“Yes,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment and then flung out her arms, shouting, “There is no baby, lizardman! There’s never going to be a baby! There’s no baby and no God and the only reason we have sex—you might want to write this down—is because it feels good and we like it! You can call it God or Gann or the Great Gadzooks if you want to, but it’s just two people fucking!”

She sat glaring at him in the bed, her breath as hard in her chest as if she had just run to him across two spans of rough road.

Meoraq studied her at great length, but she seemed perfectly sincere. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “You escaped the fall of your family’s House by seeking passage on the first ship of its kind ever to sail in the sky…and this was not Sheul?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it wasn’t. It was just me making a bad decision.”

“The ship was struck in the sky, yet sailed on…and this was not Sheul?”

She glared at him and got out of bed, snatching at her clothes as if she honestly meant to dress and go out at the mid-hour of night.

“The ship broke open over Gann, yet some survived its ruin…and this was not Sheul? At its ultimate burning, you and your fellows were yet spared and this—” He flipped onto his feet and caught her arm as she stalked past him for her boots. “This was not Sheul?”

“Let go of me!”

“What is it you think, woman, that all these things were an accident?”

“You’re a zealot!”

“And you’re a fool!” he countered, exasperated. “He has sent you a warning, a boat and a…a…I can’t say it, but you know damned well what He sent you! And were that not enough, He sent you me!”

She drew back and stared at him.

“You may not know to see His hand upon the hammer, but I do. It is not for me to question His reasoning and neither is it for me to deny Him when I hear His voice in my heart!” Meoraq paused, inviting the will of Sheul. His will was immediate and undeniable. “And He says there shall be sons. Get back in that bed.”

Her human brows descended fetchingly. “We’re still fighting, Meoraq.”

“No.” He began to undress what little she had managed to don. “We are not.”

She smacked at his hand. “I’m still fighting, with or without you!”

“I conquered you once.” He drew the knife of his fathers, cast about briefly for a place to stab it, then settled for tossing it back onto the bed. “I can easily do it again.”

She gave him a few token cuffs as he carried her to the furs, but by the time he lay her down, she was only glaring. When he nipped at her chin, she even put an arm around his neck, however grudgingly. “You really are a zealot,” she sighed, wrapping his hips in the welcome weight of her legs.

“And you,” he said, “truly are a fool.” He swept the hair away from her shoulder and bit lightly at his mark. “Burn with me now, my fool.”

“Your pillow-talk needs a lot of work,” she told him, but she burned and when she finally slept, it was smiling with his hand over her belly where his new-sparked son surely grew.

2

The mountains were not wide. Meoraq assured her the crossing should only take four days, six at the absolute most. Then it would be back on the road, one with a beach at the end of it, no less. It was too much to hope that it would be a warm, sunny beach, but still, Amber had never been to one (sleeper-dream of mama cigarette smoke screaming seagulls but o the sunset and the waves coming in) and when she had it in her to hope for things, she did hold out a little hope for one nice day at the beach.

She’d thought she was prepared. No matter how sedentary her winter routine had become, her memories of the endless march across the plains were never far. She knew it would be tough. She knew she’d be cold and hungry and exhausted all the time, but she knew she could take it and keep moving. She was ready. Four days.

Except that Amber had quite naturally twisted her ankle on those fucking snowshoes within the first stupid hour of the first day after leaving the cave.

Except that on the second day, she’d also tumbled a good fifty meters down an icy slope into a slushbank when the ledge that had supported a hulking lizardman’s weight and that of two sleds lashed together (Amber was no longer pulling hers because of her ankle) without any complaint whatsofreakingever gave way under her fat ass.

Except that on the third day, it had started snowing again that night for the first time in days and days and motherfucking days and now they were in it up to their knees again, which meant she was also back in the damn snowshoes.

Amber did not believe in God, but if ever there was some supernatural force trying to send a sign, Someone was screaming it. And Meoraq, who saw messages from God in plants, caves and even plops of animal poop, pretended to be oblivious. No matter what fresh slice of shit-cake got served, he just bandaged her up and kept going.

Amber could take all the punches the universe could throw, but waiting for the punch to hit was killing her. On the fourth day, the day they were supposed to be out and which found them camped in the middle of the same goddamn nowhere with the same goddamn ice storm crusting up the side of the tent, Amber gave up and said it for him: “You told me so.”

Meoraq raised his head out of the pillow of his pack and rubbed sleepily at his face. “Eh? Was I talking?”

“You told me it wasn’t time to leave and I made you.”

He looked at her, spines flexed all the way forward, then laughed and dropped back into his arm.

Now that stung.

“I did!” she insisted.

He made a very bad effort at smothering another laugh. “I forgive you,” he said gravely.

Amber took that for as long as she could and then she threw the blankets back and kicked free of them.

Meoraq groaned and rolled onto his side to watch her grab her mat and pull it to the other side of the tent in noisy heaves. “Please yourself. I don’t forgive you. Shall I have you whipped, woman? Would that make you happy?”

She dug down through the layers of their bedding for the xaut fur in the middle and yanked it free.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he asked, cocking his head.

“It’s mine!” she said, wrapping herself furiously in its itchy warmth. “I made it and it’s mine!”

He dropped onto his back and rubbed his brow-ridges. “Deep breaths, Uyane,” she heard him mutter. “Deep and slow. So.” He moved his hand and gestured to her. “What is it you want to say?”

“If you’re mad at me, get mad at me!”

“If I’m not mad, can I just go to sleep?”

“Stop making fun of me!”

The slap/rasp of his hand rubbing back on his brow-ridges. The steady rise and fall of his broad chest as he breathed six times. Then he threw back his blanket and before she could untangle herself from the xaut fur and get out of his reach, he’d gripped the edge of her mat and yanked her against him. He stripped the fur away and made the bed again: blanket, xaut fur, blanket.

She stopped fighting halfway through and just let him tuck her in, her eyes burning with humiliation, staring at the top of the tent until it blurred into new colors. When he was finished, he lay back down and snugged an arm around her, grunting comfortably against her shoulder. He seemed to fall asleep.

The storm blew and blew. It never stopped here. Never.

“Shall I guess?” Meoraq murmured against her ear.

Amber pressed her teeth tight together and did not answer.

“I say…” His hand slipped up to rest between her breasts. It was his favorite place to touch her. God alone knew why. “It’s just a little weather. And you say…it’s weather that could kill us.”

She shivered and tried to roll away from him. He waited until she was done and simply spooned up against her back.  “And I say we rest in God’s sight,” he continued. “And you say, stop acting like it doesn’t matter, lizardman.”