by R. Lee Smith
She stomped away without his word of release, muttering to herself and leaving Meoraq to count his breaths and silently beseech his soul’s divine Father to give him either some measure of mastery over the lust that was once again throbbing behind his loin-plate, or mastery over the temper he was forever losing to these fits of human incivility. Where did she get the nerve to speak to him like that in the first place? To give him orders?! He was Sheulek, damn it, and she was…she was…
She was a woman, was what she was. She was a woman in his camp and beholden to him for the protection he provided, just as any woman of any city he had entered as conqueror. She owed him her respectful obedience and if he ordered her to bend her back, she—
Her neck, he amended in some distraction. Bend her neck. This was a matter of disrespect and whatever else he wanted (Is it sex? she asked, the first time he had ever heard the word spoken aloud by any woman. Is it sex? and she’d been looking right at him) was nothing but an ordeal of this pilgrimage to be endured and defeated. Until then, Amber—along with all the rest of her people—would bend her neck and give obedience to the master of this camp and that was all, all, he wanted from her.
He was Sheulek. Truth was his bloodright. He knew a lie when he heard one spoken. He knew a lie when he spoke it himself.
Cursing, Meoraq got up and stalked into his tent. He fastened it against the wind and against the soft sound of Amber’s footsteps as she made her clumsy patrol. Then he lay down on the damned hides, fully dressed and aching behind his loin-plate, and pressed both hands to his brows. “O Sheul my Father, look down and see Your son in suffering,” he muttered. “As clay is made hard by the fires, so do I ask that my weak flesh be tempered and made fast against the wickedness of Gann. I cannot stand alone against sin, my Father, no more than clay may hold its form unfired.”
Fire, fire, and fire again. Where was his mind? Meoraq hissed through his teeth at the top of his tent and began again, the Supplication this time.
“Great Sheul, O my Father, behold Your son in the hour of Gann. I am the unformed clay upon Your wheel. I am the untempered sword at Your forge. I am the unlit lamp without Your fire at my heart. Shape me, temper me, illuminate me.”
It was not immediate, but as the ache in his loins subsided, peace overtook his troubled mind at last. He lost himself gradually in meditation, slipping in and out of memory, undisturbed now by the soft sounds that sometimes escaped the tent where humans lay together in what little privacy they had and vaguely proud of how undisturbed he was.
‘I wouldn’t be, if it was Amber in one of those tents,’ he thought suddenly, and that was all it took to break his peace.
It was a long night and a bitterly cold one, and Uyane Meoraq knew no rest.
* * *
Amber woke up cold. That was nothing new, but this time, it wasn’t because it was raining and the water had leaked in or her blanket had come loose. No, she was dry and tightly wrapped, just cold. And odds were good it was only going to get colder.
‘Should have slept in Meoraq’s tent,’ she thought drowsily. She’d certainly done herself no good by sleeping out here. Nicci had come back to her usual place at Amber’s side, but her only response to Amber’s attempts at talk had been, “Unless you’re ready to apologize, I’m not interested,” to which there might have been a thousand diplomatic replies, but Amber had gone with, “Okay, I’m sorry you’re such an idiot that you believe Scott can pull a starship out of his ass,” and they’d both gone to bed angry.
Nicci was probably awake right now, thought Amber as she stared at the unmoving tuft of blonde hair that protruded from Nicci’s blanket, but if so, she was pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk. And Amber was fine with that. Maybe later, she’d try again to patch things up, but the world didn’t care if Nicci’s feelings got hurt over a non-existent skyport and right now, neither did Amber.
She got up, scrunching her blanket down into her duffel and pulling out a fresher shirt to put on over the top of the two she was already wearing. That cut the chill to a tolerable level, but it left her duffel bag with nothing in it except her blanket and the one untouched Manifestor’s shirt she had left. The practical part of her knew it was just stupid not to wear it when it was cold like this—the damn thing wouldn’t fit right anyway—but stupid or not, as long as it sat folded up and brilliantly white in the bottom of her duffel bag, she felt like she had something in reserve. Once she was wearing it, she had nothing.
