I did not say that. I did not say that I was having difficulty checking my temper even at this moment. I said, “You suggest that when I come to Darra’s tent, you will step back. I think you mean this in a good way, but the suggestion is not appropriate.” Leaning forward, I met his eyes and went on forcefully. “Perhaps the customs are different among the tribes that live far to the east. Here, it is a woman’s choice who comes to her tent. If a woman has two husbands, that is certainly unusual, but the choice is still hers. Anything else would not be right. If Darra wishes me to come to her tent, you will step out of the way and go somewhere else for that night. If she wishes you to come to her tent, I will do the same.” I added, unable to restrain myself, “But when I come into the winter country, if she does not wish me to come to her tent, I will suggest she set my possessions out of her way so that I will know I should no longer trouble her.”
“I think she will never do anything of the kind,” he said. “I see now my suggestion was offensive. I apologize. I meant to show respect for you, not disrespect for Darra.”
“I accept your apology.” I did not say I would forget his words. I did not intend to forget them. But I sat back, taking a less forceful manner. “You also suggest that, whenever I come there, you might leave the camp where Darra has set her tent. If you do that, then we will hardly meet. You may consider that this is better. I do not agree. If we both decide to try this kind of marriage, then I think it will be important that we understand and respect each other. That will be even more important if I someday return permanently to the winter country.”
He bowed slightly, acknowledging the truth of this.
I went on. “You say you will set jealousy aside. You say you will not permit bitterness to come into your heart. You ask me to make the same declaration. I agree that if we cannot both hold to that resolve, this arrangement cannot stand. But if we do not come to know each other, then perhaps you may succeed in what you suggest, but I am perfectly certain I will not. I have a different suggestion. I think Aras will decide we should soon begin our journey south. I think you should ride with us, far enough that we come to know each other better.” If, once I came to know Elaro, I could not respect him, I did not want Darra to marry him, but I did not say that. Difficult as this was, everything would be even more difficult if that proved to be so.
“Perhaps this is a good idea,” he agreed. “I mean no offense when I wonder whether you may be thinking of something else as well. I wonder whether you may intend to be certain your Lau sorcerer has every good opportunity to look into my mind. I know he has sworn he will not reveal the private things he sees in anyone’s thoughts.” He politely did not indicate in any way that he knew Aras had already broken an oath even more important than that one. He merely went on, “But I think if he discovered I was not a man you could respect and not a man a woman such as Darra inKarano should marry, he would find a way to make his opinion clear.”
I inclined my head. I could not believe I would ever like him, but I did like the way he had set that realization out clearly rather than holding it close as an unspoken suspicion. “Yes,” I agreed. “You are right. That is another reason I suggest you might ride with us away from all these gathered people.”
“A man should take care to safeguard his wife. I take no offense.” He paused. Then he said, “I will go with you and with him when you begin your journey south. All your suggestions seem wise to me. If you will agree to marry in this way, I will accept everything you suggest.”
“Everything?” I studied him. “Perhaps you yield to me too readily. Perhaps your nature is not forceful enough to match mine. Or Darra’s.”
“I accept your suggestions because they are wiser than mine.” He met my eyes steadily. “I was trying very hard not to offend you. I tried too hard. I made a mistake, but only because I know Darra is unlikely ever to turn you away from her tent. She wishes very much to marry you, Ryo, and I know that. I do not need to take precedence. I hope I will argue if I consider the argument important, and I will defend myself if someone speaks slightingly of my honor, but I am not a quarrelsome man.”
“So,” I said neutrally. “Let us pause for forty breaths.”
He made a gesture of agreement. “I will count.”
For that long, we both sat quietly. Then he said, “My decision has not changed. I will still agree with everything you suggested. I have had many days to consider this matter. Perhaps you would like some days to consider it. That would be perfectly reasonable.”
“You may ask Darra to return now,” I said, partly to see whether he would protest.
