Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

Well, motherfuck.

Amber flung herself on her back in the perfectly ludicrous hope of fending off the monstrous beak that probably would not kill her right away, and got hit in the face with about a quart of hot blood.

‘Mine?’ she had time to think dizzily and then the bird’s head and about two-thirds of its neck fell to the ground next to her. Some disgusting little tubey bit lapped up against her cheek like an overenthusiastic puppy’s tongue.

And Meoraq’s hand came down to grab her by the remains of her shirt and haul her to her feet.

“You idiot,” he said.

Amber let out a whooping cry of relief so violent it was nearly orgasmic and threw her arms around him.

He recoiled, his already hard-feeling body turning at once to stiff-backed stone, but then clumsily raised a hand and patted her twice on the back. Just twice. There-there.

His obvious discomfort did more than any word of reassurance could have to clarify her mind. Amber let go of him and backed away. Scott’s flashlight was lying on the ground. She picked it up and fussed with it, feeling stupid. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Meoraq grunted, avoiding her eyes, and moved past her to pull her spear out of the bird’s breast. It wouldn’t come easily, even for him. She heard bones snap as he wrenched the haft and finally got it out. Those little scalloped tips he’d put on it…They’d gotten stuck in the bird’s breastbones somehow.

“If I’d been using my old spear, I’d have been killed,” Amber realized, unaware she spoke aloud.

“All things follow God’s ultimate plan,” said Meoraq, inspecting the tip. He gave it back to her. “He must have known you were fool enough to do this.”

Her blush deepened. “Were there only these two?”

“Three. A mated pair and this, their young one.”

“Their young…? This is a chick?”

He looked at her, at it, at her again. “Half a year. Near its fullest weight, but inexperienced. Its parents were the hunters here. It came stupidly in where it was not prepared to be,” he added, aiming a scowl at her. “And now it is dead.”

That stung. “I’m okay.”

His scowl deepened. “A more experienced tachuqi would have bitten through your spear in one moment and had your belly opened in the next.” He started to gesture at her stomach, then executed a lizardly double-take as he saw it for himself.

“I’m okay,” said Amber again. She clutched at the hanging tatters of the lower part of her shirt and pulled them aside to show him her unscratched stomach. “It only got my shirt. See, it never actually touched—”

His head cocked. He sheathed his sword, took the flashlight, and aimed it at her stomach. Yellow flared to life in the black of his throat. “Who did this?” he asked quietly.

Amber looked down. She’d fallen on the mother of all rocks; now she had the mother of all bruises coming in to prove it. “Oh,” she said. “I fell on a rock.”

He looked at her.

“A big one,” she said lamely and tried to cover herself.

Meoraq caught a fistful of shirt-strips and yanked them aside, tearing them even more.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked.

He grunted in the affirmative, now running the flashlight slowly up her body.

“Even Scott?” she asked, looking around. They appeared to be alone.

“Lamentably.” The light was on her face now. “How did this happen?”

“I fell down,” Amber said again. “Are you sure? Where is he?”

“At the fire with the others. Hold still.” His fingers probed at the side of her head and came away with a small shard of plastic. He studied it in the dim beam of the flashlight, scowling. “So far as I know, you were the only one fool enough to try to chase down a tachuqi in the dark. What is this?”

“Did you actually see him there or is that just where he ought to be?”

“Why do you care where S’kot is?”

“I just want to make sure he got back okay. He was here,” she said reluctantly as his head tipped to a curious but menacing angle. “He was with me when the bird attacked us, but I kind of…lost track of him.”

Meoraq’s head slowly straightened. He stared at her for a long time as yellow began to lighten up his throat again. Then he looked down at the piece of plastic he’d taken from her hair. Slowly, very slowly, he turned the flashlight over and looked at the broken lens.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Amber said hastily, but of course it was.

He didn’t bother arguing with her. Without a word, he turned around and walked back to camp.

Walked fast. His weight was forward, balanced on his toes like a predator, and halfway there, he threw the flashlight violently away and yanked his sword off his back.

“Oh God,” said Amber, following him, and began to run.

He got there before she did and stopped, sweeping his head left and right as he searched the camp for his prey. “S’kot!” he bellowed. “Stand and be judged or die on the ground like the animal you are!”

Amber grabbed at his arm, even as some part of her remarked that this was a very stupid thing to do to a lizard this angry. He didn’t shake her off, but it didn’t slow him down either; he dragged her along without any acknowledgement of her presence whatsoever as Scott darted around to the far side of the fire, shouting, “Whatever she told you, she’s lying! I never touched her!”