So today, like every day, Amber zipped it up where it would stay clean and neat, and told herself it wasn’t that cold yet and she’d be fine for one more day. Today, she could also tell herself that when they reached the mountains, there would be another lesson in how to make hides, and maybe clothes. They’d look like shit, she was sure, but even the worst-looking leathers were going to feel wonderfully warm. Maybe the animals in the mountains would even be furry. If nothing else, she could make a blanket.
Meoraq was hunched by his fire when she looked for him, working on something. He grunted a greeting as she approached, and gestured at the ground beside him. When she sat down, he lifted a leathery mass out of his lap and dropped it into hers. “You can finish this,” he said, heaving himself onto his feet for a bone-creaking stretch.
‘This’ was a pack, smaller than her duffel bag and designed after his own back-pack. He had done all the necessary cutting and stitching already, and was mid-way through sealing the seams with the same smelly gunk she’d used on her boots. Amber found the jar and picked up where he’d left off, trying very hard not to feel cheated.
“I wish you’d waited until I could watch you do this,” she said finally.
“So that you could make your own,” he agreed, watching her work. “But this one is yours and it should last several years, so there seemed no reason to teach you.”
“Mine?” It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but she wasn’t comfortable accepting it either. As a kind of compromise, halfway between thanks and protests, she said, “My bag’s still all right.”
He wasn’t fooled. “Did I ask if you wanted it? I said it was yours. Insufferable human. Hold.” He stretched again, then ducked into his tent. He came out with what appeared to be an armload of grass bundles. Each one was roughly the length and thickness of her arm; lashed together, with the second saoq hide stretched over the top, they formed a mat that Meoraq unrolled to an impressive length.
“Good God, you were busy,” she said, capping the resin-seal to touch the mat. “What did you use to wrap them together like this?”
“Lhichu stalks, split and soaked.”
“Really? And that’ll hold for…?”
“Eh.” His spines shrugged. “Travel and hard use will wear them down in a brace or two. Fortunately, there’s plenty of grass in Gann’s world, and the hide itself will last you for years, once you’re done preparing it. Take this.”
She reached for the small pouch he held out to her, but drew back with a start as she realized what he’d said. “Hang on, last me for years? You can’t give this to me too!”
“You sound very sure.”
With a growing sense of unease—because unease sounded so much prettier than panic—Amber looked around. People were waking up and the sight of a bed, even a little roll-up job like this one, had everyone’s attention. “Meoraq,” she said softly, urgently, while she still had a chance of saying anything privately. “This has to be yours, okay?”
He continued to hold the pouch out. “I have one.”
“This is going to make all kinds of trouble, you have no idea.”
He bent down and slapped the pouch into her hand. “It was inconvenient for me to wait until you were awake to assemble your pack, so I proofed it myself, but it is for you to prepare your mat. Yours, I say. I have no interest in arguing with you, so we will pretend that you fought bitterly against it until I forced your obedience. Now pay attention.”
She gave up, picking unhappily at the simple drawstrings to open the pouc
h. “Okay,” she said, shaking out the hard, oily block it contained. “What is it and what am I doing with it?”
“Proofing wax, and you are going to rub it over the surface of your mat—”
“I really wish you wouldn’t call it that.”
He thumped her hard on the head. “Don’t interrupt me. The proof has no color. If it leaves a residue, you are using too much. Use your hand to thin it out if that happens. How do you mark me?”
“It goes on clear.” She gave the bottom corner a rub and frowned at the nothing it left on the saoq’s scales. “How will I know I got the whole thing if I can’t see it?”
“It has a shine.”
“Oh.” She rubbed a little more. “Okay, I see it now.”
“Two layers,” he warned her. “Don’t rush. Give it a chance to rest between layers.” He glanced behind him. “Take my tent down and fill the flasks while you wait.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“Watching you take down my tent and fill the flasks.”
“I see.”
“Finish sealing your pack first. The mat can rest as we walk, but your pack needs to dry before we move on. There’s tea in the pot if you want to finish it. If not, rinse it and my cup and pack them away. Will you wear my spare tunic?”