He did not. He stood up and went out of the wagon. I thought he might be too easy-tempered to ever match me in any way. But perhaps that was only because we did not know each other yet, and because, as he said, he did not like to quarrel.
If everything had been different, I would probably like him.
If he traveled south with me for ten days, twenty days, perhaps longer, I thought we would both know whether the arrangement would be possible. But now it occurred to me that if Darra traveled with us, we would certainly find out whether it could work. I had not thought of that before. I should have. I considered it now. In some ways, I liked this idea very much. In other ways, I thought it remarkably stupid and impossible.
Darra put back the opening and came in. Elaro came in as well, a step behind her. She took the place on the other side of the brazier. He did not sit beside her, but instead took a place as far from her as from me.
Darra did not wait for me to speak first. She said, her voice admirably calm, “I hope you are not angry. I hope that very much, Ryo.” Despite the calm of her voice, her hands were tense where they rested on her knees.
“No,” I said. “Or yes, but I know that is not reasonable. Your choice was either to suggest this or to choose only one husband, who would not have been me. I should be pleased you wanted me enough to suggest this. I mean no offense when I say it may take some time for me to manage that. I hope at least I am not so stupid as to be unable to set anger aside.” I paused, setting my thoughts in order.
Then I asked, “Elaro explained everything to you? All the ways we think something like this could be managed?” I knew he had. That was why they had taken so long to return to the wagon.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I would agree to everything as you and Elaro thought best. All those arrangements seem reasonable to me, if they seem good to you.”
I nodded. I said, “I did not suggest this, but I think perhaps you and Elaro should both travel with me and with the Lau, from this place all the way to the summer country. By the time we come there, we will know whether this arrangement can be made to work.” I looked at them both. “I only thought of this now. But I think the idea is a good one. If we travel that far together, then we will certainly know whether we can agree to this. If we still agree on the day we come to the river, then I will stand up and say before the gods that Darra inKarano is my wife, and I will agree when you say I am your husband, even if you say Elaro is also your husband.”
If I decided otherwise, then this journey would ruin any lingering hope that the marriage could have been made to work. If that were so, I would probably regret I had not agreed to Elaro’s idea that he should simply stay out of my way. In some ways, I already regretted that I had not agreed to that.
But Darra let out a small breath, and her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled with more of her customary manner. “This is a very good idea, Ryo. I agree. My father will agree. Even my aunt will agree, and since she agrees with almost nothing I do, that is a remarkable thing for me to say. But she will agree to this.”
Elaro had straightened a little. “Certainly I agree. I have traveled into the borderlands, but not very often. I would like to do this.”
Darra smiled at him. “Traveling that far is nothing to you,” she said. Her tone was lighter, more teasing, than when she spoke to me. I set aside a bright, sharp stab of jealousy. I was not at all certain I wished to do
that for many, many days to come. I was not at all certain I could do it. By the time we crossed the whole width of the winter country, I would undoubtedly know with a great deal more certainty whether that would be possible.
I could not sit still any longer, so I stood up. “We can speak more of this later,” I said to them both, and walked out.
-34-
Once I left Darra’s wagon, at first I had no idea where to go. I knew I did not want to speak to Aras, not yet. I did not want to come near him until my thoughts and my heart had become more settled. I did not want to come near anyone. But if I walked away by myself, I knew my thoughts and my heart would not settle at all, but become darker and angrier. If that happened, I would probably go to Darra and tell her no, I had thought again and decided this would not work, she should choose only one man, and later, if the right time came, I would approach some other woman. If I said such a thing, that would end this problem in a simple way.
But I did not want to do that. Except maybe I did. I could not decide, but I was almost certain I did not want to decide in a way that would end everything in too final a manner. Unless I did want that.
Then, finally, I thought of Lalani.
I should have thought of her first. Darra’s suggestion to me was very different from the arrangement of the soldiers with women like Lalani, but perhaps it might not be entirely different. I had not thought I could talk about this to anyone, but now I realized this was not so. I realized that in this matter, I would ask Lalani for advice even before I asked my mother.
