“It is as you say,” Kednin muttered, his thoughts disturbed. “No man may stand alone against the hordes of his enemies. Are the off-worlders not likely to deny their gifts to some of us, thinking to create a rift between those who receive them and those who are denied?”
“They are sure to do so,” Tammad said, his tone having gone grim. “The demands you make will not be presented as yours; instead they will be added to ours as though they were ours. The demands put forward in your own name will be contrived demands, ones which will cost you nothing when they are refused. You will, of course, be highly insulted at the refusal, sending your anger toward my people rather than toward the off-wonders. It will then seem to the off-worlders that we are bound more tightly to them, having incurred the scorn and hatred of our brothers. When the truth is learned by them, it will be far too late to save them.”
“I believe I see the target of your arrow,” Kednin said, and then he chuckled. “The hunt itself will be worthy of the effort, even should the quarry not be taken. I am eager to speak further of the matter, yet such things are best discussed far from the distraction of bedinn. As you are my guests I insist that you first pleasure yourselves; serious words may be spoken later. Bedin: present yourself to the guest you bow to.”
I heard Kednin’s words through my confusion, and for a minute they didn’t make any sense. I was too busy wondering what Tammad was up to this time to remember what my position there was—until I felt the instantly gathering fury in the hizah’s mind. I quickly put my wrists behind me, offering them for binding—and only then realized who I was offering myself to. Garth was the one who sat above me, a man who probably knew less of the customs of the tribe than he did of the language, a man who would undoubtedly shame himself by failing to act as the Hamarda expected. I can’t say I was disappointed at the thought—not after the way he’d been treating me—but I wasn’t given much of a chance to gloat. No more than a lazy minute passed before I felt leather at my wrists, looped and tied tight by the large hands holding it before I had a chance to resist. I didn’t want to be tied by Garth, but it was over with and I was pulled to the silk beside him before I could struggle more than slightly.
“You seem disappointed, Terry,” he murmured as softly as he had earlier. “Were you hoping I wouldn’t know what to do with a slave? It’s a shame to dash your hopes, but Tammad briefed us thoroughly before we entered camp. Are you ready to serve me?”
He looked down at me where I lay on my right side between him and Len, his gray eyes showing nothing of hesitation, his mind showing nothing of uncertainty. All around us the evening festivities were well under way, but I wasn’t about to be a part of them. Furiously I reached toward his mind with every intention of hitting with fear or disgust or grief or anything that would dent that thick calm he’d developed—but was instead hit so hard myself by a bolt of anger that my mind felt numbed. I moaned as my head rang from the attack, and then Len’s lips were at my ear.
“That’s just a taste of what you’ll get if you ever try that again,” he whispered, no trace of that vast anger in his voice. “In order to launch an attack you have to open your mind wide, which renders you immediately vulnerable. The next time I’ll hit you with fear.”
After saying his piece he drew away again, putting his anger back under control, but that didn’t mean there was no anger left. Garth’s eyes and mind were filled with it, showing he knew what had happened even if he hadn’t heard Len. I twisted against the leather on my wrists, trying to loosen it, fear beginning to fill me even without Len’s efforts. These were men of my own civilization; why weren’t they acting like it? “I think you’re just about ready to act the proper slave,” Garth murmured, putting a big hand on my shoulder to rub gently. “That Hamarda is mostly involved—with talking to Tammad, but he isn’t ignoring you. Let me hear you ask nicely to be of service to me.”
“Garth, please don’t go through with this,” I whispered, finding it impossible not to squirm under the gentle rubbing of his hand. “You’re not a barbarian and you won’t be able to forget your . . . .”
“Silence,” he interrupted, his voice cold with anger even in the lowered tones be was using, his eyes as angry and cold as his voice. “You were given an order and I expect to see it obeyed. After that shot you took at me a minute ago, any sympathy you had coming is wiped off the books. Now, let me hear that request or I’ll force it out of you.”
Under the veil I was biting my lip, indecision tearing at me. If I refused to do as Garth said, Kednin would surely notice, and that would mean more trouble than I cared to face. On the other hand, how could I bring myself to say such a thing to Garth R’hem Solohr, a man I’d known under vastly different circumstances? It was terribly wrong, somehow, and I couldn’t see myself
“All right, don’t say you didn’t ask for it,” Garth said, the impatience in his mind unwilling to wait any longer. In the midst of the laughter and low-key conversation going on around us, his hand slid down from my shoulder, caressed my breast, then continued on its way to my thigh. My breath drew in in a mortified gasp, but in another minute I didn’t have the breath for a gasp. His touch on me was like a flash of lightning, reawakening and intensifying all the frustrations I’d suffered through that day. I writhed and moaned in low, mindless need, but the humiliation was still blazingly there.
“If you think I’ll be feeling guilty about this later, you’re crazy,” Garth murmured, stretching out on one elbow on the silk beside me to kiss my throat below the veil. “Your skin is softer than Dacrian velvet, woman, and I fully intend experiencing all of it. Speak the way you were ordered to speak, or I’ll have you screaming instead.”
I moaned again as I looked up into the gray of his eyes, knowing the truth of the words he spoke; if he didn’t stop touching me like that I would be screaming soon. I shuddered, miserable to think he was able to do that to me, then let the words come tumbling out when the pressure of his fingers increased.
“No, don’t!” I begged, choking in the effort to keep my voice down. “I’ll say it if you’ll just take your hand away. . Oh! Garth . . . All right, all right, I’ll obey you! Hizah, I beg to be allowed the honor of serving you! I beg it! Please, no more!”
“There are tears in your eyes, slave,” he observed for some reason not hearing the words he’d demanded. “Is being made to know the needs of your body so painful then? Or is it the man who touches you that’s the painful part? I will readily admit I am not yet l’lenda, but neither am I darayse. And no, wenda, I will not grant you the honor you beg so reluctantly. I want nothing of willing service from you—merely the service itself.”
He took me in his arms then, ignoring my whispered pleas, and not much later he took even more. I think I was in shock then, especially when I responded to him with very little effort on his part. I didn’t know what had happened to Garth, and once he had let me go I was even less sure about what had happened to me. I lay on the silk where he had left me, my body relaxed rather than ravaged, my emotions serene rather than scandalized. I bad never before felt that way after being with a man of my worlds, and it was almost frightening.
“That pleasure in your mind feels out of place,” Len said softly from my left. “Has it really been that long since you found pleasure in anything?”