Treason by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page B

see his life pass before him. But that would have compromised my disguise. Now, standing bare-breasted awaiting the torture, it occurred to me that my disguise wouldn’t last long if my wounds started to heal before their eyes.
    “Be quiet,” the captain of the troop said in a mellifluous, educated voice. “You knew you were supposed to register three weeks ago. This won’t hurt.”
    I glared at him. “Let me go from this post or you’ll pay with your life,” I said. It was hard work to keep my voice high and feminine, and to sound like my threat was just bluster when in point of fact I was certain I could kill him in three seconds if I could get my hands loose—thirty if I stayed tied.
    “I’m an emissary,” I said, for the dozenth time since they took me, “from Bird—”
    “So you’ve said,” he answered mildly, and he beckoned to the soldier who was heating the brand. They were too calm. They meant this to be a show to last for some time. My only hope was to provoke them to anger, so they’d damage me too much, too quickly. Perhaps then the punishment would be swift, and they’d carry away what they thought was my dead body.
    I didn’t have to pretend to be enraged, of course. In Mueller we only branded sheep and cattle. Even our slaves remained unmarked. So when the grinning Nkumai brought the red-hot brand near my stomach, I howled in fury—hoping my voice sounded somewhat womanly—and kicked him in the groin hard enough to castrate a bull. He screamed. I noticed briefly that the kick had torn my skirt. Then the captain hit me in the head with the flat of his sword, and I was out.
    I woke soon after in a dark room with no windows—just a small hole in the roof for light and a heavy wooden door. My head ached only a little, and I was afraid that I had been unconscious so long my quick healing would have given away the truth. But no, it had only been a few minutes. My body was still only half healed from the beating they must have given me after I was out.
    They were disciplined troops. Even angry, they hadn’t tried to rape me—I was still dressed as I had been, stripped to the waist but otherwise still covered. I quickly pulled the torn blouse back into place, still gaudy but no longer dazzling. It was so tight there was no hope of refastening it or even doubling it over, but all my wounds were on my back, and the tear was down the front, so it did the job well enough, serving my need, not of modesty, but of concealment of my wounds.
    Someone knocked timidly. “Here to treat your wounds, ma’am,” said a soft girl’s voice.
    “Go away! Don’t touch me!” I tried to sound adamant, but probably ended up merely hysterical. Whether the would-be nurse was of Nkumai or Allison made no difference. When she found wounds that looked days instead of minutes old, all bets would be off. Even in the unlikely event that they had heard no rumors of Muellers’ regenerating powers, they’d know something strange was up. There’d be a complete examination, and even if I castrated myself first, they’d realize my anatomy was at least somewhat confused.
    The girl spoke once more, and again I ordered her away, telling her this time that a woman of Bird allowed no foreign man or woman to touch her blood. Again, I was improvising some sort of cultural folderol to meet my present need, but I had studied folkways and rituals in school and pursued it somewhat more than the curriculum required—enough to get a sense, perhaps, of what kinds of things were sacred or tabu in other places. Women’s blood—primarily menstrual, but extending to all female blood—was more likely to be invested with holiness or dread than even the bodies of the dead.
    Whether it was a local tabu about bleeding women or the hysteria in my voice, the girl went away, and again I waited in the stifling room. The tickling of my back told me that my wounds were completely healed now, scabbed or scarred. I began searching for ways to