When a Sheulek came to the House of conquest and the steward had no daughters to offer for his fires, the accepted alternative was to give one’s wife. Any sons who came of this union were for the Sheulek to raise, but if a man’s wife bore a daughter, what harm could come of raising it in its mother’s household with the other children of her marriage? So it seemed obvious that Amber was one of these—sired of Sheulek, or whoever took that role in their human cities—while Nicci came of their mother’s wedded man. They were not true sisters, only blood-kin, like he and Nkosa. Blood-kin through the maternal line, but blood-kin all the same.

“Who was he?” Meoraq asked. “Your father.”

“I don’t know. I never knew him.”

“Your mother’s man, then. What man did she marry?”

“What did she…what?”

“Marry.” Meoraq held up his hands and clasped them. “How was she bound?”

“I’m not…sure I’m getting you, but if you’re asking who she lived with, she lived alone. Well, with us, but not with a man.”

“How is that possible?”

“What do you mean?” Her mouthparts were curling up again, as if she found his suspicion humorous. “Why would she have to?”

“Who raised her children?”

Amber’s human smile faded. She went back to work on Nicci’s other boot. “I guess the polite answer is, she did.”

“Say truth. Who raised her children?”

“She did. It was her house. In her name, paid for with her money, filled with her things. Hers. Women don’t have to get married where I’m from if they don’t want to.”

Meoraq leaned back, staring at her. He tried to picture the land she described, a land of milling humans, like yifu in some great undiscovered nest, but the images his mind presented were those of the ancient ruins, and the people he saw inhabiting them, his own. It had been that way for dumaqs once, before the Fall. Men and women, living together, walking freely about in the streets, open to any man’s eyes; it remained a shocking prospect. Meoraq flexed his spines, then shook that off and frowned at her. “What did she do? Your mother?”

Amber’s thin smile broke and she refocused her attention on Nicci’s boots, although they were entirely sealed. “She died. I don’t want to talk about that, okay?”

Meoraq watched her fuss with the boots. Eventually, she realized she was done with them and set them aside. She took up her own and finally got to work on them.

“Were you married?” he asked, and when she gave him that puzzled frown again, clasped his hands together. “Were you bound to a man?”

Understanding smoothed out her clay-soft features, but she didn’t answer right away. She only looked at him, her thoughts moving like stormclouds behind her eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

Why did he want to know? He scratched irritably at his throat, but his scales still felt cool. “I’m trying to understand you,” he said. That much was truth. He wanted very much to understand this creature who crawled into his tent uninvited and left without dismissal, and more than that, he wanted to understand which of the many males in her pack had a claim over her. Because…?

Meoraq hissed suddenly through his teeth and snapped, “I don’t need a reason!” which Amber not-surprisingly believed to be directed at her.

“No,” she said. Her head bent. She dipped out proofing resin and painted her boots. “I was never married.”

“Did you…” He wasn’t even certain how to ask this. “Did you keep your own household?”

“No. We lived with our mother.”

She did not look at him when she answered. Her voice was tight and the silence that followed it, even tighter.

“Did you take labors?” he asked at last.

“Yeah, of course I did. Me and Nicci both.”

“What did you do?”

She slid him a glance and laughed without much humor. “I built machines.”

He recoiled.

“Well, I didn’t build them. I stood next to the machines that built the other machines and made sure they ran smoothly. I couldn’t even fix them if they broke. Just a button-pusher, really.”

He wasn’t sure if that was better or not.

“N’ki did this also?”

“Oh hell no. Nicci was a waitress.” Amber glanced at him, read the confused slant of his head perfectly and said, “Do you have places where people go just to eat?”

“Yes, of course.” Surprised, he sat up straighter. “N’ki kept such a place? She never cooks!”

“No, I know. She showed people where to sit when they came and they’d tell her what they wanted to eat and she’d bring it.” She set her boots down, capped the resin, and held the bottle out.

“Is that all?” He pointed at the ground, away from the fire. “She carried food?”

“Yeah.” Without the business of sealing her boots to occupy herself, Amber returned her attention to the stew. It was bubbling constantly at the sides now, but it would need an hour at least before it stopped looking like chopped offal in water and became food instead, and it did not require constant tending in the meantime.

“For coin?” Meoraq pressed.

“Yeah.”

“Someone gave her coin just to carry food?”

“Not a lot, but yeah.”

Meoraq leaned back to think about that. When he visited a public kitchen, which was often, the cook passed him his meals directly. He could not comprehend why anyone would pay a woman just to touch it for him, and he could tell by the small smile on Amber’s pliant face that his confusion was very evident.

“And I built machines,” she reminded him. Her smile faded. “Do you have to kill me now?”

He thought about it, concerned, but ultimately determined that he did not. “The Word forbids us to master or seek to remake the machines of the Ancients. Your machines were those of humans and not the Ancients. You offend none of His laws. Besides, you are here now.”

“Yeah.” She raised her head, searching the empty plains that surrounded them. “My machine-making days are definitely over.”

“But you must not seek to master the machines you may encounter here or you will be subject to my judgment.”

She stirred the stew and didn’t look at him. “I’ll try to control myself. Making you kill me after you’ve gone through all the trouble of teaching me to light a fire would be pretty ungrateful.”

“It hasn’t been so much trouble,” he said, showing her a careless flick of his spines to hide his irritation. He picked up the nearest of her boots to prove it, inspecting the seal and grunting his approval. “You learn very quickly.” And before he knew it, certainly without planning, he said, “I like teaching you.”

“The hell you say. You can barely stand to look at me.”

“I know.” He shook his head with disgust and stood. “Come, human. Let’s go have a look at this land while your boots dry.”

“What, in my bare feet?”

“Don’t whine at me. We won’t go far and you won’t be walking much once we’re out in the open,” he added with a certain evil humor. “You’ll be crawling.”

She looked down at herself, at her mostly clean clothes and fresh-washed skin. “Great. You’re sure I don’t need to stay here and cook?”

Meoraq glanced over to the far fire where the skewers of saoq roasted, the first of which were already brown and spitting merrily. The scent of food had drawn a handful of humans from their nests. He raised his arm and when one of them raised an arm back at him, he beckoned it over. “Tend to those,” he ordered, pointing at the meat. “How do you mark me?”

The human gave Amber an uncomfortable glance. “Where are you going?”

“With him, apparently.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

The human’s eyes narrowed, which gave it a distinctly suspicious look. “Why?”

Amber’s brows puckered, first in confusion, then in irritation. “I’m going hunting! Why the hell do you think?”

Meoraq raised his hand to catch the other human’s attention, then pointed down to his stewing pouch. “Keep it hot,” he ordered. “And don’t put it over the fire! I only have one water-tight pouch.”