Treason by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online

looked rough, but their clothing seemed to be the vestiges of a uniform.
    “Soldiers of Allison, I see,” I answered, trying to sound glad to see them.
    The one with his head in a bandage answered with a sick smile. “Ay, if there yet be an Allison, with black inkers loose to rule.”
    So the Nkumai had won, or were winning.
    The shorter one, who couldn’t take his eyes off my bosom, chimed in with a voice that sounded rusty, as if for lack of use. “Will you travel with two old soldiers?”
    I smiled. Mistake. They had me half-stripped before they realized that I knew how to use my dagger and was not playing games. The short one got away, but from the way his leg was bleeding I didn’t think he’d get far. The tall one lay on his back in the road with his eyes rolled up in his head, as if to say, “And after all I lived through, I have to die like this .” I closed his eyes.
    But they had given me my entry into the first town.
    “Andy Apwit’s mother’s garter, little woman, you look half dead.”
    “Oh no,” I told the man at the inn. “Half raped, perhaps.”
    As he put a blanket around my shoulders and led me upstairs, he chuckled to me, “Half dead you may be, but rape’s an all or nothing thing, lady.”
    “Tell that to my bruises,” I answered. The room he showed me to was small and poor, but I doubted there was much better in the town. He washed my feet before he left; an unusual custom, and he was so gentle it tickled unbearably, but I felt much better when he was through. A custom we could encourage the lower classes to adopt in Mueller, I thought at the time. Then I imagined Ruva washing somebody’s feet, and laughed.
    “What’s funny?” he asked, looking irritated.
    “Nothing. I’m from far parts, and we have no such gracious custom as to wash feet of travelers.”
    “Be damned if I’d do it for everybody. Where you be from, little woman?”
    I smiled. “I’m not sure what’s proper diplomatic procedure. Let us say I’m a woman from a land where women are not used to being attacked on the road—but where they’re also not used to such kind concern from a stranger.”
    He lowered his eyes in humility. “As the Book says, ‘To the poor give comfort, and cleansing, and care better than to the rich.’ I but do my duty, little woman.”
    “But I’m not poor,” I said. He stood up abruptly. I hastened to reassure him. “At home we have a house with two rooms.”
    He smiled patronizingly. “Ay, a woman of such a land as yours might well call that comfort.” When he left I was relieved that there was a bar on the door.
    In the morning I had a pauper’s portion at breakfast—larger than anyone else in the family. The innkeeper, his wife, and his two sons, both much younger than I, urged me not to travel alone. “Take one of my lads with you. I wouldn’t have you losing your way.”
    “It won’t be hard, from here, to find the capital?”
    The innkeeper glowered. “Do you mock us?”
    I shrugged, trying to look innocent. “How could such a question be a mockery?”
    The woman placated her husband. “She’s a stranger, and plainly untaught in the Path.”
    “We here don’t go to the capital,” a boy helpfully informed me. “That’s lost to God, it is, and we stay away from such gaudy doings.”
    “Then so shall I,” I said.
    “Besides,” said the father, huffily, “the capital is sure to be full of inkers.”
    I didn’t know the word. I asked him.
    “The black sons of Andy Apwit,” he answered. “From Inkumai.”
    Must mean Nkumai. Victory for the blacks, then. Ah well.
    I left after breakfast, my clothing mended very neatly by the innkeeper’s wife. The older of the two boys accompanied me. His name was No-fear. For the first mile or so I queried him about his religion. I’d read about that sort of thing, but had never met anyone who actually believed it, aside from burial rituals and marriage ceremonies. I was surprised at the things his parents had taught