Neither man appeared to have understood a word she said, and Lowden verified this. “I will take my leave,shodan.The woman makes my head ache trying to grasp her meanings.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Tedra snorted. “I happen to know I speak excellent Sha-Ka’ani. What wasn’t to understand?”
“He has not had the opportunity I have had in deciphering your shortened words, but what you have just said still makes no sense, woman. People cannot survive without family.”
“Sure they can. We manage to just fine. It’s just one more of the many differences between our planets, differences I know you don’t care to hear about, so I won’t bore you with an explanation. Details like that can wait for theshodanI finally get around to dealing with, if he’s interested.”
She had to turn away from his look of chagrin before she laughed out loud. Talk about your subtle revenge. He was dying to question her further, but he wouldn’t, not after what he had admitted to his uncle Lowden about deliberately avoiding such talk with her.
An uncle, imagine that. Challen must also have real parents, or did have, maybe even siblings. She should have realized that sooner, primitive culture that this was, and she herself had some questions she’d like to ask now. But having effectively closed the subject in the way she had, she couldn’t ask either.
She didn’t let the lost opportunity bother her, however, and busied herself looking over her new sleeping quarters instead. Here she was a little more than impressed. The sheer size of the room nearly made her drool. This single chamber theshodanused only for sleeping was twice the size of her whole new house. Of course, there were no movable walls here to section off individual rooms for separate needs. What you saw was what you got. But she liked what she saw.
Like the meeting rooms below, this room was also extremely light and airy, with tall arched windows along one long wall, even taller arched openings on another that led out to what looked like a large garden balcony. Sheer white curtains stirred with gentle breezes over these openings, blending in with the white-and-silver-veined, marblelike walls and floors. There was more of the soft blue carpeting in certain areas, under and around the mammoth bed, under low, backless couches that surrounded a large square table, also low to the floor, and made of some kind of highly polished dark wood. Another fancier piece, a good ten feet round and with white designs running through the blue, was smack in the center of the room, for show obviously, since there was nothing on it.
There were a number of great carved chests in the same dark wood up against another wall, each a good five feet long and several feet high, with padded tops in the same white material as the couches making them suitable for sitting on. Chairs were conspicuously absent, but there were more of those comfortable-looking backless couches set before two of the open windows, with smaller tables about them, and what Tedra imagined to be gaali stone stands.
What she found the most impressive, and personally delightful, was a ten-foot-high tree in the corner between the windowed wall and the balcony, fully green-leafed though well contained, sitting in a beautiful black glazed urn. Smaller plants sat beside it, filling that corner with greenery in differing heights, and before all of this was a sunken pool, perhaps eight feet round, with bright red flowers floating on its surface.
“A pool in a bedroom?” Tedra turned around to locate Challen and found him where she’d left him, by the doors, doing nothing else but watching her. “It’s kind of small, isn’t it?”
“It is for bathing, not swimming.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She turned back toward the water before he could see her grimace. “I forgot I’m going to have to do without a decent bath for a while.”
His chuckle was close and getting closer, telling her he was moving up behind her. “My bath is one thing you will not find complaint with,kerima,”he said, misunderstanding her comment. “So which do you care to test first, the bath—or the bed?”
“I’d opt for the bed if that pause was meant to be significant, but are you really up to helping me test it out—after what I did to you?”
She turned to catch his rueful smile. “Perhaps not.”
Guilt stirred, but she quickly stomped it down. “I’ll wait to test out the bed, then. I’m afraid I’d get lost in it by myself, it’s so big.” The thing had to be at least ten feet square, and was covered with a soft, billowy blue spread that looked like it might swallow her up if she lay in the center of it. “But I’d rather pass on the bath, if you don’t mind. It’ll take some nerve building before I’m ready to experiencethatnovelty of your world.”
His humor returned when he heard that. “It is true it is not a normal means for bathing, but it is not so deep you need fear it. And it has been prepared for my arrival.”
“I wasn’t worried about the depth, though I suppose I should have been. But don’t let me stop you from enjoying it. I’ll—watch.”
“You will do more than that,kerima.”He was chuckling again, which should have given her warning. “You will join me.”
She hadn’t felt him untying her rope belt, but she couldn’t very well miss the fur blanket being lifted off her. “Now wait a—” She was picked up in strong arms and on her way toward the sunken pool before she could complete that protest. “Put me down, Challen! I mean it! I don’t want—no!” She found herself dangling directly over the water, held out at arm’s length. “Don’t you dare …”
He did; simply let go of her. Tedra screamed on the way down, but it wasn’t that far a drop, and he’d been right about the water not being very deep, only hip-deep for her. Her scream of fright quickly turned to several more of rage as she held her arms up and away from the now swirling, lapping, clinging water—uck!
Challen was laughing outright, watching her. “Did I not know better, woman, I would swear you have no liking for water. Is it not warm enough for you?”
She noticed it now that he mentioned it, warmth, clinging to every inch of her that it touched, surrounding her, seeping into her pores. It wasn’t as terrible as she had thought it would be, kind of like standing in a vat of thin gel or thick air, but it would still take getting used to.
“Is is supposed to be warm?” she asked, finally looking up at him.
“Is it supposed … you would prefer a cold bath?”
“I would prefer a solaray bath, but that’s beside the point, since I’m not likely to get one here. My question was legitimate, warrior. Warm, hot, cold, what’s the norm?”
He didn’t answer. He started taking off his sword belt, still without answering. She finally got the message that she’d annoyed him somehow, and she figured she knew the “how.”
“You know, warrior, things like this are going to crop up now and again during our time together, you thinking I’m taking you around the block or teasing, when I’m not. When one person has never been in water before, but the other has, it’s kind of natural for the one to ask questions about temperature and such-”
“Enough, woman. You have not a body that has never known water. Think you I could notsmellthe difference?”
