Meoraq stopped mid-stride and rubbed hard at his brow-ridges, counting his breaths. A slow-count of six and then another, and when he was calm, he opened his eyes and walked back to Scott, standing close to Nicci. “If you sent her out of my camp again, I’ll kill you.”

Scott’s flat face showed him no obvious alarm. “Miss Bierce?” he called. “Can someone find Miss Bierce? I have no idea what this th…what he’s saying.”

“He’s looking for Amber,” said Nicci. “She’ll be back soon.”

“Back? Where did she go?” Meoraq demanded. A thought struck him. “Did she take her spear? O my Father, restrain my hand. If she’s gone hunting—”

“She hasn’t.”

“No one interrupts a Sheulek!” Meoraq snapped, then paused and looked down at Nicci again. “You know where she is?”

Nicci cowered and Scott stepped forward to take her against his side. The man started to speak; Meoraq shoved him away and took Nicci by the chin, leaning in aggressively close.

“Answer me at once,” he ordered. “Where is she?”

“Down by the water, I think,” she whispered, trembling in his grip. “I don’t know. She…She left without me.”

He released her with a grunt of disgust and started away, snapping, “Stay here and be ready to travel on my return,” over his shoulder as he went.

“Hey!”

Meoraq stopped and looked up at the sky. “Why?” he said, conversationally.

“Because I want to talk to you!” Scott answered, coming to face off against him.

“I was not speaking to you.” Meoraq rubbed at his brow-ridges again, then folded his arms in a warning any dumaq would understand. “But since you’re here, what do you want?”

“I want you to understand that in my camp, it is not acceptable for you to get physical with us.”

Meoraq felt his spines shifting slowly forward and back again. “Go on.”

“I am in charge of these people,” said Scott, oblivious. “I’m responsible for their safety. And while I appreciate your efforts in acting as our guide—”

Meoraq tipped back his head and began another slow-count of six.

“—I am not going to tolerate all this hostility!”

Meoraq opened his eyes and leaned close. “I am going to give you the opportunity to amend those words,” he said mildly. “Because I think even you know that I have not yet been nearly as hostile as I could be.”

“Um…” Scott’s fur-striped forehead wrinkled with something that might have been uncertainty. He glanced behind him at his watching people. “Did, ah, did anyone catch that? Nichole?”

Meoraq gripped his brow-ridges again and this time hissed a little. “Father, I beg You to let me kill just one of them,” he said, then dropped his hand and bellowed, “Stay here!” right in the human’s flat, ugly face.

Scott let out a reedy shriek and threw himself backward, tripping over his own boots and falling on his backside.

“And be quiet!” spat Meoraq and stalked off. This time, he was not followed.

By the water, Nicci had said, and the humans had left a trail broad enough to lead him there even after only a single night. He had almost reached the greenbelt when Amber came out of it, carrying her pack over her shoulder. She’d changed her clothes; her clean ones were so white and loose they made her look like a candle-ward, which almost made him smile even as annoyed as he was. And if she had looked even the least bit repentant, he might have let her apologize and come back with him and have it all over and forgotten. Instead, she saw him and scowled.

So be it.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, advancing on her with two fingers pointed right at her throat. “I told you when I wanted to leave and you run off alone? No, do not dare open that mouth! I gave you an order and unlike the rest of your idiot kind, you understood it! You…” His spines flicked upright. His pointing hand lowered somewhat. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

She swiped her sleeve across them at once and pushed past him on her way up the trail. “Nothing!”

He caught her by the arm and swung her around, peering closely at her face. Her eyes were indeed swollen and red, as if she’d been sitting in smoke.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, concerned.

“I took a bath!” she snapped, yanking against his grip. “Is that all right with you? Jesus!”

“A bath,” he said, keeping an easy hold on her despite her struggles. “This is the second time you have forced me to chase you down and you know how pressing time is! A bath? Where do you think you are, human?”

“I stank.”

“I don’t care! I care that you disobeyed my spoken will and ran off on your own when all the rest of your herd is waiting on my word to move on! You—”

“I’m hungry, Meoraq!” she shouted. “I’m cold! I’m tired and I’m hurt and I’m…scared…” Some of the fire faded from her eyes. She rubbed at them and backed away, keeping her gaze averted and her arm stiff in his grip. “And I stank. And I thought I could do something about the smell. But I still stink. So…So do what you’re going to do and then leave me alone.”

The wind gusted, sweeping dead leaves out of the trees and over their feet. Meoraq watched them blow away in eddies. He did not release her.

“You are not to leave my camp alone,” he said at last. “Take N’ki with you if you must go. And tell me when you do. I want to know where you are.”

She laughed—a shrill, humorless sound. “I don’t even know where I am.”

“Damn it, stop arguing with me! If you don’t give me your obedience right now, you’ll never bathe again!”

She put her free hand up and covered her eyes. Her body was very stiff. Her breaths were short and shallow…and shook.

She was crying.

‘Oh, well done, Uyane,’ he thought, and looked up at the sky. He let go of her. “Go,” he said gruffly. “I am going to fill my flasks and once I have done that, we are moving whether your people are prepared or not.”

She turned her back on him at once and walked away, her head bent and both hands gripping the strap of her shoulder-pack. Meoraq watched her pick her way through the trees until he couldn’t see her anymore. He scratched at the side of his snout, sighed, and started walking down to the water. The first thing he saw coming out of the bracken was the damp heap of her old clothing lying on the bank. Strange that she hadn’t bothered to keep them. They were filthy and not new, but they still had some good days of wear left in them to his eye.

‘Perhaps she didn’t think she had time to wash them,’ he thought to himself, hunkering down to prod at them. ‘And seeing as you came down to whip her back to camp like wandering cattle, perhaps she was right to think so.’

If they weren’t lying in the mud like this, he could take them himself, but he didn’t have a spare satchel to put them in and didn’t want to get everything he owned wet and dirty. He felt a little sorry that Amber had managed to get her feelings bruised, but she could have taken her bath last night and washed her clothes then so they’d be dry and she ready to march this morning. She had instead made the choice to wait and he refused to help her feel like more of a victim because of it. She had other clothes, clearly.

He straightened up, turned around, gave the two colorful objects perched atop the stone an idle glance, started walking, and then halted and looked back at them. Amber’s bootprints, the only ones fresh enough to hold a little water at the heels, made a clear trail from the water to the stone and onward to the trail. She had to have been sitting there, right where the objects now sat, which meant she’d put them there. She hadn’t dropped them by the bank, as with her discarded clothing, and she hadn’t thrown them into the bushes. She’d set them down carefully. And she’d left crying.

Meoraq rubbed at his brow-ridges and scratched the side of his snout. He glanced at the trail, which was still clear for now, and then turned away from it with a sigh and went to see what the hell he’d bullied her into giving up.