“I’m not running you on into Gedai, just out for a short hunt. I thought you wanted to learn how,” he added, trying to prick at her.

“I do, but…” She looked up at him and away. “When she comes looking for me, I need to be here.”

He snorted.

She did not respond.

‘She’s dying,’ he thought suddenly, and was alarmed to find how swiftly and completely he believed it. The flesh was not the only part of a man that could die. The soul was eternal, not immortal. Whatever circumstance had brought her here (even if that circumstance was not a flying ship from another world, which was still flatly impossible) had left deep wounds in Amber. Now Nicci was carving more, and over what?

Scott. Scott and his talk of ships in Xi’Matezh.

He could do nothing for her (although the thought of dragging Nicci out of her nest of mewling friends and slapping some respect into her was appealing on some base level) except leave without pressing her further, so he did.

The wind was strong and sharp with the first of winter’s teeth. He could see rain on the horizon, but not moving this way, not yet. Still, there was a heaviness in the air that said the season’s storms were in the brewing and he was not surprised the game was in hiding. Night was coming on and unless he wanted to lose himself in the open plains after dark, he needed to find something quickly. Even another patch of gruu, bitter as it had been, would be welcome. His eyes were always open, tracking without conscious direction every small sign of life the wildlands gave up, but his mind wandered. Amber. It should have been all of them—Amber wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had a full belly in days—but no matter how often he set the aim of his inner thoughts, they always came back to Amber.

“Sheul, O my Father, hear Your son,” he muttered, his voice no louder than the wind that stirred the dead grass. Yes, he wanted God to hear him, but not the game, if there was any. “Raise up Your lamp and show me what I am meant to do. You have given me the charge of these humans and I have labored mightily in that appointment, O Father, but it is not enough. They are growing weak in my care, great Sheul. Weak in flesh and weak in spirit. Grant me Your wisdom, I pray, that I may strengthen them in turn and do Your will by them, whatever that will may be.”

Sheul walked with him, he was sure, but was silent.

Meoraq kept moving, pausing often to inspect each patch of spoor, but found nothing fresh enough to follow. There might be a few rogue males about for another brace of days, too weak or too unwelcome to join their herds in their seasonal migration, but after that came the true test. After that, he must either hunt tachuqis or corrokis—one, a vicious sword-footed predator; the other, an armor-plated club-tailed behemoth. Neither were likely to be solitary at this time of year. Both were dangerous even to seasoned warriors, invariably lethal to the inexperienced. If he could just get by until he reached the mountains, there would be other game—woolly xauts and burrows filled with mimuts, just right for two to share. Even the thuochs who preyed on them were said by some to be tasty. And once over the mountains…well, Meoraq had no idea what there might be for hunting in Gedai, but it had to be better than this. It would be warming up again by the day of his return, when the herds would come back, and it would be an easy road to Xeqor, if that was how Sheul directed him. In the meantime, he was here with all his humans and they were hungry. Amber was hungry.

“Father, I’ve no resistance to sharing out my cuuvash,” he said, crouching to investigate the long-dried track of a ghet—many ghets—in the thin layer of mud that had washed over this slice of earth in the last storm. Ghets, too, would be plentiful in the plains during the cold season. They would also be poison, in their meat and in their mouths, so if there were any nearby, he wanted to know it. “I will even share it out with all of them, although it would cost me all I have left, damn their greedy mouths, and they will be crying at me again tomorrow.”

But not Amber. Her mind was so full of Scott’s poison and Nicci’s pettiness that she might not even feel hunger anymore. He wanted to do something for her. A full belly would be a fine start, but it ought to be more than that. He fed all the humans, regardless of personal feeling. He wanted to set Amber apart in a way that she could see, to show her that he did believe she was ‘different,’ that they were still ‘good.’

Now if only he had some idea how to do that.

“It is a silly thing for one of Yours to trouble over, my Father,” admitted Meoraq aloud. “But what strengthens the heart, strengthens the whole. So if You have no other will in this small matter, I pray You inspire me, because I haven’t the dimmest spark of an idea how to make a human happy.”

The wind sighed. The sense of a watching eye, a listening ear, had never been stronger outside of the arena. Meoraq grew still, straining with all his soul to receive his Father’s word, but there was nothing.

So never mind humans. What did women like? Amber was a woman.

His mother had been fond of sweets, not that she’d ever said so in Meoraq’s hearing, but Rasozul had almost always brought her a little pot of honey or a tin of fancies if he left the house, and she’d always received it with embarrassing enthusiasm. Meoraq still had most of the honey he’d been given in Xheoth and he didn’t mind making a present of it, but it seemed wrong somehow to just hand over something he already had and wouldn’t much miss. He didn’t know what to do, but he wanted it to show some effort. Besides, Amber would only feed the honey to her blood-kin anyway.

If he had a better idea of where he was, he might make a run to the nearest city and find something there. More tea and cuuvash—that was only practical—and something special just for Amber. Pretty clothes? But no, she’d give them all to her Nicci and go on wearing hers to rags. What else did women like? A new wristlet, maybe; hers was rather plain.

But it was a long way to go and a great risk to take over something she couldn’t really use. What he wanted was something she wanted. Something that would make her happy. Something…

The wind gusted again. Meoraq turned his head, just to get the sting of it out of his eyes, and there before him saw a clean saoq track in the only patch of ground nearby soft enough to take one.

He smiled. “Yes, my Father,” he said. “I hear You. Necessity before desire.”

He readied his kzung, put the thoughts of wristlets and fancies from his mind, and returned himself to hunting.

The tracks led him to a small pile of saoq droppings, still warm. Shortly afterwards, Meoraq had the beasts themselves in his sight, a small herd of males banded together against the coming winter. He killed two of them and they landed in their death-throes atop a cluster of lhichu…

Lhichu! The stalks of the plant were strong and supple enough to let him truss the saoqs together, but it was the roots he thought of, the roots he had been meant to see.

Sheul’s hand rested briefly on Meoraq’s shoulder and took itself away, but not far. Never far. Meoraq prayed his thanks and knelt to gather in his blessings.

Amber came to help when he returned with the saoqs, carrying Scott’s share over to his fires and keeping the rest of the humans out of his way until Meoraq was done with the butchery. When she came back, he gave her a sabk and the offal and put her to work making the skewers that would be their own meal, and while she was busy with that, he set the two saoq heads down on a sturdy patch of ground and cracked their heads open. Then the heads went on the fire—not without some regret; the meat wouldn’t be near as tender with the skull open and empty—and Meoraq put the brains in his stewing pouch with water, hot stones, and the chopped lhichu root. He mixed this into a thick paste with his hands, shook them clean, more or less, and then turned to her and said, “Take off your clothes.”