She had missed something, and now Bakal had sent Strahl away and was dropping back to her side. Suddenly her mouth was dry.
‘Estaral, I must ask of you a favour.’
Something in his tone whispered darkness. No more death. Please. If she had other lovers-
‘Hetan,’ he said under his breath. ‘You are among the women who guard her at night.’
She blinked. ‘Not for much longer, Bakal,’ she said. ‘She is past the time of fleeing. There is nothing in her eyes. She is hobbled. Last night there were but two of us.’
‘And tonight there will be one.’
‘Perhaps not even that. Warriors will use her, likely through the night.’
‘Gods’ shit, I didn’t think of that!’
‘If you want her-’
‘I do not. Listen, with the sun’s fall, as warriors gather for their meals, can you be the one to feed her?’
‘The food just falls from her mouth,’ Estaral said. ‘We let the children do that-it entertains them, forcing it down as if she was a babe.’
‘Not tonight. Take it on yourself.’
‘Why?’ I want to speak with you. Take things back. I want to lie with you, Bakal, and take back so much more.
He fixed his eyes upon her own, searching for something-she quickly glanced away, in case he discovered her thoughts. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why are you women so eager to hobble another woman?’
‘I had no hand in that.’
‘That is not what I asked.’
She had never before considered such a thing. It was what was done. It had always been so. ‘Women have claws.’
‘I know-I’ve seen it often enough. I’ve seen it in battle. But hobbling-that’s different. Isn’t it?’
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean the claws of a warrior. I meant the claws we keep hidden, the ones we use only against other women.’
‘But why?’
‘You speak now in the way Onos Toolan did-all his questions about the things we’ve always done. Was it not this that saw him killed, Bakal? He kept questioning things that he had no right to question.’
She saw as he lifted his right hand. He seemed to be studying it.
His knife hand.
‘His blood,’ he whispered, ‘has poisoned me.’
‘When we turn on our own,’ she said, struggling to put her thoughts into words, ‘it is as water in a skin finds a hole. There is so much… weight-’
‘Pressure.’
‘Yes, that is the word. We turn on our own, to ease the pressure. All eyes are on her, not us. All desire-’ she stopped then, stifling a gasp.
But he’d caught it-he’d caught it all. ‘Are men the reason then? Is that what you’re saying?’
She felt a flush of anger, like knuckles rapping up her spine. ‘Answer me this, Bakal’-and she met his wide eyes unflinchingly-‘how many times was your touch truly tender? Upon your wife? Tell me, how often did you laugh with your friends when you saw a woman emerge from her home with blood crusting her lip, a welt beneath an eye? “Oh, the wild wolf rutted last night!” And then you grin and you laugh-do you think we do not hear? Do you think we do not see? Hobble her! Take her, all of you! And, for as long as she lifts to you, you leave us alone! ’
Heads had turned at her venomous tone-even if they could not quite make out her words, as she had delivered them low, like the hiss of a dog-snake as it wraps tight the crushed body in its embrace. She saw a few mocking smiles, saw the muted swirls of unheard jests. ‘Bound tight in murder, those two, and already they spit at each other!’ ‘No wonder their mates leapt into each other’s arms!’
Bakal managed to hold her glare a moment longer, as if he could hold back her furious, bitter words, and then he looked ahead once more. A rough sigh escaped him. ‘I remember his nonsense-or so I thought it at the time. His tales of the Imass-he said the greatest proof of strength a male warrior could display was found in not once touching his mate with anything but tenderness.’
‘And you sneered.’
‘I saw women sneer at that, too.’
‘And if we hadn’t, Bakal? If you’d seen us with something else in our eyes?’
He grimaced and then nodded. ‘A night or two of the wild wolf-’
‘To beat out such treasonous ideas, yes. You did not understand-none of you did. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have changed us all.’
‘And women such as Sekara the Vile?’
