Meoraq caught her up by one arm and hauled her to her feet. She let out a hoarse cry and slapped at him, but he chose to overlook the blow and frowned instead at her flat, ugly face, which was now flat, ugly and horribly bruised. There was a scraped place along the plane of her left cheek, and a short gash at the tip of her ear which had bled enough to raise a few crusty spikes in her hair, but in spite of the swelling and the impressive color, he didn’t think the wounds were serious. Meoraq moved the shreds of her shirt (over her hissing and embarrassed protests) enough to see the bruise he remembered on her belly. It was huge, beginning just under the curve of her ribs and continuing on under the ties of her breeches, but it did not look swollen. He prodded at it cautiously and she smacked his hand. “Does this hurt?”
“Of course it hurts! Let go of me!”
He did, but he was frowning. “I want to see you urinate,” he told her.
She huffed again and sat down, returning her attention to the fire. “I wanted to see Midnight Eclipse when they played Madison Square, lizardman. Life is full of things we want and are never going to get.”
“Truth,” he muttered and rubbed hard at his brow-ridges. He was no surgeon, after all. If she had done herself an injury, Sheul alone could cure her.
The thought gave him surprisingly little comfort.
“These need to be cooked,” Meoraq said gruffly and hunkered down to make room on the coals for the fat and bones.
“I wasn’t sure that was food,” said Amber, not rude any longer, but only…dim.
He shouldn’t have called her an idiot.
‘Admitted, but I still would have thought of her as one,’ he thought. Aloud, he said, “When I bring it as food, you may be assured it is food.”
“Even the bones?”
“The bones especially.”
Her brow creased for a moment, then smoothed out in dismay. “Oh, is it more of that gross bone jelly stuff?”
“Yes. And stop making that face,” he added. “You need the marrow more than meat in these days.”
“I’m not having any.”
He snorted. “Yes. You are.”
“I don’t want it, Meoraq.”
“I don’t want to feed S’kot. Life is full of things we do not want to do and must do anyway.” He turned the strips of tachuqi fat, which were browning up nicely already. “Meat may keep the life in your body a little longer, but no one stays healthy on meat alone. The season for green leaves and grain is done. My cuuvash is spent. Marrow is what I have to give you and you will eat it.”
“I don’t see you forcing it on anyone else.”
“I don’t care about anyone else.”
It took a moment for him to realize what he’d just said.
Sheul brought His hammer down on Meoraq’s chest just once. He straightened up sharply to disguise his flinch and glared at her, thinking, ‘I said that. Why did I say that?’ and thinking fractured thoughts of her bruised stomach under her torn shirt, the clean streaks of tears under her dry eyes, and the little sound it had made—that muted, soft sound—when her body slapped up against his and she threw her arms around him.
She was staring back at him, but he didn’t know what she was thinking. Her eyes were too wide, too bright in the firelight. There was still blood on her cheek and in her hair; the urge to wet a cloth and wipe her face had barely formed before it had melted into the much less clear desire just to touch her. Not sexually (not at first), but just to touch. To feel her flesh, warm with life. To put his arm around her shoulders as he so often saw humans do with one another. To hold her and feel her holding him.
‘There is something wrong with me,’ he thought, and took the fat off the coals. He pulled his samr and served half the delicacy warrior-style, across the blade. She took it eventually and set it on her knees, staring at it instead of him. She shivered once.
“Eat it,” he grunted, and ate his off his kzung. It crackled open and melted in his mouth like a good custard, and he scarcely noticed. The rich, salty taste was a luxury in this world, prized by priests and lords and rarely savored even by Sheulek, but he could not enjoy it. He wished he knew what to say to take the heaviness out of the air.
Amber stirred herself at last and touched a fingertip to the roasted fat. It broke and oozed invitingly. “If I say something, are you going to call it whining?”
What a curious question. “I can’t answer that until I hear what you have to say.”
She rolled her eyes back and rubbed briefly at her face, then looked at him. “Fine. If I whine, will you shut up about it and just let me do it for once?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “I have very little patience with whining, particularly when one is whining about the food.” He pointed.
She gave the fat a lackluster glance, but dipped her finger in the steaming inner jelly and put that in her mouth. Her mouthparts twisted into a grimace, not one of her smiling ones. “Why is everything you eat so damned gross?”
“Because these are the wildlands and here we eat for survival, not pleasure. Is this what you want to whine about? The food? When you should be thanking Sheul for His mercy that you are alive to eat at all?”
“No.” She took another taste of the fat and finally nerved herself to scoop up a quivering mouthful and eat it properly. Her eyes scrunched shut and stayed that way even after she’d swallowed. “This is indescribable.”
“Good, eh?” He took another salty bite of his own share. “Men pay high coin in the cities to eat salt-back roasted on real coals just this way. I prefer mine cooked with riak and czaa, when I have the chance. You might like yours better that way.”
“If it came baked in a bar of gold, I don’t think I could ever like this. It stings my mouth.”
He looked up sharply. “Are your teeth loose?”
“No, I’m just cut up some from when…” She didn’t finish. She looked away at the other fire, where humans huddled together to sleep or exchange low words. She watched them in silence for a long time and then rubbed at her face in a terrible, broken way. “I really screwed up with these people, Meoraq.”
That was a new turn of phrase and he wasn’t wholly certain of her meaning, so he said nothing.
“The worst part is, I don’t really know how. I don’t deserve this—I don’t think I do—but I don’t think I can stop it either. It’s not because I think I’m right all the time and it’s not because Scott’s a dick…or maybe it is. All I know is, I could walk over there right now with a spaceship in my arms and they’d probably club me to death with it before they thanked me for it.”
Meoraq leaned back in some surprise. “Do you want thanks?”
Now she looked at him, her brows furrowing. “Don’t you?”
“No. A Sheulek requires no man’s favor when he stands in God’s sight.”
“Oh come on. Don’t you think you deserve a ‘thank you’ after herding us across the wilderness and giving us food and water and then patrolling half the night to keep the man-eating chickens out of our camp while we sleep? Don’t you want just once for someone to appreciate it?”
He shrugged his spines. “Sometimes. I’m still a man and men can be petty, but I try to take the high path. Sheul may yet reward me for my efforts here; your people never will, I think. That cattle’s ass, S’kot, likes to keep them afraid of me.” He pointed yet again at her tachuqi fat and studied her face while she picked at it. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”
“He’s been pretty obvious, but you don’t act like you see it.”
“Because I don’t care. The world is filled with fools like S’kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don’t care what they think of me and neither should you.” He pointed at her tachuqi fat. She rolled her eyes again, but began at last to really eat it, and after she had taken several bites and he’d had time to think, he said, “I am Sheulek. Have I told you what that means?”