“Jesus, Bierce,” said Crandall, staring at her. “What did you do now?”

“You dare to call yourself the leader of these people?” Meoraq started left around the fire, then right as Scott continued to evade him, then noticed Amber. He plucked her off him with a hiss, and then leapt right through the fire to grab Scott by his shirt. “You looked me in the face and swore you did not know where she was!”

“I didn’t!”

“You were with her!” Meoraq gave him a shake that made Scott’s feet lose contact with the ground. “You abandoned her!”

“It was dark! I didn’t see which way I came!”

Meoraq loomed over him, his sword high and poised to fall. His breath steamed out of him against Scott’s face like smoke from a dragon’s mouth. Scott himself did not appear to be breathing at all.

Meoraq’s sword rose higher—

People made all the same gasping/screaming sounds they make watching racecars crash or kids fall out of Ferris wheels, and Amber lunged forward yet again, even knowing she was too late, but shouting for him to stop anyway.

–and sheathed it.

“She asked for you,” Meoraq said, shoving Scott away with a look of contempt. “She wanted to know if you were safe.”

He walked away. Still prowling. Still furious.

“Where are you going?” Amber asked weakly.

“To get the meat!” he spat, not looking at her. His neck was bright, bright yellow. “Stay here, all of you!”

Then he was gone. And everyone was looking at her.

“Are you okay?” Nicci asked finally.

“So that’s how it is!” Scott shrilled out before anyone else could speak. He slapped at his shirt to straighten it, his face wild and eyes glassy. “That’s you, huh?”

“Me?” Amber looked at him disbelievingly. “What the hell are you pissed off about? I didn’t do anyth—”

“You stole my flashlight! Huh? How about that?”

“What?”

“You stole it and you go running off! You endanger all of us!”

She tried to say another what? but could only mouth it, so great was her astonishment at this attack.

“I have to go chasing after you! I have to try to bring you back when you knew, you knew, we were all supposed to stay together!”

“I—”

“And you call that bird-thing!”

“What?!”

“Okay, easy,” said Eric, raising his hands. “No one called it, that’s just crazy.”

“She called it!” Scott insisted, pointing at her hard enough to make his arm quake as violently as his voice. “She called it by tromping around out in the grass where she knew she wasn’t supposed to be! She admitted it! She made herself a target and then she brought them all back here!”

“They were already coming here!” Amber told them. “They saw the fi—”

“And she pushed me down!” Scott shouted. “Yeah! Huh? How’s that for heroic? When it jumped out at us, you pushed me in front of it!”

“I pulled you out of the way, you liar!”

“Nuh-uh! No, you didn’t! You pushed me, see?”

And he held out a pair of scraped palms to prove it, while she stood there bruised from head to fucking toe, so dumbfounded by the enormity of this lie that she could not even breathe.

“Okay, everybody. Calm down.” Eric gripped Scott’s shoulder and turned a stern eye on Amber. “I think maybe you’d better apologize.”

She gaped at him. “For what?!”

He nodded as if that were the reaction he’d expected and, while disappointing, it was not unmanageable. He said, “Then I think you’d better take a walk right now. I think maybe the rest of us need to talk.”

Amber opened her mouth, but it was Maria, of all people, who suddenly said, “Oh my God, enough already!”

Eric flushed. The mob-mutters that had been rising now subsided. People shuffled back, some looking very vaguely ashamed, but most still glaring.

Maria was glaring, too, but at Eric. “I don’t like her either,” she was saying, “but don’t you stand there acting like you believe his playground pushed-me bullshit story!”

Amber stared at them, dimly aware that her mouth was still open, and saw only mob-faces staring back at her.

“Okay, let’s not go making this any worse,” Eric murmured, taking Maria’s arm.

“Baby, I love you, but grow some balls. Maybe we couldn’t see him, but for Christ’s sake, look at her! We all know who got pushed down!”

Her chest hurt. She realized she was holding her breath and made herself start again. The first few came out too rough and too ragged. Too close to tears. She looked down at herself in a torpor of confusion and saw the bright magenta color of her bruise through the shreds of her shirt. She had blisters on her hands coming in from trying to hold on to her spear when it was stuck in the bird. The fight itself felt bizarrely like it had never happened and never stopped at the same time.

“She had it coming,” Scott mumbled, trying to finger-comb his hair into place. “She stole my flashlight. And she broke it.”

