“Isn’t it enough that I’m your hostage?” she said.
“Not to Silta. He knows mere is something more.”
She couldn’t mistake the way he watched her, as if he waited for a definitive response. What did he expect her to say that she hadn’t already? What more could she give?
“He wouldn’t understand if you told him we were friends,” she said.
The light died in Ronan’s eyes. “Perhaps I can explain another time.” He turned to the boy and gave him a gentle push toward the other youngsters. Cynara felt as though she’d struck Ronan down, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
He’d never said he loved her, far less suggested a permanent mating. And if he had… if he did… was that what she had been hoping for, like any proper, desperate Dharman female?
What she’d offered Ronan demanded no repayment, no promises. He must know that. He’d already agreed without saying a word.
“The children seem very happy,” she said as Silta rejoined the game.
“They have all they want or need.”
“Silta’s parents don’t take care of him.”
“His father is of another Line and has no claim on the boy, though his genetic signature has been carefully recorded in the annals of Ain’Kalevi. His mother has her own work.”
“Humans would regard that as—”
“Wrong. But humans raise their offspring even if they are ill-suited to the work, and the child suffers. No shaauri child is without love or proper care. Those adults drawn to nurturing, li’laik’i, can never be driven to unhappiness or cruelty toward their charges. Their patience is endless.”
“What about your own children? You aren’t of any one Path. Would you care for them yourself?”
His face lost its color. “I will have no offspring.”
“What makes you so sure of that, Ronan?”
He looked ready to respond and then swallowed his words. Tension, feral and erotic, laced the air between them.
“It’s the old claim of unworthiness,” Cynara said, snapping the angry silence. “You don’t think you have the right to pass on your many defects to another generation.” And that’s why you hold back, Ronan. That’s why you wait in stoic patience until you’ve proven yourself to me and the world.
Unworthy. Never the true equal of Cynara D’Accorso.
“We will speak no more of this,” he said, turning away.
Cynara hung back to watch the shaauri children. They squabbled and tussled and tested as children will, but without the bloodthirsty intensity she had seen in boys on Dharma. They seemed to understand each other’s limits instinctively, and not push beyond them.
“What happens when a ba’laik’in needs to be punished?” she asked.
Ronan’s shoulders relaxed, and he smiled at her as if in apology. “Very little behavior is punished. It is the time of rhoka-toi’sun, irresponsibility. Much is tolerated of ba’laik’i before Walkabout, when they become be’laik’i and are free to go where they will until Selection finds them.”
“It’s a shame they didn’t treat you with such tolerance.”
“Come,” Ronan said, taking her hand. They walked up a low ramp to the door of the nearest building. The moment they stepped inside, warmth embraced them.
“Linei-ja is built over natural hot springs,” Ronan said, “to provide the young with extra comfort.” He crossed the antechamber, very like those in the other buildings with its padded benches for visitors, and into a room bright with light from numerous windows and painted in rich earth tones.
Three shaauri children sat on floor cushions, two playing with what appeared to be a wooden, three-dimensional puzzle, the third reading aloud as an adult watched over its shoulder. The second adult in the room sat cross-legged at a low desk and looked up at the sound of footsteps.
Ronan stopped. “Li Hanno,” he said. The name was an endearment, thick with emotion and memory.
The shaaurin stood up. It—she, Cynara decided, certain without knowing why—laid her ears to the side and made an odd, keening sound.
“She who raised me,” Ronan murmured to Cynara. Hanno circled the desk and passed the wide-eyed students and second li’laik’in. They met in the center of the room; there was no hesitation, no formality in their embrace.