Brittany stiffened, feeling an ominous dread that frightened her. Dalden stiffened as well, though for different reasons. She didn’t like hearing that she, specifically, was going to be the cause of trouble between them. He didn’t like hearing that Martha was so certain he wouldn’t be equipped to deal with it.
Brittany clutched him suddenly, the fear getting to her. “Whatever happens, we can work it out. Whatever it is she thinks I’m going to hate, I’ll-I’ll try to understand, I’ll try not to hate it. We will work it out, Dalden.”
He hugged her back, squeezing a bit harder than usual. “I am grateful, yet do you not need to make promises based on the unknown. We will indeed ‘work it out.’ I will allow no other thing to be.”
His indomitable will managed to truly amaze her sometimes. They’d be fine because he said so. No matter what, no matter the obstacles, no matter anything. He’d have it no other way, wouldn’t allow it. She wished she could grab hold of that certainty and take it to heart. But it was reassuring and took the edge off her fear.
“Did I mention architecture?” Martha’s voice intruded in another really dry tone.
Brittany burst out laughing, the rest of her tension fading away.
41
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BRITTANY HADN’T MISSED TOO MUCH OF THE TOWN, just the approach. And Sha-Ka-Ra was bigger than she’d expected after Martha’s remark that their towns didn’t come in sizes she was used to-not so much in head count, but in the buildings being spread out with plenty of breathing space between each one. It was perched on a flat plateau, so nothing was built on the slopes of the mountain.
The main street was very wide, lined at regular intervals with trees of different colors-none that she actually recognized, though a horticulturist she was not-and lampposts. The posts were similar to what was used in the nineteenth century, when someone came by each night and lit the candles in them, but these used gaali stones that supposedly didn’t need lighting, just uncovering, to reveal their soft glow.
She was looking forward to seeing one of these gaali stones she’d been told about up close and personal, a small one, though, since she’d been warned that large chunks were so bright they could blind. Yeah, right, something they couldn’t prove to her, but she’d like to see how they were going to hide the seams of a battery compartment on the smaller stones.
Just now, though, she was experiencing some disappointment in finding that none of the buildings in the town were built of wood. Everything was light tan in color, either plaster or stone, she wasn’t close enough yet to tell which. Mostly one-story houses, a few two-story, many with lovely arches, windows in all kinds of different shapes, each with its own yard and stable, its own garden. There were even some with balconies on their flat roofs, like sun decks. And clean. There wasn’t a single piece of rubbish on the ground anywhere.
It was an even mix of old and new. The buildings were modern-looking, but the people weren’t, and plenty had turned out to view the homecoming. Fifty men from this town had been absent for a long time, so their families were on hand to welcome them home. The procession started breaking up as each warrior was met by two or more members of his family. Oddly, never just one member, or more specifically, a lifemate. Even more oddly, now that it was noticed, there wasn’t a single woman on the street standing alone.
Each woman there had a man with her. Each one was wearing one of those scarfy outfits they called chauri, each with a cloak draped behind them. They came in a wide range of colors, but an solid colors. There wasn’t a single garment on anyone that was a mix of colors.
She found out later that the only reason she hadn’t been given a cloak the color of the house she now belonged to was because her white T-shirt and blue jeans were already the two colors representing Dalden’s house. That he’d let her wear her jeans, when the women of his town weren’t allowed to wear pants of any kind, had been an exception made just for her because she wasn’t Sha-Ka’ani and he’d wanted his people to see that plainly. It wasn’t such a strict rule anymore though, now that his country knew that other countries like Falon’s didn’t even follow that rule, so exceptions for visitors did get made now, when that didn’t used to be the case. It was still their rule though, which was why she was going to be supplied with a full new wardrobe and was expected to wear it.
She didn’t mind. She was definitely tired of jeans after wearing hers for three months, even though they’d been cleaned and returned to her each day by that thing Dalden called dial-a-closet. She’d been offered ship’s uniforms but had declined. She had never felt that her height looked good in one-piece jumpsuits of the clingy sort.
Old-style again were the marketplaces-they looked like something out of a medieval fair, with small tents with tables in front of them, or goods laid out on rugs. Then a beautiful park with a pond in it and children playing, that could have been in any American hometown.
The streets were laid out in even, straight lines. Turning one brought the biggest building in the town into view, a towering white stone castle. Brittany’s jaw dropped. It wasn’t a castle as she knew them; it looked more like something that could be found in a fantasy picture book. It wasn’t one big building, either, but built in sections, some round, some square or rectangular. All of the sections were in different heights and shapes so that none of them were the same, yet they grew in height pyramid fashion, the shorter towers on the outside, the tallest at the center. There were conical roofs on some, spiral roofs, normal roofs, and flat roofs on others, even crenellated walkways on top of some of the towers.
Tall white walls surrounded the castle, with a wide-open archway spanning the street to enter the inner castle yard. And they were heading to it. This was where Dalden and his family lived.
