He meant it well, she knew, but it only set her off again, weeping until she had no tears, only the stuffy ache of their lack. When she finished for the second time and lay shivering and wiping convulsively at her face, Jazuun rolled over with an air of grim determination and gave her shoulder a clumsy pat. “I know who you are,” he told her. “If he goes to the Halls, I will keep you as kin. You’ll have a good man to marry and I’ll see your sons raised under the Blade.”
She rolled onto her stomach and brayed into the musty bedding. He stopped trying to comfort her.
It was the last real rest they took. Shortly after dawn, they were moving again, and this time, Jazuun did not stop until they broke out of the woods into open plains. In the distance, the lone monument in this vast, green patch of nothing, stood the black walls of Chalh. Jazuun checked on Meoraq, took a long swig from his flask, then gave Amber a hard stare.
She knew what he was thinking. “Go,” she said in lizardish. “I’ll stay here.”
“Fuck that in the fist,” he replied, and then rather visibly recalled he was speaking to a woman. “You couldn’t hide anywhere in sight of Chalh that our sentries couldn’t find you, and if they do…I’m going to run you in,” he said decisively. “I don’t think they’ll challenge me if they don’t see you.”
“How the hell do you think you’re going to hide me?” Amber asked, stunned.
“You know I don’t speak that gabble!” he snapped back at her.
“How?” she asked, this time in his language.
“Well, we don’t have time to be clever, so we’ll have to be bold.” He loosened some of the belts holding Meoraq to the sled, pounded him distractedly on his back and then whisked the blanket covering him away. “Get on.”
“Can you pull us both? Damn it.” Amber concentrated and tried again in lizardish. “Can you carry us together? That far?”
“Great Sheul, O my Father…” Jazuun pounded Meoraq on the back some more. When he straightened up, he had his head cocked. “Do as I say. No, I don’t know it will work, but it’s the only plan we have time for, so just do it.”
She got on the sled, reluctantly straddling Meoraq and trying her best to keep her weight off him. To her utter astonishment, Meoraq raised one arm and placed it on her back—the first voluntary movement he’d made in two days. “You’re going to be fine,” she told him, just in case he could hear her. “We’re almost there. Hang on, okay? Just hang on.”
No response, but hope remained as long as he had his arm around her.
Jazuun threw the blanket over the top of her and cinched it down with belts. “Can you breathe?” he asked.
“Yes.” The air was stuffy and smelled of sweaty human and dying dumaq, but she could breathe it. “Go!”
The sled lurched. She had a certain amount of experience with riding on sleds, but there was a huge difference between lying on one and perching backwards like this, an even bigger difference between a walk and a run. Despite her best effort, Amber lost her balance immediately and fell into him. Meoraq’s groan of pain broke into racking coughs, then to a strengthless, “I see it. Like an arm rising…It’s mine, ‘Kosa. It’s for me,” and then his arm fell limply away from her.
She’d seen the walls. She knew how fast they were going, how long it would be before they reached the city. She knew everything and still it was endless, in the dark. She was lost until she heard Jazuun say, “Here they come. If it goes bad, I’ll kill them. I shouldn’t be challenged over it, but do not come out no matter what you hear.”
“Yes,” she told him, which was not quite the right answer, but which was all she could manage being bounced around like this.
“Stay low,” he hissed. “Stay quiet.”
Amber gripped the blanket tighter and pressed her cheek to Meoraq’s chest.
“Stand where you are!” someone called, someone new. “Stand and be—”
“I am Uyane Jazuun, steward of my House, named fourth of the governing Houses of Chalh. This man is Sheulek, kin to me and badly injured. You, run for a cart, and you, get healers and a surgeon to House Uyane! Go now!”
There was no answer. The sled rolled and bounced and jerked. The struggling of Meoraq’s lungs under the heavy blanket was so much louder than his heart beating.
“Open!” Jazuun shouted, and was answered by metallic clanks and groaning.
The sled heaved and suddenly the rear end was up in the air and the sound of boots drumming hard in a stone hall was all around her.
“Cart’s at the end of the gate, sir,” a new voice said. “Should have it emptied when we reach it. What is that?”
“It’s mine is what it is and I’ll kill the one who challenges me over it now, when this man lies in the shadow of Gann! Do you hear him, eh? Do you? This is Uyane Meoraq, son of Rasozul, who was champion of Xeqor in Yroq. That Rasozul, sprat, and his son is who this is, and if he dies, by God and Gann, so will every man I hold even a shard responsible!”
There were no other questions, nothing at all but running feet until Jazuun’s, “Easy with him now.”
They swooped up and then down, thumping into the bed of a cart on top of rough bags of seed or sand or God knew what. Meoraq groaned at the impact, then clutched at her through the blanket, and how blind could these people be? How could she help but look like a whole other person crouching in this litter with him?
“To Uyane!” Jazuun called, as boots leapt up into the cart and his heavy hand rested briefly on Amber’s head.
“Sir, the temple surgery—”
“I say Uyane! Mark me and pull, you gutter-sons!”
The cart lurched forward to the deafening hail of hooves on stone. Here, blinded, the speed felt dizzying, unreal, faster than a subway car, faster than the shuttle that had taken them into space. They did not drive out into the city, but were fired into it—a rabble of voices, a thousand smells, unseen people on every side, and Meoraq groaning beneath her.
In the dark, with the sound of his heartbeat obliterated by the chaos around her, it took hours. She knew they were there only when the cart stopped, pitching her off the litter so that she had to climb back on, and someone had to have seen that, surely, but Jazuun just bellowed for someone to open the gate and someone else to come and carry. Then it was running again, with her clinging to Meoraq like a baby monkey, until suddenly they were set down, the belts loosened and the blanket whisked away.
Light blinded her. She raised her hand against it, squinting, and heard a lizardish scream. Jazuun was an immediate blur, leaping across this wide, startlingly elegant room in an instant to swat the lizardlady responsible on the snout. “Keep your fucking head or I’ll spin it around for you,” he hissed.
The lizardlady, gripping her snout in both hands, bowed herself over at the waist and stayed that way. It wasn’t until she did it that Amber noticed the second lizardlady standing beside her. She didn’t scream. But of course, she’d seen Amber before.
“Xzem?” she stammered.
“Eshiqi!” Xzem set the armload of linens she’d been holding on the nearest surface and rushed forward to clasp Amber’s hands.
“Get her out of here,” Jazuun ordered, throwing the blanket back over her. “Take her to my wife’s chamber, and you, take this silly dip someplace with a lock on it. No one knows about this until I give the word.”
“I mark, sir.”
“Then go. All of you, go.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” Amber pushed the blanket back defiantly and grabbed Meoraq’s hand. His fingers clenched; he groaned.
Jazuun came back in just a few long strides, his hand darting out to grip her by the chin. Up close, the family resemblance was next to nothing. “The surgeon will be here any moment and if he sees you, he will lose his wit and his hands, and he needs them both to save your man.”
He released her and gestured. Xzem brought the blanket back and hooded her. This time, Amber bent, swearing, and made sure her face was covered.
