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her with curiosity. Innocent dangerous curiosity.
CHAPTER THREE
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We captured Alanna along with eight others of her kind and twelve Garkohn. The Garkohn, we knew,
would die during their period of cleansing. They had been dependent on the meklah for too many
generations ever to be cleansed. But as far as we knew, their strange new allies, who called themselves
Missionaries, had only just come to the poison. We thought some of them might survive.
I realized later that if I had separated the Missionaries from the Garkohn shut them in different rooms
for cleansing more Missionaries might have lived. As it was, they were unnerved by the fatalism of the
Garkohn. Alanna said later that several of them gave up their lives almost without a struggle when they
saw how completely the Garkohn had given up.
As it was though, I knew almost nothing of the Missionaries. They had joined themselves with the
Garkohn and I had decided to treat them as Garkohn until they proved otherwise. Only Alanna gave me
the proof I sought. Only she lived.
When the five-day period of cleansing was over, I went to the room where she and the others had been
held. My fighters were cleaning the room and clearing out the corpses for burning. I saw her, strangely
colored, furless, very thin after her ordeal, covered with filth. I thought she was dead, but as I was about
to turn away from her, she moved. I brought her water from a pot on one of the carts my hunters had
brought in. The water was for washing the room, but none of it had been used yet. I knelt beside Alanna,
spoke to her in Garkohn.
"Can you understand me, Missionary?"
She turned her face to me weakly and I could see that it was cut and bruised. Her eyes were swollen
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shut. I supposed that she was still in pain. There is no gentle way to rid one's body of the poison and
become clean.
She made a sound that was not a word and I realized that she could not speak. She had become so hoarse
from screaming in pain that her voice was temporarily gone. From my cupped hands, I gave her water to
drink. She swallowed it eagerly. I would not let her have as much as she wanted or let her drink it as
quickly as she wanted. I had seen enough of my Tehkohn survive the meklah to know how easily she
could make herself sick again.
I looked around the room at my fighters. "Who captured this Missionary?" I asked.
"I did," said one of my judges. Jeh. He was loading the body of a Garkohn huntress onto the cart that
would take the dead out for burning. He threw the dead woman onto the cart and came over to us. He is
a friend, Jeh. We were children together, though he is older. I sided with him when he broke tradition
and began a liaison and then a marriage with the huntress Cheah. He is a well-colored judge, and she, a
well-colored huntress. Neither of their clans wished to have them marry out. But they fought all
challengers for their right to do so, in accordance with ancient custom. When they had each beaten their
challengers and the people continued to complain, I said "Enough." I was still very young then but the
people obeyed me. Jeh and Cheah were left alone. Now Jeh looked down at the Missionary he had
captured.
"I thought she might live," he said. "She almost took my eyes when I caught her. And three days ago,
Cheah and I found her crawling out of this room."
"She found her own way out?"
"Yes. By accident perhaps."
"Or perhaps not. Her people may not all be as blind as our watchers think."
"None of them saw our watchers."
I let my body whiten a little. "None saw them and knew them as Tehkohn, no. But to people as different
as this one," I touched Alanna with my foot, "Tehkohn and Garkohn must look much alike."
"Our watchers say this one is the daughter of the Missionary leader."
"So? That may be important in the future if you can keep her alive now."
"Cheah and I will care for her if you wish."
I flashed positive white. "It would be best for fighters to care for her now. You will be able to handle her
when her strength returns."
He looked from Alanna to me. "Aside from tending her injuries, what care shall we give her?"
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