He did not answer.

“They wouldn’t just leave us,” she argued, trying to stare him down, but he kept watching the sky. “They wouldn’t do that.”

No reply.

“Oh come on! My sister? Nicci? She wouldn’t…”

He watched the clouds.

She wanted to keep talking. God knew, there were arguments she could be making. It was absurd to think that they’d actually packed up and left her and no, she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with and sure, Everly Scott hated her guts, but no sane person would ever go along with leaving someone behind like that. Just because they didn’t like her didn’t mean they didn’t need her. And if they needed her for nothing else, she was still one of Scott’s precious wombs, wasn’t she? He wouldn’t walk away from that. And no one would walk away from Meoraq, that was just insane! He was the only one who knew where to find this temple they all wanted so desperately to find, so obviously, they were waiting for them.

Just up ahead.

They’d left her.

Amber touched her fingertips to her lips, but they weren’t trembling. She felt at the thin skin beneath her eyes, but it was dry. Her heart felt cold, but it kept right on beating. She realized, impossible as it seemed, that this wasn’t going to kill her.

Meoraq hadn’t moved. He looked perfectly comfortable as he hunkered there against the wind and seemed content to read whatever epic novels were being printed for his viewing pleasure across the sky, and if he cared at all that he had been abandoned by Commander Scott and his brave pioneers, he showed no sign of it.

“Five days isn’t very long,” said Amber, and looked at the sky. “We could catch up.”

Meoraq grunted.

“When are we leaving?”

He rubbed at the ridges over his eyes. Then he looked at her, only this time, she was the one who didn’t look back. He hissed under his breath and looked back at the sky.

The way the clouds moved really was pretty hypnotic. She could understand why he did this so often.

“We will go when you can walk,” he said at last.

“Then we’re leaving tomorrow. I don’t care if we only make it to the top of that ridge,” she said, pointing. “But we’re going. They need to be able to look back and…and see us trying to catch up.”

He turned his head and spat, letting the wind take that little comment and carry it off. “So be it.”

“And we’re going to catch up.”

“If it is God’s will.”

“God has nothing to do with it. Nicci is waiting for me.”

That, he didn’t answer. Instead, he picked her up again and started walking. She put her arm around his neck in the hopes of better distributing her weight but thought she felt him stiffen, so she took her arm back and just hugged unhappily at herself until she was back inside the tent (which reeked humiliatingly of sweat and bile and oh what’s that gentle fragrance boys and girls that’s piss is what that is) and out of the wind. He set her on the mat (she turned her head so she wouldn’t have to see how badly she’d stained it), covered her over with the blanket and the leaden fur besides, and stood up again.

Just stood there. After a moment, he backed up. After a few moments more, he opened the tent-flap and put one foot outside, but he didn’t leave, he just looked at her. Or maybe he was only pretending to look at her while he aired the tent out. It needed it. How many times had she pissed the bed, his bed? How many times had she shit in it? And how could she even care about that when she knew that all the rest of them were out there right now, that some of them might even die because she’d made Meoraq choose her over the others? And would Nicci be one of them?

Her eyes stung; she was too dry to make tears, but her vision blurred anyway. She watched through this tearless haze as Meoraq let the hide-flap fall with him still on the inside. She scratched her eyes shut and turned her face away, but soon felt his scaly fingers on her chin. His strong hand stroked once across her matted hair and down to cup the back of her neck. He pulled her close and pressed his cool, unfeeling brow to hers. She could feel his bony ridges digging at her skull, feel each hot puff of breath against her throat. “Rest in His sight. He sees you well, Soft-Skin. He sees us both.”

“Tell him to watch out for Nicci. Because I’m not there, Meoraq. And neither are you.” She wiped at her eyes—still dry, still hurting—and pushed him away. “And until she’s back, don’t you dare tell me this is God’s will. If your god sent my baby sister out there to die, then I hate your fucking god. I hate him and I’ll tell him so to his face. I’ll tell him…”

She lost her breath and then the train of her thoughts and finally had to let him lay her gently down and cover her up again beneath the crushing weight of the blanket. “Tell her she can have the mat,” Amber whispered. She no longer knew precisely who she was talking to or why, but the words seemed very important. “Tell her I’m sorry and she can have it now. I’m so…” Her thoughts slipped again and she forgot how to end. Sorry? Thirsty? “Tired,” she finished.

She slept.

2

Meoraq sat up all night, watching Amber sleep by lamplight (and often resting his hand between her teats to feel the breaths he could plainly hear and see). Through every long hour, Gann rode his back and whispered in his ear that this was the last rally of a dying soul and that dawn would find her cold beneath his hand, but Sheul’s mercy prevailed. She lived. She drank—water at first, then tea, and finally broth made of boiled cuuvash. She mumbled in her restless dreams at times, but when her eyes opened, she always knew him. She had come out of the very shadow of death and she would be well.

And she did make it to the top of the ridge the next day, but only because Meoraq carried her. Six steps. That was all she could manage on her own. Six steps, and they left her so drained that she fell asleep soon after he set her down. Meoraq built her a fire and started the stones heating for tea, then ran on ahead along the wide trampled path left by the humans’ passage.

He didn’t go far, just up to the next rise. He could see perhaps a quarter-span from this vantage, and Scott’s trail cut through all of it, keeping steadily eastward until it vanished over the hills. He waited for some glimmer of the disappointment a righteous man would feel and felt none. If he’d found them, he would be honor-bound to go and fetch them back and he hated even the thought of that. He would do it if Sheul asked it of him, and for Amber’s sake he would even do it in good humor, but if he never saw them again, he would lose no sleep over it.

The next day, Amber managed a little better distance, but still needed Meoraq’s arm to lean on to get over the next rise, where she took one exhausted look at Scott’s trail winding away into nothing and began to cry. Meoraq kept his eyes fixed on the trail and pretended not to notice. This was ludicrous enough when she was only weeping, but when she reached the end of her tears, she just as suddenly fell to shouting.

She said things. Meoraq tried not to listen. Grief had made her half-sick and weariness took her the rest of the way. Once she’d rested, she might not even remember this…remarkably creative string of profanities…so it behooved him to just let her vomit it all out.

He stood while Amber cupped her flat face and screamed Nicci’s name until her voice roughened. He studied the rippling lines of shine in the wind-blown grass as Amber cursed Scott for a madman and a murderer. He watched the clouds when she turned on him, slapping and punching at his chest—the blows as weak as a child’s—and ordered him to go after them, find them, bring them back.

At last, the tears returned. Meoraq helped her collapse without hurting herself. He left her moaning into her hands and went out into the plains for water. There was ice along the bank of the creek where he drew it. The first ice of the season, thin and white as paper…but it would grow.