Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler Read Free Book Online

rather than a living area. Apparently the Rohkohn made greater use of cloth than did Diut’s Tehkohn, who preferred animal skins almost exclusively for their mats and blankets.
    Within the room some children sat on the floor and played a game with small sticky and smooth stones, while others clustered around the sides of one of the looms listening to a male artisan who was telling them a story. One child—Diut saw at once that it was Choh—stood alone beside the loom of a quietly beautiful artisan female, no doubt telling her of his recent victory. The woman was probably one of his guardians.
    Diut’s size and coloring attracted everyone’s attention at once. Weavers ceased their monotonous work and the children on the floor stopped their game. But this time, in the closed room, no one tried to run. The children waited to see what the adults would do and the adults were apparently not willing to abandon the children as they would have to do if they hoped to escape.
    After a moment of silence, Choh’s foster-mother—who happened, with her bright yellow-green coloring, to be the bluest adult present—stood up and faced Diut.
    “You are the Tehkohn Hao?” She spoke the imperial language flawlessly in spite of fear that she did not even try to hide.
    “So,” answered Diut.
    She looked around the room at the children and other nonfighters, then looked back to Diut. “There is another way out of this room, Tehkohn Hao.”
    “I’m aware of it,” Diut said regretfully. The camouflage here was not as good as in Tahneh’s apartment, and he had just spotted it. But he had noticed something else too. “It leads to a passageway now being searched.” At this depth, no single apartment had a passageway that lead directly to the surface.
    The woman spoke more softly. “If there must be fighting here then, will you let the youngest children be taken out?”
    “No,” Diut said.
    The woman accepted this as though she had expected it. Her eyes half closed as though in pain, she said, “We’re at your command, Tehkohn Hao.”
    Diut sighed. “Get the children off the floor. Keep them well back against the looms with you and they may not be hurt.”
    While other weavers moved to get the young children, the woman continued to face Diut. “We will keep them behind us,” she said quietly.
    Diut accepted this in silence. Choh’s hunter parents had placed him well. For a nonfighter, the woman had rare courage.
    There was a wait that probably seemed longer than it was for the two search parties to come together outside the door of the weavers’ room. Soon, Diut knew, he would have every fighter in the dwelling outside that door. But within the room, he had twelve nonfighter adults and fifteen children. That fact alone might keep the Rohkohn outside for quite a while. It took time to decide to sacrifice nonfighters and children, and there was no doubt that the searchers understood the implied threat of Diut’s fleeing into a room full of defenseless people. Diut had only the ignorance of the Rohkohn in his favor now. They did not know whether the mountain Hao was savage enough to begin slaughtering his prisoners if he were attacked. They did not know whether the first fighter through the door would be met by the hurled body of a dead child. Or most of them did not know. One of them, however, despite their short acquaintance, probably knew Diut dangerously well.
    The door opened silently, slowly, and the Rohkohn Hao stepped through it with no attempt at camouflage.
    Tahneh understood the situation at a glance—that glance being all the looking around she allowed herself in the presence of a desperate Hao. Diut had harmed no one, had permitted the nonfighters to shield the children.
    The sight comforted her somehow, reassured her that she was not alone in her dangerous foolish sentimentality. The fact that he had taken hostages in his position showed that he had decided to die. The only thing hostages could buy him was death,