Keeper of the Heart (36 page)

“Do not send me away, Falon!” Janya cried. “I do not want freedom from your ownership!”

Falon let go of Shanelle to gently remove Janya from his leg, but he would have had to hurt her to pry her loose, she was gripping him so tightly. “Janya—”

“Please, master, what have I done that you would do this to me?”

“You have done nothing,” he assured her. “The decision is mine that I will no longer own slaves, any slaves. So do I now give you your freedom, rather than sell you to another.”

The woman started crying in earnest then. Shanelle turned in disgust to leave.

Falon was fast losing patience, so his voice was sharp when he commanded, “Shanelle, stay.”

“Forget it,” she defied him. “I’m not watching another minute of this.”

She slammed the door of the bedroom behind her, but she could still hear Janya wailing. She gritted her teeth and looked daggers at the bed that that woman had obviously spent many a night in. It was bad enough that Falon had owned slaves, but that he had used some of them to share sex with ... Not once had she considered that. But she should have. Why wouldn’t he take that kind of advantage when ownership gave it to him? The poor females certainly had no choice in the matter, and if they were pretty ... But he was freeing Janya— for her—giving up that little beauty—for her.

She couldn’t handle two such powerful emotions conflicting and fighting for attention. The darker one took supremacy again, and she let out an explosive sound of outrage just as the door opened and Falon stepped slowly into the room.

“You disobeyed me, woman,” he informed her, in case she wasn’t aware of it.

She was and didn’t care. “You’re damned right I did! How dare you subject me to that? You should have known you’d be facing a weeping scene and taken steps to make sure I wouldn’t have to witness it.”

“It was necessary that you see it done, for what was done was done for you, Shanelle.”

“I
know
that! I’m not dense. And I am immensely grateful!” she shouted, sounding anything but. “But I also know she wasn’t denying the freedom you were offering, she was denying the loss of
you,
and I farden well don’t like that, Falon. How many more sex-slaves have you got around here that are going to beg you not to free them?”

He started to grin, but then he laughed instead. Shanelle looked for something to throw at him, but there wasn’t a single thing in that room besides the bed and two tables on either side of it, both of which were empty. She reached down for her slipper.

“Do not,” he warned, but he was still chuckling. “You will let me enjoy this while it lasts, for it is not likely to happen again.”

“It’s not funny, dammit!”

“I disagree. And is it fair that I find the same enjoyment you claim for yourself.”

He wasn’t asking her, he was telling her, but that just got her madder, because she knew what he was referring to. “It’s not the same and you know it.
You
get upset over nothing. But try and deny that female who just cried all over you doesn’t have an intimate knowledge of your body—a body, by the way, that happens to belong to
me
now. Go ahead and deny it!”

He raised a brow at her. “Do I understand you, woman? Your complaint is for what was done
before
I met you?”

Shanelle flushed with angry color. She’d be a first-class jerk to say yes to that, yet half of what she was feeling was exactly for that—but fortunately, not all of it.

“She just hugged the hell out of your leg, warrior!
That
was here and now, wasn’t it?”

He grimaced. “Now do you have a valid complaint. Shall I cut off my leg?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Shall I cut off her arms?”

“Falon!”

“How, then, am I to make amends for the doing of another?” he asked.

It was Shanelle’s turn to grimace. “All right,” she mumbled, “so it wasn’t exactly
your
fault, but I still don’t like it. When is she leaving?”

“She has asked to remain in this house as a servant, now that I will have need of them.”

Shanelle’s temper shot right back up. “Oh, no, she won’t.”

“The decision is not yours to make, woman. Yet do I agree it would not be wise to keep her here, so I will ask my cousin Tarren to accept her in his house.”

“Will he?”

“Indeed will he. He has tried to buy her from me many times.”

Shanelle was quiet for a moment before she asked hesitantly, “Was she the only one, Falon?”

He gave a mock-suffering sigh. “I see I must ask Tarren to take a few others as well.”

Shanelle grinned sheepishly. “I guess I can be a farden jerk sometimes myself. I’m sorry.”

“I am not. I do not mind your jealousy.”

She laughed now, to have her own words from earlier in the hall given back to her. That was when he caught her about the waist and tossed her onto the mammoth bed. Slowly he came down on it to partially cover her body with his.

Before he did anything else, however, he looked down at his own body, then caught her eye. “Yours, is it?”

Shanelle’s smile was utterly radiant.
“‘All
mine, and best you not forget it, warrior.”

“Corth could make you a generator so you wouldn’t have to depend on the wind to work those ceiling fans,” Shanelle remarked from the bed as she watched the slow-moving fan above her barely disturb the air. “For that matter, these rooms, your whole house actually, could be air-cooled.”

She rolled over to see if Falon was even listening to her. He was, and he was finished dressing, too. She’d just as soon stay naked herself. It was still early morning, but the room seemed to be getting hotter by the minute.

“You know how I feel about visitor-made things, Shanelle.”

“You might be dead right now if it weren’t for one of those visitor-made things. And there are other things that are just as useful. Think of it, Falon. A room
filled
with cool air.”

He shook his head at her. “You will become accustomed to—”

“That’s
if
I survive.”

He didn’t say another word, he just picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, where the large gold tub in the shape of a chopped-off barrel had been filled with water. Shanelle had the feeling he was going to drop her into it, so she decided to annoy him by not complaining about it. He did drop her. She shrieked her head off as the cold water closed over her.

“That was a dirty trick,” she hissed at him. “You could have at least warned me it wasn’t going to be warm.”

