He had to think of Amber then, much as he had been fighting it. Amber and her silly spear. Amber, who spent so much time sitting at his fire and taking the little bites he fed her (right from his hand) and trying with such spectacular unsuccess to mouth his words. And yes, Amber, who was female, not that this mattered, and who might be breeding (he caught at his snout to stop the hiss that shot insensibly out of him) as she damned well should be (Meoraq swung himself down and out of the tree’s fork, moving fast from branch to branch until he dropped with a curse to the ground) instead of running over the wildlands with pointed sticks!

“Although You have made no law against this,” Meoraq acknowledged, glancing heavenward as he aimed himself for the humans and their camp. “And I admit I like better to see her at her foolish hunt than to see her N’ki doing nothing but waiting to be fed in proper female fashion.”

Nicci did everything in proper female fashion, come to think of it. She sat quietly, kept herself largely invisible and showed obedience to male command, since now he knew Scott to be male. Amber did none of these things, really. She talked almost constantly when she was with him, even reaching out to touch him if she did not think she had enough of his attention, and she let her frustrations show plainly on her ugly face. She kept apart from the rest of her kind, but was quick enough to argue with them if she thought they gave her cause. As for obedience, ha! He tried to imagine Amber as a proper female, to picture her in her father’s House (it greatly resembled his own in Xeqor) kneeling meekly, her neck bent and hands turned to heaven…

He couldn’t do it. Perhaps she had been feminine once, but no longer.

He liked her better like this anyway.

There had to be something wrong with him.

It was not far into the evening, and yet the humans were bedding themselves down in broad rings around the fires when he returned. Amber was still sitting up, wrapped in the shiny skin of her blanket, watching the other humans gnaw on saoq bones and talk at each other while she sat alone. She did not look at him until he had been standing over her for quite some time and she did not smile when she finally did.

She. So he had been thinking of her all this time, but he wanted to be sure. He needed to be sure. Just why he needed to be sure this instant, he didn’t know and did not explore. He simply hunkered down and started drawing in the dirt.

She watched listlessly until he had made two images, featureless blobs with arms and legs and hairy heads. She knew they were human and said so, tapping at them without enthusiasm even as her attention wandered back to the fire.

He caught her chin and made her look at the drawings as he, not without an internal wince, carefully added twin curves to one image and a short line to the other.

She studied the pictures in silence, her mouthparts slowly turning up at the corners. “Yeh. I ges we ki’indaskipt tht’biht. Man,” she said, pointing at the male figure. And at the female: “Woman.” And then she patted herself on the chest, right above the swellings of her—yes, her—teats. “Woman.”

‘If they are people, it is not a sin,’ he thought vaguely, and his belly warmed at once. ‘If they are people, she is a woman in your camp, under your protection, and she owes you every obedience.’

Even so, it would still be one of the unforgiveable sins and he knew it. The Word forbade all men, even Sheulek, to lie with a girl not yet in her woman’s years, or with any woman in her sickbed, or with a milking mother, unless she was his wife. Amber may indeed be female, but the proof of it was as good as a warning.

He made himself the master of his clay and put aside sexual thoughts—mostly—to add a third drawing to the first two. He wasn’t happy with it. He’d made it very small, armless and legless, as if wrapped in a blanket, but the effect was disturbingly grub-like instead. He scowled, started to rub it out and try again, then just looked at her and gestured around the camp. “Where are your children?” he asked boldly.

She tapped the grub. “Ba’bee. Orkid I ges. Ch’iild. You no litelpursen.”

“Where are they?” he asked again, determined to keep her focused. “Where is your child?”

She actually seemed to understand some of that, enough to draw back and crease up her brows at him. “Mine? Dijju’just say werz my ba’bee?”

He started to point at her teats, then changed his mind and pointed at those of the dirt-woman instead.

“Oh.” She chuffed and looked down at her chest anyway. “Yeh. Theh’alwez luklyk’thss. D’ssnt alwez meen therza ba’bee. We don’t hev enee ba’bees heer’rytnow.”

It took some time to break that apart and bring it together in a way that made sense and once he had, he did not quite trust the meaning he took away. Hesitantly, he tapped the dirt-woman directly on one of the teats, then tapped the dirt-child.

“Nope,” said Amber, a clear and definitive negation. “Jsst big’buubs.”

He leaned back, trying very hard not to stare at them. It was grotesque to think her teats were always swollen, but if there was no suckling, then there was no sin in mating with her.

And that was where his mind went, yet again. Right there. Like a lodestone clamping on to steel. There was something really wrong with him.

As he grappled with this, one of the figures at the fire rose and came back to join them. Amber’s friend, Nicci. She sat—he knew it was a she by the teats—and gave Meoraq a wary nod.

“Wutz he duun’eer?” Nicci asked, eyeing the pictures in the dirt as if she thought they might be poisonous.

“Nuthnn,” said Amber, showing her teeth in a smile. “Litel’lengwij lessn thatzal. Sex’ehd lzzrdstyl.”

Nicci frowned, slowly drawing up her knees and hugging them to put the barrier of her skinny arms and legs between them. This act pulled the fabric of her breeches very tight across her loins, forming folds that made it appear as if she had a slit. Meoraq looked at the sky.

“Itz nuthnn,” Amber said again, no longer smiling. “Luk itwuz bountoo cummup.”

“Why? Wutz he wantwthuz?” Nicci whispered, her eyes still fixed on Meoraq.

“Nothing! Fr’Cryzzakes, eeza lzzrd! Eez jst nevrseen buubz b’for!”

“Thn wutabout tht?”

Silence. Meoraq risked a glance to see why and found the two of them studying the diminutive dirt-penis on his dirt-man.

“Peepel tokabout yutu,” said Nicci.

“O fuktht!” Amber spat with startling venom. “Thziz my j’b Nicci! You wanna givmeeshit about’ow I doit, doit yorgod dam slf!”

She threw off her shiny blanket, punched it down into her pack, and stomped away.

Meoraq watched her go, frowning. He’d embarrassed her—and he could hardly claim innocence after drawing a penis and showing it to her—but he himself felt no shame. In truth, he felt nothing as she fled him except a simmer of resentment at this Nicci, who had turned an awkward but promising conversation into a big puddle of piss.

They sat there, and after a time, he went ahead and looked at her.

She flinched and ducked her head, so exactly like a dumaq woman that he expected her to mewl at him. Gann’s unreasoning lust both leapt and curdled to nauseating effect. He got up at once and stalked away to his tent.

Safely shut away from human eyes, he tore off his tunic and boots, threw himself on his mat and gave the loin-plate girding him a vicious slap. It stung his palm a little. It hurt his stubbornly extruding cock a lot, but he doubted that would teach it any lasting lessons. Even now, in this storm of furious reproach, he knew that if it had been Amber who bent her neck to him, he would be on her, in her, right this instant.

Six breaths, Uyane. A slow-count of six. One for the Prophet, two for his brunt, and onward, as many times as it takes to remember that you are the master of your clay.