“Don’t do that again, Eshiqi,” Iziz said, standing over her while she took the last shaky swallow from her cup. “You won’t make me mad enough to kill you, but I will trim you down some. Remember Zru’itak and mind your fucking manners. Geozh!”

“Sir?”

“Get the slaves in a line and load them up. The rest of you, break camp. We’re moving on.”

“No!”

Scott ran forward, caught a cuff from Geozh, and went sprawling on his face in the mud to the general amusement of the raiders. Undaunted, he got back on his feet, alternately wiping at his face and finger-combing through his hair. Now and then, his hand twitched down toward his hip, wanting to straighten a jacket he was no longer wearing. “Not yet. No. Absolutely unacceptable.”

“You have something to say, Druud?” Iziz asked, turning all the way around to look at him.

“We haven’t found it,” Scott said. “We had an agreement.”

Iziz leaned back a little, his spines flaring forward, but he raised his hand to stop Geozh when he cocked a fist.

“I brought you here,” Scott was saying. “I agreed to allow my people to…to serve in…in certain capacities and I brought you here and I said…I said you could have that bitch!” he shouted suddenly, pointing at Amber. “That lying bitch! This is all your fault! This is all your—” He stopped and smoothed down his hair some more. The mud was drying to his scalp like the plastic hair of a cheap doll. “But there is a transmission tower,” he said calmly. “And that proves there’s a ship. So. We need to find it.”

“Eshiqi says there is no ship,” Iziz said.

Scott laughed scornfully. “Of course she does! She wants us to be afraid! She came here,” he declared, coming at Amber with his hand raised, pointing, “for the sole purpose of undermining the colony’s efforts! Of course she says there’s no ship, but there is a transmission tower, we’re all looking right at it, Miss Bierce, so fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck you! I was right and you were wrong! You threw away all the concrete and you stole my flashlight and broke it and you fucked the lizard and turned him against us but you’re not taking the ship so where is it? Where is it, huh? Where—”

Iziz reached out without hurry and gave Scott a tap on the underside of his chin. Scott’s jaws clopped shut. He grabbed at his face and looked at Iziz, all wounded eyes and stiff shoulders. Then he turned around and walked with silent dignity back to Geozh.

Iziz folded his arms, watching impassively as Scott directed his people out of their cluster and into a line. Through the wind and the tide, Amber could hear snatches of his speech: true pioneers rose above adversity, the good of the colony came before personal feeling, and Amber Bierce was a bitch.

“Sometimes I think he really believes that if we found a ship, I’d let him sail away on it,” Iziz remarked. “The first night we were here, picking the place over, he must have had a thousand chances to run, but he never did. Little piss-licker came to get me five times, trying to work the doors open. You believe that?”

“Yes.”

“Came to get me. But the doors wouldn’t open. Druud wanted me to pry them open. Old places like this… sometimes the doors burn you. I told him. He wouldn’t hear it. So I gave him a sword.” Iziz glanced at Amber. “You’d have stuck it in me. But Druud passed it off to one of his pokes and he stabbed it right in the door, just because Druud told him to, when he’d heard me say what could happen.”

Amber didn’t ask.

“There was a light,” said Iziz, as if she had. “And then there was a hole through him. I could have put my hand through it. Thirqa could have put his head through it. No smoke. No blood. The meat didn’t even look that burnt, but the fur on his chest was charred. He didn’t die right away. He looked down first and he let go of the sword. I was watching to see if he’d put his hand through the hole, and I really think he might have but he didn’t have time. He dropped. And Druud said, ‘Maybe he loosened it.’ I think he would have set another of his pokes on the door if I’d let him.” Iziz thought about it and snorted. “I think the poke would have done it if he’d asked.”

Raiders were breaking down the camp, stacking tents and packs indiscriminately on the sleds. She still couldn’t see Meoraq.

“But you got the doors open.” Iziz gave the domed shrine a meaningful glance. “What was in there?”

“Nothing you could steal.”

He looked at her, snorted. “I can steal anything, Eshiqi. If you haven’t swallowed that yet, I can serve up some more.”

Amber shut her stupid mouth and stood silent.

Iziz gave her a second, harder stare. “No apology?”

“I’m sorry.”

He slapped her, not hard, just enough to sting. “No, you’re not. Don’t lie to me again or I’ll carve your man, Eshiqi. I’ll carve him and make you eat the pieces I cut off.” He eyed her, his head cocked. “Beg me not to hurt him.”

Did that mean he was still alive? The words spilled out of her in a breathy rush: “Please don’t hurt him!”

He slapped her again, rocking her a little this time. “Slaves do not give orders in my camp! Beg my forgiveness!”

“Please—”

This slap smashed her lips into her teeth, filling her mouth with the taste of her own bitter blood. “Get on your knees and beg like a slave!”

Amber dropped to her hands and pushed them both palms up on either side of his boot. Somewhere in the world, Scott laughed.

Iziz twitched in his whole body at once. He looked around, blinking, color coming in strong at his throat. “Who was that?”

“Druud,” said Geozh, rolling his eyes. “Who is it always?”

Iziz cursed and turned, ready to walk away, to go deal with Scott and his petty nonsense until the day was gone and they were moving and where was Meoraq? Amber lunged out in a froggish hop to slap her hands down in the mud again, this time pressing her head to Iziz’s boot, just the way she’d seen Xzem do to Meoraq once.

He stopped. She could hear him breathing, feel him looking down at her.

The waves kept coming. The ocean never cares.

“Get up,” Iziz said finally. “I know what you want. Get up and we’ll go see your Sheulek. Druud, you’re coming too, but I hear one more sound out of you and I’ll sew your mouth shut. The rest of you, keep working.”

And with that, he started walking, leaving Amber and Scott to come together in his wake and follow.

Inside one of the many ruined structures of Matezh was Meoraq. Impossible to say just what it had been, once upon a time—a garage, maybe, a workshop, something that needed this wide open floor. If there had ever been anything inside, it had been picked clean over the years and now there was nothing left, nothing to distract her from the sight of Meoraq dangling from the rusted girders with his feet just off the floor. There was a crack in the ceiling where two panels had fallen away from each other enough to let in a little light and a steady trickle of windswept spray that had collected on the roof. Naturally, Meoraq was positioned just below this. He was naked. They’d wrapped a scrap of filthy cloth around his head to mask him and the cloth did not appear to be moving with his breath.

Iziz let her look as long as she wanted, but at her first step forward, his hand dropped over her shoulder and forced her back onto her knees. “He’s alive,” he said. His voice echoed; Meoraq did not move. “Say something, Sheulek. Your woman is here.”

Silence. The water dripped and spattered.

Iziz walked calmly over, drew Meoraq’s bone-handled knife from his belt and stuck it in Meoraq’s thigh. Meoraq jerked violently—a fish on a line—and hissed through his hood.

“See? He’s fine. We’re going to play a game,” said Iziz, coming back to Amber. “Zhuqa liked games. Most of us do. A raider’s life is more boring than people realize. My game is called, ‘God and Gann.’ Wait here and don’t move. You don’t get to speak to him, Eshiqi. Remember Druud is watching.”