He raised a brow, fighting to keep the grin off his lips. “Does the air not feel cooler now?”

“Go to blazes, why don’t you!”

“I give you what you want and still you complain. Is there no pleasing you this rising?”

“Real cute. Keep it up and I might start a running tab on getting even.”

He finally chuckled as he turned away toward the closets. “Best you hurry, woman. The first meal will soon be served, and you have yet to meet my sister.”

Shanelle splashed water that didn’t feel quite so cold now over her breasts as she watched Falon shrug into a black vest similar to the white one he’d been wearing. “Jadell said she’s older than both of you.”

“By nearly five years.”

“Does she have any children?”

He looked up sharply at that question. “Perhaps there is a thing you should know about Aurelet before you meet her. The battle the Ba-Har-ani were prepared to bring to the visitors all those years ago was because of my sister. She had been taken by a visitor from the planet Nida who had a small spaceship for his own use. Aurelet and her escort were Transferred, she to the man’s ship, her escort never to be seen again. He kept her for nearly two months on his ship, using and abusing her the whole while.”

“You didn’t search for her during that time?”

“My brother and I were too young to be allowed to help. My father searched. She had been taken near Tinet, a town the warriors of Ka’al sometimes would raid. My father nearly tore Tinet apart, yet no sign of her was found. We began to think her dead. Already my father mourned.”

“Then you didn’t even suspect it was a visitor who had taken her?”

“No. And when she was returned to us, it took weeks before she was calm enough to speak of what had happened. My father immediately gathered his warriors, and the call went out before them for a united battle. Warriors of other towns joined them on the way, for we were not the only ones visitors had offended, though our grievance was the worst.”

“I know this tale from our side. Though I never knew what the crime was, I know the guilty visitor was turned over to the Ba-Har-ani warriors, and the planet closed down soon after.”

“He was given to my father.”

“Did he kill him?”

“No. He brought him back to Ka’al and gave him to Aurelet for judgment.
She
killed him without a qualm. One month later she gave birth to his child, a boy child she has never called son. She became fifteen that same month.”

“Stars, that young to go through that? I’m so sorry, Falon. No wonder you hate visitors so much.”

“Not as much as my sister does. This is why I could not bring you home other than as a slave when I thought you a visitor. Yet might Aurelet still see you as a visitor when she learns who you are. Your brother has already been scorned by her. If this is all she offers you at first, it is my hope you will understand the depth of her bitterness and not be offended by her. Can you do this?”

“Certainly.” But then she recalled that the Catrateri were coming here, true visitors, and it was
her
fault that they were. “Falon, I know you agreed to let my brother bring the Catrateri here, and that will probably upset your sister even more. Has it occurred to you that you don’t actually have to let them into Ka’al, that you could speak with them and do all the negotiating necessary through Martha—well, maybe not Martha, but you could use Brock?”

“No, such had not occurred to me, yet does this idea please me. I will ride to the telecomm later this rising to call the Visitor’s Center to arrange it.”

“Ah, if I know Martha, and I do, she probably stuck a computer-link unit somewhere in my belongings. With it you could talk directly with Dalden and let him arrange it.”

“I would prefer to ride to the telecomm than to request anything of your Martha. And do you find that unit, you will bring it to me. I do not want you speaking with that computer again.”

She frowned at that reminder. “This
has
to be negotiable. For a time?”

“Forever.”

Her frown turned black. “Don’t do that to me, Falon. I can maybe see the necessity of cutting ties while I am adjusting to this new life, but not forever. We’re talking about a lifelong friend of mine, two actually, since Corth is also visitor-made. And I just solved a problem for you and gave up a visit with my brother to do it. In my book that says you owe me one.”

“A warrior could wish you were not so demanding of rights he is not even aware of. So be it. For a time, but a
long
time.”

He said no more on the subject, but Shanelle had been given even more hope for their future happiness. Her inflexible warrior wasn’t so inflexible after all. He just needed to be pushed on the road to reasonableness in less direct ways, to avoid his inherent “dominate-all” tendencies. That shouldn’t be too hard to do—if she could survive the initial frustration.

The welcomings-home began the moment Falon and Shanelle walked into the hall. The emptiness of a few hours ago was now transformed to an overflow. Every table was laden with food, though every seat might not be occupied. But at least fifty warriors were making a very great deal of boisterous noise—still another difference from a reserved Kan-is-Tran warrior, who rarely raised his voice, even in private.

Shanelle was to learn that the gathering of such a crowd was a daily occurrence. But Ka’al was large enough to require a permanent body of guards, kind of like an army, yet without the regimen and discipline of an official army, or a mini-government, for these warriors saw to all aspects of authority in one way or another.

This was Shanelle’s first experience of the Ba-Har-ani as a group, and the first thing she noticed was that there wasn’t another golden-haired head in sight. There were some warriors with dark red hair, some with dark brown, but most with black. And all were as deeply bronzed as Falon, giving testimony to the hotter sun in this half of the hemisphere. In stark contrast, the freed slaves moving about the room were easily spotted with their ivory-white skin, if their scanty garb wasn’t enough to set them apart.

Someone should have told them they could now cover themselves. But perhaps the word hadn’t got around to all of them yet that they weren’t slaves anymore—or perhaps none of the women here wore tops, slave or not. What free women did wear hadn’t exactly been explained to Shanelle, and those bare breasts bobbing around the room weren’t exactly drawing any notice, since these warriors were so accustomed to the sight.