Keeper of the Heart

by Lindsey, Johanna

  “Fat lot of good it will do me against warriors,” she grumbled now, only to hear more chuckling, which was really starting to get on her nerves.

  “How many times has she tossed you on your butt this morning, Corth?” Martha asked him in a purring tone.

  “Three, but I am not counting.”

  Even Shanelle couldn’t help grinning at his answer. Martha had given the android a sense of humor a number of years ago, and it came out at the most inappropriate times.

  “That doesn’t count, Martha, and you know it. He isn’t allowed to use his strength on me, so he’s nothing like a warrior would be.”

  “You’ve got me there,” Martha admitted. “That happens to be why your mother refused to teach you her own style of fighting. Because she felt it wouldn’t do you any good. But that didn’t stop you from learning on your own, now, did it?”

  “No.”

  “And that didn’t stop her from seeing that you were taught another style of fighting.”

  Shanelle made a face and dropped back in her chair. “Which won’t be worth a damn against a lifemate, now, will it, who I wouldn’t dare to hurt seriously? I can just see him now, laughing his head off, before he punishes me for years.”

  “Well, Tedra didn’t know how you were going to end up feeling about warriors when she got it into her head that you should learn a warrior’s skills. She wanted you to have the means to protect yourself, particularly after you got carted off in that raid when you were only ten. Your father took that in stride, since raiding is a fact of Sha-Ka’ani life and he knew he could buy you back. But your mother nearly went crazy before it was over.”

  Shanelle didn’t like being reminded of the most terrifying experience in her life. It should have been no more than a simple raid, with nothing for her to really fear. The leader, Keedan, merely wanted a shipment of gaali stones in exchange for her return, which he was sure to get. But one of Keedan’s warriors by the name of Hogar hadn’t been quite right in the head. Hogar liked to hurt people.

  Shanelle had had to ride with him for a day, and with the gag over her mouth, no one had heard her screams as he viciously twisted and pinched her everywhere he could reach. He’d only inflicted bruises on her, but the terror of what he was doing combined with the pain had made her faint four times. And she had had a deep, unreasonable fear of pain ever since.

  But she had never told anyone what Hogar had done, not even her mother when she was safe at home again. She had been too ashamed of her own cowardice to mention bruises that had faded by then.

  Martha didn’t know she had stirred up unpleasant memories, however, and she was still making her point. “Tedra also couldn’t stand the thought of your being helpless someday against a brute who decided he wanted to claim you despite Corth’s being there to protect you. Corth is ample protection, but not against a warrior wielding a sword. He can get chopped up just like the real thing.”

  Shanelle put a hand over her eyes, but that wasn’t going to put Martha off. She knew all this. There was no refuting it. She was like her mother in so many ways, but in one way they were glaringly different. Her mother had been born a fighter, a physical fighter, and she absolutely loved to take on men, her lifemate in particular, though she never had a chance of beating him and knew it. But Shanelle didn’t like to fight with anyone, physically or even verbally. The former type of fighting led to pain, and the latter was frustrating beyond belief, because you couldn’t argue with warriors. They didn’t get mad and they rarely ever conceded on any point.

  Tedra had insisted she learn how to fight, though. Instead of teaching her her own style of hand-to-hand combat, which worked fine on other worlds but was next to useless against barbarians, Tedra had decided that Shanelle needed to learn how to use a sword. This was an unheard-of notion on Sha-Ka’an for a female to have because there was a Kan-is-Tran law, still in effect, that didn’t allow women to use weapons. That hadn’t stopped Tedra, however. It had taken two whole years, but she had finally got Challen to agree with her by simply demanding, “Do you want your daughter at the mercy of some warrior who will walk all over her just because he can, someone like Falder La-Mar-Tel?” Falder happened to be someone whom Challen had never liked or gotten along with, so that did it. And once Challen had agreed, there was nothing Shanelle could say.