I did not have to ask to know some things. I knew jealousy and bad feeling did not cause problems in her file. But many things were different there as well. Those men were soldiers, who fought together in the Lau formations and depended on one another. Also, the men senior in the file did not permit that kind of problem to occur. Also, Lalani herself behaved in ways that prevented problems of that kind.
Darra would not know how to prevent problems in the ways that Lau women managed such things. If this were to work at all, then Elaro and I would have to make it work. If he were more quarrelsome or harder-tempered, probably this arrangement would be impossible. I was not ordinarily quarrelsome, but this was different. I knew already—I could hardly mistake it—that my temper was much harder than his.
I let out my breath, trying to let anger and bad feeling go with that breath as well. This did not really work. I had been walking back toward the inGara camp and had already come to the edge of the camp without really noticing the land across which I walked. I saw two warriors, older men, sitting cross-legged in places where they could see those who came and went. I nodded to them, but I did not go farther into the camp. Instead, I stopped a child who was running past and said to him, “Go to my mother’s tent and tell the Lau woman I am going to walk down to the lake, and I wish her to come to me there. Will you take that message for me?”
The child, a boy of perhaps seven winters, bowed and said he would carry my message and ran away toward center of our camp, fast, as only a boy that age can run. I turned aside and walked north and east, past the men watching, toward the lake—toward the place where the waterfalls come down into the lake. When I passed one of the warriors, I asked, “There has been no trouble?”
The man shook his head. “Everything is quiet. I have not heard of any trouble yet. I think the inTasiyo are cowardly as well as dishonorable. You wish to go down to the lake? That should be well enough. We have been taking it in turns to walk that path and along the lakeshore, to the place the rocks become broken, there. Perhaps it might be better to go no farther than that, Ryo.”
I nodded, marking the place the man had indicated. Beyond that place, the ground became too rough and steep and broken for any path. I did not really care about the inTasiyo now because I had many other thoughts that concerned me more, but I said, “I will not go farther than that.” Then I walked north, slowly, waiting for Lalani to come.
For all the trouble that had come into my heart, the morning was fair. Long streamers of clouds crossed the sky high above, where the winds were fierce, but here, close to the earth, the air was quiet. The Sun was high, the sky bright and clean and very far away. The air was crisp, carrying the scents of smoke from cooking fires and of cooking food and many people. It would be cold for a Lau, especially when the clouds crossed the Sun’s face. I thought of that only now. Perhaps I should have gone to speak to Lalani in my mother’s tent, or asked her to put up her own tent, or thought of another place. But I preferred to remain beneath the sky if she did not mind the cold too much.
I had come to the lake now, and turned to walk along the shore. The ice was not thinning yet, but soon that would begin. The sound of the waterfalls came clearly, though the cascades were still a bowshot or so to the north. Even if there had been no concern regarding the inTasiyo, no one would set their tents here, where the ground was rocky and uneven, and where mist from the waterfalls drifted when the wind came from the mountains. On an ordinary day, women would come and go from the lake all the time, but no one was nearby now. The closest person was the warrior I had passed.
“Ryo,” Lalani called, and I turned. She walked toward me, wrapped in a fur cloak, tucking even her hands out of sight, with the hood pulled up over her head. But she looked at me with concern and did say I should not have asked her to come out into the cold. She came to me, holding out a hand. “You’re upset,” she said in darau. “What happened?”
I sighed. Then I told her. We walked a little farther along the shore of the lake as I spoke, north, toward the waterfalls. I liked the privacy of this part of the lakeshore, but I stopped before we came to the place where the rocks were broken and the path ended. That was far enough. Warriors might patrol farther than this, but I did not want to go too far from the camp. The wind had come up more strongly as well, and clouds came and went across the face of the Sun. I asked, “Are you too cold?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m perfectly all right, Ryo. You actually think this was a reasonable thing for Darra to suggest?”
