“You believe we’ll have time to bring together a Council of Judgment before they try again to kill us?” Daniel demanded.
Hayden and Preston looked at one another—the two elderfathers of the Gordons. Apparently they would decide.
“As soon as we get agreement from seven of the thirteen families, I’ll call the Silks,” Preston said. “I know Milo Silk, or I thought I did. How he and his sons have gotten involved in all this, I can’t imagine. Anyway, once they’ve been notified that we’re calling a Council of Judgment, that we have the first seven families, they won’t instigate another attack. They won’t dare.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me as though I’d said something very stupid.
I stared back at them. “My memory goes back a few weeks and no further,” I said. “I ask because I don’t know, and I don’t want to make assumptions about anything this important.” And because I was annoyed. I let my tone of voice say, You should all realize this. I’ve explained it before.
Hayden said, “If they attack us after we’ve called for a Council, the judgment will automatically go against them. Our legal system is ancient and very strong. That part of it in particular is absolute. It’s kept feuds from getting out of control for centuries.”
“And what does that mean?” I asked. “What would happen to them if they attacked you again?”
“The adults would be killed, and their children dispersed among us to become members of other families.” He stared down at me. “We would bring the adults to you. You are the person most wronged in all this and the only surviving daughter. I think you could manage it.”
“Manage … I would be their executioner?”
“You would be, yes. You would bite them and speak to them, command them to take their lives. I suspect that you would grant them a gentler death than they deserve.”
For a moment, I was shocked speechless. Of course I knew I could kill humans directly by destroying their bodies or indirectly by biting them and then telling them to do things that were harmful to them, but kill Ina just by biting them and ordering them to die?
“I was almost tempted not to tell you,” Hayden said. “Your youth and your amnesia make you both very attractive and very frightening.”
“I can really do that? Bite another Ina and just … tell him to kill himself?”
They all looked at one another. Preston said, “Hayden, damnit—”
Hayden held up both hands, palms outward. “She needs to know. We’ve had a chance to see what sort of person she is. And let’s face it, it’s too dangerous for her not to know. If not for the crime that took her memory, she would know.” He looked at me. “When you’re physically mature, you’ll take blood from your mates, and they’ll take blood from you. That’s the way you’ll bond. The only other reason for you to take blood from an Ina male would be to kill him.”
I thought about that for several seconds, then asked an uncomfortable, but necessary, question: “It wouldn’t work on an Ina female?”
“It might. Your handling of the human captives says you’re strong. But if you go against another Ina female, you might die. Even if you manage to kill her, you might die, too.”
I thought about this. It dovetailed with what Brook had told me. “Do you know,” I said, “I have no memory of ever having seen or spoken to an Ina female. I’ve only seen my father, one of my brothers, and you. I try to picture a female, and I can’t.”
“They learn early to be careful of what they say,” Hayden told me. “It’s one of their first and most important lessons. I believe that’s a lesson you’ve remembered in spite of your amnesia.”
I nodded. “I was always careful with my symbionts, even before I understood fully why I should be. But now … I might have to kill the Silks?”
“Probably not,” Hayden said. “That kind of thing hasn’t happened in living memory. The Silks will respect the call for a Council of Judgment.”
“I hope so,” I said. “What can I do now to help?” They were beginning to get up. Some of them took phones from their pockets. Daniel went to the kitchen and brought back a cordless phone for Hayden.
“Nothing yet,” Hayden told me. “You’ll have to speak at the Council.”
“All right. But shouldn’t we keep the three captives? Shouldn’t they speak, too?”