Chapter 3
Rose stopped more than once to catch her breath, but she pushed herself to get back inside the Keep. Every time she paused to look back, she beheld the dragon regarding her with its gleaming silver eyes. Its skin glowed copper red, and the light rippled over its scales. It ruffled its wings at her and opened its mouth, but she never waited long enough to see if it spat fire at her again.
She collapsed inside the entrance and let her bags fall to the ground. “Thank goodness! That thing is a menace.”
Rohn studied her. He hadn’t even broken a sweat carrying twice as many bags up that hill. His arm muscles flexed under the weight, but he stood just as tall and straight as ever.
“Does that thing ever attack people?”
He put his head to one side. “We better get down to the hall. We’ll be eating the midday meal soon.”
He walked away without another word. By the time Rose got her bags hauled down the passage to the hall, the members of the Harkniss family all sat around a long table at one end of the room. Rohn sat next to his father with the duffel bags tossed into a corner.
With his bare hand, he pulled some body part off a roast animal in the middle of the table and tore a piece off with his teeth. The other Clan members ate the same way. No one paid any attention to the team, who stood in a cluster across the room.
Rose walked over and took a place in the group between Reyna and Tanner. She swept the group with her eyes. “Where’s Moira?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Reyna replied. “I’m sure she’ll turn up in a few minutes. She probably went off to explore this place.”
“I brought your gear down from the landing site. We can all start taking notes.”
“I already have,” Tanner replied. “This place is incredible. It’s like something out of the distant past. I wish I had a camera.”
Rose kept her voice low. “Don’t let them hear you say that. They already suspect us of trying to destroy their way of life.”
“Can you blame them?” Reyna asked. “We represent everything they want to avoid.”
Rose turned to Whitney. “What do you make of their skin color patterns?”
“I never saw anything like it before. It must be some kind of tattooing.”
“How could it be? It changes with every passing minute. It never stays the same, and it even seems to match the person’s thoughts and feelings. Did you see how Rowan’s face changed when he challenged us out there? I never saw any tattooing that could do that.”
“There’s a lot about this place and these people we don’t understand. That’s what we’re here for.”
“Have any of you had a chance to talk to them?”
Everyone shook their heads. Tanner dropped his voice to a murmur. “They won’t even talk to Whitney and me. Rohn didn’t say two words to us on the way to our quarters. He answered every question with a wordless grunt.”
Rose bit back a smile. “They don’t understand how men could live in a female-dominated society.”
“Did you explain to them that the Allies aren’t female dominated?”
Rose shrugged. “To them, it is. That’s all they understand, and that’s all they want to understand. Maybe we should just work within their expectations.”
“That’s easy for you to say. They’ll talk to you. How am I supposed to conduct an archaeological survey of this planet when none of the inhabitants will talk to me? They must have maps of the area and information about how these Keeps were built. How can I access any of that?”
“One of us could run interference for you. We can ask, and they’ll probably give it to us. They seem much more agreeable to women.”
“Dominant women, you mean.”
Rose turned to Ben. “How are you, munchkin? How did you find your room?”
“My room was fine. It was very nice, much nicer than I thought it would be when I saw the outside of this place. I thought it would be a bare prison, but it was really very pleasant.”
“You don’t mind entertaining yourself while we work on our boring scientific stuff, do you? It’s going to be a long year for you, with no one to talk to.”
“I have someone to talk to.”
Rose’s head shot up. “Who?”
“Asya.”
She stared at him. “Asya?”
“Asya Assan. She’s Haya and Callan’s daughter.”
Rose looked around the hall. She didn’t see any sign of anybody but the people they already met. “Where is she?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen her since I met her in the passage outside my room.”
“You met her outside your room, and she talked to you? Tanner just said no one would talk to you.”
“Maybe no one talked to him, but after Rohn took us to our rooms and I had a good look around, I came out and found her in the passage. We started talking, and she invited me to go for a walk with her after the meal.”
