His spines shrugged. “No.”

“It matters, you know.”

“Not to me.”

She didn’t argue the point, but she didn’t bother to hide her annoyance either and after several amused sidelong glances as she walked and fumed, Meoraq finally thumped her on the shoulder with two knuckles. “Hold a moment.”

“No. We’re not stopping until we’re out of the city, that’s what you said.”

He caught her by the wrist and stopped them both. Big scaly jerk. Far down the street, Scott apparently saw something interesting and led everyone around a corner and out of sight. All at once, they were alone—the last two people on the planet.

Meoraq too was watching as Scott and the others disappeared. Now he grunted, although he continued to gaze in that direction. “S’kot lies. Do you need me to tell you this?”

“No, of course not! But you’ve got this crazy idea that just because everyone knows that Scott talks out his ass, no one believes him!”

A snort of lizardish laughter. “Talks through his ass,” Meoraq murmured. “And farts from his face.”

“Focus, Meoraq. Our track record for disbelieving things just because they might seem stupid or dangerous is piss-poor. The only reason any of us are here is because we got on an untested ship and let them put us to sleep and shoot us into space.”

“No, you are here because it is where God willed you to be.”

The effort not to roll her eyes made her hand fly up and slap over her face. She rubbed her eyes wearily. “You’re killing me with that crap.”

“Truth does not care if it comforts you, Soft-Skin.”

They walked.

“Honestly,” said Amber. “It doesn’t bother you at all when Scott says your God’s voice is just a two-way radio?”

“Everything S’kot says annoys me,” Meoraq replied with a flick of his spines. “If he wished me fair weather and a warm bed, still it would be all my will to hold from slapping him to the ground.”

“He says there’s machines in Xi’Matezh,” said Amber, petty as that was.

If it was bait—and it was—Meoraq wouldn’t bite at it. “There may well be,” was his mild reply. “And if S’kot seeks to make himself their master, I will judge him for it. Until then, he can pour piss out of his flapping mouth all he pleases.”

“And you don’t even care who else he hurts with it.”

Meoraq glanced at her, then put his hand on her arm and stopped them again. “I don’t know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.”

Amber couldn’t argue.

“It is a long walk yet to Xi’Matezh,” said Meoraq, patting her on the head. “For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie.”

‘Says the man who thinks he’s going to find God there,’ thought Amber, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, no matter how rotten she felt. He was trying to comfort her. It wasn’t his fault he was terrible at it. What she said, as neutrally as possible, was, “I think you’re seriously underestimating how pretty this lie is.”

“He can’t promise you anything better than God.”

“Of course he can. None of us have ever met God before and we’re just fine with that. We are!” she snapped when he rolled his eyes. “And for that matter, so are you! So you may want to see God when you get there, but you don’t need to. You can live without it if you have to.”

“Live without God?” he said with a lizardish smirk.

“Live without meeting God. Look, all I’m saying is, it’s impossible to miss what you’ve never had.”

“I’ll have to meditate on that, but in this moment, I do not agree. I know a man,” Meoraq mused. “Blood-kin of mine…a friend…who misses very much, or believes he misses, the birth-right that should have belonged to both of us, but which only I achieved. He stood some of the same training. He has at least some understanding of the struggle and pains which I endure, but he misses it anyway. Because it seems so much easier to him, I suppose.”

“I think you’re confusing missing something with wanting it.”

“Perhaps. So. Do you miss your old land—” He looked at her, head cocked, unsmiling. “—or do you just want it?”

To her profound irritation, she had no idea how to answer that.

Meoraq grunted and flicked his spines. “It doesn’t matter anyway. A man may want, or miss, many things in his life, but in the end, we all serve God.”

“Go ahead, lizardman. Pound it in with a hammer.”

“Eh?”

She was saved from having to explain that admittedly snotty remark by the sudden reappearance of Nicci, running down the street toward them, alone. Adrenaline filled her mouth with the taste of metal and she would have bolted forward to meet her except that Meoraq had better reflexes. He caught Amber at her first twitch forward and thrust her behind him, his hooked sword already in his other fist.

Nicci scraped to a stop immediately, her mouth open in a round hole of alarm, both hands flying up in a helpless gesture of surrender.

“What’s wrong?” Amber demanded, ducking under Meoraq’s sword-arm where he couldn’t snatch her back so easily. In theory. “Where is everyone? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Nicci stammered, still staring at the sword in the lizardman’s grip. “We found something, that’s all. Commander Scott wants you to see it.”

“I give no obedience to S’kot!” Meoraq hissed, advancing. “Before you carry his commands to me, you had best ask yourself if you are willing to stand in his place for my answer!”

Nicci backed up fast, stumbling over the broken curb and falling against the wall of a shop whose steadfast commercial bot immediately moved to open the door for her.

Amber gave Meoraq a sharp swat to the bicep, which had to have hurt her a lot more than him, but he actually staggered like she’d hit him with a truck. He turned all the way around to look at her, his spines fully forward and quivering, but she refused to be intimidated. “What’s the matter with you?” she snapped. “Don’t you threaten my sister!”

To her great surprise, Nicci chimed right in alongside her. “Why do you always have to push us around?”

Meoraq kept his eyes on Amber for as long as it took the insistent commercial bot to gronk politely for their attention three times. When he finally broke that stare, it was with a pensive upwards glance and a private word with his god. Then and only then, did he lean back and clip his sword back onto his belt. “So. We will see this machine you have found, but you can tell that cattle’s ass who pretends to lead you that we are not carrying it out of these ruins.”

“We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” Nicci said, her brows pinching together in a look of lofty scorn that Amber hadn’t seen to quite that degree since her teen years. “Why do you always have to be so negative about everything Commander Scott does? And after everything he does for you?”

Meoraq’s spines rose—not flicking forward, but coming up slow until they stood at full extension. “What a remarkable thing to say,” he said in a dangerously mild and distracted way.

“He found something amazing!” Nicci insisted, now openly glaring. “Something that he knew you were going to want to see most of all! And here you are, jumping to conclusions and…and…stabbing him in the back!”

Meoraq smiled. It was not an edgy, tooth-filled, predatory smile at all, but almost a dreamy one. His eyes unfocused briefly. The smile broadened.

“We’re coming,” said Amber.

Meoraq’s hand dropped over her shoulder and squeezed. “In a moment,” he told Nicci. “Leave us.”

“You don’t have to leave,” said Amber, but Nicci was already moving rapidly down the street.