Chapter 1 #3
But she had never told anyone what Hogar had done, not even her mother when she was safe at home again. She had been too ashamed of her own cowardice to mention bruises that had faded by then.
Martha didn’t know she had stirred up unpleasant memories, however, and she was still making her point.
“Tedra also couldn’t stand the thought of your being helpless someday against a brute who decided he wanted to claim you despite Corth’s being there to protect you.
Corth is ample protection, but not against a warrior wielding a sword.
He can get chopped up just like the real thing. ”
Shanelle put a hand over her eyes, but that wasn’t going to put Martha off.
She knew all this. There was no refuting it.
She was like her mother in so many ways, but in one way they were glaringly different.
Her mother had been born a fighter, a physical fighter, and she absolutely loved to take on men, her lifemate in particular, though she never had a chance of beating him and knew it.
But Shanelle didn’t like to fight with anyone, physically or even verbally.
The former type of fighting led to pain, and the latter was frustrating beyond belief, because you couldn’t argue with warriors.
They didn’t get mad and they rarely ever conceded on any point.
Tedra had insisted she learn how to fight, though.
Instead of teaching her her own style of hand-to-hand combat, which worked fine on other worlds but was next to useless against barbarians, Tedra had decided that Shanelle needed to learn how to use a sword.
This was an unheard-of notion on Sha-Ka’an for a female to have because there was a Kan-is-Tran law, still in effect, that didn’t allow women to use weapons.
That hadn’t stopped Tedra, however. It had taken two whole years, but she had finally got Challen to agree with her by simply demanding, “Do you want your daughter at the mercy of some warrior who will walk all over her just because he can, someone like Falder La-Mar-Tel?” Falder happened to be someone whom Challen had never liked or gotten along with, so that did it.
And once Challen had agreed, there was nothing Shanelle could say.
But Shanelle had hated all those lessons.
She hadn’t wanted any part of them. She might have finally got over her fear of a few bruises—her determination and her downing class had seen to that—but she hadn’t back then.
And she’d still rather run away than use a sword, rather use her wits if nothing else would do.
She hated confrontations, period, and this one she was having with Martha was a prime example.
You couldn’t argue with or get the better of a Mock II computer any more than you could with a Sha-Ka’ani warrior.
Both were extremely stubborn and both were utterly undefeatable.
“Maybe what you’ve learned of downing will come in handy someday—”
“Go ahead and say it!” Shanelle snapped. “On another world it might come in handy. Not on my world.”
“Well, you knew that,” Martha said reasonably.
“That’s why you wanted to learn it, because you don’t intend to stay on your world much longer.
” Shanelle just covered her eyes again, but this time it got a sigh out of Martha.
“Tedra said it more than once, that she did you a disservice by raising you to her way of looking at things. You don’t hear other Sha-Ka’ani women objecting to the way things are, do you? ”
“But she did raise me differently. And I know that the women on other planets aren’t treated the way our women are.
Even on Kystran, if a couple living in double occupancy has a disagreement, they talk about it, with the one in the wrong ending up feeling tons of guilt, which is more than enough punishment as far as I’m concerned. ”
“But did you find a male there that you would want to share sex with? You’re twenty years old, and your mother has given you her wholehearted approval to make up your own mind about sex, to go for it as soon as you find you want it, whether your father would approve or not. So did you find it?”
“You farden well have all the answers,” Shanelle grumbled. “You tell me.”
“All right, kiddo, but you aren’t going to like it.
Sha-Ka’ani males may frighten you, but not because of their size.
Their size is something you happen to appreciate, and in that respect you’re just like your mother.
In your case, it can’t be helped. You were raised among them.
They’re the only kind of men you are accustomed to.
In fact, if a man isn’t a good deal over six feet tall and twice as wide as you are, you won’t be the least bit interested in him. ”
“There are hundreds of planets that I am now capable of visiting, Martha. Are you going to tell me that in all those other worlds I won’t find any other men with a little extra height and a little extra brawn?”
“Sure you will. So let’s look again at what you’re objecting to on your own world, the way warriors deal with their women when they break the rules.”
“It’s demeaning, humiliating—”
“But absolutely painless,” Martha cut in.
“There are worlds where lawbreakers are still executed. Worlds where they are still imprisoned for life. There are some worlds where the skin is whipped off their backs. And some worlds where advanced means are used to inflict excruciating pain without leaving a single mark. And that’s just a few of the little niceties you’ll find out there when you go hunting for your ideal mate.
In comparison, what the Sha-Ka’ani do can only be considered merciful and harmless. ”
“There are also worlds out there that aren’t so violent, worlds that don’t have so many ridiculous rules either.”
“You’ve been raised not to break the rules. Challen saw to that. So I don’t know what you’re really worried about.”
“Yes, you do, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
As usual, Martha listened only to what she wanted to hear. “Did you ever wonder why your mother puts up with those punishments you’re so terrified of, that and everything else that she still objects to on that world?”
“Because she loves my father.”
“There’s that, yes, but there’s also the fact that he knocked her socks off the first time she saw him, and he continues to knock them off every time he takes her to bed.
To have something like that to look forward to for the rest of your life is worth putting up with a few things you don’t like.
And maybe what you don’t like isn’t even as bad as you think it is. ”
“It’s not only that,” Shanelle mumbled.
“What was that? Did I hear that we’ve wasted all this time on only half of the problem?”
“Cut it out, Martha. If you know so much, then you know what the main problem is, and there isn’t any of your high-tech logic or reasoning to refute the fact that warriors don’t feel love.
They feel lust, and a measure of caring for their lifemates, but they don’t experience love like women do.
And before you throw it in my face that my father does, I happen to know how hard mother had to fight with him to get him to realize it and admit to it.
And besides, father is an exception. There is no other warrior like him.
Even my brother admits he doesn’t understand what father feels for mother.
He’s never experienced it and he’s only half Sha-Ka’ani. ”
Silence. Depressing silence. Why had she thought that Martha might be able to dispute that glaring fact of Sha-Ka’ani life?
Martha had been studying and analyzing warriors for the past twenty years.
If she couldn’t reassure Shanelle at this point, then there was no reassurance to be found.
And Shanelle was not going to hook up with a man for life who could only offer her great sex-sharing and a little fondness.
She wanted more. She wanted what her mother had found, but she wouldn’t find it on Sha-Ka’an.