Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 62 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

13

He took them to Praxas. He could have given a number of reasons if asked to do so (he was not). He had scant provisions and too many mouths. The raiders had every advantage in the wildlands if they ever decided to pursue. The…infant was far too young to travel indefinitely. And he had to take them somewhere, didn’t he? Surely Amber didn’t expect to keep them?

He would have liked to ask her, but he was afraid of starting a fight. Not because of her moods, but because of his. To say truth, he couldn’t even claim to know just what her moods were, his own were so demanding. Gann’s corruption emanated from the slaves like smoke—invisible, odorless, but choking in his throat whenever he was among them. He kept his distance as much as he could, patrolling while the women rested, but as soon as he was among them, the fires began to burn in his belly and the blackness came creeping in at his mind. And Amber was always there trying to talk to him, touch him, come and sit beside him, unaware that it was Gann’s animal lust that lived in him now, Gann’s honeyed words that whispered in his ear to take her, revel in her, rut with her.

When Amber tried to lie down with him at night, he got up and left. When he had to speak to her, he did it facing away, feeling her wounded eyes on his back like live coals. She was hurting and he did not dare embrace her. He could hear her crying softly at night, but the creeping blackness that took his words would not let him explain. She needed comfort, but until he was away from these women and cleansed of Gann’s taint, he could not give it.

So Meoraq went back to Praxas for the very simple reason that he wanted to be rid of the slaves as soon as possible. The little time he’d spent in that city (not even the city, but at most ten paces down its Southgate tunnel) had given him the impression of an evil place, largely inhabited by men he was ashamed to call brothers under the Blade, but that wasn’t his problem. His entire intent had been to find and reclaim his wife. He had surrendered to Amber’s insistence that the raiders’ slaves had also been set in his path to be rescued solely because there wasn’t time to argue with her. Perhaps it had been Sheul’s will and so perhaps the slaves could be redeemed and brought back into the light of His lamp, but that was for the priests of Praxas to decide. Meoraq’s interests began and ended with Amber.

At first light following the funeral for the…for Nali, Meoraq started them moving. It took too long, owing to the weakened and generally useless condition of the slaves, time which Meoraq spent as far away from them as possible while still keeping them in the shadow of his protection. With Sheul’s guidance, they reached their destination in four days and broke free of the woods surrounding the city close to dusk.

Again, he met no sentries, but this time, it was not for lack of them. He saw one almost immediately after leaving the treeline, but rather than come forward and challenge his party, or at least hide until he had reinforcements enough to make that seem like a good idea, the sentry took off at a run.

Well, all right. Not a commendable act, but perhaps an understandable one. Praxas had sent away a single man and now came eight figures. The obvious conclusion? A raiding party, coming to find out who they had to thank for the visit from a Sheulek.

Before long, the braziers were lit on the wall. In the growing dark, this sign of alarm only illuminated how much of the wall had been too heavily damaged to allow access to a brazier. Meoraq was not intimidated, but he was careful to begin hails at the soonest opportunity and to persist even when he was not answered. Their silence disturbed him far more than the lit braziers, yet they must have recognized him. No one fired upon them anyway, although he could see figures moving on the roof and behind the sealed gate. The Word forbade the use of all weapons which delivered death ‘not requiring the blow of a man’s hand,’ as the Prophet had written, but priests had ruled long ago that a man’s hand could deliver blows in a number of lawful ways—the cut of a sword, the throw of a spear…the tipping of a barrel. In defense of their cities, warriors of the walls kept flammable oils and acids or other volatile substances, not to mention hot coals in the braziers themselves, to repel attack. A city like Praxas, which commerced with raiders, might have anything…but they let him come.

He continued to hail and they continued to ignore him. A body’s length from the gate, Meoraq halted his herd of women and went the last few steps alone. He would be calm. Threading his arms through the bars, Meoraq clasped his hands and leaned on the gate which Praxas boldly shut against him. He looked at each man who had perhaps come to fight him off. The only one who held his stare was Onahi.

“I have not released this city,” Meoraq said at length.

Onahi raised his spines slightly in acknowledgement. He did not answer.

“Praxas stands in the shadow of Uyane,” Meoraq said. “Open to me.”

“I am barracks-ward here, sir,” Onahi told him. “I no longer hold a key.”

Barracks…ward? Meoraq had never seen that title held by a boy older than sixteen. “What is happening here?” he asked bluntly.

