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Show to the folk they'd left behind on Earth. Marry, it was the little Zetts or the Colonists. Francis and Jenny bit their lips and triggered the smoke bombs. And the Zetts ran from their warm and cozy caves, the prodders stinging their delicate pelts sorely, lovely eyes watering, bent nearly double against the unmerciful wind and the need to navigate through the blinding smoke. And Saint Isaac stood beside Father DeWitt on a rise and watched them go, tears freezing upon both their cheeks. The little Zetts ran-altogether a thousand of them-toward the southern Zettian settlements, and many died along the way. Ravaged with guilt and despair at the suffering they'd caused the small folk, some misguided humanitarian among the EarthColonists pronounced the Zetts to be animals and keyed the prevarication into the Governor, so that they and their progeny need no longer grieve over something they could no longer help, and animals the Zetts remained with little or no argument from then on. Until the half-frozen Lodyan and Dr'Anya met one snowy autumn in the HighTartars. "And so, little one," said Dr'Anya in Zettian, massaging the silky limbs so sorely frozen only hours before. "Did the drought drive all the Zetts out of the SouthernSteppes, pray?" Dr'Anya, finding the small furry leader in the lee of a cliff during an early autumn snowstorm, carried her back in a blanket to the warm cave she'd just left to thaw the little one out. During Dr'Anya's many trips into the Provinces, she'd learned Zettian in order to discover the strange 92 |