“There is always something to see.” He tore off the first bite of cuuvash and softened it, watching her jaws work as she ate her roasted root. The thought that he had provided the gruu that fed her did not annoy him the way it did to think of feeding the other humans. Instead, it made him wish he’d brought more. He brooded on this, his spines low, while he ate.

“I heard some weird sounds,” said Amber.

He grunted, inviting elaboration.

“A kind of…ooo-wah ooo-wah!”

He was more fascinated by the cupping of her hands around her mouth than the noise she made by doing so. It took a moment or two to regain focus, another moment to make sense of the clumsy human sounds, and yet another few moments to think about what it meant. “When was this?”

She hesitated again, then took an obvious guess at his meaning. “Not right here, but pretty close. I went out to look, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Not where—” he began, and stopped to frown at her. “You went out to look? Alone?”

She only looked at him.

He poked her. “You,” he said and made walking fingers. “Went out.” He moved that hand away from his body. “Alone.” And glared at her. “Against my command.”

Her brows dropped in an infuriating human scowl. “I had my spear!”

“Would you like to be burned with it, you senseless little calf?”

“Would I what?”

“You stay here!” he told her, thumping two fingers down (on his tent, but he would not notice this until later). “You do not leave the sight of this camp for any reason and you do not go even one pace away alone! Swear it to me!”

She frowned, but it was not incomprehension that made her do so, only stubborn human defiance. “Why?”

“Because I said so!” he snapped.

“I can take care of myself.”

His spines slapped flat. He stood. “Get up.”

She took that for an order to leave him and started angrily away, so that he was forced to catch her arm and pull her bodily back to him. He turned her around, held her firmly until she stopped trying to shake him off, then released her and said, “I am a tachuqi. A lone tachuqi. One only man-height, with no beak or talons, ha! I am just such a lamed and feeble enemy and you have come this close to me. Take up your spear.”

She looked around, as if thinking it would present itself, then closed her hands hesitantly around empty air and bent her knees in a clumsy warrior’s stance. She eyed him with suspicion and uncertainty in equal parts and then lunged for him.

He kicked as a tachuqi kicks, leaping up and driving his leg outward, even sweeping his foot downward in the slashing motion that would disembowel if he had the beast’s killing talon. She tried to dodge—she also finished her lunge, stabbing her imaginary spear into his side as her dying act in a move that he knew his training masters would roar with delight to see even as they beat her for her suicidal stupidity—but his boot caught her fully on the chest and knocked her hard to the ground. He bent, his hand hooked to make a tachuqi beak, and gripped her firmly by the throat. “You are dead,” he told her. “Get up.”

She did, but wary now. Her hands flexed upon a new nonexistent spear. She braced herself, mud on her chest in the shape of his boot-print, and lunged again.

He leapt back as a tachuqi leaps, arms spread in imitation of their defensive posture, and kicked her in the back as she went by. She staggered, swinging as she fell so that her spear again found its target, and ended on the ground with his hand on her throat. “You are dead,” he said again, letting go. “Get up.”

She did, breathing hard—too hard, she was too new to this, too underfed, too small and weak, too human—as she pulled a spear from the air and readied it against him.

This time, she charged, dropping to her knees and stabbing upwards in a move that was, however ultimately futile, worthy of an admiring grunt as he, the tachuqi, darted nimbly aside and tore out the back of her neck in a single bite. “You are dead,” he told her, pinning her face briefly against the ground. “Get up.”

She didn’t, not right away, but when she finally got her arms up and her feet under her, she was arming herself invisibly yet again.

“Survival in the wildlands is not a matter of persistence,” he said, ignoring her to sit down again on his mat. “Only knowledge, strength and skill. You have none of these things. Stay within your camp, human. I am with you and Sheul’s eye is upon us both.” He picked up his cuuvash and broke off another bite, pretending not to watch her.

She glared at him, weaving slightly on her feet with her empty hands still locked around an invisible spear. She was tired enough, bruised enough, muddied enough, that he thought she might give in despite the look in her eyes.

But this was Amber.

She dove at him.

He was not a tachuqi any longer. He caught her up upon the heel of his hand, her feet flying out before her with the force of her aborted momentum, and down she went upon her back much more gently than she would have gone were he an honest enemy. He held her there, waiting as she gasped herself calm, aware that every human in the camp was awake and watching them. A little water collected at the corner of one eye, just one, and it did not replenish itself once it fell. She did not cry surrender.

Meoraq moved his hand from her breastbone to her elbow and helped her to sit up. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, but she took a piece of cuuvash when he offered it and put it in her mouth. She chewed, staring fixedly at the ground.

Gradually, the other humans settled themselves, although some continued to watch them. Scott was one of these. Nicci, he noticed, was not.

“Can you teach me that?” Amber asked at last, still avoiding his eye.

Meoraq snorted. “Yes. Come to me as soon as you can present the signet of your father’s House, proving you are a son born to the warrior’s caste and we shall begin the seventeen years of training. Don’t talk at me like an idiot. We don’t have time to waste in foolishness.”

Her mouthparts pressed together into a flat, pale line. Her lower jaw trembled.

He waited until he was certain she had accepted her defeat and then said, firmly, “You will stay in sight of this camp always. You will not go even one step beyond its borders alone. Give me your obedience.”

She looked up and directly at him with eyes that were too bright and too green. “No.”

He stared at her, knowing his spines were fully extended and surprise etched in every scale of him for all the world to see. “What did you just say?”

“I said, no.”

“You did not!” he said inanely.

“Want to hear it again, lizardman? No. And you don’t get to argue with me about it.”

“You forbid me?” That was a killing offense, and yet he was not in the least angry. Stunned, yes, but the first emotion that bled in when shock finally faded was still not anger, only amusement. “If you have something else to say before I bind and muzzle you, I suggest you come to it quickly.”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to have to do,” she told him. “Look, you’re already sick to death of us. You aren’t going to stick around one minute longer than you have to. When we get to wherever it is you’re taking us, you’ll leave.”

He opened his mouth to tell her this was not necessarily so, but closed it again with that unspoken because the alternatives so obviously included killing them and he would rather not have that possibility between them just yet. And it would be a lie in any event to say that leaving the humans behind was not a pleasant thought. She surely knew it and he would not insult her by pretending otherwise.

“Life sure as hell isn’t going to get easier,” she was saying. “Right now, the only thing standing between us and a horrible death is you. And you’re leaving. So, no. No, I am not going to stand around all damn day waiting for you to come home in one of your pissy moods because you’re doing it all yourself. If you don’t want me with you, that’s fine, I’ll figure things out by myself, but you don’t get to tell me to stay home and just…just wait to die.”