It was too much. They couldn’t have built something like that just for this project; it had to be something they’d found and were going to make use of The whole town, for that matter. Maybe somewhere in Russia or that part of the world. Didn’t they have strange-looking buildings like this? And beautiful untouched countrysides? And towns so different-looking from anything she was used to?
She felt better with that conclusion, on firm ground again, and ready to be impressed as they rode through the archway into the castle yard. There was a long rectangular building right in front, with steps spanning the length of it, and at the center, a tall pair of steel-looking doors flanked by two warriors guarding it.
There was a stable for the hataari out front, and she got her first sight of small men that worked in it. They weren’t really small, just not giantsized like the warriors, and they dressed differently, too, in thin white pants and shirts. Darash males of the servant class apparently, whom she’d been told about. They were descended from a people conquered so long ago that no one had the date of it anymore.
They weren’t slaves, but were more like a mix between a medieval serf and someone from the servant class of eighteenth-century England. They were the working class, the ones who did all the menial labor warriors snubbed their noses at, though they didn’t get paid for it. There were laws to govern them, they had some rights, but they couldn’t just pick up and move like normal working-class people. For the most part, she’d been told, they were a happy lot who knew their worth in as much as the warrior society would probably collapse without them.
Dalden’s parents led the way inside. Shanelle would be staying a few more days, but then would be leaving for Ba-Har-an, a country that used to take a good three months to reach by hataar, but now was just a few minutes away by airobus. The distance, or prior travel time, was why not much had been known about Ba-Har-an before Challen had been asked to contact them for trade with the League, plentiful deposits of gold having been scanned in that region that other planets were interested in.
But it wasn’t really the distance that had kept the two countries virtual strangers for so long, but that the Sha-Ka’ani were a sedentary warrior species. They might differ here and there in each separate country, bu
t they pretty much universally weren’t explorers. By nature, they preferred to stay, grow, and prosper in familiar surroundings.
42
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BRITTANY MIGHT HAVE BEEN PICKING HER JAW UP OFF the floor again after walking through the mammoth steel doors of the castle if she hadn’t had prior warning-pools in bedrooms had been a clue-that inside wasn’t going to look like a castle, but more like a palace. Even so, the bright, open airiness of the place made it unique: high ceilings, huge rooms, everything predominantly white, even the floors, which were marblelike granite.
Potted plants and flowering trees added greenery and other colors, and a blue carpet runner about twelve feet wide extended down the center of the hall where they entered. Two big rooms on each side of it were divided by arches, but arches so wide they were barely divisions, so that standing at the end of one room you could see clearly across to the end of the other. Tall open windows at the ends of these rooms let in soft breezes that kept the place cool, as well as so much daylight they might as well have been still outside. More trees in great urns were in the two rooms, along with backless couches, tables���
Brittany’s interest perked yet again. Tables meant carpentry, but her kind or-bah, there was only one kind. Yet Kodos had said there was no one around here who could teach him how to work with wood, that most of the buildings in town had been built by the Darash so long ago that the knowledge of how to do so had been lost. A challenge loser could be made to build a building in punishment, but it tended to be of such poor quality that it would never be used.
“You expect to lose some challenges?” she’d teased her young friend.
He’d replied a bit indignantly, “I want to show a challenge loser how to build something properly so it can be useful, rather than task the next challenge loser with tearing it down, as is usually the case.”
She hadn’t asked much about these challenges, figured they were just another warrior sport. But that conversation had illuminated the early one she’d had with Dalden when he equated her job with punishment. Warriors apparently could be merchants, could direct Darash in farming, but the only thing they did with their own hands was swordwielding. Amazing how these people managed to connect and combine their stories into a whole tale without loose ends.
The party divided then, with plans to gather again for dinner: Challen off to attend to shodan business, Tedra off for a catch-up session with Martha, Shanelle and Falon off to her old room, and Dalden pulling Brittany along to his: down one hallway, then another, through a tower, then a garden outside with a covered walk that passed down the middle of it, into the next building, a few more hallways, some stairs, some more stairs. She was absolutely lost by the time they reached his room, which was so far away from the main sections of the castle that it might as well not be considered part of it.
The room covered the whole upper floor of the building it was in, so the balcony that surrounded it surrounded all of it. And yes, there really was a sunken pool in it, about eight feet round, like a miniature oasis with potted trees around it and a stone bench next to it. An extra-big bed was against the only wall that didn’t have those open, arched windows. Not a normal bed as she knew it, it seemed to be a thick, stuffed mattress that fit into a full boxlike frame with no springs. Although it was very old-fashioned looking, the bedding appeared soft and comfortable.
There were a few more of those backless couches around a long, low table. Did they eat lying down? Carved chests sat between arches-detailed woodworking! The floors were again white marblelike stones but lightly veined with blue. Sheer lightblue curtains stirred at the windows, their only covering. There were no windowpanes or shutters.
“Tell me something, how do you keep out the flies and mosquitoes?” she asked Dalden.
