Walking into the bedroom behind Tandro showed Jake a girl who lay curled up on the slave pallet with no expression on her face. If her eyes hadn’t been open Jake might have thought that Ennie was asleep, but then she seemed to pull out of her thoughts and sat up to look toward both of the men. But still with that same lack of expression…

“How are you doing, girl?” Jake asked, trying to sound friendly and somewhat concerned. “What happened yesterday was hard on you, we know, so both my brother and I want to make sure you’re all right.”

“If you’re talking about the way I threw up, I’m completely over the sickness,” the girl answered without actually looking at Jake. “I’ve never seen anyone killed before, especially not like that, so it made me sick. If something like that happens again, I just won’t look.”

“That’s … very wise of you,” Jake said after exchanging a glance with Tandro. The other man didn’t like the girl’s answer any more than Jake did, and what she’d said had nothing to do with the problem. It was the way she spoke, as if all the life had gone out of her… “Yes, very wise of you, but you still seem bothered about something. Why don’t you tell us what the something is, and we’ll see if we can help take care of the problem.”

The girl hesitated long enough to remind Jake about the way Tain had refused to answer a similar question, but apparently Ennie was the kind to make a different decision.

“There’s nothing bothering me that can ever be taken care of,” the girl replied after the pause, still not looking at either Jake or Tandro. “I’ve had to make myself understand that there’s no one anywhere who will ever really care about me, and it doesn’t even matter why that is. I’ve been fighting all my life trying to change that, but nothing I do has worked. Now I’m too tired to fight any more, so what happens to me from now on doesn’t matter. From now on even I won’t care about me.”

Once she finished speaking the girl lay down again, her eyes still open but apparently seeing nothing but inner visions. Tandro’s face looked pale and drawn, and when Jake only hesitated a moment before leaving the room again, Tandro followed.

“Now what?” Tandro said to Jake once they were in the common area, a plea for help rather than a demand. “I’ve never heard a slave say anything like that, and I don’t know what to do to pull her out of it.”

“You and me both,” Jake muttered, rubbing his face with one hand. “I wish I could say it was your problem and just walk away, but I can’t do that, can I? The only thing I can think of to do is talk to Tain and ask her opinion. They’re both females, after all, so maybe Tain can think of something that we can’t. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

Tandro nodded with what looked like faint hope, so Jake left the man and went to his own bedroom. When he opened the door he was startled to find Tain lying in the middle of the floor on her back staring up at the ceiling, and all at once Jake remembered the state he’d left her in.

“Is it lunchtime already?” she asked suddenly before Jake could blurt out some kind of demand about how she was feeling. “Time does fly when you’re having fun, and now I imagine you want an answer to the question you asked before you left.”

“Are you going to give me that answer?” Jake put cautiously as he moved closer to look down at the woman. “I noticed how disturbed you were before I left, so if you need a little more time—”

“I wasn’t disturbed, I was in shock,” Tain interrupted to correct him, her blue eyes holding his gaze with what looked like no trouble at all. “Being forced to act like that almost killed me when I finally knew what was going on again, so I’ve decided to give you the information you want. After all, it doesn’t make much of a difference now.”

“What is it that doesn’t make a difference?” Jake asked, for some reason now almost dreading what she would say. “If keeping quiet was all that important to you, maybe I shouldn’t have insisted—”

“But you did insist, so now you get to hear what I didn’t want to talk about before this,” Tain interrupted again, and Jake had the impression she was controlling some kind of anger. “What was bothering me was being this close to you and having to act like your slave, because I’ve always found you more attractive than I could handle. Does that tell you what you want to know?”

“I—don’t understand,” Jake responded as he crouched down beside the woman, part of him silently admitting that he didn’t want to understand. “If you find me as attractive as I find you, we can both relax and enjoy our time together instead of fighting about every little thing. If, that is, you … still feel … the same about…”

The humorless smile curving her lips answered his question even before he finished it, making Jake feel as if someone had punched him hard in the middle. He’d been an idiot with the woman he felt so attracted to, and instead of making things better between them he’d managed to kill the interest she hadn’t wanted to admit.

So what other brilliant ideas would he find it possible to come up with to make things even worse…?

“I … think we’re going to have to talk about that later,” Jake finally got out, now very much relieved that there was an actual problem to discuss with Tain. “At the moment I have to ask your advice about something, and I sincerely hope you can help. There’s … something wrong with Ennie, and I don’t have a clue about how to handle it.”

“What do you mean, there’s something wrong with the girl?” Tain asked, a small frown denting her forehead. “Is she still bothered about the attack yesterday?”

“No, she says that isn’t the problem,” Jake responded at once, encouraged by Tain’s immediate concern. “When I asked about what was bothering her, she said something about no one ever caring about her and now even she doesn’t care. It’s almost as if she’s given up on life, and that isn’t good.”

The frown creasing Tain’s forehead deepened as she sat up, but then she looked directly at Jake.

“There’s a good chance the girl has given up on life, and oddly enough I’d guess that being a slave has little or nothing to do with it,” Tain told him. “If you get to the point in life where you suddenly realize that no one has ever cared about you and no one probably ever will, the understanding leaves you very little to live for. Just existing for the sake of existing isn’t enough to keep you going.”

“I’m glad to see you understand the problem,” Jake said, forcibly keeping himself from smoothing back Tain’s hair. “Now all you have to do is tell me how to solve the problem, or else volunteer to do the solving yourself. The girl may not believe that Tandro and I care, not after the way she’s been treated, but you ought to be a different story.”

“I’m no different from you two, and chances are I’m worse,” Tain said with a shake of her head. “Ennie was supposed to be my partner, but all I did was treat her like an unwanted burden. If you want me to talk to her I’m willing to try, but I don’t really expect it to do any good.”

“The only thing we can do is try,” Jake said, rising from his crouch to hold a hand out to Tain. “Let’s go and talk to her and see what happens.”

Tain gave a small shrug before getting to her feet, making absolutely no effort to take Jake’s hand. She’d pretended not to see the offered help, but Jake knew it was an unwillingness to touch him that had made her stand up alone and that thought turned his hand into a fist of frustration. Well, he and Tain would still have the rest of the day to talk about their own problem. Right now there was someone else to think about.

Jake opened the door into the common area, almost pausing to let Tain go first before he realized that the woman was waiting for him to go first. Her actions were perfectly in keeping with the required behavior of a slave, and if Tandro hadn’t been hovering just outside the door Jake might have groaned. Tain was behaving exactly the way she was supposed to, but suddenly that didn’t suit Jake at all.