And then she knew what she wanted to say, felt it whole and burning in her mind. It was just a question of whether she was too chickenshit to say it.

Amber Bierce had been a lot of things in her life. Chickenshit was never going to be one of them.

She reached up and caught Meoraq around his snout. He let her, although his spines came slowly all the way forward and just as slowly all the way back.

“When we get home,” said Amber, “you keep your hands off the servants, you hear me?”

His head cocked. She kept her grip on his snout and even squeezed a little.

“I’m your woman. That makes you my man. You better not make me fight for you unless you’re damn sure you want me fighting-mad.”

Balancing easily on one hand, he closed the other over her wrist and freed his snout. He studied her as she lay beneath him for several long, expressionless seconds. “I do,” he said at last. Then he grinned and dropped, rolling onto his back. He slapped his chest once. “You can even be on top.”

3

So in the end, it took six days to cross over into Gedai, which was, as Meoraq made a point of reminding her, exactly what he’d said it would be at the outside margin. She did not appreciate the observation.

There wasn’t much in the way of foothills on the other side, just a short series of long plateaus and steep slopes, almost like stairs. Meoraq took his time scouting each descent, which made them relatively painless once he’d finally settled on a path, although Amber still managed to go down two of the slopes on her ass. In spite of this (or maybe because of it), they went from the snowline to the ground in just one day.

When the sun came up the next morning, Amber and Meoraq were awake and watching from the top of the next hill over to see sunrise over Gedai for the first time. Holy Gedai, as Meoraq called it. Birthplace of the Prophet. The land where, in just a few more days, they would find the temple where Meoraq thought he was going to talk to God. Her first impression was that it looked a lot like the same brown grass, the same windy sky, the same open plains as they’d left on the other side of the mountain. Maybe a little more wooded, a little less flat, but that was all.

“What do you think?” she asked, studying Meoraq’s inscrutable face in the thin morning light.

“Looks like your hair first thing in the morning,” he replied. “Only it’s everywhere instead of just in my face.”

She didn’t appreciate that observation either.

They started walking again, but even though they were out of the mountains at last, their speed did not improve. The ground under their feet was hard, frozen, stone-riddled grass, which while indeed much easier to walk on than boot-deep snow and slush, made pulling sleds absolutely hellish. Meoraq took the heavy one with all the meat and he still went faster than Amber and the hides. He didn’t complain in so many words, but his spines got lower as the day wore on. When Amber inevitably hit the rock that tipped her sled and spilled all their gear to the bottom of the hill they’d spent easily twenty minutes climbing, he just patted her on the head and picked everything up.

“I think we’ll camp early,” was all he said, slipping back into his sled’s harness.

“Oh come on! I hit one rock! I missed a billion others, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t say we were camping now,” he countered. “I said it would be early.”

“Yeah, but you meant now.”

“I did not.”

“When then?”

“When I judge it necessary.”

“And why would it be necessary early?”.

His glance was cool and uncompromising. “Because you’re tired.”

She couldn’t argue, so she did what anyone would do. She switched targets. “You chew with your mouth open.”

“I’m allowed to breathe when I eat,” he replied, glaring. “And you growl in your sleep.”

“It’s called snoring and I do n—”

She hit another rock, tipped the sled, and spilled its contents down the other side of the hill. They stood together and watched until the last bundled hide had finished rolling. When she finally nerved herself up to look at him, he was already looking at her.

“In my defense,” she said, lifting her chin, “there are a lot of rocks.”

He sighed and untethered himself from his sled to start picking hers up. Again.

When he decided it was time to stop for the day (early) and set up camp, he left the actual setting-up for her. He needed to make a patrol, he said. A lengthy, far-reaching, thorough patrol. Alone.

She made a token protest, just to let him know she was tough enough to do it, but he pulled out his You’ll-do-as-I-say-woman act and she let herself be bullied. Her feet hurt and she was hungry. If he wanted to crawl around for another mile or two after hiking up and down hills all day, he was perfectly welcome to do it. Still…

“And you expect me to just do all the work while you’re taking it easy on your evening stroll?”

“It is a wife’s duty and pleasure to lessen her husband’s burdens.”

“Says who, lizardman?”

“Prophet Lashraq, as written in Sheul’s true Word.”

“You mean a man wrote it.”

“But God spoke it.” He came to stroke at her forehead and she turned her face away. Undaunted, he nuzzled at her throat instead and patted her on the head. “Have food ready when I return. Use lots of meat. It’s not as cold here as it was in the mountains.”

“Okay. Put up the tent, gather poop, start a fire, make dinner. Anything else?”

He caught the sarcasm and paused long enough to pick up his pack and toss it to her. “Wash my clothes,” he said and cocked his head, daring her to challenge him.

Amber cocked her head back at him. “How about I leave the laundry for tomorrow and wash you instead?”

He grunted smug assent and started walking. “I’ll be back before dark. Be ready for me. And be rested.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waited until he’d put a little more distance between them before adding, “Sexist scaly jerk,” but she said it quietly. He didn’t hear her, which was good. She didn’t really mean it. Well, she sort of meant it, but not in a bitchy way. And she did like the idea of having the camp to herself while she took a bath. Privacy was something they’d had all too little of up in that cave.

So she put his tent together, started a fire and cut up some kipwe to warm on it, filled the flasks at the little stream nearby and put the heat-stones in the coals, then sat on the hide-cushioned sled to watch the clouds roll by while the water got hot. She had no itchy feeling between her shoulders or that prickly sensation at the back of her neck that people talked about when they said they ‘felt watched.’ And if she had, she would have only thought it was Meoraq, swinging by to look in on her before continuing on his patrol. After all this time, even hearing Meoraq talk of cities and other traveling Sheulek and even the various sinners who had been exiled to die in the wildlands, it simply never occurred to her think she was anything but alone.

She wasn’t.

It really wasn’t very windy today. The smoke from her fire made a strong, obvious arrow in the sky, pointing right at her camp. These raiders had come a long way from their usual route to investigate. There were only five of them now; the other six remained with the slaves they had acquired at the nearby city of Praxas, where they had traded bundles of dried phesok for the cast-off daughters of those who had them to spare. The raiders were certainly not above attacking Praxas (two of their number even now had been taken as young boys during such raids), but when trade was good, it behooved them all to use diplomatic measures.

Now they had spied a potential new target and so they came, crawling on their bellies as soon as they were near enough to see the lone silhouette at the glowing coals, blades out and ready. They had expected a warrior—it was always wisest to expect the worst, although far more common to find instead some fool youth who fancied himself a hunter or, ha, a raider—and they were ten body-lengths from the fire before they realized, almost in unison, that they had no idea what sat at camp before them.