Iziz left them.

After his last footstep faded, Scott whispered, “You may as well talk, Bierce, because I’m going to tell him you did anyway.” And grinned.

The hood shifted. Meoraq said, “S’kot.”

Scott flinched and stared around.

A second hiss, longer and quieter than before. “Bastard son of Gann and a she-ghet, so you have found your pack. Now hear the words of Uyane and mark well: I will not die here.”

“No. No, you probably won’t.” Scott backed up, trying to laugh, but it came out in such a high, unnatural patter that if Amber weren’t looking at him, she might not have recognized the sound. “They have plans for you, lizardman. You’re not going to die anywhere close to here, but they will kill you.”

“But they won’t,” said Meoraq, “burn me. And so I will be free to follow you all the days of your treacherous life. I will hold your face in my heart at the very moment of my murder and when I am made mad by unending death, I will still know you, human, and I will gnaw your living bones.”

“Is that a real threat?” Scott asked, but he kept backing up. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“You shouldn’t laugh, Druud. I’ve seen men die for no reason.” Iziz returned, his boots clomping heavily across the floor. He had one of the sleds, helping him to carry the odd assortment of things he brought with him. When he reached Amber, he began to unpack, laying everything out in a neat line. “I’ve heard things on the wind myself. My mother called them the howls of hungry ghosts, the voices of men who’d forgotten how to speak. So. Are you calling my mother stupid?”

Scott shot Amber several sidelong glances and suddenly pointed. “She talked.”

Iziz sent Amber a narrow stare, still arranging things, then straightened up, caught Scott by the hair and slapped him hard and fast, forwards and backhand, on his face, throat, chest and any other part of Scott’s screaming, struggling body he could reach. “Don’t you ever lie to me again,” he said at the end of it, dropping Scott carelessly on the floor and stepping over him. “Come here, Eshiqi. It’s time to play.”

Amber eased forward into striking range, but he merely folded his arms and watched as she examined the three distinct selections he’d set out for her. Meoraq’s clothes—his neatly folded tunic and breeches, his travel-harness, everything but his boots, which Iziz was wearing. One of the large travel-flasks, filled, by itself. Six or seven small vertebrae, cut from whatever animal the raiders had been roasting the night before, with shreds of greasy meat and stringy tendons still clinging to them.

“Choose,” said Iziz when she finally looked up. “Each one is a blessing. Each one brings pain. God and Gann. That’s the game and if you don’t play with me, he goes right over the edge.”

Amber looked at her choices with new eyes. The bones seemed the most ominous, although she couldn’t say exactly how. There wasn’t much meat on them, but what there was might be poisoned or maybe Iziz meant to force Meoraq to swallow them whole. That left his clothes or the flask. She couldn’t see how clothes could hurt, unless they were ratted up and used to throttle him. On the other hand, Meoraq wasn’t as susceptible to cold as Amber and walking naked might not be too hard on him. What about the flask? He might be able to live without clothes for a day, but not water. But she was assuming there was water in the flask, which was not at all certain. It could be poison. Acid. Anything.

“One,” said Iziz quietly. “Two. Three. Four—”

Her arm felt so much heavier than it should be. Raising it to point made her entire right side cramp.

Iziz grunted and picked up Meoraq’s tunic and breeches, revealing the coiled leather belt hiding beneath them. He handed her the clothes, wrapped the belt around his fist so that the buckle dangled, and walked forward.

“Oh no!” Amber dropped to her knees, palms up, crawling after him. “Please, no!”

The belt howled. It hit like a fist dead center of Meoraq’s back. He jerked, swinging wildly by his bonds, but Iziz had no trouble at all hitting him again. He swung the same way he’d slapped Scott: quick, brutal, roundhouse blows that hit anywhere, everywhere. He never spoke. His throat stayed black and cool. He ignored Amber until she grabbed at the belt, then stopped just long enough to push her to the ground and step on her before resuming the attack.

When it finally ended, Amber was crying too hard to tell. She knew only when he took his boot off her back and dropped the belt on the floor in front of her. Iziz, only slightly coarse of breath, crouched down beside her and knotted his fist in her hair, raising her head, forcing her to see the damage: what seemed to her eye hundreds of mottled, irregular blotches all over where his scales had been beaten out of pattern and a few bloody trickles making their way down his limp body to drip onto the wet floor.

Iziz stood up, dragging her with him, and held her on her feet until she steadied. “You can talk to him now if you want to,” he told her. “But for every word you say, he gets one more stroke.”

Amber’s hands rose in shaking flutters to press over her mouth.

“You sure? He’s Sheulek. I’m sure he could take it. And just imagine how much it would mean to him now to hear his woman’s words of comfort.”

She shook her head, too numb even to hate him while Meoraq hung there, silent.

“Please yourself. Bring him down and get him dressed, Druud,” Iziz ordered, and took a long drink from the flask. “Make sure you get his harness on tight. Doesn’t look like he’ll be walking much, so we’ll need to drag him. He slips his tether and I’ll whip you both together. Let’s go, Eshiqi.”

Iziz started for the door and Amber followed, walking backwards, unable to keep from staring at the horror she had helped to happen. Scott watched her for a second, then went ahead and untied one of Meoraq’s wrists. The sound of his body hitting the floor stung at Amber’s eyes, but she didn’t make a sound. “Looks bad,” Scott called after her, his brow furrowed with exaggerated concern. “You know, he probably has broken ribs. He could have a broken rib right now sticking into his l—”

Meoraq drew up one leg and slammed his foot square in Scott’s stomach. Scott flew back, hit the wall first and the floor second, bent over and threw up between his splayed legs.

Iziz paused in the doorway. “Druud, for fuck’s sake,” he began, and that was when the lights came on.

Iziz looked up, frowning, then down as the floor shuddered. The wall panel where Scott had impacted, now slightly bent, dropped away to reveal the ancient control panel beneath. It sparked twice and emitted a high-pitched whining sound, echoed as a bone-humming groan beneath them. Cracks appeared right down the center of the floor—four of them, exactly the same length with exactly the same space between them, in perfectly straight alignment. They widened as the wall squealed and the floor shook.

There were doors in the floor. The doors were opening. One, two, three—all empty holes with rising platforms that slowly sealed them off again.

Up through the fourth came a dust-dull wedge-shaped ship.

* * *

The swaddles of his crude hood kept air suffocatingly close. Meoraq could smell nothing but his own unwashed hide and blood-tinged breath. Before the beating, sounds had been muffled; afterwards, pain dulled everything to a grey groan. He was aware that something had happened, but didn’t care what, beyond the thought that the raiders might all be standing around Scott’s caved-in corpse and paying it an apprehensive witness.

That hope died with Scott’s sudden, shrieking, “Haaaaa!”

“Leave it, Druud. You have work to do.”

‘Yes,’ thought Meoraq, flexing his bound hands. ‘Come and dress me, S’kot.’