“No.”
“So be it. I will not make it my order yet. What do you want?”
Amber looked up and there was Nicci, with a small crowd of Manifestors watching from a resentful distance. Her stomach tightened. She put the wax down on the mat—on her mat—and started painting sealant onto her pack’s stitches again.
“Nothing,” said Nicci. “I’m just talking to my sister.”
Meoraq looked at her, then at Amber. He grunted and began to fuss with his many belts, making entirely unnecessary adjustments and glaring at both of them.
“Hey,” said Nicci. She sat down on the mat. “Wow.”
Amber’s stomach clenched tighter, but she made her mouth smile. She didn’t feel it and doubted she looked it, but she had to give Nicci the benefit of the doubt. They were sisters. “That nice, huh?”
“It’s amazing how much difference it makes.” Nicci ran her hands over the hide, making a twin rasping sound. She smiled. “Remember our old beds?”
“Yeah.”
“You were always so uptight about having pillow cases on the pillows and clean sheets every week. Yours and mine. Always taking care of things.” Nicci thought about it and shook her head. “I remember once you woke me up and made me change the sheets at, like, two in the morning.”
“I did?”
Nicci nodded, still stroking the mat.
“I don’t remember that.”
“It was a long time ago. In the Holland Mills apartment. We were still sleeping with Mama.”
Holland Mills…She couldn’t have been more than eight. “Are you sure I wasn’t changing the bed because she puked in it?”
“I guess she could have. I don’t remember that part, just you waking me up and making me move. You could be a bitch sometimes, even then.” Nicci ducked her head and gave her a crooked smile through a curtain of dirty hair. Her cute smile. Bo Peep’s smile. “I guess it’s been my turn lately, huh?”
Meoraq, boldly watching all this, said, “Yes.”
Nicci’s back stiffened. She threw him another of Bo Peep’s looks—the haughty fuck-you one—and wiggled around on the mat so that her back was fully to him.
Amber said nothing, just painted more resin on the seams of her pack.
“I know you’ve been trying to make up. I’m really sorry I’ve been so snotty.”
‘I’ll bet,’ thought Amber, and wished she believed she’d still be hearing this even if Nicci wasn’t sitting on that fucking mat. “It’s okay.”
“So we’re good?”
Meoraq opened his mouth and hissed silently at the back of Nicci’s head.
“We’re good,” said Amber, glaring at him. “Don’t you have some hunting to do or something?”
“No.”
“Can you at least go lurk somewhere else?”
“No.”
“This is really nice.” Nicci petted the mat’s scaly top a few more times, all her attention on her hands. It looked even less natural and casual than before. “Maybe we can share it. We could take turns. Like, you could have it every other night.”
Amber turned the pack and continued painting, feeling Meoraq’s eyes like honest-to-God coals on her face.
“Or you know what? Since I always go to bed earlier than you, maybe I could get it for the first part of every night and you could wake me up.”
This, not even five minutes after telling her how Amber had woken her up in the middle of the night when she’d been, what? Four? Three? But she’d remembered it all these years so that she could use it now as proof that Amber had always been a bitch. Still, she hesitated, and in that hesitation, Meoraq slapped a fuel-bundle down into the fire hard enough to blow out sparks and ash, and stood up.
“No,” he said, advancing on Nicci with his head so far on one side that it looked like he’d gone and hung himself in the night. “It belongs to me and if she will not have it, I will take it back!”
Nicci shrank down a little, but only a little. She hadn’t scooted back off the mat. She hadn’t even stopped petting it. She just waited, avoiding his eyes and pretending the touch of saoq scales was the most fascinating and hypnotic touch in the whole world.
“I know how to make them,” said Amber. “Meoraq can get some more of the roots before we leave today and the next time we get a saoq, I’ll help you make your own, okay?”
Meoraq spat at the fire and kicked one of the burning bundles of grass.
Nicci petted the mat.
“Okay?” Amber said again. “I don’t know where they are, Meoraq, or even what they look like! Please?”
