by R. Lee Smith
His will was nothing. The Word of the Prophet must be upheld.
‘She’s human. She didn’t know.’
But the law was Sheul’s. If the humans were His children, they were subject to His rule and to the judgment of His Swords.
And after all, some evil voice observed, you don’t even like her.
“So this is Your lesson,” he said in the dark. His voice, no louder than a whisper, caught at his ears like hooks.
“Well, Jesus Christ, lizardman, what the hell did I do n—”
He pulled a knife as if it were a bone he pulled from his own body. He used the knife of his fathers. He could do that much. He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Amber!” Nicci cringed back even as she cried out, but no one else moved. “Someone do something! He’s going to kill her!”
“No, he’s not,” said Amber, frowning uncertainly at the knife he held.
It hurt.
“Do you wish to pray?” he asked hoarsely. “Please. Do not make me send you from this world into darkness.”
There followed a terrible stillness. Amber looked past the gleam of ancient metal to search his face and for a long time, it was only that and the watchful eye of Sheul upon them both.
“Are you really going to kill me?” she asked at last. Her voice trembled, but only once.
“I am a Sword and a true son of Sheul. I am the arbiter of His law, which you have broken. I have no choice in this matter.” And then he said, not thinking, what he had never said with a blade of judgment in his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Someone stop him!” Nicci begged.
“We can’t interfere with their customs.”
Amber’s baffled stare turned briefly molten. She swung around, snarling, “Fuck you, Scott! Nicci—” Her voice trembled again, then turned harsh. “Don’t look. Someone get her out of here. Dag…or someone…Don’t let her see this.”
Nicci began to wail, but she walked away, she was not carried. Many other humans faded back with her. Scott stayed. Scott meant to watch. His eyes were bright in the firelight.
Amber turned her back on them all. She lifted her chin with a defiance belied by her too-bright eyes. “Do it, if you’re going to do it. I don’t care.”
“Will you not pray?”
“I had nothing to say to God before. I’ve got nothing to say to him now.” Her jaw clenched, biting on the shiver in her words.
“So be it. Human, you have broken the Third Law and taken up a bladed weapon—”
“Wait a minute, what?” Amber looked down at the knife in her hand and then back at Scott.
All the remaining humans were looking at Scott, whose skin had gone a curious greyish color. And as Amber opened her mouth to speak, he lurched forward and shouted, “She’s a fucking liar!”
The temper broke in Meoraq and suddenly his kzung was in his other hand—not his father’s knife, not for this human—and he shouted, “I do His will now, but I will be free to do my own when it is over, so do not provoke me!”
Scott put up his open hands, but his eyes stayed on Amber, hissing, “There’s nothing anyone can do about this and you know it, so don’t you even think about getting anyone else in trouble!”
“You fucking yellow bastard.” Amber put her hands on the knife, folding the blade into its own haft, then threw it to the ground between Scott’s feet. “It was my knife,” she said loudly. And turned to face Meoraq. “But I didn’t know that was your law.”
“It is Sheul’s law and not mine to forgive.” Meoraq took resolute hold of her shoulder and put the blade against her neck. “I will be quick.”
“Wait, just…What is the law exactly?” she asked. “The actual words.”
He frowned.
“Humor me,” she said. “As my final request.”
He could feel the heat of her shoulder through his hand. Living warmth. He could feel the tremble of her mortal fear, but she stood and she faced him.
“No man may raise his judgment higher than the true Word of Sheul,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “I am Sheulek. I have no mercy to show you.”
But he did not make the killing cut and after another long moment, he eased the edge of his blade away from her thin skin. Red blood, red as dye-berries, welled up where it had rested.
