He saw how he had committed himself. He was not a coward, to back away. He was not in Kais Tain, where marriage was singular and women, but not men, could die for a mere suspicion of infidelity.

To what, then, had he agreed? To a night under a roof? To a lifetime, and two women? And a breach with all the customs of the west? His father would be appalled.

“I am not an’i Keran,” he said.

“Once we sleep together, you are,” Hati said, and added a confidence which sent a warmth through him that was by no means the sinking sun: “I am initiate.”

Did they not say, for a proverb of the unfindable, a Kerani virgin? The women of that tribe took care there were none. But she had not called herself wife, or widow. She had not had a man before him.

No one but the au’it had slept near him. But when next they pitched the tents Hati unrolled her mat next to his. Without a word, assuming the right, she lay down in her robes and her veil.

Not until a roof, he had said, but he had given her a certain right by the agreement they had made together, and he had no notion quite what to do to prevent this steady, purposeful assault on his senses.

With the furnace-warm air blowing through the open sides of the tent, she turned on her side facing him. He turned on his back and stared at the canvas above them.

Above it the noon sun was a light shining through the heavy fabric, and the sideless tent billowed and bucked in occasional gusts. A rope needed tightening. But that was the slaves’ job, not his. It was the master’s job to see to it.

It was better to be here, lying at ease, than riding against the furnace-hot wind.

It was better to have a woman than to be alone.

He had no wish to drive her away. He had no wish to end this proposal in a quarrel before they had even shared a bed.

A hand touched his. Her fingers ran from his open palm to his arm and his shoulder. He lay still and ignored her enticement, finding it on the one hand pleasant and on the other vexing, an assault on his mind, as well as his body.

Suddenly, subtly, the voices spoke. He heard them and knew what stopped her hand wandering, what made her rest a moment, too, eyes shut… every line of her expression said she hated that intrusion, resented it, detested its timing.

He observed the strong cast of her unveiled face, the long, slim hand that rested on a breast breathing hard, the offended pride of a woman who had been cast out, humiliated, but not broken.

The voices dinned in his own ears, Marak, Marak, Marak.