“It means you’re a foot.” She glanced at him. “A wandering soldier or something, right?”

“A Sheulek is more than a warrior. We are the instruments of God’s judgment.”

“I don’t think I got that.”

“Sheul’s will is not always manifest to those of us who dwell on Gann. When conflicts arise that cannot be settled by men, we Sheulek are called to mediate. Most of these matters can be settled with words,” he added, taking back his samr to clean and sheath it. “If you have conflict with S’kot, call him forth and I will mediate.”

“I don’t think that will go over too well.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, court will be in session all of three minutes before you bang the gavel down on Scott’s fat head. Admit it,” she said, giving him half a smile that did not much touch her eyes. “You’d love the excuse to take him out.”

“You think I have had no excuses before this?” He took a bite of his salt-back, swallowed, and added, “I don’t need one anyway. One of the privileges of carrying these blades is that I can use them against whoever I want. Yet for now, this moment, I must believe Sheul put him in my path for a reason.”

She snorted. “Maybe it’s to kill him.”

“Father, hear Your son’s desire, but in the meantime, I don’t require his good opinion of me,” said Meoraq with a dismissive flex of his spines. “It wouldn’t mean much, coming from him.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with these people.”

“Neither do you.”

Her eyes rolled. She looked at the fire and moved roasts around.

“If you want his approval,” said Meoraq bluntly, hating even the taste of the words, “give him yours. Lay your open hand at his boot for all your people to see and his favor will fall like rain.”

“No. He’s an idiot. And I know you think I’m an idiot too—”

He never should have said that.

“—but if I just smile and let him do whatever he wants, he’ll kill us.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes!” She stopped and frowned into nothing for a few moments. “Yes,” she said again, with less heat but more feeling.

“So. Do what is right. Stop pursuing the gratitude of your pathologically ungrateful people.” Meoraq put a hand on her bent knee and leaned forward until his face and hers were a breath apart. “And stop whining.”

It seemed the right thing to say, for a change. She smiled a little anyway, and when she smiled, it was as though a cold hand reached directly through his flesh and squeezed at his stomach.

He had nearly lost her this night. A thumb’s width of bone at the end of her stupid spear had been all that made the difference between his Amber sitting at this fire…or burning on it.

Meoraq gave her a tap and stood up, looking away. “Mind the meat,” he said unnecessarily. Of course she’d mind it. “I need to do something with the carcasses before the ghets come.” He hesitated, then looked down—not directly at her, but close—and said, “You were very brave tonight.”

“And stupid.”

“But brave.” He reached…but closed his hand into a fist and walked away without touching her. He wanted to. And that was why he just didn’t dare.

7

Amber fell asleep while cooking, which, if someone had told her it had happened to them, she wouldn’t have believed was possible. In the aftermath of the tachuqi attack, she had thought she would be awake all night and so she’d busied herself with chores while the others gradually went back to sleep, ultimately ending up behind Meoraq’s tent with a small fire and the stewing pouch, washing up and crying some more. The next time she checked on the meat, Meoraq’s mending kit had been set out in a conspicuous spot, so she went back behind his tent to see what she could do with her shirt. The hanging shreds were beyond help; she ripped them off, then went ahead and ripped the whole shirt up to the neck and started sewing. The new seam was as ugly as a surgery scar, but the shirt fit a lot better, so she did them all the same way, even her sweaters from home, leaving only her last new Manifestor’s shirt still folded and untouched in the bottom of her pack.

She didn’t think she was tired, the same way she didn’t think she was too badly hurt, but with her adrenaline burned out and her emotions pulled thin, a full stomach and a dark night, it happened. One moment, she was leaning over a half-sewn shirt to turn slabs of meat on live coals, and in the next, it was day and Meoraq was shouting the place up: “I said, get back! That is for smoking, not for eating! You have had all that I mean to give you today!”

She woke up, but not fast. Her head felt cottony, thick with hurt, but her head wasn’t even half the problem. She’d never hurt so much in her life. Her stomach was a furnace of so much sick heat that it felt almost like a separate entity—a pregnancy of pain—with a weight and a pulse all its own. She had to touch it, thinking with half-asleep logic that she could measure the extent of her internal injuries by how much swelling she found, but decided she must still be dreaming once she had. ‘I am not this flat tummy,’ she thought decisively, and was comforted. She left her hand on the stranger’s stomach, though. It hurt to bear her hand’s weight, but it felt good to be cradled, and after she’d had a few minutes to brace herself, she sat up.

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick, but she made it happen. Cold air hit her as gravity took her blanket away, forcing her to pull it back up. While it would have been exaggeration to say that the blanket felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, she could honestly say it felt like ten, and that was ten too many for the arms that had kept a giant man-eating ostrich at spear’s length the night before.

All these thoughts had time to pour themselves, thick as syrup, redly throbbing, through her head before Amber noticed it wasn’t her her blanket. Her Fleet-issue sheet of tinfoil was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a real blanket made of some heavy woven material, dark red in color, wonderfully warm. After that sank in came the real shock: she was in Meoraq’s tent, lying on his bedroll, which had her grass-bundle-and-waxed-saoq-hide one, great as it was, beat all to hell.

While she was staring at this in a stupefied kind of horror, a lizardman’s shadow grew suddenly huge and dark on the wall. “Be quiet!” Meoraq hissed. “If you say one more word, S’kot, even to beg my forgiveness, I will split you down to the ground! Great Sheul, O my Father,” he continued under his breath, “see Your son in his hour of trial and give me the strength to keep from killing that ass-headed fool just one more day.”

With that pious thought hanging in the air, the mouth of the tent rippled, bulged and finally opened. He stuck his head inside, moving carefully and making no sound, only to see her already sitting up.

His spines slapped flat. “Fuck,” he said, and withdrew. His silhouette twisted, his long head turning in profile, sparking some vague storybook memory—a dragon, a cave, a damsel in distress—before he shattered it by shouting, “Get back, you pack of ghets! You! If I see you reach your hand toward my fire again, I’ll cut it off! Back!” Then he looked in at her again.

“Hey,” she said.

He glowered and came all the way inside, flinging the flap shut behind him like it was a door he could slam. Muttering savagely under his breath, he dropped to one knee and began rummaging through his pack. His spines were still flat. Those yellow stripes were out and glaringly bright on his black throat. Amber re-thought her ‘What the hell am I doing in here, lizardman,’ approach and said instead, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

He grunted, pulled a rolled-up mass of something from his pack, and tossed it at her. It fell open on impact and dropped into her lap. Some kind of leather shirt, long-sleeved, nicely-tailored. His spare tunic.