ow long it would take the Alanna warriors to get to her--she had
no idea where she was, other than in a hospital--so she decided she had
better get dressed.

Doing so replaced what fear her exercises had left with sheer
frustration. To begin with, bandages made clothes that had fit
comfortably before so snug they would have been hard to get into even
if she'd had her hands free instead of in casts. As it was, the effort
of just getting them on, not to mention closing the buttons and zippers
she preferred to magseals, was more of a challenge than she appreciated
right then.

Not too long after she managed to make herself presentable, four
warriors wearing Alanna arms on their drab coveralls--and more heavily
armed than usual for peacetime--entered her room. She bowed to them,
acutely conscious of the scab forming on her cheek. They didn't return
the courtesy, of course; instead, two of them secured her arms behind
her back. They weren't especially gentle, but she was obscurely
pleased that they also weren't as rough as she'd expected them to be
with an oathbreaker.

And during the flight to the Alanna clanhome, she was both pleased and
a little puzzled by the warriors' continuing lack of overt hostility.
Even given the ingrained politeness of a Sandeman, she would have
expected some jostling, or unpleasant comments.

The flight also gave her time, and energine gave her strength, to think
back on the attack and Jason's dismissal of her. She still didn't want
to believe that the man she'd chosen to devote her life to had set her
up for such a painful, degrading death, even to give her the illusion
of dying for the best reason a thakur-na could have. But she couldn't
avoid the truth: from all the evidence she had, that was precisely what
he had done. And then when that had failed, he had deliberately
sentenced her to the death of an oathbreaker.

She shifted in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position with her
arms fastened behind her. She failed, and that discomfort combined
with the wearing off of the painkiller to make her begin to resent her
former thakur. Maybe she did deserve to die, she thought bitterly. Not
for the dishonor he admitted she wasn't guilty of, but for her
misjudgment of him--when it came down to first causes, that was why she
was being flown to her death. While Jason would live, as wealthy,
comfortable, and influential as ever . . .

* * * * *

Dana w