He wasn't quite sure why he was afraid to go into the camp. He'd gone into human cities alone, without his sisters and friends around him to give him some support and some familiarity to keep him calm. He'd managed to go into that Saranam city easily, and though he'd felt anxiety and fear, it had been managable. But these Selani… it seemed different somehow. He trusted their behavior, up to a point, because of Allia and his understanding of them. Yet he was afraid to surround himself with Selani. Perhaps it was because, unlike humans, Selani did pose a danger to him. Allia was more than capable of killing him, and he knew it. That caused him to afford much more respect to a Selani opponent than a human. And that was probably why he was afraid of them. Respect caused him to fear them, fear them more than humans, simply because they could hurt him. With humans, it was different. The average human had almost no chance of doing him any harm, so he wasn't very worried about going out among them. It took an extraordinary human, or one with knowledge that was not commonplace, to do him harm.

Strange. If that were the case, then maybe he was more tolerant than he thought he was. If he was able to differentiate between those that could harm him and those that could not, and give each group a different level of caution, then perhaps he wasn't quite so feral as he believed.

He watched the Selani as they watched him, gathered on that side of the camp, many of them holding weapons and watching to see if he did anything hostile. He knew the sharpness of Selani eyes, so he knew that they had seen the brands. That was probably the only reason they weren't attacking him as an outlander. He was a mystery, an unknown, carrying the brands that would give him safe passage through the desert, but of a species they had never seen before. The combination of those meant that they would simply not pester him.

Well, at least most of them thought that way. One rather tall Selani broke away from the group, holding a longspear in his hand. He marched towards Tarrin calmly and steadily, but Tarrin gave no outward reaction to the man. He simply watched him, with only his tail moving back and forth. A surge of irrational fear rose up in him, but he rose up along with it and stomped on it. He would not be a slave to his own fear. He would not! It was hard to scent the man through the dried blood that still stuck to him, from the fight with the inu, but once he got close enough, the coppery-flavored scent of the Selani reached him. There was nothing in that scent to hint to him what the man intended to do. Usually, a scent gave away fear, anger, even murderous intent. But he couldn't find any of those things in this man's scent.

The man didn't attack. He stopped, about ten paces from Tarrin's rock, and grounded the butt of his spear in the dusty soil. "You claim blood debt on my daughter?"

"She claims it against me," he said evenly in reply. "I already absolved her of any need to satisfy her debt. What she does is by her own choice."

"You carry the brands, so you must know of our custom. You know she would not simply walk away."

"I certainly tried to convince her. I don't have time to shephard a child."

"Speak carefully about my daughter, stranger," the man said with a bit of steel in his voice. "Her brands give her the same rights as any of us."

"Truth is truth," Tarrin said, rising up onto his feet, rising up over the Selani man. To his credit, the Selani didn't flinch away from Tarrin's unnatural height. "All of you are like children to me."

"Seeing you like this, I see the truth of that," the man acceded with a hint of a smile. "What my daughter does is her choice. I have no right to force her. Those rights were surrendered when she took the brands. But I will not allow my daughter to travel into danger without understanding that danger."

"I intend to let her guide me for a few days, then I'll send her back," he told the man. "I'm not the kind that goes looking for danger. I agreed to let her guide me so I could avoid dangerous areas."

"She says you intend to move in the night. That is seeking danger."

"These Sandmen don't concern me, shih," he said, using the Selani term for honored stranger. "I don't fear ghosts."

"You don't understand the danger."

"I understand the danger. They are ghosts made of sand. There are ways to stop sand."

"My daughter said you are shaman. Is this true?"

"It is," he replied honestly. "I also have an companion who is shaman."

The man looked him up and down. "My daughter is an adult, so I can't stop her. But if something should happen to her, there will be blood between us, stranger."

That was a Selani term for a feud. "Whatever happens to your daughter is by her choice, not yours," he replied, looking down at the man. "First she is old enough to make her own choices, now you seek to dishonor the choices she makes."

"That is a father's right," he said evenly. "Why do you seek to travel at night?"

"To get away from you," he replied bluntly. There was no reason to lie to Selani. "I don't like strangers. I can't find peace with them close to me. So I will move away from you before I rest."

"My daughter is a stranger."

"Your daughter is one stranger. One, I can tolerate. A group is another matter."

"A strange reasoning."

"I'm not human, shih. Don't try to judge me by any standard you're used to."

"I've taken it," he said, using a Selani slang phrase for understood. The Selani language had a kind of thing for the word take . It appeared in many phrases and expressions, even when it made little sense for it to be there. "If I may be so bold, what exactly are you?"

"There's no word for me in your language," he replied. "You can call me a man-cat. That's the closest I can get."

"It seems fitting," he agreed. Denai appeared on the edge of the camp, with a pack on her back and trotting towards them easily. She came up behind her father, who turned to look at her, and then she put her hand to his face in ritual farewell as he did the same with her. "Go with caution, daughter," he warned. "Don't let need for honor cloud your judgement. A wise woman knows when a debt is repaid, and when the greed for honor has taken over."

"I'll be alright, father," she replied easily. "If that one can kill a pack of inu, I don't see much need to worry."

"Be careful all the same," he warned. "We'll sing for you each night until you come home."

"I appreciate that, father," she said with that charming smile. "I'll be home as soon as the debt is repaid."

Tarrin settled his sword a bit on his back, then turned away from them and started off towards the northwest. He'd give them a moment in private, and besides, seeing them like that made him miss his sisters, and his parents, and Triana. It wasn't something he wanted to dwell upon.

Behind him, the Selani camp arose in song. The sound of it was haunting, as a multitude of gentle, soft voices joined together in what sounded to him was a benediction, and a plea for the safe return of their daughter. The sound of it was haunting, complicated, as the many voices joined together to form a choral whole that was stronger than the sum of its parts. It reminded him in a strange way of the Goddess, and the curious choral effect of her voice when she spoke to him, as if no one voice could contain all the power within it. This wasn't the powerful choral quality ofthe Goddess, but the voices carried a strange power of their own. It incited several memories of Allia and her lovely voice, how she would sing for him whenever he was feeling unwell or out of sorts. Her voice was nothing like what he heard behind him, but the sound of it only made his longing for Allia's company that much worse. He closed his ears to that sound, looking down at the ground as he left, picking up his pace to get out of earshot of their lovely song, a song that reminded him of the family he had left behind.