There was no light, so I couldn’t see her. “Doing what?”
“Scaring the daylights out of me!”
“Hoolies, Tiger, I’d think you’d be a bit more alert when there are sword-dancers after you!” I was amused to hear ‘hoolies’ coming from her, until she finished the thought: “Then again, that’s what happens to older men.”
I realized then that Neesha was not in the room. Well, there had always been a good chance that he wouldn’t return until morning. “Then if I’m old, you might have taken pity on me.” I sat up. I’d put the mattress on the floor because, as Tamar had once warned me, the bed was too short for someone of my height.
“I didn’t say ‘old,’” Del noted. “I said ‘older.’”
I felt the presence of someone very close to me. Hearing, feeling—didn’t matter. You just kind of know when someone is close, even if it is pitch black. Then hands patted my leg, moving from knee to mid-thigh.
I nearly quivered. “Are you trying to send me a message? If so, I have definitely received it!”
I heard soft laughter. “No, no message. Truly, I’m just trying to find you. I’d stay to take advantage of you, but I want to get back to Rasha.”
She sat down close as I levered myself up on elbows. “How is she?”
Del sighed. “Difficult to know. She walks from anger to fear to sadness and shame, then back again.”
“Shame! Why shame?”
In the dark, she was silent a moment. “Women are taught they should maintain their maidenhead until they marry. She no longer has it.”
I sat up next to her. “That’s hardly her fault!”
Del’s tone was delicate. “It doesn’t matter, Tiger. It’s rare that a man will forgive his bride’s lack of maidenhead. She’s now considered a whore.”
I was astonished. “Rashida is not a whore!”
Del said nothing a moment. When she did speak, it was with an undertone of sadness. “No. But men will believe so.”
I said something very rude about a certain number of males. A large number.
“Well, yes,” Del agreed. “But you and I are hardly like others. You didn’t expect me to be a virgin since I’d already told you what happened. You also weren’t looking for an unsullied bride.”
“Hoolies, Del…you don’t mean she can never marry, do you?”
“It depends on the man. Here in the North there are considerably more freedoms than women experience in the South, but a woman without virginity—unless she’s a widow—is always suspect.”
“Suspect for what?”
Del sighed. “Sleeping with a man not her husband.”
I mulled that over. “I didn’t expect you to be a virgin even before you told me what had happened.”
“Thank you very much!”
“Well, think about it, bascha. You spent how many years training on Staal-Ysta, surrounded by men? You rode alone across the Punja. And you took up company with me.”
Her tone was exquisitely dry. “The last being the most damning.”
I couldn’t come up with a good answer for that. I took the conversation in a new direction. “Did Neesha come to see her? He said he would.”
“He did come, but Tamar chased him out. We were helping Rasha bathe.”
I remembered how Tamar had said Rashida bathed three times because she felt so dirty. I knew it wasn’t dirt and grime and mud she was referring to. “So he left?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
I sighed. “So, about Rashida—what do we do?”
“We take her home.”
“Her home is gone.”
“Ah,” Del said on a note of realization, “so it is. Well, maybe that’s not a bad thing. We’ll take her to her parents. That’s also ‘home.’”
I found a thigh and cupped my hand over it. “Can you stay the night?”
“No. I suspect she will have night terrors. I should be with her.”
I’d sort of expected that. “Then you’d better go, because otherwise I’m going to do my best to talk you into carnal activities.”
Del laughed, though she restrained it so as not to disturb Tamar. “‘Carnal activities.’ I like that.”
“So do I. But I guess they’re out for tonight.”
“Sadly, yes.” She leaned, kissed me briefly, then rose. “Goodnight, Tiger. I’ll see you in the morning.”
By the time I wished her goodnight, she was gone.
Chapter 34
NEESHA WAS SITTING OUTSIDE ON THE BENCH on Tamar’s porch when I finally awakened and went out to look at the day and its weather, carrying the tack I’d collected from Del’s room. Seeing him made me pause a moment. Tied at the porch posts were the stud, Del’s gelding, Neesha’s bay.
He sat on the bench next to the basin of water for washing feet, slumped against the wall. It made me look down at my feet. My poor sandals were stiff from water and mud, though I’d cleaned off most of the leather because of Tamar. Either they’d soften as I wore them, or I’d need new ones.
“Feet all clean?” I did not want to venture onto the uncomfortable ground we’d walked the night before.
“They’ll do.” Neesha rose. “I ran into Eddrith at a tavern. He, of all people, had the five horses. He didn’t know where to take them. And he doesn’t know where the raiders may have taken the rest. For all we know they’ve already been sold.”
I knew that was a bitter and painful realization for him. So many years put into developing superior breeding stock, and now only five were left. I went to the stud and began getting all the pieces arranged in order. “Any of them a stud horse?”
Neesha shook his head. “Two of the mares are obviously in foal. If the other three were bred, it’s too early for me to know.”
“So no stallion.”
“We—well, my father, providing he can—will need to find a good stallion elsewhere and breed the three mares to him, if they’re not in foal.”
“I’d offer my stud, but I hardly think he’s what you want to breed.” He had never been a particularly attractive horse, but I couldn’t have asked for a better one in so many ways.
Neesha’s lips twitched wryly. “Well, no.” He sighed. “So I guess they’re starting over. After thirty years.”
“No, you’re not,” I told him. “You have five good mares. Two are in foal. You know what good brood mares are worth. And they’re not the first mares your father ever bought. He’ll know a good stallion for them. And you could get a stud colt from one of the two mares in foal. You aren’t starting from the very beginning where no one will sell you a good mare.” I brightened. “And there’s the roan mare I inherited from Kirit. Six mares will help get the farm on its feet again.”
After a moment, he nodded. “That’s true.”
“So we ride to Sabir’s and Yahmina’s today.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to run the mares loose, or pony them off of our mounts?”
He thought it over. “Easier to let them go on their own. They’ll look to your stud to make the decisions.”
“Oh, that could be a problem, if he decides to pitch a fit.”
“He only pitches a fit with you. He knows you expect it, so he gives it to you.”
That sounded more like the old Neesha. “Will Rashida ride double with one of us, or ride a mare bareback?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Let her choose,” I suggested. “Give her something to think about.”