“‘And the third law writ was this,’” he said in something like surrender. “‘Let no man who is not born of the warrior’s caste and raised under its sign take up the bladed weapon, for the age of the Ancients is ended and wrath belongs to Sheul alone. For he who is born under the Blade, all liberty is given, but for all other men of this world, this sin shall be unforgiveable.’” The last word fell like a hammer on his heart, briefly silencing him. “No allowance can be made,” he told her, as soon as he felt he could. “The Prophet writes plainly that whatever man touches the bladed weapon, even if he has taken it up in defense of his life or that of his son or even of his abbot, if he is not born to that caste, he must be judged unforgiveable. He…You must die.”
Amber’s eyes had narrowed. “Are these laws open to any interpretation?”
“None.”
“Not even from you?”
“I would spare you if I could.” He raised the knife. “But I am Sheulek and His law is mine. I will be quick.”
“You said no man can hold a knife,” she said, and reached up to catch the bone-hilt of his. “But I’m a woman.”
The world dropped away for a second time.
“Is there a law against women holding knives?” Amber asked. Her eyes were intent. Elsewhere, at some unknown distance, human voices began to whisper.
Meoraq bent his head. He breathed.
The First Law: Sheul is master over all His children. There is no mortal being or beast born of clay who does not bend before Him and none whose judgment can be raised higher than His sacred Word.
The Second Law: The Age of the Ancients is ended. Let their cities fall to ruins. Let their time pass out of memory. Let no one seek to master or remake the machines with which they poisoned Gann, lest they be corrupted in return.
The Third Law: Let no man take up the bladed weapon…no man…
Meoraq opened his eyes and found them already gazing into Amber’s. He sheathed his father’s knife. Then he bent, as a man in a fever, without conscious thought or plan, and licked the blood from her neck. It tasted coppery and bitter and he drank it in like wine and pressed his brow to her warm shoulder.
“I take it that’s a no,” said Amber. Her air fell out of her in a shaky rush. “You scared the piss out of me, lizardman.”
“Sheul instructs with a burning hand,” he replied, still somewhat light-headed. “I have to pray.” He turned around, but caught her arm as she first moved away, no doubt to find her weeping Nicci.
She waited, tense, while he tried to puzzle out his reason for stopping her. He only knew that he wanted to say something, but whatever it was would have to be witnessed by all these damned staring humans.
Nicci was coming. He could hear her sobbing through the crowd, as hysterical with joy as she’d been with grief. Amber’s gaze wavered; she looked behind her.
Meoraq released his hold and stepped back. “I have meat,” he said, and rather unnecessarily plucked up his travel-pack to thrust into Amber’s arms. “See that your people are fed.”
Then Nicci was there and Meoraq retreated so he wouldn’t have to watch them embrace and feel…whatever the hell he was feeling.
* * *
Meoraq was sleeping when Amber finally nerved herself up to try and talk to him, or at least, he was lying down with his eyes closed and his arms tucked beneath his head. He was outside though, and fully dressed, boots and all, so Amber waffled for a second or two, and maybe he could feel her stare, because he said, without opening his eyes, “What do you want?”
“Nothing. I brought your, uh, entrails. Thanks for the food. Go back to sleep.” Amber set the leather pack down by his mat, trying to get in and out of his space
fast to disturb him as little as possible, but he was faster.
His scaly hand locked around her arm. He sat up, frowning at her, then beyond her, and then let go. He grunted, pointed at the ground and picked up his pack.
“I don’t want to keep you awa—”
“Sit down.”
She sat.
He rummaged through the organs, pulling out this or that disgusting lump of bloody grossness and occasionally grunting to himself. One of them he set on the ground, hesitated, then picked it up and gave it to her.
“What is it?” she asked dubiously, eyeing the pile of blood-streaked yellow mush and hoping it was not edible.
It was marrow, as he eventually managed to explain, and he wanted her to eat it.
“How do I cook it?” she asked.
He looked at her. “I have roasted it already. Eat.”
“I’ll just save it for later,” she hedged, easing it toward the ground behind her.
“Eat it!” he snapped.
