Nicci did not shiver, did not even look at him. She turned her face away from Amber and watched the waves roll in from the sea.

Iziz spared this emotionless response a glance, but no more than that. Whatever he was looking for, he wanted it from Amber. “You look good, Eshiqi,” he said, with surprising mildness following the venom of his other words. “I mean that. I didn’t think you would. You are so fucking ugly and I hate you so fucking much, I am truly astonished by how glad I am to see you. So often, the things you look forward to the most are just sparks, eh? A flash, a little heat, and nothing but ash for the rest of your life. But you look good. Come here. Let her go,” he said to the raider holding her. “She won’t run. Come here, Eshiqi. Right to me.”

The hands gripping her arms loosened and finally fell away. Amber walked on legs like water past Meoraq and Nicci both to stand before Iziz, close enough for him to hit her if he wanted to. She didn’t think he’d kill her yet, but hitting was definitely an option. Her heart was pounding worse than it had ever done on the Candyman’s humming little injections a lifetime ago, punching at her ribs from the inside so hard she couldn’t believe that he couldn’t hear it too.

But if he heard it, he ignored it. He gazed into her eyes like a lover—smiling, marveling, savoring. Then he reached one hand into the pocket of his sword belt and held up an insignificant slip of bent metal. He pulled a bit of mganz-wood off one sharply-pointed end and there it was: a fish hook.

Iziz looked at it. He started to speak, then just stopped and sighed instead. He looked at her.

Where was he going to use that? On her neck, on the vein that had to be throbbing there in this panicked pulse as thick as a subway tube? In her eye, or even both eyes, before the real fun began? Or would he try to use it like she’d used it on Zhuqa, and how much damage could he do down there, ripping at her insides in search of a vein she didn’t even know if he’d find?

“He was my friend,” said Iziz. It was not an easy admission for him and he made it like they were the only ones there to hear it. “He was our leader, but he was my friend. How many of those do you think I have, Eshiqi?”

Behind her, Meoraq groaned against the ground. Amber strained in vain to see him through the raiders and it was only because she did that she finally saw the body and recognized it as Crandall.

“Little piss-licker took a jump at me,” Iziz remarked, watching her reaction. “Friend of yours?”

“He did?”

“Seemed to think he’d have help.” Iziz ran his eyes over the few remaining humans, ably held by his men. “And if he’d had it, maybe they could have had me. Not all of us, but me for certain. But they let him jump alone.”

She looked for and found Eric and Dag with the raiders. They wouldn’t look at her.

“I didn’t kill him right away,” Iziz was saying. He turned around so that he could stand at Amber’s side, see what she saw and think his own thoughts. “I told him he could live if he’d raise a fist to me. You may be ugly, but you can still be useful. So I gave him the choice: Keep my camp, carry the tack, catch a few cocks or show me he can fight them off, and who knows? Maybe someday he could have a sword on his belt and a slave for his own. It’s the sort of thing Zhuqa would have done,” he added meditatively. “So for his sake, I offered. He told me to fuck myself. But the rest of your men put their fists right in the air when I slit his throat, didn’t they…what’s your name? Nicci?”

Nicci did not respond. She and the ocean were in their own world.

“I thought she was you until you came out,” said Iziz, studying the two of them, first Nicci, then Amber. “I thought she was you and that maybe we’d killed you after all. They say the dead can walk again if they aren’t burned and Gann won’t have them. She looks like you,” he mused, eyeing Nicci slowly up and down. “But she bent her neck for me and you never would. Or would you?”

Behind them, a sudden scuffling as Meoraq tried groggily to rise and was beaten back down to the ground. It took a lot of beating. Iziz watched. Amber didn’t dare to, no more than she dared to look at Nicci. Iziz still had the fish hook in his hand; he was just looking for the best place to stick it in.

“What would you do, Eshiqi?” Iziz asked. His voice was low and too close to her left ear. She could see the dim dazzle of cloud-covered sun on the fish hook on her right. “If I told you I would let him go, would you raise your fist to me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d be lying.”

He grunted, a soft paff of air against her neck, and combed through a few strands of her hair with the hook. “I suppose I would be. Get him out of here. And don’t get stupid with him. That’s a Sword of Sheul you’re handling. Tie him up, keep both eyes open, and leave him the fuck alone until I say different. Go on.”

Two of them went, dragging Meoraq between them. He let himself be taken without resistance, but his eyes were open and they were not defeated.

She knew better than to ask. She knew and she asked anyway.

“What are you going to do to him?”

“Do you expect me to answer honestly?”

“Zhuqa would.”

His glance was ice on the edge of a knife. “He probably would. But he’s dead. And his killer is talking at me like that’s a safe or even a sane thing to do. Do you really want to know what I plan to do? Do you really think that will somehow help while you wait for it to happen?”

His throat was still black. She risked another question. “Did you burn him?”

He leaned back. “Who?” he asked, but his eyes told her he knew who.

“Zhuqa. Did you burn him at the funeral?”

Some of the raiders close enough to hear exchanged glances and murmured to others further back.

“What makes you think he even had a funeral?” Iziz asked finally.

“Because you were his friend and he would have wanted one.”

He stared at her. No one else moved. No one else spoke.

“That was a damned good hit,” Iziz said at last. “I mean it, Eshiqi. You aim for the gut like a fucking tachuqi. Yes, we burned him. You want to know how long it took or how it smelled?” His voice was rising, but she didn’t need it. The yellow was coming in at his throat now and coming in strong. “You’d think it would smell like meat cooking, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. It smelled fucking awful. Gann’s breath could not be more rank than the smoke from my only friend’s funeral. Why would you even ask…” He trailed off, his head tilting by degrees, like the head of a clockwork toy. “You want to make me angry, is that it? You think if I’m angry I’ll just spit up everything I’m going to do to you and you can make a plan. What do you need to plan for, eh? Do you think I’m going to kill you?”

“Eventually.”

“Oh, that’s a good word. Eventually.” He circled back to where he could stand and face her, folding his arms to tap the point of the hook against his own arm. “You haven’t asked how I know your language.”

That startled her. She hadn’t thought about it. With everything else there was to see and hear and wait for, the little matter of a lost language barrier had not even begun to send up its alarms. Iziz raised a hand and gestured without taking his eyes from Amber. He watched her while she looked and saw raiders drag a slumped, limping human unwillingly out into view.

He was naked, except for leather strips wrapping his feet and the metal band around his neck to which a chain might be attached if the need arose. His arms had the washed out color of a man who used to get a lot of sun before being stranded on this sunless world. The rest of him was a grub-pale pinkish-white, where he wasn’t bruised or scraped or just plain filthy. He stood where they made him stand and put his hands over his groin and stared at the ground.