impatience in his mind. He wanted me to move on to Len, but that move was harder than the one to Tammad. I hesitated another instant, found no way to reach his mind and change it, then absolutely had to change position. When I knelt in front of Len and extended the bowl, I found two serious blue eyes staring at me.
“Such a lovely bedin should not find herself ignored,” he murmured, taking a strip of meat. “Perhaps she feels herself undesirable and therefore appears undesirable to men. Come, bedin. This will show that I find you of interest. Are you not pleased?”
“This” was a torn piece of his meat strip, larger than the one Kednin had given me, but not so large that it was likely to spoil me. Len stuffed it in my mouth the way the hizah had done, giving me no choice about accepting it. He let me feel the grim pleasure he experienced while I chewed, knowing full well how great the humiliation was for me. His sending was crisp and clear, unlike the accidental sendings of the untalented, but the strong anger he felt wasn’t quite as covered as he wanted it to be. He knew I’d been tampering with minds again, and he was furious over the fact. I felt my own anger rising at the injustice of the outlook, not caring whether or not he felt it. He wasn’t the one who had been in constant jeopardy of being raped; how dare he judge?
. When I finished with Len I moved on to Garth, who naturally hadn’t said a word. Len had been leaning over toward him from time to time, most likely translating, but the situation wasn’t one where Garth could afford to comment. As I knelt before him I wondered why he was even there; not speaking the language put him at a considerable disadvantage. I held the bowl of meat strips out to him, but he didn’t accept the offer immediately. His gray eyes stared at me intently, almost accusingly, and at last he shook his head in disgust.
“Knowing you, I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured very low, so low no one else could possibly have heard him. “You’re a damned fool, Terry, and Len’s the one who’s right.”
He reached into the bowl for a meat strip then, his mind smoldering with an anger I didn’t understand. There was no trace of his usual air of superiority; instead, he seemed to have achieved the sort of calm assurance most people don’t even know is possible. I didn’t agree with his conclusions about Len’s position—on any subject I could think of—and he seemed to know that. Once he had his meat strip he moved his hand in a curt gesture, dismissing me from his presence as though I were a slave. I could feel my lips tighten as I rose to my feet, but that was as far as I could let my anger show. Even that, with the veil in place, became a gesture for myself alone.
After that I was required to start the rounds again, but custom and courtesy no longer demanded that the men take only a single meat strip. Once they all had all the meat they wanted, I was sent for the bowls of dark bread and fried vegetables and mixed sweets some of the other women had brought. The men had their hands full with the meat, so I had to feed them whichever of the other items they wanted while they leaned back and took their ease. Kednin waved me away when I approached him, showing he was uninterested in being served further, but his guests weren’t that easy to please. Garth insisted on more than one serving of everything, Len made me eat his leftovers, and Tammad—Tammad nodded wordlessly when I offered something, took the proffered offering without moving his eyes from mine, chewed, swallowed, then waited for the next, all the time projecting a faint air of being displeased somehow. For some reason my hand quickly began trembling as I raised the food to his lips, and wouldn’t stop even when I told myself I was being stupid. I didn’t care in the least whether or not he was pleased, so why was I reacting that way?
When the food was all gone the men shared a large wineskin, brought to them by the bedin they’d chosen to serve them. Once rd handed the thing to Kednin I was supposed to be through for a while, but Garth gestured me to him while Kednin looked in his direction, giving me no chance to pretend I didn’t see the gesture. Garth couldn’t have called to me, of course, and I would have taken advantage of that fact if I could have. He seemed to sense my impatient anger when I knelt before him, but instead of being amused he was annoyed. I hadn’t expected that reaction in him, any more than I expected the way his fist came to my hair to force my head down to the silken floor. I almost gasped at his nerve in bowing me like that, but Kednin was watching too closely.
“It is unusual having guests in our tents,” the hizah said to Tammad after pulling at the wineskin and passing it on. “Do you merely travel through the sand to some far destination, or have you come to us with purpose?”
“The truth occupies two places,” Tammad answered after a drinking pause of his own. “We come to the sands of the Hamarda in search of that which was stolen from us, yet we also come to bring word to our brothers of the desert. We who dwell in cooler lands have found it necessary to begin a life-game with those off-wonders of whom you are already aware. The off-worlders encourage us to make demands upon them, thinking to bind us and separate us with the granting of those demands. We, however, will use our demands to weaken our enemy and strengthen ourselves, to their eventual sorrow. We invite our brothers the Hamarda to join us, both to stand with us against the enemy and to grow in strength as we do. It is my intention to speak more fully of the matter at the next Gathering of the tribes of the Hamarda.”
Kednin was silent for a moment, his mind whirling in frenzied thought, and then he said, “You offer to share the new strength which will be yours? Surely you know that should you keep it for yourselves alone, you would soon come to rule our world. Why, then, would you wish to share it?”
“It is not possible to rule a world which has fallen to strangers,” Tammad answered, his voice harsh from the bleak sight his inner eye looked upon. “Should we be foolish enough to keep the gifts of the off-worlders to ourselves alone, we would soon find ourselves a small island of strength in a world of weakness. Once the balance of our world is taken, how much longer are we ourselves likely to stand? In order to survive a battle a man must have his brothers at his back, else his sword, no matter how sharp, will be rendered useless.”