by R. Lee Smith
“Now you really do.”
“No,” he said with a snort. “I still don’t. I am Sheulek and all things within my camp are mine. Besides, you’re my wife and it is your divinely-ordained duty to serve my needs, whatever they may be. Besides that, you want me.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Always,” he said, but he stole a covert glance to make sure she didn’t mean it. She didn’t. He grinned and thumped a knuckle playfully on her scarred shoulder, saying, “I must be among the very best of men, eh? To possess so fine a wife.”
“Yeah, thanks, but we’re not really married.”
She was still smiling, but it wasn’t a joke. Meoraq thought about it, then stopped walking and turned on her. “That’s not the first time you’ve said that,” he said, then thrust his face very close to hers. “Why do you keep saying that?”
She seemed startled at first, inclined to laugh at him, but her eyes darted up to take in his low spines and she decided to become defensive instead. “Because we’re not! You can’t just say something and make it true!”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t!” she snapped. “Anyway, there weren’t any witnesses or anything to prove you even said it.”
He rocked back onto his heels and stared at her. “A witness?” he asked incredulously. “Woman, I will do many things to humor your human whims, but inviting in an audience while I am having sex will never be one of them!” He paused, then leaned in again. “You were there. Why didn’t you protest at the time if you had such objection?”
Pink color touched at her cheeks. “I wasn’t exactly paying attention to what you were saying at that point.”
He smiled.
“Oh shut up,” she snapped, ducking around him to keep walking. “We’re not married and I’m not arguing about it anymore. We’re just not.”
He snorted, but came after her, falling into step at her side instead of taking the lead. “This is not an argument,” he informed her. “There would have to be a dispute in order for there to be an argument and it is not possible to dispute the facts. But now I am curious. How do humans make a marriage bond?”
“With vows, I guess, but there has to be a priest there, or at the very least, a judge.”
Meoraq peered at her, then struck himself on the chest and flung both arms out, putting his whole body on display.
“Not you!” she yelled. The color in her cheeks was very bright now, a bold red that painted her all the way up to her eyes. “You don’t count! It has to be another priest or another judge!”
He flicked his spines, still grinning. “When we return to Xeqor, I will have our bond formally witnessed by the abbot and the high judge both if you like. Does that satisfy you?”
Amber walked a little faster. “You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to marry you.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked, amused. He didn’t have any trouble keeping pace at her side.
“Because you can’t marry someone against their will!”
“Yes, I can.”
“You can be a real prick sometimes.”
Meoraq snorted. “That is the sort of thing you say when you can’t think of anything else. If this is an argument, I think I have just won it.”
She threw him a glare and tried to walk even faster. He had only to wait. Eventually, his same even strides were enough to bring him up beside her. She glared straight ahead, her back stiff and her mouthparts pressed together.
“Well?” she said, after a few minutes of what had been for him a fairly comfortable silence. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m beautiful when I’m angry?”
That was a trap if he’d ever heard one.
“No,” he said. But took the risk and bent in swiftly to sweep his scent-cavities along the side of her throat. “But you do smell nice.”
He gave that a moment more to settle, then put out his hand.
Her mouthparts twisted, but she took it.
* * *
The journey resumed. With the wind at their backs and the ground drying out and chilling hard beneath their feet, their speed greatly improved. The plains rose and became the foothills. Dead grass thinned over the stony soil. The earth took on the strange greenish-grey tint unique to the border between Yroq and Gedai. They made six spans that day at his estimate, six spans and still it was light when he called camp. And yet he lay awake that night with Amber tucked up against his side in a bed warmed by his fires, thinking.
Meoraq knew of no roads through the mountains, which was not to say there were none. From the moment the mountains were in sight, he had been looking for evidence of a pass. The relatively low peaks and shallow grades of this particular slope had brought him here, where he found the remnants of a road, but nothing that had been cleared or remade in years. Carving out a road, even in the plains of Yroq, was no casual undertaking and they were not abandoned on a whim. The inescapable conclusion was that there might be something wrong with this one and furthermore, that there must be a better crossing somewhere else, but he didn’t know where, didn’t even know whether to search for it north of their position or south.
In the morning, the mountains looked whiter. Meoraq prayed while Amber sat on a rock and pretended to be patient with him, but when he raised his head at the end of it, he still saw only the mountains…and the snow creeping down from its heights.
“Well?” said Amber, shouldering her pack and taking up her spear.
“This is where we cross,” he decided, but he was not at ease with the decision.
They began to climb, making their way steadily over the loose rock and deadfall that littered the base of the mountains. There was no sense of progress made. They seemed to struggle over the same hill again and again while the mountains themselves stayed just beyond it. Meoraq had to look back and see the plains below them—a rumpled brown blanket with patches of trees and the short, ugly scar left by the storm days ago—to feel for certain they were moving at all. Their distance halved and then halved again as the snowline began to drop.
