Still laughing, Naä managed to say: “But it must have been — ” Then she caught herself. “It must have been quite a little rain of slop and garbage!”
“It wasn’t Qualt,” Jallet said.
Naä was surprised that the child’s thoughts had gone like hers to the dump. But then, what else would a town person have thought?
“It wasn’t anybody at all,” Jallet explained, “because the Myetrans got real angry and began to climb the trees and look about, and there wasn’t anybody in them. Nobody had gone up them. And nobody — except the Myetrans — ever came down!”
“I see,” Naä said. “So it just…happened!”
Jallet nodded, with his unsettling glance that, because of the cast, you never knew where it was fixed. But while Naä laughed, she wondered.
Later that evening, though, when she was passing through the common, she saw four Çironians bound before a group of bewildered villagers. As she stopped to watch, the bored officer in his black hood and immobile cloak announced their crime was “mischief against Myetra! For the crime of which, ten lashes each!” Their hands thonged together before them, their clothes torn from their backs, the woman and the three men shuffled from side to side, blinked, and looked frightened. Were they, she wondered suddenly, being lashed for her misdoings? Or Qualt’s? It was the first moment of circumspection she’d had in the heady rush of her mischief. When the first lash fell, little Kenisa, standing next to her and looking very serious, reached up quietly to take Naä’s hand — Naä flinched a moment, so that Kenisa glanced up at her. But then, Naä had already gotten the soap and salt and done the obligatory hand washing earlier at Hara’s house.
Several times and very loudly, the sunset curfew ordinance was read out at all corners of the common.
And finally, in full darkness, Naä was still slipping between the houses and along the back paths behind them, contemplating what more she might do to cause the soldiers inconvenience, when she saw Rahm.
For the first minutes behind the horses, Rahm had stumbled and crouched at the end of the rope. Then he just walked, head low and half bent over. Finally he’d come on behind them, the tall, muscular youth Naä knew as Ienbar’s helper and her friend — almost as if, bit by bit, he’d put aside some mime of weakness he’d been performing for his captors that they had not even bothered to notice. It’s amazing, Naä thought, hurrying on beside, they really haven’t looked at him once.
I could run out, take my knife, slash the rope, and the two of us could be free and off in the dark in seconds! She grasped the knife at her belt, finally pulled it loose. But whenever she squeezed the handle, picturing herself sprinting forward, she felt a glittering web of terror, a web flung up between her and the figures moving through the dark streets.
If I surprised him and he really stumbled or cried out…
If just one of them chose to look back, by chance…
If he or I made some accidental sound…
This bravery of the body in sight of bodies was very different, she realized, from the sort she’d managed earlier, with a camp half asleep under the hottest of the day’s sun.
But still, across the little span of night, not one of the soldiers had actually looked at him, so smug were they in their superiority! Naä was still thinking this when the soldiers, Rahm bound behind them, returned to the common’s edge and started across for the council house. Qualt had been right: the strongest building in the town was now being used as a Myetran prison. She stepped out, then stopped as though the stone wall were only feet in front of her instead of cattycorner across the square. Naä stepped back into the last doorway, to watch the soldiers and her friend mount the ten stone steps and enter the plank door. Torchlight flickered within. She cursed, cursed again. But there was no way to breach those well-set rocks. She turned among the houses and began to hurry down a back street.
Half an hour later, Naä was again among the dark trees, the Myetran camp before her — though, save a cook fire off over there or a line of light under the edge of a tent to the right, it was all but invisible. She crossed between the underbrush and a back wall of canvas, that, bellying with the night’s breeze, gave a snap, then sagged. Moving closer, she heard a voice within:
“Lieutenant Kire, this will stop! I ordered them executed. You had them flogged.”
A softer voice, with a roughness to it almost menacing: “Nactor, my prince — ”
“I want no explanations! You, Kire, have been given a great opportunity, an opportunity allowed to few — to lead a brigade of Myetra. Is this how you use your officer’s privilege? This is how you’d have Myetra known? Were you not so good a soldier with different family connections, things would go badly for you now — very badly. It is only your skill at arms that saves you from my anger.” There was a pause. “It’s dangerous to cross me, Kire. You know that, don’t you?”
“My prince, truly I thought — ”
“What did you think, Kire? At this point I would like to know if you were thinking at all. Personally, I thought you’d lost your mind. Did you think perhaps it was an accident when a fire started in the horse yard? Did you think perhaps it was happenstance when most of three platoons came down with dysentery in the same hour?”
“My prince”—the man’s breath came stiffly, hoarsely, uncomfortably in his throat — “all we know is that it was not the villagers I had flogged who did it. What I thought, my prince, I thought we might…learn something from them — who is responsible for the fire, the water.”
“We could take any one of them from the street and beat that knowledge from him.”
“You’ve tried that, my prince.” He drew a loud frustrated breath. “Sire, these are a peaceful people. They don’t even have a word for weapons. The tactics we are using here are inappropriate — more than inappropriate: wasteful of our time and energy.”
“Peaceful, are they? If they have no word for them, that just means they will be that much cleverer in coming up with weapons you or I would never think to name as such. There have already been attempts at sabotage — ”
“But let me at least try a method that seems to me right for this situation. Let me pick out someone, gain his confidence, then send him among them so that we can learn and direct both. Let me select a man who — ”
“Choose a woman.” Nactor’s voice was hard, almost shrill. “A girl, rather. I am not interested in confidences, Kire. I’m interested in terror, fear, and domination. And she must be terrified of you, Kire — she must know that if she displeases you in the slightest thing, then…you will kill her!” (Near Naä’s cheek the canvas snapped once more. She pulled sharply back, though more at the indifferent cruelty than the surprise. Again she moved forward.) “Peaceful! If they seem peaceful, it is because we have given them no opportunity to be otherwise. Peaceful? Ha! Get this woman. Yes — there are three things you must do to her: bed her, beat her, and let her know her life hangs by no more than your whim, a hair…a hair that can break any moment you decide. Then…well then, use her as you will.” (In the pause, Naä tried to picture the lieutenant’s and the prince’s expressions.) “You understand, Kire: this is an order. Break her, violate her. Then, when you’ve done that, you may use her as you wish for whatever spying — or instruction — you can. And when we depart here, you will kill her — like any other soldier finished with an enemy whore. You’ve disobeyed me once, Kire. If you do it again…”
Naä heard the sounds of boots over matting and hard-packed earth. Canvas scratched against canvas as the flap was pushed back. Kire spoke to a guard: “Go into town, Uk. Take horses and two more men; requisition a portable light from Power Supplies. And bring back some woman of Çiron — ”