“You can make another one,” said Nicci. “And I can use this one, okay?”
Meoraq glared at her.
Nicci ignored him, but at least looked up at Amber. Her eyes were big and her smile, small and fragile. “Okay?”
‘Little girl,’ said the ghost of Bo Peep, laughing her drunk ass off in the back of Amber’s mind, ‘you are being played.’
Yeah, so what else was new? They were making up, and however it happened, that was a good thing, right?
‘You call this making up?’ Bo Peep inquired, smirking. ‘Do you really? Because I admit things have gotten a bit fuzzy since I died, but I’m pretty sure that’s usually called being bent over and fucked.’
No. They were sisters. Nicci loved her.
‘I loved people too. When they paid me. You selling, little girl?’
“No,” she said.
Meoraq’s head tipped slightly back and his spines twitched forward.
Nicci looked at him—a flustered, accusing stare, which he shrugged back at her with a singularly spiteful grimace—and then at Amber. “W-What?”
“No,” Amber said again, to Nicci this time. “You can make your own. I’ll help you, but I’m not doing it for you.”
“How is that fair?” Nicci demanded shrilly. “You’re a total hypocrite, you know that? You didn’t make that! He gave it to you! And everyone knows why!”
“Oh?” Meoraq’s spines rose a bit higher. “Why?”
Nicci looked at him, hesitated, then swung back on Amber. “Why do you always have to be such a bitch? All I’m asking you to do is share!”
“Yeah, share. You sleep in it and I carry it. Is that about right?”
Nicci burst into noisy tears and clapped her hands over her eyes. Her dry eyes, whispered Bo Peep. “You said you’d take of me!”
“I am,” said Amber. Her stomach cramped and rolled, but she made herself pick up the resin and go on sealing seams like nothing was wrong. “But it’s time for you to start meeting me halfway, Nicci.”
“You owe me! This is all your fault!”
“Lies,” said Meoraq, folding his arms.
> “You stay out of this!”
“It is a lie,” Amber said. “And I’m getting awfully goddamned tired of hearing it. Maybe I did put you on the ship, but I didn’t crash it. If you want to be a victim for the rest of your life, you go right ahead, but I’m done taking your blame. I’ll teach you how to make a mat like this if you want, but you better be sure you really want it, because I’m not carrying it for you.”
“I hate you!” Nicci shouted, scrambling to her feet.
“Grow up,” said Amber, painting resin onto the last bit of stitching.
Nicci stood over her, silent except for her harsh, angry breaths, and when Amber finished her pack and picked up the pouch with Meoraq’s little brick of proofing wax, Nicci abruptly turned on Meoraq. “You made her say that!”
“I would love to think it true,” he replied evenly, and left.
Nicci stumbled after him, her mouth working, and finally screamed, “Lizard!” at his retreating back.
He stopped walking. His head cocked. He thought about it.
When he turned around, Nicci tripped over Amber’s mat backing up and fell sprawling. Amber reached for her hand, but Scott somehow got the other one, catching her between them like a tug-O-war rope. A sudden pop from the fire (O god her arm i pulled her arm off) made Amber let go, and Nicci spilled onto Scott’s leg and hugged on tight, babbling apologies that even Amber couldn’t fully understand.
Meoraq went past her without a word and into his tent. A moment later, he was out again, hanging his little metal flask around his neck.
“This is my third gift to you in a single day,” he said without looking at her. “A pack, a bed, and a reprieve for your blood-kin’s beating.”
‘And everyone knows why.’
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Will you…Will you please…?”
“I’ll gather the lhichu. But I won’t give it to you. She’ll have it when she asks my forgiveness and if that means she never has it, so be it.”
Nicci could probably hear him, but she did not react, except with sniffling. Scott helped her stand up, patting her shoulder and murmuring. She looked so wounded as she stood there under his arm, so little and bruised, and so goddamn much like their mother that Amber wanted to throw up. Fighting that urge meant squeezing the bar of proofing wax hard enough to leave finger-shaped impressions along the edge.