"You will." Dilam stopped before a small tent. "This is yours. My tent is two down the way. Refresh yourself and I will come for you in fifteen minutes." She changed her mind. "No, thirty minutes. I have something to do."
Jane's smile lingered as she watched Dilam walk away. She liked the woman. Her bluntness might be a little discomforting, but her good humor and vitality were refreshing. She might also be as valuable as Ruel claimed if she was as energetic in work as she obviously was at play.
Her smile turned to a chuckle as she remembered Li Sung's outraged expression before he had stalked away with Ruel. Yes, Dilam's presence was definitely going to make their task more interesting.
Li Sung was sitting on the ground, fastidiously devouring a piece of roasted rabbit when Ruel arrived at the campfire ninety minutes later, but Jane and Dilam were j nowhere to be seen. "Where's Jane?" Ruel asked. "I have not seen her. I do not know where she is."
Since Dilam was also missing, Ruel had a good idea where they both were. The gambling in the belim tent was still going strong, and he had learned Dilam never liked to be disturbed when she was gambling.
A moment later he was elbowing his way through the crowd in the tent. He spotted Dilam almost at once playing parzak, a Cinnidan card game, but Jane was not with her. "I thought you'd be here," Ruel told Dilam as he glanced around the tent. "Where's Jane?"
"Over there." Dilam motioned to the dice corner. "But you must not disturb her. She is winning."
The throng was so thick he couldn't see any of the players at the dice circle. "It's time for supper. Food is more important than gambling."
"You never think so when you are the one who is winning." She threw down her cards and stood up. "I will go with you to the candmar, but we will let her stay here and have her pleasure,"
"Oh, will we?"
Dilam nodded. "She needs to win. She has no joy." She took Ruel's arm and started to pull him from the tent. "We will send Li Sung for her later."
"I doubt if Li Sung will allow himself to be sent anywhere by you."
"I know," Dilam said glumly. "It is his crippled leg, I think. He is going to cause me much trouble."
Laughter. Jane's laughter—excited, full-bodied, and free, ringing through the tent.
He stopped in his tracks, ignoring Dilam's tugging hand as he turned back. He felt a sense of shock as he realized he could not remember ever hearing Jane laugh like that. Certainly not in Kasanpore or Glenclaren.
She has no joy.
"You will have to be the one to tell him," Dilam said.
"What?"
Jane laughed again. Dammit, he wished the crowd would part so he could see her.
"Li Sung," Dilam said impatiently. "You'll have to he the one to tell him to come back for Jane."
The crowd standing around the dice circle shifted.
Jane knelt with dice in hand, her head thrown back, a soft flush on her cheeks, her face glowing with laughter. She looked young and free and full of joy.
"See? Did I not tell you?" Dilam said softly, "She needs this."
And he wanted her to have it. He wanted her to keep on laughing. He wanted her to look like this for the rest of—
She looked up and saw him watching her.
Her laughter vanished; wariness tightened her lips. It was as if she had drawn a somber cloak around her, closing everything childlike and bright inside her and leaving him outside.
He felt cheated, stung, as if she had robbed him of something. He called sharply to her, "It's time to eat."
"I lost track of time," she said quietly. "I'll come at once."
He nodded curtly and left the tent with Dilam at his heels. Christ, for a moment it had been like those days before the train wreck when he had felt a tenderness for Jane he had never felt for any woman. But the moment was over, he assured himself. He had not brought her to Cinnidar to give her the joyous childhood she had never had but to see that she was punished. She was not a child but the woman who had destroyed his brother's life.
"You did not listen to me," Dilam said. "Why did you not let her—"
"Did it ever occur to you that when I don't listen, it's because I don't wish to hear?"
"I still think you—" She stopped as she saw his expression. "I should not speak?"
"You should not speak," he said emphatically.
Li Sung's temper had definitely not improved, Jane thought. All through supper that evening he had either kept silent or spoken in monosyllables. She supposed she had better bring it out in the open and let him loose his surliness. "Dilam?"
The one word was all it took to bring the explosion. "She is an abomination," he said between his teeth as he glared at Dilam across the campfire. "Can we not hire someone else?"
"I doubt it. Evidently the Cinnidans would consider it an insult if we didn't accept her. Besides, I like her." She smiled slyly. "And she obviously likes you."
"She regards me as some kind of tame— Do you know she came to my tent after she showed you to yours?"
"No." So that had been the 'something' Dilam had to do.
"She said she forgave me for my blindness in not seeing what awaited me with her and assured me she* would be patient."
Jane's lips twitched. "How kind of her."
"Kind? She regards males only as inferior drones to slave for the queen bees."
"I'm sure you're misunderstanding her." Jane's glance followed his. Dilam's face was alight with laughter, her hands gesturing, moving, drawing pictures as she spoke to Ruel. "She's not unattractive, is she?"
"Ugly as sin."
"I don't find her so." But Li Sung clearly was not going to be convinced of anything he chose not to believe, and she was too tired now to continue to try. She got to her feet. "I'm going back to my tent. I still have to study that map of the mountain trail and we need to get an early start tomorrow."
Her answer from Li Sung was a nod and a scowl.
She had scarcely left the campfire when Ruel fell into step with her. "You appeared to be enjoying yourself in the belim tent tonight."
The tension that was always present when she was with him caused her to answer tersely, "Yes."
"Did you win much?"
"I don't know. I haven't figured out the Cinnidan currency yet. I don't think so."
"You like the Cinnidans?"
"How could I help it? They're good-natured, intelligent, and I've never seen anyone live with such enjoyment." She looked at him. "You like them yourself. Dilam said you belonged here."
"I do," he said unequivocally.
She was surprised at the admission. "Because of the gold?"
He shook his head. "Cinnidar caught me. I worked the mountain and dealt with the Cinnidans and thought I was slaving only to make myself a rich man. Then one day I stopped working long enough to raise my head and look around and found I'd walked right into the trap."
"Trap?"
"Ian would call it 'home.' I'm not so at ease with the word."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Why not?" His tone was mocking. "Isn't it time we became reacquainted?"
"No." She stopped at the entrance of her tent. "I don't want to know anything about you."