Butler, Octavia - Survivor

Neila came out of the bedroom where she had obviously been listening, and stood staring first at Natahk, then at Jules. Alanna watched them all as though nothing they said had anything to do with her. Jules was bluffing, feeling himself too valuable to be casually murdered. Natahk was bluffing. He might kill others, but he had no intention of killing Alanna. Not yet. Jules was trying to salvage pride, and Natahk was trying to intimidate. A game then. One miscalculation from either of them, and the people would be destroyed because of the outcome of a game.

“Jules…” said Neila softly.

Jules glanced at her.

“You can’t let him…” She went to stand beside Alanna, put an arm around her protectively.

“You won’t do it,” said Jules to Natahk. “You won’t kill my daughter and then expect me to co-operate with you.”

Natahk stood up, stepped toward Alanna, and Alanna deliberately entered the game on Natahk’s side. She stood quickly, as though frightened, and moved so that her chair was between herself and Natahk.

“Jules!” cried Neila once more.

“All right!” Jules was on his feet. “Stop!” For his daughter, for his pleading wife, he could do what he refused to do for himself.

Natahk stopped, looked at him.

“I’ll do as you say. Leave them alone.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll… I’ll try to guide my people in the way you want, help them to accept their new lives… and you.”

“You don’t believe what you’re saying,” said Natahk. “But your saying it is a beginning. You will say it again, and again. You will act as though it was true in order to deceive me. You will deceive yourself instead. Your lie will become truth. You and your people are mine, Verrick.”

Jules said nothing.

“In time,” said Natahk more softly, “you will realize that there is no shame in your submission. I don’t rule this valley through weakness. And all who live here submit to me in one way or another.”

Still, Jules was silent.

Watching him, Natahk whitened slowly, then just as slowly settled back to his normal green. “You are First Missionary then, Verrick. Go out to your people and see that no more of them throw their lives away. Take your wife with you. I want to speak privately with Alanna.”

Alanna had not thought anything could bring Jules’s resistance back so quickly.

“You want to… My God, Natahk, haven’t you done enough? Can’t you leave us any peace at all?”

“I want only to speak with her, Verrick. I won’t harm her as long as you obey me.”

Alanna spoke up quickly. “Jules, it’s all right. I’m not afraid.” She was, but her fear was for him. “Go, please. I’ll be all right.”

Jules stared at her with such a strange mixture of anger and concern that she was confused and silenced.

“My daughter?” he said to Natahk. “My house? You leave me no rights at all, do you, First Hunter?”

“The right to live your life with your family in peace, as long as you obey me. Go.”

Alanna spoke up again. “Please, Jules. Go.”

Jules looked from Natahk to Alanna, and finally to Neila. He gestured Neila to him, but she hesitated.

“Go,” said Alanna urgently. “Don’t let me be the cause of your getting hurt.”

Neila went to Jules and they left the house together. Alanna looked after them sadly. Then she heard Natahk sit down again and she turned to face him. “You are destroying him.”

“If he cannot change, he will be destroyed. He knows that.”

Alanna sighed and sat down. “What do you want of me, Natahk?”

“A narrative. Reasonably detailed, true.”

It was what she had expected—what he had promised her days before. She relaxed a little. “Where shall I begin?”

“With your capture.”

She obeyed, telling her story easily, altering only those facts that would indicate that her husband was something more than a judge.

Natahk questioned her from time to time, but for the most part, he listened. She did not know how much he believed, did not care. She kept to the truth as much as she could because her story was so long. She wanted to be able to tell it over in the same way as many times as Natahk might wish without having to struggle to remember too many lies. But surprisingly, Natahk seemed content with one telling.

“Why are you still here?” he asked when she had finished. “You could have left with the prisoners—should have left with them.”

She looked at him, startled. “Should have?”

“If you intended to rejoin your husband. It was your last chance.”

She shrugged.

“You do not believe me. You still expect your Tehkohn friends to help you, even though you will be on your way south before noon.”

Alanna said nothing. Let him worry. She would have been busy praying herself—if she had been Missionary enough to pray.

“You ask for punishment,” said Natahk. “You challenge.”

“I have said nothing.”

“Yes.” Natahk yellowed slightly. “Even your silences challenge. Why did you stay, Alanna?”

“To help my people.”

“Which group?”

“The Missionaries. Do you think the Tehkohn need my help?”

“And what is it you want to help them do?”

“Live. In spite of your goading. In spite of their beliefs.”

“That is a fragment of truth. Now tell me the rest.”

“I… hoped to free them from the meklah.”

“Why? The meklah does no harm as long as it is eaten regularly.”

“And it does no good. Do you not withhold it to torture your captive Missionaries?”

“We withhold it until they obey-and they learn to obey very quickly. But are you less vulnerable to me because you are free of the meklah? Was your father?”

She did not answer.

“You planned for the Missionaries to leave the valley,” he accused. “It is the only answer. But where were they to go?”

The truth? No. But what lie was possible? “I don’t know.”

He stood and came to face her. “I have not wanted to beat you.”

She did not have to pretend fear. “When Jules talked with the Tehkohn Hao, Diut promised to move the Missionaries to a place of safety if they co-operated. And he promised to have them all killed if they refused.”

Natahk stared at her, unbelieving. “Are you saying that he did nothing more than threaten, and Verrick believed?”

“Yes.”

“Even though Diut was Verrick’s prisoner at the time?”

Alanna manufactured cold anger. “And was he really a prisoner, First Hunter—yours or ours—when you forbade the Missionaries to paint him? When your own people obeyed him? Perhaps you would have believed his threats too if you had ever dared go near enough to him to hear him speak!”

She thought he would hit her. In fact, she expected him to hit her. She feared his strength less than she feared his questions now. But he only stood watching her. “You sided with the blue one, counseled your father to accept his word.”

Again, she did not feel that an answer was necessary.

“Even so, that should not have been enough. There is something missing. Something to do with your husband perhaps?”

“You know Jules doesn’t know about him.” She forced a note of bitterness into her voice. “And he’s out of favor with Diut—because of me. I only wish he did have enough influence to help.”

Natahk made a sound of disgust. “Somehow, you are lying. You are worthless. Gehl was right. She said it would be better to kill you.”

Had she? Then somehow Gehl too had noticed what Alanna could not help noticing. Natahk had b2en careless. But at least now, Alanna knew how to stop his questions. She looked at him calmly. “You are not going to kill me.”

He stared back at her for a moment without speaking. “So you realize that.” He whitened slightly. ”We will speak of it then, in a moment. Were the Missionaries to be taken to the mountain dwelling?”