His answer was to glance at her for only a second before he took one step back and kicked the door down. Shanelle mumbled under her breath, “Well, I guess not,” and a little louder, “So much for specially made doors that even seven-foot barbarians can’t break.”
The only satisfaction Shanelle got was in catching Lanar unawares. The Sunderian female had been sitting on her couch gloating to herself while she finished her drink. The crash of the door caused her to leap to her feet, and like her sister, she wasn’t prepared for the sight of a live Sha-Ka’ani warrior, though she’d been forewarned of their size. She simply stared boggle-eyed at Falon, giving Shanelle the opportunity to approach her without being noticed.
Falon came closer himself, asking, “Are you the one responsible for the way I found my woman?”
Suddenly Lanar wasn’t frightened anymore. She was grinning. “Did you appreciate it? She said you would want to punish her for running away from you. I decided to make it easy for you, figuring you would be along shortly. But I would have let you in,” she added reproachfully. “You didn’t have to break my door down.”
“We do not bind our women for punishment, nor do we punish them in the way Shanelle was prepared for. What you did was to terrify the woman under my protection, and you would severely regret this were you a man.”
Lanar experienced only a moment’s fear before she realized he wasn’t going to do anything to her. “It sounds like you’re too lenient all the way around,” she sneered. “The woman deserves much worse than you’ll obviously be giving her. I should have seen to the matter myself before you got here. She needs that arrogance of hers whipped out of her.”
Shanelle tapped Lanar on the shoulder at that point. Lanar turned toward her in annoyance, then paled, having apparently forgotten that Shanelle was not a Sunderian female of Sunderian size.
“Care to tell me about what I deserve?” Shanelle asked in a softly menacing tone. “No? What about this arrogance I’ve supposedly got-which by the way can’t possibly be greater than yours?”
Still Lanar didn’t answer. In fact she was looking kind of sick. Shanelle found that satisfying, but not nearly enough for what she’d gone through.
Casually, she remarked, “You know, Lanar, I think you’ve been worried about the wrong Sha-Ka’ani. That warrior there might not make you regret what you did to me, but I don’t have any such qualms.”
Lanar finally found her voice, though it was definitely shaky. “You-you wouldn’t dare.”
“Wanna bet?” Shanelle replied as she drew back her arm and let her fist fly.
The little woman collapsed back on the couch, out cold for a while. Shanelle hoped she’d broken her jaw, but she doubted she’d be that lucky. Only that still wasn’t enough as far as she was concerned. She bent over and searched through Lanar’s pockets for the Altering rod she was sure these power-hungry females would keep handy, and sure enough, she found it.
Behind her, Falon said, “Thank you.”
Shanelle straightened with the short blue rod in her hand. “For what?”
“For doing what I could not.”
“I didn’t do it for you, babe, I did it for myself. Nor am I finished yet.”
And she marched into the other room to squat down by the two Sunderian males, who were still unconscious. Sublims had proved eons ago that it wasn’t necessary to be awake to hear something and have it implanted in your subconscious for future reference. Shanelle made use of that fact now.
When she finished and stood up, it was to find Falon blocking the doorway. “What did you do, woman?”
“Made sure the next time Lanar comes into this room she’ll end up being treated exactly as I was today, and probably how her slaves get treated every day. It ought to be an eye-opening experience for her, though she may be too mean-spirited for the lesson to do any good.”
She passed him to return the rod to Lanar’s pocket so she wouldn’t suspect that her slave-handlers had been tampered with. Falon was right behind her again when she straightened this time, and he wasn’t looking too pleased now.
“You know the use of that device?” he asked her.
“It was explained to me, yes.”
“Did you know the female called general would try to use it on me?”
“I knew she was going to try. Looks like you didn’t give her the chance to.”
“She used it, yet did I not have an understanding of her language for it to work. How is it that this one who looks like her could speak to me in Sha-Ka’an?”
“I was asked for a copy of the Sublim on our language, so I had Martha send it down. I thought it was the general who wanted it, but obviously it was her sister who doubted the process I had explained during my interrogation and wanted to try it herself. Shows what I get for making assumptions. If it had been the general, instead, that rod would have worked on you.”
“It occurs to me now that in knowing what she intended, you had to agree to it.” A growl entered his voice as he added, “You would have had me forget you.”
Shanelle flinched and decided it would be judicious to assure him the opposite. “That wasn’t my idea, Falon. It was the only way Donilla figured she could help me out. And it was only temporary. As soon as you returned to your ship, Brock would have reminded you of me and your reason for being here, and your very nature would have brought you back down here, whether you remembered me or not. For it to work permanently, I would have had to use it on you, and use so many countering suggestions that no one would be able to cancel them all. I could have met you when you arrived and got you so confused, it would have taken you years to figure out what I’d done. For that matter, I could have used the rod on you when I just passed you with it. You wouldn’t have known, and I could have told you to walk out of here-without me- and you would have done just that. It works that simply. But I didn’t do that, did I?”
“Why not?”
“You can get that scowl off your face, warrior. I don’t like the idea of altering personalities on people who don’t know it’s happening, any more than you do, that’s why not. That’s not what I did to those two men, either. I didn’t change them, I merely told them to forget that Lanar is their mistress. Apparently she’s already got them altered into thinking that any female who walks in there is there to be punished. But they don’t do the punishing, merely the preparing, so air Lanar will get is an uncomfortable wait until someone comes around to release her, and probably not even that, since all she has to do is pull out her rod and use it on them again-if she can figure out what suggestions I gave them before they bind her up. Farden hell, I didn’t think of that.”
He was suddenly grinning. “I cannot decide if I like this desire you have to avenge yourself.”
“Too bad,” she retorted, but then she looked at him curiously. “You know, Falon, if you agreed to it, I could rid you of the things I object to about you. Of course, I’d have to take one of those rods home with me, because someone is going to remind you of everything I’d have you forget, so I’d have to do it again and again. But it could work, I suppose, as long as you agreed to it. Would you like to be completely acceptable to me, warrior, so I won’t mind going home with you?”
He was scowling again, and this time as intimidatingly as possible. “You will accept me as I am, woman.”
She sighed and turned away from him. “I figured you’d say that.”
He grabbed her and gave her one hard shake before he reiterated in a near shout, “You will accept me.”
Her jaw thrust forward at a stubborn tilt. “Don’t count on it.”
His complexion darkened. She realized that she’d got him angry at last and he didn’t care that she knew it. She closed her eyes, expecting the worse, but refusing to back down or even try to placate him. She would just as soon find out now what happened when a Ba-Har-ani lost his temper.