Meoraq scrambled back, his limbs skidding wildly through that damned puddle until he finally thrashed free of it. The bot pivoted to watch him go, lighting his graceless retreat until a crunch and a shower of sparks threw him into darkness. Meoraq bolted back up the tunnel, smashing from one wall to the other until he leapt out into open air.

He landed hard, skidded what felt like half a span, then hit a crack under the sediment and went right over on his belly in the bottom of the canal. Cold sludge sluiced up over his snout and poured itself in under his clothes, swallowing him in stink.

He lay there, dazed. He didn’t think he’d ever been dazed before. He could feel his brain still careening through its own black tunnel, seeking some gripping place, and what it eventually hooked onto was, ‘Salkith must feel like this all the time.’

He laughed, spewing bubbles up through the watery muck, then pushed himself out of it. Behind him, the tunnel was quiet. The mouth stayed open, round and innocent, silently asking if he’d like to try again.

Meoraq gained his feet, wiping compulsively at the end of his snout even though he knew he was only rubbing the taste deeper into his scent-cavities. He took a breath, coughed it out, took another, and decided he was all right. Bruised, reeking, and without a damned thing to show for it, but all right.

He started to pray his thanks, stopped to climb out of the stormway, finished his prayer, and headed back to Amber.

She hadn’t put his tent together—it was still too early for that, in spite of the eons he’d spent in the tunnel—but she had lit a fire and was heating something in the stewing pouch while she waited for him. He had plenty of time to watch her watch his approach. Her face was as good as a mirror, but he didn’t need it. He couldn’t possibly look worse than he smelled.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked as soon as he was close enough.

There were many things he could have told her, things she deserved to know, but he couldn’t think how to do it.

“I fell down,” he said. That was true enough.

“That’s tea,” she warned, watching him reach for the stewing pouch.

“As far as I care, human, it is now oddly-scented bathwater.” He splashed a little over his face, rinsed his mouth, then began to undress.

She pulled his pack over and found his soap, started to hold it out and then drew it back when he put out his hand. “Am I supposed to…? You want me to help?”

He laughed curtly. To have Amber bathe him again had been pressed into his imagination, his fantasies, ever since that night…but now, with this stink in his scales, he could not be less aroused. Sheul heard and answered every prayer. Ha.

“Yes,” he said, raising his arms.

She obeyed, wetting the bar and rubbing it between her hands before she gave it to him. While he attempted to clean his mouth, nose, and especially his scent-cavities, she moved behind him and started scrubbing at his back.

“See anything down there?”

He didn’t know what to tell her.

“There’s always something, Soft-Skin.”

“But no sign of them, huh?”

She thought she knew what he would say, and yet there was a hopeful tremor in her voice. She had contented herself all these days with footprints, with ashes, with dung. She could follow their shadow all the way to Xi’Matezh as long as she knew something was casting it. Take that away…

Uyane Meoraq, twelve years a Sword in Sheul’s service, with conscious thought and in full sight of God and Gann both, lied.

“None.”

Her hands on his flesh stilled. He felt, in exquisite detail, the fingers of one hand open and lie flat just under his shoulder. Her breath sighed onto his back, first warm from her body, then cold in the wind. “I thought…I was so sure…”

Meoraq said nothing.

She sighed again, but resumed bathing him. “Thanks for looking, anyway.”

‘Father, forgive me,’ he thought, staring into the sky where the light of the sun stared back at him behind the clouds. ‘Truth does not care if it comforts her. But I do.’

5

It started raining immediately after Amber tied up the last piece of laundry to dry. As if she needed more proof that this whole planet hated her.

“Meoraq?” she called. “What should I do? Take it down or leave it up?”

No answer. She leaned out around the tree that was serving as her laundry line, but he was still sitting there on the flattest and most hospitable rock in camp, naked, just staring into space.

He’d been very distant lately, ever since the ruins. He wouldn’t talk about it, not to her at least, but he sure prayed a lot, even for him. And when he did talk to her…

“Are we still going the right way?” she’d asked this morning, not whining or anything, just asking.

He’d rounded on her at once, flinging out one arm and shoving his face right in hers. “Do you see the mountains?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen any sign of Nicci and the others for—”

“And you think I have?”

“Maybe!” And because that did sound like whining, she added defensively, “If you stopped to tell me everything you saw, you’d be talking all the time! You haven’t said two words all morning, does that mean you haven’t seen anything?”

“I’ve said more than two words,” he’d said disgustedly and stomped off.

Some days, it wasn’t even worth trying. “Have you seen anything or not!” she exploded. “Jesus!”

“I see what God gives me to see.”

She’d stopped there before she started a real fight, but after she’d fumed long enough to make him happy, he’d said, without looking at her, “No.”

“See? That was all you had to say.”

Another long stretch of nothing but wind and the marching of their boots.

“The doors of Xi’Matezh may not open,” Meoraq had said suddenly. “I will have to live with that…if it happens.”

“I don’t think I want to hear where you’re going with this.”

“We may never find—”

“Shut up, lizardman.”

He did, and that was pretty much it for chit-chat until they set up camp for the night. They’d talked a little then—he at his end, bathing out of the stewing pouch, and her by the fire, trying to stretch out the saoq they had left with roasted roots. Although neither one had commented on the day’s chilly silence, his bad mood was never further than arm’s length and she’d left him alone after his bath.

And now he was getting another one, it seemed. Look at him. Just sitting there. In training all his life to be God’s foot and he still didn’t know to get out of the rain.

“Meoraq?” Tucking her hands under her arms to warm them, she headed over. How in the hell he could sit there without a stitch on in this weather (or any weather) amazed her. “Meoraq, wake up.”

His spines twitched. He looked up, looked down, looked at her. “It’s raining.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said, shivering. “I just got your clothes hung up, too.”

He shrugged his spines. “Leave them. They could use a soak.”

Right. He insisted they still smelled, even though she’d been washing them every night since they left the ruins.

Meoraq stood up and collected the clothes he hadn’t bothered to put on. He still didn’t bother. He pointed at her mat and went on into his tent without speaking.

It was going to be another fun night.

Amber dug their dinner out of the ashes before it completely turned to hot mud, packed it into her pack, rolled up her mat, and joined him.

He’d put on his panties at least and lit his lamp. He watched in his serious, distracted way as she arranged her bed, but closed his eyes when she asked so she could change into drier clothes. Rattier ones, but drier.

“I think I’ve reached the point where mending this is only going to make it worse,” she remarked, carefully shrugging into one of her old shirts.