“Wow.” Eric’s eyebrows rose appreciatively. “That’s pretty gruesome.”

She felt herself relax without ever feeling herself tighten up. She’d been so sure she was about to hear him tell her all the ways it wasn’t so bad when it plainly was. “Yeah,” she said and looked at it herself. It was just as ugly as it had been yesterday, but for some reason, with Eric standing there, it also looked rounder. Her stomach clenched; the scars buckled.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. Sometimes, if I move just right, it kinda stretches and feels tight, you know? And sometimes the new skin hurts if you touch it.” She prodded at the dimple, resisting the urge to shudder. It felt firm, if alien and horrible. She was not getting fat. “Feels like wax.”

Eric touched her stomach. She could feel the heat of his hand, but not the texture. Looking at her scars, Eric said, “I don’t think anyone’s said this yet, but you really showed your stuff out there.”

She frowned, ready to be offended if that was the insult it sounded like. “Is that a joke?”

“I don’t mean just the porcupine-thing. I mean how you went after it. For us. After everything…” He looked her in the eye at last, his hand heavy over her unfeeling scars. “You even stood up for Scott and I know you don’t like him. I guess…I guess you deserve to hear someone say thanks.”

She hadn’t realized how completely she’d given up on that until she felt how shocked she was to finally hear it. Her mouth was actually open. She was gaping.

“I’d really like it if we could start over,” said Eric. “I realize that’s asking a lot, but…Do you remember when I told you how friends matter?”

“Yeah.”

“I was trying to tell you how important it was for you to get along with us.” Eric smiled crookedly. “We really should have been making more of an effort to get along with you. It’s not too late, is it?”

Eric’s direct stare was getting hard to meet. Amber looked away and, like a ghost in a bad movie, Meoraq’s head was there, floating in the shadows just over Eric’s left shoulder.

Eric saw something in her face. He turned around and promptly tried to jump back, banging his shoulders into the cupboard frame and his hand into the door in his hurry to take it off her. “Oh, you’re back. That was quick,” he said, trying to laugh.

Meoraq did not respond, unless you counted a very slight tilting of his head.

Obviously, Eric knew what that meant now. “We were just talking,” he said, holding up his hands.

Meoraq didn’t answer, even with a grunt. He also didn’t step back, forcing Eric to retreat by sidling along the cupboard door until he had enough room to make a dive for the stairs. Meoraq watched him go, then glanced back at the others.

Dag and Nicci got up immediately and left the underlodge. Crandall followed at his own deliberate pace, laughing.

When they were gone, Meoraq unexpectedly flared his mouth open in a lizardish grin and coughed laughter of his own.

“Tell me you didn’t scare the crap of him just because you could,” Amber said.

“He put his hand on you,” Meoraq replied with a casual shrug. He went to light a fire in the hearth. “How did it feel?”

“His hand? What kind of question—”

“His words. His…” Meoraq snorted with extra-special sarcasm. “…gratitude.”

“Don’t say it like that,” said Amber, annoyed. “At least he’s making an effort.”

“He certainly is,” Meoraq murmured, smiling.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Meoraq set the heat stones in the fire to warm up, filled his stewing pouch with water and hung the half-emptied flask back on the wall. He was still smiling.

At last, exasperated beyond belief, she got it. “You think he was coming on to me, don’t you?”

“I suspect that is just what I think.”

Amber slammed the cupboard door on him.

He opened it and leaned inside, spines relaxed, smirking. “How long would you say we’ve been here?”

Amber moved the blanket and checked her notches. “Fifty-three days,” she said and heard, like a ghost of a ghost, Nicci whisper, When was your last period? She shivered.

Meoraq didn’t notice. His spines were at full attention as he leaned into the cupboard to look at her calendar. “Why are you defacing my bed?”

“It’s how prisoners keep track of time where I’m from,” she told him, making sure there was an extra emphasis on ‘prisoners’. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I don’t have a subject. I merely observe that a man doesn’t take fifty-three days to say things he feels strongly about. He had another motive.”

“You don’t believe that,” said Amber, watching him withdraw to his chair at the table.

“You sound very sure.”

“He still has the hand he put on me.”

“Ha! But I don’t need to defend my woman from his conquest,” he added. “She defends herself.”

It was praise and she knew it, but all the same, she felt that phantom tug of resistance as the fish hook tore through flesh, felt the sting where Zhuqa’s heat splashed over her eyes, tasted blood and cum in her mouth. She defended herself all right. Fierce little thing that she was.

She couldn’t hide that shiver. Meoraq noticed, but obviously didn’t know what to make of it. “Are you angry?” he asked cautiously, flaring his spines to suggest that, if she were, he was prepared to insist he was not at fault until she agreed with him.

“No. I’m not, I just…hate lying here!” she finished in a sudden illogical rush of fury. She shoved the door over as far as it could go and swung her legs out, sitting up. When Meoraq only twitched his spines, she stood. After another pause to assess him, she walked over to the table and stood in front of him.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Fine.”

He raised his chin, his eyes narrowing.

“A little shaky,” she admitted and sat with relief on the table.

“Truth,” he declared, leaning out to put the first heat stone in the water.

“But that’s only because you never let me get up.”

“Evil Uyane,” he agreed and hissed to himself, heaping embers over the remaining stones. “Vindictive brunt, who in his cruelty, would not allow his wife to tear open her soft skin.”

“My skin has been all sealed up for days.”

“Only in seeming.”

“I’m better now,” she insisted.

“Truth, but ‘better’ is not ‘healed’.”

“When are we leaving?” she asked.

“When leaving will not kill you.” He slid a pointed glance her way. “I feel I’ve said that before. No matter. Your clay requires time to strengthen. Shall we say—”

“Six days?” she guessed.

“How well my wife knows her man’s mind.”

“And then we go on to Xi’Matezh?”

“Xi’Matezh,” he agreed, or maybe he was correcting her pronunciation. “We aren’t far.”

“Half a brace, right?” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve been saying that since the mountains.”

“Less than that. Perhaps even less than half that.”

“So…You could have been there and back, like, three times by now.”

“No arguments, woman. This is not a discussion. We go to Him together.” He looked past her, loudly flattening his spines. “I have not invited you back.”

“It’s raining,” Eric said on the stair.

“Excellent. Keep me informed. Get out.” Meoraq continued to stare until Eric and the others turned around and tromped back upstairs. “Raining,” he muttered, and prodded at the heat stones.

“How long are you going to keep them outside?” Amber asked.

“They aren’t ‘out’ anywhere. They’re in the foreroom. Listen.” Meoraq looked up at the ceiling, scowling at the sound of footsteps pacing above them. “I ought to make them stay up there until we move on. I’m sick of having humans underfoot.”

She looked at him.

He noticed and predictably misunderstood. He scowled back at her, saying, “I’ll call them down once I’ve had my bath. Enough. I am still the master of this camp and I am not a harsh one.” His spines lifted in an overture of peace. “An hour, eh? A private hour, you and I, and all the world outside.”