  But Shanelle had hated all those lessons. She hadn’t wanted any part of them. She might have finally got over her fear of a few bruises—her determination and her downing class had seen to that— but she hadn’t back then. And she’d still rather run away than use a sword, rather use her wits if nothing else would do. She hated confrontations, period, and this one she was having with Martha was a prime example. You couldn’t argue with or get the better of a Mock II computer any more than you could with a Sha-Ka’ani warrior. Both were extremely stubborn and both were utterly undefeatable.

  “Maybe what you’ve learned of downing will come in handy someday—”

  “Go ahead and say it!” Shanelle snapped. “On another world it might come in handy. Not on my world.”

  “Well, you knew that,” Martha said reasonably. “That’s why you wanted to learn it, because you don’t intend to stay on your world much longer.” Shanelle just covered her eyes again, but this time it got a sigh out of Martha. “Tedra said it more than once, that she did you a disservice by raising you to her way of looking at things. You don’t hear other Sha-Ka’ani women objecting to the way things are, do you?”

  “But she did raise me differently. And I know that the women on other planets aren’t treated the way our women are. Even on Kystran, if a couple living in double occupancy has a disagreement, they talk about it, with the one in the wrong ending up feeling tons of guilt, which is more than enough punishment as far as I’m concerned.”

  “But did you find a male there that you would want to share sex with? You’re twenty years old, and your mother has given you her wholehearted approval to make up your own mind about sex, to go for it as soon as you find you want it, whether your father would approve or not. So did you find it?”

  “You farden well have all the answers,” Shanelle grumbled. “You tell me.”

  “All right, kiddo, but you aren’t going to like it. Sha-Ka’ani males may frighten you, but not because of their size. Their size is something you happen to appreciate, and in that respect you’re just like your mother. In your case, it can’t be helped. You were raised among them. They’re the only kind of men you are accustomed to. In fact, if a man isn’t a good deal over six feet tall and twice as wide as you are, you won’t be the least bit interested in him.”

  “There are hundreds of planets that I am now capable of visiting, Martha. Are you going to tell me that in all those other worlds I won’t find any other men with a little extra height and a little extra brawn?”

  “Sure you will. So let’s look again at what you’re objecting to on your own world, the way warriors deal with their women when they break the rules.”

  “It’s demeaning, humiliating—”

  “But absolutely painless,” Martha cut in. “There are worlds where lawbreakers are still executed. Worlds where they are still imprisoned for life. There are some worlds where the skin is whipped off their backs. And some worlds where advanced means are used to inflict excruciating pain without leaving a single mark. And that’s just a few of the little niceties you’ll find out there when you go hunting for your ideal mate. In comparison, what the Sha-Ka’ani do can only be considered merciful and harmless.”

  “There are also worlds out there that aren’t so violent, worlds that don’t have so many ridiculous rules either.”

  “You’ve been raised not to break the rules. Challen saw to that. So I don’t know what you’re really worried about.”

  “Yes, you do, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  As usual, Martha listened only to what she wanted to hear. “Did you ever wonder why your mother puts up with those punishments you’re so terrified of, th
at and everything else that she still objects to on that world?”

  “Because she loves my father.”

  “There’s that, yes, but there’s also the fact that he knocked her socks off the first time she saw him, and he continues to knock them off every time he takes her to bed. To have something like that to look forward to for the rest of your life is worth putting up with a few things you don’t like. And maybe what you don’t like isn’t even as bad as you think it is.”

  “It’s not only that,” Shanelle mumbled.

  “What was that? Did I hear that we’ve wasted all this time on only half of the problem?”

  “Cut it out, Martha. If you know so much, then you know what the main problem is, and there isn’t any of your high-tech logic or reasoning to refute the fact that warriors don’t feel love. They feel lust, and a measure of caring for their lifemates, but they don’t experience love like women do. And before you throw it in my face that my father does, I happen to know how hard mother had to fight with him to get him to realize it and admit to it. And besides, father is an exception. There is no other warrior like him. Even my brother admits he doesn’t understand what father feels for mother. He’s never experienced it and he’s only half Sha-Ka‘ ani.”

