And she’d done it again. She forbade him to give her orders. Unbelievable.

“I am tending to you, human,” he said, trying very hard to sound reasonable. “It is not an easy task and requires my full attention. Do you think you can just stride out into the wildlands at my side and be anything but a hindrance? Your intentions may be good, but I can’t afford to indulge them and if you truly believe it is not an indulgence, that only proves you don’t understand how desperate your circumstances are.”

“I think you’re the one who isn’t getting it, lizardman.” She paused and raked a hand through the mess of her hair, snagging all four fingers before she had even reached her ear. She swore, disentangling herself, but the distraction quieted her some. “Listen,” she said, frowning. “Just listen, okay?”

Meoraq rubbed his brow-ridges and gestured for her to speak.

But she didn’t, not right away. She searched his face, her human mouth opening and closing, and finally she said, “There were these stray cats that lived under the building where I lived, and the lady three doors down would feed them, you know?”

Meoraq leaned back with a frown. What was she saying now? Was the argument over? Had he won or lost?

“The super kept threatening to evict her for it, so what would happen is, she’d sneak out in the middle of the night every few days and dump this bag of food out on the ground, and if you looked out the window, you could see them all together and purring as they shared it. It must have made her feel real good, like she was saving them.” She paused to frown at him uncertainly. “Are you…Are you getting any of this?”

“I mark enough. Go on.”

“Well, she wasn’t saving them. She was just feeding them. And eventually, she disappeared. I don’t know, maybe she died. My point is, she was gone and do you think the cats started catching all the rats and roaches that were absolutely infesting that building? Do you think they started taking care of themselves just because they had to?”

Meoraq glanced over at the other humans. They looked curiously back at him as they ate the food he had provided and warmed themselves at the fire he had built.

“No, they stood outside where the old lady used to feed them and yowled all day and all night, because that was what they knew how to do. And when they got hungry enough and desperate enough, what they started eating was each other. Every time you looked out there, you could see them, all those cats, with their bones showing and their fur falling out and blood all over them like…like zombie-cats, still yowling and fucking…and eating. Finally the super put out some poison. He was picking up dead cats for weeks and the moral of this story is, feeding someone isn’t saving them. You want to talk to me some more about luxuries now, lizardman?”

The hand of Sheul was heavy on his shoulder.

“I need to pray about this,” he said at last.

Her glare deepened. She folded her arms like a warrior, gripping at her slender biceps where a Sheulek’s honor-knives should be. “I’ll wait.”

He grunted and closed his eyes, finding stillness with just a few breaths. ‘Sheul, O my Father, guide me, I pray,’ he began silently, but then stopped and just sat quiet. He was not ready to know Sheul’s mind just yet. His own knew too much unrest.

There was nothing in Sheul’s Word to specifically forbid a woman from carrying a spear or standing a watch. The goodly virtues of a woman—to be invisible and chaste while in her father’s House, to show her husband meek obedience and loyalty, to be fruitful and to raise her children in the sight of Sheul—did not seem to apply to Amber’s present situation. If it dishonored her father that she was wandering the prairie in the company of so many human males, it was no concern of his. It was disgraceful behavior, perhaps, but not criminal.

You’re already sick to death of us…feeding someone isn’t saving them…

He’d felt something when she said that. He felt it again now, clarified in the quiet. He didn’t like to call it hurt…an itch, perhaps. He had fantasized many times, in much detail, during each day’s walk and each evening’s patrol about the end of this interminable journey. He had imagined walking across the courtyard of Xi’Matezh with the humans at his back and seeing the doors that had stood fast against so many travelers open wide for him. He had imagined kneeling before the holy forge at which Prophet Lashraq and the rest of the Six had met with Sheul Himself and hearing His voice spoken aloud and perhaps, just perhaps, feeling His hand with warmth and living weight upon his shoulder, looking up and seeing the very face of God looking down at him.

Ah yes.

But afterwards? If Sheul gave him no command regarding the humans who presently plagued him, what would he do with them? He could not leave them at Xi’Matezh to desecrate that holy place. Surely God would lead him to some other place. Some secluded valley, perhaps, with a slip of a stream and a few trees. He would help them build a smokehouse and fleshing pit and then he would go and let their fate fall into their own hands.

His mind conjured the fleeting impression of Amber alone with her spear in her hand, receding as with distance. He pushed it away, but now found himself thinking…If Sheul led him to that gentle valley, of course he would leave the humans there as Sheul willed. But if Sheul instead gave him his own will in the matter…what would he do then? With her?

Timeless stretches of unquiet passed and left him with no answers.

‘Well, it is very simple,’ he told himself abruptly. ‘Will you kill them?’

No. Not all of them, anyway. Scott had a way of getting under his scales, but the rest of them were only minor annoyances in a large group and once they were behind him, he thought he would forget easily enough. He didn’t need to kill them to have peace.

‘Then you will abandon them to the wilds and let them find death at the hour Sheul decides. It is not your responsibility to hold watch over all the people of the world. Besides, if they are still unable to provide for themselves after you have carried them all the way to Xi’Matezh, it can only be because they are meant to die.’

Then he would leave them to their fate, but he would take Amber with him.

‘Why?’

Why not? He would not be the only one ever to take mementos home from his pilgrimage.

‘Most people settle for bits of broken temple bricks.’

It would be as long a journey home as it was to reach the shrine and Amber made better company than a broken brick.

‘Only sometimes. She’s far more often a profound annoyance. And she’s ugly.’

He was uncomfortable with that, however true it was. Surely her flat face, furry patches, and clay-soft body would be gruesome aberrations to any dumaq, but she was human. And for a human, she was…agreeable.

‘And what will you do with your agreeable human and her agreeable pet? Because even if you convinced her to leave the rest behind—unlikely—Amber would pull the heart from her breast before she left her Nicci. Will you wander the wildlands for the rest of your days tending the two of them?’

No. With Amber, that was at least only a foolish thought. Add Nicci and it became lunacy. He would have to take up stewardship of House Uyane just to give them a place to safely stay. Even in the depths of his meditations, he could feel himself wanting to laugh at that, but before he could, the image abruptly fell on him of how it would really be to bring Amber into his House. If humans were people, then she was a woman. He would be bringing a woman into his House. His woman. And he, the steward of his bloodline.

‘At least until your brothers challenge you on the grounds that you have bound yourself to a monster.’

He’d best them.

‘You sound very sure.’