She scooped a jiggly blob of it up in two fingers and sucked it squeamishly down. It tasted pretty much just like bland, vaguely blood-flavored jelly, which made it easily the most disgusting thing she’d ever had in her mouth and that included the time Bobby Wykes up the street knocked her down and made her eat a slug.
Meoraq reached over and helped himself to a heaping palmful, licked his fingers, then went back to untangling intestines.
“I saw the spear,” said Amber after a while. “It’s nice.”
He grunted. “It belongs to you.”
“I figured.” And, inanely: “I’m glad you didn’t have to kill me.”
“So am I.” He glanced at her. “Where did you get the knife?”
It wasn’t an unexpected question. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“So be it.” He took more marrow. “He would be well-advised to be rid of it. If I see it in his hand or the fold of his clothes, I will kill him. That is not a threat, mark me. That is the vow of Uyane Meoraq and God hears me. I will kill him and I will not burn his body. It can lie there and rot. And I hope ghets scatter his fucking bones.”
“Hypothetically speaking, if someone did give me the knife, he wouldn’t have done it to get me killed.”
“Only because he didn’t know the law. If he had, he would have urged the knife on you the first day of our meeting because he is an evil little clay-born smear of shit.” He said this without inflection or any sign of interest, yet long patches of scales on either side of Meoraq’s throat were turning yellow. He was doing that a lot lately.
The yellowing intrigued her, especially as it seemed to go hand in hand with high emotion. Maybe she’d been wrong about the ‘he’ thing this whole time. Maybe he really was a girl, and he was PMS-ing. It was something hormonal, plainly.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He grunted, put his empty pack aside and pulled out one of his many knives.
The knife gave her some pause, but now she felt more or less obligated to finish. “You are a man, right?”
He stared at her. Then the double-row of spines on his head kind of flicked forward and he looked at the knife in his hand. “Ah,” he said. And looked at her again. “I am a man. I am also Sheulek, born of the warrior’s caste to serve God as his Sword and his Striding Foot. Blades are not forbidden to me.”
“Oh.” Amber waited, choking down marrow and watching the yellow patches on his throat fade back to black as he sliced the saoq’s intestines into long strips. She didn’t say anything until he was done, but once he had, she said, “So…what did I do to piss you off this morning?”
He frowned, glanced at her, and kept working.
“I thought we had an agreement and yeah, okay, I didn’t wake you up, but is that really a good enough reason to go at me like that?”
He ignored her.
Amber picked at the marrow, then put it aside. “Do I bother you?” she asked bluntly.
He made a few half-hearted passes at the stripped bowel, then leaned the blade of his knife against his boot and rubbed at his brow-ridges. He didn’t answer.
“That’s a yes,” said Amber. She made an effort to sound cheerful, or at least, the sarcasm-laden sort of cheer she usually dished out when she was in a good mood and her feelings weren’t hurt. “It’s okay, Meoraq. Believe it or not, I understand.”
“No,” he said quietly, still rubbing. “You do not.”
“Yeah, I do. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with us either. For what it’s worth, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I’ll try to give you your space. I know I’m in the way and I’m not the easiest person to live with even when I haven’t been stranded on an alien planet, that’s for damn s—”
“Enough.” He moved his hand and looked at her with eyes that pierced but were impossible to read. His voice had not risen, but there was something new about it that she did not imagine because she could see people looking their way and wearing pretty much the same expressions they’d worn when they’d thought he was about to cut her head off.
It bothered her even more now that no one was doing anything to interrupt than it had then.
Meoraq tipped his head back and looked at the sky. He stayed that way as Amber picked at her bootlaces and rubbed traces of marrow off on her pants. She’d never been good at social stuff. She got the feeling he wasn’t, either. The silence sat between them like a cancer, squeezing everything else out as it grew.
“I don’t—” he said, and then just sat there, watching the clouds roll by.
There were too many ways that sentence could end to walk away from it.
“You don’t what?”
