Wolf Captured (40 page)
Rahniseeta looked puzzled.
“Pay? For what do you need pay? Haven’t the temples answered your least need?”
“Least?” Barnet considered. “I admit I’ve been kept fed and clothed, and that Harjeedian was generosity itself when we were in Hawk Haven and I wanted to replace my musical instruments, but sometimes it’s nice to feel the weight of unspent credits heavy in your pocket.”
Rahniseeta continued to look confused.
“But is there anything you desire that you have not been given? Indeed, there are those among the younger aridisdum and kidisdum who feel you have been tended to more like one of the fully anointed than as a guest who owes even for his life.”
Derian caught his breath at the anger that flared in Barnet’s eyes.
“I thought your people didn’t practice slavery,” he said, his tones hard and chill as iced steel.
“We do not,” Rahniseeta said proudly. “I was appalled when Harjeedian explained the practice to me, and I knew that being enslaved was one of the risks he took in going into northern waters.”
“Seems to me,” Barnet pressed, his tones still cold, “that expecting someone to work for no reward is pretty much the same as slavery. Don’t get me wrong, Rahniseeta, I’m grateful to be alive and all the rest, but the horses here”—he gave a broad- armed gesture that encompassed all of u-Bishinti’s elaborate complex—“have more freedom than I do.”
Rahniseeta looked genuinely shocked.
“Have you ever been truly hungry, Barnet Lobster?” she asked, and her voice was fire to melt his ice.
“A few times at sea,” the other replied levelly, “when something happened to spoil the provisions. I’ve been thirsty, too, so starved for water that drinking pee seemed like a good idea.”
Derian shuddered at the image that evoked, but Rahniseeta remained angry. He gazed at her, uncertain how he felt at seeing the seething temper that must have always lain beneath the sweet, kind exterior he had admired. It frightened him a little, but excited him. After all, the best horses were those who were brought into line without losing their fire. It seemed to him that it must be the same with women, too.
Rahniseeta glowered at Barnet.
“Well, I know something about hunger. My father died when I was very small. My mother took care of Harjeedian and me as she could, and in what time she could spare, she plaited mats from reeds and leaves. The money from selling these—or more often what she could trade for them—was all we had. Otherwise we ate what we could scrounge: fish caught in the canal, eggs when our hens were laying, and sometimes the huge oval insects that creep out into the light at night. They aren’t too bad if you’re hungry enough.”
Rahniseeta surged on without giving Barnet an opportunity to voice what Derian was certain had to be an apology.
“You make my stomach twist more than those bugs ever did,” she said. “You have shelter, fine food, good clothing, and if you would but ask, you would be given more. Yet you whine because you don’t have money weighing your pockets?”
Derian would have been stammering apologies and seeking to placate the angry woman, but Barnet was made of stronger—or at least different—stuff.
“And if,” the minstrel said, all silky sweet, “I wanted to buy a present for a lady, what would I do? Would I go to Harjeedian or the doorkeeper or Ahmyndisdu Tiridanti and say ‘Give this to me’? What if I didn’t wish to remain a lackey in the temple all my life? How do I earn what I need to build my own house or boat? Do I sing on street corners with my hat at my feet?”
The woman who had been napping in the kitchen had come to the doorway to eavesdrop, but Derian doubted that she had heard much. The argument had taken place without voices being raised. Even at her angriest, Rahniseeta had never spoken above a fierce, hissing snarl.
Rahniseeta suddenly reminded Derian of the jaguar, all sleepy indolence one moment, but revealing masses of muscular power when it moved. Varjuna had told him that even a lesser jaguar could haul a deer as heavy as itself into the treetops, where it would cache it against scavengers. Derian thought his earlier comparison of the young woman to a horse seemed as foolish as mistaking Firekeeper for a cottontail rabbit.
Rahniseeta had cooled as quickly as she had flared up, and was studying Barnet with a return to puzzlement—and perhaps with a touch of wistful sorrow.
