“In his tent,” Eric replied, and his woman added, “Sulking.”
“He’ll get over it,” said Dag, stealing a bit of heart-meat out of the stewing pouch.
Meoraq’s hand twitched, but he managed not to slap. Barely. “Get over what?”
Nicci rolled her eyes and made a chuffing noise.
“Same shit, different day,” said Amber. “You’re undermining his authority.”
“Would it kill you to be nice once in a while?” Nicci demanded, glaring at her. “He has so much to worry about right now and you just…you just push him around!”
“Scott does his share of the pushing.” Amber stirred the stew as all the humans found something else to look at.
Meoraq turned back toward Eric. “Does your abbot truly believe he will find a ship in Xi’Matezh capable of sailing him into the sky?”
“I don’t know,” said Eric after a moment. “Sometimes I think he does.”
Beside him, his Maria snorted. “If he didn’t, he couldn’t convince anyone else. He needs that too much, so yes, he believes it. And he’ll go on believing it until we get there and don’t find anything.”
“We might,” said Nicci, glaring at Eric’s woman, who snorted again.
“Meoraq…” Amber’s nerve appeared to fail her. She fussed with the heat-stones unnecessarily, and just when he thought she would wait until someone else changed the subject for her, she looked up again and said, “Why are you going to Xi’Matezh? Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said quickly, waving her hand. “You want to talk to God. But you talk to God all the time and I’m sure you think he answers—”
Meoraq sighed and patted her knee.
“—so why would you walk across the whole world to do it now? I mean, you’re tough, but this place could kill you.”
He acknowledged that with a flick of his spines. “I was called to find you. You were placed in my path.”
“Okay, whatever, but you were already on the road, is my point. Why?”
“The road…” mused Meoraq. He thought about it, beginning to smile. “So. I am on a sort of road. At one end, I am Sheulek, as I have been since my ascension. At the other, I am steward of my bloodline. House Uyane is the last of the great Houses in Xeqor to hold a direct line of descent. Whoever stands as steward stands in the sight of all men. Yet a Sheulek stands in the sight of God. It is too great a decision for a man to make.”
Maria leaned forward slightly to look at Amber. “What, is he the lizard-king?”
“Baby, be cool.”
“I’m just asking.”
“No,” said Amber, sounding annoyed. And to Meoraq, “Is it really worth all this walking just to ask God if you should quit your job?”
“It is a serious matter. I serve as His Sword and the tool of His judgment.”
“Can’t you serve him at home?”
“Of course,” Meoraq said uncomfortably.
“Just not the same way?”
Discomfort grew. Now it was Meoraq who leaned out to check on the stew. “In many of the same ways, actually. A steward must mediate conflicts in the households under him and may even be called to trial if one of those households falls under accusation.”
“But you have to stay home?” Amber guessed.
He looked at her.
Her arms raised, putting all the world on display. “Where you miss all this.”
“Ease off, Bierce,” Dag murmured.
“Don’t speak for me,” Meoraq told him irritably.
“Look, I’m sorry,” said Amber. “It’s your life. And I guess I can understand that running around out here is more exciting than staying home. The point is having an interesting story, right?”
Meoraq was startled into laughing out loud. “I don’t know any stories about Sheulek. Boys may think this life is exciting, but one city is the same as any other, walking means nothing but boredom and bad weather, and you can’t even remember the trials. No. The best stories, the legends, are told of stewards. They do the things that men see, after all.”
“Tell us one,” said Maria.
They all looked at her.
Eric leaned over to whisper, but she shook him off. “It has to be better than the bedtime stories the Commander tells. Come on, Meoraq, let’s hear it.”
It was right in the back of his throat to tell this woman that Uyane Meoraq, whether Sheulek or lord-steward, would never wallow so low as to put himself in competition with Scott for the favor of the fools who served him…but Amber was watching. These were her people and this was the first time he had ever seen them share her company at his fireside.
So he swallowed his first response and after some consideration, Meoraq said, “My father is…was steward of the bloodline and lord of House Uyane, which is the championing seat of Xeqor. As such, he was subject to be summoned to the city’s defense and his battles on those rare occasions earned him as much fame as honor. He was very well known, not only in Xeqor, but across all the world. Or as much of the world as is left under Sheul,” he amended. “Many years ago, when I was…six, I think. I suppose I could have been as much as seven, but I am certain it was winter because I was at home to see it. But however long ago it was, it happened that a band of raiders led by a man called Szadt attacked the neighboring city of Kuaq and took one of its gates.
“Here,” said Meoraq, waving them closer. He took up a burnt bit of stick from the fire and sketched in the soil as he spoke. “Here are our cities, entirely enclosed within walls, with our cattle-lands and fields protected at the open heart, you see?”
“Like a doughnut,” said Amber.
Nicci rolled her eyes. “The Commander’s right,” she muttered. “It’s always food with you.”
“Okay, it’s like a tire,” Amber said crossly. “Is that better?”
“There are four great gates at the cardinal points and often others in the various districts around the city, for ease of trade and the summering of cattle, but whether civil or private, each gate-house is fashioned with but one tunnelway that opens to the outside at one end and to the inward terrace here. No other door opens to the outside and no other door opens to the city. The many watchmen appointed at the gate-house are garrisoned along either side of a central stair with the private homes of the officers and their families above, arranged to rank, with the warden’s home topmost, encompassing the entire floor so as to be the only home with access to the roof. So it is,” Meoraq concluded, eyeing his poor drawing for faults, “that there are only three access points to the gate-house: the outer gate, the inner gate, and the rooftop stair. All three points were easily held by Szadt and his men. The gates were built to stand and Szadt had the whole of that armory at his disposal. Apart from that, he had somehow acquired certain machines—either from the stores of the Ancients or built after their fashion, I do not know—which could be tossed out through the inward windows. These burst and burned to terrible effect, capable of killing twenty men or more in an instant.”
The humans looked at each other, but didn’t seem much amazed.
“They still worked?” Nicci asked. “The grenades or whatever they were?”
“He said they were built by this other guy,” Amber said before Meoraq could answer. She was scowling.
“He said maybe they were. And maybe the other guy just found them.”
“Can you two fight about this later please?” asked Maria, ignoring the censuring mutters of Eric. “I want to hear the story. Go on, Meoraq.”
He paused, not to let Amber and her blood-kin settle, but to think about whether or not he really wanted to give the human Maria the idea that she could give him orders. In the end, he continued, but only because it was a good story and he liked telling it.
“Kuaq rallied its defenses immediately, of course, and if Szadt had advanced out into the streets, surely he and his men would have been taken, but instead Szadt sealed himself within the gate-house to plunder it at his leisure. All attempts to break through the inner gate met with burning death. So too ended the efforts to send warriors around the outer wall to that gate. And so ended the disastrous assault upon the rooftop, when two whole legions of warriors were dismembered alive by more of the Raider-Lord’s infernal machines. And in the lull that followed each onslaught, Szadt provided those encamped without the gate-house with the terrible sounds of his entertainments as he tortured those watchmen he had taken prisoner. At one point, he offered to release the families for certain goods, but when another attempt was made to break the gates, Szadt ended all negotiations. For hours, the cries of the women and children were heard as the Raider-Lord shared them out among his men and then threw them screaming over the inward wall at each tolling of the hour.”
