“We call him Druud,” said Iziz. “He’s been very helpful.”

“Are you all right, Scott?” Amber asked finally, knowing perfectly well that he was not. They weren’t starving him. He had no scars, no branding burns, no obviously broken bones to show for his time in captivity, but he was not all right.

Iziz waited with her for an answer that never came, then took two easy strides forward and slapped Scott hard across the face, knocking him back into the chest of another raider, who had to catch him before he fell to the ground. “Eshiqi asked you a question,” he said.

“I’m fine,” said Scott. He didn’t look at Amber.

“Eh. He’s a liar.” Iziz gripped Scott’s chin to make him face this way and that before shoving him away again. “At his best, he’s never even close to fine. What would you say, Geozh?”

The raider holding Scott uttered a considering grunt. “He’s a hot grip when the urge comes on. That’s fine enough for me, sir.”

Scott flushed and stared fixedly at the ground.

“Zhuqa once said you were like a slow fuck into God, Eshiqi. I confess, I was expecting better, but Geozh is right. This one’s nothing but a little soft meat and a squeeze. He doesn’t even squirm anymore.” Iziz gave Amber a long, assessing glance, but did not seem to find what he was looking for. He grunted and stepped back, rubbing at his throat and frowning as he studied her. “I suppose you cast him out for a reason,” he said at last. “What did he do?”

Amber didn’t answer, not out of any planned defiance, but simply because she didn’t know what to say. There was no satisfaction in seeing Scott the prisoner of these horrible people, only the same sick horror she had felt in their grip herself. She’d survived it and he could survive it too, assuming any of them walked away from this…but she’d had Meoraq to take her in, to tell her she was his, to make her believe it. Scott had nothing and she had nothing to give him except silence when Iziz might be asking for a reason to hurt him.

Iziz grunted mildly after a suitable span of time had bled itself out, then turned around and walked over to Dag and Eric. “What did he do?”

“He tried to kill her,” said Dag.

Iziz flared his spines forward. “Truth?” he asked, almost but not quite laughing. “And all you did was exile him? You didn’t stab him in the head first?”

“She couldn’t,” Dag told him. “She was, um, hurt.”

“Hurt?” Iziz came back to her, his head still cocked, still smiling. “You didn’t look very hurt the last time I saw you. Did Zhuqa get a cut in after all? Did I? Tell me you bled for me, Eshiqi.”

“It was a—”

Iziz turned back in the same easy, friendly manner, drew his sword and hit Dag in the face with the hilt. The sound of bone crunching was somehow louder than Dag’s scream, and the spattering of blood and teeth falling over the ground was even louder than that. “When I talk to you, I’ll look at you,” Iziz said, and looked back at Amber. “How bad were you hurt when Druud tried to kill you? I’m curious. Wait.” He glanced behind him to the raiders standing over Dag, who was still screaming even as he tried to fit his shattered jaw back into place, and said, “Shut that thing up or get rid of it.”

The nearest raider helpfully kicked Dag in the side, then smacked him in the head with the pommel of his knife a few times, and finally grabbed him by the hair and started hauling him toward the hole in the shrine’s crumbling wall. Nicci moved out of the way.

“Stop it!” Amber shouted. “He’s hurt, for God’s sake! He can’t help it!”

Iziz swung toward her, moved in close, but did not hit her. “Pick someone to take his place,” he said, staring hard into her eyes. “I’ll let him go. I’ll even patch him up first. Druud, fetch me the humans and put them in a line. Pick someone to go over, Eshiqi.”

Amber couldn’t stop herself from looking as Scott assembled the last of his Manifestors—naked, shivering, mutilated, and still following him—but when they were all there, she clamped her jaws shut tight and stared back into Iziz’s eyes.

He waited, his spines ticking out the seconds. “Not even you?” he asked softly. “It’d be quick, at least. Quicker than all the eventual ways I had time to think on while I stirred Zhuqa’s burning bones.”

She closed her mouth.

“Please yourself. Geozh!”

Dag’s mushy pleas and promises to be quiet turned into screams, turned into receding shrieks, turned into nothing. Amber didn’t watch. She looked at Iziz looking back at her and said, “What do you want?”

“From you?”

“Yes.”

He seemed to consider the question fairly. It seemed to be the truth when he finally said, “I don’t know yet. But for right now, I want to know how bad you were hurt when Druud tried to kill you.”

For answer, since answers had become inevitable, Amber loosened her girdle and opened her tunic to show him the scar left by the kipwe’s attack. Iziz’s spines flared again as she undressed to this small degree. Faint smudges of yellow lightened his throat as he looked down at her chest, then her belly, and finally at the scar.

“Fuck Gann,” he said mildly. “Or fuck a kipwe, anyway. They used to have kipwe shows in the camp when I was young. I may have mentioned that once. Druud, get over here.”

Scott came, his head bent and jaw tightly clenched.

“Did she fight back?” Iziz asked, prodding at the worst of the scars with his fingertip.

“No,” Scott said sullenly.

“Could she? Or was she just lying there in a pool of her own fucking blood?”

“She wasn’t bleeding.”

“She wasn’t bleeding,” Iziz echoed, again in that almost-laughing way. “That bled, Druud. Tell me it didn’t again and I’ll tear your squirming little tongue out and feed it to you. You’ve seen me do it before. Dare me not to now.”

“She was bandaged up when…She was bandaged by then.”

“I see. You really are a shining drop of poison shit, aren’t you?” Iziz asked, almost admiringly. He fingered the edge of the scar for a moment more, plucked at it just once with the rough scale that acted as a fingernail, and then moved his hand unhurriedly lower, wedging it beneath her breeches with a grunt of effort to grip at her sex. He had to hook at her girdle to hold her from her instinctive flinch, but he wasn’t bothered by it. His expression remained serene if distracted as he felt between her legs for her opening and forced a finger inside.

Not a sound from him. Not a sound from anyone, unless the low mutters and speculative grunts from the watching raiders counted. Iziz worked a second finger in and rubbed them slowly back and forth, watching her watch the sky. At last, he wrenched the fishhook out of her girdle and cupped the back of her head instead, more or less making her face him.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he told her grimly. “I don’t think I’ll enjoy it much, but I’m going to do it. After that…well, I promised my men a fresh poke if we ever found you. So. Here’s what’s going to happen, Eshiqi, if you want to start making your plan. You’re going to catch every cock in my camp all the way down to little Thirqa unless you pick someone to take your place.”

Amber pressed her lips together and glared at him.

His spines flicked. “You don’t mean that.”

That felt horribly like the truth, but she shook her head and glared at him anyway.

“Point your finger for me, Eshiqi,” Iziz said, working his own a little deeper into her. “I promise not to kill them if you give them to me freely.”

She shivered, but kept silent.

Iziz waited, running his gaze over Eric and Nicci, and then the rest of his huddled human slaves, keeping his hand at work the whole time. When his eyes finally came back to her, he pulled his hand out of her breeches and wiped it on Scott’s chest. “Not a damn one of them would do the same for you,” he told her seriously. “You know that, don’t you?”

She said nothing.