Then, silence.

Rain fell into his open eyes. He could not blink. The boy’s face loomed over him, colorless, indistinct. Was he dead? He couldn’t move, not even when the boy shoved him over on his side. He could feel tugging, prodding—the boy, searching for treasure—and the final kick of frustration when he found none.

Stormlight flickered through the grey in a constant sheet. Meoraq could see the boy’s boots circling to stand before him. He could see the black shape of his father’s knife sprawled in the mud before his snout. He could see each dimpled knot in the cord of Amber’s hair tied at his arm where it sprawled unfelt over him. He saw these things, only these things, and he thought that must be important.

More silence. It had become heavy, a weight on his ears. He could not hear his pulse anymore, but he thought he could still feel it, in his fingers of all places. The grey was fading slowly to black. His chest hurt.

“That was so much easier than I have been led to believe,” the boy remarked. Even his voice was grey.

Meoraq’s head was lifted, the belt loosened and then yanked away. He heard it go, felt it striping his throat with pain as scales caught in that cheap braid were torn loose.

The boy had killed him. That was bad enough, but he knew the boy would never burn him. He would never be wholly dead, never see the House of his true Father, never know the eternal peace that comes after. He must lie here and die forever. Would he feel it when he rotted? Would he feel it when the ghets came? Did they even have ghets in Gedai? He took a breath. He tried to cough and couldn’t. Dead men couldn’t cough.

His father’s voice, pained: Son, dead men don’t breathe, either.

…Truth.

The boy was unbuckling Meoraq’s belt, replacing his own shoddy piece of leather.

‘I take back my thought about your perfect choke,’ he thought peevishly, and breathed again. ‘I should be unconscious now.’ He struggled to scrape up a better insult, but there was nothing in dumaqi good enough. ‘You suck,’ he thought finally, savagely. ‘Lizard.’

“How long have you been a Sheulek?” asked the boy, buckling on Meoraq’s belt. “I wish I’d asked…I’ve been doing this job for six years. Do you know what that means? Eh?” The boy’s boot nudged at Meoraq’s thigh, then drew back and slammed into his ribs. “It means they won’t let me do it much longer,” he said as Meoraq watched his fingers slowly grip the ground. “Too tall, they tell me. Too old. Soon it’ll be another boy out here, and what the hell am I supposed to do? They say Zhuqa won’t take me, not even to work their stupid crops or clear the canals. Zhuqa only takes real raiders.” Another kick, harder than the first. “I could be a raider. I killed you, didn’t I?”

In the midst of the grass before him, a single gray blade began to bleed in green. Color, coming back into the world. He breathed.

“I probably should have waited until we were closer,” the boy mused, circling again. “Not sure how I’m going to move your body sixteen spans to the camp, but I probably don’t need the whole thing. Nothing about the head proves you’re Sheulek…and the arm doesn’t prove you’re dead…” The boy hunkered down to pick up one of Meoraq’s sabks. He admired it in the stormlight, then struck it under Meoraq’s chin and rocked his head back and forth. “What would you do if you were me?”

Meoraq took the knife and slammed it into the side of the boy’s throat.

He and the boy stared at each other. He felt no need to speak. He had no questions, really.

The storm was moving on, lightning breaking into separate sparks, thunder growing distant. The rain fell even harder, but that was all right; the rain was cool on his scraped throat and bruised ribs.

Meoraq pushed himself awkwardly to his knees and then his feet, dragging the boy up with him. “The law,” he rasped, and had to stop and cough into his palm. There was no blood on his fingers and the pain of the effort was minimal. It took strength to break a man’s ribs, and everything this scrawny youth possessed had gone into the choke. Meoraq hurt, but he thought he was all right.

“The law requires me to ask,” he said again, adjusting his grip on the knife’s hilt. “Do you wish to pray?”

“This is not supposed to happen,” the boy whispered.

Meoraq pulled the knife across his throat slowly, bringing blood in a fall and not a spray, guiding the boy to his knees while he made his little struggles, and then letting him fall where Gann willed when it was over. He found his other honor-blade, cleaned them both, sheathed them. He took his belt back. He found the pitted toy of a knife stowed away in the dead boy’s boot and broke it. He stood and stared at the body until the rain had washed the blood away.

Sixteen spans. He didn’t think the boy had been lying about that. They had been traveling east, and he didn’t think the boy had been leading him false either. But crop? Canals? That was not a raider’s camp. That was a settlement, one that could not possibly have gone unnoticed for as many years as the boy claimed to be visiting it.

The sky flashed; a final stroke of lightning, a final snap and growl of thunder. In the back of his mind, Meoraq heard the phantom crash of shattered glass and felt Amber slamming up against his back as she’d done that long-ago night in the ruins.

Ruins. For as long as Sheul had forbidden his children to enter the ruins, those who had gone to Gann had nested in them. Yes, they might hide their crop in the roofless husks where the Ancients had made their homes and yes, they might even have canals worth restoring, but so what? Sixteen spans, generally eastward, look for ruins? Was that hope? There were ruins everywhere!

But ruins stand, he thought suddenly. After so many days, he would never catch a moving pack, but ruins were a pin to hold his Amber in place. He could have her back.

If he could find her.

Meoraq looked wearily out across the world, his eyes sweeping dully across the whole of the horizon and up, up into heaven. The rain poured down his face and across his aching throat. “Mine is the same clay as any other’s,” he said. “I do not move at Your speed, Father, but at Your direction. I cry out to You from the darkness. I cry, Father. Please. I cry. Help me.”

The wind changed, just a little. He turned his face to keep the rain in his eyes. To the east.

He started walking.

* * *

Amber’s first full day as a slave passed because even the worst days do, hour by uncounted hour, undisturbed by rescue. There was no food in the workpit, only a barrel of stale water under a leaking faucet that served dually as drinking and wash-water. At some point, Hruuzk appeared and took the new slaves away. Dkorm left with Xzem and the babies soon afterwards. The work changed from doing things to cleaning up, so Amber rallied what was left her of her strength and cleaned alongside them, although she let them do the more vigorous sweeping and scrubbing while she put things away. After another stretch of time, Hruuzk returned and called the children to him in a noisy flock. He hunkered down to talk to them, tapping at this or that one to keep their attention, before he sent them out—chattering children in front, silent slave-women behind.

“Finish up,” he called to her, pointing at the small lump of clay left on the table. “No sense running that all the way down when you can put another three lamps on the shelf and be done. Do it well, but do it quick.” He pulled a piece of what sure appeared to be her last surviving Manifestor’s shirt and used it to wipe out the socket of his missing eye. “Been a long day and I want a piss and a poke before it’s over.”

Amber rolled out coils of clay and made the last lamps with hands that ached like rotten teeth and barbed wire where her spine used to be. She found herself wishing dully that Zhuqa would hurry up and get here. All he’d want from her was sex and she could do that lying down.