Twissel had stopped and was looking at her oddly. “Go on,” Danner said, and forced herself to concentrate on Twissel’s estimate of numbers and speed. Not listening did not make the truth go away: her people, eleven of her people, had been butchered. $he should never have sent them. She should not have split her forces. It was her fault. Her people were dead because she had let them down.
But what else could she have done? She could not have foreseen that the storm would lead to malfunction. But maybe she shouldhave expected the unknown. They had spent too long down here, too long believing the natives to be harmless. Too long getting soft.
Recriminations would have to wait. For now, she would learn what she could. There were still half‑a‑hundred personnel here to take care of.
“And you didn’t find White Moon’s body, you say?”
“No, ma’am. But there were some that… well, after the tribes had finished with them, I doubt their mothers would recognize them.”
Danner chewed that over. “Why, Twissel? Why did these savages do this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take a guess. They must have had reasons.” Her voice was harsh.
“I don’t think they did.” Twissel’s voice was flat, dull. “Request permission to see that medic now, ma’am.”
“Permission granted.”
Twissel stood.
“And, Twissel…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You did a remarkable job. Without you Dogias would have died, and Chauhan probably. No one will forget what you did. I’ll want to talk to you again soon, but try to rest now, and be assured that you did everything you could have done. Everything.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Twissel sounded as though she did not care what Acting Commander Hannah Danner thought, and Danner did not blame her.
Danner looked at Marghe, who looked right back. Even the representative’s eyes looked different, with that scar above the eyebrow. How did she fit into all this? Perhaps she could explain the massacre. There hadto be a reason. There was always a reason.
That would have to wait.
She punched Kahn’s code into her wristcom. “Sergeant, as soon as communications with Port Central are reestablished, I want you to request Nyo for satellite tracking of hostiles, estimated number one hundred twenty, last known position at the relay last night during the storm, and heading north. Estimated speed fifteen kilometers per hour. And advise Sigrid that weather information now has top, repeat, top priority.”
She hit OFF. “Now,” she said, turning to Marghe, “I want you to tell me, as plainly as possible, what has happened to you since you left here and why you’re here now, while we walk over to see how Letitia is doing.”
“Part of the message was missing…” Danner stopped five feet away from the closed flap of the hospital tent, Marghe watched understanding flatten the Mirror’s expression, bring a flush to her cheeks. “You mean all this”–Danner waved at the sleds, the stretchers leaning drunkenly against the walls–“all this was a mistake?”
“Yes. But not my mistake.”
Hiam stepped out of the tent, wiping her hands on her bloody whites. “What mistake?”
Danner ignored her. “Whose, then? You were the one who deliberately stopped taking the stuff. You. No one else.”
“I don’t understand,” Hiam said, looking from one to the other. “Are you talking about the FN‑17?”
“Yes,” Marghe said tiredly. “How’s Letitia?”
“She’s stable. Tell me about the FN‑17.” Hiam was very still, very white. Marghe knew this was going to be hard.
“The FN‑17 worked. Or at least, it worked as long as I took it.”
“But you said, your message said…” Hiam looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand.”
”The message that reached Danner wasn’t complete. The part that was missing explained that I’d chosen to stop taking the vaccine.”
“But why?”
Marghe wondered how long it would take for Sara’s puzzlement to turn to anger. “I was alone in Ollfoss, with about thirty days’ worth of vaccine left, facing a journey to Port Central that would take longer than that, if it was possible at all, which it wasn’t.”
“If you hadn’t insisted on going there in the first place, this wouldn’t have come up.” Danner’s voice was shaking.“But no, you had to go galloping off there in the dead of winter.”
“If I was going to learn anything, I had to go north. And it had to be winter: I only had six months.” That all seemed so long ago. Blame Company, she wanted to say. If they hadn’t landed me in autumn, I wouldn’t have had to go up there in the harshest season. But she said nothing. Danner knew all this, or ought to.
“But you could have kept taking it,” Hiam said. “To see. You could have kept taking it.”
“No. Thenike told me–”
“Thenike?”
“My partner. She said the adjuvants were poisoning me, that–”
“What does a savage know about adjuvants?”
“That ‘savage’ is my partner.” She spoke very softly. “And she knew enough to save Letitia’s life.” There was a small silence while Hiam opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, and Danner slapped her gauntlets against her thigh, over and over. “Thenike said the adjuvants were making my body weak. And I needed to be as strong as I could be, to make sure that the virus, when it came, didn’t kill me.”
Danner stopped slapping. “It wouldn’t have come if you’d taken the damn vaccine.”
Marghe did not bother to answer that. “Sara, for you it was months of hard work–”
“Years.”
“Years, then. For me it was my life. But it worked, Sara. It worked.”
“Yes,” Sara said bitterly. “And that does us a lot of good now. Shall I call the Kursttomorrow, and tell them? No? No. Because they wouldn’t believe me. Because their spy has already told them it doesn’t work, and I’m down here. Contaminated.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She laughed, a sharp bark. “So am I.” She lifted the hospital flap to go back in. “Tomorrow, when I’ve more time, I want you to tell me everything. About the vaccine, the virus, your pregnancy, everything.”
It was evening, and Marghe was leaning against a fencepost, watching the Singing Pasture horses, when Thenike joined her.
“You look tired,” Marghe said. “How’s Letitia now?”
Thenike slid an arm round Marghe’s waist and leaned her cheek on Marghe’s shoulder. “Steadier. She’s strong, and the doctor knows well enough what to do.” Thenike’s bare skin felt cool; the night was warm and soft. A fly buzzed nearby. “And you?”
“Angry,” They called you savage. “At Danner, at Hiam. At whatever disturbed those message stones,” Nothing she could do about that now. She let her breath go in a rush, “Danner’s going to be even angrier when she hears our idea.”
“What do the others make of it–Cassil, Holle, T’orre Na?”
“I don’t know yet. I wanted us both to speak to them, together. They’re waiting.”
But neither of them moved for a while; the night was soft and spicy and peaceful, and the talking that lay ahead would go on until morning. They watched the horses flicking their tails at the flies.
The late afternoon sun was a hot, orangey red, and the shadows of the seven women were beginning to lengthen. Danner stared at the other six one by one, at Cassil and T’orre Na, at Day and the one from Singing Pastures, Holle, at Marghe and Thenike. She could not believe what she was hearing.