Alanna closed her eyes again, not thinking about the time gone, not thinking about anything. Only enjoying the sensation of peace, the near-absence of pain.
“I have water,” said Neila, “and some broth, meklah-free. Do you think you can take it now?”
She could. Somehow she forced herself to drink slowly. She was as weak as though she had fasted for weeks, but even at that, her condition was not as bad as it had been after her first withdrawal.
Jules came in as she was swallowing a little broth, and for some reason, Natahk was with him. Alanna could only stare her hatred at the Garkohn and wonder why he was there.
Jules said small meaningless things and managed to let her know that he was glad to see her alive. Natahk only shook his head—one of the Missionary gestures he had picked up. He spoke quietly.
“It is unthinkable that anyone should be able to do this twice.” He came closer and touched her with his offensive careless intimacy. “How is it that we did not notice you before we lost you to the Tehkohn?”
She was not yet alert enough for his openness to frighten her. She only glared at him, then appealed with her eyes to Jules and Neila to get him out of her room. Natahk saw the appeal and understood it.
“You would like them to send me away? I will go soon. I only wished to see for myself that my hunters’ reports of you were true.” He was secure. He did not even look at Jules, who was now behind him. He spoke again, softly. “Shall I leave you as you are now, free of the meklah, the only one of your kind granted such freedom?”
She turned her face away from him, wondering furiously who had given her away. Jules? Neila? Nathan? Who had failed to notice the concealed listening Garkohn. The thought of yet another withdrawal made her sick with fear. She would readily have begged, groveled before Natahk if she had thought it would do any good. The four-day ordeal had drained her pride away. But it had not stripped her of her knowledge of the Kohn. She faced him again, carefully showing only her real anger and hatred. She managed a whisper.
“Leave me free or kill me!”
He stared at her silently for a long moment, giving no sign of his feelings. “And still you challenge,” he said finally. “When you’re fully recovered, Alanna, we must talk. You have much to tell me. I’m leaving now, but in a few days, I’ll return with questions for you. Keep your freedom until then, and think on what you would do to keep it longer.”
He turned and left the room. Jules moved so quickly to follow him that Alanna almost missed the look of cold rage on her foster father’s face.
For a moment, she was aware of loud arguing from the next room. Jules’s voice and Natahk’s raised against each other. She did not understand what they said, nor did she care. She could not even make herself worry about Natahk’s threats now that he had left her alone. She was too tired. She drifted off into much-needed sleep.
Not until noon the next day when Alanna got up—against Nathan’s orders—did she begin to take a real interest in anything outside herself. She was still weak, still hoarse. She had bruises and sore muscles, but none of that mattered. Something had happened between the Garkohn and the colonists. She had to know what it was. She found Jules sitting alone in the cabin’s main room.
“It’s simple,” he told her. “Natahk’s guards reported my meeting with Diut. Then they reported Diut’s escape. Natahk connected the two and decided that I had let his prize prisoner escape.”
“With all his guards looking on?”
“Oh yes,” said Jules bitterly. “It was all some Tehkohn trick, you see, and I was in on it. I told him it was a lot more likely that some of his own people had let Diut get away—out of respect for the blue.”
“And?”
“He lit up the room. Brightest yellow I’ve ever seen. I think a lot of his rage came out of his knowledge that I might be right. He questioned me about my talk with Diut. I had to tell him something so I told him Diut had accused him of kidnapping our people. He not only admitted that it was true, but he told me he had us too. Confirmed everything Diut said against him.”
Alanna sighed, nodded. “Well, at least now you can be sure.”
Jules went on with increasing bitterness. “He said he wanted me to understand exactly what the situation was so that I wouldn’t endanger my people by following any instructions Diut had given. He said it was unfortunate that I couldn’t have been content with things as they were, because now he had to take away even the limited authority that he had let me exercise over my people.” Jules took a deep breath and the rage that Alanna had only glimpsed the day before was back, intensified. “My people! People I worked over half my life to save. People who trusted me! I’ll kill Natahk before I let him get away with this!”
Alanna sympathized silently. But Jules’s anger, like her own, would have to wait. Now the Garkohn would watch him more closely than ever, and they would be less tolerant about what they permitted him to do.
“Jules, this means you can’t go through with your withdrawal.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“They’ll be watching you! My God, if they found out about my withdrawal, you know they’ll find out about yours.”
“Possibly.”
“They’ll readdict you—at least. They might not even let you get all the way through. You’re a lot more important to them than I am. Natahk will see your freedom as a threat to his control over the settlement.”
“You might be right,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter. The whole idea of my withdrawing now was to test your hypnosis idea. I didn’t want to ask anyone else to serve as a guinea pig, and now, I don’t want to expose anyone else to Natahk’s anger if he finds out what we’re doing.”
She looked at him closely. He was sitting in his chair near the fireplace, his body limp, seemingly relaxed, his hands first clasped, then moving nervously. He was pale and the lines in his face seemed more deeply etched.
“You’re in withdrawal.”
He nodded. “I haven’t eaten anything since early yesterday evening.”