“They’ve gone to fetch the governor. It won’t be long. He’s been boarding here since you left us, sir. I turn his sheets,” Onahi added caustically. He glanced behind his shoulder and stepped aside as Warden Myselo lumbered into sight.

“Open this gate,” ordered Meoraq in what he felt was an admirably patient voice.

Warden Myselo drew himself up importantly and raised a hand in salute, not to Meoraq, but to one of the two men coming up the tunnel behind him. “Governor Rsstha Tolmar of House Rsstha, a son of Lonagra, who was son of—”

“I’ve never heard of you,” interrupted Meoraq, and knew at once which was Rsstha by the flattening of his spines.

“—a son of Posh’ar, who—”

“I am Uyane Meoraq,” said Meoraq, lowering his own spines with deliberate insolence. “Son of Uyane Rasozul, steward of House Uyane which is champion to the city of Xeqor in Yroq. Have you heard of me?”

“—who is Praxas in the sight of Sheul,” Myselo finished, flustered.

Governor Rsstha gave the warden a tap of release that did not quite reach the man’s actual shoulder. “I have,” he said. His voice was ridiculously deep and full coming from such a reedy, workless body. “Praxas welcomes you, Sheulek.”

Meoraq leaned back to run his gaze over the bars of the gate. “Such is Praxas’ welcome, eh?”

“We are happy to make provision for you on your journey. House Rsstha itself shall board you for however long you desire to rest within my walls, but before I open to your conquest, I will hear your intentions.”

How easy it would be to argue. Meoraq had never once been given so audacious an order in all his years of service and he thought no tribunal in the world would so much as call him for query if he cut Rsstha down for making it. He yearned to say this aloud…

Ah, but even valid arguments turned easily to insults, which had a way of building to a surge of temper when Meoraq was tired, even when he hadn’t been four days keeping a herd of unwanted women ahead of the murderous raiders who may be in pursuit. So instead of parrying the governor’s demand, Meoraq simply said, “I do not intend to stay. I will speak with the high judge here. Afterwards, I have a short list of needs for your provisioner and as soon as they are met, I will release your city and go. Open the gate.”

“You will go,” the governor repeated. “You and your…party?”

Meoraq’s temper, none too secure already, slipped. “Take the sneer out of your tone when you speak of them,” he said, and Myselo took a broad step back, bumping into his watchmen. “These women come from this city, your city, and it was here just days ago that their own fathers conspired to place them in Gann’s hands for coin.”

“You have proof of this accusation?”

His temper slipped again. “I am proof!” he snapped. “Are you involved in this commerce?”

“Certainly not!” The governor’s indignation did not appear to be feigned. “Neither have I any reason to question the judgments executed at my tribunals! These women were exiled according to the laws we are all sworn before God to uphold!”

“These women were not exiled, they were sold! That crime is unforgiveable and will be rooted out at its source and if those roots go as deep as the Governor’s Seat, so be it!” Meoraq bared his samr and stabbed it suddenly through the bars, restraining himself with less than a finger’s breadth between his blade and Rsstha’s neck. “Open this gate or here do I swear in the sight of Sheul that I will come through it.”

The governor hissed at Myselo and retreated to an ignoble distance with his aide. The nervous jangling of the warden’s keys could not quite cover the sound of their voices, but Meoraq did not care enough to listen. He returned to his herd with an itch under his scales and paced among them, coming to stand at last beside his wife. Predictably, the women shrank away, leaving a wide space around him.

And Amber.

Activity at the gate ceased. Rsstha came a few steps forward, staring, then retreated again. More hissing.

Warden Myselo opened the gate and raised a salute. “Honored one, the governor wishes to speak.”

“Is everything okay?” Amber whispered.

He glanced at her, wondering blackly how close he’d come to being able to just do what he’d come to do and walk away. He shouldn’t have pulled a sword on the governor. A Sheulek was supposed to be the master of his emotions at all times and this was probably why. Fuck.

“Stay here,” he said and went to see what the piss-licker wanted.

“The barracks-ward here will take your list of needs to be filled,” Rsstha said with a wave at Onahi. “And to arrange your meeting with the high judge. Until that matter is settled, I must insist the women be confined under arms. Regardless of the sins of their fathers, they still stand convicted of criminal acts and have by your own acknowledgement been exposed to further corruption in the grip of Gann.”

“Insist,” Meoraq said. His hand flexed on the hilt of his samr. “Go on.”