“On what, her face?” Maria demanded, advancing on him. “Hey, you know what? She’s a bitch and it’s okay to hate her, but you are a lying, cowardly little coil of dogshit and you are not doing yourself any favors tonight.”

Scott shut his mouth tight and shifted his sullen stare to Eric.

“All right, baby, that’s enough,” said Eric. This time, when he took Maria’s arm, she sniffed but let it stay. “Everybody’s emotions are running high. You’re not helping. The lizard wants to cook, so let’s…let’s just give him some space and everybody try to settle down and get some sleep.”

The mob began to thin out, muttering and throwing mistrustful glances over many shoulders as it left Amber behind.

‘What about my apology?’ Amber wanted to say, wanted to scream. She didn’t.

‘I don’t care,’ she told herself, but the tears were still there, stinging at her eyes.

…it’s okay to hate her.

‘But she used to like me,’ she thought, staring into the fire. ‘She used to say I saved her. She used to say I pulled her from the ship when it was burning. She used to…’

“Amber?”

“Bring your blanket over here somewhere, Nicci,” she said, and was proud of how level and unaffected her voice sounded. “Nothing else is going to happen tonight, but just for my peace of mind, you know?”

“Well…I think I’m going to go sleep in the tent with Lani and Sabrina and, you know, the other girls. Is that okay?”

Amber looked up. “You’re going to the Resource Tent? Why?”

“It’s not…you know, what they were saying. It’s just…” Nicci looked away and then fiddled with the hem of her shirt a little and looked back at her. “I don’t want to be alone right now, okay?”

“Yeah, I understand. Of course it’s okay. You don’t need to ask permission,” she added, even managing a little laugh. She felt like throwing up, as much as she knew that would hurt her already aching guts. “Sleep wherever you want, just as long as you get some rest, okay?”

“Okay.”

The wind gusted, covering the little sound of Nicci walking away. A short time later, another fire was struck out past Scott’s tent. She could see people moving around it, some bedding down, others standing close and talking. Looking at her.

Amber moved over to the fire and numbly rearranged it for roasting. Smoke got in her eyes. The tears came streaming out. She tried not to be too conspicuous about it. She didn’t care if they hated her, but she didn’t want them to see her cry.

* * *

All things served Sheul. Meoraq had often mentioned his increasing difficulty keeping the many lazy humans fed when at his prayers, and so came meat, directly into his camp. That it came in the form of hunting tachuqis was surely a divine comment of another kind, and one which Meoraq humbly acknowledged as he butchered them and gave his thanks.

He did not try to glean every strip of meat on the beasts’ bones. Tachuqis, particularly those with young, were aggressively territorial and he could not imagine there could be others close enough to be a threat to him, but the blood on the wind was sure to bring ghets eventually. Meoraq stripped the first corpse of its breast, flank, and tail meat, took the legs for meat and marrow, and hacked the spines away to get at the tender strip of dense, salty fat it carried. For organs, he took only hearts, kidneys and livers, and left the rest behind for the inevitable scavengers.

When he returned to camp with the first load, he was not surprised to see that the humans had withdrawn themselves beyond the borders of labor, and that Amber tended the roasting coals alone. She took the meat without asking instruction and he moved rapidly on to the next animal, annoyed with her for no reason whatsoever.

But no, he had reasons. She’d stood her watch, had carried back a timely warning, and had acted swiftly and well to preserve the lives of her people. All fair and good. And then she’d run off alone into the dark with her spear and stabbed it blindly into a damned tachuqi.

Except that she hadn’t been alone, truly. She’d begun, at least, with Scott.

And that made him…so angry.

That she had gone with Scott out after the tachuqi was bad enough, but he thought he could forgive it in time. What he could not—would never—forgive was the blood in Amber’s hair, the broken end of the human’s lamp, and Scott himself safely back at the fire telling him he did not know where Amber was. Even these thoughts in Meoraq’s mind put such heat in his throat that he could not swallow; he was actually drooling through his bared teeth like an animal. Again and again, he tried to count his breaths, but thoughts of Scott and blood broke every scrap of peace he found. The butchery of the tachuqi gave him only pale gratification, but at least it occupied his hands.

He brought the second beast’s bounty to the fire. Again, Amber took it without comment. The first tachuqi was roasting well, save for the salt-back, which she didn’t seem to know what to do with, and the marrow-rich bones, which she’d set aside as trash.

“Save those,” grunted Meoraq, pointing. He’d show her how to cook them when he was done with the butchering.

She nodded, silent.