“So why isn’t she joining the meal? Do they keep her locked up or something, so she won’t talk to foreign men?”
“If they are, it’s not doing much good. She talked to me, and she didn’t seem to have any strange ideas about me being dominated by women, even if my mother is the Commanding Officer.”
At that moment, a lovely, willowy girl with long golden yellow hair strode into the hall. She cast a calculated look over the guests before she sat down next to Haya. Rose opened her mouth to say something. Then thought better of it and closed her mouth.
“What are we all doing over here in a corner? Why don’t we sit down and have something to eat?”
“We haven’t been invited.”
“Maybe they don’t invite. Maybe meals are every man for himself.”
Tanner chuckled. “It seems like everything around here is like that.”
“Well, I’m hungry. I’m going to sit down and eat. If I make a tactical blunder, I’ll pay for it.”
Rose walked over to the long table. There was only one seat available, next to Fay Harkniss, the matriarch. Rose slid into the seat. No one said anything. No one even looked at her.
She waited another long moment before she dared to put out her hand for a piece of the meat. Still no one took any notice of her. She might as well not even be here. She tore off a chunk and started chewing. So far, so good.
For some odd reason of their own, the family didn’t pass conversation among themselves during the meal. They all ate in silence. From her place at the end of the table, Rose couldn’t see them even looking at each other or acknowledging each other’s existence. Everyone sat in a cocoon of their own thoughts.
At the sight of her success, the others came over and sat down, too. The Clan shifted around to make room for them, and pretty soon, they scattered around the table and got something to eat.
Rose waited, but no one opened the table to discussion. Did these people plan to let a whole year pass without talking to their visitors about their studies? No one else would broach the subject, so it was up to her to initiate it. She turned to Fay. “I didn’t realize there were dragons living on this planet.”
Fay didn’t answer. She showed no sign of having heard.
Rose stared at her and waited. Then she tried again. “I was surprised when our shuttle dropped us off and I saw that dragon on the mountain. Is it dangerous?”
Still Fay looked straight in front of her. She chewed her meat with slow, methodical movements of her jaw.
Rose swallowed the food in her mouth. What was going on here? Would these people ignore all their questions? Her mind whirled through the possibilities. Maybe Fay had some personal reason not to talk about the dragon. Maybe she would be more inclined to talk about something else. “Where’s your oldest son? Is he coming back sometime soon?”
Rohn answered from across the table. “My father told you he isn’t here right now.”
“I heard that. I asked if he was coming back sometime soon. We’ll need to interview him, along with the rest of you, for our reports.” She forced a laugh. “We couldn’t write a report and leave one of you out of it.”
“What do you put in your reports?”
“Well, I’m a doctor, so I’ll want to examine a few of you. I’ll report anything unusual about your physiology. That reminds me. If you don’t mind, Fay, I’d like to interview you about childbearing among your people—how you do it, what specific practices you have to care for the mother and baby, that sort of thing.”
Fay replied for the first time, but she still didn’t look at Rose. “Haya has given birth, too. You could interview her.”
Rose struggled to keep her composure, but her hackles started to rise. “Do you have some objection to talking to me, about that or anything else?”
“I have no objection.”
“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to interview you.”
“Very well. Ask me anything you like.”
Rose looked around the table. Rohn stared at her from directly across the table. Besides him and her own teammates, no one looked up from their meal. “Do you mean...right now?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not exactly dinner table conversation.”
Fay shifted her languid eyes to Rose’s face. “Why not? You want to interview me. Go ahead.”
Rose fidgeted in her seat. “I thought we’d do it later, in private.”
A hint of a smile crept over Fay’s face. “I don’t see why. These men all know what it’s like. They’ve all been born.”
No one laughed. Only Rohn smiled. Rose blushed. Rohn spoke up. “Perhaps you’d like to examine me.”
Rose’s eyes flew open. “Really?”
“You want people to examine. Why not me?”