“The human.” Rsstha tucked his hands into his sleeves, oblivious to all danger. “My guards will take it now, honored one.”

“I’ll split the man who so much as…” Meoraq’s hiss died in his throat. His head cocked. “What did you just call her?”

“Human.” Rsstha flared his mouth and hissed delicately through his teeth. “It is the word for their monstrous kind.”

“It is.” Meoraq tipped his head further. “How did you come to hear it?”

Rsstha’s answer took few words. Meoraq stared at him, at Myselo, at the ceiling of the tunnel (which had several disturbing cracks). He took six deep breaths and six again. At length, he released the grip on his sword. He brought his eyes down and his spines up. He looked at Onahi.

“Do you have a room where these women can be held?” he asked. Calmly.

“Yes, sir.”

“And defended, if need be?”

Governor Rsstha bristled. Meoraq ignored him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gather your men, then. See that the women of my party are provided food and fresh clothing. A bath, if one can be managed. And hold that door until you are given my word to open, do you mark me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Meoraq released Onahi, who left the tunnel at a soldierly run, and turned to Myselo. He leaned in very close, taking up every step that the warden tried to put between them, until there was a wall at the man’s back and Meoraq full in his face. “You know my father,” he said.

“I, eh, I’ve heard of him, sir.”

“You’ve heard of how he climbed the wall at Kuaq.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Killed one hundred and eleven men, alone. Killed the Raider-Lord Szadt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who am I, warden?”

“Sheulek, sir.”

“Who am I?”

Myselo’s throat worked weakly as he cast his eyes about for aid. “Uyane?”

“I am Uyane. I am my father’s son. I am the Sword and the Striding Foot of Sheul. I am—” Meoraq caught the warden’s broad face and forced him to look at him. “—the man who comes to you now from the ruins where your Raider-Lord Zhuqa laired and who killed his way in and out to bring you these women. I did not count them,” he admitted. “I will not say that I have bettered my father’s tally at Kuaq, but I will tell you this, warden.” He yanked Myselo’s snout down so that he could lean even closer. “I can climb this wall.”

Myselo had no answer other than his rapid breath and the metallic stink of fear that rode it. Meoraq released him and went through the gate back to his women.

“A room is being prepared,” he told them. “You will rest there until permanent arrangements can be made. I want you with them for now,” he said to Amber.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. “Not far,” was the best he could think of.

She took a small step toward him. “I want to go with you.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No. Get back!” He held up his hand and looked aside until she stepped away again. His throat felt hot. He rubbed it, breathing until he had lost some of the blackness that clouded his brain. Some. Not all. Rsstha’s words—those few, simple words—scratched bloody furrows in his head. Damn him. Damn them.

Onahi was back, waiting at the mouth of the tunnel with several armed watchmen. Meoraq put his women in a line with Amber at its tail and took them into Praxas. “To my word,” he reminded Onahi, “and no other.”

Onahi saluted. His men echoed him. They closed their small ranks around the women and marched them into darkness. Meoraq watched the cracks in the ceiling of the tunnel until they were gone.

“Take me to them,” he said, and felt his heart begin again to burn in spite of all his deep, calming breaths. “Now.”

* * *

Myselo lumbered off ahead of them, ostensibly to find a boy and a cart, but the governor’s carriage was waiting at the inner road, and over the governor’s outraged exclamations, Meoraq tore the standards off and took it for his own. Rsstha kept a bitter half-silence all the way to the Temple District, which was to say that he glared at Meoraq with his mouth shut tight while his aide made polite objections at regular intervals.

Meoraq ignored them both, meditating with his eyes open and his arms folded. He was quiet, but he was not calm.

There was no one at the gate of Xi’Praxas when they reached it. Meoraq had to bang on the bars with the hilt of his samr for several minutes before a swearing abbot finally let them in.

The inner halls were dark and empty. The abbot brought them a lamp and took himself back to his rooms, muttering loudly and in no uncertain terms about his cold dinner and certain slit-lickers who abused their powers of authority. Meoraq amused himself during much of the next walk debating whether it were himself or Rsstha who had been the slit-licker in question. His tendency to toy with the hilt of one blade or another as he waged this mental argument kept Rsstha and his aide very quiet.

