The lizardlady in the bed made a single unhappy sound. Not a word. Not even truly a complaint. Just a sound, scarcely louder than a sigh.

“And there we are,” said Zhuqa. His eyes were on the baby, expressionless, watching its tiny hands and feet grip on to the blanket that wrapped Amber’s shoulders. Its scales were white and slightly translucent, which gave it almost a pearly look beneath the gore of its birthing. It pressed the top of its weirdly flattened head to her breast and did nothing, made no sound. Its ribs bulged rapidly in and out. It was impossibly thin to her eye; no fat and happy human baby, but something skeletal and drowned.

Long minutes passed. No one spoke. The raiders sharing this moment stood very still, facing away, invisible in their own skin. There were, Amber saw, three other lizardladies a short distance away, keeping very quiet as they gathered stained cloth and other less-identifiable devices into baskets to take away. They didn’t matter. Even Amber herself and the lady in the cupboard did not seem to truly manifest. This was all about Zhuqa and the baby. The silence stretched and stretched…and shattered with the scraping sound of a knife drawn from its sheath.

Amber flinched back with a wordless sound of her own, clutching the baby closer to her chest as if her arms were any shield against the killing blade.

Zhuqa paused, knife in hand, and gave her a long, thoughtful stare.

“Interesting response,” Iziz remarked.

Zhuqa held the knife up in an elaborate display, turned it point-down, and pierced his forefinger. He sheathed the knife again as he pinched his knuckle to make blood well out past his scales, then closed what little distance Amber had put between them and drew a red-black line of his own blood down the baby’s naked back.

“Welcome to Gann’s world,” he murmured. “Your blood is the blood of Zhuqa.”

The baby did not move, did not squirm, did not make a sound beyond its rapid panting.

At last Zhuqa looked up, far deeper into Amber’s eyes than she wanted to see him go. He read them without speaking. He did not step away. He said, “Zru’itak here was exiled from the city of Chalh for thievery. She would have died in the wildlands if my men had not found her. Is this not true?”

The lizardlady did not reply.

Zhuqa did not seem to expect her to. “They brought her to me and I gave her the gift of my protection. I fed her. I clothed her. I gave her every luxury this life allows. She was not grateful. I asked her to play a game with me. So. We played. I don’t care if my woman hates me, but if she’s going to play the game, she has to at least pretend. Zru’itak never had a kind word for her man, only insults.”

He gave the lizardlady in the bed a pointed stare. After a moment, Amber looked that way, too. The lizardlady continued to face the wall until Zhuqa’s hand moved calmly to his knife and then she finally turned. Her mouth opened.

The tongueless, empty hole of her mouth.

“After that, things became…strained,” said Zhuqa. “I was willing to forgive, but she didn’t want to play anymore. I am not a cruel man. I told her if she would stay one year, just one, I would let her go her way in Gann’s world. For a time, she seemed content with that. Soon, I learned she was pregnant. I brought her out of my rooms and let her walk at my side. I made all the world our House and opened every door for her.” He glanced back. The lizardlady looked at the wall. “And how did you show me obedience, faithless one? How did you serve the man who took you in? Who cared for you? Who put the fire of new life in your wretched womb?”

His voice never rose, never showed the slightest strain of emotion.

The lizardlady did not—could not—reply.

“She ran away,” said Zhuqa. He gazed at Amber, his head cocked to show a faint degree of sarcasm. “She ran away, when all the world was my House, and she slapped my face when I went to fetch her back.”

No one spoke. No one made a sound. No one met his stare but Amber.

Suddenly, he turned around, seized the blanket that covered the lizardlady, and ripped it entirely off the bed.

She saw. The baby in her arms uttered a chick-like peep; she’d squeezed it.

Zru’itak had no legs, no arms. He’d left her nothing, nothing but the delicate, polished bones of her toes and fingers, strung prettily together and hung around her neck.

“The year is out,” said Zhuqa, dropping the blanket indifferently on the floor. “And I keep my promises. Take her back to where we found her. Let her go.”

All the raiders but Iziz moved at once to pull the lizardlady from her bed. Her mouth opened for another of those terrible, quavering wails, but there were no words and no way to beg. Amber didn’t know she was moving until her back hit the scaly wall of Iziz’s chest. He caught her, but she didn’t need catching. She might not be able to feel her legs at the moment, but they were holding her up just fine. She watched the raiders wrap the lady—the moaning torso of the lady—in the bloody sheets so that she made easier portage and then they took her away.

“So our game ended,” Zhuqa said. He came to Amber, laid his hand upon the baby’s back—eclipsing it almost entirely—but his touch was gentle. “And so you see the man you’re playing with. Dkorm.”

“Sir.”

“Find Xzem and bring her here. My child will want feeding.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zhuqa’s gaze shifted to the lizardman behind Amber. “See to it that everyone understands that while Xzem has the care of my child, no one is to use her. I don’t care if Sheul Himself appears and puts His burning hand on your dick, no one touches Xzem.”

Iziz let go of Amber and walked away. No sooner had the door shut behind him than it opened again, readmitting Dkorm with a lizardlady crouching nervously behind him, a much larger baby clutched to her chest. She looked at Zhuqa, visibly quailed, and then looked at the infant Amber held and staggered in horror to her knees.

Zhuqa turned away from Amber and reached down to Xzem. He didn’t help her up. He plucked the baby out of her arms and held it over her head as she clasped both hands to her snout and shivered. He looked at it while it cried and kicked, then at its mother. “Do you love this child?”

“Please, I beg you! Please!”

“I take it you do. Then here is what I have to say to you. Mark me closely. If mine dies, so does yours. If mine lives out the next year, you and yours will go free.”

She reached up tentatively. Zhuqa held the crying infant higher. Xzem hesitated, then cringed around him and held out her empty hands to Amber.

The baby’s tiny fists twisted in the blanket. She could feel its pulse hammering at her even through the leather. It was still damp from its birthing and beginning to tremble in the draft.

Zhuqa looked back at her and looked for a long time. “Give it over, Eshiqi,” he said. “Unless you can give it suck, give it up.”

She didn’t want to. That was a disturbing thought. It was Zhuqa’s baby, for Christ’s sake! The man who’d spent the whole day raping her, not once or twice, but the whole damned day! The man who’d hacked the arms and legs of the baby’s mother and then thrown her out into the plains! That man’s baby! That man’s spawn!

Its head moved, prodding shakily until it found the valley between her soft breasts and there it rested. After a second or two, its heaving sides began to slow with sleep. It began to make a breathy rr-rr-rring sound on its exhales. Not snoring. Purring, maybe. Almost singing.

Xzem, increasingly nervous, finally reached up and took the baby, hissing frantically at Amber’s split-second resistance. The baby woke at once, let out a surprisingly loud yowl, and clung with considerable strength as Xzem broke its grip one hand and one foot at a time. It did not settle in its new mother’s arms, but struggled on, its head blindly tossing and all four limbs reaching out.