Meoraq watched until she was good and gone, keeping his hand comfortably locked on her shoulder despite her efforts to shrug it off. It took several minutes, and each one stretched out thinner and longer, until the small greyish blob that was Nicci turned a corner and vanished. Immediately, Amber went on the defensive. “I’m sorry she said that, but what do you expect?”

“Cattle will bellow and beetles will bite,” he said scornfully. “S’kot will talk out of his ass and his fool people will repeat him. I don’t concern myself with N’ki’s behavior. I concern myself with yours. So.” Suddenly his scaly face was right in front of hers. “What am I about to say to you?”

Her mind went wonderfully blank. “How many guesses do I get?”

His face got even closer, as improbable as that was. “You,” he said, “hit me.”

She blinked and looked at her hand, which was still pink and stinging a little. “Are you going to tell me it hurt?” she asked incredulously.

His red eyes narrowed. “I did not mark that. And before you repeat yourself, know this: It is the law of all the city-states under Sheul that no man may lay naked hands upon a Sheulek, save at invitation, for his is the flesh of the Father and the punishment for such presumption is death. So. What did you say?”

“I’m not a man. I’m a woman.”

His head cocked. “I did not mark that either. What did you say?”

“Uh, I said I’m sorry and I won’t do it again?”

Meoraq straightened up with a grunt and resumed walking.

As she followed, Amber studied his raised spines, his black throat, and what few other minutia existed to help her gauge his mood, decided it was safe to be a little catty, and added, “I also said you were being kind of a baby for making a big deal out of it.”

He coughed up a dry laugh. “Did you indeed? You ought to know that it is as much a crime to insult one of God’s Swords as it is to lay naked hands upon one. If we were at home, you would be publically whipped for what you have just ‘said’, and I don’t believe I could stop it.”

Her feet rooted at once. “You’re not going to…I mean…Nicci…?”

He shrugged his spines. “I suppose I could make the effort to feel offense, but you would only insist on bearing her punishment.”

Would she? The doubt pricked at her just once before she crushed it in a kind of horror. Of course she would. They were family. They were all each other had. Amber would always stand up for Nicci, and Nicci…would always stand up for her.

“Have you ever seen it happen?” Amber asked. Blurted, really. Anything to keep from thinking.

“Eh? Of course.”

“I mean to you. Or over you, I guess I should say. Have you ever got someone hurt because they called you a…a scaly son of a bitch or gave you one of these?” She slapped lightly at his bicep.

He glanced at his arm where her hand had struck, smiling with his mouth even as his head cocked—not quite enough to really be a threat. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Many times. I wasn’t always offended, to say truth,” he said in his careless I-have-people-whipped-every-day way. “But law is law. When I am at home in Xeqor, I have the authority to forgive, but when I travel, such forgiveness reflects poorly upon the leaders of that city. They must show mastery, especially in conquest.”

“Even if they were just kidding?” Images from old movies spun through her head—pilgrim ladies set in stocks in the town square, sailor guys tied to the mast while the bosun whipped his back bloody—but it wasn’t all the movies, was it? There were always stories in the news about some rich jackass partying a little too hard in some foreign country getting his ass caned and turning it into an international incident. She’d never had much sympathy for those people before, and yet the idea that she personally could be dragged away and beaten in front of a jeering crowd just because she’d called Meoraq a baby and swatted him on the arm boggled her mind.

“Intent is of no consequence to the law. Sheul’s Swords may suffer no abuse from lesser men. Only another Sheulek or a Sheulteb has the right to confront me. All others, even if born under the Blade, can be severely punished for a thoughtless word or an idle blow.” His spines twitched. His gaze grew distant. “Even…if they are kin.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

No answer, not even a grunt. They walked half a block in silence.

“I’m not trying to be rude,” said Amber finally.

He roused himself from wherever he had gone to give her a friendly nudge. “No one is here to see us, Soft-Skin. Say what you like. I’ll let you know if I’m offended. You won’t stop,” he added with a wry tilt to his head. “But I’ll let you know.”

Another half-block passed, with crippled bots making the only conversation. This time, the silence was Amber’s.

“I’m a bitch, aren’t I?” she said. It just fell out, landing heavily and dragging along behind her like one of those iron balls you saw chained to a prisoner’s ankle in the old-time cartoons.

“I don’t know what that means.”

She didn’t know how to explain and didn’t entirely want to, knowing that she’d called his mother one just last night. Instead, she nerved herself up for an honest answer and asked, “Do you think I’m hard to live with?”

“Eh.” He flicked his spines in a careless manner, not even bothering to shrug them all the way. “I’m the wrong man to ask. I’ve never had to live with anyone so long as I’ve lived with you humans. Even the Prophet himself would likely be in under my scales by now.”

“In other words, yes.” She tried to smile like it was a joke, but it wasn’t and she couldn’t, quite.

“No one speaks for a Sheulek. My words are my own. There are no others. You should—” But just then, they rounded the corner and saw the others, and whatever else Meoraq had been about to say ended seamlessly with, “Fuck Gann.”

It got a laugh out of her, the first real laugh since they’d stumbled into this god-awful place, the first laugh in what felt like lifetimes. “I should what?”

He glanced at her, still scowling over Scott, but a little sheepish, she thought. “That isn’t what I meant to say.”

“I thought God’s feet only told the truth. Your words are your own. There are no others.”

“Insufferable human,” he said. “Come. I need to see what this cattle’s ass is about now, and if God be merciful to me, it will end badly.”

The wind, which had been blowing more or less non-stop since Amber first crawled out of the wreck of the Pioneer and which had long ago become a kind of white-noise sensation she scarcely noticed, suddenly threw an extra-cold breeze their way, sending an honest-to-God chill up Amber’s spine. At the same time, the lit window they were standing beside flickered and died. She tried to laugh over that (sheesh all we need is some ominous music duh-duh-duh-DUMMMM the omen is officially here) but it wasn’t really funny. It was Scott. Of course it was going to end badly.

Scott and the others were standing in the middle of the street two blocks down, but even from here, Amber could see what they were looking at. It was another kiosk, but one of enormous size, planted in the middle of the intersection so that each side faced out into traffic. Centered in each wall of the kiosk was a video screen, and judging from the way everyone had ringed around it, all of them were working. Bands of static cut across the image, but the lizardman speaking there was still perfectly discernible, if muted. Amber had to be right up next to the group before she could hear anything at all. Only one of the speakers seemed to be working and the audio feed was in terrible condition, but a few words had survived.

“…won’t help anymore,” was the first phrase to fall out of hissing static into recognition. “It’s everywhere. It’s in everything. You can’t…” And back to static.

“What is this?” Amber asked, and was violently hushed by a dozen people.