It began as a few flakes, which Amber tried to tell him were just blowing down from the mountains. He didn’t bother to argue with her. In another hour, arguments were unnecessary. Their tracks were holes in dust at first, then depressions, then craters, and finally twin lines. By the time he called camp that night, they were in the white up to their knees and the snowline was lower than it had been even two days ago.
Amber held his pace without complaint, walking where he walked and taking no foolish chances over rough terrain. She learned quickly how to see softslides forming and where to put her feet on broken slopes, but he heard her fight for breath the higher they climbed. He felt the sharp tug of her hand on the back of his belt each time her footing slipped. He saw her cup shake when she drank her first swallows each time they stopped to rest. He felt the weakness in her arms when she put them around him at night.
The foothills could not go on forever. Already, the landscape was changing. The true mountains loomed over them: rock and ice and death in every misplaced step. The time was coming to make a decision. Meoraq put it off as long as he could, until at last, Sheul made it for him.
* * *
Meoraq crested a hill and when he saw what lay before him in the last valley before the mountains, he halted. Amber, bent nearly double to keep the stinging wind out of her fragile human face, promptly walked into him. She stumbled, her hunting spear at once tangled in his legs and hers, and probably would have fallen over if he hadn’t caught her by the arm.
“What is it?” she asked, squinting through the falling snow.
It was a cave, and if a cave had been all it was, it would not have drawn his eye for more than a moment. But it was a cave with a mouth large enough to allow a grown man to walk through and small enough for said man to easily craft a hide door to cover it. It was a cave positioned midway up a gentle slope, neither on the valley’s floor nor dangling unreachably over a sheer drop. The valley itself was wooded and well-t
raveled by mountain game, with a visible source of water and no evidence of past slides. Short of a second pillar of flame rising to heaven, the message could not have been more clear.
“Why are we just standing here?” Amber asked.
“We are done for now,” he told her as his gaze moved over her. She did not look well. Her skin had turned a bright pink wherever it was exposed to the air, all but her mouthparts and the thin flesh surrounding her sunken eyes, which had taken on a deep, bruised color. Part of it was surely the cold, which her human body could not seem to combat, but the endless days of walking had taken a heavy price as well. If she was not at her limits already, they were well within her sights.
“It’s hours until dark!” she argued, even as she weaved upon her feet.
“We are done.”
“The mountains are right there!”
“We are done.”
“Damn it, lizardman!”
“We—” He bent down to put their eyes directly on level, his face so near that he could taste her breath when he spoke. “—are done.”
“You don’t think I can do it, is that it?” she demanded.
Meoraq neither answered nor straightened up.
She swiped snow out of her face. “Fine. We’ll take a break, but—”
“That cave shall be our camp,” Meoraq said, pointing.
“That what?” She tracked the aim of his arm and scowled at the gift Sheul had given them. “A cave? I don’t want to stop for the whole night!”
“We will not stop for one night, woman,” he replied. “We stop for all of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sheul has provided our winter’s camp.”
She stared at him, water welling and steaming in her eyes. Then she snatched her spear back from him and yanked her arm from his grip. “Have fun, lizardman. I’m not tired and I’m not stopping!”
He watched her go, struggling against the wind at every stubborn step. If this were any other woman, her foolishness might carry her another hour before she came meekly back to him, assuming there were any dumaq woman who would refuse him. If she were a man, her pride might take her well into the night before reason brought her slinking back to his camp. But she was Amber, and so Meoraq went after her.
She tried to shake him off when he first took her arm, saying something about this not being a matter for discussion, which was very true. Meoraq did not bother to answer, however, electing instead to sling her over his shoulder with his travel-pack. He picked up her spear, gave her a whack with it to stop her drumming her fists on his back, then turned back along the path of his tracks, loudly praying for patience. He did not stop until he had marched himself into the cave Sheul had given him and could have this fight out of the weather.
“Where will you go?” he demanded, setting her on her feet and giving her a shove when she immediately attempted to storm out again. “How is it you think you will find Xi’Matezh without me?”
“Maybe God will take me there,” she said acidly.
“Sheul brought you here.”
“I…I…I don’t need to stop! I can keep going just fine!”
“Do you think I am making this camp for your sake?” he asked, incredulous. “I am a Sword and a true son of Sheul. I obey only His will. I do not ignore His direction for benefit of stubborn females without the sense to look after themselves. And if I did,” he went on, his temper fraying, “I would have halted this march long before now as you are plainly, plainly, killing yourself to make it!”
“I am not!”
He ripped his samr from its sheath and seized her. She fought him with embarrassing effectiveness, but in moments, he had roughly turned her and thrust its polished blade unavoidably before her face. He shook her once to stop her swearing and again to make her look at it instead of at him and then there was quiet.
“Leave me alone,” she said at last.
