Chapter 17

It was a perfect day to do nothing but lay around.

Tarrin lounged in the highest spars of the rigging lazily, looking the hundred or so spans down to the deck with half-open eyes and little interest on the happenings beneath him. The summer sun beat down on him, making him drowsily warm, and a good breeze from the west pushed the gaudily painted ship steadily to the east, making time for Dala Yar Arak. As it was, they were just barely going to make it on time. They had lost too much time in Shoran's Fork, and Renoit had been forced to cancel performances he had booked in Arkisia. So the ship sailed out past the sight of land, heading towards the rugged peninsula that was created where the Sandshield Mountains descended into the Sea of Glass, which marked the border of Arkis and the beginning of the desert. Tarrin lay there in complete security despite the gusty winds, only occasionally shifting when the healing injury to his chest found a certain position no longer comfortable. Head on his arm, one leg and tail dangling limply from the spar, he looked down to the deck and watched with only mild interest as the dancers practiced their trade near the stern, and a pair of jugglers tossed wooden duckpins to each other near the bow.

Tarrin liked it in the rigging, mainly because it was the one place where that infernal Amazon couldn't follow. He couldn't really fault Camara Tal, for she was only doing her job. To be honest, he respected her, and liked her just a little bit. But Tarrin didn't know her, didn't entirely trust her, and he found her continuous presence to be extremely aggravating sometimes. He liked being alone, or at least with only a few people, and the unknown Amazon woman was not on his list of acceptable companions. He tolerated her because the Goddess had all but ordered him to take her along with him, but that was about it.

It was almost frightening how much like his mother she was. If she had pale skin and blond hair, he would swear that she was actually Ungardt. She had that same bluntness, that same direct way of looking at the world and that same direct way of tackling life. Camara Tal wasn't very talkative. She preferred to stand in relative silence, going about the job that was assigned to her with a cool professionalism that assured anyone watching that she knew exactly where her charge was and exactly how safe he was. In that respect, she reminded him more of Binter and Sisska than his mother. But the instant she opened her mouth, it was like hearing his mother's words in a different voice. And she wasn't afraid of him. That probably annoyed him more than anything else. Azakar had tried the same stunt, but he learned very quickly that there was a line that he didn't cross, and the big human had learned to respect that line. Camara Tal had no such reservations. She would order him around. She would boss him, she would command him, and for some mysterious reason, he wouldn't turn around and rip her arms off. He wasn't afraid of her. Impressive as she may look, she was still human, and there wasn't a human alive that he couldn't kill. It was the way she looked at him. She could order him with that gaze, overwhelming his resentment at being ordered around with one cool stare.

He knew that there would eventually be a reckoning between them. She would go one step too far, and her strange ability to dominate him would be broken, and he would turn on her and do something she wouldn't likely forget anytime soon. If she lived through it. The thought of killing her didn't really bother him that much, because he didn't really know her, but he knew that Triana would disapprove of such an act, so at least in that respect he thought about other things first.

His time with Triana had helped in some ways, but it had hurt him in others. She had taught him to understand his own nature a little better, and in that understanding there was an incredible feeling of helplessness. He was no better than Mist in the simple respect that he was too weak to overcome his own instincts. It was his instincts that made him fear and distrust the humans on the ship, the people who would look at him and do their best to not draw his attention. He knew they posed no threat to him, he knew that there was no danger, but he still just couldn't help being afraid of them. They were strangers, and just knowing he could kill them wasn't enough to make him feel safe when he was around them. After all, Jula had been a human, and she had definitely stripped him of his freedom, and had helped turn him into what he was now. No matter how much his human mind knew that he was safe on the ship, his instincts refused to allow him to feel safe and secure among them. He understood where it was coming from, but it was so strong that he was helpless against it. It was almost infuriating, knowing that nothing but his own irrational fear made him a pariah, but no matter how hard he tried, he just could not handle it.

And he had tried. Many times. He had tried talking to the performers, he tried having Renoit teach him the Shacean language, he tried helping Shelli set up a performing cat act, since he could speak to the animals and tell them exactly what they had to do. But every time, it ended quickly and it ended nervously. he nearly hurt Shelli when she put her hand on his shoulder by accident. He had to give up at that point. He was just too nervous, too frightened, too worried about what someone might do that he posed a physical threat to them.

The only person on the ship outside his personal circle he could talk to was Phandebrass. The doddering mage was wildly curious about Tarrin, had been ever since he came on the ship, and the times that he had spoken to the mage had reinforced a sense of ease around him that no one else on the ship outside his circle had managed to match. His intense curiosity had only increased with Camara Tal and Sarraya coming on board, who were also extremely exotic individuals with many interesting things to teach him. Phandebrass lived to learn, had spent many long hours talking to Dolanna about Sorcery, to Faalken about the Knights, to Dar about the Arksian upper class, and to Allia about her people and their mysterious desert, a place no human would set foot in and few humans had ever seen. Ever since they left Shoran's Fork some ten days ago, Phandebrass had been grilling Sarraya about Faeries and Fae-da'Nar. The Faerie didn't seem to mind the attention, though she did nearly kill one of Phandebrass' pet drakes, who mistook her for an appetizer. Phandebrass had dismissed that incident as the accident it was, and after all, the drake was fully healthy again. It wouldn't come within fifty spans of Sarraya, though, and that had caused an interesting relationship to form. When the drake-Tarrin could never tell them apart-left Phandebrass because of Sarraya, it would sit on Allia's shoulder and beg for attention. The drake seemed fascinated by the Selani, and Allia seemed to like the creature. It fled from her when Tarrin approached, however. To the drakes, Tarrin was a predator, and they avoided him religiously. That suited him just fine. One of the little monsters snapped at him two days before, and the fact that it could fly was the only thing that saved its life. If he could get his paws on them, he would kill them, and they knew it. So they made it their business to know where he was at all times, and stay very far out of his reach.

Sarraya was turning out to be more of a problem than the Amazon, strangely enough. In the ten days they'd been together, she's already worn Tarrin's patience thin with her mercurial personality. She was a flighty little thing, given to pursuing whatever caught her fancy at the moment, and that made her very unpredictable. Tarrin did not like unpredictable. Her pranks and jokes quickly wore at his nerves, especially when she had the nerve to put a bucket of water over the door to his cabin. Toying with him was tempting death, but that didn't seem to phase her in the slightest. She would just go on talking or laughing, fading from view if she thought she pushed the moody Were-cat too far and hiding from him until his temper cooled. She knew Were-cats, and she understood that much of their reputation came from the fact that they were very impulsive beings. Trying to kill Sarraya was more a reflexive reaction than actual hatred, and the Faerie knew that she'd be safe again after Tarrin had a chance to cool off. Where Camara Tal wore on his patience, Sarraya really pushed his temper. And Tarrin didn't have very much temper to push against.