He was led to the Temple’s infirmary, past several unattended watch-points, and at the end of the hall in the wing reserved for the needs of the oracles and the high judge, propped up against the wall with his arms folded and his chin tucked against his chest, was a watchman. He appeared to be asleep, but at least he was at his post. He roused himself at their footsteps to say, “Fifty rounds for a dip, five hundred goes an hour, next hour opens at—” He opened his eyes to check the time and saw them. His hands flinched to his sword-belt as his eyes darted to the door, but he drew nothing, and after a tense, considering silence, Meoraq saw him surrender.

Meoraq no longer knew what to expect behind the door, but he was suddenly intensely glad he had not brought Amber with him.

“What is the meaning of this?” Governor Rsstha demanded and his aide went scurrying forward, demanding that the door be opened and didn’t the watchman see that this was House Rsstha before him and who was his commander, what was his name, stand and answer.

The watchman dropped his arms to his sides, away from the hilt of his sword. He didn’t answer, didn’t even salute. His eyes were for Meoraq alone. “I wish to pray,” he said simply.

Meoraq drew his samr. “Do so.”

The watchman bent his brow to the ground and made his prayers in silence while Rsstha tried to take control of what he obviously perceived as an embarrassing breach of security which Meoraq had no right to judge. He was ignored, and after several minutes, the watchman rose, took the key from his belt and walked to the door.

“Hold where you stand! Honored one, I assure you, we will pursue this matter,” Rsstha said stiffly. “But I think it is not your place to—”

“My place,” said Meoraq calmly, pensively, and the governor fell silent at once. “My place is to enforce the law of Sheul. That is my place and I know it well. Your place is to run this city in accordance with those laws, and if you believe that doing so allows you to challenge me—” Meoraq’s eye at last broke from that of the silent man before him to slide back and stab at Rsstha. “—judgment shall be passed.”

The governor made a few flustered gestures, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

Meoraq stared at him for a while, then glanced at the watchman. “Open the door and await the will of Sheul.”

“Outrageous,” the governor said again, but very quietly this time. He stalked away a short distance and came back, then had to do it again because the guard’s hands were shaking too much to work the key. For a time, the only sounds to be heard were the key rattling at the lock and the governor’s angry footsteps.

Until the door opened.

It was another guard, by the look of him, one still meant to be at his post somewhere in the city. The sound of his armored leg-plates striking against the bars of the cage rang out in discord against the weak cries of his prisoner.

This had not long been a prison. Meoraq could see that by the lightness of the mortar where the bars had been set, and the bars themselves were neither straight, nor smooth, but crude as it was, the cage was more than sufficient to hold the humans. The cage ran the length of the far wall, but was no deeper than a man’s arm could reach. There was nothing inside but the prisoners themselves, not even a pail to piss in or dried grass to soak it up. Grooves in the floor were clearly meant to carry wastes away, but they weren’t over-careful about using it; they were sitting in filth even now, just watching him. He saw recognition in no one’s eye, not even Scott’s.

“What the hell is this?” Rsstha demanded in a high, almost comical shriek.

The man at the cage bucked, startled into an early climax. He looked back at them, already furiously snarling out something about that not being anything like a full hour, but then really saw them. He froze, panting, wide-eyed, then shoved himself away from the bars, letting the body he’d been deep inside fall carelessly to the ground as he buckled his loin-plate hurriedly back in place. The girl in the cage rolled onto her side, reaching down between her legs to wipe his semen away.

For one terrible moment, even knowing she was safe under Onahi’s honest eye, he thought it was Amber. Then he saw it was Nicci, and he wondered if it made him an evil man that he felt even a moment’s relief. He would pray on that later. For now…

He counted ten men, and though he should have known them all, Scott was the only one of them he recognized straight away and only because his face was so hateful to Meoraq’s eye, even now as it was, bruised and smeared with unmentionable grime. Ten men and Nicci. Of forty-seven human lives, ten men survived. And Nicci.

“Is this all there are?” Meoraq asked.

Rsstha stammered for a second or two, then swung on the watchman, screaming, “How long has this been going on? How dare you? How long have you been selling time to these…these deviants? Answer me at once, you—”

Without turning, Meoraq slapped him across the snout, knocking the governor of Praxas sprawling across the floor. “Is this all of them?” he asked again, just as calmly.

“These are all that remain,” said the watchman.

“I assure you, I had no knowledge of this!” Rsstha said, scrambling to his feet. He shoved his aide away and aimed an accusing hand at the guard standing silent by Nicci’s cage. “This…this…bestiality shall be punished!”

