But maybe he didn't know exactly what that meant. "Thakur—what am I supposed to do?"
Jason shrugged. "That's up to you. Whatever a Sandeman 'na does when @'s no use any more, I suppose. Mentally you've always been more Sandeman than Terran anyway … yes, that would be best. Imitate your Sandeman idols again." He started to turn away.
"Yes, Thakur." Dana went as cold as his voice had been, wishing she had died back in the mountains, never had to hear this.
"Mister Jason!" the w'woman snapped.
He turned back. "Yes? You don't approve?"
"I do not, but I cannot interfere between thakur and 'na. So long as you both live and she wears your mark, however, she is yours; no one else may be involved in what you order for her."
"Oh? All right." Jason took a folding knife from his pocket, opened it, and bent over his 'na.
Dana felt cold sharpness against her cheek, and she gasped. Then the knife bit, four quick shallow slashes, followed by a tugging, and she cried out more in loss than in pain. By the time the tugging stopped, she was sobbing quietly, the salt of her tears accenting the pain of her missing tattoo. When she was able to see again, Jason was gone and the w'woman was standing over her, cleaning her cheek.
Dana raised the head of her bed, trying to think. Her thakur—her former thakur—had admitted seeking her death, but he had that right; a 'na's gift of @self was absolute. She had even imagined circumstances where she would welcome death at his hands, or give him his own—but those had been honorable circumstances, where death was preferable to the alternative. This was… She shied away from the thought momentarily, then forced herself back.
Her thakur had ordered her to die, in humiliation and agony, even as he had said she had done nothing to deserve such a death. Then he had told her to do whatever a Sandeman 'na would do under the same circumstances. And she had absorbed enough of their ways to think that a proper response—except that, as far as she knew, similar circumstances had never arisen.