"I, well… you have much to hate, I know. But you seem so angry at us all the time, and we're the ones who are trying to help you! After the day work you stay here, you don't want to talk with people — though now I see that was our fault. You wanted us to come here but were too proud to say it. I have these insights into character, you see. My friend, the one you call Scarbutt: he is truly a nice fellow. I know I can tell you that honestly, and that as my new friend you will believe. He would very much like to come to visit you, too… urk."
Johanna walked slowly around the fire pit, forcing the two members to back away from her. All of Scriber was looking up at her now, the necks arching around one another, the eyes wide.
"I'm not like you. I don't need your talk, or your stupid ideas." She threw Scriber's notebook into the pit. Scriber leaped to the fire's edge, desperately reached for the burning notes. He pulled most of them back and clutched them to his chests.
Johanna kept walking toward him, kicking at his legs. Scriber retreated, backing and sprawling. "Stupid, dirty, butchers. I'm not like you." She slapped her hand on a ceiling beam. "Humans don't like to live like animals. We don't adopt killers. You tell Scarbutt, you tell him. If he ever comes by for a friendly chat, I-I'll smash in his head; I'll smash in all of them!"
Scriber was backed into the wall now. His heads turned wildly this way and that. He was making plenty of noise. Some of it was Samnorsk, but too high-pitched to understand. One of his mouths found the door pole. He pushed open the door, and all six members raced into the twilight, their rain slickers forgotten.
Johanna knelt and stuck her head through the doorway. The air was a wind-driven mist. In an instant, her face was so cold and wet that she couldn't feel the tears. Scriber was six shadows in the darkening grayness, shadows that raced down the hillside, sometimes tumbling in their haste. In a second he was gone. There was nothing but the vague forms of nearby cabins, and the yellow light that spilled out around her from the fire.
Strange. Right after the ambush, she had felt terror. The Tines had been unstoppable killers. Then, on the boat, when she smashed Scarbutt… it had been so wonderful: the whole pack collapsed, and suddenly she knew that she could fight back, that she could break their bones. She didn't have to be at their mercy… Tonight she had learned something more. Even without touching them, she could hurt them. Some of them, anyway. Her dislike alone had undone Pompous Clown.
Johanna backed into the smoky warmth and shut the door. She should feel triumph.
— =*=
Scriber Jaqueramaphan didn't tell anyone about his meeting with the Two-Legs. Of course, Vendacious's guard had overheard everything. The fellow might not speak much Samnorsk, but he had surely gotten the drift of the argument. People would hear about it eventually.
He moped around the castle for a few days, spent a number of hours hunched over the remains of his notebook, trying to recreate the diagrams. It would be a a while before he attended any more sessions with Dataset, especially when Johanna was around. Scriber knew he seemed brash to the outside world, but in fact it had taken a lot of courage to walk in on Johanna like that. He knew his ideas had genius, but all his life unimaginative people had been telling him otherwise.
In most ways Scriber was a very fortunate person. He had been born a fission pack in Rangathir, at the eastern edge of the Republic. His parent had been a wealthy merchant. Jaqueramaphan had some of his parent's traits, but the dull patience necessary for day-to-day business work had been lost to him. His sibling pack more than retained that faculty; the family business grew, and — in the first years — his sib didn't begrudge Scriber his share of the wealth. From his earliest days, Scriber had been an intellectual. He read everything: natural history, biography, brood kenning. In the end he had the largest library in Rangathir, more than two hundred books.