Silence. And just when she’d decided he wasn’t going to answer, he said, quietly and without a shred of emotion either in his voice or anywhere on his body, “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I thought…I thought you were taking us to this temple place.”
He grunted. It could have meant anything. Then he finally looked directly at her, if only for a second. It seemed to her that he flinched a little before he went back to staring at the sky. “I know you want to learn things. It may even be that this is God’s will as well. But I don’t…I don’t think I can teach you. You…upset me.”
Her heart sank. She could actually feel it sinking.
“Meoraq, I know I haven’t given you a lot of reasons to believe me, but I swear I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I’ve just been in the city all my life. I can figure this out. Please, just give me a chance.”
“You do not mark me,” he said, but he didn’t say how and after another long stretch of cloud-watching, he abruptly changed the subject. “Did you kill the saoq I saw you roasting?”
She huffed out a little laughter. “Yeah. With my broken spear. Like the stubborn bitch that I am. And then I had to drag it all the way home. I was trying to be careful, but it still looked like I’d rolled it off a cliff by the time I got it back. Plus, it tasted like shit because all the blood was clotted inside. Some of the guys told me I should have drained it, but how the hell was I supposed to do that?”
He frowned, but didn’t answer.
“Then you show up with two of them, already skinned and roasted, on a friggin’ sled…” She tried to smile, but the bitterness in her tone made the effort somewhat wasted and Meoraq was just looking at her, so she let it drop. “And I felt like a fool.”
He stared into the sky.
“For about three seconds. And then I felt like a walking dead woman. You are one scary son of a bitch when you want to be.”
“I know.”
He wasn’t in the mood to talk, clearly, and she was all out of things to say, except for the stuff she’d had seething through her head all day—you made me run out of here like a fucking little girl you yelled at me for no good goddamn reason you broke my spear you made me cry no one’s begging you to stick around and I don’t like you either so there—and the stuff she’d never say even if he stuck another knife to her throat�
�I thought we were friends—so she guessed they were done. Amber managed another wan smile for the road and started to get up again.
“Take the marrow.”
She hunted around for a tactful way to say what came next, then just said it: “It’s gross, Meoraq.”
“I don’t care what you think of it, human. Eat it.” He rubbed at his brow-ridges, scowling, then crossly added, “Share it out with your N’ki if you must, but eat it.”
“Well okay, but she’s going to think it’s gross too.” She bent over to get it.
He reached up and brushed the back of his knuckles across her forehead.
It was the third time he’d done something like that and she never seemed to see it coming. She looked up, startled.
He looked back at her, frowning, silent.
She straightened up haltingly, fussing with the marrow until she had it folded again in the wide square of leather he’d used for its wrapping. ‘That was a weird touch,’ she thought, tossing the words out defiantly into the recesses of her brain just like it was all there was.
And the thought came back, like some distorted echo: ‘He’s going to ask me to sleep with him.’
Her stomach flipped over, but not in a scared and pukey way. She wrapped up the marrow some more, thinking (no he’s not don’t be stupid that’s just his half-assed way of saying he’s sorry for picking a fight this morning or even heck trying to kill you tonight except that was more of his god stuff and he probably doesn’t feel sorry about it but whatever he doesn’t want to sleep with you he’s a lizard) nothing in particular.
“I’ll do what I can with you,” he said finally. “For as long as I can stand it.”
“You won’t be sorry.”
He grunted in a way that suggested he already was, and rubbed at his knobby forehead again. “Go. Now. I…I need to pray.”
She backed away, clutching the leather with its jiggly blobs of marrow to her churning stomach and watching as he bent over and put his hands flat against the ground. His eyes closed. His breathing evened out.
He did not ask her to sleep with him.
‘Jesus Christ, you really are a fool,’ she thought disgustedly and picked her way back to Nicci, peppering herself with silent and scathing recriminations until she excused herself on the pretext of visiting the bushes, where she threw up and had a record-breaking second crying jag in one day and then went back and fell miserably asleep.