She said nothing, let him go off to bed thinking he had hurt her. Surprisingly, he had.
Natahk’s hunters let her in to see the prisoners without trouble. By now, they were probably used to allowing Missionaries to go in and try to convince the Tehkohn to eat.
The captives did not bother to look up at her as she entered. Their prison was a single large room with walls and ceiling of rough wood and a floor of hard-packed earth. It had a few tiny windows near the ceiling—enough to let in a little light and air. None of the captives brightened the room further with their personal luminescence. None of them wasted energy in any way at all. They sat or lay on the floor, silent and unmoving. Alanna spoke to them bluntly in Tehkohn.
“If I bring you food and guarantee it safe, will you eat?”
There was a long silence. Finally a judge near her answered quietly. “We will not eat.” No one contradicted him.
Alanna faced him. “Can you believe that I would poison you?”
“We don’t know.”-His coloring became dimly iridescent with indecision. “We don’t know who you are, Alanna.”
“So,” she said softly. She could have taken offense. The judge had insulted her by questioning her loyalty. Another Tehkohn, even of a lower clan, could probably have made the judge apologize. Alanna might have been able to do it herself, but it would accomplish nothing. The captives would still refuse to eat, would still doubt her. They would simply keep their doubts to themselves.
Now all three groups had questioned her loyalty—Garkohn, Missionary, and Tehkon. No one knew who she was except Diut. What would she do, she wondered bleakly, if he began to doubt. She spoke again to the Tehkohn.
“Is there nothing that I can do for you… to ease your wait?”
“Nothing that you would be permitted to do.”
There was nothing more to be said. She turned to go.
“Alanna!” The voice was quick and just a little louder than necessary. Loud enough to shift everyone’s attention to the speaker, a small well-colored huntress. Cheah, her name was. She rose to her feet in one swift motion, and came to stand before Alanna. It was she who with her judge-husband Jeh had found Alanna sprawled in the doorway of the Tehkohn prison room. It was she whom Alanna had lived to kill. And yet they had become friends. Cheah was raucous and Alanna quiet, but somehow they enjoyed each other’s company—and admired each other’s savagery.
“We have heard what the Garkohn did to you,” said the huntress.
Alanna lifted her head slightly, stifling a rush of humiliation. “It is undone. And the Garkohn will pay.”
“Didn’t I say it!” Cheah looked around at the other prisoners, her body suddenly shimmering triumphant in the room’s half light.
“Many things may be said,” muttered a hunter off to Cheah’s left. Alanna looked at him and saw by his poor coloring that he had made a mistake. Perhaps his hunger had made him careless.
“So?” Cheah looked at him coldly. “Talk is not enough for you? Shall we discuss it another way?”
But the hunter had realized his mistake. His body was already fading to yellow in the slow way that signified submission to a more powerful person. Cheah was not only well-colored, but she had lived up to her coloring by earning an impressive reputation as a fighter, and when necessary, a killer. Her size did not deceive those who knew her.
“Alanna has suffered as we have,” said Cheah to the group. “You understand what I mean. And now, she offers help and ignores your insults in order to prove what she should not have to prove.” She lowered her voice abruptly and the others leaned forward to hear. But her words were not for them. “I know who you are, Alanna. And if you bring food, I will eat.”
Alanna smiled, stepped to Cheah, and touched the back of her hand briefly to one side of the huntress’s face in a gesture of friendship. Then Alanna turned and left the building, barely able to conceal her elation.
Cheah had given her a victory. Alanna would bring enough food for all the prisoners, and Cheah would eat, would taste everything. Then she would fast. She knew what to do. When the others saw that she suffered no ill effects, they would eat too.
Cheah’s confidence in Alanna had restored Alanna’s wavering confidence in herself—in her ability to play two separate roles. As long as she had Cheah’s support among the Tehkohn prisoners and Jules’s support among the Missionaries, she had a chance.
And when Natahk returned, things would become even more complicated. She would have to play three roles. But she could do it. She would do it.
She hurried back to the Verrick cabin to get food for the captives.
CHAPTER SIX
Alanna
I had managed to avoid the Tehkohn Hao for most of my first season with the Tehkohn. It had not been hard since he lived in a different section of the dwelling and since people who wanted to see him usually had to go to him. I had not wanted to see him—although I was probably lucky I did, when I did. I had just hit one hunter with a stone—he had earned the blow—and I was about to face his friend. I would have had to fight, and though I was careful not to show it, I was afraid. Hunters were trained to kill with their hands and they possessed great strength. Also, even if I fought this hunter and won, how many of his friends would I have to fight? How many others would leap to his defense as he was coming to the defense of his fallen friend?
Then Diut stepped in and the confrontation was over. I was grateful to him but my gratitude did not make it any easier for me to look at him or be near him. He was a monster—as much a mutant as the Clayarks back on Earth—though among the Kohn people, his was a desirable mutation. He was huge and physically powerful, and hideous. No Missionary could have called him a caricature of the “true” human shape. He was more an intensification of everything nonhuman in the Kohn. And somehow, that made him seem alien even among them. With all that, though, I considered the fear and revulsion I felt for him to be foolish and dangerous. For one thing, he had done nothing to me, had shown no interest in me since that first night in Jeh and Cheah’s apartment. Clearly he
