“I was right,” Scott said again, backing toward the door and the two sentries who were now watching him with amused contempt. “I found a transmission tower and a ship and a skyport and what did you find, lizardman? Huh? Nothing! There’s no God here! There never was!”

The words slapped harder than Scott’s freakish little hand, but even so, it was a slap, not a stab. He looked at the machine and the machine was a dead thing, just another decaying piece of the past. Scott could call it what he wanted, but he was still only pissing out of his mouth. Perhaps Meoraq had not heard Sheul’s true voice, but Scott hadn’t found a ship either, so there was still justice in the world, even if there was no God.

No God. The slap of those words struck even harder and so Meoraq brought them back and stared them down. The holiest shrine of all the world was empty. The Prophet Lashraq had been the leader of a band of foul-mouthed raiders. The Great Word was a book of lies and the fires of Sheul were a symptom of sickness.

Truth. All truth.

But did it really mean there was no God? If a blind man says the sky is grey—

Except that the sky wasn’t grey. Meoraq raised his head and looked up through the hole in the warped panels of the roof, at the little piece of the world that existed for him beyond this room. The clouds were grey, but he had seen the clouds open, however briefly. The clouds were grey, but the sky was green, and all the blind men in the world did not change that.

Scott left him, laughing, reveling in whatever suffering he imagined he had caused. Left alone, quietly and futilely hating him, Meoraq suddenly realized that somewhere along the winding road that had led to this moment, he had come to believe in Earth. He believed in this other world, this impossible blasphemous thing, and he believed that Scott and Amber and every other human, seen and unseen by him, had traveled through the sky between their two worlds in a ship. He believed the tower of fire he had mistaken for the very arm of Sheul was indeed the fire of that burning ship. He believed in all these things.

But he still could not believe that ship had come here by accident.

It was not the faith he’d had in his life before entering Xi’Matezh. It did not come with the name of Sheul or the certainty that he was seen by some greater eye as he hung here in Scott’s power, but it was still a comfort. His clay would perish, yet he had a soul and that, somehow, would go on.

Meoraq closed his eyes and stretched his toes toward the ground to take some of the weight off his screaming shoulders. He took deep breaths. He did not count them.

He waited in the dark to die.

13

They passed the day at Xi’Matezh and it was, for many, a good day. Scott had his moment of triumph, complete with a ship to show to his surviving men as proof of his superior leadership. The raiders encouraged his speeches and even called for a few when things threatened to get quiet; the delirious joy of the humans for what must seem to them just another relic in the ruins made it a day of rare entertainment. For Amber, it was a day in Purgatory. Not Hell itself, but only its cold grey antechamber—the waiting room where there was no time and no relief from the awful weight of anticipation.

Iziz kept her close, kept her servile, but did not allow her to work. The other humans hauled wood and water, and answered whatever need any raider had, whether it was for tea or stew or sex, with plenty of time to stand around their ship and daydream. Amber could only kneel with her hands below Iziz’s boot, aching with the strain of staying small and quiet, feeling his stare cold on the back of her head. She had nothing to do except think and when she wasn’t relentlessly playing out every possibility that began with getting a weapon away from Iziz (and ended with going through the broken wall and over the cliff more often than not), her mind brought her back to the same questions:

What was that thing in the garage where Meoraq hung? What was that thing that Scott and his Manifestors were all but praying to? Was it a ship? Was it really?

Or was it a boat?

She thought it was. She really did. And worse, she sometimes found herself thinking of it as proof that the helicopter was coming too, a thought that grew less and less comforting the longer she had to listen to Scott. He still hadn’t figured out how to open the door (as far as Amber knew, he hadn’t even identified which panel was the door), but he was completely confident that he could fly it home. Funny, how faith could look like crazy when she saw it on someone else.

She could try to fight. Iziz had plenty of weapons on him. Unfortunately, the only one she had any hope of getting at down here was the dagger in his boot, whereas he was in the perfect position to lop her head off.

‘He won’t do it,’ Bo Peep said sleepily. ‘He wants the baby.’

But he could still kill Meoraq.

‘He’s going to do that anyway. If you make him mad, at least he’ll kill Meoraq quickly.’

Nicci had died quickly. That didn’t make it easy.

‘If you do nothing, he’ll definitely die hard.’

But if she waited, she’d have more time to plan and maybe stumble into a better opportunity to take one of his swords.

‘Or lose it,’ said Bo Peep’s ghost. ‘If you see the chance, little girl, you take it. Maybe there is a God and maybe there isn’t. Maybe He helped Scott cross the wires that raised that boat and maybe He didn’t. Maybe this and maybe that, but you know damn well He isn’t going to drop out of the sky and put a gun in your hand, so you forget all about good opportunities and better ones. If you see the chance, you take it.’

Fuck it. Amber made a grab for the dagger in Iziz’s boot.

Iziz yanked his foot up and then slammed it forward, catching her in the chest and sending her skidding backwards through the mud until she collided with one of the Manifestors. He kicked her too, and Iziz leapt up and slapped him. “You touch my Eshiqi again and I’ll whip you bloody! Geozh!”

“I’ve got him. Urgath, get over here, what’s wrong with you?”

Amber spat mud, raised her head to catch a glimpse of metal—the shine of a buckle on the side of Iziz’s boot—and dropped it again, knowing it was all over now. Meoraq was dead; she’d helped to kill him.

Iziz stood over her a long time without speaking. “Get up,” he said at last.

“Fuck you,” Amber replied. The enormity of her risk and the self-disgust behind her failure combined to make her feel a little drunk. “Kill me on the ground, motherfucker.”

Several raiders hooted, hearing this. Several more wandered over to watch.

“Get up,” said Iziz again. Over his shoulder, he added, “Bring me the Sheulek.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to fuck off again, but she knew this might be the last time she saw Meoraq, the last time he saw her. She didn’t want to be lying in the mud for that.

She climbed to her feet as they dragged Meoraq into the courtyard. He did not appear to be conscious, but they took no chances; his wrists were bound behind his back and then tied to his belt.

“That’s far enough,” said Iziz, and the raiders holding him let him drop. He collapsed face-down, but proved he was at least alive by rolling slowly onto his side and spitting out a mouthful of mud.

Iziz let her stare, but at her first hesitant step forward, he caught her by the arm and pulled her back. He studied the ground, gauging the distance between them and Meoraq, and took her with him all the way to the outer doors of the shrine. “He looks dry,” Iziz remarked, keeping his grip on her arm. “Lkonu, give the Sheulek a drink.”

With a snort, one of the raiders beckoned to the human acting as a serving slave.

“No,” said Iziz. “He looks very dry. Make sure he gets a long drink.”