So he halted them in the early evening after traveling less than two spans—less a call for camp than a cry of surrender—with plenty of good hours left in the day to hunt or patrol or just pray before night truly fell. The walls went up. Fires were lit. The women went to work brewing tea and heating cold kipwe, all but Xzem, who knelt with Amber in the mouth of a tent with the infant singing in her arms and Nicci close by to watch. Most of the humans rested by their fool abbot, but Eric went out to gather deadfall for the fires and Dag actually helped the women with the cooking.

Around the small camp, Onahi’s men—now men under Uyane, he supposed—kept watch. Their quiet talk eased him; not their words, which were exactly the sort of low garrison-talk one would expect, but just their speech. Dumaqi in male voices, relaxed and uncomplicated, with meanings he didn’t have to guess at. He didn’t think he was lonely and wouldn’t have believed it if someone told him he was, but the pleasure that came just to listen was almost enough to take even the ugliness of Praxas from his heart. How much better would it be, he wondered, to be home again in Xeqor, to hear not only familiar words but familiar voices? See his brothers’ faces? Sleep in his own bed?

He was ready, he realized. The fate that had been so damning when he first confronted it now seemed to him as welcome as Sheul’s own Halls. Home. Family. Rest.

Amber.

And there his gaze lay for some time, upon his wife and the infant she held to her heart. She sensed it, looked up. Their eyes met and Sheul’s fires, cooled but never entirely gone, surged at once to greater life.

Meoraq turned away and beckoned Onahi to him. He had to do it twice; the other man’s attention had been fixed and somewhat glazed upon Xzem. “Call your sentries in,” he ordered. “I want a private hour with my woman. No one is to leave this camp for any reason until my return.”

“I mark.” Onahi’s eyes traveled the camp, counting his men…but came back to Xzem. And lingered.

“These are women of my House,” Meoraq reminded him, trying not to sound as if he were also warning him.

“I will not dishonor your camp, sir.”

Meoraq grunted, now studying Onahi instead of Amber. The fires were insistent, but a Sheulek was the master of every impulse, even that one. “Have you seen women before?” he asked bluntly.

“At a distance.” Onahi managed with effort to look at Meoraq. “But no mother…apart from my own.” He hesitated, clearly battling the urge to speak further, and ultimately defeated by it. “I have gone to Gann, sir. I submit myself to your judgment.”

Meoraq’s spines snapped up. “Eh?”

“I have gone to Gann,” Onahi said again, his words all but bleeding in the air. “I have tried to pray. I have begged our Father’s forgiveness all this day and all last night, but I…”

Meoraq waited, beginning to feel restless now that the first astonishment of this incredible confession was fading. The fires in his belly burned and Amber was watching him. “You?” he prompted impatiently.

“It is unforgiveable to lie with a milking mother,” Onahi said and seemed to break. Without moving, his strained body became soft as clay. “It is unforgiveable. The taint of my city is on me. I must submit to your sword.”

Meoraq took a moment to puzzle this out. “You want a woman,” he said at last.

Onahi closed his eyes.

So did Meoraq, before someone could see him rolling them. He rubbed at his brow-ridges, took six breaths (without sighing and that was nearly an ordeal in itself), and said, “I do not see Gann’s hand on you, watchman. It is the fires of our Father you feel. Take a woman.”

“It is unforgiveable—”

“Take another woman.” Meoraq beckoned to his own and started to turn away. Sheul’s hand fell on him at once; he turned back and yes, Onahi was staring at Xzem.

There was something in this, he was certain, something he was meant to see…but whatever it was, it would have to wait. Intellectually, he knew no man had ever died of lust, but his belly felt as if it were filled with molten lead and his thoughts had begun to slip toward the same killing black that took him in the arena. If he did not take his woman soon, he thought it very likely that Sheul would take her in his stead. As for Onahi—

“Go to my tent,” Meoraq ordered. “Make your prayers and be prepared to submit to my judgment upon my return.”

Onahi saluted and went without question as Amber came near, looking back over her shoulder either at the baby or at Nicci. “I’m really worried—” she began.

“Come with me,” he said and left the camp.

Onahi’s watchmen raised their fists as he passed by, but he was beyond acknowledging them. He strode swiftly out between the walls and as soon as Amber had joined him, he took her roughly by the arm and walked as far as he could stand to go. He refused to rut with his woman on the ground where anyone could hear them. He could see a sturdy-looking tree twenty paces away, maybe thirty; it may as well be a thousand.

“Wait,” said Amber, pulling at him.

He grunted and kept going, dragging her with him, seeing nothing but that tree.

“I have to talk to you! Damn it!” And with a mighty yank, her hand was gone from his grip. “This is important!”

He turned on her, hearing the hiss that spat out of his throat, but unable to feel even a spark of shame for it. She was his woman, his wife! Why could she not give him her obedience for one fucking day?

Blackness took him for a heartbeat, no longer, but when it faded, he had his hand on her throat and his face biting-close to hers. Confusion swelled, overshadowing rage but not killing it. He shut his mouth, leaned back, and finally released her.

She stared at him, trembling and furious even with tears welling in her eyes. It made him think of Nicci, which made him think of the watchman in Praxas fucking her through the cage, which made him think of the tree he may not reach tonight. He had to turn around, facing into the chill spring wind, and took several minutes to breathe himself calm. One for the Prophet…two for his Brunt…three for Uyane…

He was Uyane.

“Speak,” he said at last.

“Aren’t you going to look at me?”

“No.”

There was quiet at his back. He did not hear her crying, not until she spoke again. The tears were in her voice and they cut at him, but he did not look at her.

“You have to get the baby out of here. This is taking too long and it’s getting weaker.”

“The humans are at their limits. They can go no faster.”

“Then you have to leave us behind.”

Us, she said.

“It’s too cold,” Amber said. “We barely got anywhere today and I know it’s our fault—”

Our.

“—but I can’t make us go any faster and you can take that baby to Chalh.”

“No.”

“I heard those other guys talking. Even they know it’s going to die if…It’s just a baby!” she burst out. He could hear her slapping at her face, punishing the eyes that betrayed her with tears. “How can you not care about that? You said you forgave everyone! Didn’t you mean it?”

He glanced at her, but his troubled thoughts turned to flame and he faced back into the wind at once. “It is not for me to forgive the children born to Gann.”

“I don’t care whose it is!” she sobbed. “It’s just a baby! You can’t let it die because it’s Zhuqa’s! That’s not its fault! God, Meoraq, look around you! How can you even think of letting it die? In a world where so many of you have died, you should be doing everything you can to save it just because it’s alive!”

The words stabbed him twice—once for their edge alone and once because she believed them. It didn’t matter to her that the child was sired of her enemy by a slave. She saw only an innocent life, and where the right was hers to end it out of vengeance, she wept because she could not save it.

‘Yes, my Father,’ thought Meoraq, once more in the tribune hall at Tothax with the daughter of Lord Saluuk weeping at his feet. ‘I hear you.’