He went to deal with the last tachuqi, musing as he went on her uncharacteristic quiet. Women should be quiet, of course. A good woman should be all but invisible in her man’s House. Or her father’s, rather. Then her man’s. It was unnerving to see Amber as well-behaved.

Then again, she had just faced down a hunting tachuqi. Courage and stupidity may have helped her wield the spear, but perhaps now that it was done, she was reflecting on her actions and how badly things might have gone.

Her shirt was torn. Had the spear been a hand’s width shorter…

“Idiot,” grumbled Meoraq, and began to cut the dead tachuqi out of its skin.

Midway through this difficult process, it occurred to him that he had called her an idiot to her face. She’d embraced him anyway (he was not going to think about that) but she still might have heard it. Perhaps he’d bruised her feelings.

Bruised. The image of Amber’s stomach behind the tatters of her shirt intruded, scratching across his mind and raising that fighting urge once more. It was light enough yet, but by dawn, her colors would be in as dark as thunderclouds. Fell on a rock, she said. Running in the dark after her tachuqi. And blissfully forgetful of all the fragile human organs she carried in that soft belly that could be split as easily as they could be bruised. She might have been seriously injured. She might have been killed.

Or she might not. He had to remind himself that a wound was not the same from human to dumaq. No creature he knew of showed injury so vibrantly or so easily as humans. Dumaqs bruised when they were young, before their skin thickened and scales grew in dark and hard. Meoraq could remember carrying the colors of his warriors’ training as proudly as if they were priestly medals, at least up to his fifteenth year and the beginning of his last growth. He’d come to it no earlier than the other boys in Tilev, but he’d had time since then to see boys outside the warrior’s caste. The sons of farmers and cattle-hands, the sons of craftsmen, the sons of priests—they were still grey and thin-scaled well into their seventeenth, even their twentieth years…

He thought about that in a distracted, brooding way as his hands went about their work uninterrupted, waking back to himself to find that he’d cut the tachuqi’s middle talon from its foot. He studied it there in his hand, his head cocked, curious and amused. He was still in his boyhood mind. Hunt-Master Takktha had taken his best students out into the wildlands occasionally to hunt tachuqi. If anyone managed to take one, it was his habit to award the boy the talon for a prize. It was not bladed and so stood fair in the sight of Sheul, but made a good knife for a boy, and a damned good story in the envious eyes of those who had to stay in Tilev. On the shelf below his sleeping cupboard at home, Meoraq probably still had the three talons awarded him over the years.

And was this Amber’s? Here she was behaving properly for the first time in all the days he’d known her, and he was making her a boy’s knife to go with her spear.

“I am a terrible influence,” Meoraq declared, tucking the talon through his belt. He could make her a hilt if they ever found decent wood to craft one from.

He went back to the humans’ camp in much smoother spirits than he had set out from it, hauling the last of the meat behind him and thinking ahead to the hilt he would make and the trick of sizing it for a human’s hand. Amber was still at the fire, alone. There were the tracks of tears on her face, although her eyes were presently dry. She did not seem to see his approach, although he made no secret of it. She saw him only when he flung his load of meat onto the heap, and it was with a start that she turned away to poke at the fire and the roasts and covertly rub at her cheeks.

He probably should not have called her an idiot.

‘Well, it was an idiotic thing to do!’ he thought defensively, and went over to have a better look at her. “Stand up.”

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

She huffed a breath out through her nose, not loudly enough to be a true snort, and looked away.

Meoraq caught her up by one arm and hauled her to her feet. She let out a hoarse cry and slapped at him, but he chose to overlook the blow and frowned instead at her flat, ugly face, which was now flat, ugly and horribly bruised. There was a scraped place along the plane of her left cheek, and a short gash at the tip of her ear which had bled enough to raise a few crusty spikes in her hair, but in spite of the swelling and the impressive color, he didn’t think the wounds were serious. Meoraq moved the shreds of her shirt (over her hissing and embarrassed protests) enough to see the bruise he remembered on her belly. It was huge, beginning just under the curve of her ribs and continuing on under the ties of her breeches, but it did not look swollen. He prodded at it cautiously and she smacked his hand. “Does this hurt?”

“Of course it hurts! Let go of me!”

He did, but he was frowning. “I want to see you urinate,” he told her.

She huffed again and sat down, returning her attention to the fire. “I wanted to see Midnight Eclipse when they played Madison Square, lizardman. Life is full of things we want and are never going to get.”

“Truth,” he muttered and rubbed hard at his brow-ridges. He was no surgeon, after all. If she had done herself an injury, Sheul alone could cure her.

The thought gave him surprisingly little comfort.