  Silence. Depressing silence. Why had she thought that Martha might be able to dispute that glaring fact of Sha-Ka’ani life? Martha had been studying and analyzing warriors for the past twenty years. If she couldn’t reassure Shanelle at this point, then there was no reassurance to be found. And Shanelle was not going to hook up with a man for life who could only offer her great sex-sharing and a little fondness. She wanted more. She wanted what her mother had found, but she wouldn’t find it on Sha-Ka’an.

  Chapter 2

  “I don’t know about you, Shani, but I’m so excited about getting to see your world, I can barely contain it.”

  Caris looked it, too, Shanelle noted, but she didn’t understand why her friend felt this way. Sha-Ka’an was not a world she would want to visit if she didn’t have a reason to. But she supposed a visit there became so enticing because it was forbidden to the average citizens of other worlds.

  Caris confirmed that by adding for Yari’s and Cira’s benefit, “It was open for a while to tourism after Shani’s mother first discovered it. But a few idiots didn’t obey the local laws and ruined it for the rest of us. Now the planet is closed up tight with one of those Global Shields that prevent even the most sophisticated spacecraft from entering the atmosphere outside the designated Spaceport. If you want to land, you have to have permission from the Visitor’s Center, and you better be a Trade Ambassador or in a dire emergency, or you can forget it. Only the ambassadors are allowed there now, and even they can’t go any farther than the Visitor’s Center. Without your invitation, Shani, we would never have had this opportunity. I hope you know how much we appreciate it.”

  Shanelle felt uncomfortable with that kind of gratitude. All she’d done was invite a few of her new friends home for a free vacation, since graduates didn’t have enough earned Exchange Tokens to afford to go off-planet, while she had a Transport Rover at her disposal, a spaceship big enough to accommodate a thousand people comfortably. It didn’t even need a crew, since Martha was capable of running the entire ship.

  But Shanelle had invited only the three girls, Caris, Yari, and Cira. The two young men, Jadd and Dren Ce Rostt, Yari’s first and only sex-sharer, had invited themselves along, Jadd for deluded reasons and Dren for almost the same reason, because he couldn’t bear to be parted from Yari, sex-sharing being new and apparently wonderful for both of them.

  Actually, they were inseparable, and they had been having a great deal of fun in the two weeks since they had left Kystran, and that could be taken both ways, since one of the Sha-Ka’ani expressions for lovemaking was “having fun.” It certainly made Caris and Cira jealous, and both had remarked that they intended to pounce on the first males they came across as soon as they landed. They had also both tried to interest Jadd in a little sex-sharing, but he had decided that if he couldn’t have Shanelle, he wouldn’t have anyone.

  Shanelle had also been feeling a little jealous of Yari’s happiness, but not as much as the other two girls, since she didn’t know what she was missing out on, whereas they did. It was expected that every cadet would spend the first night after graduation getting acquainted with sex-sharing, and that was exactly what this group had done, all except Shanelle. She had spent graduation night with Garr Ce Bernn, who was presently in his third ten-year term as Director of Kystran. It was Garr who had got Shanelle into the World Discovery class as a favor to Tedra, and Garr who had got her into the Sec exercise class, too. He had, in fact, made the past nine months very easy and enjoyable for her. Anytime she got lonely, she was able to visit him, and he would cheer her up with stories about her mother, since Garr used to be Tedra’s boss.

  She had had to make many adjustments, mostly in her way of looking at things, despite the fact that Martha had been her teacher for most of her life and had prepared her for such an advanced culture as Kystran’s. Because she had been an otherworld student, which was a rarity on Kystran, she hadn’t been required to live in the Learning Center complex like the rest of the students, so she had had daily dealings with Kystrani adults, and had learned that everything her mother and Martha had told her about Kystran was true.