He snorted at the back of her stubborn head. “I am tempted to do just that altogether too often for a righteous man,” he told her and released her, unbuckling his harness rather than re-sheathe his samr. He strove for patience, found some, and turned his attention to his surroundings, where it should have been from the start. The cave was not as roomy as he would have liked, but had a natural bend to it which protected it nicely against the worst of the wind and would make it easy to hang doors. It had clearly been used by men in the past, to judge by a stone-ringed ashpit and a number of pots and basins too heavy or ungainly to carry over the mountains, even a small smoker and drying rack. Far more recently, it had sheltered animals; there was a scattering of small bones to tell him that a thuoch had been and gone at some point, but now it was a kipwe’s den. Perhaps even a mated pair of kipwe, to judge by the size of the nest of quills and shed fur before him. If they had not already descended to winter in the warmer climes of Yroq’s plains, their two hides would make fine doors to seal off the mouth of the cave and their meat would make a fair start on their winter stores…
Amber had not moved.
Meoraq pondered her for a moment more in silence, then heaved a mental sigh. He may as well get the whole of the fight out of the way now, rather than portion it out over the next several days and impede all the other work they could be doing. He said, “All things happen in Sheul’s time.”
“Bullshit. Lizard-shit.” She shot him a fierce, humiliated sort of stare and as quickly looked away. “Why don’t you ever just come out and say what you mean?”
“Great Sheul, O my Father, give me patience. What do I mean?”
“You think I’m weak!”
Of all the things she could have said, this was the one he was least prepared to hear. “In what sense?” he asked guardedly.
“In the sense that you think I’m weak!” she yelled back at him. “There aren’t a whole lot of different ways to say that, lizardman! You think I’m weak!”
“You are,” he said, baffled by this outburst.
She stepped back with her spear so tightly clenched in her fists that it shook. Her mouthparts, as tightly pressed together, shook also.
“Your skin is soft,” he told her, hardly able to believe he needed to make these arguments out loud. “It bruises at every touch. It tears. It can’t hold its heat. In that sense, you are weak. In the sense that you can’t carry the provisions you require to sustain you on this journey, you are also weak. You have suffered severe illness which makes you tire more easily. You may improve in that regard with rest and time, I don’t know, but for now, you do tire easily, which makes you weak. You don’t know how to survive in the wildlands. This is ignorance more than weakness,” he added thoughtfully, “but it bears mentioning.”
She turned around with curious difficulty, as if pulling against invisible hands.
“Your clay is much too frail,” he went on, watching her walk clumsily to the mouth of the cave, “for the soul it must house.”
She did not stop and he was obliged, not without a sigh, to follow after her for a second time.
“Sheul measures us all,” he said, taking his place at her side and resisting mightily the urge to pick her up and carry her off again. “His greatest trials are reserved for those He takes greatest pride in. You must please Him, Soft-Skin.”
“I don’t believe in your stupid god.”
He snorted. “It amazes me each time you say that, as if you truly believe it is necessary that you do.”
She rolled her eyes in their bruised sockets and tried to walk faster, skidding now and then in the wet snow, but soon enough her step began to slow. She struggled on for a time, following the path they had made in her first senseless flight, but when she reached the mangled place where he had seized and carried her away, she went no further. She glared at the ground between her feet, not moving. Meoraq waited, watching the snow catch in her hair.
“They could be just up ahead,” she said finally.
“All things are possible, but this is not likely.” And in answer to her glance, explained, “
If they passed through this valley, surely they would have seen that cave and slept within at least one night, and if they had, I would know it. You would know it.”
Her shoulders fell. She stared at the mountains.
And because it needed saying, even as much as he hated to be the one saying it, he took grim hold of that spear and drove it all the way in. “I have not seen any sign of their passing in a long stretch of days.”
“They’re not dead. My sister—” She stabbed her eyes at him and looked away just as fiercely. “—is not dead. I’d know if she was.”
“I’m not saying she is,” said Meoraq, who nevertheless thought just that. “I say only that they have not come this way. Perhaps they crossed elsewhere. They may have made a camp to weather out the cold season or even abandoned their search for Xi’Matezh altogether. If it is Sheul’s will, we will meet them again. But for us, for now, we are done.”
Meoraq stood in the snow and let her think. She had begun to shiver by the time she was done, but he did not attempt to hurry her along.
Her breath heaved in and out of her. She turned around to face him. “If I go back with you tonight, I don’t want to hear you tell me not one more word about how this is God’s will.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that, whether she liked admitting it or not, she was his wife and as such, sworn to obey him in all things, but the words would not come. Instead, awkwardly, he opened his arms. Glaring, wordless, she shuffled closer and let him hold her.
“I still have the lichu,” he said at last, for want of something intelligent and comforting to say. “We’ll cure leathers and make clothes. The cold will pass. All things in…All things in time.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
They went together back to the cave as the snow fell and filled their bootprints.
BOOK VII
ZHUQA
The worst winter of Amber’s life happened the year she turned five. These were among her earliest memories—freezing in the basement of the flophouse where Mama made them stay, hiding from the men with the big hands who stayed there too, Baby Nicci always crying and sometimes Amber crying with her because her stomach always hurt. The days of state-care with juice boxes and storybooks and all of life’s cares erased in one wonderful tumble down a hill was months away, a fairy-tale Amber didn’t even know to hope for.