She did, but she kept looking at him, watching the yellow bloom and die on his scales, and eventually, he looked back at her. “Can I tell you something?” she asked quietly. “Something I really have known all along. Something that is one hundred percent true. Something…Something I could have built my own shrine on.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no.

“You’re an alien,” she told him. “Or I am. One of us is, at any rate.”

He sighed and rubbed at his brow-ridges.

“Our worlds are billions of miles apart. We come from two entirely different evolutionary trees. You have scales, I have hair. We have different skeletons, different organs, different everything, right down to the number of fingers and toes. We are one hundred percent incompatible. The only thing we have in common is a carbon base.”

“So?” he said wearily.

“So I’m pregnant,” said Amber, and was amazed at how matter-of-fact she sounded, saying it for the first time. “What the hell do you call that if it isn’t God?”

He raised his head from his hand and stared at her.

“You told me once that I was good at seeing evidence and, boy, did it piss me off because this is something that I really did not want to see. But men can only push themselves so far, Meoraq, and men with faith can only push so much further. All the evidence is telling me…there’s something else out there, pulling from the other side. I don’t like it,” said Amber bluntly. “I’m not at peace with it. I sure as hell don’t take comfort in it…but I’m glad you do.”

He frowned, tried to look away, but Amber caught his snout and turned him back.

“Because all the things God isn’t for me,” she said, “you are. Because of you, I see Him every day. So start talking, lizardman, but I warn you, you’ve got a hard talk ahead of you if you’re going to convince me there’s no God after He gave you to me.”

She waited, but he didn’t say anything. He took a few deep breaths, then reached up and brushed the back of his hand along her cheek. His eyes closed. He bent and let her guide his head to rest on her shoulder. He put his arms around her. He did not rage.

He wept.

* * *

He cried off and on for a long time. Even after he was done, he held on to her, so heavy and so quiet that she thought he’d fallen asleep. Amber stroked his back and stared into space and after an eternity of this, was startled when he thickly said, “What are you thinking?”

“Huh?”

He lifted his head off her shoulder and shifted around until he was sitting at her side, facing the same blank stretch of wall. “You were very quiet.”

“So were you.”

“But I know my thoughts. What were yours?”

“I was thinking of the day my mother died,” Amber admitted. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know,” she said uncomfortably. “I should have been thinking about you or something. You know. So you could ask me what I was thinking while you were at the lowest point of your life and I could say, ‘How much I love you,’ and you’d feel better.”

He smiled faintly. “I feel better.”

“Because I was thinking of my mother?” she asked, surprised.

“Because you told me the truth, even when you thought it was something I did not want to hear. That is how I know how much you love me. I do not need to be told.” He brushed the back of his knuckles across her brow, then dropped his hand to his lap again and stared at the wall. “What happened the day your mother died?”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“You always sound so certain about the things I want.”

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nothing happened, really. I mean, we were there, but they didn’t let us in to see her. We were just sitting in the room outside, me and Nicci, and I was holding her kind of like this. Waiting for the world to end.”

He grunted.

“But it didn’t. End, I mean. Life went on.” She heard herself utter a surprisingly sincere little laugh without knowing she was going to. “Look how far it went on.”

He said nothing.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“That I’m glad you’re here with me.” He said it without emotion, without looking at her. “Master Tsazr had to hear that message and walk all the way back to Xeqor alone. I couldn’t do that.”

“He probably thought that too, until he did it.”

“I couldn’t,” he insisted. “My life ended when I heard those words. I may have looked and sounded like a living man, but I was clay, soulless clay…until you spoke to me again. One word changes all the others. Truth.” He shut his eyes and rubbed his brow-ridges. “I am so thankful that you are here…and I have no one to thank.”

Amber held him while the silence grew heavier and heavier, and when she couldn’t stand it anymore, even knowing she couldn’t make it any better, she said, “What are you afraid of the most?”

He was quiet. Neck bent, he opened and closed his mouth several times before finally whispering, “Being alone.”

She put her arm around him again.

“I know I should be more worried about my soul,” he said in a quick, almost embarrassed way. “But I think I have one and I don’t think I’ll care if I’m wrong when I’m dead. What frightens me is knowing I’m alone now. When it matters.”

She nodded, gently rubbing at his bicep, right above his sabk, and feeling his scales scrape at her palm. “I know that nothing I say is going to fix what you’re feeling right now, but listen to me, Meoraq, please. If there is no God, then you’ve been making all the decisions up until now and you’ve done just fine.”

He made a sound of lackluster agreement, not looking at her.

“And if there is a God, He’ll be there, the way He’s always been there,” said Amber. She hesitated and then softly said, “If there is a God, He’s with you now.”

Meoraq flinched a little. He looked up, searching the sooty ceiling as his spines slowly came all the way forward. He wiped at his eyes, glanced at his damp fingers, and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, following him to the door.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But at least I have the comfort of knowing nothing worse can possibly happen.”

And with that, he pushed open the heavy door and stepped out into a pool of blood. He looked down; the hilt of a kzung came whistling down and cracked against the top of his head. Hands seized her, pulling her roughly out into the light over Meoraq’s crumpling body, and the first thing she saw—perhaps not unsurprisingly—was neither the raiders nor their captive nor even the dead man at their feet, but Nicci in their leader’s grip.

Amber let out a cry and lunged, but all this accomplished was to catch the leader’s eye. He looked at her, cocked his head, looked more closely at Nicci, and then tossed her carelessly aside for one of his men to catch. He smiled.

“Hello, Eshiqi,” said Iziz.

11

Nicci didn’t cry. She didn’t fight, either. She only stood in the bruising grip of the raider who held her, looking back at Amber with their mother’s eyes. There was as much of Bo Peep’s aimless, haggard accusation in that silent stare as there was pain, but there was no confusion. She didn’t ask who these men were or what they wanted. She didn’t ask Amber to make them go away. She just stood there.

“It’ll be all right, Nicci,” Amber told her, just as if she weren’t also in the unbreakable grip of a lizardman, just as if Meoraq weren’t lying on the ground being tied up while he was still unconscious. Just as if there were some chance it might be true.

“It will not be all right, Nicci!” Iziz snapped. He did not falter over her name and why should he? He had been born into Gann’s world. Creation was not sacred to him; nothing was. “No matter what happens, it will not go well for you!”