“Plainly it is a sensible suggestion. Only I cannot like it and I do not know whether I can accept it. Even if I am able to set aside ordinary jealousy, what if my children, our children, come to know him and not me?”
“Oh. Yes, for a man like you, that would be difficult. Would that be different if you alone married a woman, but then came only seldom to the tent of your wife?”
At once I saw that this would be the same. Or the same in every way except that if I accepted Darra's suggestion, all her children would have one father near at hand. A poet would not even be much at risk from the ordinary dangers that warriors face. I drew a slow breath, trying to consider this a good thing.
“Among us, I mean, when a talon wife has a child, no one asks who the father is,” Lalani said thoughtfully. “Every man in her file generally takes an interest, but that's not the same.”
I nodded. “Perhaps Lau men accept such arrangements easily, regarding a woman and regarding children. I have never truly understood this. Now I need to understand it.”
“It’s not that easy,” Lalani said. She had taken my arm and drew me on to walk a little farther, walking close to me. She said, her tone thoughtful, “Making it work is my job, and Esau’s, since he’s file leader. Well, and Laraut, just because he’s got the right attitude to get everybody else to settle down. But if the men didn’t depend on each other in battle, it would be impossible. I don’t know exactly how it works for Ugaro women. It seems strange to me when your people say a woman chooses whom to invite to her tent. A Lau woman who marries one man, a jewel wife, won’t ever lie down with a man who isn’t her husband. Or if she does, she had better not be caught!”
I thought about her words. “A woman should respect her husband’s pride. If she suggests to another man that he might come to her tent, she should speak quietly, and only at a time when her husband is not in the camp. Perhaps that is a little the same.”
“Respect his pride,” L
alani repeated. “Well, you might say that’s the same, in a way. I mean for soldiers and talon wives, a woman had better be able to able to make every man believe she likes him, or there’ll definitely be trouble. It’s best when she does like every man. You don’t doubt that Darra cares for you. Do your people ever—does a woman ever say she loves a man? Does a man ever say he loves a woman? I can’t exactly get I love you to work in taksu.” She was frowning in puzzlement. “I never realized that before.”
“One does not say it that way,” I told her. “To hold someone in high regard is like that phrase. But perhaps different. I do not—”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, or I would have died at that moment. I ducked to the side, crouching and spinning, throwing up one arm and pushing Lalani hard away with my other hand, so the knife cut along my forearm rather than taking me low in the back. I threw myself down, rolling, and came up again, and a second thrown knife struck me in the chest, fortunately at an angle so that my ribs turned the blade. I jerked the knife from my flesh and threw it back, making my enemy duck, slowing him enough that I made it back to my feet.
My own knife was in my hand now, but the weapon that cut at me was a sword, not a knife. I blocked the stroke, but the force of the blow sent my knife flying out of my hand. Now weaponless and badly off balance, I threw myself down and away, rolling again with all the desperate speed I could manage, barely evading a second stroke—I heard the sword cut into the earth a fingerbreadth behind me. I found a rock beneath my hand and threw that, but it was small, and Yaro inTasiyo ignored it. He was so fast, faster than I was, and he had a sword and I had nothing. If I could get inside his guard and grab his sword hand—but he was so fast, and even if I managed it, I knew even from our one exchange of blows that he was very much stronger than I was.
Lalani was screaming—people would be coming, but we were so far from the camps, no one could possibly come in time—I backed away and he followed me; he feinted, and I shifted my weight to make him think I believed the feint real and draw him into a real attack, and he began the real blow, and I threw myself out of the way, but that had also been a feint—my own move had been a mistake and I could not compensate fast enough—he kicked me hard in the face. I sprawled, expecting at any instant to take the blow that killed me. I was angry, so angry. That was what I knew at that moment. That I could not evade his blow, and that I was so blindingly furious I was not at all afraid. I did not want to die, I was sick at the thought of dying, of losing all the life that a heartbeat earlier had been laid out before me.
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