Meoraq turned his back on them and knelt again next to Amber. “For you,” he said simply. “Hold on to me now. This will hurt.”

He lifted her. He did it slowly and even gently in spite of the color that was still so strong at his throat, but it did hurt and in spite of her determination to suck it up, she had to cry a little. But she got an arm around his neck and kept it there, anchoring herself to him while the rest of the world lurched and spun.

“I’m sorry,” she said as he took her into his tent. “This is a hell of a thing to come back to.”

He coughed up a humorless laugh and lay her down on his mat. “I asked God to bring me back to you. I left the details entirely to His whim. There is a lesson in that. Now rest. Tomorrow will be a difficult day.”

“You’ll have to remind me…when were the easy ones?”

It was a rhetorical question. Meoraq had never been good at recognizing those. “All things are relative,” he told her. “There are no easy days in the wildlands, but tomorrow…tomorrow will be difficult.”

5

Meoraq had run all night on nothing but a few bites of cuuvash, praying at every step that Sheul would keep his camp shrouded from the eyes of his enemies and tormented by visions of what he would find if He did not. He would have thought he had imagined every possible scenario. A kipwe attack—which he could not help but think of as roughly on a level with a mimut or a saoq attack—had never crossed his mind. It was the sort of thing he would have found laughable had he seen it in a play or a book—a tragedy on the indistinct edge of comedy—until it was his Amber lying there, as pale as a yearling…and as weak.

But she would not rest. Meoraq understood that she had not seen him in many days and that she wanted to know that Xzem and the infant had reached Chalh in good health. He understood also that the mood within his small camp was a dark one following Scott’s exile and she wanted to lighten it. And he understood best of all that she was hurt and hurts have a way of growing when there is nothing else to do except think about them. A Sheulek leaned early to embrace pain, to own it and sleep in spite of it, but Amber was not Sheulek.

In the end, Meoraq brewed her a strong cup of tea with a few leaves of healershand, chewed some more leaves and packed her wound with the pulp, then set the humans on watch—ha—and went out with his lamp to pray. Sheul brought him to a hive of soldier beetles; Meoraq caught twenty and wrapped them awkwardly in a fold of his tunic.

He returned to find Amber, as he’d hoped, deeply asleep. So was Nicci and the other humans, who had, he saw, helped themselves to the rest of the tea. Just as well. He moved Nicci to the humans’ tent (as he knelt to set her on her mat, she mumbled and caught at his harness as if to pull him down with her. It took some effort to get away with waking her and even more effort to do it without hissing), left the rest of them where they lay and directed himself to Amber without distraction.

The medicine had done its work well by that time and the wound was bloodless when he pulled the bandage away. He washed the wound to clear it of clinging pulp. Amber murmured, but that was all, even when he pressed the severed edges of her flesh closed and hunted out the first beetle, holding it carefully by its shiny shell. Already deeply aggravated, it needed no encouragement to bite. Its massive mandibles punctured both sides of her torn muscle, squeezing them tight together, and at once, Meoraq pinched off its head. Its insect will was greater than death; it would hold its grip until its shell crumbled away.

Beetle by beetle, he closed her wounds and sealed it with a paste of healershand and honey. He examined every part of her for kipwe quills the humans had missed and licked every scratch. He changed out her bandages for clean cloth taken from his provisions seized in Chalh. After that, there was nothing he could do except sit and brood over the many wounds he’d seen sour in spite of the best surgeons and those that had healed cleanly with no care at all.

“She rests in Your sight, O my Father,” he muttered, rubbing at last at his brow ridges, and this was true, but she also rested in the wildlands. Between the threat of revenging raiders and hungry beasts (he counted Scott somewhere along this line) were too many dangers to defend against. The nearest city—well, the next nearest, as Praxas would be no shelter to him—was Chalh again, four running days at best, and in light of Lord Uyane’s last words to him, he was hesitant to take her there. If she was to have any chance at all of recovery, it would have to be somewhere else.

They must be ready to move on at first light.

So decided, Meoraq again took his lamp and went out into the darkness, this time to build a sled. He was so tired by now that he watched his hands cut and trim poles as if they were the hands of another man, feeling nothing of what he did. He didn’t know how he was going to walk all day, let alone carry Amber. The humans would be no help to him in that regard; their treatment in Praxas had not left them able to bear weight for great distances even if they could be made willing.

Anger rose in him, bitter as bile. He swallowed it, but the taste remained.

When he returned to camp, the fire had burned itself down to lightless red glints. He built it up again and when he could make out one human from another, he woke Eric (with a none too gentle nudge of his boot). “Take the watch,” he said, noting even as he gave the order the groggy glaze of healershand tea in the human’s eyes.

But Eric nodded and sat himself up, rubbing at his flat, ugly face.

“Wake me at first light or if Scott should return. Do not—” He pointed the whole of his hand into Eric’s face and immediately won the man’s full, frowning attention. “—speak with him. He has gone to Gann and so too have those who treat with him. How do you mark me?”

Eric yawned and showed his fist, saying, “He won’t be back. He knows you’ll kill him. Hey. Is she going to be okay?”

Meoraq glanced behind him, but of course saw only his tent. “I cannot answer, but that isn’t what you truly want to ask, is it?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“If she dies, I will turn you out.” Meoraq glanced around and caught a shadow of dark thought in Eric’s eye before his human face closed. “There was a time I thought almost well of you,” Meoraq said with a thin smile. “But you have grown to like the taste of the poison S’kot fed you. Now you talk out of two mouths, the same as he. I have no use for you. If my wife insists on it, there will be a place for you in Xeqor. If she doesn’t—” His spines flicked. “—there won’t.”

“You have no idea what we’ve been through.” Eric’s jaw clenched, but his voice did not rise and he bent his neck before he spoke. If his time in Praxas had taught him nothing else, it had taught him manners. “I don’t even think you can understand it. I don’t think there’s one thing in your privileged life that allows you to know what it’s been like for us since we crashed on this planet. Even Amber knows we did the best we could.”

Tired as he was, Meoraq smiled an honest smile. “She said that, didn’t she? I can almost hear her say it. And if I had been there to see it, I would have seen no lie in her eyes and do you know why? Because she wants so much to believe it. Like S’kot and his fever-dream ship. She believes it because she has done the best she could every step of this road. Yes. Now. Look into my eyes, human, and tell me you have done the same.”

“Why should I? I already know you think it’s a lie.”

“I do know it’s a lie,” Meoraq agreed. “I want to know if you do. So speak, human. We’ll judge your words together.”

“I think I’ll wait,” said Eric after a moment, “until you’ve slept.”