“I have considered,” she said softly, “much the same thing sometimes.”
Derian wondered if she was speaking of Barnet, then realized with *a sudden illumination that Rahniseeta was speaking about herself.
RAHNISEETA WAS ASHAMED OF HER OUTBURST of temper. It was a flaw she had thought she had conquered, but hearing Barnet whine after privileges as she had listened to other children whine for a sugared roll with jam inside when she would have given anything for a chunk of dry bread had infuriated her. Now she remembered too little, too late that it was her job to placate these strangers so they would do what the temple needed.
Now she swallowed cool tea as if by doing so she could put out the fire in her belly and focused on Derian. The red-haired man was staring at her in fascination—but not in disgust. This relieved her. Her one chance at marriage to someone prosperous had been ruined shortly before the shipwreck victims had arrived in u-Seeheera. What had ruined it was her prospective husband realizing the force of her personality. What had attracted him had been beauty, soft voice, and graceful movement—and her brother’s connections within the disdum. None of these were enough to hold him after he realized that she had opinions of her own and ability to express them.
Since then, a few men had come courting, but as they were all within the temples Rahniseeta had found it easy to resist them. If she was going to live the temple life, she might as well do so with Harjeedian. He, at least, had few illusions about her and little belief that he could change her—use her, yes, but not change her.
“I have washed the dust from my throat, and the cobwebs from my mind,” she said, rising and punctuating the phrase by giving Barnet a friendly smile. “Shall we walk about and see how well Derian can show us his new domain?”
The men rose with her, and she thought Derian had looked a little nonplussed when she had smiled at Barnet. To ease him, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, then her other into Barnet’s. Seemingly escorted by the two fair foreigners, she guided them out into the sunshine.
How to raise the question of the maimalodalum? she thought. Perhaps Barnet can be made to do it for me … .
It was easy to find a horse with the same red-brown coloring as Derian’s own hair, and she indicated it with a toss of her head.
“That one’s pretty.” She lowered her voice and let her own very real discomfort show. “Is it much like the one … the one …”
“The one your brother had killed?” Derian’s reply was clipped, and she felt his anger in how the muscles of his arm tensed beneath her hand. “No. Roanne was bright as new copper and had white stockings on her legs. This one lacks the white and is a shade or two darker.”
“More like your hair,” she said, laughing nervously with no pretense at all. Derian usually expressed his displeasure in sarcasm. Now she was aware that he was capable of a more direct response. She had forgotten what Harjeedian had told her about the violence Derian had shown aboard the ship.
Barnet, Water wash away his woes, took the bait.
“I bet Rahniseeta is wondering if you’re really a horse in disguise,” the minstrel said with a laugh.
Derian’s arm didn’t tense beneath her fingers, and his expression of puzzlement seemed genuine.
“What are you talking about, Barnet?”
“Rahniseeta was telling me a local legend while we were driving here.” Barnet shifted to the voice he usually used for storytelling. “Magical creatures, were the maimalodalum, sometimes taking the form of humans, sometimes that of animals. Some legends said they used talismans to make the change, such as the skin of the animal whose form they took or a bone from the rib closest to the heart. Even when these beast-souled took human form, they carried this talisman with them, so that it was one way to know the truth about them. Yet, even when they did not, a skilled observer might see upon them the mark of their animal self. The mark might be in the line of the face or their preference for certain foods or even their coloring. It might merely be their uncanny rapport with the animal of whom they were kin. Often they traveled with one of their own, and drew power from the relationship.”
Barnet trailed off dramatically, and Rahniseeta couldn’t help but he impressed by how he had embellished the slight details she had given him, turning the whole thing into something much more interesting.
Derian said nothing at first, only stopped in his tracks and looked down at her, his expression blending both hurt and amusement—and what might have been a hint that he felt flattered by her assumption.