“These need to be cooked,” Meoraq said gruffly and hunkered down to make room on the coals for the fat and bones.

“I wasn’t sure that was food,” said Amber, not rude any longer, but only…dim.

He shouldn’t have called her an idiot.

‘Admitted, but I still would have thought of her as one,’ he thought. Aloud, he said, “When I bring it as food, you may be assured it is food.”

“Even the bones?”

“The bones especially.”

Her brow creased for a moment, then smoothed out in dismay. “Oh, is it more of that gross bone jelly stuff?”

“Yes. And stop making that face,” he added. “You need the marrow more than meat in these days.”

“I’m not having any.”

He snorted. “Yes. You are.”

“I don’t want it, Meoraq.”

“I don’t want to feed S’kot. Life is full of things we do not want to do and must do anyway.” He turned the strips of tachuqi fat, which were browning up nicely already. “Meat may keep the life in your body a little longer, but no one stays healthy on meat alone. The season for green leaves and grain is done. My cuuvash is spent. Marrow is what I have to give you and you will eat it.”

“I don’t see you forcing it on anyone else.”

“I don’t care about anyone else.”

It took a moment for him to realize what he’d just said.

Sheul brought His hammer down on Meoraq’s chest just once. He straightened up sharply to disguise his flinch and glared at her, thinking, ‘I said that. Why did I say that?’ and thinking fractured thoughts of her bruised stomach under her torn shirt, the clean streaks of tears under her dry eyes, and the little sound it had made—that muted, soft sound—when her body slapped up against his and she threw her arms around him.

She was staring back at him, but he didn’t know what she was thinking. Her eyes were too wide, too bright in the firelight. There was still blood on her cheek and in her hair; the urge to wet a cloth and wipe her face had barely formed before it had melted into the much less clear desire just to touch her. Not sexually (not at first), but just to touch. To feel her flesh, warm with life. To put his arm around her shoulders as he so often saw humans do with one another. To hold her and feel her holding him.

‘There is something wrong with me,’ he thought, and took the fat off the coals. He pulled his samr and served half the delicacy warrior-style, across the blade. She took it eventually and set it on her knees, staring at it instead of him. She shivered once.

“Eat it,” he grunted, and ate his off his kzung. It crackled open and melted in his mouth like a good custard, and he scarcely noticed. The rich, salty taste was a luxury in this world, prized by priests and lords and rarely savored even by Sheulek, but he could not enjoy it. He wished he knew what to say to take the heaviness out of the air.

Amber stirred herself at last and touched a fingertip to the roasted fat. It broke and oozed invitingly. “If I say something, are you going to call it whining?”

What a curious question. “I can’t answer that until I hear what you have to say.”

She rolled her eyes back and rubbed briefly at her face, then looked at him. “Fine. If I whine, will you shut up about it and just let me do it for once?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “I have very little patience with whining, particularly when one is whining about the food.” He pointed.

She gave the fat a lackluster glance, but dipped her finger in the steaming inner jelly and put that in her mouth. Her mouthparts twisted into a grimace, not one of her smiling ones. “Why is everything you eat so damned gross?”

“Because these are the wildlands and here we eat for survival, not pleasure. Is this what you want to whine about? The food? When you should be thanking Sheul for His mercy that you are alive to eat at all?”

“No.” She took another taste of the fat and finally nerved herself to scoop up a quivering mouthful and eat it properly. Her eyes scrunched shut and stayed that way even after she’d swallowed. “This is indescribable.”

“Good, eh?” He took another salty bite of his own share. “Men pay high coin in the cities to eat salt-back roasted on real coals just this way. I prefer mine cooked with riak and czaa, when I have the chance. You might like yours better that way.”

“If it came baked in a bar of gold, I don’t think I could ever like this. It stings my mouth.”

He looked up sharply. “Are your teeth loose?”

“No, I’m just cut up some from when…” She didn’t finish. She looked away at the other fire, where humans huddled together to sleep or exchange low words. She watched them in silence for a long time and then rubbed at her face in a terrible, broken way. “I really screwed up with these people, Meoraq.”

That was a new turn of phrase and he wasn’t wholly certain of her meaning, so he said nothing.

“The worst part is, I don’t really know how. I don’t deserve this—I don’t think I do—but I don’t think I can stop it either. It’s not because I think I’m right all the time and it’s not because Scott’s a dick…or maybe it is. All I know is, I could walk over there right now with a spaceship in my arms and they’d probably club me to death with it before they thanked me for it.”

