The Tiger Prince (39 page)

“Thank you.” In the dimness of the tent Jane had received only a fleeting impression of sparkling dark eyes and an equally gleaming wide white smile. Now she could see the woman was probably close to her thirtieth year and those fine eyes were set in a square face whose only other claim to beauty was a well-shaped mouth and an expression of intelligence and good humor. “Ruel didn’t tell me you were a woman.”

“But it is better, yes? We will work in harmony and understanding. I will not have to teach you my value as I did Samir Medford.”

“And are there other women on the crew?”

“Oh yes, but not many. Men are better for physical labor. Women have more endurance and reasoning power, but men possess more physical strength. It is best to let the men do what they do best and leave the rest to us.”

“I beg your pardon.” Li Sung’s tone had a distinct edge as he stepped out of the shadows cast by the huge tent.

Dilam’s gaze swung to Li Sung and her eyes widened.
“You
are Li Sung? I did not see you there in the shadows behind Jane.”

“Even though I’m a mere humble man destined to do only what he does best, I do
not
stand in the shadow of any woman.”

“I meant no insult by my words.” Her tone was absent, her expression totally absorbed as she gazed at Li Sung. “But it is the truth, you know.”

“I do
not
know.”

“The Cinnidans have a principally matriarchal society,” Ruel said. “Did I forget to mention that?”

The devil knew very well he hadn’t mentioned that important fact, Jane thought crossly. Ruel’s eyes were shimmering with mischief as he looked from Dilam to a bristling Li Sung.

“I’m sure we’ll all get along very well,” she said.

“If she does not try to treat me as a mindless beast of burden,” Li Sung said caustically.

“Oh no, that is not my intent.” Dilam frowned earnestly. “You misunderstand my words. Men are truly splendid creatures.”

“Creatures,” Li Sung echoed. “Like mules or elephants perchance?”

“They do not deserve to be bunched together. Elephants are much more intelligent than mules.”

“And where do men rank in this bestial hierarchy?”

“By the gods, you’re prickly,” Dilam said, exasperated. “What do you wish me to say?”

“I wish you to explain these acts of splendor of which you deem men capable.”

“I think you wish to quarrel with me.” Dilam shrugged. “Men are good hunters and warriors. They can also be fine craftsmen.”

“But we are not worthy to govern?”

Dilam shook her head. “Their temper is too hot. Before women took over the council, we had many tribal wars.”

“And now I suppose peace reigns under your benevolent council.”

“Not always.” She smiled cheerfully. “But since it takes us nine months to bring a child into the world, we think much more carefully about starting a war that will crush out their lives.”

“I’m sure your men have an equal concern for their children,” Li Sung said stiffly.

“Then why do they war?” She held up her hand as he started to speak. “We have no real quarrel. I can see you are different.” She added, “In some ways.”

Jane could see Dilam’s words were only exacerbating Li Sung’s irritation and interceded hurriedly. “Will you show me to my tent, Dilam? Perhaps we could discuss—”

Dilam was shaking her head. “Samir Ruel will show you where you sleep.” She smiled and pointed her index finger at Li Sung. “I take you.”

“That is not necessary,” Li Sung said coldly.

“It is a pleasure, not a necessity. You are angry with me and I must make things right. I think we
nesling
before supper.”

Jane heard a sound that was half gasp, half snort from Ruel

“
Nesling?”
Li Sung frowned as he cast an inquiring glance at Ruel.

“Copulation,” Ruel murmured.

“That’s another thing men are good at,” Dilam said with another beaming smile. “Nesling.”

“How kind that you approve our carnal capability.” Li Sung looked at her in outrage. “I think not.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I do not please you?”

“You do not please me.”

“You please me very much. I find you …” She made a face as she read his forbidding expression. “Oh, well, perhaps you will like me better later.”

“I doubt it.”

“You will not change your mind?” she asked wistfully. “I am truly excepdonal at nesling.”

“I will not change my mind.” Li Sung turned to Ruel. “Where is my tent?”

“I’ll show you.” Ruel was trying to keep from smiling as he told Dilam, “I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with the discussion Jane suggested. Bring her to the
candmar
in an hour.”

Dilam watched them as they walked away. “It is not a good beginning.” Then she noticed something else. “He limps.”

“His leg was crushed when he was a child. It doesn’t hinder him. You’ll find he works harder than anyone on the crew.”

“I know this.” She shook her head gloomily. “But the limp explains much. I could have wished for an easier task.”

“What do you mean?”

Dilam didn’t answer, her gaze still on Li Sung’s retreating figure.

“What is a
candmar?”
Jane asked.

“What?” Dilam’s glance shifted back to Jane. “Oh,
candmar
means eating place. We all eat together at one campfire in the center of the encampment.” She turned and started in the opposite direction. “Come, I will show you where you sleep and then we will come back here. We have time for more dice before supper.”

Jane shook her head. “I need to study the map and find what problems there might be on the—”

“We will go play dice,” Dilam said adamantly. “Gambling gives zest when one is tired and downhearted. Your head will be clearer when your heart is more content.” She studied Jane. “You must learn to enjoy life. You are too solemn.”

“I have to build a railroad in seven months. That’s a solemn matter.”

“Li Sung is also too serious.” Dilam jumped on to another subject. “You
nesling
with him?”

“Me?” Jane chuckled. “We’re only friends.”

“Friends
nesling.
Sometimes that is very pleasant.”

Evidently Cinnidar culture was very different from her own, Jane realized. She tried to clarify. “We’re like brother and sister.”

“Oh, that is good. Then we will also be friends.” Dilam smiled broadly. “You
nesling
with Samir Ruel?”

Her smile faded. “No, I don’t.” She stiffened as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Do you?”

Dilam shook her head, looking at her curiously. “Why does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “I only wondered.”

“You lie,” Dilam said flatly. “It matters.”

Dilam was right, the raw sharpness of the pain that had torn through her at the thought of Dilam and Ruel
together had shocked as well as frightened her. She quickly changed the subject. “Ruel said your people didn’t get along with the Savitsar rulers.”

“They tried to make slaves of us. We had no weapons to fight them, so we had to run.” Dilam’s lips tightened. “That time must never come again. One of the reasons the High Council decided to work with Samir Ruel was that we knew it was inevitable that others would again intrude.”

“And you preferred the intruder be Ruel?”

“He was an intruder at first but no longer.”

“You work well with him?”

Dilam nodded. “Samir Ruel is fair, works as hard as any of us, and knows how to laugh at his mistakes.”

“But you still won’t allow him on your council.”

“In time. He belongs to Cinnidar, but we must season him.”

The idea of anyone seasoning Ruel brought a smile to Jane’s lips. “I’d like to see that.”

“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 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 be 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.”