His spines came slowly forward in a silent, oddly graceful flare above his otherwise expressionless face. “Oh my fearless Soft-Skin,” he said after a moment, without readable emotion. “I could just slap you.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Scott said quickly.

“I do not hear you. Await the sword of Sheul’s judgment.”

“It’s not,” Amber said. “It was a kipwe.”

“I see that. I say stand where you are, S’kot,” Meoraq added, no louder and without seeming to have even noticed Scott’s silent attempt to disappear behind his Manifestors. He bent further over her, peering into her eyes and then prying her mouth open, of all things, before looking under the bandage again.

“It didn’t look that bad to me,” said Crandall, watching him. “Once we got the bleeding stopped, I mean.”

Meoraq didn’t answer, which was about the worst response he could have given. At length, he replaced the bandage and covered her over with the blanket. He put his hands on his thighs. He bent his neck. He took six breaths. Then he brushed the backs of his knuckles across Amber’s brow and said, “I forgive you, Soft-Skin. Rest now. You are in our Father’s sight.”

The little comfort this gave her lasted just until Meoraq gripped the hilt of his kzung and stood up, ripping it from the wet ground and spattering Amber lightly with grass and mud. “I’ll try not to enjoy this,” he said, seizing Scott as he bolted for escape. “But you haven’t made that easy.”

“Meoraq, don’t!”

“I am not Uyane Meoraq but the Sword in His hand,” Meoraq replied, calmly towing Scott toward an opening in the walls. “Rest. This will not take long.”

“Let him go,” said Amber. The words were bitter as ash.

Meoraq stopped walking. He stood silent, staring straight ahead at the leather wall while Scott gasped for air at the end of his fist. The color striping his throat throbbed in time with his pulse. But for that and the heaving of his chest as he breathed, he did not move.

“Please let him go,” said Amber, hating herself for feeling the mean hope that he would ignore her and kill Scott anyway.

He turned and came back to her, dragging Scott with him, perhaps entirely forgotten. The color was bright enough almost to seem to be glowing in the firelight and his eyes were starting to glaze. “He broke his faith with God, if he ever had it, and as His Sword, I have no mercy to show him and would not even if I did! If I could not spare you, why in Gann’s name would I spare him?”

“Because we’re all that’s left. That…has to matter.”

“More than the Word?” Meoraq demanded. He struggled visibly with his temper, then lost it, roaring, “More than your life? What do you think he meant to do with my sword, fool woman? If I had slept tonight, if I had stopped even once to rest, you would be dead now! Dead and…and buried!”

She stretched out her hand toward his boot, palm up, trembling.

He looked down at that as everyone watched and Scott twisted and gasped in his unmoving fist. At last, Meoraq’s neck bent. His burning eyes shut and opened again, calm. He studied Scott for a while in silence, then released him and let him drop in the muddy grass. “I am not Uyane Meoraq but the Sword in His hand,” he said as Scott scrambled back, clutching at his neck. “I am a true son of Sheul, by whose laws you are judged unforgiveable. You are welcome no more among men. However, exile is permitted as a lawful alternative to execution and so I offer it. Shall you stand and submit to my sword, Var’li S’kot? It is a far easier death and, for my wife’s sake, I will even burn you when it is done. Gann will give you no such mercy.”

Scott retreated another step, still breathing hard, then suddenly snatched up a rolled tent and held it before him like a shield.

Meoraq spat contemptuously and picked up one of the travel-sized waterskins, shoving it hard against Scott’s chest. “Take it and go, then. You and all your cattle. Go and let the Dark Father who shat you out, take you in.”

“Come on, men,” Scott rasped, gathering up supplies with shaking hands. “I’ve spent…enough time…with lizards…and their…whores!”

Meoraq’s head cocked. He looked at Nicci. “What does that word mean?”

“It means he’s leaving,” Nicci said.

“And you’re not…coming with me!” Scott declared, pointing at her. He waited, perhaps expecting some tearful plea to reconsider, but when Nicci only sat there, he finally sneered and turned around. He left, staggering as he went, either from the lasting effects of his throttling or under the weight of the many waterskins he’d taken with him. After a long silence spent eyeing the supplies remaining to them, the last of the Manifestors scratched up some food, some blankets and another tent and hurried after him. The rest—Eric and Dag and Crandall, his one-time loyal lieutenants—stayed.

Meoraq looked at them. The stripes on his throat were still bright, bright yellow. “Get out.”

“For what it’s worth,” said Eric, “and I know it’s not worth much, we never should have left her.”

Dag grunted, a disturbingly lizardlike sound, and Crandall, looking back over his shoulder at Scott’s retreating colony, agreed, “He was a fucking loon. What do you say, Bierce? No hard feelings?”

Amber smiled weakly. “Yeah, okay. We’re good.”

Meoraq stepped up and shoved Crandall so hard and so unexpectedly that Crandall lost his feet and nearly fell in the fire. “This is not her camp!” he spat, this time shoving Dag, who only staggered. Eric stepped back on his own. “It is mine and I forgive you nothing! You, who acknowledge you should not have abandoned her to die in the open plains—not apologize, but acknowledge—have nothing to say about the fact that you stood and watched S’kot raise a blade over my wife?”

Eric kept his wary distance, but didn’t flinch. “I tried to stop him.”

“He did,” said Amber. “Please, Meoraq.”

“No! I give you your blood-kin. The rest of them can go to Gann. Out!”

“Hey, he had a sword!” Crandall shrugged off Dag’s helping hands and bounded to his feet. “What was I supposed to do, take it away from him? Huh? So you could come back and find me holding it? Who the hell do you think carried her back here and bandaged her up? Isn’t that worth anything?”

“We made a mistake,” Eric added. “We made a lot of them, okay? We just want the chance to make it right.”

“It’s okay,” Amber tried to say and this time, Meoraq rounded on her.

“Stop telling them that!” he hissed. “You have no power to forgive them!”

“You do.”

He recoiled, spines flaring and flattening with a brittle snap. “But I won’t!”

“Please.”

“No!”

“I’m begging.”

“I don’t care!”

“Meoraq—”

“They don’t like you!” he bellowed, pointing at Crandall and the others with the sword. “This isn’t liking you, damn it! This is groveling for their worthless lives! Nothing has changed!”

“I don’t care if they like me,” she said, just like she’d used to say it to herself so long ago. Somewhere along the way, it had turned into the truth, but it didn’t make her feel tough or hard or strong, only tired. “But if I let them walk out there and die just because I don’t like them, then something’s changed, all right. Please.”

They all looked at Meoraq.

He did not say anything for a long, long time.

At last, he sheathed his sword and turned his head just enough to look at Eric and the others. “I am Uyane Meoraq, son of Rasozul,” he said tonelessly, “who was son of Ta’sed, who was son of Kuuri, who was the forty-third son of the line descended of the Prophet’s Uyane Xaima. I am a Sword and a true son of Sheul…and I forgive you all your pasts. But I do not take you in,” he added in a hiss. “You are not Uyane under me. You are not welcome in my House. We are not good.”

Crandall started to speak, but Eric stopped him with a warning glance.  No one said anything.