Meoraq leaned back in some surprise. “Do you want thanks?”

Now she looked at him, her brows furrowing. “Don’t you?”

“No. A Sheulek requires no man’s favor when he stands in God’s sight.”

“Oh come on. Don’t you think you deserve a ‘thank you’ after herding us across the wilderness and giving us food and water and then patrolling half the night to keep the man-eating chickens out of our camp while we sleep? Don’t you want just once for someone to appreciate it?”

He shrugged his spines. “Sometimes. I’m still a man and men can be petty, but I try to take the high path. Sheul may yet reward me for my efforts here; your people never will, I think. That cattle’s ass, S’kot, likes to keep them afraid of me.” He pointed yet again at her tachuqi fat and studied her face while she picked at it. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

“He’s been pretty obvious, but you don’t act like you see it.”

“Because I don’t care. The world is filled with fools like S’kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don’t care what they think of me and neither should you.” He pointed at her tachuqi fat. She rolled her eyes again, but began at last to really eat it, and after she had taken several bites and he’d had time to think, he said, “I am Sheulek. Have I told you what that means?”

“It means you’re a foot.” She glanced at him. “A wandering soldier or something, right?”

“A Sheulek is more than a warrior. We are the instruments of God’s judgment.”

“I don’t think I got that.”

“Sheul’s will is not always manifest to those of us who dwell on Gann. When conflicts arise that cannot be settled by men, we Sheulek are called to mediate. Most of these matters can be settled with words,” he added, taking back his samr to clean and sheath it. “If you have conflict with S’kot, call him forth and I will mediate.”

“I don’t think that will go over too well.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, court will be in session all of three minutes before you bang the gavel down on Scott’s fat head. Admit it,” she said, giving him half a smile that did not much touch her eyes. “You’d love the excuse to take him out.”

“You think I have had no excuses before this?” He took a bite of his salt-back, swallowed, and added, “I don’t need one anyway. One of the privileges of carrying these blades is that I can use them against whoever I want. Yet for now, this moment, I must believe Sheul put him in my path for a reason.”

She snorted. “Maybe it’s to kill him.”

“Father, hear Your son’s desire, but in the meantime, I don’t require his good opinion of me,” said Meoraq with a dismissive flex of his spines. “It wouldn’t mean much, coming from him.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with these people.”

“Neither do you.”

Her eyes rolled. She looked at the fire and moved roasts around.

“If you want his approval,” said Meoraq bluntly, hating even the taste of the words, “give him yours. Lay your open hand at his boot for all your people to see and his favor will fall like rain.”

“No. He’s an idiot. And I know you think I’m an idiot too—”

He never should have said that.

“—but if I just smile and let him do whatever he wants, he’ll kill us.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes!” She stopped and frowned into nothing for a few moments. “Yes,” she said again, with less heat but more feeling.

“So. Do what is right. Stop pursuing the gratitude of your pathologically ungrateful people.” Meoraq put a hand on her bent knee and leaned forward until his face and hers were a breath apart. “And stop whining.”

It seemed the right thing to say, for a change. She smiled a little anyway, and when she smiled, it was as though a cold hand reached directly through his flesh and squeezed at his stomach.

He had nearly lost her this night. A thumb’s width of bone at the end of her stupid spear had been all that made the difference between his Amber sitting at this fire…or burning on it.

Meoraq gave her a tap and stood up, looking away. “Mind the meat,” he said unnecessarily. Of course she’d mind it. “I need to do something with the carcasses before the ghets come.” He hesitated, then looked down—not directly at her, but close—and said, “You were very brave tonight.”

“And stupid.”

“But brave.” He reached…but closed his hand into a fist and walked away without touching her. He wanted to. And that was why he just didn’t dare.

7

Amber fell asleep while cooking, which, if someone had told her it had happened to them, she wouldn’t have believed was possible. In the aftermath of the tachuqi attack, she had thought she would be awake all night and so she’d busied herself with chores while the others gradually went back to sleep, ultimately ending up behind Meoraq’s tent with a small fire and the stewing pouch, washing up and crying some more. The next time she checked on the meat, Meoraq’s mending kit had been set out in a conspicuous spot, so she went back behind his tent to see what she could do with her shirt. The hanging shreds were beyond help; she ripped them off, then went ahead and ripped the whole shirt up to the neck and started sewing. The new seam was as ugly as a surgery scar, but the shirt fit a lot better, so she did them all the same way, even her sweaters from home, leaving only her last new Manifestor’s shirt still folded and untouched in the bottom of her pack.