“Ithnkeewntz t’tak’uzther.” Frowning, Amber patted her chest with one hand, gesturing at the other creatures as she did so, then pointed at Meoraq and made wiggling, walking movements with her fingers. “Wergo’in t’gthr? Yutu?”

“We all go together,” he told her, pointing at his drawings. “If His will is not made known to me upon the journey, Sheul shall surely tell me what to do in Xi’Matezh when I stand before Him.”

“Wut izthtpls?” Scott asked.

Amber threw up her hands, slapped her thighs, and swung around. “Frfkz’sk Scott i’dntno! I’dntspeek fkknlzzrd!”

Meoraq hissed at the creatures to silence them, then poked Amber irritably with his stick to take back her attention. When he had it, he swiftly made some sketched animals to fill the empty space between the ash-creatures and the ash-shrine. “The journey is long and dangerous. The prairie is filled with wild beasts and godless men and we are very near to winter. I will protect you—” Ash-Meoraq received a few ash-knives and the very badly-drawn ash-tachuqi nearest him was rubbed out. “—at least until I know whether or not I am meant to kill you. That you are to be a test of my faith is clear to me,” he mused, once more gazing into Amber’s unsettling eyes. “But I am Sheulek and my faith is as enduring as the wind. I shall not fail my Father.”

Amber’s pliant little brow-ridges drew together as she listened. Her eyes were green and she had felt warm and soft and disturbingly real in his dream when he held her.

“But if it is His will that I stand with you,” Meoraq said, now speaking just to Amber, “I shall not fail you either.”

“Wutz’i sa’en?” Scott wanted to know.

This time, Amber answered without taking her eyes from Meoraq’s. Her mouthparts curved upwards. She said, softly, “Eezcm’mn wthuz. Eezgnna hlpuz.”

And she held out her empty hand, just held it out, open in the air. After a moment, Meoraq put down his stick and held his out the same way. She huffed and moved to take his hand in hers. Joined.

Behind his loin-plate, some hot urge of Gann flared and throbbed. Meoraq willed it back. He released Amber and stood up. “Enjoy these last hours,” he told her. “When the sun rises, you and all your kind belong to me.”

“Meeor’ak,” she said.

“Just so,” he agreed, and gave her a tap on the top of her freakish, furry head.

8

And just like that, the lizardman apparently considered the matter settled. He rose from the fire, said a few words while pointing sternly at the tents, and then walked away into the tall grass without looking back.

“Grab it!” Scott shouted, backing out of Meoraq’s path.

No one moved.

Meoraq kept walking and was soon swallowed up by darkness.

“You let it get away,” said Scott, and for a change, the accusation wasn’t aimed at Amber.

“We’re not set up to take prisoners,” Eric told him. He pointed back at the lizardman’s teepee. “He’ll be back. He left his stuff.”

There just wasn’t a whole lot to do at that point. Scott hustled the Fleetmen into his tent for an emergency debriefing (all but Mr. Yao, who went back to his bivy in spite of Scott’s threats to consider that insubordinate behavior). Everyone else drew off at first to sit and talk in low worried voices about if and how this changed things, but it was early and not entirely dry, and one by one, people drifted back to bed. Amber sat up until the fire died and even dared to interrupt the debriefing to ask for a flashlight, but Scott said no and it was just too dark to move around without one. She paced around the edge of camp for a while, banging into crates and tripping over bags of concrete while she strained her eyes trying to see shapes in the black. There was nothing, only the endless wind and a few icy pellets of rain, so in the end even she gave up.

Nicci was already sleeping soundly. Amber pulled out her blanket and wrapped up to stay dry. She lay down, but only to huddle close to her sister and share as much warmth as she could. She was way too wired to sleep now, couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. She was only keeping Nicci warm while she waited for the lizardman to come back.

The next thing she heard was a heavy, squishy, thumping sound, like someone falling over in the mud close by. Amber pushed her blanket back and dragged her head up into the light of late morning.

“I fell asleep,” she croaked and dropped back to the ground, slapping both hands to her face.

A low grunt answered her. The lizardman walked around the scaly deer he had just deposited on the ground in front of her and hunkered down to investigate his firepit. His little leather stewing pouch was slung over one shoulder like a ladies purse, bulging and heavy-looking, which had to have some connection to the dead deer, which was slit wide open and was all shiny and pink and empty inside.

‘Gross,’ thought Amber sleepily, trying to rub her face awake. Then she thought, ‘Food,’ but that wasn’t quite right, was it? No, it was Meoraq’s food and that was a very different thing.

She looked back into Scott’s side of the camp and saw dozens of people watching, looking like nothing so much as a horde of hungry prairie dogs, motionless and staring. At their center, Scott slowly stood up, towering over the rest of them for a few seconds before Eric and Dag popped up too.

She started to say something to Meoraq—just what, she didn’t know, especially since he wouldn’t understand it anyway—but then saw that he was making a fire. Amber sat all the way up, trying to pay attention to how he did it, but there wasn’t time. He just cleared the ground, laid out some branches and a few bundles of grass, put something from his pack up next to the kindling and then there was fire.

“Nicci, look at this,” said Amber, reaching out to pat her sister’s hip. “Look what he’s doing.”

Nicci rolled away from her. “Is he building a starship?” she mumbled.

“No, but—”

“Then I don’t care. Leave me alone. I’m sleeping.”

“Oh come on!” There was now a roaring fire where nothing but ash and mud had been less than a minute ago. Amber found Nicci through the crinkly blanket and shook her. “Look at this!”

Nicci heaved a sigh and raised her head just as the lizardman pulled the long sword off his belt and hacked the head off the deer. It rolled over, tongue lolling and sightless eyes staring. Meoraq picked it up and set it over the fire, carefully balanced on rocks to keep it out of the forming coals. The deer’s scaly lips shrank back, steaming, into a dead, idiot leer.

Nicci looked at this, then at Amber, open-mouthed.

“That’s not what I wanted you to see,” Amber said.

Meoraq grabbed both sides of the dead deer’s ribs and broke them well apart, forming a meaty platter where he upended his stewing pouch. Lots of shiny organs came tumbling out—heart, liver, kidneys…other things—along with a small splash of blood.

Amber slapped her hands over her face again.

“Thanks so much for sharing that!” Nicci punched her blanket into her duffel bag and stormed off through the mud to the other fire, where just about everyone else was already up and sitting together. They let her in, listened to whatever she had to say to accompany those angry arm gestures. A few of them looked at Amber.

Damn it.

Meoraq watched Nicci go without obvious interest as he cut up his assortment of organs and impaled them on sticks. He put these gut-kabobs over the fire, licked his fingers, then started cutting the deer out of its scaly hide.

“Looks like it’s going to be another great day,” she muttered, taking Nicci’s blanket back out and rolling it up neater. “Thanks for coming back, Meoraq.”

He covered his eyes with the back of his least bloody hand and muttered, “Meoraq,” under his breath. His spines twitched up and down as he thought. Then he pointed the tip of his knife at the half-butchered animal and said something.