“Then how am I supposed to—”

“Change out the stones,” said Amber, pointing at the one heating in the coals. “Just fish out the old one, drop in the hot one and try not to get too much ash in there.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

The question was directed at Amber, but Meoraq did not allow her to answer it. He snapped his spines flat and leaned in close enough to smell the unwashed, male stink of the human now trying to back away, and hissed, “Because it is not the task I set her. It is the task I set you!”

“Is there a problem over here?”

Meoraq leaned back, rubbing at his warming throat and allowing the human to escape so Scott could take his place. He was calm. A Sheulek is always calm.

“It’s not worth it,” Amber murmured behind him. “I’ll stay.”

“Get your spear and fill the flasks. I’ll find you at the water.”

“Meoraq—”

“Go.”

She went.

Meoraq folded his arms, resting the lengths of his first fingers along the hilts of his sabks, even though if it came to killing, he would never use an honor-blade on the throat of the hateful human Scott.

Scott smiled at him. Like all his smiles, it was a lie. “I’m glad we have this opportunity to speak privately.”

“So it seems,” said Meoraq after a moment’s judgment. “I will hear you then.”

“You’ve been a tremendous help to us in these first difficult days.”

Meoraq snorted. A ‘help’.

“And I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. However…” Scott’s face shaped itself into an expression of grotesque concern. “We are all increasingly uncomfortable with your attempts to assert control over us.”

Meoraq thought that over and took slow breaths and decided he’d better be sure he’d heard that before he lost his temper. “I do not mark you.”

“Control,” Scott said again. “Command might be a better word. Telling people what to do. And trying to intimidate us when you do it.”

“Ah. Go on.”

“I just don’t want there to be any confusion over who’s really in charge here. Now, I’m happy to assign someone to take care of the cooking detail this morning,” Scott said magnanimously. “And I’ll see to it that your…uh…whatever that is, is kept hot while you and Miss Bierce are…” Scott’s eyes rolled and his smile took on a crude sort of slant. “…doing whatever it is that you do, but I don’t want there to be any further incidents. In the future, if you have requests to make, you bring them to me and I’ll see what I can do about meeting them, but you need to stop just barking orders and slapping my people around.”

“I see.” Meoraq’s throat was very hot and tight-feeling now, but he made no attempt to hide its color or breathe it away. He did not draw; he remained calm. “Is that all you have to say?”

Scott considered. Meoraq’s throat throbbed painfully.

“I guess that’s it. But I do want you to know that I don’t hold you responsible. Miss Bierce has always been a disruptive element. I realize now it was a mistake to let her act as my intermediary during our initial contact and I apologize for that.”

“I forgive you.”

The subtlety of dumaqi sarcasm was entirely lost on humans.

“Okay, then.” Scott clapped his hands noisily together and rubbed them. “I’m glad we got that sorted out. Is there anything you’d like to share?”

“Oh yes.”

The answer seemed to catch Scott by surprise. His smile slipped; the one that replaced it had teeth. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Good. Because I am only going to say this once. I don’t know who you were in your homeland or what you think gives you the right to talk at me like an equal—”

“Now wait a minute—”

“Do not interrupt me,” said Meoraq, quietly and distinctly. “This is not your camp and these are not your people. Everything you think you had became mine the moment I set my tent among you and will remain mine until I choose to release you. I am not asking your obedience. I demand it. I have forgiven much and will forgive more, I am certain, but the one thing I will never do is make myself your servant in the camp I have conquered. So here we stand, human, and either you will do as I command and cook the fucking gift of food—” Oh, calmly now. Breathe. A Sheulek is the master of his clay and his emotions, always. “—that I have brought you, or you can let it burn, but you will have no more from me until I see the obedience I am owed.”

Scott looked back over his shoulder at the far fire where the saoq roasted. More of his people had wakened and gathered there, but they stayed close to the food. These words were still private.

When Scott turned back to Meoraq, he was not smiling. “I think there’s a lot of people over there who would object to being thought of as your property.”

“Is that a threat?” Meoraq demanded, more incredulous than angry, although he was very, very angry. “You and all your piss-licking people together couldn’t take me if I were tethered to a tree!”

“It’s not a threat,” Scott mumbled, but his face had gone dark and even uglier.

Meoraq clapped a cooling hand to his throat and rubbed, rubbed. It didn’t help much. He closed his eyes, tried to breathe, and for no reason at all, the memory of Amber crawling into his tent in the dark watches of the night leapt full to the front of his brain. Hissing, he opened his eyes and there was Scott, brazenly scowling at him.

Something in him tore. It did not break, maybe, but it tore and it tore deep. Meoraq’s vision briefly clouded, as it sometimes did in the arena, before the fires took him. His flesh became a stranger’s, throbbing everywhere, every nerve and vein and scale. His thoughts were black.

With all that was left of Uyane Meoraq, he said, “Raise your hand right now and show me your fucking fist, or I swear here in the sight of Sheul that I will end you.”

Scott said nothing, did nothing. Sheul, whose name had been invoked to bear a witness, let neither His voice be heard nor His hand felt. The wind blew at the mganz trees, moving their soft branches in odd gusts, as if it were breathing; six breaths, deep and slow.

‘Amber is waiting,’ Meoraq thought, his first real thought in quite some time. He opened his hands—they ached—and let go his sword. “If you don’t want to tend the food I bring, I’ll stop bringing it.”

Scott mumbled at him, flushed and frowning.

“I did not mark that.”

“I said we’ll do it. I never said we wouldn’t, you know,” he added churlishly. “I was just—”

“I know what you said.”

They stood together, silent. The words they had spoken sat and soured. The words they did not say screamed between them. Meoraq watched the mganz branches blow. Scott watched the fire.

Meoraq said, “We will not walk today.” Amber’s boots—and Nicci’s—would need to dry. It should only take a few hours, but the damp in the air would slow the process and he wanted a good, strong seal.

Scott muttered some kind of acknowledgement Meoraq did not ask him to repeat.

“I am glad we had this talk,” he said instead and he thought he said it sincerely. Something he’d learned from his early days at Tilev and its public toilets: It was always better to open the doors and let the stink out than to try and close it in. “But you would be wise not to approach me again unless the need is very strong.”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about with Bierce, won’t you?” Scott snatched up the pair of sticks Amber used to manipulate his heating stones and began to fish savagely through the stew for the stone there. “I bet you just talk each other’s brains out, don’t you? All night, every night.”

There was an insult somewhere in those words, but the more Meoraq tried to puzzle it out, the more he found himself distracted by Amber’s tracks in the wet grass. She would have found the water by now, he knew, having found it himself the previous night. He could see her in his mind’s eye, sitting on the bank with her bare feet tucked up beneath her to keep warm, waiting for him.