"Not really," she replied. "Men aren't slaves, boy. I don't know how many times I have to tell you that. As long as a man's well treated, why buck the system? Women who don't treat men well tend to end up dead. A man is more than capable of killing a woman. You don't think Koran Tal could tan my hide if he was mad enough? He's no weakling."

"Then why don't they revolt and make things equal?"

"Because there are two women for every man," she replied. "About a thousand years ago, a plague killed almost all our men, a plague that the women couldn't contract. It required us to make changes in the way we do things. Well, our population still hasn't equalized yet, mainly because most of us don't like the idea of mothering children from outlanders. They're smaller and weaker than pureblooded Amazon children. Besides, it's been so long since then, the new society is too deeply seated. Nobody wants to change things back to the way they were now. It works, and that's all that really matters in the end."

"I guess."

"Stop worrying over the customs of a land you'll never see," she said. "Now then. Ayuda. Good day."

For the rest of that day, and every day after that for five days, Tarrin and Camara Tal sat near the bow and she taught him the Amazon language. For the first five days, she brought no weapons and wouldn't wear her amulet. Then, on the sixth day, she came wearing her amulet. The repeated enforcement of the idea that Camara Tal wasn't a threat had bolstered him against seeing that silver medallion around her neck. It was then that he realized that she was trying to tame him like a wild animal. She started slowly and gently, and was gradually building him up to the point where special precautions weren't necessary. The idea of that shocked him more than a little bit, but a part of him realized that no other way of going about it would work. He was too wary and nervous. It required someone to completely submit to his power for him to treat them without fear. Just as Triana said, she would have to repeatedly prove to him that she wouldn't hurt him, and she wouldn't betray him.

That idea had made him step back from her and take a walk, paw to his head. Had he really sunk that low? Actually, that was a question that he'd already answered. He had really become little better than a wild animal, because no matter how intelligent he was, it simply came down the to fact that he was ruled by his instincts. No matter how much he understood them, no matter how much trouble they caused, he could not go against them. He had become a slave to himself, a slave of his own bestial half. It was such a depressing thought. Every time he thought about it, he had always neatly evaded the simple truth, but he just couldn't do that anymore. He leaned on the rail and looked out over the sea, wind in his face, his eyes distant as he pondered what he had become.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump. It was a strong hand, yet the pressure it applied was gentle and reassuring. Camara Tal's bronzed scent touched him quickly after that, and she leaned in close to him and looked at his profile. "Are you alright?" she asked with sincerity in her voice.

"I guess so," he sighed after a moment. "I just wish sometimes things were different."

"Dolanna told me about you, Tarrin. You've had a rough time of it. You have the right to be a little bitter. Just don't let it poison you."

"It's more than that. All I ever wanted out of life after this happened to me was to be free. But I guess I never will be. Even if I am free, I'll never be free of myself. I'm a prisoner, Camara Tal, just as much a prisoner as I was when there was chain between my wrists. It's just that my prison doesn't have walls."

"You hold your own key, Tarrin," she told him gently. "The only one that can free you is you."

"I wish it was that easy," he said quietly.

"Things we value should never be easy," she said. "Something gained easily isn't appreciated as it should be." She leaned closer to him. "Until then, at least you have a few good dependable people to help keep you company, until you can be free. I've been working to be part of those people, but I can go only so far. You have to meet me half way, Tarrin."

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. Why wouldn't he do that? Mist had conquered her fear and had reached out to him, something she had never been able to do before. Camara Tal had gone out of her way to reach him, had put herself in personal danger just to make him feel more secure. She even had the personal approval of the Goddess, who had personally selected her to travel with him. He trusted in the Goddess, he did what she said, so why couldn't he accept the Amazon? He had faith in the Goddess, he should have trusted Camara Tal without question, yet he had not. He could not. Even now, part of him yearned to accept the Amazon, but he still couldn't bring himself to accept her trust. He couldn't feel her warmth or sincerity. All he could feel was the cold steel of the manacles on his wrists.

"I'm sorry," he said abruptly, shaking her off and stepping back from her. "I, I can't. I trusted a human once before, and it nearly destroyed me. Not again. Never again."

He retreated from her, quickly shifting into cat form and bounding away, confused and not a little frightened of what he was feeling.

"Never is a long time, Tarrin Kael," Camara Tal said quietly in her own language, watching the cat race away. "A very long time indeed."

Tarrin avoided Camara Tal for nearly two days after that, and to her credit, the Amazon had backed off to give him time to come to grips with what he'd discovered inside himself. It was a truth he'd known, something that he convinced himself was untrue, but knew in his heart that it was. Seeing Mist, seeing the awful condition of being truly feral could bring on someone, had frightened and saddened him. What sobered him now was that he saw the very same things he saw in Mist inside himself. Mist was more violent than he was, but in reality they were no different. They both had had their resistance to their instincts shattered by the actions of others, and now both of them were too weak-willed to overcome them. Tarrin had more control than Mist, was not quite so paranoid as she was, but they were sides of the same coin. Everything he pitied about Mist made him dejected with himself, because he felt powerless to change.

He had tried before. He just couldn't do that to himself again. Trying made him short-tempered and out of sorts, heightened his feral fear to a fever pitch and made him an exceptionally unpleasant person to be around. He wasn't trying with Camara Tal, but her attempts to win his trust were even worse, because they were making him look inside himself. Trying to muster courage was much different than having dark truths bared for him to see.

Sometimes it just all felt so hopeless. He was feral. He accepted that, understood it, because he couldn't change it. He wouldn't if he could. He'd lost more than his innocence to Jula and her collar, he had lost his security, his sense of personal freedom to her. That had caused him to harden to outsiders, to turn feral, that and the destruction he had wrought beneath the Cathedral of Karas so long ago. Triana was right. It was so easy to lose himself in the suspicious fear of ferality, to turn his back on struggling to retain his humanity and allow his instincts to govern his actions. It was a condition of comfortable apathy, where nobody mattered other than himself and those few people he trusted, where everyone else was conveniently grouped together into a large assortment of enemies and strangers. Triana had said that being feral was living in a world of them and us. In Mist's case, it was just her. She was so right. There was Tarrin and his small tight circle of friends, and then there was the rest of the world, which was out to get them. Being feral protected him. It protected both his sanity and his life, because in their dangerous quest they had no shortage of enemies and competitors. But when a new person came into his life, a person that Tarrin actually liked, it rose up and prevented him from accepting that person as a new friend. No matter how much he liked Phandebrass, Sarraya, and Camara Tal, they were still strangers, and he couldn't bring himself to drop his guard around them.