Rose blushed again. Why? Something in his eyes unsettled her, something sharp and predatory. Her eyes skipped around the table. She wasn’t getting any other volunteers. At this rate, he might be the only Kratak she got to examine. “Okay. I could examine you.”
“When would you like to do it?”
“Well, not at the dinner table.”
He smiled at that. “I didn’t mean at the dinner table.”
She cast a glance at Fay. “You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t understand your customs and manners yet. I’m sorry if I said something to offend anyone.”
“You haven’t offended anyone. Tell us more about the work you plan to do here.”
“My sister Reyna is the genealogist. She’ll want to study your family histories and any other information you have on your relationships with the other Kratak Clans.”
Reyna turned to Haya. “Are you on good terms with Clan Assan?”
“Why wouldn’t I be on good terms with them? My husband Callan is Assan.”
“I know. I just wondered, since the Clans sometimes go to war. I wondered if Clan Harkniss ever warred against Clan Assan. I wondered if hostility between the Clans caused Callan to move here.”
Rowan Harkniss boomed across the table. “There is no hostility between Clan Harkniss and Clan Assan. Callan would not have come to live with us if there had been. Clan Harkniss and Clan Assan have always been the closest allies. We’ve fought together in the wars and died for each other. That is the reason Callan came to live with us, to help rebuild our numbers that got decimated in the wars.”
“What causes the wars, then? Do you fight over mates and relationships gone wrong?”
“Most of the wars break out over territory. One Clan decides to take the territory of another, but occasionally, as you say, wars break out over mating disagreements. Most matches happen without trouble, but every now and then, people disagree.”
Reyna turned to Callan, who sat silent at his wife’s side. “Do you miss your people? Do you visit them much?”
“Clan Harkniss became my people when I moved to this Keep. I see my family every year at the gatherings, but my life is here.”
Whitney spoke up from the end of the table. “What animal is this we’re eating?”
Rohn answered him. “It’s wild pig.”
Whitney took another bite. “I’d like to get out into the woods and see some of them myself.”
“That would be most unwise.”
“Why is that?”
“They’re very dangerous. You would take your life in your hands getting close enough to see one.”
“I’ve seen wild pigs before. We even kept pigs back home. I think I can handle them. You just have to know how to throw your weight around.”
“You wouldn’t throw your weight around with these. They stand twice as high as a full-grown man. They would trample you with their small toe and tear you apart with their tusks.”
Whitney stared at him. “Wild pigs twice the height of a man? Now that I have to see.”
Rohn shook his head. “You would be safer in the Keep.”
“You eat them, so you must hunt them. You must get close enough to see them.”
“I grew up hunting them with my father and my brothers. We know how to do it. You don’t.”
“I know how to hunt.”
Rohn scanned him up and down. He shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
Whitney bristled. “The men of the Allies are just as much men as you are.”
Rohn turned back to his meal. He pretended not to hear.
Tanner interrupted. “How long have the Kratak people lived in these Keeps? They must be very old.”
Rowan answered. “We have lived in Keeps as far back as our histories record.”
“Who built the Keeps?”
“We did. Our ancestors built them.”
“When did they come to this planet? Did they migrate here from somewhere else?”
“We have always lived on this planet. We developed here from...from other animals.”
“I find that hard to believe. You’re too similar to humans on other planets. I’ll bet if I did some digging around, I would find out you came from somewhere else.”
Rowan shook his head. “That’s impossible. Our histories would tell us if that was the case.”
“Maybe your histories are wrong about that.”
Rowan raised his flashing eyes to Tanner’s face. Rose saw the storm gathering and leapt to intervene. “I’m sure we’ll find the answers to all our questions when we start studying your people. You have to admit, Mr. Harkniss, your people offer us a fascinating puzzle to solve.”
Rowan bent over his food. “I’m glad we offer such a fascinating puzzle for you to solve.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Rohn stood up from the table. “Come along, Commander Doctor. If you want to examine me, you can do it now.”
Rose glanced around. Now everyone stared down at their food. No one spoke to anyone else. “All right.” She put down her meat and got up.