"None, madam."
"Isn't there anything I can say or do to—"
"Remember, you told me just a minute ago you were not the type of woman who entreats!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE ENMESHING OF THE MASTER
She fell silent, biting her full lip. Something in her eyes shamed the man. Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had come out a winner in this, their first encounter. A woman—one of the despised, ignored creatures—had deceived him. She had disobeyed his orders. She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that she would never leave Nissr alive. And last, she had forced him into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew—falsehoods the secret of which only she shared with him.
Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he had been obliged to have something in common—to have much. Something existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched itself between these two—the first secret this man ever had shared with any woman.
"Captain Alden" smiled a little. The honors of war, so far, lay all in her camp.
The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken, yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation with a stern command:
"Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury. I trust it is not causing you any severe pain?"