The leader reached up and caught Vek’s harness, gave him a small shake to make him look at him, and quietly said, “Ease off, I said. If I decide to sell it—if—I will give you the first offer. Until then, it belongs to me and you keep your distance. I’m feeling tenderly toward you at the moment, for the sake of all the years your two good arms have done me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t put you right into Gann’s open mouth if you keep giving me reasons.”

Vek moved off, grumbling and drinking, to collapse in a heap by the fire. He picked something up and looked at it—his hand, Amber realized—and threw it into the coals hard enough to send up a cloud of hot ash.

The leader picked up his knife again and resumed cutting. Her pants, as crudely made as her shirt, put up a little resistance at the waistband, and then he was able to put the knife away and just tear along the seams. Soon, she was lying there in her boots and the belts he’d used to tie her up and not a damn thing more. She tried to keep glaring, but the wind cut across her and the effect was completely spoiled by her sporadic shivers.

“What’s it doing?” someone asked.

“She’s cold,” the leader said after a moment’s silent contemplation.

All of them exchanged glances. It was some time before one of them said, “She? Are you sure?”

“No.” He thumbed at her nipple again. “But I believe these are teats of some kind. And this—” He started to move toward her pussy; she yanked her bound legs up. He dropped his hand back to his knee with a look of tolerant amusement and finished, “—looks open to me. That means female.”

“Oh that is disgusting,” one of them said, almost exactly at the same time as another said, “That is so much money…”

The leader grunted. Then he leaned in a little and tapped at his forehead with two fingers. “Zhuqa,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Say it,” said the leader. He tapped his brow again. “Zhuqa.”

Amber glared at him, shivering under her thuoch hide. She kept her mouth shut.

He flexed his spines again as he gently cupped her cheek. Then he lifted his hand, showed her his open palm, then slowly drew back his arm.

“Zhuqa,” she spat.

All the lizards but one recoiled.

“She said it,” one of them breathed.

“She tried.” Their leader dropped his hand to her forehead and gave her one of Meoraq’s friendly knuckle-taps. “Zhuqa means me. And Eshiqi…that means you. Say it.”

She didn’t think about it consciously, with words and arguments and a rational balance of pros and cons, but once again, that sense of helplessness welled up. It wasn’t despair, only a ruthless acknowledgment of her new situation and the very few options before her: Fight and be overwhelmed (and probably killed), or play along and hope for something better a little further down the road.

All this had time to sink in before Zhuqa ever had the chance to show her his slapping hand.

“Eshiqi,” said Amber.

“Good girl. Now look at me, Eshiqi. I want you to see this.”

He untied her left hand, just the one. She watched as he took her gently by that arm, holding it not quite straight out from the shoulder. He smiled, cupped her elbow, then slid that hand in an unmistakable caress down to her wrist, down to the Manifestor’s docking bracelet that she’d worn so long, she had forgotten it entirely.

“This,” he said, prying the thin metal off with his eyes locked on hers, “is over.”

He took it off, held it up briefly for his men to see, and then set it down. He drew a knife, the one he’d used to cut her clothes away, and as she struggled in vain to yank her hand out of his grip, suddenly stabbed it down. Into the bracelet.

Amber stopped fighting and looked at that. His men muttered and nudged each other. One of them rattled out a particularly nasty lizardish snicker. Zhuqa merely sheathed his knife again and tied her wrists back together, leaving the bracelet dead on the ground.

“Now you are mine,” he told her, and lifted her back onto his shoulder. The moment ended. He gestured to his men and they started taking down the walls and kicking the fire out. “Water for the slaves and get them moving,” he ordered, already walking. “I want to be home before dawn.”

* * *

When the sun came up, Amber raised herself up as best she could as she swung over Zhuqa’s back, searching for any dark speck that might be Meoraq, but she couldn’t see anything. Not saoqs, not corrokis, not any living thing. Just hills and trees…and ruins. And where Meoraq avoided the fallen cities of the ancients, the raiders headed right for them.

Headed home.

The ground beneath Zhuqa’s boots gave way to cracked pavement as the weathered framework and crumbling heaps of overgrown buildings slowly enclosed them. Ancient machines lay in rusty piles here and there along the streets, but their placement only seemed random at first glance. When she was behind them, looking out, Amber could see the sentries positioned behind them. One of them cupped his snout and let out a loud yodeling cry that Amber might have mistaken for a ghet’s howl if she hadn’t seen him do it. In the distance, someone else joined in and someone else beyond that, and then there were dozens of voices all raised together.

Soon, she could hear them coming, heavy boots tromping over the overgrown roads and speculative voices made indecipherable by the wind. The captives began to cry again, struggling in their bonds until the men walking at their sides were forced to cuff at them to keep them moving, but all Amber could do was hang there.

Trotting feet crunched up to them unseen and some new voice coughed out a laughing, “What is that?”

“The short answer is, ‘Mine’.” Zhuqa didn’t even slow down. He passed a raider who fell into step behind him, his head cocked and gaze traveling freely over Amber. “You didn’t want to come, remember, Iziz? All the way to Praxas, you said? In this cold? Fuck that, you said.”

“Is it the first time I’ve ever been wrong?” the other asked. “What is it?”

“I call her Eshiqi.”

“Her?” Iziz hooked a finger under Amber’s chin and tipped her head up. “Gann’s breath, that’s eerie. It looks almost like a person.”

Zhuqa laughed. “Almost,” he agreed.

“You selling it?”

“You buying?”

“I might toss a bid out. Can you fuck it?” he inquired, looking more and more interested.

“It’s got a slit in the right place. I haven’t tried yet. She killed Godeshuq and took a hand off Vek.”

Yet. He hadn’t tried yet.

“And gave you a good bite, it looks like.”

“Not half so good as she would have liked, eh, Eshiqi?” He shrugged to jostle her into a slightly different position as he ducked through a door into the ruined mouth of a building. More raiders lounged around in various stages of idleness, getting to their feet at the sight of her, only to be distracted by the captive lizardladies. Zhuqa showed no interest in any of them, only led the way through torchlit halls to a wide, echoing stair. He started down, bumping Amber hard against his shoulder on each step.

Iziz followed, toying with Amber’s hair. “You never said if you were selling.”

“If I do, I’ll see that you know before the open bidding. Here.” She felt him shift and saw a metal plate flicker as he tossed it over his shoulder for Iziz to catch. “Make yourself useful and take the new slaves to my pen. My men will want a wrestle; I ran them all night. Take one for yourself, since Godeshuq won’t be needing her, but be polite. Take the one the others leave. And give Vek first choice. His feelings are bruised.”

Iziz raised his fist and turned around to take charge of the slaves, herding them down another hall and out of Amber’s sight. Soon she had nothing to look at but torchlight on the walls, another stairwell, another corridor, and then—