Meoraq’s head cocked at a dangerous angle. “It is no sin for Sheul to urge a man to lie with humans,” he said. “We are all His children.”

Rsstha blinked rapidly for several seconds before, perhaps, visibly recalling Amber and the scar on her shoulder.

“It is no sin to feel that urge. The sin,” said Meoraq, “lies with selling it.”

The watchman took a deep breath and did his best to let it out slow. He raised his chin and closed his eyes. “My name is Seelat Vin.”

“Seelat Vin, you have broken the Fifth Law. You have made trade of flesh and so acted against the Word of Sheul. You have broken your faith with Him and as His Sword, I deem you unforgiveable. Stand and be judged.”

The nerve which had steadied the watchman until this point crumbled. He cried out for his father, flinching back from the cut that swept across his throat, but it was already over by then and the flinch only opened the fresh gap between head and neck that much wider. He staggered as blood poured in a dark flood across his chest and then fell, his last breath turning to froth under his sagging chin.

The humans in their cage at last showed some reaction, recoiling with even more force than the governor and his aide, who found themselves splattered with blood. And then one of them—he really should know the name—surged forward to seize the bars, saying, “Holy shit, that’s Meoraq!”

Meoraq paid the death a proper witness and then, with great effort, turned away. “Get out,” he said to the other guard. The humans set up an immediate clamor, beating on the bars and calling his name in their mangled way, but he ignored them for now and turned to Governor Rsstha. “Release them. Do you have a tablet?” he asked the aide.

“Release…? What?”

“Yes, sir,” said the aide, producing one from his deep sleeve, along with a stylus.

“I require…” He eyed the humans, blackly considering. “Four tents. Each human is to have a pack, two sets of clothing and a blanket. I will also have four travel-flasks and four bricks of cuuvash. You will take everything to Southgate immediately.”

“Honored one, you cannot take these creatures!” the governor stammered. “Sheul gave them to Praxas for study. They are mine!”

Meoraq turned on him fast and hissed, “If you claim possession, then you have broken the Fifth Law yourself! All of you! All who have penned these people as cattle, who force bestial behavior upon them against the Word of Sheul, have broken faith with Him! Do you submit to my judgment then or do you release them?”

Rsstha rather visibly groped for his wits, ultimately falling back into the habits of his office. “I will call for a tribunal—”

“It will be your own!” Meoraq leveled his bloody samr at the guard, still standing silent beside the cage where Nicci huddled, looking back at him without expression. “Get out, I said!”

The guard still did not immediately move, which was understandable since there was no way out of the room save through the door where Meoraq was standing, but when Meoraq looked at him, he eased forward, hesitated again, and then fled.

Rsstha hissed to his aide, who sprinted down the hall, snatching up his robes around his knees. Then he turned a haughty eye on Meoraq and said, “Honored one, you overstep yourself.”

Fire burst in Meoraq’s brain and before he could stop himself, he’d seized a ruling governor by his fine robes and slapped him across the snout. And again. And again. “I hold this piss-gully in my fucking shadow!” he roared, still slapping. “I would not be overstepping by a fucking scale if I ran a sword up your slit and out your mouth! Open that fucking door!”

With that, he turned and hurled the man across the room and into the bars of the cage with force enough to bend them. Meoraq clapped both hands over his eyes and breathed in the dark, listening to Rsstha fumble with his keys and babble out all the ways in which it was obvious that humans were in no way people and that Sheul could not condemn their use in any fashion any more than he condemned the use of cattle for hides Meoraq himself wore. Then the door was open and Scott came spilling out to catch at Meoraq’s arm, saying, “Jesus Christ, am I glad to see you!”

Meoraq shook him off. “Gather your men. N’ki, come!”

Nicci rose, but slowly. Surely she knew him—by Scott’s words if by no other reason—but her gaze remained dull and lifeless. She moved out of the cage and toward him without making any effort to cover herself, and Meoraq sent a second prayer of thanks to Sheul that Amber was not here, but it was a heavy gratitude, for he knew his wife would have to see what her blood-kin had become soon enough.

“I told you he’d find us, didn’t I?” Scott was saying, standing tall at Meoraq’s side as Nicci hobbled her vacant way across the room. “I told you he wouldn’t stop looking!”

