Rebel Ice by S. L. Viehl

they would have immediately abandoned the negotiations in order to get her back."
    "To get her back by attacking the ship on which she was held?" His mate sounded incredulous. "By destroying it? I think not."
    "An enraged Jorenian does not often think clearly," he assured her.
    "That may be so, but I still do not understand how it can be better that she is never found," Garphawayn said, her tone flat now. "She was there; she knows the truth. That truth must be told."
    This was what everyone thought, what everyone felt. Cherijo, the ultimate truth seeker, had become a symbol of it. Everyone admired her and loved her; few thought of the practical matters, like the actual consequences of such a revelation.
    "If the League fired first, they deserve whatever the Jorenians do to them," his mate stated flatly.
    "It is not only the Jorenians." Squilyp touched the wall panel and switched the viewer panel from clear to opaque. "There are worlds outside the League and the Faction who want this war to end. They view the Jorenians as admirable for remaining neutral through it. If it is known that the League massacred the Jado, that will be the final outrage. Those worlds technologically advanced enough will use it as impetus to take up Joren's cause as their own."
    His mate's eyes flared wide. "How many worlds would do so?"
    Squilyp enabled the viewer panel, changing the magnification to show the dark, glittering expanse of the surrounding quadrant.
    He left his mate staring out at ten thousand stars.
    Chapter Three
    Hurgot did his best to hide his anger as he stripped the rotted rags from the body of the unconscious ensleg female. It was a waste of his time, this examination, but the rasakt had ordered it done. There was no question of refusal.
    Still, what was Navn thinking, showing such attention to a half-dead ensleg, and a female one at that?
    He felt no pity as he studied her pathetic condition. Malnourishment or starvation had feasted on her flesh, leaving her with limbs like well-worried bones and a slightly swollen belly. She had not the intelligence or sense to cover properly before venturing out on the ice. Offworlders seldom did, which was why so many ended as stiff white blobs covered in snow. In the old days that stupidity alone would have earned her a slit throat, had she been Iisleg, to eliminate all possibility of her reproducing equally brainless offspring.
    Before Hurgot touched her, he covered his hands with thin hide mitts. Navn be sliced , he thought. I will not contaminate myself with whatever offworlder vermin she carries .
    Her skin responded to his prodding with more resilience than he expected. That she had suffered from waterlack rather than coldsleep was evident. Her lips and eyelids were swollen and chapped, but her belly felt warm. She had probably tried to eat snow for water, unaware that she could not afford to lose the body heat required to melt ice crystals in her mouth. Yet from wherever she had come, she had not traveled far; the snowbite on her fingers and toes showed a sickly gray that would heal, not the black that promised flesh rot.
    "The gods smile upon you, ensleg." It was only another reason to resent her. She had shaleev, that rare As Navn had. Did the headman not remember that a healer's talent was supposed to be devoted exclusively to caring for the men of the tribe?
    Hurgot parted the ensleg's long dark hair to check for parasitic infestation—if she was permitted to stay, one of the tribe's women would have to shear her properly—and frowned at a mass of scar tissue beneath a swath of shorter, silvery white hair that measured as long and wide as his hand. Such a wound should have killed her .
    A soft groan emerged from the ensleg's mouth, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were tilted like an Iisleg's, and she was obviously human, but that only made her seem all the more unnatural. It was appalling to think that his people shared a common ancestry with such an ensleg being.
    He