“The what?”
“Insects, bugs, you know, tiny things that fly around in the air and make a habit of biting people.”
“You will find such things in the lowlands, not up on a mountain.
“Ah.”
“What think you of your new home?”
She knew he’d been eagerly awaiting that answer, though his expression was guarded. It was truly beautiful, his room, uncluttered yet lavish. But the whole place made her think of a sultan’s harem. It brought home clearly that she was nowhere near her own home.
“It’s big,” she allowed.
“Indeed, a warrior has need of space to not feel confined,” he agreed.
“I suppose.”
“You do not like it,” he remarked, clear disappointment in his tone now.
“I didn’t say that,” she said quickly. “It will just take getting used to.”
“What do you not like about it?”
“Dalden, stop it. It’s beautiful, really.”
“You are mine, thus do I know you well, kerima, and you are not pleased with where you will live.”
She held out her hand to him. When he clasped it, she brought his fingers to her mouth and bit one of his knuckles, hard. He raised a golden brow at her, though he barely felt any pain. He then grinned at her and pulled her to him. She pushed away.
“Bah, that wasn’t an invitation. I was just proving you’ll never know me as well as you think you do, which is a good thing. Surprises add spice to life, after all. As for these quarters, I will get used to them. But you saw where I lived. The house I had planned to build for myself would have been four times as big, but it still wouldn’t be a castle. This place is like a-a fairy tale to me. Fairy tales are nice, but they are to be enjoyed temporarily, not permanently. I can’t see staying here forever.”
“You wish to live elsewhere?”
Instead of answering that, she asked him, “Did you plan to always live here, even after you took a lifemate and started your own family?”
“There is ample room here for more than one family,” he stated.
“Yes, but you’re missing my point. You have no desire to spread your wings? To have a place that’s exclusively yours, rather than your parents’? Where I come from, people tend to leave home as soon as they’re done with their schooling, to get out and start their own lives. Parents nurture up to a point, then turn their creations loose and hope they become productive adults. You are an adult, right?”
That got her a scowl that she couldn’t help chuckling over. It was so rare of him to display frowns of any sort, other than in confusion.
“Sorry,” she said. “But I had to ask, when nothing else around here is what I’m accustomed to. Do women even work on your planet, you know, make things, build, create? Do they have occupations.
“Not in the way you mean.”
“Take me home.”
“Yet they do have hobbies.”
“Doesn’t suffice for a working woman,” she mumbled. “And yet you do have industry here, craftsmen, woodmills. Evidence is all over your town. Where do you hide it?”
“Kan-is-Tra has not these things. We do not tamper with nature above the surface of the ground, other than to add to it in the growing of food.”
“And below the surface?”
“The gold metal Is extracted in many areas of the world, including here in Kan-is-Tra. Usually Darash who live near each mine have the knowledge of crafting and shaping the metal into useful objects.”
“And the furniture I’ve seen?”
“It is made in countries to the south. Twice a year we get huge caravans of merchants who bring these things to us. There are potters in the north. Most all Darash are skilled in weaving, sewing, and dyeing. Glassmaking is known in the east, but is generally not transported by caravan because it rarely survives the trip.”
“I guess that’s something,” she said with some relief “How hard is it going to be for me to commute to one of these craft countries to get a job?”
No answer and a really blank look. Brittany sighed, but recalled that there was a better information source attached to her hip.
“Martha, what wasn’t to understand about tha
t question?” she asked.
“He understood it, doll, he just didn’t understand it, if you get my drift. Sha-Ka’ani women have simply never had a need to work. They go from one protector to another all their lives, so they never lack for support-which doesn’t mean they don’t have responsibilities. If you need an example, think of them as the medieval lady of the keep who keeps everything running smoothly, supervises the servants, and makes sure things get done and done right.”
“That isn’t work, that’s home chores.”
Martha chuckled. “The culture you came from had evolved in leaps and bounds in just the last hundred years, and took giant leaps where women are concerned in just the last fifty years. So I know your women didn’t always have this ‘gotta work’ attitude. You have it because you were born when it was already starting, and by the time you reached adulthood it was already fully in place. You expected to support yourself, expected to continue doing so even after you married, because your people have let their economy go bonkers, forcing them to hook up to combine incomes in order to get anywhere.”
“And your point?”
“Look back just fifty years ago, when your culture expected women to stay home and be housewives as soon as they married, and work in only menial, unimportant jobs until then, and your women were happy in this role. Like the medieval women before them, they didn’t bring home the bacon, but they worked: they ran the home front, which was often harder work than their mates were doing elsewhere. Now look what you have here: a lot of ‘housewives’ comfortable with that position just as your women were a few decades ago, something you can adapt to because it’s not so far off the mark from your own history.”
“Inactivity is going to drive me up a wall,” Brittany insisted.
“That’s a distinct possibility, and one that Dalden will have to think hard to rectify,” Martha said. “Paying attention, big guy?”
Heart of a Warrior l-3 Page 24