Meoraq hissed to himself, stubbornly ignoring the ache and throb behind his loin-plate. He tried to meditate, counting breaths in the dark.

Never mind. Regardless of the wife he would be given when and if he returned from Xi’Matezh, he was Sheulek now. He was the master of his clay at every hour and in every temptation. He was Uyane Meoraq, a Sword and a true son of Sheul, and no slave to the lure of any female. He was his own man, and even if one were to drop this instant at his feet—

A heavy body struck up against his back and, with a sharp cry and a failed grasping hand, Amber tumbled over his shoulder and landed heavily half in and half out of his lap. Her knee knocked him in the snout as she thrashed to right herself. He swore, grabbing at her with one hand and his injured face with the other, and heaved her off onto the ground. “Mind where you put your feet, damn it!”

“Don’t yell at me! What the hell are you doing, sitting in the middle of…of…”

“Of the ground?” he suggested. “Where else should I be sitting, eh? In the sky? What are you doing walking about in the dark anyway?”

“I couldn’t see you,” she grumbled, righting herself and rubbing at her knee.

“Then carry a lamp. Where are you going?”

“Scott has all the flashlights and he never lets me have one. And I still say you should be in your tent and not lurking around where people can trip over you. Aren’t you supposed to be lying on those hides anyway? Tell me I didn’t carry one all day so you could ignore it.”

“If it bothers you, go to my tent and lie on them,” he countered, and felt with bitter triumph the immediate throbbing of his slit. “A Sheulek goes where he will, asks what he will, and sits where he will. Now, and for the third time, where are you going at Gann’s hour, insufferable human?”

“I’m on watch! I was watching things!” She stopped there, perhaps in deference to the few raised voices protesting this interruption to their sleep, then heaved a sigh at him and punched her hands onto her hips. “I thought I heard something, that’s all. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Meoraq’s frustration sharpened itself at once to a ready point. He put a hand on his kzung and stood up fast, peering into the dark in all directions.

“Relax,” said Amber. “It turned out to be nothing but a bad mood with a lizardman attached. Go to bed, Meoraq. I’m getting you up in a few hours.”

She stomped away without his word of release, muttering to herself and leaving Meoraq to count his breaths and silently beseech his soul’s divine Father to give him either some measure of mastery over the lust that was once again throbbing behind his loin-plate, or mastery over the temper he was forever losing to these fits of human incivility. Where did she get the nerve to speak to him like that in the first place? To give him orders?! He was Sheulek, damn it, and she was…she was…

She was a woman, was what she was. She was a woman in his camp and beholden to him for the protection he provided, just as any woman of any city he had entered as conqueror. She owed him her respectful obedience and if he ordered her to bend her back, she—

Her neck, he amended in some distraction. Bend her neck. This was a matter of disrespect and whatever else he wanted (Is it sex? she asked, the first time he had ever heard the word spoken aloud by any woman. Is it sex? and she’d been looking right at him) was nothing but an ordeal of this pilgrimage to be endured and defeated. Until then, Amber—along with all the rest of her people—would bend her neck and give obedience to the master of this camp and that was all, all, he wanted from her.

He was Sheulek. Truth was his bloodright. He knew a lie when he heard one spoken. He knew a lie when he spoke it himself.

Cursing, Meoraq got up and stalked into his tent. He fastened it against the wind and against the soft sound of Amber’s footsteps as she made her clumsy patrol. Then he lay down on the damned hides, fully dressed and aching behind his loin-plate, and pressed both hands to his brows. “O Sheul my Father, look down and see Your son in suffering,” he muttered. “As clay is made hard by the fires, so do I ask that my weak flesh be tempered and made fast against the wickedness of Gann. I cannot stand alone against sin, my Father, no more than clay may hold its form unfired.”

Fire, fire, and fire again. Where was his mind? Meoraq hissed through his teeth at the top of his tent and began again, the Supplication this time.

“Great Sheul, O my Father, behold Your son in the hour of Gann. I am the unformed clay upon Your wheel. I am the untempered sword at Your forge. I am the unlit lamp without Your fire at my heart. Shape me, temper me, illuminate me.”

It was not immediate, but as the ache in his loins subsided, peace overtook his troubled mind at last. He lost himself gradually in meditation, slipping in and out of memory, undisturbed now by the soft sounds that sometimes escaped the tent where humans lay together in what little privacy they had and vaguely proud of how undisturbed he was.

‘I wouldn’t be, if it was Amber in one of those tents,’ he thought suddenly, and that was all it took to break his peace.

It was a long night and a bitterly cold one, and Uyane Meoraq knew no rest.

* * *

Amber woke up cold. That was nothing new, but this time, it wasn’t because it was raining and the water had leaked in or her blanket had come loose. No, she was dry and tightly wrapped, just cold. And odds were good it was only going to get colder.

‘Should have slept in Meoraq’s tent,’ she thought drowsily. She’d certainly done herself no good by sleeping out here. Nicci had come back to her usual place at Amber’s side, but her only response to Amber’s attempts at talk had been, “Unless you’re ready to apologize, I’m not interested,” to which there might have been a thousand diplomatic replies, but Amber had gone with, “Okay, I’m sorry you’re such an idiot that you believe Scott can pull a starship out of his ass,” and they’d both gone to bed angry.

Nicci was probably awake right now, thought Amber as she stared at the unmoving tuft of blonde hair that protruded from Nicci’s blanket, but if so, she was pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk. And Amber was fine with that. Maybe later, she’d try again to patch things up, but the world didn’t care if Nicci’s feelings got hurt over a non-existent skyport and right now, neither did Amber.

She got up, scrunching her blanket down into her duffel and pulling out a fresher shirt to put on over the top of the two she was already wearing. That cut the chill to a tolerable level, but it left her duffel bag with nothing in it except her blanket and the one untouched Manifestor’s shirt she had left. The practical part of her knew it was just stupid not to wear it when it was cold like this—the damn thing wouldn’t fit right anyway—but stupid or not, as long as it sat folded up and brilliantly white in the bottom of her duffel bag, she felt like she had something in reserve. Once she was wearing it, she had nothing.

So today, like every day, Amber zipped it up where it would stay clean and neat, and told herself it wasn’t that cold yet and she’d be fine for one more day. Today, she could also tell herself that when they reached the mountains, there would be another lesson in how to make hides, and maybe clothes. They’d look like shit, she was sure, but even the worst-looking leathers were going to feel wonderfully warm. Maybe the animals in the mountains would even be furry. If nothing else, she could make a blanket.

Meoraq was hunched by his fire when she looked for him, working on something. He grunted a greeting as she approached, and gestured at the ground beside him. When she sat down, he lifted a leathery mass out of his lap and dropped it into hers. “You can finish this,” he said, heaving himself onto his feet for a bone-creaking stretch.