“I had not started looking, human,” Meoraq spat. “Nor was I inclined to start. It is Sheul who apparently wishes you spared and I can only think He does so to teach me humility.” And because no one was making a damned move in that direction, Meoraq stalked furiously over and picked Nicci up himself, tossing her across his shoulder where she hung like a sack of grain, half-emptied. “And I tell you right now that He had best make His will very damned clear if He wishes me to move you even one damned step away from this city, because I would just as soon see you all rot in its ruins!”

“Are you mad at us?” Scott asked. He sounded surprised.

Meoraq walked away, letting the humans scramble after and Governor Rsstha stand alone in the mouth of an empty cell. The feel of Nicci swaying with the force of his stride was extremely unpleasant; her hand smacked against his thigh now and then, lifeless as a corpse.

“You are mad,” said Scott, now angry as well as surprised. “Just what the hell do you have to be mad about? You abandoned us, remember?”

Meoraq swung around so fast that Nicci’s limp hand struck the wall behind him. “Lies! You did the leaving, human!”

“She was dying! What were we supposed to do, stand around and watch?”

Meoraq cocked his head warningly and took a few soul-soothing breaths. When he was calm once more, he said, “If you had, you would have been there to see that she did not die.”

They all stared at him, all these flat and ugly faces he had almost forgotten, simply amazed.

“She didn’t?” Scott said finally.

“No.”

“Not then or not ever?”

Meoraq leaned back a little and gave him a hard, dangerous stare.

“Well, I mean…where is she?”

“With me,” said Meoraq and started walking again, reminded by these words that she was not, for the moment.

The humans followed. He could hear them whispering amongst themselves. If any of them were pleased to learn that Amber lived, they showed no sign. He expected no better of them.

‘And so do I stand again among them, O my Father,’ he thought crossly, jogging Nicci’s dead weight higher up upon his shoulder. ‘If this is the price You would have me pay that I receive my woman once more, I will even thank You as I pay it, but of all humans You have chosen to spare, why Scott?’

Sheul had no answer.

The governor’s carriage was too small to fit all the humans. Meoraq ordered a cart and loaded them into the back like sacks of grain. The driver, who had obviously never seen or imagined anything like the humans he was now pulling, got them back to Southgate in half the time it had taken the carriage to make the same trip, a feat even more impressive considering how often he’d been staring back into the cart instead of directing his blindfolded bulls.

Meoraq did not speak to his humans. They did not speak to him.

At the gate, Meoraq again hupped Nicci onto his shoulder and demanded to be taken to Onahi. He and his humans were led into the barracks, to a sealed door guarded by five watchmen and Onahi himself, armed and armored.

“Is there something you require, honored one?” he asked respectfully. He did not so much as glance at the humans, not even the one on Meoraq’s shoulder.

“I am leaving as soon as my provisions arrive. I am taking the women with me.”

Onahi frowned. “The high judge would not receive them?”

“I didn’t meet with him. It is my judgment that Gann holds this city in his shadow. I say the eye of Sheul is upon Praxas and His eye burns with wrath. I am certain He has not directed me to lead these people from death into damnation, therefore I…damn it, I must be meant to lead them on.”

Onahi gazed at him for a short time in perfect stillness. Then he turned and made a gesture of his own, and while his men opened the door and passed out of sight, presumably to gather the refugees sequestered somewhere within, looked back at Meoraq and calmly said, “Is it for you to know if the wrath of Sheul is upon me as well, sir?”

Meoraq gave him a second, more thoughtful stare. “And if it were?”

“I serve Sheul in faith. If it is His will that I die here, I am ready and go to His judgment without fear. Yet if it is not, for my own will, I would live.”

Meoraq listened past the chatter of his humans, and while he heard no specific word from Sheul to approve this suggestion, he heard no word against it either. He began to give a cautious assent and then said instead, for no reason he could fathom, “Have you a family?”

“I am of the House Xaik, sir,” Onahi replied, showing no sign he thought the question an odd one. “Descended low by their champion, but born under his blade.”

Which was to say, he was a bastard, the son of a Sheulteb and one of his House’s servants.

“Have you a woman? Sons?”

“No,” said the guard.

Meoraq pondered the matter while Onahi patiently stood by, but could discern no reason for asking such things. And so perhaps Sheul had spoken after all.

So be it.

“Gather those of your men you trust and whatever gear you can readily manage. We leave as soon as my provisions arrive. Fuck,” he finished, glaring as Amber came through the door. He looked at Nicci’s upturned ass on his shoulder, fought and mastered the urge to hurl her violently to the floor, and instead shrugged her upright and set her carefully down.