“Are you saying that I look like a horse?” he asked, starting to walk again down a long tree-shaded path between two pastures.
“You do not look like a horse,” Rahniseeta said quickly, “yet your coloring, you must admit …”
“Firekeeper—Lady Blysse—calls me Fox Hair for that same coloring,” Deriansaid. “My dad teases my mother—from whom I got the hair—by calling her vixen, sometimes. No one ever called my hair ‘chestnut.’”
Rahniseeta persisted. “But you are so good with horses. Everyone says so. One of the Wise Horses let you ride him at a first meeting. I thought it might be because you were somehow related.”
“Eshinarvash’s condescension to me surprised me as much as it did Varjuna, I assure you,” Derian said. “As for my being good with horses, well, I’ve been around them all my life. So they could tend the animals when I was little, my parents would put me in a saddlebag with just my head poking out—they had a smaller operation then and Mother helped in the stables as well as in the office. Yes, I’m good with horses, but that only makes sense. I could no more not be good with horses than Barnet could fail to learn to swim and handle a boat.”
“Still,” Rahniseeta said, vaguely disappointed, “there was your familiar.”
“Familiar?” Derian looked puzzled for a moment. Then his face stiffened as she had seen it do before when he was trying to hide his anger. “Oh, you mean Roanne. She was nothing more than a much treasured riding animal. We’d been a good many places together—across the Iron Mountains, about Hawk Haven and Bright Bay, even over the White Water River into New Kelvin. I’d thought to have her for many more years, and to breed fine foals from her. To have her killed as dog meat …”
His voice softened to a rough growl and Rahniseeta felt truly frightened. Derian might be excited about acquiring Prahini, but he had in no way forgiven Harjeedian for the death of Roanne.
When she didn’t say anything, Derian went on.
“You’re not telling me that Harjeedian wouldn’t be upset if something happened to those snakes of his, are you?”
Rahniseeta chose her words carefully.
“He would be upset, yes, but part of the upset would be because the snakes are connected to his role as aridisdu. We keep a few in our quarters—everyone in the temple does, because that is the best way for the snakes to become accustomed to human handling—but they are not pets. They are divine contacts.”
Barnet, perhaps to save her from the barely banked intensity in Derian’s gaze, cut in.
“Is that why Harjeedian brought them on the sea voyage with him?”
“Yes,” Rahniseeta said quickly. “On that voyage he served as kidisdu as well as aridisdu. It was a considerable honor.”
Derian interrupted as if he had not heard this last exchange.
“So that’s why everyone got so nice all of a sudden,” he said stiffly. “Who was it who first got the idea that I might be one of these maimalodalum? I’m sure they suspected it of Lady Blysse all along.”
Rahniseeta heard her voice come out much smaller than she had intended.
“It was I,” she said. “When we were talking about the societies your culture has in place of temples. You mentioned you were given into the Horse Society. I thought of that, and what Harjeedian had said, and …”
“Well, I’m sorry, lady,” Derian said brusquely, “but there’s nothing special about me. I’m just a man who likes horses and is good with them. That’s all.”
“Hardly ‘all,’” Rahniseeta said weakly, but she knew she had erred badly, and if she alienated Derian, how could she ever find out about Lady Blysse?
She was still struggling for something to say, when Barnet smiled one of his impossible-to-resist smiles.
“Hardly ‘all,’” he said, echoing her. “Didn’t you promise to help me teach Pellish?”
Derian gave the minstrel an obviously forced grin.
“You mean I can’t go into a snit and avoid the lessons?”
“Sorry,” Barnet said. “I simply won’t have it”
Derian’s smile was more genuine this time,
“Then I surrender to the inevitable.”
They walked along. When Derian next spoke it was to comment on the superior structure of the fence rails. He sounded casual, but Rahniseeta knew without a doubt that she had lost a great deal of ground with him. To her surprise, she realized that she felt not only worried, but also somehow rather sad.
