She still believed Meoraq was coming. This was so obvious that it didn’t even bear wondering about. He was coming and he’d find her. Meoraq could do anything. The question of whether he’d still want her after another man had been inside her had not yet occurred to her, but it would before morning. These were her last worry-free moments, but for now, no, she wasn’t worried.

Someone knocked.

Zhuqa woke. Only he didn’t just ‘wake’. Between his sleeping inhalation and the swift snort of his waking exhale, he managed to flip into a crouch and draw his other knife. She knew about the crouch because she could hear the pa-pad of his bare feet hitting the hard mat they slept on. She knew about the knife because it was under her jaw.

“That wasn’t me,” said Amber.

Zhuqa eased up on the knife with a low grunt.

The knock came again, even louder.

“Someone better be dead,” he called, and shoved the cupboard door open.

The bells were loud as sirens in the quiet, slow to leave the air. She heard his footsteps recede. A sliver of reddish light split the dark as he opened the door.

“Iziz,” said Zhuqa. “In light of our many years of friendship, I will give you one word before I disembowel you.”

“Zru’itak,” said Iziz, seemingly unconcerned.

Zhuqa sheathed his knife and came back into the room. He left the door open, so she thought he was coming for his clothes, but while he did dress and strap on his weapons, modesty was clearly his secondary concern. “Up, Eshiqi,” he called. “You are far too new to this game to be left to play alone.”

He didn’t offer her any clothes. Amber fumbled a blanket off the bed and wrapped herself in it as well as she could, running to make up what little time this cost.

He grunted, eyeing her as he cinched his belt tight, then gave the lizardman standing behind him a friendly slap to the stomach and said, “Say something to him.”

“Gee,” she said, in her most neutral voice. “I didn’t have a speech prepared, but choke on piss and die.”

Iziz snorted, his spines flaring in either amusement or surprise. “What the hell did that mean?”

“Nothing good, I should think.” Zhuqa gave Amber’s chin an affectionate pinch and went back out into the hall, trusting her to follow. Which she did. “Probably told you that your father was a ghet or a slave or a warm pile of shit.”

“Could have been Gann himself for all anyone knows,” Iziz said agreeably, walking backwards to watch Amber. “My mother isn’t much for names. Those eyes…Does that thing really understand you or is it just doing tricks?”

“It understands every word.”

“Eerie. Have you fucked it yet?”

“Yes.”

“How is it?”

“Better than your mother.”

“She could use some training up, couldn’t she?” Iziz agreed and turned around just in time to avoid tumbling backwards onto the stairs. “You feeling proprietary?”

“For now. But stop a moment. Eshiqi, come here.”

There on the stairs, with a guard on the lower landing looking up and two on the next floor looking down, Zhuqa beckoned.

She took a second or two to think about all the things he might want her to demonstrate with his friend and then she walked stiffly up to them and waited.

“Oh, that is snapping mad,” Iziz remarked in an admiring tone.

Zhuqa moved Amber’s hair to show off Meoraq’s scar.

The effect on his friend was something of a surprise. He looked at it politely for a heartbeat or two, and then actually leapt back, banging into the stairwell rail and nearly going right over and down to wherever the bottom was in this place. Zhuqa’s hand catching in his harness prevented that, but Iziz didn’t even thank him.

“That’s a fucking Sheulek bite!” he hissed, all his spines standing straight up.

“Yes.”

“That thing belongs to a Sheulek?!”

“Used to.” Zhuqa chucked Amber on the chin again and resumed climbing stairs. “She says she killed him.”

“Then she’s a fucking liar!” Iziz said, looking and sounding almost prissily outraged. “Where did you get that thing?”

“About three, maybe four spans off the old quarry road.”

“Off the road? Where off the road? And when were you going to tell us to make fast against a fucking Sword of fucking God? Shouldn’t that have been the first thing you did when you got back, instead of throwing a poke into that Gann-ugly thing for hours at a stretch?!”

“How long have we been here, Iziz? How many years?”

The second lizardman passed a hand over his eyes briefly and shook his head—not in negation, they didn’t do that, but in the same way an irritated dog throws off water. “More than a few,” he said, resigned. “Five? Six?”

“It is, in fact, eight. Eight years, settled. And wintering twelve years before that, under me or under Chuaan, and who knows how many years before that, for raiders like us if not this band exactly? These ruins have stood since the Fall and they may still be standing when men rise up to Fall again.” He glanced back at Amber, his eyes glinting red in the torchlight. “No one is coming.”

“You say that like no one ever has. I say to you, if little boys chasing after tachuqi talons can find this place, so can a Sheulek.”

“Then I’ll kill him.”

Iziz snorted. “Before or after you catch lightning in your fist and squeeze it into wine?”

“I have killed six Sheulek in my time, Iziz. Seven, if you count a certain way.” He gave Amber another glance, coughing amusement at what he saw in her face. “If he comes, he comes. And I will kill him and make a cup of his skull—” He reached back to pinch her chin. “—for my woman to hold for me when we share our meals.”

She twisted out of his grip and rubbed the back of her hand across her chin, erasing the hated heat of his touch. It wasn’t deliberate; she couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d tried. It was all she could do not to bare her teeth at him like an animal.

“Fierce little thing,” Zhuqa murmured and left the stairs for another hall.

There was more light here. And noise. Muted by distance and at least one other door, she could hear a lizardish screaming. Not high and frightened, not fresh. Whatever torture played out at the end of this hall, it had been some time in the act. Amber’s step slowed as the last cry tapered to an moan and then came a terrible silence that stopped her entirely. Even when Zhuqa noticed, even when he came back for her, she couldn’t move. She didn’t want to see what he’d done to someone to make them make a sound like that.

Or to make them stop.

“These are my slave pens,” Zhuqa said after a moment. “Zhuqa the Warlord has played many games in this hall I do not care to remember. Easy, my little one. This is not one of them. Come with me.”

He turned around again. She followed.

They had not quite reached the door he wanted when it opened and a raider came out. She recognized him, although the name didn’t come until she heard it in Zhuqa’s mouth.

“Geozh.” He folded his arms, an act that placed his hands very near to the sheathed blade strapped to his biceps. “You must be coming to fetch me.”

“I was, actually.” And, far from showing concern, Geozh gave his leader a clap to the shoulder. “You know what they say about the first one, but it’s a tough little sprat.”

He moved off down the hall, spines high but relaxed. Humming.

Amber frowned, watching him go. Zhuqa opened the door.

The clove-sweet smell of their blood struck her at once, followed by the gaspy rattle of someone’s dry, labored breath. Amber stopped cold, but Zhuqa didn’t wait. He went to the cupboard where a few more raiders stood respectfully aside for him, and looked down at the lizardlady lying in the bed. She dragged her eyes open to look back at him, then turned her face away.

“Eshiqi, come here.”

She went, pulling unwillingly away from Iziz as Zhuqa bent over and picked something out of the bedding. She knew what she was looking at—she thought she knew—but she still shied squeamishly back when he turned around and placed the wet, blood-streaked baby in her reluctant arms.