  The citizens really did look at lovemaking differently than the inhabitants of any other world. Sex-sharing, they called it, and because they’d discovered some healthful benefits from it, it was now mandatory for all citizens except students, to whom it was forbidden until graduation. They even had laws to govern it, it was such an integral part of their culture.

  But their culture wasn’t Shanelle’s. Unfortunately, neither was her own culture, which was why she was having such a hard time dealing with the fact that she would have so little say in the choice of her lifemate, a man who would have complete control of her for the rest of her life, a man whom she was expected to obey, respect, and supposedly love. Fat chance, she thought, not once he started punishing her.

  The only reason she hadn’t yet been mated for life was because Tedra had put it off by finding fault with every warrior Challen had considered. And then the pilot training had come up, and Tedra had got her way in that, too. But Tedra wasn’t going to be able to delay the momentous event much longer. Shanelle was two years past the average age for starting her own family. In fact, she might be returning home to find the decision already made.

  She would have to ask Martha to contact Tedra to find out. She just might not be returning after all…

  Stars, what was she going to do? Perhaps her mother had done her a disservice by encouraging her to think for herself. If she had had any other mother besides Tedra, she wouldn’t be agonizing over this issue now. Instead she would be happy to let her father decide her future, without the least doubt that he would make the perfect choice for her, because, above all, he wanted her happiness. But the plain truth was, she preferred her mother’s philosophy when it came to sex-sharing.

  Though Tedra came from the Kystrani culture, she didn’t subscribe to all of it, especially having something as personal as sex governed by someone else. What she did subscribe to was individual choice, and Shanelle wanted that individual choice. She wanted to choose, and she was more than ready to choose, more than ready to find out what was making Yari so happy, what had made her mother so happy all these years.

  She was ready. She just hadn’t found the man who could “knock her socks off,” didn’t even know what that was supposed to feel like. Her mother had assured her she would know when it happened, and when it happened, she was to take full advantage of it if she wanted to. It would be her choice. And her father either could approve of the man after the fact or not. She would still have made her choice. But Tedra seemed to think she could get around Challen’s displeasure. Shanelle was counting on that being so.

  Shanelle was drawn back to the conversation in pro
gress when she was asked a question. They were gathered in the Rec Lounge, having finished the last meal for the day. Shanelle would have liked to retire already, but her friends were too excited to sleep.

  “What was that?”

  Caris answered, “Cira wants to know if she’ll be allowed to sample the local wares when we arrive.”

  “Wares?”

  “The barbarians.”

  Shanelle groaned inwardly. She really should have gone to bed. But she offered her friends a half smile.

  “The Sha-Ka’ani don’t like to be called barbarians, now that they know what meaning advanced worlds give that name. And they aren’t really true barbarians anyway, though they might seem like it at first. But yes, you can share sex with a warrior if he’s interested. You just have to make sure you tell him beforehand that you are protected by the shodan, to avoid any misunderstandings.”

  “What kind of misunderstandings are you talking about?” Cira asked. “Was this mentioned in those rules and laws Martha supplied us with?”

  “Martha gave you the standard stats supplied to all visitors, but as you’ve already realized, your case is unique. Usually, the only visitors allowed to leave the Center are those who have requested an audience with the shodan. If he agrees to see them, they are escorted to the palace by the Center’s Security. They take care of their business quickly and then they are escorted right back to the Center. If there is a female in the party, she isn’t going to stop along the way to share sex with a warrior, so there’s no reason to mention something like this in the stats.”

  Caris’s green eyes widened considerably. “My Stars, you’re talking about that claiming business you once mentioned to me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Shanelle replied, and explained further for Cira’s and Yari’s benefit. “If a warrior thinks you aren’t protected, and you don’t have a male escorting you, then he is within his rights to claim you if he wants to, and there won’t be anything anyone on my planet or yours can do about it once he does. But as long as you tell him up front that you’re under a warrior’s protection, he’ll make sure you’re telling the truth before he does any claiming.”